“Perhaps some medical help?”
The day before her death, I had bought her jeans, sweatshirts, the small Converse trainers she loved, and wrapped them with great care. Men can’t fold a parcel for shit but I tried and figured if I put a bow on it, it would be less of a befuddled mess.
That care/less package had lain at the bottom of my wardrobe ever since, untouched, unseen. I told Keefer that the clothes might fit Sara; I couldn’t meet his eyes as I did so.
He asked,
“You sure, buddy? I can go out, get some gear.”
I managed,
“No, it’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine, it would never be fucking fine. Never.
I had some very bad dreams in the days after Sara left. I woke one night and wrote down a thought, then went back to sleep.
In the morning, I read this:
“You search in a black dark cave for a candle
That was lit
Two thousand years ago.”
Benjamin J. didn’t fuck up.
That was as close to a slogan as he’d ever come.
He’d fucked up.
One of the miracle children had survived the inferno.
He replayed the days before the fire.
He’d mounted a massive charm campaign on Brid to persuade her to lead the way into the house they’d burn. Took some doing but his full attention and flattery did the trick and she actually said to Connie,
“I may have been wrong about him.”
He’d laid out the details to Connie.
“You and Brid go in, chloroform the children and their carer, then you...”
Pause.
“Disable Brid, allow your arm to be burned, and flee.”
He gave Connie the gasoline, said,
“Spread freely.”
She was very dubious but he bamboozled her with an engagement ring, said,
“Not only will you be a hero, nearly a martyr, hurt as you tried to save the children and your best friend, but you will soon be Mrs. Benjamin J.”
He’d rehearsed the two women at different times, drilled them on the importance of fine timing. He was well pleased with his machinations, fooling one woman is not so difficult but two, simultaneously, it was a friggin’ work of art.
The actual day of the fire, it seemed to be proceeding to plan, and as soon as he saw the first signs of the flames, he rushed to the door, bolted it, and whispered,
“Good-bye my love, good-bye.”
If he had waited for a moment, he might have heard Connie scream.
Might have heard her scream,
“One of the children is missing.”
Benjamin J. was seriously pissed. How could Connie have missed out on one child? A survivor was very bad news. If Connie were still alive, he’d have flayed her, shouted,
“You dumb bitch.”
Where was the child now? Had she seen him?
He was at home. Home was what he termed a rather splendid mansion off Threadneedle Road. The name of the road amused him in foolish ways. Three stories high, with huge bay windows, a small courtyard leading to the main door — and what a door, made of reenforced steel, covered in timber, it proclaimed,
“Here lives a person of note.”
The furniture was Scandinavian, all clean lines. His pride of joy were framed paintings of historical fires. He could stare at them, lost for hours in their splendor. In a separate glass case was a collection of matches from different decades in history.
He paced back and forth in his massive living room, raging at the debacle of the recent fire. When he was thwarted in any of his endeavors, his usual solution was to burn something. But caution urged he stay under the radar for a time, see what developed.
He thought about Connie and a warm feeling ran through him. It had been a total rush to fuck with her head. Her sidekick had been too feeble a creature to afford him any real joy. He wished he could have seen Connie’s face when she realized he had set her up.
“Ah...”
He thought.
“The joy of betrayal.”
In an effort to calm his mind, he worked on the latest set of accounts he’d been commissioned to fix for a major firm. A cursory glance told him how easy it would be to settle the books to satisfy the most diligent of audits. He would of course delay his findings until the last moment, let them sweat, then swoop in, save the day.
For a hefty fee.
Benjamin J. studied his face in the mirror. What he saw was a face of refinery and breeding. A very carefully constructed facade, years in the making.
On most humans it worked, lulled them into the artifice. See the gig with the late Connie, for example. He’d studied the tomes of
Psychology.
Pathology.
Origins of evil.
People of the lie.
Even amused himself with the psychopath test and, yes, he was off the chart on that baby. Years of immersion in the realms of malignity were hugely beneficial to his means of not only surviving in the world but flourishing. He discovered early that arson was his fuel, so to speak.
Fire.
How he worshipped it.
It vaguely amused him that the classic early signs of a killer/psychopath didn’t apply to him. He hadn’t set fires in his youth, tortured animals, been a loner, endured abuse as a child. All of this supplied his answer.
He was simply other.
Hate.
Hate suffused him, lit him up, and, even better, he could present as what the masses termed a people person.
This term was among his absolute favorites.
He studied arson with the zeal of a devotee. How to set the perfect infernos that, to date, were labeled accidental. A tribute to his years of research.
He had perfected timers that, after they ignited, self-destructed.
Took years to get that utterly undetectable; his flames devoured everything.
Until now.
A witness.
Sent a shudder of an unexpected feeling.
Fear.
But he shook it off. He was the arsonist. He’d successfully set a series of fires and not one visit from the Guards. How magnificent was that!
Now it was time to recruit a patsy. Connie had been a blast, dare one hazard, that for a short time had lit his fire but onward and fireward. Nothing finer than to groom some dumb schmuck, set them up, let them believe they actually mattered, then lower the boom. Plus, they were useful for errands. I mean, was he expected to, like, collect his own dry cleaning?
Get real.
Too, at a certain stage, he did enjoy the fawning, the admiration.
And, let’s face it, if you wanted a fuck-up in waiting, an actual dope, then Galway was a sea of infinite choices.
The Unit.
The psychiatric wing of the general hospital, all sorts of mental blitzkrieg to choose from, be it
Anorexics.
Junkies.
Depressives.
Alcoholics.
Oh, Lord, a panorama of twenty-first-century casualties and growing every day.
Benjamin J. belonged to a group of prominent businessmen, professionals who devoted time and especially funds to help patients on their release. It worked nicely, too, as a tax write-off.
Benjamin had already selected his candidate.
James Powell, twenty-six years old, victim of serial abuse, addicted to solvents, and due for release on a heavy dosage of meds. Benjamin had already visited with the poor lad and was well en route to gaining his trust.
James would suit his plans perfectly.
“The Tecate is ice cold and a storm is rolling across the desert. The rain’s musky fragrance rides the blast-furnace wind as a jukebox grinds on in a cantina’s corner.”