“I’m running late, sorry. Come in and I’ll go get ready. Help yourself to the fridge.” She yelled the last part from the bedroom as she sprinted over to her wardrobe. Pulling out a pair of tight black skinny jeans and another tight tank top from the rack, she quickly threw them on. She brushed out her dark hair and smudged on some lip gloss. She was blessed with a smooth olive complexion and thick dark eyelashes from her mother’s Iranian heritage, which made her morning ritual a breeze. Pulling on a pair of combat boots to complete the look, she strolled out of the bedroom as if she had all the time in the world. There was no way she was going to let Keenan think she was rushing around for him.
Keenan was standing stiffly in the living room but his eyes kept darting to the couch. Azar smirked again. Obviously he couldn’t get their moment of dirty sex out of his mind either. She clicked her fingers to get Keenan’s attention.
“I thought we might go down to the sorority house and Coney Island to check out the other crime scenes. Maybe I can pick up something the CSU guys have missed.”
She knew the sorority house and the part of Coney Island that had been burnt out would still be taped off to the public until they either wrapped up the investigation or the case went cold.
Azar picked up her keys. “But we are taking my car.”
They caught the elevator from the fifth floor to the basement car park, and Keenan let out a small whistle when they stopped in front of her 1969 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 in Candy Apple Red. It was her baby, and she stroked the roof as she walked to the driver’s door.
“I bought her fresh off the lot. She’s all original, right down to the stitching in the leather upholstery.” She slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key, grinning from ear to ear as the motor rumbled to life. "I know a great place to get lunch near Central Park. You might want to hang on.”
Thirty hair-raising minutes later, she pulled into a car space close enough to Central Park, and Keenan was looking a little pale.
“You drive like a lunatic,” he wheezed.
Azar just waved him off with a grin as she hopped out of the driver’s seat. “There’s this amazing hot dog stand in Central Park near the corner of East 67th street. The dogs there are to die for, and the relish is heavenly.”
They’d parked a couple of blocks away but by New York standards, that wasn’t even a short stroll. They stood at the crosswalk, and looked everywhere but at each other. Well, this was awkward. When the little green man finally heralded them across the road, it was a godsend. She didn’t know what to say, how to make conversation that didn’t revolve around mythical beings or wild sex.
They walked in silence, until she stopped in front of a hot dog cart. It had a big red and white striped umbrella and had been run by the same old guy for years. He was at least six inches shorter than Azar in height and almost six inches wider on both sides of his waist. But he always wore a genuinely large smile, as if he enjoyed meeting new people as much as he liked his own hotdogs. Azar's mouth watered as the fragrant steam around the cart assailed her senses. She stepped closer to the old man to order; he was a bit hard of hearing.
“Hi, can we have four dogs with the lot, please? Go heavy on your relish, it’s spectacular,” she shouted. The little guy smiled as he loaded up their hotdogs.
“I will tell my wife that. Every day she says, ‘Antonio, when will you retire so I no longer have to make this sauce every day. Sometimes I sleep walk and wake up making this sauce.’ But I tell my Rosa that the people love her relish. It makes the customers happy. We will sell hotdogs until we can afford to buy a condo in Florida or people no longer flock to my cart to taste her amazing relish.” He finished squirting mustard and ketchup on each and Azar handed the man a twenty.
“Keep the change. Put it towards an early retirement to keep Rosa happy,” Azar said, laughing as she took her hotdogs and Keenan took his. She wandered over to an uncrowded patch of grass in the sun and sat down, a hotdog in each hand. Keenan sat next to her, and licked at a dollop of mustard that had squirted onto his pinkie finger. I momentarily envied that finger.
Keenan took a bite of his hotdog and let out a little groan. “These are really good,” he said, his mouth stuffed to capacity with half-masticated hotdog.
“I know.” Azar smiled as she took a huge bite of her own. Maybe she should have ordered three. She didn’t get to Central Park enough. "So Keenan, tell me a bit about yourself? It feels weird that I’ve seen you naked but don’t know anything about you other than your name and occupation.”
Keenan shrugged. “There's really not much to tell. I was born in Ireland and lived there until I was ten. We moved to Boston after my mother died. My Da thought a new start in a new country would help us all recover. I’ve got two sisters and a brother. That’s about it.” He shoved half a hotdog in his mouth and seemed to chew without difficulty. Azar thought his talents were wasted with the police force. He should be doing hotdog competitions at County Fairs for a living.
“I’m really sorry about your mother. I know what that’s like.” They sat in silence for a little while, watching people go by. Dead parents was a real conversation killer.
One of those big fancy dogs that are basically mixed breeds but with fancier names, like labradoodle or bullmastador, ran over to them and sniffed at Azar’s lunch. She tore her hotdog in two, gave the dog half and shoveled the rest down herself.
A woman in running gear followed along behind the dog about twenty feet. She was in stretchy yoga pants and a sports bra and had her cellphone strapped to her upper arm.
“Bad boy Snookums, don’t run off on Mommy! What are you eating? You didn’t give him meat did you? He’s on a vegan diet!” The woman shot Azar a glare.
“No way! It was a falafel-dog, I swear. Does he have a medical condition where he can’t eat meat?” Azar hoped she hadn’t accidentally killed the dog by way of processed meat by-products, although it probably wasn’t a bad way to go for a dog on a vegan diet.
“No, we just don’t believe in slaughtering animals for food.”
Azar opened her mouth to tell the woman that that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard but before she could get the first incredulous word out, the woman huffed, called the dog and ran off. Snookums the dog shot them one more pitiful look, and Keenan gave him the rest of his hotdog for the road. They both shook their heads after the poor animal.
“If I was that dog, I don’t know what I’d be more upset about; the vegan diet or having to respond to Snookums every day,” Keenan said seriously. She had to agree; at least one of those things should be classified as cruelty to animals.
Lunch now finished, she stood up and brushed grass off her butt. She watched wistfully as Keenan did the same. He had an ass made to dig your nails into and hold on for dear life.
After a quick discussion on the merits of catching the subway or parking in the NYU district, they decided it would be easier to ride the train to the sorority house, which was in the penthouse of one of the residence halls on Lafayette Street.
Keenan flashed his badge to get them through the station gates without having to buy a ticket. The train was reasonably quiet; just a couple of shift workers asleep with their faces squished against the window, a crazy guy talking to himself at the end of the carriage and some students with their music blaring through their headphones, obviously on their way to NYU too. Azar and Keenan remained standing, both holding onto the supports above their head.
“So, how did you end up in New York if you grew up in Boston?” Azar asked, her eyes focused on the darkness outside the window. She wasn’t big on tunnels. Regardless of the fact that the chances of a tunnel collapsing on her train were slim, they still made her anxious. Making small talk with Keenan would help pass the time between stops.
“There are a lot of Irish expats in South Boston, so when we arrived it was like we hadn’t even left Dublin. You see so many people you know, or your Da knows, and before you know it, the old folks are sitting around talking
about the old days with a Guinness. I just wanted something different, I guess. So I moved to New York and became a police officer. Besides, my family drive me crazy. I decided to move far enough away that they couldn’t drop in, but close enough that I could be there if they needed me.” A grin lit his face, and it made her heart beat wildly. When he smiled like that, she knew why she’d thrown caution to the wind and slept with a man who was almost a coworker. “You’d know what I mean if you’d had two older sisters. So bossy. Patrick went into the army just to escape their interfering ways.” Keenan’s tone was warm; they might annoy him but it was obvious that he loved his family very much. The doors opened on the Bleecker Street Station and they jumped off.
The NYU district was hectic. Groups of students milled around the sidewalks along with the everyday crowds. All the fresh faced freshman, out of home for the first time, added an air of excitement to the area. Azar and Keenan headed up Lafayette Street towards the building that had housed the sorority.
She knew they had reached the right place from the massive memorial in front of the building. Pictures of the two girls who had died were surrounded by masses of flowers and candles, stuffed animals and letters of sorrow. The girls had been young, maybe nineteen or twenty, and their loss would have devastated a lot of people. Azar leaned over and touched the picture of one of the girls. She had dark brown laughing eyes in the picture, as if someone just out of the shot was doing something to make her laugh. The other girl was a blonde girl with short feather cut hair and a broad white smile. She looked like she could have been a model for Abercrombie and Fitch. It didn’t matter who they were, the loss of their lives would have been no less tragic to Azar if they’d been homeless women on the street. No one deserved to die in that much pain, let alone anyone so young.
Keenan held her elbow and directed her into the building. “All the students have been rehoused as a precaution, but as soon as this investigation wraps up they’ll come back and rebuild.” He started climbing the stairs to the penthouse. “This building was housing one hundred and fifty students the night of the fire. The students reported that the fire alarms went off at around three in the morning, and all the levels evacuated. When they got down to the footpath they realized that it was the penthouse that was burning. By the time the fire trucks arrived almost everyone was out, except for the two deceased girls. The fire was contained on the top floor without doing much structural damage. The coroner said that the heat which incinerated the bodies was inconsistent with the amount of structural damage in the apartment. It led the coroner to believe that maybe the girls were physically set on fire but we could find no trace of accelerant on their clothing or bodies. The girls were deceased when the FDNY arrived.”
The coroner was right. The kind of fire produced by the Ifrit was different to the average kind of fire. Ifrit fire followed the instructions of its master. If the Rogue had wanted to destroy as much life as possible, he would have directed the fire to focus on the life energy within its reach instead of burning the inanimate objects in each room.
Keenan continued down the hall. “The fire didn’t look as if it had been started near the girl’s room, but rather rushed unbelievably quickly towards them. They really didn’t have a chance of escape.”
They stood outside the penthouse entrance and Azar could see where the soot had tried to escape under the door. Keenan turned the knob and let the door swing open.
The inside was a sad, barren landscape of black and grey. Everything had been charred or burnt, and what had once been a beautiful apartment was now just a desolate shell. A spiral staircase came down on the left hand side of an open plan living/dining room with two hallways leading off down either side of the room.
“There were fourteen girls on these two floors, two to a room. Most got out through the fire escape on the other side of the building to where the fire started. Somehow our perp got through the security at the front of the building, up all the floors, into a locked apartment and then set a fire, disappeared out the same way and no one saw him at any point. Initially, we thought it had to be someone on the inside before we made the connection to the Coney Island fire.” Keenan led her further into the main living area. “The fire was started on the landing above this staircase and spread from there. The two victims were in the furthest bedroom and couldn’t get to the staircase or to the fire escape. They essentially burnt to death before the firemen had even rolled up the doors at the firehouse. The University ensures that the fire escapes are well maintained and it saved lives.”
They gingerly walked up the spiral staircase, and it creaked under their weight. At the top of the stairs, on the wall in front of her, was the Djinn symbol. Any lingering doubts about this being a fire pledge left her mind. She looked at the door to her left where the bodies had burnt, and she could still see outlines where the girls had basically melted onto the floor boards. Azar wanted to be sick, not from the ephemera of death, which she saw all too often in her job, but the fact that it was her kind that caused such an atrocity. The blood that ran through her veins was the same as this monster, who had planned on killing hundreds of innocent kids.
“I don’t think that this place can tell us anything new.” Azar choked out the words and Keenan looked at her worriedly. “Let’s go down via the fire escape, see if there is anything you guys missed.”
They headed to the end of the hall, where a large window opened out onto the fire escape. Azar went out first, hushing Keenan’s objections.
“A drop from six stories will hurt but it won't kill me. If the fire escape collapses while you’re on it, you’ll just be a Jackson Pollock painting on the sidewalk. Now be quiet and let me check!” She bounced around a couple of times and assessed its integrity. It groaned and creaked but it was fine. “Come aboard.”
She waved Keenan out the window before slowly heading down the ladder. One of the rungs had basically melted through and she called Keenan over to look. “Well, I think we definitely know how he got in and out. His hands were still hot enough to melt metal when he left.”
They climbed down the rest of the ladder, and the metal warped less and less as they got closer to the ground. If the cops had been searching for evidence from the alleyway, they would have found nothing but a structurally sound fire escape. She highly doubted that if they did find the heat twisted metal they would have put it down to anything but circumstance. It’s not like anyone’s mind was going to jump straight to ‘Fiery Middle-Eastern Genie’.
They walked back around to the front of the building and saw a girl crouching down to place flowers on the memorial. Keenan flashed his badge at her as they walked over.
“Excuse me, Miss. I’m Detective Keenan from the NYPD. I’d just like to ask you a few questions, if that’s okay?” The girl nodded and stood up. “What’s your name?” Keenan asked in his cop voice.
“Ashley.”
“Hi Ashley, this is my associate Azar Nazemi from the FDNY. Do you live up on the top floor?” Another nod from the girl. “Can you tell me anything about Kate and Alana? If they were in any kind of trouble, acting strange, anything like that?” Kate Matthews and Alana Fitzpatrick were the two girls who died in the fire.
“No, nothing like that. It was coming up finals week and everyone had been staying in to prepare. They were really serious; they didn’t even have boyfriends. We would have known if they did, you can’t keep a secret in a sorority.” The girl didn’t smile, and neither did anyone else. Ashley looked like a deflated doll, like she’d blow away with a stiff gust of wind.
“What about any of the other girls in the penthouse? Anyone angry or been acting weird? Perhaps someone with a vendetta against the sorority in particular?” Ashley shook her head.
“It isn’t like the movies, you know? The whole Greek life in NYU is really small in comparison to most colleges. We are kind of like one big community. Not competitive or anything like that. I told this to the police when they interviewed us. We weren’t mean girls or frenemies or w
hatever. We concentrated on school, and maintained a good GPA average so we could keep the penthouse.” Ashley’s eyes were starting to get big and watery and Keenan said a quick thank you, gave the girl his card and strode away. She didn’t know what it was about female tears, but they seemed to make even the toughest man uncomfortable.
“Let’s move onto Coney Island,” Azar suggested and they headed back to the subway.
Chapter 4
As soon as they got to Coney Island, Keenan scrambled out of the car again and she laughed. Maybe, subconsciously, she’d taken the corners a little too fast and ran a couple of orange lights, but she hadn’t done anything illegal. She definitely hadn’t put them in the way of any real harm.
“When I get back to the station, I’m going straight to Traffic and telling them to pull your license,” he shouted. This just made her laugh harder.
“I’ve been driving since the automobile was invented. You just need to relax more and work on your control issues. We both know you were never in any danger.”
Keenan just gave her a stony stare and walked off, leaving Azar to trail behind.
She could see the ferris wheel slowly spinning in the distance and hear the continuous buzz of people chattering on the boardwalk. The striped awning of an ice cream cart caught her eye and she made a mental note to pick one up on the way home. It would be a shame to come all the way to Coney Island and then leave without having a cone.
They walked toward the storage shed where the fire had been lit, its doorway still sealed up. Keenan pushed open the door and lifted the police tape for her.
The first thing she saw was the charred remains of carousel horses and brightly colored amusement rides. It depressed her a little; it was like someone had burnt down fun.
The Azar Omnibus: The Complete Azar Trilogy (The Azar Trilogy Book 0) Page 4