Less than an hour after the explosion, Sergeant Joe Stone was on the job, doing what he did best: bellowing pointless orders and causing general chaos. Most of the roughly fourteen hundred officers who worked for the Denver Police Department were trained professionals who did their job and did it well. Some were better, some worse. But there was one--there's always one--who was the glaring exception to the rule. In Denver, it was Stone. Most people disliked him the first time they met him.
For me, the animosity had simmered like a foul-smelling stew over a dozen unpleasant years of dealing with him. He was arrogant and cocky, a broad-shouldered lunkhead with a bulldog face, leathery pock-mocked skin, and a square jutting jaw. Most of his fellow officers ridiculed Stone behind his back but no one, especially not his subordinates, ever dared to challenge him to his face.
The biggest problem with Stone was that not only wasn't he very bright, he also had a one-track mind. Once an idea got stuck in his brain, he was like a dog gnawing feverishly on a dried bone. Nothing could pry it away from him. And he was a shameless glory seeker. I often suspected he was more concerned with closing his cases than with making sure he had the right culprit.
Maurice and I had placed ourselves like bookends on the olive green bench in what was left of the atrium. Since our clothes were covered with plaster and dirt anyway, we hadn't bothered to brush off the bench before we sat down. Silent and dejected, we watched the spectacle of activity going on around us. After Stone decided he had kept us waiting long enough to show how important he was, he swaggered over to where we were sitting. He was about my height, which is exactly six feet, but he outweighed me by about thirty pounds, most of it muscle. When he smiled--which was seldom--his lips never made it past a sneer.
This time, he didn't smile. "I guess I'm ready for you two now."
"It's about time," Maurice grumbled. He couldn't stand Stone and he didn't bother to hide it. "We've been sitting here for forty-five minutes."
Stone puffed himself up like a peacock. "I had more important things to do. Even more important than talking to His Majesty, the exalted Adam Larsen. And his muscle-bound ex-jock bodyguard." He gestured toward Maurice. "You first. In the study. Let's go!"
Maurice stood up. He turned back toward me and raised his brows in an unspoken question. I just shrugged. It didn't matter which one of us Stone questioned first. Neither of us had anything to hide. Nor, unfortunately, did we have much useful information for Stone to gnaw upon.
Stone aimed his index finger at me like the .44 magnum he used as a service pistol. "You stay put, Larsen. Right here on this bench. And don't you move one inch. Not one inch!" He wheeled in a military fashion and marched off. Maurice followed, deliberately lagging behind in a show of unspoken defiance.
At first, I sat dutifully on the bench. After a while, I found myself growing impatient. Sitting there doing nothing only made me feel worse. I began pacing the atrium area, wondering whether there was something I could have done differently, something that might have saved the Empress. Finally, I decided I needed to do something. I left the atrium and ventured into the living room. There was nothing going on there. No policemen, no lab techs and no members of the Emerson household. The room hadn't suffered much damage, so I assumed the police were directing their attention upstairs.
I began climbing the same staircase that Maurice, Wiggins and I had used when we rushed upstairs an hour earlier. When I reached the second floor landing, I stopped short. Unlike the main floor, this part of the house was buzzing with activity, especially down the hallway that led to what was left of Helen Emerson's bedroom suite. A bearded man was flashing pictures of everything in sight. In a low voice, he dictated into a small recorder after he snapped each shot. Two lab technicians in latex gloves were methodically gathering samples of plaster and other items too small for me to identify from where I was standing.
After I had watched them for about ten minutes, I caught sight of a friendly face, heading my way.
Fred Yamamoto called out with a wide smile, "Adam Larsen, attorney at law! How the hell are you?"
I offered my hand and he shook it vigorously. Fred was the head of the mobile crime lab. He was probably five foot six, about forty years old, and thin as a rail. His thick black hair was shiny even though it was cut very short. The skin of his narrow face was tightly drawn, making him somehow look even smaller than he actually was.
"I'm fine, Fred. I had no idea you were up here."
"Yeah, I'm like the wind," he explained, swishing his arms through the air like a Ninja. "I come and go in silence. Or in this case, through the back door." His amiable laugh was almost a giggle. "So what's a nice lawyer like you doing in a place like this?"
I grimaced. "Nearly getting himself blown up. I was supposed to meet with Mrs. Emerson. Unfortunately, I never got the chance."
He shrugged philosophically. "Nobody's gonna get the chance now. Someone definitely made sure of that. Man, what a mess! By the way, you're not supposed to be up here."
"I know. I won't touch anything. I promise. Any idea what caused the explosion?"
"More than just an idea. I know exactly what it was. Somebody put explosives and a detonator in the toilet tank. The trigger was probably a pull wire igniter, with the end fastened to the flush handle. When she pulled the lever, bang!"
I gawked at him. "You mean the toilet blew up?"
"That's the layman's version," he said. "But, yeah, that's the gist of it. We don't know yet what explosive they used."
"I think I have something that might help you. My legal assistant was with me when the blast went off. He says he smelled something called Detoneatine."
"Ah! Thanks, man. I suspected something like that, but I didn't know which one. I probably wouldn't have guessed Detoneatine. The odor was already dissipated by the time we got here. I'll let the lab know. It will save them a lot of time." He eyed me with sudden suspicion. "So how does your legal assistant know about things like Detoneatine? I thought he was a football player."
"He used to be. He has an uncle who has a farm. Apparently, they use explosives."
"Probably to blow out tree stumps," Fred said. "Saves a lot of manual labor."
"That makes sense. So what exactly is this Detoneatine?"
"Detoneatine is just the brand name. I forget the chemical name. Too many syllables for a simple-minded guy like me. It's made by a company somewhere in the Midwest. It comes as a package of unmixed components. Separately, they're harmless. When you mix them together and add a blasting cap--" He gestured expansively to indicate the mess all around us. "You can see what it does." He added meaningfully, "They don't sell that stuff to just anybody."
"I hope not. Does Detoneatine work in water? It strikes me that--"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. I'm way ahead of you, Counselor. The big boom could have fizzled out into a big dud. Whoever set this one up thought of that. They shut off the water supply beneath the toilet and drained all the fluid out of the tank. Then they put bricks on the bottom to, as they used to say, keep their powder dry. Except that this wasn't powder."
I eyed him suspiciously, wondering whether he was pulling my leg. "How can you possibly know all that?"
He gently tapped the side of his head. "Brain power, my friend. That's why they pay me the big money." He chuckled at the thought. "Fat chance! Anyway, the tank was blown to smithereens, and the burn marks on the wall were the blackest at exactly the height of the toilet tank. You can see from the stains on the opposite wall that the force of the explosion was projected in the direction, away from the toilet."
"Yeah, but if the tank was blown to smithereens, how can you tell that someone drained it first?"
"A stroke of good luck. The blast blew the shutoff assembly clean off the wall. By some miracle the valve is still intact. It was in the closed position. I checked it. Ergo, the water had been turned off before the explosion. Why else would anyone turn it off except to drain the tank?"
"Okay, I'll concede that one. What about the bricks in the bottom of the tank? How do you know--"
"That, I admit, is just an educated guess. We found clumps of reddish sand. The lab will decide it for sure, but I'd bet you a month's salary it used to be brick. Heck, I can even tell you what she was doing before she flushed, in case you really want to know." He scrunched up his face. "The place was a mess."
"I know," I said with a grim expression on my face. "I saw it."
He gave me a crosswise look. "You didn't go messing with my crime scene, did you?"
I shook my head firmly. "We just went far enough into the room to make sure we couldn't help her. After that, we got out of there."
"Are you sure?" he pressed me, his eyes still narrowed.
"Absolutely. Fred, you know I'd never--"
He suddenly smiled and elbowed me in the ribs. "Yeah, I know that, man. You're a pretty straight shooter." He couldn't resist adding, "At least, for a lawyer." He glanced urgently at his wristwatch. "Hey, I've got to get out of here. My wife and I are supposed to be at some dinner party. If I'm late again, she's gonna kill me!"
I trailed behind Fred as he headed down the stairs. When we reached the main floor, he tapped me on the shoulder. "Nice seeing you, man."
He cut through the living room, moving rapidly toward the back of the mansion, and disappeared around the corner. I headed back to the atrium. There was no sign of Stone. The only person in the room was Wiggins, who was sitting on the bench with his head resting on his palms. He glanced up half-heartedly when he sensed my presence, nodding a forlorn greeting. The poor man looked lost. He hadn't bothered to clean any of the dust from his face and hair, and he seemed to have somehow grown smaller in his clothes.
I sat down on the bench, accidentally raising a small cloud of white dust. "This hasn't been a very good day for you, has it?"
He looked as though he might burst into tears. "It has been an absolute nightmare! It started out in total chaos and has only gotten worse!"
"That's too bad," I clucked sympathetically.
"I was already standing in the checkout line with a full basket of groceries, when my pager went off and I had to come rushing home."
I wasn't following his train of thought. "Why did you have to rush home?"
"The burglary, of course. I was next in line, too!"
I stared at him. "Excuse me, did you say burglary?"
"That's right. Can you imagine that?"
"I don't know. You'd have to tell me what happened."
His face colored and he suddenly looked alarmed, as though he had inadvertently spilled the family's most intimate secrets. "I shouldn't be telling you this."
"Mrs. Emerson was going to meet with me tonight, Mr. Wiggins, to discuss something she considered highly confidential. She obviously trusted me to guard her secrets."
"She did," he said in a somber tone. "I do know that much. Even so, I'm not sure I ought to be discussing this with you, Mr. Larsen."
"I'm not either," I agreed affably. "But doesn't it strike you as an odd coincidence that a burglary occurred this morning and this evening a bomb exploded in Mrs. Emerson's bathroom?"
He frowned and looked puzzled, as though I had suddenly started speaking a foreign language. "Why do you say it was a bomb? I thought--"
"Of course, it was a bomb. It had to be. It was deliberately planted in her bathroom."
Wiggins knitted his brows, looking even more perplexed. "How would something like that get upstairs?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," I said, with a noncommittal shrug of my shoulders. I couldn't decide whether he was genuinely confused or deliberately being obtuse. For all I knew, he might have been the person who blew up the Empress. With a lop-sided smile I said, "I don't suppose Mrs. Emerson had a habit of playing with explosives around the house?"
My stab at humor went right over his head. "No," he replied in a serious tone, "not around the house."
I stared at him. "You mean she played with explosives somewhere else?"
He flushed with sudden embarrassment. "That wasn't what I meant at all, Mr. Larsen. Mrs. Emerson didn't play with explosives anywhere. However, the Emerson family holds coal interests throughout the United States, including their shaft mine here in Colorado. The company uses blasting materials in its mining operations."
"That makes sense," I said, "although it doesn't explain how any of those materials might have wound up in her bathroom."
"No, it does not," he muttered enigmatically. "It most certainly does not."
"Anyway," I reminded him with a smile, "you were telling me about the burglary."
"No," he corrected, betraying a faint smile of his own. "I was avoiding telling you about the burglary." He sighed. "I suppose it would be all right, though. As you point out, she trusted you enough for whatever it was that she wanted to consult you about." He placed emphasized the 'whatever it was' part, as though hoping I'd tell him what it was. Unfortunately, I couldn't have told him, even if I had wanted to. Someone who did like to play with explosives had made sure of that.
"This isn't something you can keep to yourself, Mr. Wiggins. At a minimum, you need to tell the police about it."
He flipped his hand. "Oh, they already know all about it."
I eyed him for a moment, to see if he was pulling my leg. When I realized he wasn't, I broke into a knowing smile. "Then there's no reason not to tell me, is there?"
He mulled it over and then smiled back. "No, I suppose not. There's something quite reassuring about you, Mr. Larsen, and I fancy myself a pretty good judge of character." He took a deep breath and began, "What happened is this: Mrs. Emerson summoned me at seven o'clock this morning. She instructed me that she wanted to meet with you alone. She was very mysterious about it, and it is not my place to pry. Together, we contrived a plan to get everyone else out of the house."
"What sort of plan?"
"Mrs. Emerson convinced the girls--her daughters, Claudia and Joyce--to spend the day playing the casinos in Central City. Andrew was at work, of course. When you refused to meet with her this morning, she threw an absolute fit."
I opened my mouth to protest his inaccurate characterization of what had happened, but he was continuing.
"She left the house, ostensibly to run errands, while I followed my normal routine, first going to the grocery store to do the week's shopping. It happened about one o'clock. I was already in the checkout line when the monitoring company notified me that the burglar alarm had gone off. I--"
He abruptly stopped talking, and a distant look swept across his features. When he said nothing further, I prompted, "Go on."
"Oh, sorry. I was thinking about, about what happened upstairs. I came right home, of course, from the supermarket. Someone had broken into the house. I immediately called the police. It took them nearly an hour to arrive. Meanwhile, my groceries were spoiling."
I explained, "They don't give a lot of priority to burglaries, especially if no one is hurt. So what happened when they got here?"
"As it turned out, that was the end of the story. A bit of an anticlimax, I'm afraid. Someone had smashed one of the windows and gotten inside. As far as I could tell, nothing was missing. The alarm must have frightened them off."
I was disappointed that there wasn't more to the story, but I tried not to let it show on my face. "Did the police do anything?"
"Not really. There were two officers. They went inside the house, to make sure it was safe for me to enter. Other than that, frankly, they seemed unconcerned about the whole thing. They said they would fill out a report and they suggested I call someone to repair the window. As though I hadn't already thought of that. I wanted them to look for fingerprints or something. They said they weren't equipped to do that."
I nodded. "What happened next?"
"Nothing. After the police left, I put away the groceries and then made a careful inspection of the premises. I didn't even find anything out of place, except for the broken window. I promptly cleaned that up."
"Did you happen to check her bedroom suite? For example, the bathroom?"
He wrinkled his forehead. "No. Why would I? That was her personal sanctum. Other than when I go in to clean it, I would have no reason to go in there. Why?"
I shrugged. "Just asking. So, what does Sergeant Stone make of all this?"
"I wouldn't know. I haven't spoken with him."
"I thought you said the police knew--"
"I was referring to the two officers who were out this morning. When I tried to approach that Sergeant tonight, he said he was too busy to talk to me. His tone made it very clear that he regarded me as someone quite unimportant."
"Don't take it personally, Mr. Wiggins. Stone treats everyone that way." I smiled at him. "If he ever starts paying attention to you, that's the time to start worrying."
"I see," he replied mildly. "I'll keep that in mind when he questions me. He told me he'll need to do that." His demeanor was becoming less guarded. "I don't like that man."
"You're in good company," I assured him. "Nobody likes Sergeant Stone." I was slowly revising my initial impression of Wiggins. He was more than just a stuffed shirt. What I had first pegged as mere pomposity was actually a quiet dignity that I found refreshing. "Would you mind showing me which window was broken?"
"Not at all." He frowned. "But why--?"
I winked at him. "Because Sergeant Stone ordered me to wait here on the bench. Which makes me want to do anything except wait here on the bench. Besides, we have nothing better to do, do we?"
He shook his head, smiling like an indulgent father, and stood up. "This way, Mr. Larsen."