Chapter six
James
Toxic water pooled black in the hollow bones of the first warehouse to burn, carrying dissolved remnants of accelerants, and God knew what else. The evening rain had driven away the day shift investigators, but something about the scene had gnawed at me until I'd asked Marcus to return.
Now, we crouched in the building's skeletal remains. Our flashlight beams cut through sheets of rain that carried the sharp bite of melted wiring and scorched metal.
Rain hammered against the umbrella Marcus held above us, creating a private sphere defined by the steady drum of water against nylon. He'd positioned himself to block the worst of the wind, angling the umbrella's shelter over my hands as I executed my examination.
The gesture was purely practical—protecting evidence from further water damage—but something about the careful way he maintained the shelter made my pulse pound. He held the umbrella firm against anything the weather could dish out.
"The flow changes here." I drew a defined circle in the air above scarred concrete, acutely aware of how Marcus shifted with my movements, keeping me covered.
Water ran down his sleeve where he'd left his shoulder exposed to better shield my work. It was a small sacrifice that impacted me deeply.
He moved again, causing his turnout coat to scrape against broken cement. We'd been clearing debris from one particular corner for an hour, following my hunch about secondary burn patterns. The rain plastered Marcus's shirt to his shoulders, causing the wet fabric to cling to well-trained muscle.
"There's something wedged behind this support beam." His light caught on paper edges, barely visible through the twisted metal. "Must have been hidden by the hot spots earlier."
He discovered journal pages that came apart in fragments—sodden paper stuck to chunks of debris, protected from the initial fire by a collapsed section of wall. I used my gloved hands to piece them together beneath the truck's emergency lights, where the rain couldn't further damage our evidence.
The pages came apart in my hands like wet skin sloughing from bone. The cheap paper had partially melted. I focused on the handwriting that matched our second letter.
"The composition's deteriorating." My voice echoed against the warehouse's exposed steel bones. "No more archival materials or artistic presentation. This is raw—torn from a cheap spiral-bound notebook. The arsonist pressed a ballpoint pen hard enough to emboss the fibers."
Marcus crouched closer, his flashlight beam steadying over a particularly dense section of text. The rain ran in rivulets down his neck and soaked into his collar.
It would leave traces of smoke that even hours of showering might never quite wash away. He still smelled of chlorinebeneath the smoke and must have come straight from training to meet me.
"Purification through immersion," he read. "Through flame, through the marriage of opposing elements. The language is a little different."
"More immediate. More—" I broke off as his hand settled at my back, grounding me as my light caught another passage:
"...every morning he cuts through dawn mist like a blade through silk, each stroke perfect, precise, purifying. Twenty-seven strokes per minute, always consistent, like a metronome of flesh and will."
Bile rose in my throat. "The imagery is... intimate in its detail."
The warehouse's broken walls groaned in the wind, rain driving sideways through shattered windows. We'd moved closer to the fire truck's shelter, evidence bags spread across its hood beneath the strobing emergency lights. Each page revealed more of our arsonist's deteriorating mental state—precise documentation giving way to obsessive rambling.
"The paper's degradation suggests recent hiding, but the entries themselves..." I inhaled, filtering through the overlapping chemical signatures beneath the rain's metallic tang—soot, accelerant, wet cellulose.And something else. Something sharp, almost sterile.
I frowned, adjusting my grip on the evidence. "These chronicle weeks of observation. Pages and pages of documented sessions, each one more detailed than the last. Hidden here deliberately for us to find."
Marcus caught my hesitation. "What is it?"
"There's an antiseptic component.Not bleach. Something finer. A solvent, maybe, or industrial ethanol. It wasn't here before the fire."
The realization settled like a stone in my gut.
"You think they came back?" Marcus's voice was quieter.
"Maybe. Or they accidentally left something behind we weren't supposed to notice. Hid it here with what they placed deliberately for us to find."
"For you to find," Marcus corrected quietly. "They knew you'd see the pattern change. Knew you'd come back."
The implication sent ice through my veins. I looked up to find him watching me with an expression that made my carefully maintained professional distance waver. Rain beaded on his eyelashes, tracking down his cheek in paths my fingers ached to trace.
"You should get backup here." My voice sounded distant. "If they're watching, anticipating our movements—"
