THE SMELL WAS the worst of it.
Detective David Moore held a rag to his mouth and stepped over the charred remnants of the transom and into the lobby of Stanford Acres. Much of the roof had collapsed, forming great yawning holes through which the blue sky gaped at the ruins. The drywall behind reception had burned away, revealing half-melted innards of copper pipes and electrical wire. The room ran thick and greasy with the noxious fumes of a dozen chemicals, wood varnishes and silicon and puffy pink clouds of insulation all spumed into the air by the vanquished flames. Yet worse somehow was the smell beneath them, a charcoal tang of roasted flesh that reminded David, appallingly, of barbeque. That human flesh once cooked would smell much as any other was a fact both obvious and abhorrent.
Noise from the street drifted through the gaps in the crumbling walls. David could hear the low murmur of rubberneckers gathering along the lines of police caution tape, the hubbub of reporters setting up on-location broadcasts, the monotone bellow of duty officers insisting the public stand back and not tamper with the investigation. As he made his way inside, these loose noises were replaced by the crisper, almost clinical sound of forensic analysis, as men in white gloves studied the destruction. A team of arson investigators picked their way through the wreckage, the lower halves of their faces obscured by paper masks. They nodded to David as he passed, shifting when needed to provide a clearer look at the bodies. He made his way down the hallway, stepping carefully around the debris. Rooster tails of ash rose in the wake of each footfall, adding their peppery sting to the already caustic air. Light tumbled in through empty window frames, igniting crystalline embers in the shards of shattered glass.
He entered a bedroom and spotted his partner, Walter. Mid-fifties, he had the large, softening frame of an athlete gone to seed. An unlit cigarette jutted from beneath the grey tusks of his walrus moustache. He touched a lighter’s dancing flame to its tip and inhaled.
“Kind of in poor taste, Walt.”
Plumes of smoke unfurled from the sides of Walter’s mouth. “I guess it might stink up the drapes, huh?”
David approached the bed. Walter offered him a cigarette from his pack and David, pausing for a brief pang of guilt, took it. He bent towards Walter’s lighter and studied the body through a sheer veil of tobacco smoke. The victim, though badly burned, was still recognizably female. A woman in her eighties or nineties, David guessed, from the wisps of hair and the wrinkled topography of her unblackened left cheek.
“How many, all told?” David asked.
“Twenty at last count, though there’s a couple of spots the body boys haven’t swept that closely yet.”
“Jesus.”
Walter shrugged. “Half these folks were bedridden, the other half in wheelchairs or walkers. Not the sort gonna be makin’ dramatic escapes through windows. Staff did what they could, but we’re talkin’ one nurse for every dozen residents. It was the smoke did it more than the fire, so there’s a bright side for you.”
“Pretty damn dark for a bright side.”
“True. But that’s about as bright as she gets.”
Walter smoked his cigarette down to the filter and snubbed out the embers on the pad of his saliva-dampened thumb. He readied himself to flick it, paused, and pocketed it instead. “Come on. I’ll give you the tour.”
They walked to the end of the hallway, their gazes drifting about in an ostensibly casual way that belied the true depth of their search. Years on the job had taught David that looking too closely could be as bad as not looking at all. Clues were skittish things, and too aggressive an approach was liable to spook them.
Walter led him down the stairs to the basement. Soot and ash lined the walls, giving the hallway a sepulchral, cavernous cast. David and Walter clicked on flashlights. Stalactites of fire-warped tile hung from the ceiling, strung with cobwebs of melted insulation and vines of dead wire. Pockets of smoke eddied about the ragged ceiling, flavouring the air with a bitter tannin stink. The damage grew greater as they progressed, culminating in a coal-black abscess gaping in the left wall. Flames had blistered the support beams and eaten a hole through the ceiling, allowing a column of soot-stained light to descend from the room above. David whistled in appreciation at the totality of the destruction.
“Utility closet,” Walter explained. “Fire chief says this is where it started.”
David leaned through the doorway and trawled the beam of his flashlight slowly about the room. Aluminum shelves slumped half-melted against the back wall, their contents burned to slag. He spotted an empty paint can and squatted to inspect it. He hooked the rim with one gloved finger and lifted it gently. “Plenty of fuel in here, by the looks of it.”
“Sure. Paint, Varsol, all that good shit. Question is, what set it off?”
“Electrical, maybe?”
“Possible,” said Walter. “Spoke to the manager and he said everything was up to code, inspected just last year. We’ll need the records to prove it, but the place has a pretty good reputation. My mom stayed here.”
David looked at Walter uneasily. “She wasn’t . . . ”
Walter waved David’s concern away. “She died years ago. Alzheimer’s. Fuckin’ bitch of an illness. Compared to that, smoke inhalation’s not so bad.”
“Still pretty bad, though.”
Walter nodded.
They emerged into the midmorning air, lungs sighing with relief. David immediately quelled their enthusiasm with another cigarette. They cleared out to the sidewalk to let the evidence boys work without feeling like homicide was peering over their shoulders.
“So what you think?” asked Walter. “This one comin’ our way?”
David puffed on his cigarette contemplatively. “Not really for us to say, is it? Could very well be bad wiring, or maybe the janitor was sneaking a cig and forgot to butt out properly. Arson guys’ll give their report, let us know if we should investigate.”
“Yeah, but what’s your gut tell you?”
David stared at the building, and the building stared blindly back. “It was deliberate.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.”
Walter flicked ash from the end of his cigarette. “Takes a special kind of scumbag to torch an old folks’ home. What’s it gain you?”
David held his cigarette aloft as if it were a tiny wand. He studied its burning tip, watched as embers took wing on the steady breeze. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
It was a question he intended to have answered, eventually.
Though he doubted he’d like what he heard.