Burning Time

48

There were a few vital inconsistencies in the information Detective Woo, calling him from New York, was giving him. Jason sat in the chair by the bed, looking out at the lights on the navy ships in San Diego Harbor.

“Dr. Frank, from the appearance of your apartment, there is no indication that anything untoward happened to your wife,” she began.

He sensed another message behind her words. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“Ah, there are no signs of anything being disturbed,” she said.

There was some crackling in the background. The connection was not a good one. If nothing was wrong, why hadn’t she waited until morning to return his call? Jason looked at his watch. It was way past midnight her time. He had asked Detective Woo to check his apartment, but he more than half expected her not to do it until the next day.

He had pegged her as a bureaucrat from the moment he saw her, from her very first words. There was a lot of tension around her mouth and eyes, a rigidity in the way she held her slender body. Her precisely layered haircut was extremely controlled, and the navy blue blazer and red-and-white blouse she wore buttoned all the way to the neck took no chances. Everything about her indicated a person who walked a straight line in the middle of the path, afraid of risk-taking, or of veering from the rules in the slightest detail. Jason had known a lot of bureaucrats, still did. Bureaucrats were the people who had accidents in hospitals, who let little things by them that resulted in very big consequences. There were times people died because bureaucrats were just doing their jobs. That’s why Jason didn’t trust them.

“But she’s not there, and you tell me the lights and television were on. That’s already very untoward,” he said.

“That depends on your wife,” Detective Woo said.

What did that mean? What was the real story here? Jason shifted the phone from one ear to the other. He didn’t like the vibrations he was getting from the detective’s voice. He could feel how tightly wound she was. Clocks wound too tightly sometimes froze up and stopped working altogether.

“What did you see, Detective?”

“There were wet towels in the bathroom,” April said. “Some lettuce in the sink. The lights were on in the kitchen. She may have started to make herself something to eat and then changed her mind and gone out to visit a friend.”

There was a slight hesitation before her next question that made Jason think the detective didn’t have any faith in that theory.

“Do you think she was likely to do that?” she asked.

“No, she wouldn’t do that. She wanted to talk to me.”

But how badly did Emma want to talk to him if she didn’t pick up all the times he rang? Now it was really late and she was still out somewhere. She couldn’t be out negotiating a movie deal at midnight.

“No,” he said again.

“Maybe somebody from business you don’t know.”

He pondered the heretofore unconsidered possibility that Emma was indeed out with some producer or movie star, and that was what she wanted to tell him when she called more than twelve hours ago. Just that she was going out with someone wonderful that night. He walked around in the idea for a minute. Emma didn’t know what he was doing in San Diego, what was going on. She might have gone out in all innocence. Maybe she took the afternoon off and went to the hairdresser first.

None of it worked for him. And it was clear the theory wasn’t working for the detective, either, or there wouldn’t be so much strain in her voice.

“Were you aware her answering machine is on the blink?”

“What?” Jason started. “No, I wasn’t.”

“It picks up, but it doesn’t record.”

So maybe Emma didn’t know he returned her call.

There was another small, telling hesitation on the New York end. Jason was sure the detective was keeping something else from him. What was it?

“I’m coming back,” he said suddenly. “There’s no point in trying to talk like this.”

This time there was no pause on the other end. “That’s probably a good idea, Dr. Frank,” Woo said. “You have to be here to file a Missing Person Report.”

“What?”

“I can’t investigate without a complaint,” she said.

“So you don’t think she’s just out for the evening.” Jason had known it from the beginning.

“Well, she left her purse with her wallet in it on the bed.”

Oh, shit. Oh, no. No. Emma wouldn’t leave the apartment for more than a few minutes without her bag. He knew her habits, knew what she did. She must have gone out to pick something up at the store. And something prevented her from coming back.

Jason swallowed. “I’m leaving now.”

He hung up, and started furiously throwing the few clothes he had brought into his suitcase, gathering his notes on Troland Grebs, all the time reviewing what he knew.

There wasn’t a thing on Grebs’s record that was recent. No hint of hospitalizations, no way to find if there had ever been a psychiatric evaluation of him without calling every in-patient and out-patient facility in the state. Grebs didn’t have a file at North High School, which meant he hadn’t been in trouble there. Jason didn’t even know the name of the school Grebs attended in third grade where the little girl’s hair was set on fire. The aunt didn’t remember it, and she couldn’t remember the name of the technical school he went to after high school, either.

What the record confirmed was that Grebs’s obsession with fire went well beyond letter-writing. It confirmed there had been many occasions in his life when he acted out his desire to burn. Another significant thing about the record was the fact that there was nothing recent on it. That meant he had a high degree of intelligence and had learned from his mistakes. Grebs had found ways to avoid being caught. He may have killed the girl in San Diego by burning her and leaving her in the desert. What was he likely to do in New York?

Jason now had no doubt Grebs was the guy who had written the letters to Emma. Whether or not he killed the college girl was another question. His last letters to Emma indicated he was becoming disorganized. The more disorganized he became, the more unreachable and dangerous he was.

Fire, the guy was obssessed with fire. Jason shivered. Fire was permanent, the damage it did irreparable. Oh, God, help Emma, he prayed. Then stopped himself short. Fuck praying. There was no God to help her. He took some deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He had to think clearly, must not let his panic over Emma get in the way of finding her. He might have some time, but he was certain now that he didn’t have much.

He slammed the small suitcase shut and looked at his watch. It was a Cartier Tank watch with a brown alligator band that Emma had given him when they got married so he could treasure their time together. The watch told him he could probably make the ten o’clock flight.