Human flesh.
Flames still
skittered over the body—an accelerant had been used. As he stood there in the
small dark alley, he heard others rushing in: Mike Dalton, his partner, and
patrol officers. He heard the sirens; the fire department was coming.
But there was no saving
this victim.
Craig was already
tamping the fire out; an extinguisher would make the work of the medical
examiner more difficult.
But he knew what the
medical examiner would find.
The victim had been
strangled, then the tongue had been cut out. And then the eyes had been gouged
out. Death had occurred, mercifully, before the fire had been set.
The corpses haunted
his dreams. Burned shells, some flesh and soft tissue remaining, charred and
clinging to the bones, mummy-like. The mouth in the blackened skull was agape,
and those empty, soulless eye sockets seemed to be staring up, as if they could
still see, as if they stared at him in reproach…
Why hadn’t they caught the killer sooner?
He heard a rustling
sound. Looking across the alley, Craig saw a shadow moving. Leaving the corpse
to others, he took off like a bullet. He pursued the moving shadow at a
run…running and running for blocks. The city was a blur around him.
He reached apartments
on Madison, with a coffee shop and a dress store on the first floor, just as
the gate at the street entry to the residential units above was closing. He
caught the gate, and he reached the elevator in time to see what floor it
stopped on. He followed.
And again, as he
arrived, a door was just closing; he didn’t let it close.
And there he was: the
Fireman, still smelling faintly of gasoline, ready to sit down to a lovely
dinner with his family. About to say a prayer before the meal…just a husband
and a father, and a man who looked at Craig and calmly said, “So, my work is over.
But I have obeyed the commandments given me, and I will go with you.”
Why did you take so long? The corpse again! In
Craig’s dreams, the corpse was back, animated, flying at him like a ghostly
banshee, issuing a silent scream.
Craig opened his
eyes.
He didn’t awake
screaming or startled—he didn’t jerk up. It was almost as if he always knew it
was a dream, reliving the day the Fireman had gone down.
He’d had the dream
several times before. But, now, it seemed as though it had been a long time.
Weeks. He’d thought he’d ceased experiencing it altogether. He’d been doing all
the right things: quietly seeing a Bureau shrink a few times, following their
advice. He hadn’t told Kieran Finnegan, his fiancée, about his recurring
nightmare, and while she was a criminal psychologist working with two of the
city’s finest criminal psychiatrists, he’d made a point of not telling her or
her bosses.
He’d thought he’d
settled it on his own. It was a little strange and sometimes intimidating being
in love with someone who studied the human psyche, and he hadn’t wanted Kieran
worried about him or trying to analyze him.
Why the hell had the dream come back?
He felt Kieran shift
against him. He pulled her into his arms and she rolled, crystal eyes opening
wide when she realized that he was awake.
And aroused. Kieran’s
tangle of auburn hair was a wild mass around her face, emphasizing her eyes and
the quick smile that came to her lips.
“Ah!” she murmured,
feeling his arousal against her.
“Your fault,” he
accused.
“Well, thankfully.
What time is it?” she asked with a soft whisper.
He laughed. “Quickie
time, or time for a quickie,” he said.
Her smile deepened,
and there was something so sensual about it that it never failed to increase
whatever he had begun to feel.
In her arms, in the
liquid burn of kisses here and there strategically placed, in the swift—and
intense—blaze of arching and writhing and thrusting, all else faded.
After, Craig headed
for the shower. He was an FBI agent in the Criminal Division of New York City’s
branch of the FBI. He could be satisfied in having brought down several
killers. But there would be more; a sad fact of the world and humanity. He was
blessed to have his job, his vocation, and it was time to go to work.
He shoved the dream
into the back of his mind.
Whatever his day
held, he’d already seen the worst that this world could offer.
Little did he know.
