“You look like hell.”
“Thank you, Tessa,” Danny said as he set his thermos of coffee on his desk. “I can always count on you to brighten my morning.”
“Were you up drinking?”
“No,” Danny lied. “I was watching a baseball game and fell asleep on the couch. If I look like hell it's likely because I've got a crick in my neck from sleeping upright all night.” He grabbed a tissue from Tessa's desk and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “And because it's hotter than hell in here.”
Tessa sipped from a cup of ice water on her desk. “It is, can't argue with you there.”
“Anything new on our guys?”
“The body found yesterday was Max Fugate. They were able to get fingerprints that matched his file at the hospital. Nick Torrance was arrested on a DUI charge years ago in Anchorage, so his prints are on file too if they can get them from what remains of his hands. Apparently they're still working on that.”
“What about the autopsy report? Was Fugate burned alive too?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ. Anything else was too much to hope for, wasn't it?”
“I think so.”
Danny sat down at his desk. “What else do we know about him?”
“He's a Fairbanks native and his parents and sister also live here. He wasn't married and had no children.”
“So I guess we start with the parents and the sister. Have they been notified?”
Tessa shook her head. “No, the ID just came in. You and I are the lucky ones who get to do that.”
“Goddammit.” Danny let out a breath. “I hate this shit.”
“Who doesn't?”
Tessa got up from her chair. “You driving or am I?”
“I'll drive.”
“Excuse me, officers?”
Danny and Tessa turned to see Mark Chambers, the desk sergeant, holding an envelope out to them.
“Yeah?” Danny asked.
“This just came in the mail. I'm not sure if I should give it to you or to Captain Meyer. It's addressed to homicide detectives.”
Tessa took the envelope. “We've got it. Thanks, Mark.”
She laid the envelope on her desk. There was no return address and the address of the police station was printed in pencil with a neat and precise penmanship. The postmark said Fairbanks and showed the letter had been mailed the day before.
“I don't like this,” Tessa said.
“I don't either.”
Danny pulled some gloves from the drawer of his desk and picked up the envelope.
“Let's bring it to the boss.”
The two walked to Jack Meyer's office and knocked. The captain was talking on the phone but motioned for them to enter.
Jack quickly hung up the phone and glanced up at the detectives. “What's up?”
Danny held out the envelope and placed it on Meyer's desk. “We just received a strange envelope.”
The captain looked at the letter and reached into his own desk drawer for gloves. He picked the envelope up and gingerly opened it with a letter opener. He turned the envelope upside down and let one sheet of paper fall onto the desk.
The paper was plain white and the words “Who do you think is next?” were written at the top of the page in the same penmanship found on the envelope. An old image of the advertising mascot Smoky Bear standing in front of a raging fire was printed underneath the words.
“Oh my God,” Tessa said.
“It looks like someone wants to have some fun with us,” Danny said.
The three stared at the paper in front of them, all momentarily speechless.
“We need to get forensics on this,” Jack finally said. He picked up the phone and barked out some orders before slamming the receiver back down. “Were you two heading out to notify Fugate's next of kin?”
“Yes,” Tessa said.
“We'll get some uniforms to do it. We need all of us on this now.” He rubbed his eyes and fell back into his chair, his eyes never leaving the paper on his desk. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“I'd say that about covers it,” Danny said.
****
Jennifer Higgins sat at her desk at Fairbanks Channel 10 news and scrolled through the police alerts on her desktop looking for something interesting to cover for her Emmy award winning “Crime Stoppers” feature. Of course, the fire at the Midnight Sun baseball game was still foremost in everyone's mind, but Jennifer was trying to find something everyone else wasn't already covering. Or an angle on the fire that fit the same criteria.
Like most of the city, she had been at the game and seen the horrifying spectacle with her own eyes. Despite years as a reporter and experience covering heinous crimes both here in Fairbanks and in her home town of Juneau, Jennifer had never seen anything as terrifying as the fire that had consumed the jogger at the baseball game. She hadn't been able to rein in her shock and regain her composure enough to view the scene as a reporter instead of as a bystander, something she was still angry at herself about. She might have been able to reel in another Emmy for her on the scene coverage if she had only acted like a professional instead of a shocked and frightened baseball fan.
She couldn't change that though and there was no point in dwelling on it. And no one even knew if the fire had been the result of a crime or simply a freak accident, so it was possible it didn't even fit her crime beat anyway.
Jennifer knew the police had been called to Griffin Park earlier in the day due to the discovery of a body there, but when she'd tried to go to the scene they'd had access completely blocked and neither she nor any of the rest of the media had been able to get anywhere near the area in question. Still, she'd figure out what happened soon enough. They couldn't block her access to the coroner's office or to the uniformed cops who were always willing to spill a few secrets about the ongoing cases of their superiors while they were hanging around one of the local bars after work. Jennifer was an old hand at cajoling secrets out of men who had enough alcohol in them to loosen their tongues.
For now though she had nothing and worse yet could find nothing of interest to follow up on and cover. She supposed she would have no choice but to fall back on ongoing coverage of the baseball game fire for her segment that evening. It may be for the best as no one in town was talking about anything else anyway.
“This came for you, Jennifer.”
Jennifer turned to see Peter Johnson, the man who had been delivering the station's mail since before she was born, standing next to her desk. He handed her an envelope.
“Thanks, Peter,” she said. “How are you doing today?”
“Not bad. Except for this damn heat.”
“It's miserable isn't it?”
“Sure is. If I wanted this kind of weather I would have moved to Florida a long time ago.”
Jennifer laughed. “I hear ya. Try to keep cool.”
“You too.”
Jennifer smiled at Peter as he shuffled away from her desk. Like every place else, the station received less snail mail all the time. She hoped Peter would want to retire before the station decided to eliminate his position. She knew he was old enough to retire and had been for years, but he didn't seem to have much in his life besides his job. She hated to think of him being forced out.
She glanced at the white envelope he had given her and felt a twinge of alarm. Her name and the address of the station were hand-written in pencil and the envelope bore no return address. While it was probably nothing more than fan mail, which she and the rest of the anchors still received through the regular mail on occasion, something about the envelope made her uncomfortable.
When she opened it and took out the enclosed letter, she knew her instincts had been correct. “Who do you think is next?” was printed in large letters at the top of the page and underneath the question was a picture of Smokey the Bear at the scene of a fire. The image looked like one of the ads about preventing forest fires that she remembered so well from her childhood in the 1980s. She turned the paper over and found it blank.
Jennifer set the letter on the desk in front of her and stared at the precisely written question. She could hear her heart pounding in her chest.
“Oh my,” she said.
****
Jamie sat on the floor of his apartment wearing only his boxer shorts. He was thrilled to be working the night shift tonight so he could work on his rituals today. He needed the rejuvenation.
Keeping with the ancient customs of the Roman worshippers of Vulcan, he had hung all of his clothes outside on his patio to allow them to soak up the sun. He kept all the lights off in his apartment, which wasn’t a hardship with the sun blazing through his windows, and surrounded himself with candles.
Sitting in a traditional yoga pose, Jamie placed his hands palms up on his knees. He closed his eyes and focused on regaining the peace and strength that the previous spells had taken out of him. It was difficult to focus, as he was so eager to know if the police detectives and the reporter had received his letters yet. Chances were good but he couldn’t be sure. What he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the walls of their offices.
But of course a mere fly was far beneath anything he already was and aspired to be.
Jamie had always found it revolting that his family had wasted the magic that had been their birthright. When he’d learned about the powers he had inherited from his great-grandfather, he couldn’t believe neither his father nor his grandfather had ever made use of them. From what he could ascertain of his family history, his great-grandmother was the only member of his family who had respected the powers after her husband had been killed. She had been terrified of his book but had kept it in honor of the man who had last used the Dzubenko family magic. She had also tried to convince her son about the presence of the supernatural in the world, but he had dismissed her beliefs as nothing more than the ravings of a grief-stricken woman who had never recovered from the murder of her husband.
As a result, Jamie had nothing but contempt for his grandfather and his father for that matter. They had both turned their noses up at the idea of magic and the supernatural. He never would have learned about his gifts if he hadn’t stumbled upon his great-grandfather’s book in the attic of his childhood home. His parents had tried to dismiss his questions about the book but he’d been undeterred. He knew from the moment he’d opened the book that he was meant to have it. He knew that it was special. And he knew that he was too.
On the surface, Jamie didn’t seem like anyone who would be called special. He was a small man with mousy brown hair, a sharp nose and beady eyes. It was a combination that gave him the look of a rodent. When he was younger he’d been teased and called more rat nicknames than he could remember. But none of that bothered him once he’d found the book. The book that showed him who, and what, he really was.
It had been a challenge to learn the Ukrainian language needed to understand the text, but he’d finally worked it out. As time went on, the magic somehow took over and he had become a master of the language despite never having any formal training. He’d fallen in love with the ancient words and phrases he could use to make magic. Above all, he’d fallen in love with the words he could use to make fire. It was through fire that Jamie had learned what he was meant to be.
After ridding himself of his family and childhood home, Jamie had immersed himself into the study of his ancestor’s magic. He’d learned of the Ukrainian’s ability to fight vampires and other creatures of the night through fire and other spells of black magic.
He’d also read the prophecies of Nostradamus and came across a prediction of a city gone bad that would need to be destroyed by Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. As Jamie had aged, his revulsion for the city of his birth had grown steadily. He believed it needed to be destroyed and that he was the man to do it. Through his magic, he could become a god and the modern day incarnation of Vulcan.
The power was intoxicating and Jamie felt more god-like with each spell he brought to fruition. He could feel the ancient power of Vulcan working through him and he almost pitied the cops who would task themselves with trying to stop him. Almost.
Mostly he felt contempt for them just as he felt contempt for the rest of the mindless robots wandering through this barren city. The cops would never be able to stop him and before the summer had ended the entire town of Fairbanks would be laid to waste. Jamie would be the only one left standing.
His plan had started better than he could ever have dreamed; convincing him even more that he was on the right path. Now his dream was becoming reality. And the fun was only just beginning.
****
Danny and Tessa walked into the police conference room and sat down across from a frustrated Jack Meyer and an increasingly bedraggled Anthony Rizzo.
“What do we have?” Danny asked.
“We’ve got a shit storm is what we have,” Jack said. “As you can expect, forensics couldn’t find a single print on the letter. The words were written with a standard number two pencil that you can buy at any Walmart in the freaking world. The paper was the equally standard eight and a half by 11-inch 20-pound office paper. If you do a google search for Smokey the goddamn Bear you’ll find the image our guy sent on more pages than I can count. We’ve got guys searching the IP addresses of visitors to the sites looking for a local connection, but right now it’s a needle in a haystack.”
“What about the postmark?” Tessa asked.
“It’s the main Fairbanks branch downtown here. The letter was mailed yesterday. We’re going over footage from the cameras inside the post office but unfortunately there aren’t any cameras on the street outside where the mailboxes are. I don’t think the cameras are going to give us shit anyway because this jackass could have used any number of mailboxes all over the city. They all go to the downtown branch.” Jack paused and let out a breath. “Now tell me, do you two have anything? For once, please say yes.”
“The prints on the baseball game victim matched Nick Torrance’s old police record. He’s our victim,” Danny said.
“Alright so we’ve got Nick Torrance and Max Fugate. What do these two have in common?”
“So far, nothing,” Tessa said. “Nick worked in IT and Max was a doctor. Max was a life-long Fairbanks resident and this convention was Nick’s first visit here. They were obviously both joggers and both men, but other than that we haven’t found anything.”
“Torrance was gay, right?” Jack asked. “What about Fugate?”
“We don’t know. We’re getting ready to head out and talk to his family and colleagues,” Danny said. “See what we can learn about him.”
“Good,” Jack said. “I need to set up a press conference too. We can’t keep the media out of this much longer.” He shook his head. “I just hate to start a panic. People are freaked out enough by the baseball game. Now when they hear about Fugate…”
“Honestly, sir, they’re right to be afraid,” Danny said. “People are being burned alive. Aren’t we all freaked out?”
Jack scowled. “Of course we are, Fitzpatrick. But the police of all people don’t need to start a panic, do they?”
A knock on the conference room door interrupted the meeting.
“Excuse me, Captain Meyer?”
Mark Chambers, the desk sergeant who had handed Tessa and Danny the envelope earlier was now at the door.
“Yes, what is it? We’re in a meeting here.”
“Sorry, sir, but Jennifer Higgins from Channel 10 is on the phone and says it’s urgent she speak with a detective. She said it’s about the baseball game fire.”
Jack’s scowl deepened. “Oh Christ here we go. God damn the media.”
Danny stood up from his chair. “I’ll talk with her. Jennifer and I go way back.”
“You’ve only lived in Alaska for what, a goddamn year? How far back can you go?” Jack asked, his face reddening with each word.
“As long as I’ve been here,” Danny said.
He left the room and headed for the main desk of the station. He liked Jennifer Higgins in spite of the fact that cops and reporters typically weren’t pals. He had made a fool of himself while in a drunken stupor and hit on her at a local bar not long after he’d moved to Fairbanks. She hadn’t been interested in his drunken advances and had actually tried to help get him home before he drank any more. He’d behaved like an idiot, likely even more so than what he actually remembered, but Jennifer had never held it against him and had accepted his apology the next time they’d met.
“Hey Jennifer, it’s Danny Fitzpatrick,” he said, picking up the phone.
“Hey Danny. I was hoping you’d take my call.”
“What’s up?”
“I think you’re going to want to come over here to the station.”
“Why’s that?”
“I just got a really strange letter that I think is connected to the fire at the baseball game.”
Danny’s stomach tightened. “A letter, huh? I have a feeling I know what it says.”
“I’ve hardly touched it. I’ve got it here on my desk and I thought you guys would want to come get it.”
“We do. And we’ll be there shortly.”
****