By two-fifteen a.m. I had all Dani’s possessions in a green garbage bag. I set the bag in the kitchen, but that didn’t feel right, so I put it on the deck. That felt wrong, too. The same with the stoop. I finally carried it downstairs and jammed it in the little cold-water shower beneath the house.
I tried to sleep but pictures clashed in my head and feelings banged into feelings in my heart. The internal warfare kept me awake until four, when I went outside and fell asleep at the edge of the water. The sun woke me at daybreak. I stood, brushed sand from my clothes, and went inside to shower and make coffee.
Though it was barely half past six, I decided to head into the department, get a jump on the day. I was still ten miles south of Mobile when I saw a plume of smoke rising above town, a brown smear against the crystal-blue sky. I flicked the radio to the fire band, heard the cacophonous mix of voices that indicated a bad burn.
“Jeffers here, on the east side. We’ve got flames from the fourth-story windows.”
“Get a hose on it.”
“All the high-volume hoses are working the south side.”
“This is Smith. We’re losing pressure from the Corcoran Street hydrant. Get us a tanker, fast.”
“Jeffers. I’ve got a woman says there’s people on the fourth. She heard screaming. Wait…I got a man at a window. Elderly. Jesus, he’s getting ready to –”
I stuck the flasher on the roof, pushed the accelerator to the floor, aimed the truck at the plume.
Eight minutes later I was weaving through the crowd of gawkers at the periphery. I pulled onto the curb a block away, staying well back from the firefighters. The last thing they needed to deal with was a vehicle blocking a needed path. I flapped my badge wallet open, stuck it in my pocket, jogged toward the scene. The air was oily with the smell of smoke and steam.
I knew the place, an old apartment building, four stories, maybe a dozen units per floor. The rent was inexpensive, but not so cheap the place became a haven for junkies and derelicts. I’d been on a few calls there as a patrolman, a couple domestic beefs and picking up a hooker on a bench warrant, no big deal. Back when I was working the streets, there were one or two hookers who lived at the place, out-service types, not streetwalkers. They tended to keep low and stay out of trouble and we pretty much left them alone, having a lot worse to deal with than call girls.
I saw a firefighter buddy of mine, Captain Rawly Drummond, standing beside a truck and shedding his air tank and yellow flame-retardant coat. He shook off his gloves and wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Hey, Rawly.”
He turned, showed a smile beneath a red handlebar mustache that would have looked at home on a gold-rush prospector.
“Yo, Carson. You here to see how real civil-service types work?”
“I was looking for a doughnut joint, took a wrong turn. How’s it going?”
“Tough at first, but we’re getting it knocked back. Lotta combustibles in that building.”
“I caught some radio traffic. People in there?”
The mustache turned down. “Don’t have a resident count, but it seems most people got out. An old guy panicked, dove from a window. Another two minutes and we could have had a ladder to him. They took him to the hospital, but it was over.”
“Any idea what caused the fire?”
“I had two guys made it deep into the building, back toward the heart of the burn, the start point. They thought they caught a whiff of gasoline, even with the masks.”
“Arson.”
“Some materials put off a smell of gas when they burn, so maybe not. Still, that place was cooking when we arrived, heavy involvement on two floors, starting on a third. Asphalt from the roof was a burning river.”
The danger to surrounding structures had passed and Rawly was out of the fight, another engine company working over the active flames at the far end of the building. We shot the breeze a couple minutes, telling fishing lies combined with enough truths to keep each other off balance.
“Captain!” a guy yelled from the corner of the building. “Got a body.”
“Oh, shit,” Rawly said. He ran toward the guy and I followed. We rounded the corner. A ladder truck was beside the building. Between the truck and the structure was a body on a collapsible stretcher, two young firefighters staring at the form. Judging by their eyes, it was their first dead body. The guy who’d called Rawly over had the name “Jeffers” printed on his helmet. A slender guy with some years on him, Jeffers nodded toward the younger guys.
“Wills and Hancock found the body, hauled it out.”
One of the young firefighters said, “Maybe we should have left it. It was just that…”
The kid couldn’t finish. I stared down. The corpse was charred beyond recognition, a wet briquette in semihuman shape.
Jeffers saw my badge. “You’re a cop? Maybe there’s a reason you’re here.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Roll it over,” Jeffers said.
Faces averted, the young guys turned the corpse from supine to prone. I saw two black twigs, arms, stretching behind the dark mass.
And on what had once been wrists, handcuffs.
Rawly hunkered beside the corpse and thumbed ash from the cuffs. Underneath, they were stainless steel. The lock mechanism was sturdy, the link forged. Good cuffs, pro quality.
Rawly frowned. “I think the arson probability just jumped a notch, Carson. I’ll call Forensics.”
Jeffers said, “There ain’t much left of the room it was in. The body was on the third floor, but started out on the fourth. It was in a huge bed judging by the frame. It all fell through when the fire ate away the floor joists.”
“Think this’ll be one of yours, Carson?” Rawly asked.
“Someone else’ll get the case. My dance card’s full.”
“Wanna take a look inside anyway? I can’t say the area will stay secure. Too many feet stomping around.”
The fire was pretty much knocked back on our side of the building, a few rooms at the other end still spewing black smoke as firefighters aimed thick ribbons of water through the windows.
I looked at Jeffers. Said, “Lead on.”
We climbed the ladder to the third floor, crept in the window past jagged teeth of glass. I pushed back my borrowed helmet and looked up and saw sky, the floor above and the roof gone.
“Stay close to the edge of the room,” Jeffers said. “The floor’s bad in the middle.”
I found myself in a brick-walled box of ruination. There were bits of furniture, mostly the metal parts. I saw the melted remains of a television and computer. Near the room’s center lay the twisted box springs and mattress springs of a large bed, larger than king size, it seemed, most of the fabric burned away in the center of the springs, blackened fabric at the edges.
“The body was in the middle of the bed?” I asked.
“Dead center.” He grimaced at his words, said, “Sorry.”
I studied the floor, a mess of charred flooring from above, wires, and shattered glass. I kicked at the glass. It was everywhere in the ash.
“I’m working on my fire investigator’s certificate,” Jeffers said. “I’ve got a teacher who’d say the burn patterns are suggestive of an accelerant poured on the body and the bed. I’m also picking up a background scent of a petroleum-based chemical, gasoline maybe.”
“What would you conclude?” I asked.
“Right now I’d conclude I’m just a student.”
I took a couple steps forward, the charred flooring crunching like ice.
“No further,” Jeffers said, grabbing my arm.
I backpedaled. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” I reached down and brushed aside detritus, lifted a piece of the ubiquitous broken glass. I blew off ash, saw my face in my hand.
“It’s a mirror,” I said.
Jeffers knelt and brushed at the floor.
“A lot of mirror. Must have been a biggie.” He inched across the floor to the bed.
“The springs are full of mirror, big pieces.” Jeffers stared up at a non-existent room. “What’s that make you think, Ryder?”
I studied the wreckage. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw mirror fragments everywhere.
“A mirror above the bed. Or on the wall. But probably both.”
“Probably says a little something about the lady,” Jeffers said.