Fire and Ashes

by Elaine Viets

  “Do you think she set the house on fire for the insurance?”

  “She’s in Michigan, Angela.” He came down hard on her name. “I’m not even sure she has insurance anymore. Besides, Celine’s a good woman.”

  And her husband was a good doctor. At least on the surface. Angela knew she’d get nowhere asking anything else about Celine. “Are you going to search for the boys?” An icy drop of rain hit Angela in the face.

  “I’m sure they’re long gone,” Doug said.

  Another drop slammed into Angela’s neck.

  “I have to finish my preliminary fire-scene documentation. I still need to record the address number on the gate and street sign to establish the scene.” He patted his camcorder like a faithful pet.

  She said, “Nice camcorder.” The two drops had turned into twenty as Angela edged toward the driver’s door to make her escape.

  “It’s a professional model. A Sony PXW-X70 XDCAM compact camcorder, with a one-inch type sensor, which is larger than a super-16-size sensor . . .”

  He rattled off a dizzying list of features that Angela didn’t bother to figure out. The Forest grandees gave those who served them the best equipment—for their own protection, not to keep the workers happy.

  The cold drops had turned into stinging, slashing sleet. “Feel that?” he said. “The sleet may help put out the fire, but it ices up the ladders.”

  “I feel it, all right,” Angela said. “It’s like being hit in the face with a bucket of ice water. I’m heading for my warm home. Good luck, Doug.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Days seven, eight

  Angela drove carefully home through the sleet storm. Once inside her house, she kept her cell phone on the coffee table and prayed everyone stayed safe tonight in the Forest.

  Her prayers were answered—sort of.

  Her cell phone rang the next morning at 3:00. She fumbled for the phone and gave a groggy hello to Butch Chetkin.

  “Bad night to call you out, Angela, but we’ve got a possible fatal overdose out on Du Pont Close.”

  “It was bound to happen,” she said. “Last Saturday night, there were two near-fatal ODs: high school seniors who’d scored heroin so pure it was nearly white. They weren’t used to the good stuff. It sent both of them to the hospital.”

  “I heard about that,” Butch said. “The girl’s an A student, and he’s just been accepted into Yale. Heroin is no longer a junkie drug. Nice white suburbanites switched to it when the street price of prescription painkillers shot up—heroin was cheaper. There’s something off about this one. I’ll show you when you get here. Meanwhile, I got a warrant to search the car, just to be safe.”

  “That’s why I like working with you, Butch. You play by the rules.”

  “This one’s bad, Angela—another kid. Seventeen, if we can believe his driver’s license.”

  She sat up on the living-room couch, nearly knocking over her mug of cold coffee. “Who is it?”

  “Alexander Soran. License says he lives on Harris Avenue in Toonerville, but he hasn’t been formally ID’d. We found his wallet on the passenger seat with more than six hundred dollars, most of it in twenties, a Chouteau Forest Library card, and a Chouteau Forest High School ID, all in the name of Zander Soran. The photos on his school ID and license look like him, but we’ll still need formal identification.”

  “Give me the address and I’ll be there.”

  Chetkin did, then said, “He’s driving a new black Beemer. You’ll see the patrol car first—its emergency lights are on. The officer saw the BMW on the side of the road and stopped to see if the driver needed assistance. This poor boy was beyond help. Bundle up. The sleet has stopped, but it’s still slippery and cold as a stepmother’s kiss. Hurry! I’m freezing my tail off.”

  Angela was fully awake now. After she came home from the Gravois fire, she’d been too tired to bother fixing dinner. She’d scrambled two eggs—her default meal—and fell asleep listening to the sleet patter against the windows, grateful no one had died in that fire. She’d slept on the living-room couch again, wrapped in a yellow throw her mother had knitted. The old stone house was cold and drafty, even with the thermostat pushed up to eighty. She would have been more comfortable in her own room, but she couldn’t face that vast, lonely bed and the memories of how Donegan had warmed her on nights like these. Then, she’d loved the cold. They both had.

  She shook off her sad thoughts, caned her way to the kitchen to flip on the coffee maker, then hurried upstairs to dress. She couldn’t believe this gorgeous spring had relapsed into winter. She rooted in her closet for sweaters, long johns, and her heaviest winter coat.

  By the time Angela was ready, she wore so many layers she could hardly move. She carefully made her way down the stairs in her sock feet, cane in one hand and railing in the other. In the kitchen, she poured steaming coffee into an insulated cup, found her winter boots in the mudroom, and put on the antislip ice-and-snow grips. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to wear them again until next winter.

  She was sweating by the time she made it outside, grateful for the cold wind that slapped her face. In the satiny moonlight, her yard was an ice garden with diamond-dusted grass. Her colorful spring flowers were encased in glittering ice. They’d be brown and dead by morning, but at this moment their fatal beauty was arresting.

  She carefully made her way down the drive to her icy car, once more cursing her cowardice. If she could find the nerve to move Donegan’s car, her Charger would be sheltered in a warm garage and she’d be at the scene quicker. She ripped the magnetic cover off the front windshield. Holding on to the car and using her cane, she walked carefully back and pulled off the other windshield cover, then dumped both in her trunk. She sprayed de-icer on the mirrors and the passenger windows, then pressed the key fob. The driver’s door opened.

  She tossed her cane on the passenger side and rewarded herself with a sip of hot coffee. The roads were a lethal combo of ice and slush. Whenever she pushed past twenty miles an hour, the Charger slid sideways.

  After twenty minutes, she spotted the patrol car’s lights first, then saw the crime-scene van. Zander Soran’s black BMW coupe was parked on a deserted stretch of Du Pont Close, another cluster of century-old mansions about a mile from Du Barry Circle. She parked her car and saw Butch Chetkin, red-nosed and miserable in his hooded sheepskin coat.

  Angela popped the trunk latch on her Charger, and Butch pulled out her death investigator kit. The crime-scene techs were working on the BMW’s trunk. One was Sarah “Nitpicker” Byrne. That nickname was a compliment—Sarah was famous for finding trace evidence in hopeless cases.

  “Looks like the kid was a dealer.” Butch stamped his feet to warm them. “We found four cartons of thirty-six preloaded ‘love roses’ in the trunk.”

  “Every time I see love roses at a convenience store, I wonder if anyone actually buys them for romance,” Angela said. “They’re so chintzy. A teeny silk rose in a little glass tube. I know they’re drug paraphernalia, but how do you preload them?”

  “Stick in a bit of copper scouring pad—Chore Boy is a favorite brand—for a filter, add some heroin, and you’ve got yourself a preloaded pipe. Also works for crack cocaine. The local convenience stores live up to their names—they carry Chore Boys and love roses for one-stop shopping.”

  “Kid must have been a super salesman,” Angela said. “Not many seventeen-year-olds in Toonerville drive fifty-thousand-dollar Beemers.”

  “You don’t have to be good to sell heroin. Anyone willing to risk Missouri’s tough drug laws will make a fortune. Zander had an advantage. A nice preppie-looking kid like him fit in with the white suburbanites. Too bad he started using his product.”

  “Let’s go see him.”

  He started to take her death investigator suitcase, but she refused. “I can handle it, Butch.” She rolled it carefully along the slushy blacktop road. A uniform greeted Angela and moved the crime-scene tape so they could pass through. Butch hovered
beside Angela. She wished he wasn’t so protective, but it beat working with Greiman—even the so-called improved edition.

  She unzipped her case and opened the Death Scene Investigation Form on her iPad. She stuck her warm wool gloves in her coat pocket and put on four pairs of latex gloves. As she examined the dead boy, she would strip off the gloves so the evidence wasn’t contaminated.

  She was ready to begin her body actualization—the investigation. Photos came first. Zander Soran was in the driver’s seat. She took wide shots of the BMW from the front, back, and both sides, then medium shots, then close-ups of the exterior and the license plate.

  “Finished with your photos?”

  Angela nodded, and Butch opened the door with latex-gloved hands. “No prints on this door. This was a carsicle when the uniform opened the door.”

  Seventeen-year-old Zander’s slumped body was held in place by his seat belt. The boy must have been a chick magnet, with his thick, dark hair, long lashes, and straight nose. His lips were blue, and he’d vomited on his expensive plaid shirt.

  “Did you see a froth cone coming from his nose or mouth?” The froth cone was a sign of pulmonary edema―the lungs weren’t working. Often found in drug overdoses, a froth cone was the most fragile evidence. It had to be photographed quickly before it disappeared.

  “No. I looked for one,” Butch said. “He’s sure not dressed like a Toonerville kid in old jeans. He looks like he was going to a country club, right down to the khaki shorts and boat shoes.”

  “He must have died before the weather changed,” Angela said. “He’s wearing shorts and didn’t have a winter jacket.”

  Butch laughed. “You don’t know anything about preppie boys. They’ll freeze their legs off before they’ll admit they’re cold. They only wear jeans when they have to.”

  The brisk wind didn’t blow away the powerful smell of feces and another odor filling the car’s interior.

  “Do you smell gasoline on him?” Angela asked.

  “Definitely. See the spike in his left arm?” The needle was still stuck in Zander’s arm. Angela’s stomach heaved. She hated needles. “Why did he use a needle when he had a car full of pipes?”

  “Exactly. What else?”

  “I don’t see any track marks. Is that needle in a vein?”

  “I don’t think so. That’s what’s off about this,” he said. “It could be suicide or murder, but I’m guessing murder. I’m hoping we can get DNA from the needle and maybe a print on the syringe.”

  “Poor kid.” Angela shook her head. A fatal heroin overdose was an ugly way to die. He’d be shaking and fighting to breathe. She could see where he’d thrown up.

  She photographed the needle site, then shot more photos of Zander in the car seat. Next, she wrote down the body’s location on her iPad. Zander left this world in style, in the elegant ebony leather seat of a jet-black BMW 440i Coupe, with both feet on the floorboards. His car was facing north on Du Pont Close.

  She noted the fingerprint powder on his seat-belt buckle. “Can we move him for a full examination?”

  Butch nodded. “His seat belt and harness have been printed. The techs will work the rest of the interior after we move the body. I’ve got a body bag.”

  Angela and Butch spread the black body bag on a soggy patch of grass near the car, then covered it with a sterilized white sheet. They carried Zander to the sheet, careful not to dislodge the needle. She photographed the needle again and noted her and Butch’s suspicions about the setup. She’d also warn the contractors who transported the body to handle that spiked arm like fine china.

  “He’s only seven years older than my boy, Butch Junior.” Angela heard his sorrow—and his fear. He knew, better than most parents, that bad things happened to good kids.

  She was relieved when Nitpicker Byrne interrupted them. “Hey, Butch, we found something you should see in the trunk.” Butch left Angela to work on her investigation. She used her cane to carefully lower herself to the cold ground.

  She’d have to get Zander’s demographic data, including his name, age, and birth date, when his identity was confirmed. She took the ambient temperature—thirty-two degrees at 3:57 a.m. Then she made a slit in Zander’s shirt under his rib cage to get the body core temperature. She used a refrigeration thermometer that cost fifty bucks at a food-supply outlet. The overpriced forensic models didn’t have as good a temperature range.

  After she removed the thermometer and circled the slit on the body in indelible ink, she initialed the mark so the ME would know that was her work. It was her job to note every cut, known as a cutlike defect, every scrape, and every bruise (contusion) on Zander’s body, from his head to his feet.

  She started with his head, carefully examining it and probing around the hairline with her gloved fingers, but she found no scrapes, cuts, or contusions. She checked for “burns,” or irritated areas around his mouth, in case he’d drunk some corrosive liquid like Drano. Some suicides checked out that way.

  The boy’s clothing had no rips or tears on the front, except the one she’d made to take his temperature. She noted a yellow-brown, eight-inch-by-four-inch irregular stain on his shirt front that “appeared to be vomit.” She did not see any blood. He was wearing brown Sperry boat shoes.

  He wore no jewelry and had no visible tattoos or piercings. Many drug users who injected used tattoos—including spiderwebs—to hide their track marks.

  His muscular arms were bruised. She noted a twelve-inch contusion on the inside of his left arm and a one-inch contusion on his left elbow. He had a three-quarter-inch cutlike defect on his left index finger and a three-inch contusion on his left palm. His right arm had a two-inch contusion on the elbow, a six-inch contusion on the inside of his right arm, and a two-inch contusion on his right palm. Angela didn’t think the cuts, scrapes, and bruises were defensive wounds, but the medical examiner would make that judgment.

  His hands had other, puzzling injuries: big blisters, ranging from half an inch to three-quarters of an inch, above the first knuckle on the thumb and on the first two fingers of his left hand. He had a three-and-a-half-inch red mark on his right palm that appeared to be a first-degree burn.

  Angela did not find any drugs, pill bottles, or paraphernalia in his shirt pocket or shorts pockets. She had to turn the body, and the black van for the contractor who removed the bodies had arrived. Angela had worked with Jim and Terrell before. She waved at them.

  “Would you please help me turn him?” she said.

  “Jim and I will do it,” said Terrell, a burly linebacker with a deep voice. “You stay there.” Together, the two men rolled Zander onto his stomach. As they did, his shirt rode up, and Angela saw a huge purple spot on the dead boy’s right side. Livor mortis. After the heart stopped beating, the blood had pooled in the areas where the body rested. The pair went back to wait in their van while Angela measured the livor mortis on his side.

  She quickly finished the back of Zander’s body: he had a four-inch contusion on his left calf and an irregular brown stain on the back of his khaki shorts.

  Butch ambled over, and she asked, “Did you find his cell phone?”

  “No, I was hoping you would. Who would take a cell phone and leave behind six hundred dollars in cash?”

  “Look what I did find. Livor mortis on his right side. He didn’t die sitting up in the front seat of his car. His body was moved. And his hands are burned and blistered.”

  “Interesting. There were two twelve-packs of toilet paper, a bag of potato chips, and a can of vegetable shortening in the trunk—all Cheap and Easy house brands.”

  “Weird. Why would he have that?”

  “They’re all fire starters. Arsonists love chips. They make a trail to the ignition source, and the fire consumes it. Toilet paper works well, too. Smear the walls with vegetable shortening, and that adds more fuel. Nitpicker found a receipt from Cheap and Easy for thirty packages of potato chips, six cans of shortening, and thirty twelve-packs of TP. Looks like he
paid cash and bought the stuff last night at eight nineteen p.m.”

  Why were Zander’s hands burned and blistered? Why did he smell of gasoline? Was he the Forest arsonist?

  And who killed him?

  CHAPTER 22

  Day eight

  Jackie Soran, a small, worn woman, opened her front door at six in the morning and saw Angela and Butch Chetkin on her doorstep. The blood drained from her face before they presented their credentials.

  “He’s dead! My baby’s dead,” Zander’s mother shrieked. “I knew it. I knew it!” She rocked back and forth in the doorway, weeping and tearing her short, dry brown hair.

  Angela and Butch had yet to a say a word. A chill morning wind whipped across the concrete slab rustling the corpses of the spring flowers.

  “Mrs. Soran,” Angela said, “may we come in? Please?”

  She put her arm around Jackie Soran’s thin shoulders and guided her inside. She could feel the woman’s nearly fleshless bones and smell her rose perfume. The living room was barely big enough for the bulky brown couch and recliner, a pair of end tables topped with brass lamps, and a boxy old TV. Styleless and scrupulously clean, the room’s only decorations were framed photos of Zander, from a smiling baby to a sullen, sultry teen. The dead boy looked like a doomed movie star.

  Angela helped Jackie to the recliner and handed her a fistful of tissues from a box on the nearest end table. Butch sat on the brown corduroy couch.

  “May I fix you some coffee?” Angela asked.

  “There’s coffee in the thermos,” Jackie said between sobs. “In the shopping bag on the kitchen table. I was on my way to work.” She wore a blue housekeeper’s smock with a logo for the Forest Executive Suites, a well-run motel for business travelers near the highway.