Down and Dirty Read online

  “Sure did. Fire is big business nowadays. Lots of rich folk are buying up industrial property in the county, thinking we’re too stupid to figure it out when it burns to the ground within a week or two of purchase. People are idiots.”

  “We’d all be out of jobs if they weren’t.”

  “True enough.” Chief Edwards pulled a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and tapped the bottom three times before removing one to stick between his lips.

  I’d always been fascinated by how people who smoked were able to talk around a cigarette hanging out of their mouth. It was almost hypnotizing, the way it bobbed up and down, the mouth not opening to form coherent words.

  “New arson guy is from Arlington. Worked at PD undercover a decade and then transferred to homicide until he made his twenty-five last month and retired. He said he was bored with retirement after the first forty-eight hours, so I hired him. And he’s a damned thorough investigator. Relocated to your neck of the woods, Jack.”

  “Oh, yeah? He must be the mystery man I keep hearing about around town. Speculation is he’s a kidnapper or running drugs because of the strange hours he keeps. How he’s managed to sneak in and out of his house without being seen is anyone’s guess, because believe me, his house is the most watched in the neighborhood. The women on that street consider it their duty to stay well informed.”

  “Thank God for ‘em. I wouldn’t know half as much as I do if it weren’t for the busybodies in this county.” Edwards finally lit his cigarette and took in a deep puff, exhaling long and slow in my general direction. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of coughing, but just turned my head to suck in fresh air.

  Edwards nodded toward the wreckage of the house and said, “There he is now.”

  A man in a black Nomex jumpsuit and heavy boots made his way carefully through the debris, his hard hat low over his face so I couldn’t see his features. He held a clipboard horizontally and occasionally made notes or sketches.

  “Walker,” Edwards called out.

  “Oh, damn,” I whispered soft enough that no one else heard me. There’d been something about the way he carried himself that sparked recognition, but I didn’t place it until his name was mentioned.

  I appreciated the fact that Cal Walker wasn’t someone to be called to heel. He’d always been his own man, forging his own path. He acknowledged Edwards with a head nod, but didn’t rush over to greet us. He finished what he was doing and then stepped up over the threshold and off the concrete slab, kicking his boots against the sidewalk a couple of times before heading in our direction.

  I could tell the moment he recognized me. He tipped his hard hat back and his face broke into a grin. Cal had been a good friend back in my ER days—more than a friend. He was just one of those guys who was liked by everyone. Laid back and ready for a good time, with a quick sense of humor and ready smile. He was a cowboy, pretty much doing whatever the hell he wanted and bucking the rules if he thought his way was better. He’d never married and had had no plans to settle down, at least back when the two of us were seeing each other.

  Cal had been the one serious relationship that had lasted a significant amount of time before Jack. But we both knew early on it would never lead to anything. Cal didn’t want long-term commitment, and I couldn’t devote enough attention to a relationship with the hectic hours I was working at the hospital. So we’d said our goodbyes and parted as friends. And we hadn’t seen each other since.

  “Doctor Graves,” he said, the grin still on his face. “Damn, it’s good to see you. What’s it been? Five years?”

  “Pretty close.”

  I couldn’t help but return the smile. Cal was just a nice guy. He leaned in and gave me a big bear hug, picking me up off the ground. I usually tried to maintain a professional façade whenever I was out on a scene, but he was making that difficult. I could feel Jack’s eyes on me, but I’d somehow lost the ability to speak. Or at least talk my way out of this one.

  “Woman, you haven’t changed a bit. Still as beautiful as ever.”

  I was pretty much thinking the same thing about him—a man a little over six feet tall, dark blond hair in need of a trim, a couple of days worth of stubble on his face, and pale green eyes that were full of good humor and framed by laugh lines that women cursed, but that always seemed to make a man look more distinguished.

  I’d met Cal my first year out of medical school while I’d been working the night rotation at the hospital. He’d come in after wrestling with a dealer hopped up on coke who had a knife the size of my forearm. The dealer ended up in the morgue and Cal’s arm had been sliced from shoulder to wrist all the way to the bone.

  I’m not sure how he talked me into it, but I’d agreed to go out with him by the time I finished stitching him up. He was fifteen years older than me, and I hadn’t given a damn. He’d been charming, even while in pain, and our personalities had clicked immediately. My relationship with Cal had been the flash and burn you always hear about, but it was impossible for that heat to sustain itself over a long period of time.

  Cal squeezed me once more and sat me down, and then backed up a bit so he could see the whole group. Everyone had varying looks on their faces. Chief Edwards was annoyed, Lewis kept glancing at Jack, Martinez was trying not to laugh, and Jack—let’s just say Jack’s thoughts were unreadable at the moment.

  I finally got my wits about me after the surprise of seeing Cal and moved closer to Jack.

  “Cal Walker,” he said, extending a hand in Jack’s direction.

  “Jack Lawson.”

  “Sheriff,” Cal acknowledged. “I’ve heard plenty about you, but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you before now. All good things. I promise.”

  Jack smiled and some of the tension went out of his shoulders. Probably no one else noticed but me. “If I believed that, I’m sure you’ve got some oceanfront property you could sell me too.”

  Cal nodded, his mouth quirking in amusement. “I figure as an elected official if you’re not pissing someone off on a daily basis then you’re probably not doing your job. But I’ve been here a month and see how the county is run from the Sheriff’s Department. You do a good job, and the people respect the officers and the department, which is better than you could say for most places.

  “From what little I’ve seen of Bloody Mary, it’s a great community, though the name could use some work. And I appreciate the ingenuity of some of the neighbors on my street, trying to see me coming and going. If you’re looking for new recruits I’d start there.”

  “Ha, you’re not kidding. Let me know if you want a tour, such as it is. I’ll take you around and introduce you. Most people think you’re a drug dealer or a kidnapper.”

  “Only in my undercover days. I’m mostly an upstanding citizen now. Has Detective Lewis had a chance to fill y’all in on what we’ve got? I have to assume there’s a reason Doctor Graves is here at the scene and not working in the ER.”

  “I’m coroner for the county,” I said. “The company is better than it was at the hospital.”

  “I remember,” he said. “I’m glad you got rid of the headache. Everyone grab a hard hat and I’ll walk you through.”

  “I’m going to check in with my men and get reports,” Chief Edwards said. “I’m getting too old to wade through the shit. I’ll leave that to you young folks.” And with that he saluted and walked off.

  “You can see why I’m so fond of him,” I said.

  Jack grinned and elbowed me playfully in the ribs, and I caught the curious expression on Cal’s face at our interaction. “You owe me fifty bucks, Graves.” He nodded to the silver Honda Civic that had parked in the ditch outside the gates and I sighed in disgust.

  Emergency personnel worked quickly to get crime scene tape up so Floyd didn’t get too close, but in my mind anything short of being in the next county was too close for me. Floyd was getting closer to forty, but he was probably in the best shape of his life. I always wondered how he managed to find dress
shirts to fit around his neck and over his biceps. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and habitually carried a red notebook with him everywhere he went.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” Floyd called out. “Care to make a statement?”

  “Not at this time, Floyd. I’ll make a statement once we have more facts and family has been notified.”

  “The public has a right to know.”

  “And they will as soon as we have something to tell them. You wouldn’t want to misreport, now would you, Floyd? That wouldn’t be responsible journalism.”

  “Because he’s always been so good at that,” I mumbled under by breath.

  “I could ask different questions,” he said, moving as close to the yellow tape as possible. “Like why have a couple of your biggest donors not committed to supporting you for the upcoming election? Is there trouble in paradise? Or maybe they’re worried that the poor choices you make in your personal life will affect your job as sheriff.”

  Floyd’s eyes cut to me and he smirked. I’d gotten in the habit over the past few months of carrying a small Beretta with me everywhere I went. After a close call with death at the hands of a madman I’d decided to never be caught without a way to defend myself if need be.

  The gun weighed heavy in the holster at the small of my back, and I figured Floyd was damned lucky that I had a pretty straight moral center, otherwise he’d be finding himself with a hole in his foot right about now. I wasn’t a moron. Aim to maim. Not to kill.

  “To be honest I haven’t thought about the election,” Jack said. “November is a long way off, and I was elected to do a job. I wouldn’t be much of a sheriff if I was out looking for donors in the middle of April instead of serving the people of this county.”

  “That’s a very political answer, Sheriff.”

  Jack just smiled and we continued on toward the house, leaving Floyd at the perimeter. I don’t know how Jack did it—how he always managed to keep his cool despite having to deal with people like Floyd or others who’d rather see those who served fail instead of succeed. Maybe it was partly because he had to be a politician. Jack was elected after all. But I think it said more about the kind of person he was deep down. It’s why he’d made a good commander during his S.W.A.T. days and why he made a good boss now for hundreds of employees. He gave them the kind of leadership they could always rely on.

  “How does that guy find shirts to fit his neck?” Cal asked. “That’s ridiculous.”

  I snorted out a laugh and the tension was broken. “How many bodies do we have?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the problem.” We each took a hard hat and put it on. “The Connellis have owned this house for the last seven years—dad, mom, a seventeen year old son, and a thirteen year old daughter.”

  “So what’s the problem?” I asked.

  “There are five bodies.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “That’s certainly a problem for someone,” I said, eyebrows raised. “Any ideas as to the identity?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Cal said.

  I nodded. “Let’s go take a look.”

  A bricked walkway led to the front of the house and what had been the bottom floor porch. That wasn’t the main entrance. The main entrance had been on the second floor, but the exterior stairs that had looked so beautiful from the road no longer existed. I’d seen the house when it was whole, so I knew the porch had wrapped around the entirety of the house on both levels.

  I’d never entered a house that had burned before. I wasn’t expecting it to still be smoking, with the embers that hadn’t been extinguished wafting through the air like demon infested snowflakes.

  Parts of the house still shifted, which explained the need for hard hats, and as it shifted, hisses of smoke escaped from the newly exposed areas. Wood and insulation stuck out in all directions, making it a maze to get from one space to the next. I tried to identify the furniture, hoping it would give me some kind of clue as to where I was in the house, but it was hard to tell.

  The sight of a porcelain doll gave me pause. The hair and eyelashes were gone, and the face cracked across the cheek and blackened with soot. One blue eye stared blankly, while the other remained closed. A child’s possession.

  Damp smoke lay like a blanket across my lungs, but the underlying smell of burnt flesh hovered, so you could taste it in the back of your throat. It was a smell that was hard to erase from the memory.

  “Watch your step,” Cal warned. “The guys came through and tested for the weak areas. You can see where they’re marked with the white spray paint. But it never hurts to be careful. There’s a partial basement on the left side of the house and part of the upper floor collapsed into it.”

  It was easier to see where the rooms and second floor had been once we crossed the threshold into the house. The floor was littered with fire eaten furniture, blackened and still dripping wet from the thousands of gallons of water that had been dumped to extinguish the flames. Broken glass from picture frames. An iron bedframe with white paint that had bubbled and peeled in places, the scrollwork ornate enough for a princess—or a cherished daughter.

  “We’re standing in what was the main entryway,” Cal said. “The stairs curved and went up in that direction. There were three bedrooms, all with their own baths, on the upper level. When the second floor collapsed everything seemed to fall pretty evenly, but there’s some scatter because of the pressure from the fire hose.”

  “Were you able to find a starting point?” Jack asked.

  “My best guess is the kitchen. It’s through here.” Cal led us to the right side of the house, where one of the two standing chimneys sat stark and blackened against the bright sun. “I’m going to take some of the equipment back with me to test, but look at that coffeepot.”

  I realized what he was asking us to see right off. There was a pattern to fire—the way objects reacted to the heat. Some things caught flame and burned to ashes. Others melted, becoming deformed blobs of metal or glass.

  The granite countertops had collapsed and broken into large pieces when the cabinets they rested on had burned. Doors hung from hinges haphazardly and the oven looked as if it had barely been touched at all. The refrigerator door had expanded outward, looking bloated and misshapen. But I could at least tell what and where these objects were.

  The coffeepot was no more than a blackened mass of fragments. The only way I was able to recognize it at all was because of the metal base that had a small rectangle for the clock. A perfect circle of glass from the bottom of the coffee pot lay on top. There were singe marks on the side of the stainless steel refrigerator, similar to the marks seen after a detonation.

  “Deliberate?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure at this point. I need to find all the pieces and put it back together. I’ll be able to tell then. But it can happen by accident. Sometimes the factory doesn’t put protection around the coils and they can get so hot they can combust. And if the Connellis left the coffeepot on by accident or maybe had the automatic timer set, then it could happen. Timing and bad luck often play a big part in fires like this one. Either way, it’s going to be a long night for all of us.”

  “Timing and bad luck and five people dead,” I said, shaking my head. “Where are the bodies?”

  “Master suite was on the first floor, just off the kitchen. There was very little disturbance back in that area other than the water damage, so the scene is mostly still intact. We’ll wrap around to that side last.

  “I want you to check out the one on the far side first. It’s in a precarious position, and I don’t want to take any chances. The floor above the basement is unstable and part of it is missing. When the second floor caved in, one of the bedrooms landed directly on top of that area. We tried to stabilize the body so it didn’t fall into the basement, but I can’t promise it’ll stay that way.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said. “I’d prefer not to spelunk into any smoking holes to retrieve a body.”

  “We ai
m to please.”

  We left the kitchen and went back in the direction we’d come. The house had been massive in size. I hadn’t been kidding when I’d compared it to a mini-White House. The curved staircase had broken from the upper floor and fallen to the side before it had burned, but part of the spindles of the railings were still intact. It was fascinating how the fire could reduce one object to ashes but leave another whole.

  “The first body is over here,” Cal said. “Watch your step and stay on the path we marked. If you breathe wrong something might collapse.”

  “A comforting thought,” I murmured. I took out my camera and turned it on, adjusting the settings for light.

  I noticed Martinez was looking a little pale. Most of the cops under Jack hadn’t seen too many dead bodies—if any. I knew Martinez wasn’t new to death, he’d helped us pin down a killer just a couple weeks back. But there were some who would never be comfortable with death, no matter how many times they saw it.

  Jack knew it too. “Lewis, why don’t you and Martinez start running backgrounds on the Connellis. I want to know everything about them, including all of their close acquaintances. That fifth body is someone who has a family that needs to be notified.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lewis said, slapping Martinez on the back. “Let’s go, junior.”

  I’d already put Martinez out of my mind. The victim had come into view and it was my only focus now. The right half of the body hung precariously over the ledge into the basement. The skull faced me, the mouth open in a parody of a scream. The fire had ravaged the flesh and muscles, leaving something behind that was almost unrecognizable as human.

  I followed the white lines of spray paint, careful to not stray from the path. There wasn’t a whole lot of room to work with, so Jack and Cal stood back while I scooted closer to the body, praying I didn’t shift any debris and send the body tumbling.

  “Victim is male,” I said, taking a few pictures. I knelt down and handed my camera