Touched by Fire

by Greg Dinallo

  Fletcher nodded sagely and suppressed a smile. “Hey, sometimes you just have to let go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Santa Anas were up well before Lilah on this broiling morning, and the stands of eucalyptus outside the Westwood Marquis bent and straightened in rhythmic waves. In the distance, smoke from smoldering wildfires swirled between the high-rises that ran down Wilshire.

  Exhausted from yesterday’s events, Lilah had slept well-beyond Merrick’s departure. On waking she realized he had left without a word or even a note.

  Now, she stood beneath a steaming shower lost in her thoughts. Hadn’t there been another attempt on her life? Hadn’t he been so concerned that he escorted her to the hotel? Hadn’t he accepted her invitation to get to know her better? She had purposely left him sleeping on the sofa, hoping to awaken and find him next to her, hoping to bathe in the tenderness she sensed beneath his coarse veneer, hoping to be caressing him beneath the water cascading over her. Yes, she longed to be lost in ecstasy now, instead of thought; but even if it was all romanticized drivel, his indifference hurt.

  Lilah put her damp hair in a ponytail, pulled on a T-shirt and pair of jeans, then ordered breakfast and checked her condo for messages. She assured concerned family, friends, and staffers she was alive and well, reminding the latter that weekend or no—because of the upcoming conference—they were expected in at noon to process the blood samples from the prison. Then, to bolster her flagging spirits, she headed for Macy’s. She soon had Ferragamo pumps, Nike Air-Max workout shoes, and Cole Haan loafers arrayed on the sales desk.

  “Six hundred forty-two eighteen,” the salesman said, zipping her credit card through the reader. He frowned curiously and tried again, then said, “I’m afraid your card’s been rejected.”

  Lilah sighed in disbelief. Sure, it was charged to the hilt, but she made the minimum payment every month. And it had been a week since she returned the teddy. She was dialing customer service when she pictured the pile of bills on her desk, and realized, in the recent turmoil, she hadn’t paid them. She didn’t have enough in her checking account, but she wrote a check anyway, then headed to cosmetics to pick up some eye shadow.

  Cardenas had spent the morning in the lab working on his medical school applications and fielding calls. He was just getting off the phone when Lilah arrived, briefcase in one hand, shopping bag in the other. “Been jumping off the hook, boss.”

  “The media,” she said knowingly. “I’ve got two words for them, Ruben, and the first one rhymes with duck.”

  “I guess this isn’t a good time to remind you about that letter of recommendation.”

  “Good guess,” Lilah replied, then sighed with remorse and said, “Today, Ruben. That’s a promise.”

  She touched base with a technician who was preparing a centrifuge, a Dupont 75B Ultra that looked like a cross between a mainframe computer and top-loader washing machine, then headed in Serena’s direction.

  The J .R. was at her computer scrolling through a log of numerically coded blood samples. “We’re absent some C.F. data here,” Serena said in her haughty British tones. She pointed to a consent form number on the monitor. The adjacent line—where the volunteer’s name, Social Security number, and the date the sample was taken should have been recorded—hadn’t been filled in. “I’m afraid we’re genotyping a Mr. Blank.”

  Lilah looked genuinely baffled. “We are?”

  “From the last series we processed,” Serena said, referring to the one that contained both Kauffman’s and Lilah’s samples. As instructed, Cardenas had peeled a bar-code sticker from a blank consent form, affixed it to Lilah’s sample—without knowing it was hers—and, with the stroke of a light pen, recorded it in the log. “I’m quite certain it’s the one Ruben left on your desk.”

  “The one that went up in smoke,” Lilah corrected, realizing it had been destroyed in the fire. She shifted her look to Cardenas. “Void that number, assign a new C.F. to the sample, and put it on my desk, will you?”

  “I’m on it, boss,” he replied, moving off.

  “Leave me an indie too,” Lilah called after him, thinking of Merrick’s sample, which was independent of the OX-A study. Then her eyes shifted back to Serena’s. “We’ll just call him Mr. Blank for now.”

  “T minus three and counting,” Serena warned. This meant that in three days the sheets of X-ray film would be developed and the resulting autorads evaluated. “We really should have that data by then.”

  Lilah nodded, then took a rack of vacutainers from her briefcase and set it on Serena’s desk. “From the veins of convicted sex offenders.”

  Serena eyed the gleaming red tubes and shuddered. “So, did you get them to spill their guts?”

  “Like they had morning sickness. By the way, I made some headway with the hockey thing last night. I don’t know what you said to him, but Spicer thinks you’re sharp. Schmooze him a little, okay? Stay in touch.” Lilah turned on a heel and headed for the suite of temporary offices.

  Kauffman was slouched in a chair, waiting for her. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and crossed the reception area as if he weren’t there. “Hey?” he bellowed, tossing the textbook he was reading aside. “Called you last night. Came by this morning too, but the lieutenant and his flunkies were there. I split before he spotted me. Figured he’d think I was admiring my handiwork.”

  “Is that what you were doing?” Lilah teased as they entered her office.

  “Come on, that’s really lame. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine. See?” She did a little pirouette into her chair, then noticed the consent forms. She slipped the one for her OX-A sample into a drawer and left Merrick’s on the desk. “I thought you might want to apologize,” she said with a little smile.

  “I might . . .” Kauffman pawed at the carpet with a Reebok. “You busy tonight?”

  “I’m up to my ass. I’ll have to let you know.”

  “Why? You hoping for a better offer?”

  “Joel,” Lilah admonished, concealing he’d hit the nail right on the head. She didn’t know it, but at the moment the better offer was crawling around the grounds of her condo complex on his hands and knees.

  * * *

  Earlier, after grilling Eagleton, Merrick, Logan, and Fletcher had driven straight there. The yellow streamers used to cordon off the crime scene were snapping loudly in the hot winds when they arrived.

  The deluge of water required to extinguish the fire had deposited a layer of ash gray silt in the courtyard and washed clumps of cinders against the stucco walls and into the landscaped areas beyond. Fletcher settled into a crouch and began picking through the wet debris with a pair of surgical forceps.

  Logan took a camera from his field kit and took shots of the blackened exterior before working his way inside and focusing on the charred details.

  Merrick entered the smoldering receiving room. The smell of napthalene was unmistakable as he began his search for the flash point. He soon located an area where everything had been totally incinerated—the area from which the inferno had radiated. He set his attaché on the scorched flooring and began looking for bits of minutiae that were once part of a homemade incendiary.

  The three arson investigators spent the entire weekend sifting ashes and picking through soggy debris. Late Sunday afternoon Fletcher was still working the grounds when his eyes darted to what looked like a bent twig but turned out to be a piece of twisted wire. Its vinyl sheath had been burned to a crisp. He pulled gently with the forceps but it wouldn’t come loose. After scooping the muck aside, he unearthed a charred plastic device the size of a pack of cigarettes. Two twisted wires pierced a seam that ran around the perimeter; and, unlike the device Merrick had found in Lilah’s office, this one had been swept outside by the deluge of water before being fused into a blob.

  Fletcher knew he’d found the fire bomb’s detonator, and knew it wasn’t some sort of timer, but a fiendishly clever remote control device.
“Guys? Hey, guys! I got something hot out here!”

  Merrick was staring at the detonator in stunned silence when Logan arrived. “You know what that is?”

  The old guy’s brows twitched excitedly. “Yeah, looks a whole hell of a lot like a beeper, don’t it?”

  “A modified one,” Fletcher replied, toying with the wires.

  Merrick whistled in appreciation of the elegant simplicity. “Fucking pyro’s been setting these things off with a goddamned phone call.” He took the device and slipped it into an evidence bag. “Pete, find out who this thing is registered to and get me its number.” He turned to Fletcher with a smug grin. “I think I just got me back my prime.”

  “Hey, when you’re right, you’re right,” the young A.I. conceded, looking chagrined.

  Merrick pumped a fist in triumph. “Billy, my boy, I’m gonna need a list of all the calls Dr. Fiona Sutton-Schaefer made from Santa Barbara.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Yes! Yes! God! Oh God! Yessss!” The words came in a rush from Lilah’s trembling lips. “Yes! Ohhhh yes—wait, wait! Joel! Joel, I’m going to fall! Joelllll!” she shrieked, her arms around Kauffman’s neck, her legs about his waist as the room-service cart scooted out from beneath her. It zipped across the room, crashing into a table that held her briefcase, the remains of several meals, and a phone with a flashing message light. Kauffman was laughing so hard he could hardly stand. He had her bare bottom cupped in his palms and was looking for a surface that would support it.

  Yesterday afternoon Lilah kept Kauffman on hold until she finished the letter of recommendation for Cardenas and drafted an outline for the presentation she’d be giving at the conference, all the while hoping Merrick would call. When he didn’t, she and Kauffman went to the hotel and spent the night in her room.

  They spent Sunday in bed watching football games and ended up in the shower, running a few plays of their own. Neither heard the phone ringing. Neither would have made an effort to answer it if they had. Having soaped each other into a passionate frenzy, they were en route from bath to bed when Kauffman impulsively lifted her onto the room-service cart.

  Now, while the message light flashed and Lilah clung to him fiercely, Kauffman fell backward into a chair. She came at him with such enthusiasm that it teeter-tottered and suddenly went over. They tumbled to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, and broke into hysterical laughter. It wasn’t long before they decided they were starving. Lilah went to the phone to call room service and saw the flashing message light.

  “You had a call from a Lieutenant Merrick,” the hotel operator said.

  “That it?”

  “Yes, he just said to tell you he called.”

  Lilah lit a cigarette, disappointed that it had taken him the entire weekend to get around to it. A plume of smoke came from between her lips, curling gracefully upward, like a soul leaving a body. She inhaled deeply as if trying to recapture it, but the emptiness prevailed, along with an awareness that the sexual marathon had been the act of a spiteful child rather than the choice of a mature woman, and was ultimately unsatisfying.

  Monday morning, Lilah awakened before dawn with the sense of uncertainty that always surfaced after she’d had sex. She decided to get an early start and headed over to her office well before nine. Kauffman went along to retrieve the textbook he’d left behind, and slouched in a chair, cramming for class. She was reviewing the outline she’d drafted when the intercom buzzed. “Yeah? . . . Okay, Ruben. Thanks for the warning.”

  Thirty seconds later Merrick rapped on the half-open door and entered the office. “Got a few minutes?”

  “What if I said no?” Lilah teased.

  “Bad hair day?”

  “I’ve had worse,” she replied, burning him with a look. “Saturday, I had breakfast alone. My poached eggs were harder than hockey pucks. And I went shopping only to have my credit card rejected and discover my eye shadow’s been discontinued.”

  “Ah, a bad eye day too,” he observed wryly. “That it?”

  “No. In case it slipped your mind, someone’s been trying to turn me into a french fry.” Lilah smiled and pushed a consent form across the desk. “Sign this.”

  “Look, Doc, I’ve got something real important to—”

  “Make your mark,” she commanded sharply. “We have a witness. I’ll settle for an X if have to.”

  Kauffman emitted a complacent snicker.

  Merrick scrawled his signature across the bottom, then glared at him. “You’re outta here, junior. Now.” Kauffman stiffened in protest and looked at Lilah in search of support.

  “Do me a favor, Joel, and wait in the lab, okay?”

  The kid made a face, then bolted from the office.

  “That was uncalled for,” Lilah said, coming around the desk toward Merrick. “You have no right to—”

  “It was a beeper, Doc,” he interrupted, silencing her with the impact of a gunshot.

  Lilah recoiled and questioned him with a look.

  “The detonator. It was a modified beeper. A wire in, a wire out . . . the phone call completed the circuit, and ba-boom.”

  “Then it could have been set off from anywhere.”

  “Anywhere on the goddamned planet. Which blows Fiona Schaefer’s alibi right out of the water.”

  “Jack’s too—” Lilah blurted.

  “Jack?” Merrick said. “Who the hell is Jack?”

  “Jack Palmquist. Did his post doc here a year ago. Very gifted, politically naive, kind of weird. He got real upset when he didn’t get tenure.”

  “This just occurred to you?”

  “No, Serena reminded me, but I found out he’s been living in Europe and dismissed it. Even with a remote detonator, there was no way it could’ve been Jack until you came up with this beeper thing, right?”

  Merrick grunted, then grinned at what he was about to say. “So, did Jack and Jill go up the hill?”

  “God, you’re nosy.”

  “It goes directly to motive, Doc.”

  “I’d say the fact that he was an outspoken critic of my work is more on point. It shouldn’t be hard to find out who the beeper’s registered to, right?”

  “It was damaged. I’ve got ATF working on it.”

  Lilah groaned in dismay. “Only half the people on the ‘goddamned planet’ use them—Fiona for one.”

  “Your mother for another,” Merrick observed.

  “My mother? Get serious.”

  “Everybody’s a suspect till it’s over, Doc. She really all thumbs with the barbecue? I mean, what was she doing tailing us in the middle of the night?”

  “Looking out for me.”

  “So she leaves your sick father all alone?”

  “Yeah, all the time. During the day when she’s at work. At night when she does her marketing. That’s why she carries a beeper.”

  Merrick nooded, then settled in her desk chair and lit a cigarette. “By the way, keep the beeper thing to yourself. We always leave a piece of the puzzle in the box. Gives us a way to verify confessions. That’s why I kicked your pussy-whipped friend out of here.”

  “That gets an A for strategy and an F for bedside manner, Lieutenant. Now, to purposely change the subject . . .” She leaned across the desk, making eye contact with him. “You free later?”

  “ ’Fraid not. I promised my kid I’d help him with his algebra.” Merrick rolled his eyes. “Talk about the blind leading the blind . . .”

  “Hey, I got a perfect score on the SATs.”

  “A perfect score?” Merrick echoed incredulously.

  “Uh-huh. I’d be happy to tutor him.”

  “And he’d be more than happy if you did.”

  “Am I picking up on something here?”

  Merrick smiled. “What can I tell you. The kid’s got a thing for, uh, foxy redheads with brains.”

  “Like begets like?” she ventured flirtatiously. “Sounds like he’s got his daddy’s genes.”

  “Sure as hell hope not.”


  “You sound just like my father,” Lilah said, and laughed. “Guess firemen all have the same—”

  “Hold it, hold it,” Merrick interrupted, struck by a thought that propelled him from the chair. “I’ve been trying to think of this all weekend. You know if your father has any enemies?”

  “My father?” she scoffed. “He was senior deacon at church, coached Little League . . . the guy people came to for advice. When did you cook that one up?”

  “When I was crashing on you the other night,” he replied with a boyish smile. “I was thinking about him being a fireman, and this little bell started ringing.”

  “Not loud enough to keep you awake,” she teased.

  “No, but it had me tossing and turning,” he said, assembling the pieces. “You’re the target—but maybe your father is who this pyro is out to get.”

  Lilah’s brows arched. “By hurting me?”

  “With a fire bomb,” he replied pointedly. “Why not a knife? A gun? A hit-and-run? Remember that?”

  Lilah whimpered affirmatively. “Who’d want to hurt a retired fireman who’s dying?”

  “Someone who lost a loved one in a fire and blamed it on the smoke-eater who didn’t get there in time. Grief can turn real ugly. I’ve seen firemen spit on, threatened, assaulted—”

  “My father put his life on the line more times than I can count. He has medals for heroism, bravery above and beyond the call of duty—”

  “Okay, how about somebody he was on the job with? Couple of years ago we had a senior A.I. busted for torching buildings all over the state.”

  Lilah’s jaw slackened. “If my father had an enemy on the job, I think he’d have said something by now.”

  “Don’t let logic get in the way of common sense, Doc. You’d be amazed what people forget. You chat with them a while, push a button or two, and it all starts coming back. We do it with witnesses all the time. Can you set it up this afternoon?”

  “Sure, but he’s much sharper in the morning.”

  “First thing, then. Okay?” Lilah was nodding when his cellphone twittered. “Merrick . . . No, Gonzo, I can’t,” he snapped, assuming he was being assigned to another fire.