The Burning Season

by Jeff Mariotte

  Hospitals smelled, first of all. They tried their best to disguise the odor of disinfectant, but he always knew what it was anyway. There were always strange sounds, beeps and clicks and hums and whirs, emanating from devices that poked, prodded, and probed people in particularly private places. At any moment, there might be someone around a corner weeping or praying or arguing or screaming, or so lost in absolute grief that sound had become impossible.

  So, hospitals? Necessary, but not places he would visit if he had any say in it.

  In this instance, he did not.

  Catherine had sent him to take a buccal swab from Garrett Kovash, bodyguard to the stars. And anyone else who might have been at Alec Watson’s office. A quick comparison had showed that the DNA from the saliva found on Watson’s desk didn’t match the blood—which did indeed come from Dennis Daniels—on the bit of gauze from Watson’s floor. Kovash had admitted being at the office, so if the saliva came from him, that was one mystery solved.

  Greg’s guess was that the saliva had come from one of the Kirklands. None of their previous court cases had involved DNA evidence, though, so it wasn’t on file anywhere, and they had not yet been located. While he was at the hospital, he would swab any other members of Daniels’s retinue who agreed to it, in order to eliminate them as suspects. But his money—figurative money, since he wasn’t about to risk the real kind on a criminal investigation—was on the Kirklands.

  Building a case like this, when there were no solid suspects and no witnesses, was always a matter of the accumulation of tiny pieces of evidence. Eventually, they could be put together in a way that painted a picture of the perpetrator. But the process could be painstaking and slow. And involve things like trips to hospitals, which Greg would rather not have to make.

  He got off the elevator—even the elevator made strange noises and carried unpleasant odors—on Daniels’s floor. A nurse pointed him toward the room, and when he started toward it, he saw Kovash standing outside, talking to a uniformed cop. Greg had met the cop before, at some crime scene or other, but couldn’t remember his name.

  “Mr. Kovash,” he said as he neared. He showed his badge. “I’m Greg Sanders, with the Crime Lab.”

  “Oh, sure, how you doing, Greg?”

  “Fine, thanks. I was just wondering, I know you were in Alec Watson’s office today—”

  “That’s right.”

  “—so I was hoping I could get a buccal swab from you. We’ve got some unidentified saliva on Watson’s desk. If it’s yours, then it doesn’t help us, but if it’s not—”

  Kovash interrupted again. “Understood. No problem. Just say when.”

  Greg had half a dozen capped swab sticks in his pocket. He was reaching for one when the elevator door opened again. Greg half-turned and saw a scruffy guy coming toward them, his wooden crutches plastered with stickers. His shorts displayed a smooth prosthetic left leg and a hairy, pale right.

  “Voet!” Kovash said. His hand darted beneath his jacket and came out with a gun.

  Greg didn’t think, just moved a step forward, planting himself between Kovash and the newcomer. Brass had said something about paying a visit to a one-legged veteran who had sent Daniels threatening messages. He guessed this was the guy. But Brass had been convinced he was innocent of the attacks, all bark but genuinely a pussycat, not a dog at all.

  “Hold on, Mr. Kovash,” Greg said. The uniformed cop was on his feet, too, his weapon drawn. He didn’t seem to know who to point it at. “Let’s all just calm down.”

  “This guy threatened Dennis Daniels,” Kovash said. “I’ve had my eye on him.”

  “Mr. Voet,” Greg said. “You had a talk with Captain Brass earlier, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did. After he left, I thought about what I’d done. How shitty it was to write to Mr. Daniels like that, say those things. I never meant to do anything to him, but you shouldn’t try to make someone else live in fear, either, and that’s what I was doing.”

  “Are you armed?”

  Voet laughed, then his laughter devolved into a raspy cough. “Hell, I ain’t even properly legged,” he said when he was able.

  “What are you doing here?” Kovash asked.

  “I just wanted to see him for a minute, apologize for my actions. It’s important to me to take responsibility for the pain that I’ve caused others. If his wife is here, I’d like a word with her, too.”

  “You’ll have to come back during visiting hours,” the nurse said.

  Greg was torn in different directions, but part of him wanted to shout at the nurse. There were people standing around with guns in their hands, and she wanted to talk about visiting hours? “That’s not exactly helpful right now,” he said. “Mr. Kovash, you want to put that weapon away.”

  Kovash glared at Voet, then at Greg. The rage behind his eyes was identical in both cases. “Officer,” Greg said, “could you make sure that Mr. Voet isn’t armed?”

  “Sure,” the cop said, seeming relieved to be told what to do. He holstered his gun and patted Voet down. “He’s clean.”

  “Mr. Kovash?” Greg said.

  “Fine.” Kovash made his weapon disappear under his jacket.

  “What do you say we give Mr. Voet a couple of minutes with Mr. Daniels?”

  “Okay, but I don’t leave his side,” Kovash said.

  “Of course. I’m sure that would be okay with Mr. Voet.”

  “Long as nobody’s pointing a piece at me, I’m cool.”

  “You keep your distance from Mr. and Mrs. Daniels,” Kovash said. “And your hands where I can see them, and everything will be okay.”

  “Got it.” Voet clomped across the floor, crutches and prosthesis, then good foot, then the same again. Kovash and the uni parted and made room for him to pass into Daniels’s room, then followed him in.

  Greg went as far as the doorway and watched from there.

  Voet stopped several feet from the hospital bed. Mrs. Daniels was in the room, too, dressed in jeans and a loose sweater. Greg had seen her picture many times, usually taken at social events; without makeup, her hair down, suffering from lack of sleep, she looked like an entirely different person. More attractive, somehow, as if she had shed a veneer of plastic.

  “Mr. Daniels, sir,” Voet said. “Mrs. Daniels. My name is Sean Voet.”

  “What are you doing here?” Joanna Daniels demanded.

  “I guess you remember my name. I shouldn’t be surprised. I came to apologize, to both of you. You’ve got no reason to hear me out, and every reason to have your guys here throw me out on my ass, but if I could have just a minute of your time . . .”

  “Take it,” Daniels said. His wife started to protest, but he silenced her with a glance.

  “Thank you, sir,” Voet said. “I know the things I wrote to you were rude and offensive. That was nothing but bad manners on my part, and my momma brought me up better than that. I never meant to carry out any of the threats I made, but shouldn’t have made them just the same. For any minute you lived in fear, any sleep you lost, any worrying you did on my account, I am deeply, deeply sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Daniels said.

  “I’m not saying I agree with all your viewpoints,” Voet said. “Far from it. But I recognize now—brought on, I’m ashamed to say, at least in part by the terrible thing that’s been done to you—that I was voicing my opposition in the wrong way.”

  “We all make mistakes,” Daniels said. “It takes a brave person to admit them, sometimes.”

  “I might have been brave once, but I think I left that behind a long time ago,” Voet said. “What I mostly am now is stubborn. When I had my mind set on you being wrong, I figured I could do or say anything to make you change what your announcers said on the tube. Now that I’ve realized what a mistake that was, I’m too damn stubborn to not say my piece. So I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again. You’ll hear from me—you can be sure of that—but my tone will be civil, not threatening. I promise that, and when I make a prom
ise, that’s when I’m stubbornest.”

  “Well, I appreciate the gesture, Mr. Voet. And I know my wife does as well. Don’t you, honey?”

  “Of course,” Joanna said. Her voice was ice.

  “That’s all I needed to say. Thanks for your time.”

  “Oh, Mr. Voet?” Daniels said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m setting up a citizen’s advisory council on veteran’s issues. If you’d like to be included . . .”

  “Me? In a hot minute.”

  “Very well, then. Consider yourself a member. We’ll be in touch. I’m pretty sure we have your contact information at the office.”

  Voet laughed, ran the back of his hand across his lips. “Yeah, I just bet you do.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Voet,” Daniels said.

  Voet swiveled around. Once again, Kovash got out of his way as he clomped out of the room and back to the elevator. When the elevator doors were closed behind him, Daniels said, “And that, my friends, is how you win a viewer for life.”

  Everyone laughed. Greg’s was a little forced, because he couldn’t tell if the whole thing was a brilliant display of personal, one-on-one politics, or a shameless hustle. In the end, he figured, it was a little of both, and the line between them was probably considerably less distinct than he cared to know.

  Finally, Daniels seemed to notice that he had been standing in the doorway. “Are you here to atone for something, too? This seems to be the time for it.”

  “I’m actually here to make Mr. Kovash open his mouth,” Greg said.

  “The rest of us are usually trying to get him to close it,” Joanna said. “So your job shouldn’t be hard.”

  “Mr. Kovash?” Greg took the cap off his swab. “Say aah.”

  25

  SARA AND NICK stood on the street in front of Collin Gardner’s house, trying to figure out their next move, when Sara’s smart phone alerted her to a text. She read it and summarized the salient points for Nick.

  “We got the details on the wax,” she said. “It is candle wax, like we thought. From the chemical composition and the dye used, Hodges has determined that it’s from a candle made by a company called Luxu Candles, in Santa Monica, California. It’s a bayberry-scented candle they make, two inches in diameter and either seven, nine, or eleven inches tall. It’s a red color they call ‘Vin Rose.’”

  “So now all we have to do is find a house on this mountain with a partly burned candle matching that description? That couldn’t take more than two or three weeks, could it?”

  “Might as well start with Mr. Gardner,” Sara said. “He’s just begging for attention.”

  “Guy might go out and buy an angry dog so he can sic it on us,” Nick suggested.

  “I’d hate to subject a dog to that. Living with him, I mean, not eating us.” Sara went back up Gardner’s walkway, knocked on the door again. “Mr. Gardner!” she called. “It’s us, LVPD Crime Lab!”

  The door opened and Gardner stood there, his face purple with rage. “Again with you guys? Didn’t I tell you to get the hell out of here? Don’t tell me you’ve got a warrant already.”

  “No, sir,” Sara said. “We just had one more question for you, before we do. Do you own any candles?”

  Gardner blinked several times. Sara understood that the question was out of the blue, which was intentional. When people expected a question, they usually had also worked out how they would answer it. “I guess maybe some of the birthday cake kind,” he said. “I have a granddaughter, and her mom brings her here for birthdays sometimes.”

  “That’s it? None of the big fat ornamental kind?”

  “I got a propane lantern and some flashlights, for when the power goes out.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “That’s it?” Nick asked as they walked away from the door again. “Taking his word for it?”

  “We can’t go in and look,” Sara said. “Besides, look at him. Does he really look like the candle-burning type to you?”

  “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “But that gives me an idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s take a walk, Nick.”

  “A walk?”

  “It’s a little too dark to go tramping through the woods looking for clues. But if people up here are candle-burning types, this is when they’ll be burning them. Let’s walk the neighborhoods and see if we can see any through the windows.”

  “I like it. It could still take a week, but it’ll be faster than going door to door and asking.”

  “Faster, maybe. But less certain, since not everybody who uses candles lights them every night. Still, if you’ve got a better idea . . .”

  “I’m fresh out,” Nick said. “It’s either that or knock off for the night, I guess.”

  “Then let’s take a walk.”

  Ray was in with Hodges, peering at the display from a scanning electron microscope on a computer screen. Standard microscopes used light to view the object under consideration, but a scanning electron microscope used an electron beam. Viewed through electromagnetic lenses—or displayed on the appropriate screen—even infinitesimal details achieved amazing clarity. They were looking at one of the tiny metallic disks Ray had found at Lucia’s home, which under the scope proved to be faceted and not as perfectly round as it had first appeared.

  “Now we know what it looks like,” Hodges said. “But I still have no idea what it is.”

  “Looks like a tiny flying saucer,” Ray admitted.

  “If it is, I don’t think we have to worry about alien invasion.”

  Catherine walked in while they were staring at it. She, too, studied the screen for a moment. “What’s that?”

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” Hodges said. “Dr. Ray found a couple of these at the scene where the man missing his hand was abducted.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Ray glanced her way. She was looking at the same screen they were. She read his meaning before he had to ask the question. “The real thing,” she said. “Not the magnification.”

  “Oh,” Hodges said. He shut down the SEM and removed the tiny disk. Catherine pressed down on it with her fingertip, picking it up. “Too small to get any usable impressions from, so it’s not like I’m blurring any, right?”

  “Makes sense,” Ray admitted.

  “You guys really don’t know what this is?”

  “Should we?” Ray asked.

  “I was thinking nanotechnology,” Hodges replied. “But I—”

  “It’s body glitter.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Believe me, I know body glitter when I see it. Probably eighty percent of the exotic dancers in Vegas wear it.”

  “Oh,” Hodges said. “That kind of body glitter.”

  “That kind, exactly. You would have recognized it if you’d seen more of it, but with only a few flecks it’s harder to identify. In my dancing days, though, I learned that once you get a little on you, you’re going to keep finding specks of it, in the strangest places, for days to come.”

  “If it’s that common,” Ray said, “then it doesn’t necessarily help us narrow our search much.”

  “And it’s not just strippers,” Hodges pointed out. “Plenty of women wear some when they’re going out. And prostitutes use it, too. There must be forty or fifty strip clubs in the city, and thirty or so brothels in the state.”

  “And you know that prostitutes use it because . . . ?” Ray asked.

  “Let’s just say I have a well-rounded education. Besides, hookers are easy prey, so we’ve had more than our share wind up in the middle of investigations. Catherine’s right, if there was more of it than just those couple of pieces you found, I’d have known it right away.”

  “Well, I’m sorry there wasn’t enough left behind for you to make that call. I brought back what was there.”

  “You’re right,” Catherine said. “That doesn’t limit your search parameters much. The stuff’s commonplace these days. Even if you can g
et a line on the manufacturer of this particular glitter, which is probably going to be difficult with such a small sample, it wouldn’t help a lot.”

  “It looks like field work will be required,” Hodges said. “I can help with that, if you want.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” Ray said. “I’m sure you’re needed here in the lab, though. We still need an ID on those fibers I collected at the scene.”

  “He’s right, David,” Catherine added. “You’re not going anywhere tonight.”

  “Okay, fine,” Hodges said. Few adult men Ray had known pouted as frequently, or as obviously, as Hodges did. Most men held their feelings inside, to some extent, but Hodges wore his right out there on his face for everyone to see. Maybe it was healthier that way.

  Then again, did he really want to hold David Hodges up as an example of sound mental health?

  Ray sat at his desk, using his computer to research ownership of the city’s many nude and topless clubs. Progress was difficult because so many were owned by shell companies, and he had to trace the principals of those back to the actual corporations, sometimes offshore, that owned them. Others were owned outright by locals, including characters with suspected racketeering ties, chased out of gaming but not out of the skin trade. Ray’s operating assumption, based on the available evidence, was that any gang that had grown up around the business of smuggling illegal immigrants in from Mexico would be largely, if not entirely, made up of Mexican nationals and/or Hispanic Americans. Those would be the people who could function most effectively on the far side of the border—it seemed self-evident that anxious would-be border crossers would be more trusting of their own kind than of gringos.

  When he worked through the layers of obfuscation, he found that most Las Vegas strip club owners were Caucasian males. Two clubs were owned by African-American males, and seven, to his surprise, were owned by three different white women, one of whom ran a chain of four clubs.

  A tap at his door drew his attention away from the monitor. Hodges stood there with a printout in his hand. “You probably didn’t think I’d get to your fibers so quickly.”