Then he looked beyond them, beyond the bystanders. He searched the shadows, scanning the alleyways and sidewalks across the street. He let his eyes move over the rooftops. He checked each window, side by side and row by row in the neighboring buildings. As far as he knew, these were warehouses, not residences, so it would be strange, or at least unusual, to see movement or lights on any of the floors.
He moved to the other side of the tree and started the process again with the adjacent block. That’s when it struck him that the few bystanders looked like homeless people. He was used to seeing what he called the city’s “night crew.” Drug dealers, prostitutes, overnight delivery men, and cabbies. They were usually the only ones out at this time of night. But he never got used to seeing the homeless, with their hollowed-out cheeks and vacant eyes, reminding him of walking zombies.
“Hey, Tully.”
The voice startled him so much it made him jump. Probably thinking about zombies didn’t help.
Tully glanced over his shoulder. Detective Julia Racine wore jeans and a leather bomber jacket, unzipped—her badge and weapon on display. There was always something Racine did or said that made her seem tougher than Tully knew she was. Tonight it was the unzipped jacket on a cold night, plus a swagger and now a swipe of her hand through her short spiky hair, which was still wet from a quick shower.
“What are you doing out here in the shadows?” she asked.
She didn’t expect or wait for an answer. It was Racine who had called him and this was her greeting. He was used to it by now.
“He’s here,” Tully said, almost under his breath, and he didn’t move. His eyes returned to the adjacent building.
He wasn’t sure Racine had even heard him. She came up beside him and stood stock-still, hands in her pockets, so close he could smell coconut and lime. Probably her shampoo, and it was enough for Tully to think that the aroma canceled out her swagger and her unzipped “I’m too tough to get cold” tough-guy message. It was one of the things Tully liked about working with women, though he’d never in a hundred years admit it—they always smelled so much better than men.
“Fifty-five percent of arsonists are under eighteen,” she said with no emotion and without a glance in his direction, all business as usual.
She studied the clusters of people while Tully continued to go from window to window, floor to floor.
“You’ve been reading too many worthless statistics.”
He stopped at the third floor of the brick building on the corner. He could have sworn he saw a flash through the window. Did it come from inside the building or was it only a reflection of the flames?
“Body’s outside,” Racine said. “It’s in the alley behind a Dumpster.”
“Outside?”
That didn’t sound right to Tully. The other fires had had no casualties. A body usually meant the acceleration of an arsonist, the next step. Fire wasn’t enough to achieve the same high so they started setting fires to occupied buildings. But if the body was outside, it was hardly a casualty.
“Someone who made it out but too late?”
Racine shook her head and pulled a notebook from her pocket. Started flipping pages. Tully kept his hand in his pocket, fingering his crunched receipts. Why couldn’t he ever remember to carry a notebook?
“Separate call about the body,” Racine said, finding her notes.
Tully glanced over. Even her handwriting was neat and clean, not the scratches and odd abbreviations he used.
“Person said there was a—quote—stiff with half its face gone in the alley by the Dumpster.”
“By the Dumpster? Not in the Dumpster?”
Racine flipped a few more pages and returned to the same one. “Yep. By, not in. Fire chief told me she’s not burned. We have to wait until it’s safe for us to enter the burn zone.”
“That changes things,” Tully said.
“Yep, it sure does.”
They stood silently side by side again, eyes preoccupied. Seconds ticked off. Behind them firefighters called out to their crew members. Pieces of soot with sparks floated through the air like tiny fireworks filling the night sky. At the last fire someone had mentioned that they looked like fireflies, and soon after they started calling the arsonist the firefly. Tully figured it made about as much sense as firebug.
It was Racine who broke the silence. “So you suppose the bastard’s right here watching and jerking off?”
That’s exactly what Tully had been thinking earlier, but he knew it wasn’t that simple, especially if this guy had now started to kill and hadn’t even bothered to set the body on fire. Again, he didn’t glance at her, but he did smile. “You’ve been reading way too much Freud.”
CHAPTER 5
Maggie parked a block away. Her head had started its familiar throb, same side, same place, drilling a rap-a-tap into her left temple. She stayed behind the steering wheel of her car. Black clouds of smoke billowed over the area. She stared at the flames shooting out the windows and devouring the roof of the four-story building. Even a block away the sight paralyzed her. It kicked her heartbeat up and squeezed the air out of her lungs.