The Suicide Club

“Time delay,” the boy in the back seat said. “We rig some kind of incendiary device and a trigger. Something that lets us be far away when it goes up.”

The boy in the back was his friend. The only person he had ever considered in that light. That gave him certain privileges. Including, he guessed, making stupid suggestions.

“You got that kind of device, bozo? And something to use for the trigger? Like what, man?”

“I don’t know what it would take, but I can find out. You can find out how to do anything on the web. Just Google nuclear bomb and you could build one.”

“Because if you don’t have it already,” he went on, ignoring the crap-spew, “then you’d have to go out and buy it. All purchases are traceable, but something like that…Besides, all of that’s gonna to leave behind evidence.”

“In a fire—”

“Because that is the key to success in any criminal activity, my friend. Leave nothing behind. Nothing they can play their little CSI games on.”

In the resulting silence, he retrieved his beer, draining it in one swallow. Stolen bottle by bottle from his father’s basement fridge, there was never quite enough to get a good buzz going. Especially not when it had to be shared.

“As if,” his friend said. “That’s shit anyway. Maybe up North they do all that, but not down here. You think the pissant state labs here have got stuff like that?”

“The feds do.”

“The feds?” the girl repeated.

“ATF. They’re the ones who broke the other case.”

“People saw ’em, dude. They left tire tracks, for Christ’s sake. It doesn’t take a genius—”

“Maybe it does.”

Another silence as the other two tried to figure out what he meant. And since he wasn’t exactly sure…

“What does that mean?” the boy in the back finally asked.

“All you have to be to carry out any crime is smarter than the cops, right?” He glanced back, pressing for agreement.

His friend shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Actually, you’ve only got to be smarter than the smartest cop. He doesn’t figure it out, the rest sure won’t.”

“You want to give the cops IQ tests?” The girl laughed, a sound that was beginning to get on his nerves. “We see which of them is the smartest and…what? Plan to do something criminal that even he can’t figure out?”

She was being sarcastic, what passed for wit in her narrow world. Like that saying about the mouths of babes, the simplicity of it seemed to loop over and over inside his head.

See which one of them is the smartest and do something even he can’t figure out.

And if he couldn’t outsmart the local constabulary, he needed to reevaluate his life goals. They thought they were so fucking smart with those patrols. He’d love to be able to circumvent them. Set one more fire, just to prove he could.

But the risks were too great. He wasn’t going to risk his future. He had that all planned out, and it didn’t include any of the things a conviction would entail. Whatever he did to prove to those bozos that he wasn’t defeated would, like the fires, have to be something that they could never trace back to him. Or to anyone associated with him.

He’d had lots of time during the summer to think about the way to set those fires without leaving evidence. And he’d been right about all of it. The cops had nothing.

With school started, he’d have less time. So…something simpler. But without the risk, would the satisfaction be the same?

There had to be a way to feel the same exhilaration he’d felt watching through his father’s binoculars as those churches went up in flames.

“Exactly,” he said. “Something he can’t figure out. Or trace back to us. Something like the fires. Only better.”

“Like what?” the boy in the back asked.

“I don’t know yet,” he answered truthfully.

Lower risk. Same exhilaration. Raise the stakes in the game with the cops without raising the stakes for himself.

To do that meant that the risk would have to be very high for somebody else. But after all, that really wasn’t his problem.

One

Lindsey Sloan hesitated, her knuckles hovering just beneath the metal plaque on the door. David Campbell and then below the name in smaller letters, Principal.

Although it was unusual for Dave to leave a message with the school secretary asking her to come to his office, Lindsey believed she knew what her boss wanted to talk about. Randolph-Lowen was for up for accreditation review this year. He probably wanted to ask her to head up the school committee.

That wasn’t something she wanted to do, but she knew she would end up saying yes to his request. Which was why she was standing outside the door to his office as if she had been called here for punishment.

Taking a deep breath, she tapped lightly and then, following Melanie’s instructions, turned the knob. Dave, who was seated behind his desk, looked up.

“Melanie said to come on in,” Lindsey offered.

Although she’d followed the instructions she’d been given, as Dave stood, he seemed slightly annoyed by the interruption. Or maybe, she realized as she continued to study his expression, he was annoyed because of the presence of the dark-haired man seated on this side of his desk. He, too, got to his feet as Lindsey stepped inside the office.

He was no one she recognized. A parent with a complaint about something she’d done? Since it was only the second week of school, she’d given out no grades. If he was here to complain, it must be about an assignment. She mentally ran through the ones she’d handed out to her classes, but she couldn’t imagine why any of them would bring a father to the school. Not in person.

“That’s fine, Lindsey,” Dave said. “Want to close that?”

The frisson of anxiety she’d felt when she realized there was someone waiting with Dave escalated. She used the excuse of securing the door to hide it. When she turned back to face the two men, her “meet the parents” smile was firmly in place.

“Lindsey, this is Lieutenant Nolan. Detective, Lindsey Sloan, our gifted coordinator.”

“Ms. Sloan.”

That thin, hard mouth probably didn’t do much smiling, Lindsey thought. And he obviously didn’t intend to make an exception for her. His eyes, as dark as his hair, continued to study her as she attempted to retain her own smile.

“Detective?” she questioned.

“With the sheriff’s department.”

“And…you want to see me?”

“The lieutenant’s in charge of the investigation into the church fires,” Dave interjected.

Lindsey’s gaze automatically shifted to her principal as he made his explanation. Almost immediately she refocused it on the detective. She realized that his eyes had never left her face, undoubtedly because he was noting her reaction to what Dave had just said.