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Stacy watched as a handsome, young paramedic with blond hair and a flat nose taped a bandage over her arm.
“Ah,” she said, wincing. “That burns.”
“And it will,” he said, dappling the skin with ointment. “Those pieces of glass cut into you pretty good.”
Stacy took the opportunity to breathe in deeply, letting the cool, crisp river of oxygen from a nasal cannula flow into her lungs from an oxygen machine.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Whatever,” he said. “I have a direct order to take you to the hospital for evaluation.”
“From whom?”
“From me.” Austin stood in the space between the two opened ambulance doors. His light green shirt and striped tie accentuated his dark features. He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment, revealing a few glistening white teeth.
“I came as soon as I heard.”
Stacy nodded and pushed herself to the end of the tailgate. “How bad is it?”
“Fire department says it’s a total loss. They found two bodies inside, presumably Monica and George DeVito. Also, a pet dog didn’t make it. Somebody had cut a gas line connected to the stove in the kitchen in two places. And no sign of Colton DeVito inside.”
Stacy closed her eyes and paused, remembering that distinct pungent smell of gas that came from the open window before the explosion. She removed the cannula as she spoke. The holster for her Glock had melted, and the dark pantsuit she wore was tattered and layered with soot and the smell of smoke.
The last time Stacy was in the back of an ambulance was in September, when a former scorned informant, Jamal, had kidnapped Stacy and held her hostage inside a warehouse of the Flats District in Cleveland. Stacy had been chained to a chair and beaten but managed to escape, only to see Harris’s body slide down an embankment along the jagged cliffs of the Lake Erie shoreline below.
The thought made Stacy shiver. Then she remembered her brother. Chance had also been taken hostage by Jamal Harris but was rescued by Austin and another cop, Kendall Jackson. Chance was still missing, Brandon was in jail, and Stacy still had no more answers as to what had happened to her brother.
The thought made her stomach sour. She had been so wrapped up in the Colton DeVito case that she had taken her focus away from her missing brother and Brandon Deerfield. Questions and scenarios ran through her mind. None of them had any good answers or outcomes.
“Stacy,” Austin interrupted. “Still with me?”
The question pulled her out of her thoughts. “Yeah. What about Chavis and Brown?”
“Chavis has third-degree burns on the right side of his body, but he’s expected to be fine. Brown suffered a concussion and a broken eye socket.”
Stacy blew out a breath until her cheeks puffed. “Shit.”
“Brown saved your life,” Austin said, looking back as the chaotic scene began to subside now that the fire was out. “He followed you around the house and heard the ceiling begin to crack. He pulled you out of the door just in time.”
“Jesus Christ,” Stacy said, her voice still raspy. The blood drained from Austin’s face, turning his mocha-colored cheeks a milky white. Stacy couldn’t decide if his shock resulted from her language, what she had experienced, or both.
Austin glanced around the chaotic scene. “We need to scour the area for Colton DeVito. Check with neighbors to see if anyone saw him around the house before the explosion.”
Stacy looked over at him and made a face. “I don’t think Colton would’ve done this. Not to his own parents.”
Austin shook his head. “Think about Brooke Crawford and what he did to her.”
“We don’t know that he killed her,” Stacy replied with a hard edge to her tone.
“And we don’t know that he didn’t do this, either.” He let out a quick sigh. “It’s hard, I know, but don’t let the relationship you had with Monica DeVito cloud your judgment here.”
Stacy took a moment and then agreed. “I know. I’m sorry,” Stacy said. “We’re the reason this happened.” Stacy searched her partner’s face.
“Excuse me?”
Stacy pushed herself up from the tailgate. A maze of firemen, police, media, and onlookers milled around the site, some looking for their place and others looking for a place to go.
Stacy turned her eyes down to the half-melted toes of her boots. “That press conference made George and Monica targets. We paraded them up there and put a name and face to them. The killer knew who to target.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch.” Austin held up an open palm between them. “Nobody could’ve known what would happen here.”
Stacy leaned on the doorjamb of the ambulance. “But we made them a visible target. We might as well have put a bullseye on their backs and said ‘Come and get ’em.’”
A cold wind had picked up off the lake and made Stacy shiver.
“I want to go back inside the house,” she said.
Austin shot her an incredulous look. “You need to go to the hospital and get checked out.”
Stacy moved past him. “Let’s walk and talk.”
They moved around the house, now nothing more than a smoldering hole in the earth with a few shanty walls where the brick façade had collapsed inside itself. Two firemen continued to pour a slow stream of water on a couple of smoldering sections of charred wood piled in the middle of it all. The wind blew the smell of smoke and death around the yard in concentric circles.
Stacy tipped her head forward. “I don’t think we need to walk back around the house anymore.”
Austin showed his badge to an officer who had secured the scene. They both put on scrubs, boots, and gloves to avoid contaminating the crime scene and wandered into the middle of the house. The floor near the kitchen and the backroom that Stacy entered earlier was remarkably intact, and there were two shapes outlined with white tape where the bodies must have been.
Austin pointed to the burned hull of the stove. “That’s where the gas smell came from.”
Stacy walked ahead first. She saw the tape outline of a body that had been on its side, with one arm folded over the waist.
“I found Monica there,” she said. “She was already dead.”
Austin stepped back, his shoe crunching against some charred rubble. “They found George DeVito over there.”
Austin kicked a piece of charred metal. It heaved up and then collapsed onto the mottled floorboards with a thud.
Stacy flitted her eyes at the oven and then squatted down and looked at the white taped outline. She looked around it and rubbed her nose with the crook of her elbow.
“Something doesn’t fit here.”
Austin came over and crouched down beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“Look at the tape,” Stacy said, pointing. Austin followed her finger.
The taped outline revealed a man that had landed on the ground with both arms resting to his side. The right leg has bent at an odd angle, as indicated by the tape outline’s jagged trajectory near the bend of George DeVito’s knee.
“If the tape was placed correctly, George was either facedown or face up.”
Austin studied the taped outline a little further but remained silent. The acrid smell of charred debris wafted around him.
“I was back there, just feet away from him. I’ve never felt the heat so intense. The flames were almost as high as the ceiling. Someone in that situation would instinctively have their hands drawn up to their face and head, trying to protect themselves from the flames as they got close. There is no way a person would be standing here with arms rested to their side.”
Stacy froze and felt the heat drain from her face. She remembered hearing a scream before the ceiling began to buckle over her.
“Dammit,” Stacy said in a voice that was a mixture of annoyance and surprise. “The killer was in here. I heard a scream before all hell broke loose. I think that scream was from George DeVito, and maybe whoever else was here with him.”
Austin came around and stared down at his partner. “Stacy, the heat and flames would’ve made it nearly impossible for someone to stand upright with the strength needed to kill George DeVito.”
Stacy wagged a finger into the open space. “Improbable, but not impossible. I need to see the autopsy from Adam, and I also want to speak to the fire marshal investigating. I think the killer was here waiting for us. The house fire was a trap.”
Stacy sprang up and wiped some of the soot from her gloved hands. It cascaded off her fingertips in thin wisps and floated to the ground.
Stacy and Austin moved cautiously out of the charred remains of the house and removed the scrubs.
Austin removed his notepad. He changed the tact of the conversation.
“I was able to get some footage from one of the Wells Fargo ATM security cameras. The main corporate office on East Ninth Street monitors the cameras. This came from the ATM near the bank building on Euclid Avenue.”
Austin dug into his pocket and unfolded the photo before passing it over to Stacy. The grainy photo showed a thin individual with dark sunglasses and a white hooded sweatshirt huddled closely near the machine. Wisps of hair had blown out from under the hood with the head cast down as if they knew someone was filming, and the individual didn’t want to be seen. Stacy stared at it closely for a few long seconds.
“Who is he?”
“Or who is she? Tough to tell from that picture if it’s a man or woman.”
Stacy held the picture away from her and then pulled it close again. “Not definitive either way. What’s the date on this picture?”
Austin held the picture in his hands and turned it sideways. “Two days ago.”
Stacy thought for a moment. “It’s possible this person either has permission from Colton to access his bank account or doesn’t know that Colton is missing and is using it anyway. If Colton gave permission, he could be hoarding money to try to escape, which fits Gavin’s theory that he’s trying to flee.”
Stacy noticed that Austin winced at that statement.
“Either way, we need to catch the person that did this, and hopefully, she—or he can lead us to Colton.”
“And we have to find out if this fire is connected or is something separate.”
Stacy nodded. “If anyone else knew that the DeVitos were putting thousands of dollars into a bank account for their son, maybe someone wanted the money.”
“Or someone wanted them to stop with the money.”
Stacy sighed. “We have more questions and more theories now than we did when this whole thing started.”
Two men from the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office wheeled a body strapped to a gurney covered in a thick white sheet past the two detectives.
Stacy watched the gurney roll by as if in a trance. “Unfortunately, Colton’s parents didn’t live to find out what happened to their son.”
Austin shifted his weight uncomfortably between both feet.
Stacy turned on a heel to face Austin, her eyes meeting her partner's intense, dark hues. "We need to start from the beginning of this and soon before it's too late."