It had been a hell of a day. I was hoping it wouldn’t be a hell of a night. My burning dreams had been working overtime lately. When they occur two or three times a week, I try to tell myself that’s manageable. Of late, though, it had been a nightly event. My cases seemed to be stirring up my subconscious and the end result was me burning.
The next day was Sunday, I told myself. I could sleep in.
I remembered when Jen had shared my bed. We always held one another before turning in. If Jenny kissed me on the lips, that meant she wasn’t ready for sleep. A kiss on the nose was another matter. That meant it was time to snooze. That kiss on my nose always brought a smile to my lips, and the next thing I knew it was morning.
I touched my nose for luck. Within seconds I fell asleep. You’d think I would have been too exhausted to have had one of my dreams. My subconscious begged to differ. As usual, hell broke loose in the middle of the night. Most people drool if they’re sleeping deeply. I am into combustion.
The fiery blast furnace, pushed by the swirling winds, blew into my face. I recoiled from it, but too late. The fire was being blownevery which way and there was no escaping it. We staggered away from the worst of the heat and paused to catch our breath. With so much smoke in the air, there seemed to be a great divide between me and the Strangler, but there was only the length of a dying dog that separated us.
The light from the burning fires allowed me to see his face. His features were almost totally black from all the smoke and soot. The Strangler’s eyebrows had been singed away along with much of his hair, and I knew the flames had exacted the same toll on me. His eyes were red and enflamed, and they were so deep within his sockets they looked like burning embers. But he could still see well enough to plot.
I watched him take a quick peek over his head and sensed he was ready to make a run for it. The Strangler knew how hobbled I was, knew that every step hurt like hell.
“You can’t outrun a bullet,” I croaked. “Before you get two steps away I’ll empty my gun into you.”
He reconsidered his flight, if not his plight. “The dog’s dead,” he said. “We have to think of ourselves.”
I forced myself to look at Sirius. If the Strangler was right, I knew what I’d have to do. “Put him down,” I said, “carefully.”
We lowered Sirius to the ground. As I dropped to one knee I kept my gun pointed at the Strangler.
“See,” the Strangler said. “He’s not breathing.”
Earlier Sirius had been panting wildly, but now he was still. My heart started pounding, and the static inside my head made it impossible for me to hear anything other than my surging blood pressure. With my free hand I reached out and touched Sirius’s chest.
Nothing.
The Strangler looked hopeful. He wanted Sirius to be dead. He thought that not having to carry a heavy dog around would be a good thing for him. He was wrong. My trigger finger tightened, but at that moment Sirius’s paw moved and then his chest rose.
“He’s alive,” I said.
“We can’t…”
I moved my Glock no more than half an inch; I wasn’t going to miss. The way I was feeling, it didn’t really matter to me whether the Strangler cooperated or not.
“We’ll lift him on three,” I said.
“We have a chance to live if we leave him. We’re dead if we don’t.”
“One.”
“If we find a way out of here we can send help for him.”
“Two.”
The Strangler’s head jerked in my direction. He could hear the intent in my voice and he suddenly realized that there were two counts going on, and that one of those counts was going to end very badly for him. He dropped down and placed his hands underneath Sirius, and it took me a moment to realize what I was feeling: disappointment. Now I would have to keep going.
“Three,” I whispered, but instead of my shooting the Strangler, we lifted Sirius up and started walking. It was up to me to lead, even though I didn’t know how to lead anymore and hadn’t for some time.
Fire blew our way again, and the pain made me cry out. It surprised me that I was still alive enough to feel.
Something dug into my arm, and I felt pressure on my chest. I opened my eyes to see my shepherd hovering over me. One of his front paws was on my arm, and the other was on my chest.
“I’m all right,” I said, patting him.
Once again I had done my Lazarus act and returned from the dead, but this time, more than any other of my resurrections, I recognized that being alive was a good thing. It hadn’t always been that way. When you’re severely burned it takes a long time to get better, but that had been the easier recovery for me. After Jen’s death I tried to hide from everyone how bad off I was. Few people had any idea I was a basket case, and my severe burning had helped to mask my other symptoms.
My dreams were now forcing me to look back. There was no longer any hiding from what I’d been. Part of me had wanted to die in the fire. Jen’s death had left me a hollow man, a shell ripe for going up in flames. Being responsible for my partner was the only reason I hadn’t let myself become a human flare. As bad as reliving the burning was, facing up to the old emotions was worse. It was a hell of a lesson to keep on burning night after night.
My moment after stripped away my veneer. I had gone out into that fire wanting to die. Ironically, getting burned probably saved my life. I had been contemplating suicide, but I hadn’t wanted it to look like a suicide. That was my own personal insight. I had a feeling my vision somehow applied to the Klein case, but I didn’t know how.
Inspiration might strike, I told myself, if I got more sleep. Later, I told myself, I would think about it. And then, knowing I wouldn’t burn anymore that night, I fell asleep again and awakened much later than usual.
Every PTSD burning takes its toll. Satchell Paige once posed the question, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” In the morning following a burning I usually awaken feeling as old as Methuselah. When I got up, I was parched and drained and achy. I downed an Advil with two glasses of water and then started thinking about my moment after.
My visions-for want of a better word-are not always straightforward, but unlike dreams I always remember every detail of them. I would like to believe that the after-fire message comes from my subconscious, but I don’t know if that’s an adequate explanation. Before my walk through fire I was never prescient, but now some strange door seems to have opened up for me. My oracle demands a high price, though. It needs its pound of burning flesh.
I made myself a breakfast of Cheerios and coffee. While I sipped my coffee, I thought briefly about my moment after but didn’t stay with it for long. It was too personal. I didn’t like remembering the suicidal thoughts that I’d had and was glad that darkness was no longer with me.
During my talk with Karen Santos, she had recalled seeing a “feisty” bird on the sweatshirt of the young woman that had bought the baby bootees at the monastery’s gift shop. Her impression was that the bird was gold or brown and belonged to a college. It was time to find that bird. I started entering information into my laptop.
“Road Runner,” I hummed as I typed, “the coyote’s after you.”
The search engine told me there were more than twenty four-year colleges in Los Angeles, Orange, and San Fernando Counties. The mascots were varied: there were lions and tigers and bears (oh my!), as well as an anteater, a beaver and, yes, a roadrunner. There were mascot characters such as Prospector Pete, Matty the Matador, and Johnny Poet (which makes sense only if your school is named after the poet John Whittier), and nonanimal mascots in the forms of titans, Trojans, and waves.