Wednesday
On Wednesday morning, Pierre Michel pulled out his notes and looked them over. He was not optimistic. Most arson cases go unsolved. Nationwide, roughly one-quarter of the investigations led to a suspect but only about five percent of those cases resulted in a conviction.
He was better off than most, however. He had some forensic evidence. He had the traces of the fire-starter. He had a footprint that might or might not be that of the arsonist. And he had a fuzzy photograph taken at night by a child with a cell phone camera, which no one had come forward to identify, in spite of an appeal being broadcast over the local news agencies three nights in a row.
If the fire was related to the death of the owner of the house, then the attempted break-ins and the arson were most likely the acts of a desperate person. It had started in the home office and that part of the house had been effectively destroyed. If the arsonist believed any incriminating evidence had gone up in smoke, he would relax. If not, he would try again.
Officer Michel’s brows drew together in a small frown. The young couple in possession of the house, the heir and his wife, had been advised to move to a hotel, but had declined on the grounds that they needed to complete the inventory of the estate so they could return to their home in Tennessee. It might be worth his while to talk to them again, to see if they remembered anything else. Also, he should talk to the boys who had witnessed the arson. The police had done so on the night, but he had not spoken to them directly.
He extricated himself from his chair, collected his hat, and headed out.
He had spoken to the librarian yesterday and her information had led him to the disgruntled client, who had admitted his threats toward the victim. But that man could not have been the arsonist. Not only did his physical appearance not correspond to the image in the photograph, but he had an alibi.
Officer Michel had also spent some time yesterday talking to the investigator on the murder, Detective Tran. She was pursuing a lead, something to do with the murder weapon, but she had declined to tell him much, explaining it was an ongoing investigation.
He drove over to the Craig’s address, then made his way to the front door of the house across the alley. The doorbell was answered by a middle-aged woman in jeans and a sweatshirt.
“May I help you?”
He removed his hat, introduced himself and explained his errand.
“Oh. Yes, well, Jeremy is at school.”
“Yes, ma’am. I need your permission to speak to him so I came to you first.”
Mrs. Warren turned out to be a very capable, no-nonsense sort of woman. She invited him in, inspected his credentials, read the permission form, phoned her husband, then called the school. While they waited for Mr. Warren to bring Jeremy home, she provided iced tea and answered background questions.
She rose when she heard the car pull up, then introduced Officer Michel to her husband and the child.
When they were all seated around the table, Pierre Michel turned to the boy.
“You are not in trouble, Jeremy. In fact, I have come to ask for your help.”
The boy’s eyes lit up. “Cool!”
“I’m hoping you can tell me more about this man in the backyard across the alley.”
As it turned out, he could. Pierre Michel controlled his expression carefully over the next half hour, taking down the details of an intelligent child’s perception of the neighborhood spectacle. He had done a good job of surveillance, considering his limitations.
“The old man disappeared and they said he was dead and then they moved in and it didn’t look right, so I kept an eye on them.”
“You saw the other woman, the redhead, come and visit?”
“Yes. They were all three in the room that burned. Maybe she set the fire!”
Michel kept his eyes on his notepad. The child had been playing hooky that Thursday morning, so fascinated by his suspicions that mere schooling had faded to unimportance.
“You took a picture of a man with his arm through the window.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, then he did it. He hung around and watched, anyway.”
When he saw there was no more to be learned here, Officer Michel closed his notebook, rose and thanked the family. He turned on the doorstep and addressed the child.
“Jeremy, if you really want to be an investigator, you must stay in school. The tools you learn there will be needed in the field. I advise you to master them.” He gave Mrs. Warren a small smile and touched his hat. “Good day.”
* * *
After almost three weeks off, Ginny was back on her regular noontime session at the rink.
She stepped carefully out onto the ice. She’d been skating for most of her life, but she still went in awe of the fact that a person could stand on something as thin as a single skate blade. She glided across the surface to the hockey box and set her bag down, then turned to see who else was on the ice. Two others, both very much like herself. Grown women with a bit more than basic skills and a love of the sport. Neither paid any attention to her.
Ginny pushed away from the boards and started her warm-up. Slow, smooth strokes at first, forward, then backward in both directions, clockwise and counter-clockwise, making a huge figure of eight as she crossed through the center of the ice on the changeovers.
Swing rolls next, deep edges bisecting the surface of the ice in geometrically perfect half loops. Up one side of the rink and down the other. A little faster now, she moved into crossovers and cross rolls, power stroking and edge changes, working the inside edges as much as the outside ones.
The ice was in good condition, neither too hard nor too soft. Ginny felt her heart lift as the tension of the last few days began to ease, lost in the physical exertion.
She finished the lap, then peeled off to do some stretching. Ice skating was as much a matter of suppleness as of strength. She closed her eyes and centered her balance, then reached for her toes, her fingertips brushing the ice surface. Up, down, side to side, all done with the skates in a neutral position, but off the boards, to teach her body how to move while balanced on the stationary blades.
She put a hand on the boards and went through the rest of her routine; deep knee bends, lunges and high kicks, to loosen the joints; fifth position with her hips pushed into the boards and her back arched, to stretch the tendons and boot leather.
Ginny stepped into the box and made her way to the sound deck. She plugged in her dance warm-up medley and turned the machine on, adjusting the volume on the public address system. Music flooded the ice surface. Cheerful music. Quick, lively, energetic music, a piece called “Perpetual Motion” that lived up to its name. The other two skaters looked up and smiled at her. Ginny smiled back and stepped back out onto the ice.
She stroked around the rink, matching her timing to the music, starting smoothly and accelerating, concentrating on details. The idea was to get the maximum thrust from the potential energy stored in the curved and hollowed out blade. She stroked harder, extending her leg, pointing her toes, testing the physics yet again. Under her breath, she coached herself, push, push, push, push, with each stroke.
Simple three turns, and not so simple ones. Outside, then inside edges, backward to forward to backward again. Rockers and Mohawks, drop threes and cross rolls. Faster and faster. No time in this music for long smooth edges. Those would come later in the session. For now she was flying.
In her head Ginny could see what a truly gifted skater could do with this music, could see the breathtaking speed and precision, the startling changes of direction, the grace and power and line. She pushed harder.
Cross, cross, cross, cross. Faster and faster, each foot re-positioned with each beat of the music. Change edge, change direction, keep going, keep moving, and always faster and faster, harder and harder. Trying to keep up with the music. Pushing herself, pushing the ice, pushing the bounds of physics.
Ginny got a split second of warning before the blade slipped, a subtle shift in the tension on her right skate, but it came too late for her to save herself. She was turning a corner when she lost the edge and with it her control. She fell, landing with a crack that brought the other two skaters running. The momentum carried her across the remaining ice. She slammed into the boards and lay still.
* * *
Ginny took a slow, deep breath. She didn’t even try to move, not at first, she just lay quietly and waited for time to pass. Eventually she started to get cold. She opened her eyes, trying to figure out what was going on around her. There were too many people here. The other two skaters, of course, but men, too. At least one of them rink management. Someone in a fireman’s uniform, or was it an EMT? She squinted up at them, wondering if her head was going to hurt this badly for the rest of her life. She wanted to sleep, to lie still and wait for the pain to subside, but they wouldn’t let her. They were touching her, pulling her skates off, moving her. Straps of some sort. Voices. One of them had noticed she was awake. He spoke to her, asking her to help him. “What hospital?” he asked. “Hillcrest,” she whispered.
The ride to the medical complex was like something out of a nightmare. Ginny kept waking to find that only a minute or two had passed and she was still being jolted around inside the ambulance. She was beginning to feel nauseous and was glad to slip back into oblivion.
In the E.R. it was almost worse. The exam lights hurt her eyes and everyone was busy, busy, busy. There was too much noise and a steady stream of irritants. “Look here. Talk to me. Let me just do this.” Ginny closed her eyes and wished herself back on the ice, flying around the oval, her heart soaring, released by the music and the ice and the skates and her own twelve years of work. Accidents happen, of course, it was expected. “If you aren’t falling, you aren’t trying,” her father had said. She’d fallen before, many times, even hit her head, but never like this.
She opened her eyes to find two doctors examining an x-ray, their backs to her, holding the film up to the light box on the wall. She could hear them talking.
“Linear temporal fracture, no depression, and no hematoma. We’ll pop her into the neuro ICU and keep a close eye on her. That way we’ll be ready if the swelling gets out of hand.”
“How fast was she going?”
“No way to know. The witnesses told the police they’d seen her do the same routine dozens of times before without problems.”
The next time she came out of it, it was to find Jim perched on a stool beside the stretcher. He was watching her. He rose and leaned over the side rail.
“Hi, Ginny. How are you doing?”
She swallowed. “My head hurts.”
He nodded. “I’ll bet it does. That was some fall.”
Ginny blinked, interested in spite of the pain. “How can you tell?”
He hesitated for a split second. “They told us there was blood smeared across the ice and a pool of it under you when the ambulance arrived.”
Ginny started to reach for the side of her head, but he intercepted her.
“Don’t touch just yet. You have a laceration along the scalp line and across the top of your ear. There are dressings over the stitches. Just leave it alone.”
She squinted up at him. “How bad is it?”
“Two cracked ribs, twenty two stitches, and something that looks like road rash.”
“What about my head?”
He kept his voice quiet. “You have a skull fracture, and a concussion.”
Ginny was too experienced not to see he was hiding something. “And what else?”
There was a short pause. “One of your pupils is larger than the other.”
Ginny sighed, knowing exactly what he meant. Her brain was swollen within the hard shell of bone. They might have to do some very aggressive surgery before the swelling started to go down again. She might have to go on a ventilator. She might die.
Ginny closed her eyes, exhausted with the effort of talking. She heard Jim settle back down on the stool, then nothing.
All the rest of that day Ginny drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes finding herself attended, sometimes alone. The nurses came, checking her pupils and pushing drugs into the IV line. Doctors came, making sure she was no worse. Her mother came, her face white, but her voice calm. Ginny stirred herself to minimize her mother’s fears. Just a bump on the head. A matter of time. Of course she would skate again, she loved it too much to give it up. When her mother had gone away again, Ginny retreated into the pillows and did as little as she could get away with. It hurt to open her eyes, hurt to talk, hurt to breathe.
* * *