Fifteen

Behind the glass partition of Lucinda’s domain, she was turning the pages of a commemorative volume and weeping copiously onto its gilt-edged pages. I didn’t disturb her, just made my way to the narrow stairway off to the side that rose up between institutional green walls—the same green as the morgue basement, unless I was greatly mistaken. It ended at a door with a poster hiding the window. Welcome to The Inferno it said in hellacious letters with flames licking at their bottoms and smoke belching in billows from their tops. A figure stood staring out at me from his red eyes. Either he did a lot of glute-work in his exercise routine or he was a demon form, because his haunches were extremely equine, going nicely with the hair that tumbled over his glistening naked shoulders and could easily be a mane. I knocked on the door, avoiding rapping the poster-beast-guy anywhere too tender.

“Enter,” came a voice.

I sidled in. He wasn’t one of the twitchy ones I had seen downstairs and, at first glimpse, I couldn’t help thinking of the Wizard of Oz behind his curtain, because the actual person behind horse-dude on the door was an inch taller than me, perhaps a hundred pounds soaking wet, with thinning ginger hair and a Keep Calm t-shirt. When he stood up from behind his monitor I saw that it was a Keep Calm and Blow Stuff Up t-shirt, but he had an elasticated belt holding up his cargo shorts and a band-aid on his shin just above his black socks.

“Are you the … ?” I said. But I could only think pyromaniac and pantechnicon, the actual word staying tantalisingly out of reach of my tongue. And I couldn’t bring myself to say “Bubba” to his face.

“Bilbo,” the guy said. Ahhhh. Not Bubba. “And you are?”

“Lexy,” I said. “I didn’t see you downstairs at the … when Mizz Visalia was addressing the ranks.”

“No,” he agreed. “I’ve got documentation. I don’t do crowds.”

“How do you do firework shows if you don’t do crowds?” I asked, instantly intrigued. Every psychologist will tell you, on the record, that spot diagnoses are unhelpful and unprofessional and we never slip into them. They’re lying; we do it all the time and I had this poor wee scone taped as a generalised social phobic with attendant anxiety disorder already. I was halfway there by the time I’d seen the scary monster covering up the window.

“The crowds are prevented from getting close to the fireworks by sturdy physical barriers,” he said. “And I’m the designer anyhow. I’m not required at installations.”

“I see,” I said. “Hm, maybe you’re not the one I need to talk to then, Bulb-Bilbo. Bilbo, eh?”

“My parents are geeks,” he said, not even smiling. “My sister is called Nyota. They really hate Jackson and Abrams.”

“Bilbo, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t understand anything after ‘sister’.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “They named me after an obscure character in an obscure British work of literary fiction and my sister got the first name of a character from an old TV show that had only been used in a subsequent tie-in novel. Then JJ Abrams made a movie and Peter Jackson made six and we’re both uncomfortably prominent wherever we go. My sister says her name is Nina most days”

“That’s awful,” I said. “My geography teacher was called Harry Potter. But who was Nyota? What TV show is that?”

He looked at me like I’d asked if Sherlock had a flatmate. “Lieutenant Nyota Uhura was the communications officer on board the USS Enterprise,” he said. “And what was it you wanted to know?”

“Well, since you missed the address downstairs,” I began.

“I didn’t miss it. I listened remotely.”

“Ah,” I said. That put a kink in me pretending that Vi had said any of the stuff I was going to pretend she had said, to get this interview going. “Well, anyway, what I wanted to ask was this: how could you tell if a firework had been lit … Ha! That’s it. Remotely. A remote switch and an electric match. I remembered!”

“Is this the firework that killed Clovis?” he said. “The one the police were asking about too?”

“That’s the one,” I said.

“There isn’t a way,” he said, and he sounded very sure. “Assuming the remnants of the wire were removed, which the police confirmed they were.”

“They did? How did you get them to do that? I kind of tricked them into nearly saying it, but they really just told you straight out?”

“I offered to look it over to see if I could tell anything about it and they said it was gone.”

“Huh. Did they tell you how they knew about the remote switch?”

“They didn’t know. They thought it might have been a timer, but I told them that was unlikely.”

I sighed. He was just as obsessed as the rest of them. In my opinion, if you’d decided to blow up an old man, arse first, you were probably beyond worrying about some gopher or sparrow that might wander on-set and get caught in the action.

“But did they tell you what makes them think the perpetrator wasn’t there when the firework went off?”

“No,” he said, “I told them.”

“You … what?” I said. “What?”

“They called me in the small hours of Monday morning to ask my opinion.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“That it had been done by someone with at least a working knowledge of firework construction and behavior and that it had been triggered remotely.”

“And how did you know?”

“I’ve been a pyrotechnician and display designer since I graduated college with my PGI DOC. Fourteen years.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself down. “I’m not disputing your qualifications, Bilbo, but I meant what were the clues in this instance.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, the lift charge had been disabled. See, ordinarily, the lift charge in a full tube would have fired the rocket out of … harm’s way … before the burst charge could do any damage. Someone who knew nothing about fireworks would have missed that. Or they might have taken a mortar out of the tube and used that. But they didn’t. It was a full tube but it didn’t lift off. It just exploded.”

Just a few days before I had actually laughed about it. Now I couldn’t imagine how I could ever have been so heartless.

“And … ” I said.

“And so it was someone who knew enough to tamper with the lift and leave the burst.”

I worked hard at suppressing another sigh. Bilbo was hard work.

“I meant, and how do you know that the person used a remote switch?”

“Because no one in their right mind would stay in a closed garage with a lit rocket after disabling the lift,” he said. “Or ‘duh’ for short.”

“Okay,” I said. “So … it’s a supposition rather than knowledge, is it?”

“It’s a supposition I used to instruct the police in collecting evidence to cement the knowledge,” he said.

“And what were the instructions?” I asked. I didn’t add anything for short; not FFS or anything.

“I told them there would be residue on everything in the garage and if anyone else was in there, there’d be a body print, like a stencil. I told them that if the person lit the fuse and ran away to hide behind the door like a radiographer, then came back immediately after the explosion, the warm residue would stick to their shoe soles and clothing and they’d leave a trail. If it was later and the residue was cold the trail would be differe—Look, I can email you a link to a blog post instead. It would be much quicker.”

“But,” I said, “everything you’ve just said suggests that someone lit the firework and scarpered—no remote, no wire, no return to remove them. Right?”

“Yep,” he said.

“I’m lost,” I told him. “Where did the thing about a timer come from then?”

“Not a ti—”

“OH MY GOD!” I said, quite a lot louder than I meant to. “Look at it this way: scenario A—strike a match and run. Scenario B—set it up, leave, and return. Okay? How did scenario B get traction when everything points the other way?”

“Ohhhhhh,” said Bilbo. “I see. That’s probably because they know someone came back after he was dead.”

“And how do they know that?” I said, almost weeping.

“Because they took off the handcuffs and ankle-cuffs.”

“The what’s that?” I said. “How do you know there were handcuffs?”

“The police told me.”

“The … police just … told you?” I said. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” He looked puzzled, remembering. “I really don’t understand why. That woman—”

“Plainclothes Mike?” I said.

“I was talking to her about, well, this and that, pretty much the same stuff I’ve been talking to you about. Answering her questions and taking it all seriously, and she just got more and more weird. And then she just kind of exploded and told me all about it in one long sentence without taking a breath. I have no idea why. It doesn’t seem like a very great habit for a cop, if you ask me.”

Poor Mike, I thought. Briefly.

“So what did she tell you in the one big long sentence?” I said

“That he had marks on his wrists and ankles from being handcuffed and ankle-cuffed and that they’d been cut off post-mortem.”

“How could she tell when they’d been removed?”

“Because there was a lot of blood and so on and it was drying by the time the handcuffs and ankle-cuffs came off. If they’d been taken off immediately—the handcuffs and ankle-cuffs—then the blood on his arms and legs would have smeared. But if they—the hand cu—”

“Got it!”

“If they were taken off once coagulation had begun, when the blood was gelid or tacky, it wouldn’t smear. And it didn’t.”

“After Mike blurted all that,” I said, “didn’t she tell you not to tell anyone else?”

“Oh, yes,” said Bilbo. “But that’s not enforceable. There’s no
detective-witness covenant. Once she made the mistake of telling me, she lost control of the information’s future dehiscence.”

“She really did, didn’t she?” I said. “Can I ask you one last question?”

“Is that it?”

“No, Bilbo, that’s not it.”

“Go ahead.”

“And will you keep it quiet that I’ve been speaking to you?”

“Is that it?”

“No. Will you?”

“Is that—”

“Bilbo!”

“Yes, I will. I will uphold a voluntary covenant of secrecy with you, Lexy. I don’t want Visalia to know the upsetting details about what happened to Clovis just before he died.”

“Why do you call them Visalia and Clovis?” I said. “That isn’t it,” I added.

“What is it? Waiting’s beginning to make me anxious.”

“Did Mike really say the cuffs had been cut off?”

“Yes!” he said. “Clearly. She said he was handcuffed and ankle-cuffed and they were cut off. That suggests that the person who put them on—presumably the person who set up the wire and switch and perhaps also the person who disabled the lift charge, although that’s less certain—wasn’t the person who took them off. Because that person would have the key. That clearly follows from what I’ve told you.”

“But how could you tell that they’d been cut?” I said.

“The handcuffs and ankle-cuffs?” said Bilbo. “I have no idea how you would tell something like that. If it was done soon after death, the cutters might have made a characteristic trail through the blood on his skin, but since it was done when the blood was drying … I have no idea.”

“Well, thank you, Bilbo,” I said, standing. “You have given me no end of help. And thank you for saying you’d keep quiet. I will too. I agree that Mizz Vi should never know.” I smiled at him. “Stay safe,” I added. It was one of those strange American things people said to each other all the time. They said it before all the holidays and I could never work out what dangers they had in mind. If it was just Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year it might have been snowy roads and drunk drivers that was worrying everyone. And Independence and Memorial Days had the threat of salmonella from bad barbecuing, but they even said it at Easter when the biggest worry was a chocolate coma. And they said it before every trip: “Stay safe!” And sometimes just at the end of random phone calls. Life certainly did seem to be pretty scary.

“Wait,” said Bilbo and he leapt to his feet. “We haven’t finished our conversation!”

“Oh?” I said. “Go on then.”

“I use their first names because I’m a Quaker. Goodbye.” He sat down and spun away to look at his laptop. At the first mouse-jiggle he was lost to me.

“Right,” I said and left him.

∞

I talked myself in and out of going to report to Mike seven times on the drive back to Cuento and happened to be passing the entrance to the police station car park while I was talked in. Another five hundred yards and I’d have talked myself out for the eight time, but I decided not to question the universe. I pulled in, parked, and went to ask the dispatcher if she would page her.

There was no need. I met her in the foyer. The fact that she was carrying a Dora the Explorer skateboard and—I looked closer—a block of Crisco, hardly even registered.

“I’ve got to tell you something,” I said. “I had an anonymous phone call, from a woman. I didn’t recognise the voice.”

“Oh?” she said. She put the skateboard down and we both pretended not to notice as it rolled slowly away across the floor. She held out her hand.

“What?” I said, frowning at her hand.

“Show me your phone, so I can see the number,” she said. Boy, she was good at this.

“It was on the landline at the motel,” I said.

“Okay-doke,” she said. She sounded so jaunty, it was obvious she had busted me. It just wasn’t obvious how. “I’ll get the records. What did she say?”

“She told me she had the handcuff key. Does that mean anything to you?”

“What handcuff key?”

“That’s all she said.”

Mike put her foot out wide and brought the skateboard back towards her. She flipped it and caught hold of it in her hand.

“‘I’ve got the handcuff key’,” I said. “Those were her exact words.”

“Was she British?”

“No!” I said. “I mean, no.” I, on the other hand, was shit at this.

“So she’d have said ‘I have the handcuff key’ not ‘I’ve got’. What are you up to, Lexy?”

“Okay!” I said. “Bilbo didn’t keep his promise about keeping his mouth shut.”

“What?” she said. “Are you high?”

“Bilbo, the pyrotechnician at Bombaro’s,” I said.

“Ah. Yes,” she said. “Well, I’ve met his sort before. I’m surprised he hasn’t written a blog yet. No biggie. Free speech. What handcuffs, though?”

“Right,” I said. “An ongoing investigation. No way you’re going to share the details with me.” I turned away, but she put a hand out and touched my arm.

“Seriously,” she said. “What handcuffs are you talking about?”

I frowned at her. “The handcuffs and ankle-cuffs used to—”

“Oh!” she said. “I see. Great!”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I know.” She smiled at me. “I like that.”

“I suppose you would,” I said. She gave me a puzzled look and God help me I sank to her level. I showed off. But oh so subtly. Not.

“Any time they’re asked,” I told her, “law enforcement professionals tend to say they joined the service to protect and serve, or out of a concern for justice, or even because of that time they fell down a well and a big cop saved them, but I’ve never bought it. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you take pleasure in knowing more than me and feel happier that way.”

The smile was gone. Totally gone. Simultaneous strokes on both sides of the brain gone.

“Be careful, Ms. Campbell,” she said.

“Yeah, see, that was definitely a flex of your professional muscles, wasn’t it?” I said. “That wasn’t protection, service, or justice calling the shots there.”

“Be very careful,” said Mike. “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of your local police force.”

I considered saying more. I half considered saying a lot more, but in the end I just nudged her with my elbow and said, “Only kidding.”

“This is your lucky day,” she said to me. “It’s not often you get to assault an officer and walk out of here.”

“Assault?” I said. “You mean that right there when I nudged you?”

“Be careful,” she said, “and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”