The Second Goodbye

by Patricia Smiley

  Vaughn began coughing. “My lungs are on fire. I’m going back to the car. Call if you need anything.” He untied the handkerchief and handed it to her. “Better put this on.”

  Davie waited for the detective to return, shielding her lungs from the smoke with Vaughn’s handkerchief. Ten minutes later Detective Harper rounded the corner and walked toward her.

  “Patrol officers spoke to the woman who manages the store next door. She said the salon’s employees showed up for work this morning but the doors were locked. They hung around for a while and then left. No official word on what started the blaze, but there was a flashpoint near an overloaded outlet, so it could be faulty wiring.”

  Davie remembered the multiple appliances inside the shop—everything from nail dryers to foot massagers all plugged into that single wall socket.

  “They also found a white male inside, deceased. Can you identify Blasdel?”

  Davie nodded.

  “Come with me.”

  Her expression remained stone cold, but her stomach churned with dread as she followed Detective Harper. She’d once taken a training class on fire-related homicides. All she remembered were the grotesque photos of charred remains and the instructor’s description of what happens when you’re trapped in a building fire: blinded by smoke, the crackling sounds of walls and ceilings burning, the pop, pop, pop of light bulbs bursting, and the taste of smoke on your tongue.

  When she got to the gurney, the coroner’s assistant unzipped the body bag. He wasn’t wearing the gold chain, but his hair and face were singed and his silk shirt had melted into his skin. Smoke stains around his nostrils suggested he might have been alive and breathing when the fire started. Smoke inhalation could have caused his death, but Davie knew toxic fumes from building materials or other substances often killed victims before the smoke did. What she didn’t see were burns on the hands or scuff marks on the knees of the clothing that might indicate he’d tried to crawl to safety.

  “It’s Blasdel,” she said.

  As deaths go his must have been a horrible one and for that she felt a measure of sorrow. She thought back to her first conversation with Blasdel at the cafe down the street. He’d told her he didn’t like redheads because they reminded him of fire and he hated fire. Given his attitude, it seemed unlikely he would have set the blaze.

  Davie willed her gaze to leave the body and focus on Detective Harper. “Any idea how he died?”

  “It’s hard to speculate. The medical examiner will look at the body. If there are no obvious signs of trauma or gunshot wounds, they’ll check other things, like elevated levels of carbon monoxide in his blood and determine the cause of death.”

  Davie’s gaze turned toward the salon’s charred facade. The shop was such a small space. Even if Blasdel had been blinded by smoke, she wondered why he hadn’t been able to find his way out, unless something or someone had rendered him unconscious before the fire started.

  She waited until the body was loaded into the coroner’s van before heading back to the car. Her shoes were saturated with water and every step was accompanied by a squish and ooze. She slid into the driver’s seat next to her partner.

  “What happened?” Vaughn said.

  The horror of seeing Blasdel’s burned body washed over her and she almost lashed out at him for not staying with her. Instead, she rested her head on the steering wheel, rhythmically inhaling and exhaling as she’d been taught—three deep breaths, hold each for four seconds, count to four while exhaling—until her anger faded and she gathered her thoughts.

  “Blasdel is dead. He was my last best hope to solve Sabine Ponti’s death.”

  “What about Gillen’s widow?”

  Davie blew out a puff of air and lifted her head. “She’s in Tortola on vacation and won’t be home for a couple of weeks.”

  “She doesn’t have a cell phone?”

  “The housesitter told me she didn’t take it with her.”

  “Can’t you call her hotel?”

  “I tried. She’s not answering any calls.” Davie paused for a moment to think. “Maybe I need a tan. You think there’s sun in the BVIs?”

  Vaughn smirked. “Yeah, plenty of it, but forget about going there. The powers that be will never send you to Tortola for a case that’s not even a case. Besides, redheads don’t tan. They burn.”

  Davie shot him a stink eye.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Bad timing.”

  37

  Threat assessment.

  He was crouched on the rooftop of a building down the street, watching the flames. He wasn’t an arsonist. Didn’t fit the profile. He felt no sense of power, no thrill. He wasn’t going to take photos or videos to relive the excitement later on over a beer and a TV dinner. Setting the fire had been a job, a way to vary his routine so nobody detected a pattern.

  Blasdel had become a liability. His client couldn’t allow Detective Saffron to score a second interview with him, so he had to be eliminated. Before the decision was made, he’d already developed a list of alternatives for the client to choose from. Careful planning allowed for a rapid response. Torching the salon was the best option given Blasdel’s history. His business was tanking. He’d checked. His death would seem like a scam gone wrong.

  To prepare, yesterday afternoon he’d walked into the shop to ask for directions. One thing he noticed was there were multiple pillows on the chairs, on the floor, and on the table near a sign advertising psychic readings. On his way back to the no-tell motel he’d stopped by a craft store and bought several highly flammable polyurethane cushions that would add fuel to the flames. Investigators weren’t going to search through the rubble to conduct a pillow count.

  When he’d arrived at the salon early that morning, he picked the back door lock and waited inside. Old Jack showed up at eight to open the store at nine. He slapped the cloth over his nose and mouth before he had time to pocket his keys. It took a minute or so of struggling before the ether rendered Blasdel unconscious. The guy was flabby and no match for his superior strength. Ether was highly flammable, which was perfect for his purposes. It was legal to buy in the States, but to avoid attention he purchased his supply from a doctor in Malawi.

  He waited until the employees gave up knocking on the door and left, then kept silent for a while longer to make sure they didn’t come back. After that he took his time igniting the blaze with a simple incendiary timing-device he’d learned years ago from a TV show about the arson investigator/serial arsonist John Orr. He’d been fascinated by the simplicity of the gadget and had sketched a diagram of the items Orr used—matches wrapped in yellow-ruled writing paper and held together by a rubber band, and ignited by a lit cigarette. He hadn’t planned to set any fires, but in his business it was wise to have a full toolkit ready.

  For this job, he’d modified Orr’s device—the cigarette and matches were wrapped with plain white paper and tied with silk thread he’d purchased at the craft store—but the principal was the same. He’d taken a gallon of highly flammable acetone he’d found in the back room and set it near the electrical outlet. He dragged Blasdel’s unconscious body to a nearby chair, propped up by the polyurethane pillows. He set the device near the acetone and the outlet and lit the cigarette. He’d used gloves, of course. That’s what tripped up Orr. A partial fingerprint on a piece of yellow paper had survived one of his arson fires. Bad luck, but he wasn’t Orr. Arson fires were difficult to detect and prosecute, and this would likely be his last and only fire.

  It was unfortunate the blaze had been reported before the shop was fully engulfed, but at least the building was still smoldering. He was about to leave his hiding place on the roof when he saw Detective Saffron and her partner arrive at the scene. He hadn’t expected that. At least she wouldn’t be handling Blasdel’s death investigation. It was outside her jurisdiction, but she would certainly share whatever information she
had with the other investigators. That troubled him.

  Following the detective had been useful, but that usefulness was over now. If she kept sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, she’d soon become part of the problem. He would assess the threat and advise his client of the options.

  Meanwhile, he would continue retracing his movements in search of the St. Christopher medal. He had to find it, feared for his safety without it. The medal was more than a family heirloom. It was a talisman that made him invincible.

  38

  The smell of charred wood and chemicals had seeped into the fabric of Davie’s pantsuit and now permeated the air in the car. She lowered her window as she drove back to the station, unable to shake the image of Blasdel’s silk shirt melted into his skin.

  “I know you’re bummed, Davie,” Vaughn said, “but Blasdel isn’t the only one who knows what happened to Sabine Ponti. What about that hottie PI, Natalie Salinas? Maybe she did more on that surveillance job for Gerda Pittman than she let on. I think we should call on her again. If you’re too busy, I can go and take another detective with me.” His cell pinged an incoming message. He paused to read it. “I just got an email from Pendleton. Daniel Hernandez had a weekend leave before he shipped out. He left the base on Friday afternoon and didn’t come back until Sunday morning. That means he was still in the area the day of his brother’s murder, which means Emma Wainford could have seen him at the crime scene.”

  “Call the food bank,” she said. “See if he’s there now.”

  Vaughn pressed the number into his cell display and waited while Hernandez’s supervisor confirmed he was expected at work within the hour. When they arrived at the station, Davie opened the rear door near the Kit Room and nearly collided with Detective Giordano as he read a notice on the hallway bulletin board.

  Her boss glanced at his watch and then at Davie and Vaughn. “Where have you two been? You didn’t sign out.”

  “We were at a fire,” Vaughn said.

  Giordano pointed to the stairway. “Roll-call room. Now.”

  Davie and her partner led the way upstairs. The roll-call room was empty. Giordano didn’t bother to sit. He crossed his arms and glared at Davie. “What’s up?”

  She glanced at her partner and then at her boss. “It’s a long story. You may want to sit.”

  “I don’t need to sit. What I need is to know what’s going on.”

  Davie told him about Blasdel and the fire, about her suspicion that Sabine Ponti may have uncovered a money-laundering scheme at the restaurant where she worked.

  “We have to interview Nate Gillen’s widow, but I also need access to the books and records of the Seaglass Cafe,” she concluded. “I can’t do that unless the case is reclassified.”

  Giordano’s muscles stiffened. “The bodies are piling up, so I’m going to reclassify the case from suicide to homicide. First, I’ve got to make a few phone calls.”

  Davie could barely contain her excitement. “That’s great.”

  “What about the Hernandez case?”

  Vaughn jumped into the conversation. “A witness saw the victim’s brother running from the scene of the murder. We were just about to head over to Daniel Hernandez’s work and question him again.”

  “Good. From now on I want to know everything you’re doing.” He took a few steps toward the exit but turned back. “And air yourselves out before you come back or bury those clothes.”

  As Giordano left the room, Vaughn sniffed the arm of his jacket. “What’s his problem? Smells fine to me.”

  She patted him on the back, not mentioning that he’d been waiting in the car most of the time they were at the fire. “Don’t worry. You smell like fresh laundry drying in a spring breeze. Me? Not so much. I’m going upstairs to change.”

  Once Davie had put on the pantsuit she kept in her locker, she went downstairs, signed out on the log sheet, and picked up the keys to the Jetta. She found Vaughn standing at the Kit Room door, checking out a new battery for his handheld radio. They took the 405 South to Jefferson. She was half a block from the food bank when her partner pointed toward a late-model black Toyota exiting the parking lot and turning onto the street.

  “That’s Daniel Hernandez’s car. You think his supervisor tipped him off we were on our way?”

  Davie glanced at her watch. “It’s almost noon. Maybe he’s just going out for an early lunch.”

  “You want to pull him over?”

  She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, thinking about the options. “No. Let’s see where he’s going.”

  Davie kept the Jetta a couple of car-lengths behind Daniel, guessing he wouldn’t notice a junker on his tail. She followed him on the 405 North, inching along in heavy traffic until he exited at Sunset Boulevard and headed toward Beverly Hills. He turned left at Beverly Drive and continued to the intersection of Woodland Drive, where he pulled to the curb near a small park. Davie stopped a short distance away and watched him get out of the car and walk across a lawn shaded by mature trees.

  Vaughn opened the door. “Let’s see what he’s up to.”

  Davie set her phone to vibrate in case she got a call. Daniel didn’t notice their presence because his focus was riveted on a heavy-set white woman sitting on a bench holding a small child.

  Vaughn grabbed Davie’s arm. “Is that who I think it is?”

  It was Alma Velez’s mother and Velez’s son, Manny.

  “Interesting,” said Davie.

  Daniel must have called out to the woman because she looked up and so did the child. Manny slid off his grandmother’s lap and made his way toward Daniel with that unsteady toddler’s gait. The kid was wearing a black sweatshirt with a Snow White dwarf printed on the front—Grumpy. Manny giggled as Daniel scooped him into his arms. In Davie’s limited experience, toddlers were squirrely. She doubted this one would run to greet a stranger. The kid not only seemed to know Daniel Hernandez, but Davie guessed Manny had also spent a fair amount of time with him.

  “What’s the deal?” Vaughn said. “I got the impression Daniel Hernandez hardly knew Alma Velez. So why’s he meeting her son and her mom in Beverly Hills?”

  “Because it’s about as far away from Mar Vista Gardens as you can get and still be in the same universe.” She pulled her partner behind the trunk of a tree out of Daniel’s line of sight. “I thought he looked familiar when I met him. Now I know why. Those big round eyes and cupid-bow lips. Manny has the same features.”

  Vaughn looked surprised by her conclusion. “You think the kid is his?”

  “Does anything else make sense?”

  “That means Daniel and Alma were screwing behind Felix Malo’s back.” Vaughn opened the calculator app on his cell. “Let me do the math. Let’s say she was maybe two months pregnant when Javi was killed in February. The baby was born seven months later in September. That would make Manny about twenty months old.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “I wonder if Daniel knew she was pregnant with his kid.”

  “Hard to know,” Davie said. “If our theory is correct, the baby might have had something to do with Javi’s death.”

  “Daniel said his brother was Malo’s loyal soldier. If Javi found out his brother was screwing his homie’s girlfriend, where would his loyalty be—with Daniel or Felix Malo?”

  She watched Daniel on a swing with Manny in his lap. “What would Velez do to protect her secret?”

  “Should we go over and confront him?”

  “Let’s wait. I don’t want a scene with the kid there.”

  They returned to the car and watched as Daniel supervised Manny, petting a woman’s French bulldog and splashing his feet in the shallow water of a pond surrounded by boulders and spiky plants.

  Thirty minutes later, Velez’s mom motioned for Daniel to join her. They spoke for a couple of minutes. Daniel held Manny u
ntil he squirmed to get down. Velez’s mother took the child in her arms and walked out of the park as Manny screamed in alarm. Daniel Hernandez lingered behind, sitting on the bench with his head resting in his hands. He was so absorbed in his thoughts he didn’t notice Davie and Vaughn approach.

  “Mr. Hernandez,” Davie said.

  He bolted upright and squared off in front of them. His expression was a mix of surprise and alarm. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?”

  Davie’s hand hovered near her weapon. “We need to clear up a few things you told us the last time we spoke, because I think you lied to us about your brother’s death. We know you weren’t in Afghanistan the day Javi was murdered. You were in L.A.”

  Daniel looked caged and ready to bolt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t lie.”

  “You withheld the truth,” Vaughn said. “That’s as close to a lie as it gets.”

  “We have a witness who saw you running away from Javi’s apartment around the time he was murdered. You want to tell us what happened?”

  The man looked down and jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “It’s not what you think.”

  Davie’s voice remained steady but firm. “What I think is you killed your brother. What I don’t know is why you did it.”

  Raw emotion played across Daniel’s face. “I didn’t kill Javi. I swear. I’d never hurt my mom like that.”

  Vaughn’s tone was sharp and unsympathetic. “Then what were you doing there?”

  Daniel collapsed on the bench. “A friend called and told me Alma was there. I needed to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “We had a misunderstanding. I needed to clear things up before I was deployed.”