“Whatever else they might be, I think Orrin believes his notebooks are prophetic. The passage about Turk Findley setting fire to the warehouse—in Orrin’s mind that’s not something that did happen, it’s something that might happen. He wants to change the outcome.”

“Obviously he knows a few things about the Findley family—if any of it’s true.”

“The basics weren’t hard to confirm. Findley spent a few years in Istanbul. He has an eighteen-year-old son. The high school his son graduated from also has a Latisha Philips registered the same year.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“No. What would I say? She’s not implicated in any of this.”

“Or the son?” Whose nickname, Sandra presumed, was Turk.

“Hard to do that without tipping off Findley.”

“So maybe we can assume Orrin talked to the boy, or overheard something and drew his own conclusions, and he incorporated that into his story.”

“Logically, yeah. He’s not psychic.”

“Well, he predicted the storm,” Sandra said. The rain eased off every once in a while but it always came roaring back, as if half the Gulf of Mexico had levitated over the city and yielded to gravity.

“But he was wrong about other details. Orrin’s document says the warehouse was empty except for the night watchman. It’s not, not tonight. Also, one of the reasons Orrin was so upset when he was fired is that he thought he was supposed to be the watchman on duty when Turk set fire to the place.”

“He was predicting his own death?”

“In a sense. But not because he wants to die. Orrin doesn’t strike me as remotely suicidal. I think he came here to prevent the thing he was predicting, whether he’s the victim of it or not.”

Bose sketched out the scenario for her. Orrin, working at the Findley warehouse, somehow uncovers a plan on the part of the boss’s son to commit an act of arson, and he incorporates that knowledge into his ongoing notebook fantasies. The notebooks are the work of a troubled young man who happens to be smarter than anyone including his sister imagines he is, but whose grip on reality is tentative at best. Unexpectedly fired from his job, and then locked up at State, Orrin panics: he believes the time of the planned arson is close and he thinks he can stop it if he can get free. (Which was why he bit Jack Geddes during his clumsy attempt to break out, Sandra thought.) Once Bose and Sandra cut him loose, he borrows car fare from Ariel and sets out to prevent Turk Findley from committing an unforgiveable act.

Sandra thought about it. “Seems like your timeline is a little off. Orrin was fired before he could have known anything about Turk’s romantic problems.”