Fireproof

pretty ordinary, nothing menacing about him except that he was always there. Cornell would see him leaning against a lamppost or sitting on a bench. Once at a Metro bus stop. Buses came and went but the guy stayed. Sometimes he saw the man downtown, but then hours later he’d see him walking back by the same warehouses where the fires had been. There was no reason that he could think of for this guy to be in these two very different places in the city unless he was following Cornell.
    A couple of times when Cornell traveled underground he could swear he’d seen the shadow of someone behind him. Lighting wascrap down there. Long stretches were pitch black. He tried to avoid those. Even the best stretches were limited to a bare lightbulb tucked into the maze of pipes.
    The first time he noticed the man was right before he tossed his backpack. Though he didn’t look like a cop, Cornell had thought maybe he was part of the investigating team, but only because the guy was inside the barrier of yellow tape. He had been leaning against one of the vehicles, watching and smoking a cigarette.
    Maybe he knew the dead woman. A shiver slid down Cornell’s back and a sudden bout of nausea made him put down his spoon. He sipped his water, waited for it to pass. He didn’t like thinking about the dead woman. Didn’t like remembering that battered face, pounded and ripped like ground beef.
    Cornell grabbed the little package of saltine crackers. His fingers shook and he struggled to tear the plastic, suddenly desperate to get at them. He crunched a piece out and quickly put it in his mouth, holding it on his tongue and sucking off the salt, waiting for the nausea to pass. It didn’t seem to be working.
    He stuck another piece in his mouth. Weren’t saltines supposed to help? Probably not if you had wrestled a dead body with your bare hands. He still couldn’t believe he’d touched it.
    When Cornell looked back up, the man in the brown suede jacket was standing just outside the diner window. And he was staring directly at Cornell.

CHAPTER 43

    By the time Maggie arrived, the cross at the top of the steeple blazed against a smoke-filled sky. She could see a second black plume several blocks away.
    She showed her badge at the first barricade, a half block from the fire. The uniformed officer lifted the yellow tape for her and pointed out Detective Racine. Here across the river, Racine would be out of her jurisdiction. That was the only reason she stood back and tolerated the man beside her. Maggie recognized Brad Ivan, the ATF fire investigator.
    “Were there any church services being held?” Maggie asked as she joined them. There were three ambulances parked at odd angles. One had driven onto the church lawn.
    “No services,” Racine told her, “but there was an altar society meeting in the basement of this one.”
    “Fatalities?”
    Racine didn’t answer, looked instead to Ivan. Technically ATF would be the point agency now that the fires had moved out of the District.
    “We don’t know yet. They’re still inside,” Ivan said as hehitched his trousers up, then stopped almost abruptly and kept the belt just below his waist.
    Maggie guessed the gesture was an old habit but that a new paunch still surprised him. Ivan looked like a man who had kept himself in shape until recently. Maybe a change of schedule or, Maggie speculated, a change in living routine, perhaps a separation or divorce. Curious to prove her theory, she glanced at his left hand and saw a subtle streak of lighter skin where a ring had been.
    Maggie waited for Ivan to continue filling her in, but there was nothing after the pants hitch. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored aviator sunglasses. Odd that he’d need sunglasses, since the smoke blocked out the sun.
    “The middle of the afternoon goes against his MO,” she said. “How do we know this is the same guy?”
    “It would be nice if we had some kind of a profile.”
    His sarcasm surprised Maggie. She didn’t think the man had it in him to muster up something as complex as sarcasm. Racine raised an eyebrow. Looked like he’d surprised her as well.
    “The murders at the last scene throw off any typical profile of a serial arsonist.” Maggie told him this as a matter of fact. “If you remove the two victims from the equation, he becomes a repeat nuisance offender.”
    “Yeah, under twenty-five, male, white, history of family dysfunction, father abusive or absent, blue-collar