"We still have work to do," she said. She was starting to get irritated. How many different ways did she have to tell him that she did not want their romantic entanglements to interfere with their work? She really didn't want to be a b.i.t.c.h about it, but he was leaving her no choice.

"You work your a.s.s off," Ramirez said. "It's okay to take five or ten minutes for yourself." As he said this, he increased the pressure on his shoulders. His hands also slid a bit lower below her neck.

"For what?" she asked, shrugging off his hands. "You want me to just throw everything on my desk onto the floor so you can bang me on it? Want a quickie on my desk? Or maybe in a janitor's closet? Jesus, Ramirez...grow up and do your job."

"No, I didn't want a quickie on your desk," he said, offended.

"Then what is it?" she asked. "What do you want?"

"Ten minutes with you where we aren't bogged down by our jobs," he said.

"Well, you aren't going to get that right now. I'm sorry, but if you make me choose between work and you, you're not going to stand much of a chance."

"Oh," he said, slowly walking back to the door. "It's that easy for you, huh?"

"Yes. It is."

"So maybe I should just leave you alone until this case is wrapped...or until you decide that you're overthinking it and it's already wrapped. Bailey is our guy. Stop overthinking things. Stop making yourself busy so you can ignore this emotional thing you're feeling for me."

"That's not what I'm doing," she spat.

"I'm not too sure about that," Ramirez said.

"The world does not revolve around you," Avery said. "Now, if you don't mind...close the door on your way out."

It was obvious that he was biting back a remark as he made his exit, but he managed to swallow it down. He did put some force behind closing the door as he left, though.

Avery looked back down to the files of the victims. All women...but what else? Was there something there that she was missing?

She thought of her conversation with Sloane and the insights she had given into the mind of an arsonist. Maybe they needed to look at it from a different angle-from a fresh perspective. Of course, it was nearing three in the morning right now so there was very little to be done.

Knowing that three hours of sleep would be useless, she stood up and stretched her back. She then settled back down behind the desk and studied the files for Keisha Lawrence and Sarah Osborne. She hoped the ident.i.ty of the third victim might help tie up some loose ends.

But until then, she only had the two deceased women staring at her from pieces of paper on her desk. They had been reduced to ashes on their last days on earth and it was up to Avery to discover the stories they had to tell.

She thought of Dr. Sloane Miller again and thought she might be just the person to help her figure out what these particularly tragic stories meant.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

Avery waited until six in the morning to call Sloane. She was relieved to hear that it sounded like Sloane had been awake for quite some time already. As it so happened, she was in a coffee shop when she answered her phone and happily agreed to meet with Avery the moment she got to the office.

That's how Avery came to be sitting in Sloane's office half an hour later with a coffee and a m.u.f.fin Sloane had brought her from the coffee shop. Sloane set her things down on her desk, powered up her work laptop, and finally took a seat.

"So what can I do for you?" Sloane asked.

"I'm still hung up on this case where the killer is burning his victims," Avery said. She was sitting in the patient's chair, eating her small breakfast. For a moment, it almost felt as if she were just hanging out with a close friend. "I'm trying to view it through the lens of someone who might be using fire as a strictly symbolic means without any interest or leaning towards arson."

"Well, that's certainly interesting," Sloane said. "But I'm not sure you'll find someone fitting that description. I guess it is possible, but unlikely."

"And why do you say that?"

Sloane thought about it for a moment as she sipped from her coffee. "As we discussed before, even a little kid staring into a campfire-maybe holding a hot dog or marshmallow over it-understands the power that fire has. There's an inherent sort of respect for it. What an arsonist essentially does is evolve that fascination and respect into a device for power. They want to see the world burn and they have no problem using fire to do it because it's an outlet of power to them. Does that make sense?"

"So far, yes," Avery said.

"So now let's consider someone who is burning bodies on purpose. Sure, there could be some symbolism attached to it and that's fine. But anyone using fire as a means to destroy or reduce something is working on those same inherent feelings. They understand the absolute power of fire and are using it with intent. It may even be a situation where the killer doesn't even realize he has these arson-like tendencies. But at the root of what he's doing, there is a degree of the same sort of mindset an arsonist would have, even if it's at its most basic form."

So it could be someone like Phillip Bailey, Avery thought. Behind his obvious mental issues, there's an almost primitive understanding of how fire is a very basic yet common way to destroy things. h.e.l.l, even George Lutz understood that.

"So you think it would be a mistake to rule out an arsonist?" Avery asked.

"I wouldn't do it. In fact, I'd be looking for links between the two. Out of your suspects, is there anyone who has a background in arson that also may have some sort of connection to fire that could be viewed as symbolic?"

Would an arsonist work at a crematorium or trash-burning plant? Avery wondered. And if they did, would they even understand why they were doing it? Would they even be aware of their interest in fire?

Avery nodded, knowing exactly what she needed to look for. But on the heels of that was the question of Howard Randall. Had he purposefully given her wrong information? Had he just been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with her, tiring of being her lackl.u.s.ter mentor?

Symbolism versus intent, Avery thought. I've been putting too much stake in that thought. What if the two are married? What if we're looking for someone who is not only very much aware of their obsession with fire, but with the mindset of a killer?

There's no need to look at those as individual traits if they could be linked to create a s.a.d.i.s.tic murderer.

But then again, maybe Howard was right all along. Maybe the killer was using fire as a weapon but not with an arsonist's frame of mind. Sometimes, fire was just fire.

"Does that help?" Sloane asked.

"I think it does. And as much as I hate to take the gift of coffee and run..."

"Run," Sloane said with a smile of understanding. "Go get the bad guy, Detective Black."

With a nod of appreciation, Avery left Sloane's office with the cogs in her head already turning. She walked back to her own office on autopilot as she started putting the pieces together in her head.

By the time she was back behind her desk, she was pretty sure she knew exactly what she was looking for-and that two files in particular were on her desk that lined up almost exactly.

In their searches, Avery had received files based on people with a history of arson and then a completely different set of files based on people who had worked at crematoriums and had been let go for questionable reasons. While she had done some cross-referencing, she had not done anything in-depth because she had been leaning so hard toward arson not being a part of it.

She pulled up the two files that had shown the most promise when she had been cross-referencing the material. The first one was an older woman who had worked in a crematorium between 1989 and 2006. She had not been fired but had quit because of health concerns. She had come back for a few years to work as a receptionist before retiring for good in 2012. There was a mark of arson on her record, but it came from 1986 when she had been arrested for possession of marijuana and opiates. The arson in question was speculated to be perhaps an accidental fire started in her friend's backyard that had nearly burned the house down.

The second file was much more interesting, though. It told the story of a man named Roosevelt Toms. He had been employed by Everett Brothers Crematorium between 2006 and 2012. He had been fired for what the file listed as "professional difference of opinion from that of the owners." Avery looked back through the other pile and did not find his name to cross-reference. However, in his file within the crematorium employees, there was an additional sheet of information attached. It was a brief doc.u.ment that explained that Roosevelt had been arrested in 2001 under an intent-to-harm charge. Later that year, a girlfriend had called the police on him due to suicidal tendencies when he locked himself in the attic of their apartment.

Near the end of the report, a small statement caught Avery's attention and made her stand up from the desk.

When he locked himself in the attic, Roosevelt carried two things with him: a lighter and a small can of gasoline from beneath the patio where the lawnmower was kept.

Bingo, Avery thought.

She gathered up the files and thumbed in the number for Everett Brothers Crematorium. She was out her door and headed down the hallways toward the parking garage before the phone had even started ringing.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Avery could see right away that Charles Everett was uneasy with a detective stepping into his place of business. Avery didn't quite understand this, as it was a beautiful building that didn't have that morbid sort of feel that had saturated Wallace Funeral Home. She tried to remind herself that it was only 8:40 in the morning when she stepped into his office and that this was probably not the way he wanted to start his day.

"Thanks for meeting with me on short notice," Avery said.

"It's not a problem," he said. "But I have to admit...I was hoping I'd go the rest of my life without hearing the name of Roosevelt Toms. Everyone around here always called him Rosie for short...something he hated and I found sort of off-putting. Because there was nothing rosy about him."

"Can you tell me a little bit about him?"

"Well, my brother hired him and he's been deceased for five years now, G.o.d rest his soul. But I originally saw some of the same things in Rosie that he did. He was a hard worker and seemed to genuinely care about the bodies that came through here. Also, if we were in a pinch and needed someone to work the floor during memorial services, he was great at consoling people. But if I'm being honest...there was always something about him that never sat right with me. He was one of those people that just sort of started to creep you out after you spent a lot of time with him."

"How so?" Avery asked.

"I don't know, exactly. He'd sometimes have this blank stare, like he was thinking really hard about something that he didn't want you to know about. And there were times when I'd catch him just staring at the deceased...not in a sad way but...I don't know. It was almost the same way a curious middle school kid would look at a toad just before they put it on the dissection tray. You know what I mean?"

Or like a cat in Phillip Bailey's bas.e.m.e.nt, Avery thought. It was a little alarming how these sorts of people were starting to link themselves together in her head.

"And why was he fired?" Avery asked. "The only explanation I have is professional difference of opinion from that of the owners."

"It was the strangest thing...whenever he got the chance, he'd actively try to talk our clients out of cremation. He told them burial was a more natural way to respect the bodies. He was very pa.s.sionate about it."

That's a new avenue to consider, she thought. Someone using fire as more than a weapon, but almost like a spiteful punishment-someone who doesn't necessarily like fire.

"Any idea why he started doing this?" Avery asked.

"No idea. But it got annoying. He'd even start lecturing us about it. And one day it was just too much. We let him go."

"And did he get hostile about your decision to fire him?"

"Not at all," Charles said. "In fact, it was all rather civil. He even called and apologized several months later."

"But you said there was nothing rosy about him," Avery said.

"I did. Even in that phone call where he tried apologizing, he had this way of just getting under your skin. His voice was flat and monotone. And it seemed like an act-like he was hiding something from us and was taking a great deal of pleasure from it."

Maybe he wanted back in, Avery thought. Maybe something about fire drew him back...maybe he realized this sort of workplace could greatly benefit whatever skewed plans he was forming.

"Mr. Everett, do you know where I might be able to find Roosevelt Toms? We have no current residence on file."

"The last address I have for him is the apartment he used to live in. But I know for a fact he moved out of that shortly before he was fired from here."

Avery thought about the information in the file. She thought about the man Charles Everett had just described to her, climbing into the attic with a lighter and gasoline. That scene, coupled with what she had just learned about him, made her think that she might finally be on the right trail.

"What about next of kin or emergency contacts?" Avery asked.

"Yes, I can get those for you but keep in mind, they're going to be at least four years old."

"That will be fine for a start. Thanks, Mr. Everett."

"Of course," he said as he started tapping at keys on his laptop. He worked quickly, giving Avery casual glances as he worked. It took him less than thirty seconds to get the information he needed. When it was on his screen, he printed a copy out on an old printer that hummed on a shelf behind the desk. He grabbed the single sheet of paper and handed it to Avery.

"Here you go," he said. "I hope it helps." He paused for a moment with a thoughtful look on his face and asked:"Can I ask you something, Detective?"

"Of course."

"I saw something on the news last night...a story about a killer that seemed to be burning his victims, some to the point of near cremation. Is Rosie being eyed in this?"

"I'm afraid I can't discuss case details with you," Avery said.

"Ah, I understand," Charles said. But there was an understanding in his eyes, letting her know that the template answer she had given had, in fact, answered his question. "Best of luck to you on the case."

"Thanks."

She excused herself from the office, holding the paper tightly. As she exited Everett Brothers Crematorium, she didn't realize how suffocated she had felt until she was back out in the fresh air. Even though the place had been airy, clean, and mostly cheerful, Avery hoped she would never have to step foot into another funeral home or crematorium until it was her own body lying on the slab.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

The address Avery had been given was for a woman named Debbie Toms, listed as mother on the emergency contacts form Charles Everett had given her. The house was in a middle-cla.s.s part of town. The front was surrounded with modest flower beds, and a small birdbath sat in the side yard.

Avery knocked on the door for five minutes and got no answer. She had no solid ages to do math with but figured there was a good chance that Debbie had not yet retired and was working a job. She made the call to A1 for a.s.sistance and was asked to hold while the receptionist transferred the call.

She was beyond surprised when Ramirez answered the page. When she heard his voice, she froze for a moment, unsure of how to proceed.

"Hey," she finally said.

"Hey yourself," he said. "What do you need?"