Fahrenheit Page 6

  He snickered. “Sorry; I forgot about that.”

  How could he forget about that? The bomb was the biggest excitement, outside of the fires, the city had seen in years. Everybody was still talking about it. Some were afraid it would happen again, while others were fascinated about the chaos and wishing it would happen again. “Well I can see how you would forget,” she teased him as they stood up to leave. “I mean, bombs are an everyday occurrence around here.”

  “Absolutely.” Before leaving he cancelled the order they had placed with the waitress. Eve wasn’t sure why it was taking so long, but clearly they weren’t meant to eat at that restaurant—not tonight anyway.

  Dinner with Adam had been relaxed, fun even. Neither one seemed to be trying to impress the other. She was so relaxed that she almost forgot that it was their first date. He told her about his brothers while telling her about his goal to become a smokejumper. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go back home where his brothers were, or go west. He was planning on California, where he had done most of his research, or maybe Wyoming.

  By the end of the date he walked her to her car, which was parked just a couple spaces from his, and he gave her a sweet, tender kiss that made her body tingle from the contact. There was nothing revealing to those watching, but the feelings pulsating through her were feelings of want and desire. She wanted a deeper kiss, a longer kiss, but she knew they shouldn’t. They were in public for one thing. And she wanted to wait for sex, so keeping kissing sessions to minimum arousal levels would be best for both involved parties.

  She drove back to the hotel, thinking about Adam, the kiss, the night they had shared talking and laughing and just getting to know each other better. He had asked her out again. They were going to go to the beach after she got off work. Adam was off anyway, and she just had the meeting with Mitch at the mayor’s office to attend. She would take the pictures, and Mitch would do the interviewing. The mayor had specifically requested Mitch come to his office for an exclusive on what the city was doing to catch the arsonist. It was coming up to reelection so Eve was sure the mayor just wanted good press to help him come election time. Mitch seemed to be jumping at the opportunity to get an exclusive. After all, they were the only newspaper being allowed a behind the scenes with the mayor, and a behind the scenes with the firefighters fighting the Espanola fire, and the other fires. For some reason they seemed to be getting special treatment. Mitch was the biggest reporter in town. His previous work was award winning journalism, so she understood why the mayor would latch on to him.

  What was good for Mitch usually ended up being good for her. If she hadn’t been assigned as Mitch’s photojournalist she might still be trying to work her way up the ranks as a freelance photographer. Working with Mitch gave her access to the big stories that he was working on. Her pictures got her byline just like Mitch’s story got his. Together, they were a team, and where his name went, her name was sure to accompany it. She wouldn’t complain that her success was coming in the shadow of a man who was a “famous” reporter because quite frankly she was making her own path. Her photos were talked about just as much as Mitch’s stories, which meant soon, even if she moved away from this city, she would be able to get a good job at a strong paper without worrying about trying to prove herself to anybody.

  “The Palm Coast Arsonist,” he paced the room, angry once again over their lack of respect. They gave better names to serial killers and rapist. Maybe that was the problem. They didn’t take him serious because he hadn’t killed anybody yet. Maybe he needed to change that. “I’m an artist,” he snapped. “And I sure as hell have more than Palm Coast as a notch on my belt.” He had set fires throughout the state. Wherever he went, fire followed, but they didn’t know that. Perhaps it was better that they didn’t otherwise they might piece it together.

  He knew law enforcement. They had their heads so far up their own butts that they didn’t know the meaning of the word collaboration. There was no way the authorities in Palm Coast would share information with those in Tallahassee, Ft. Lauderdale, or Miami. He grinned at his own genius. They would never catch him. They weren’t smart enough.

  Palm Coast was special. He had a bone to pick with everybody there. It’s why he settled on the area once again. His last fire…he sat back and smiled just thinking about the fire he set over a decade ago right here in Palm Coast. He had been so young yet he had nearly devastated the entire area. Of course his work had some help from nature. Dry lightening wasn’t something he could control. While he wanted sole credit, he was forced to share with nature. He was going to have to get a little more creative for this next fire. He wanted it big enough to light up the sky from space. He would show them all. But until he could safely set the big blaze he would have to settle for the smaller ones. He would light up the sky at night with a beautiful blaze consuming a crap-built house. Maybe one of those houses that were formally worth more than a quarter of a million dollars. With the market dropping out of the bottom in Florida those same houses weren’t worth much, but the residents would never admit to that. The area was still considered high class, with nice homes and spacious backyards in one of those quiet developments where the houses started at two hundred seventy five thousand and went up to four hundred thousand. He would light up the night while they were all asleep in their “safe” homes. He would show them just how safe they were.

  Maybe he wouldn’t stop at one house. Maybe he would do two. Two houses would get him some attention. And if somebody died…well then they would know he meant business. People would soon realize the police couldn’t keep them safe, and the firemen couldn’t put out his fires so easily. They would realize his genius, his art, and they would finally know he was more, much more, than what people gave him credit for.

  “Hello world,” he looked out the window, and stared at the lush greenery surrounding his home. The flowers were in bloom, the trees had crisp leaves, and his grass was the greenest on the block. He made sure he kept his area looking beautiful. He added artificial grass from one of those companies with realistic fake grass. He laughed at the term “realistic fake;” as if there could be such a thing. Although he guessed there was. Most people couldn’t tell his grass wasn’t real even if they walked on it. The benefit was green grass all year without excessive watering. Plus, in fire season his biggest worry were the trees in back of his property. Of course he hadn’t planned to start a fire in his own backyard—not yet anyway. But he couldn’t control nature, or the idiots who left a grill going unattended and managed to set their own yard on fire. He had put a lot of work into his home and right now he didn’t need it going up in flames, not even if they were flames of his own doing. But once he was ready to move on, leave the town of arrogant slobs behind, then maybe he’d watch everything burn, including this place he called home.

  “Hello world,” he repeated. “Can you hear me yet? Can you feel my anger burning inside me like the fires consume the wild? Not yet,” he mumbled. “But soon. Soon you will know the pain you’ve caused me, the pain I suffer every day. Soon, that pain will be yours. Soon, you’ll watch everything you’ve ever wanted be ripped away from your hands too. Soon,” he looked out at the area surrounding him. It was quiet now, but in a few hours children would be getting ready for their first day of school, parents would be rushing off to jobs they hated, and firefighters would be making the switch from their house to the firehouse. Soon the world around him would be awakened, carrying on as if their lives weren’t in danger. He exhaled slowly. “Avoidance won’t change who I am. It won’t change what’s coming. It only helps me continue to get away with it.” He laughed. He was living right amongst them and they didn’t even know it. Well, there was something to be said for anonymity—it allowed him to work his art without interruption. Even still, he wished they would give him a better name. He deserved better. His art deserved better.

  He snickered. “Maybe I should burn a new name into my next fire.” Yes, he was starting to like that idea even more than th
e other ideas he had been having lately. He turned to look at the map he had laid out on the ebony colored desk. “Where oh where should my next fire be, oh where, oh where should it be?” He hummed as he pulled a silver dollar from his pocket. “Heads to the east, tails to the west.” He flipped the coin and caught it before slapping it to the back of one hand. He peaked at the shiny coin resting on the back of his hand and he smiled. “Yeah, that was my choice to.”

  Deciding he should at least get a few hours of sleep before work tomorrow he turned off the desk lamp and retired to his bedroom. Tomorrow would be a glorious day; a glorious day indeed.

  Chapter Seven

  “Mr. Mayor,” Mitch tacked ankle to knee and leaned back in the oversized French Provincial ivory chair. “Now that the Espanola fire is almost completely contained what type of restoration plans will the city put in place?”

  “Well right now we’re focused on getting the fire completely extinguished,” he stroked his fingers over his clean shaven face. The lines of a middle age man surfaced at the creases in his eyes when he smiled. A smile that Eve was sure wasn’t really anywhere other than on his lips. He was having this meeting with a purpose, and that purpose wasn’t about answering Mitch’s questions in any specific order. Reelection would be coming up soon and it would look good for the mayor if he had something fabulously wonderful to say to reassure the public. Although at present the public didn’t seem to be all that concerned about the fires. Eve had noticed that as long as the fires weren’t threatening homes people didn’t care. Of course the bomb at the apartment complex had sparked a higher level of interest in the arsonist lately, but even that had been short-lived. People who weren’t affected had a tendency to move on a lot quicker than people who were.

  Rusty Davis, the mayor’s right hand, entered with two cups of coffee. “Here you go sir, black with sugar. And for you,” he handed Mitch a cup of coffee. “Black, no sugar.”

  The mayor took one sip of his coffee and spit it out. “You idiot! This doesn’t have sugar in it.”

  “Sorry sir,” he tried to clean up the mess of liquid now on the desk.

  “Just take it away and go.”

  “I’m sorry sir.”

  Mitch handed Rusty his cup of coffee too. “Thanks anyway, son.” Mitch nodded politely. Rusty looked at Eve briefly and she gave him a reassuring smile. Good Lord, some people needed a crash course in manners. A mistake was a mistake. Coffee wasn’t anything to berate the poor guy about. Rusty had been so nice to her, and to Mitch, when they first arrived. He was one of those guys, that to look at him, a person would assume he was a gentle big kid. Right now that impression was growing because right now he seemed like the kid who always got the raw end of the deal. She bet he was picked on in school too—probably from people who were just like the man behind the desk.

  “Now, where were we?” He pushed aside a few papers before turning his attention back to Mitch.

  “The fire’s almost contained. I would think this office would be trying to figure out what to do to beautify the area once again.”

  “Well you see it’s like this;” Mayor Townsend leaned forward. “We thought we were going to get a direct hit with that hurricane and we didn’t. The rain we managed to get didn’t fully take us out of the danger zone for wild fires. We managed to go from level alert of Extreme to Very High. That does not make for easy breathing right now. If the wind picks up that fire could reignite to something bigger. Not to mention the fact that we still have a few other smaller fires that we want to get contained as soon as possible. The last thing we need is for one of them to jump the fire line or the highway and cause even bigger threats to homes and lives.”

  Eve kept the smile from gracing her lips. Mayor Townsend kept including himself as if he were the one out there on the front line fighting the fires. Of course he would. He wanted favorable press and there was nothing more favorable than having the spotlight on him and not the firefighters actually out there doing the work. This was all show for him. It was why he insisted she photograph him from his right side and not his left. She had to be sure to use the natural lighting coming in through his sparkling clear glass windows, no flash photography was allowed. She didn’t use flash often because she hated the look herself, but the mayor’s obsession with looking good on camera was getting a little tedious. If he told her one more time to shoot only from the right, and only from a lower angle, she was going to do something she never did—she was going to shoot in the least favorable position she could and then give the picture to Mitch as the lead photo. Mitch would use it too, because Mitch was more concerned with pushing buttons than making friends.

  Eve knew Mayor Townsend wanted a lower angle because it made him appear taller and more in power. Basically, it made him seem like he was larger than life. He was five foot eleven inches so height really wasn’t an issue. It wasn’t as if anybody looked at him and thought, “short guy,” but the mayor wanted to be larger than everybody and since he wasn’t, making himself appear as such on photos was of high importance to him.

  She listened to more chatter about how he was doing everything he could to make sure these fires were extinguished before the damage spread much farther. She wondered just what exactly was it that he was doing, other than sitting behind his desk in his nice air conditioned office while the other men and women were out there with the heat from blazing flames scorching them. She had been on those fire lines and she had seen the hard work, the backbreaking, sweat inducing work that these firefighters worked through—the burden they carried knowing if they didn’t do the job perfectly, if they didn’t put the fire out, then that fire could jump the highway, jump the line, and consume homes, schools, businesses—and if that happened then the loss of human life would increase one hundred percent from where it was now. They carried that burden everyday while the mayor tried to get his photo in the paper.

  “I saw the paper this morning,” Mayor Townsend looked at Eve. “It would appear you decided to focus on the firefighter and not the fire. I think the containment is a bigger story than this kid.”

  “I picked the photo,” Mitch added with measured hostility.

  “She took it.”

  Yes, she had taken the photo. If she did say so herself, Adam was looking mighty fine in his getup, working hard, sweating hard, gorgeous, sexy, hot…she couldn’t look at the photo without thinking about him. Of course she wasn’t sure just where they stood after last night. He had said he wanted to go out again. He had planned a date for later today actually, but then this morning he called her to cancel. Cancellation wasn’t good; at least she didn’t think it was. He left a message, but he didn’t say exactly why he was cancelling, just that he would call her. The fact that she was being ditched for no apparent reason was a fact that Mitch wouldn’t let her forget. She was sure Adam had a reason. Even if it was a reason she was hoping it wouldn’t be, he had one. When he was ready he would either call and tell her why he would call to reschedule, or he would just vanish from her life.

  “What was his name? Adam Carson…Carpenter…Casper…”

  Eve rolled her eyes, something she hoped the mayor hadn’t noticed while he was so busy pretending not to know the name of the firefighter on the front page of their paper. “Carrington,” she provided because if she had to listen to Townsend spout out one more incorrect name she just might scream.

  “Why is the focus on him and not the fires?”

  “It’s all relevant to the situation. Somebody starts the fire, somebody puts it out.” She shrugged. “I somehow don’t think the arsonist is willing to pose for a photo.”

  “No. I wouldn’t think so either, but he’s probably on the sidelines at some of the fires. Maybe shooting the crowd would help.”

  What crowd? This fire wasn’t exactly in their neighborhood. Other than reporters getting a shot here or there, there wasn’t a crowd standing around to watch everything burn. Besides, “he’s too smart for that,” she shot another photo of the mayor.

&n
bsp; “You glorify him?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “No. I want to hear her, not you.” Townsend cut Mitch’s sentence in two, which shifted things considerably. If Mitch thought he was in charge of this interview, that his status as a journalist could unnerve the mayor, he was wrong.

  “I don’t glorify him. What he’s doing is wrong. But to underestimate his genius would be stupid on our part. I don’t have the lay of the land on all things Palm Coast so I don’t always know what the fire lingo is, but what I do know is that a fire burns uphill. Now Florida’s not exactly Wyoming, but there are some inclined areas—small as they may be on this coast—and all of the fires so far seem to have been started in areas where they’ll do the most damage quickly. He’s made sure to start the fires in spots that aren’t going to be extinguished before the fire has spread to an uncontainable level. He’s not your typical idiot arsonist. He’s on a mission and until we figure out what that mission is and stop him, he’ll stay on it.”

  “We? Has your job status changed without my knowing it?”

  She smiled sheepishly. “I’ve been spending too much time with firefighters I guess. I meant until they stop him.”

  “Well, perhaps, young lady, you understand him better than we do.”

  Was that a compliment, an accusation, or just some snide remark about her intuition? She would have him know that she has always been capable of analytical thinking. She and Thomas seemed to have that in common. They both had a way of figuring out the psychology of the truth. Of course she looked more at discovering the why, while Thomas just wanted to know who the bad guy was so he could stop him. Her natural curiosity had her always asking; why? Even now she knew there had to be something more behind these fires than just a love of seeing things burn. There had to be something deeper and she wanted to know what that something was. Maybe if they figured out why, then they could figure out who was behind this crime. Yes, she was well aware this wasn’t her job, and she wasn’t trying to make it her job, but the mayor had asked a question and so she answered him. If he was going to get his shorts in a wad over the answer then perhaps he shouldn’t have asked.