I’ve seen the devil more than a few times. Often he looks just as you imagine, but once in awhile he’ll throw you for one hell of a loop. In my line of work there’s all manner of situations that’ll rip your insides out, give you skin-crawling nightmares. A person sees enough of that and they start to get a picture of how demented and desperate evil can be when it’s determined to get its own way in our world.

Being a police detective means you have to get used to all the blood and gore, which I have. Only thing I can’t stomach is arson, and for reasons you’ll soon hear.

My ex, Lou, claimed I had a dark outlook regarding my work, and that I was too close to it. She said “my issues” went all the way back to Tommy, my kid brother. Get this: Lou’s suggestion was acting lessons. She thought I needed some desensitizing, said acting would teach me to approach the job as if I was a voyeur, with a lessened emotional connection. That kind of imagination was precisely what got me attracted to Lou in the first place, but advice I don’t need from anyone, lover or foe.

Just so you understand, Tommy and I were pyros as kids. Started with firecrackers and worked our way up to small, containable field fires. One day, in rage over my new girlfriend, Tommy went solo. It took the crews of Duvall, Carnation and Snoqualmie three days to quench the fire, and by then fifty-seven acres were gone. When Tommy got home he torched that place, too, with him in it. Never saw my brother again, never got to say a proper goodbye.

Now maybe you’ll understand why I hesitated when Chief called, assigning me the triple Krispy Kreme arson spree.

***

I was well acquainted with the latest donut joint that got burnt down. Lou and I met while standing in line for the grand opening two years ago. She noticed my badge and I noticed her figure. We fell hard and fast, but things went bad the same way.

One night I came home and she had already devoured a carton of jelly-filled. Something about that glob of purple goo smeared on Lou’s chin lit me on fire. I told her she should be galloping on the treadmill, sweating off a few instead of stuffing her craw. Oh, how she cried. It was baby fat she said. Satan had a hold of me that night. I didn’t stop the abuse—just verbal, I swear—until Lou announced she was going to call the police. When I burst out in hysterics, she shrieked about me being evil, no better than a prowling jackal. Where had I been for the DNC? She was glad about the miscarriage, she screamed, because what type of father would I have been anyway, just look at me, a savage animal.

She slammed the door on her way out and, like Tommy, never returned. That would have been that if I wasn’t standing in front of the charred remains where our love and demise had taken such deep root.

The site looked like Hades after it’d decided to set up shop somewhere else. A breeze skimmed across two mountains of ash, one corner of the melted assembly line sticking out. A few singed planks remained as corner posts, gnawed and brittle. The air swung thick and hazy, cinder bits everywhere. It hurt to breathe, and I knew it’d be days before I got the stench off of my skin, longer for my hair.

“We don’t catch the perp soon this thing’s really going to blow up.” It was Muller, the P.O. from Duvall who looked like a pale version of an aardvark.

I work alone and Muller knew to leave me that way.

I knelt down for a close inspection, my eyes watering hard. The rancid, mummy rag odor tugged at my gag reflex, but I got control because I needed to secure the evidence.

Using a pair of tweezers, I picked up the fireproof locket I kept Tommy’s ashes in, the one Lou admired and must have filched from me recently.

Lou.

She had started this thing, started and ended it all at once.

I drove to the station rolling the word “revenge” around in my mind, even on my lips. Some people say revenge is sweet– a few say just the opposite.