Fired Up

victims were all dead by their late teens or mid-twenties.”
    “No offense, but I’m guessing you are not in your twenties.”
    “I’m thirty-six.”
    “And you’re telling me that this new talent of yours just started showing up?”
    “The symptoms that something was going on started about a month ago.”
    “What kind of symptoms?”
    “Hallucinations. Nightmares.” He started to pace the office. “Serious nightmares. The kind that leave me shaking in a cold sweat. But they were starting to dissipate, or at least I was telling myself that they were getting less intense, less frequent. But then something else happened.”
    “Stop.” She held up a hand, palm out. “Tell me about the hallucinations and the nightmares first.”
    He shrugged. “Not much to tell. The nightmares were bad but nothing I couldn’t handle. It was the hallucinations that really worried me. They can hit at any time. I’ll be walking down the street or sitting in a bar, and suddenly I’ll see things that aren’t there.”
    “Things you know aren’t there?” she asked.
    “Right. Images in mirrors. Scenes from the nightmares sometimes.”
    “But you’re always aware that you are hallucinating?” she clarified. “You don’t mistake those images and scenes for reality?”
    He frowned. “No. But the fact that I know I’m seeing things doesn’t make it any better, believe me.”
    “Maybe not, but it’s an important detail. Okay, go on.”
    “Like I said, I had convinced myself that the visions and the dreams were starting to become less intense or, at least less frequent. But then I had the first blackout. It lasted a full twenty-four hours, although I’ll admit that my memory is a little fuzzy on both sides of that time frame.”
    She folded her arms, thinking. “Sounds like some sort of short- term amnesia. There is a technical name for it: transient global amnesia. It’s rare, but it’s well documented.”
    He stopped and turned back to look at her. “All I know is that about a week ago I lost about twenty-four hours of my life. I have no idea where I went or what I did during that time.”
    “What’s your last memory before the episode?”
    “I was walking home after having a couple of beers with a friend. I blanked out at First and Blanchard, not far from my condo.”
    “And where were you when you came out of it?”
    “In my condo.” He walked back to the window and stood looking out at the gray skies. “I was in a raging fever. Thought I had the flu.”
    She relaxed a little. “If you were ill, that explains a lot. A high fever can play all sorts of tricks. Among other things, it can trigger hallucinations and nightmares.”
    “No.” He shook his head once. “I was somewhere else during that twenty-four-hour period but I don’t know where.”
    “What makes you so sure of that?”
    He looked back at her. “I know it. What’s more, I’ve had three more blackouts since then. All at night. The first two times I went to bed as usual. When I woke up I was back in bed, but I was fully dressed. My clothes were wet from the rain, and my shoes had fresh dirt on them.”
    “Sleepwalking. It’s not that uncommon.”
    “The last time I came to after one of the episodes, I was standing in an alley on Capitol Hill,” he said evenly. “There was a dead man at my feet and a woman was running for her life.” He paused a beat to let the meaning sink in. “Her name is Susan Billings. The dead man’s name was Aaron Paul Hanney.”
    A strange sensation twisted through her, as if she were looking into a very, very deep well. “The guy they think killed those two women? The one they found dead in . . . Oh, geez.” She took a deep breath in an attempt to settle her rattled senses. “The one they found dead of a heart attack in an alley on Capitol Hill.”
    “Evidently I went out for a late-night walk and killed a man.”
    She frowned. “He was going to murder that nurse.”
    “I’m not saying I have a problem with the fact that he’s dead. The problem is that I don’t know what the hell I was doing in that alley in the first place. The problem is that I killed him with my talent, my new, second talent.”
    “What makes you think that you killed him? The papers said he died of a heart attack. Maybe you just happened on the scene.”
    “Trust me,” he said. “I killed him. Without a trace.”
    “But how? You’re a strat.”
    “I’m not absolutely sure.” He rubbed the back of his neck in a