Touched by Fire

by Greg Dinallo

  “Lighten up,” Gonzalez counseled. “You had a call from Campus Security. Said to tell you they got that videotape you wanted.”

  Merrick hung up and turned to Lilah. “Where’s Campus Security at?”

  “Across the street.”

  “Come on, we’re going to watch a video.”

  They were just entering the lab when Paul Schaefer came through the door. “Lilah, glad I caught you,” be said, glancing at Merrick. “The tapes are being transcribed as we speak; but we better cross-reference my data with your bar-coding to make sure—”

  “This isn’t a good time,” Lilah interrupted.

  “Oh? What’s going on?”

  “None of your business,” Merrick replied before she could answer. He looked from Schaefer to Serena to Kauffman, then broke into an amused smile. “Talk about the usual suspects . . .” He cocked his head reconsidering it. “Actually, there are a couple missing—”

  “Is it one of you?” Lilah shouted. Until now she’d managed to keep her relationships in one compartment and the case in another, but Merrick’s wisecrack blew a hole in the wall that separated them, and she suddenly lost it. “Is it one of you? Is it?”

  “Hey, come on, Doc,” Merrick said, taking her aside. “Come on, settle down, this isn’t going to help.”

  Lilah resisted briefly, then took several deep breaths to regain her composure and nodded.

  “Where was I?” Merrick prompted. “Oh, yeah, suspects.” He burned Schaefer with a look and said, “Tell your wife I want to see her.”

  “Fiona? Why? She told you she was away.”

  “Her out-of-town alibi just got blown out of the water. Your office—tomorrow—five o’clock. Make sure she brings her beeper.”

  Merrick ushered Lilah out of the lab, then led the way to the elevators and thumbed the call button. “You really should’ve known better, Doc.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

  “Shakespeare,” Lilah intoned haughtily.

  The elevator dinged as if indicating a wrong answer.

  “Nope.” Merrick followed her in, and, in a matter-of-fact tone, said, “William Congreve. The Mourning Bride.”

  Lilah shrugged, then got back to the matter at hand. “If it was Fiona—or even Jack, for that matter—they won’t be on this video, will they?”

  “Not unless they dropped by to see the show,” Merrick replied. “Well, one thing’s working for us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Process of elimination. If it’s Fiona or Jack-what’s-his-face, none of the other suspects will be on it either.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Campus Security employs a multizone video system,” Chief Copeland intoned, tapping a pointer across a diagram of camera locations. “Blue-coded units cover what we call SEZs—structure entrance zones. Each provides an RTI—real-time image—to personnel manning the security desk in that structure.”

  Merrick squirmed impatiently. On arrival, he and Lilah had been hustled into the operations center, and now they were being subjected to a security briefing with the attention to detail Merrick imagined went into planning the Normandy invasion.

  “Yellow-coded units provide GCS—general campus surveillance,” Copeland droned on. “Unlike SEZs, GCS units are tied in to VCRs. Tapes are recycled unless they contain potential CRD like this one. If your man was in zone seven—and I have strong doubts he was—this unit would have picked him up.”

  “Strong doubts?” Merrick echoed, bemused. “Care to share them, or do we get to wait another week for that?”

  “The incendiary device was mailed,” Copeland replied condescendingly. “What would the perpetrator be doing in the target area when it detonated?”

  “Getting his rocks off,” Merrick replied sharply. “And we’d be getting ours off if we were watching that FVT instead of talking about it. FYI, that stands for fucking video tape.”

  Lilah made no effort to stifle her laughter.

  Copeland glared at her, then aimed a remote at a VCR. On the monitor, a grainy image of figures cloaked in silhouette and shadow began moving through leafy darkness. Date, camera location, and time counter were displayed across the bottom of the screen.

  Lilah shrugged as the tape ended in a blizzard of electronic snow. “Nothing.”

  “Let’s run it again,” Merrick said smartly. “By the way, that thing have slow-mo?”

  “Frame by frame if you want.”

  “I want,” Merrick replied. He pointed at the remote, the symbol for control, the symbol that had rivalries raging in living rooms all over the country, and added, “I’ll take that too.”

  Copeland scowled. Control was his opiate, Control Freak his nickname, which—to the dismay of the teenage daughters who gave it to him—he took as a compliment. Grudgingly, he tossed the remote to Merrick.

  Merrick played the tape frame by frame. This time the obscure figures danced an eerie stop-action ballet in the darkness. He frowned in reaction to a fleeting detail that he’d missed on the first run, and froze the image. If he saw what he thought he saw, two possibilities came to mind. One was a long shot, so he decided to explore the other first. “Any idea what that is?”

  Lilah leaned closer to the monitor. “Sort of looks like . . . like a ponytail, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure as hell does.” Merrick swatted at Lilah’s hair. “Like you were wearing it that night, right?”

  “Yes, I remember putting it up at the gym. Why?”

  “You said you got back to the lab sometime after eight.” Merrick pointed to the time counter. “Any chance it was seven fifty-four?”

  “No. No, I remember the clock in the lobby. It was definitely after eight. Eight-ten, eight-fifteen.”

  “Then that can’t be you, can it?”

  “Guess not.”

  “What about Fiona Schaefer?”

  “Fiona? I thought she was up in Santa Barbara.”

  “That’s what she claims, and some people we talked to are pretty sure she never left the place; but I’ve had this feeling she’s been lying about it. If it is her, she never figured we’d come up with the beeper. So being out of town was the perfect alibi.”

  “You’re thinking, beeper or no, maybe Fiona came back to . . . ‘to get her rocks off.’”

  Merrick nodded, then zoomed in to the figure’s head. Instead of being enhanced, the image further disintegrated. “Damn. She ever wear a ponytail?”

  “I guess. I mean, most women with long hair do, especially when it’s hot.” Lilah squinted curiously. “It sort of looks a little like a guy now, no?”

  “Sort of,” Merrick echoed with uncertainty.

  “You think maybe it could be Jack Palmquist?”

  “He have a ponytail?”

  “Not when he was working for me.”

  “Figures,” Merrick grunted, forced to consider the alternative he’d avoided earlier. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to link the two cases, but it couldn’t be ignored. “The name Eagleton mean anything to you?”

  “Not a thing. Why, he have one?”

  “Yup,” Merrick replied, explaining Eagleton’s link to the Las Flores fire. “He was up there that night, and could’ve been down here the next. It’s off the wall, but he had opportunity, and he sure has expertise.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Copeland said with an amused smile. “It’s called motive.”

  “What would I do without this guy?” Merrick asked sarcastically. He showed Lilah the photo of Eagleton. “James Eagleton. Any connection come to mind? Grade school? High school? College? Church group?”

  “No.”

  “One-night stand?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Don’t answer so fast. Maybe he tried to hit on you in a bar or something, and you told him to buzz off, and ever since he’s been—”

  “Who knows? A lot of guys’ve hit on me in bars.”

  “Okay . . . shifting gears, but still
on motive,” he said with a sideways glance to Copeland, “any chance he might have a grudge against your father?”

  Lilah shrugged. “You can ask him, tomorrow.”

  Merrick grunted, then called Pack-Tel and asked if Eagleton had mailed any packages recently. “Large ones—bold, black printing.”

  The owner typed Eagleton’s name into his computer. “Nope, not since we put this system in.”

  “Which was when?”

  “Little over six months ago.”

  “Shit,” Merrick groaned. He resisted an impulse to throw the phone, and kicked a wastebasket instead. It went tumbling across the floor, spilling its contents.

  “You break it, you bought it,” Copeland crowed.

  Merrick muttered an expletive, then took a twenty from his billfold and tossed it on the desk. “That’s for the basket.” Then tossed another after it—making it an even hundred he’d doled out in recent weeks—and made a mental note to put in for reimbursement. “That’s for a copy of the tape.” He locked his eyes on to Copeland’s. “The one I’m taking with me now.”

  “Now?” Copeland echoed smugly. “These things take paperwork, Lieutenant, and paperwork takes time.”

  “I don’t have time, dammit!”

  “That’s your problem,” Copeland said coolly. “This tape belongs to UCLA and the state of California. You want a copy of it, go get a subpoena.”

  Lilah stiffened with rage. “Subpoena? Lieutenant Merrick is trying to stop this nut from killing me, and you’re into marking your territory? Well, pee on all the hydrants you want, but not on my time!” She stepped to the VCR, ejected the cassette, and tossed it to Merrick. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Copeland glared at them, then shifted his look to the technician. “Make the goddamned copy,” he ordered.

  A short time later, tape in hand, Merrick and Lilah were walking across campus beneath forty-foot palms that were rustling in the wind. “You know, you were something else in there,” Merrick said with unmistakable admiration.

  “Really?” she prompted, pleased by his praise. “You don’t think I overreacted?”

  “No way, the jerk had it coming. The bit about hydrants was primo.”

  “Thanks,” Lilah said, cupping her hands to light a cigarette. “But something tells me our brains were running on dangerously low levels of sero in there.”

  “Sero?”

  “Serotonin. It’s a chemical that controls impulses.”

  “Well, if I don’t lick this case soon,” Merrick growled, “mine’s going to be running on empty.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Merrick was en route to ATF headquarters when he called Jason and apologized for blowing the algebra lesson. “Think you can hang in there till the weekend?”

  “The weekend? What about Wednesday? There’s no school. It’s Veteran’s Day.”

  “I don’t know. I was talking to Dr. Graham about it. Turns out she’s a math whiz, but she may not—”

  “She’s going to tutor me?” Jason interjected, his voice rising with excitement.

  “What she said.”

  “So then, she is your girlfriend . . .”

  “No, but if you play your cards right, something tells me she could be yours.”

  Merrick found Logan and Fletcher in the commissary. The old-timer was nursing a cup of black coffee, the young A.I. draining a bottle of Snapple. “I thought you guys were busting your ass on this case?”

  “Yeah, I just got a nasty pain in mine.”

  “Me too,” Fletcher chimed in.

  “Take two aspirins, then call Passport Control and have them run a guy named Jack Palmquist. He’s supposed to be in Sweden. Find out if he made any calls to this area on the nights the boxes went boom, then put out a bulletin on Eagleton.”

  “Eagleton?” Fletcher echoed, bemused.

  “Don’t gloat, Billy-boy,” Merrick cautioned, “it’s not what you think. Any action on the calls Fiona Schaefer made from Santa Barbara?”

  “Phone company’s working on it. By the way, a few more people on her list got back to me. Two of ’em swore Dr. Schaefer left the workshop before it was over.”

  Merrick’s eyes brightened in triumph. “I knew she was lying. They say when?”

  “Six-thirty, quarter of seven.”

  “Perfect timing too.”

  “What’s it matter?” Fletcher prompted. “That’s either her beeper or it isn’t; she either called it or she didn’t, right?”

  “Right, neither of which we can prove.”

  “Yet,” Fletcher corrected.

  “What if it turns out we can’t? What if she made the call from a colleague’s cellphone or a public booth? Then the key to breaking her is going to be catching her in a lie.” Merrick shifted his look to Logan. “What’s the story on the beeper?”

  “No prints on the case. Interior was clean. So were the guts. Tattoo is trying to come up with who it’s registered to.”

  “She show you her other tatt yet?” Merrick teased.

  Logan flicked a look in Fletcher’s direction. “You know what, Danny-boy? I think you need to get laid.”

  “That’s what my kid said.”

  “Smart,” Logan grunted. “Took him to that bacon and egg joint again, huh?”

  Merrick nodded.

  “No, no, Starbucks,” Fletcher advised, in a tone that suggested he was dispensing profound wisdom. “You want to meet women, you hang out at Starbucks.”

  Merrick groaned. “I’d probably run into Joyce and her Lethal Weapon live-in.”

  “Then again,” Logan surmised mischievously, “you might run into somebody like . . . Tattoo.”

  “Yeah,” Fletcher said with a grin. “The rumor mill says she takes her electric guitar to bed. Think about it: She’s straddling you with her Stratocaster. You’re plugged in to her amplifier with a bird’s-eye view of both tatts. She starts ripping off some twangy licks, gets the wah-wah pedal and whammy bar working—”

  “You guys are sick,” Merrick said with a lurid cackle. “Come to think of it, I need to talk to her.”

  “Man doesn’t waste a minute, does he?” Logan said.

  “Mention the word wah-wah and he’s gone.”

  In the Computer Imaging lab, Pam Dyer was doing an electronic postmortem on the beeper. Her back was to the door, and her bottom, sheathed in stretch denim, balanced on the stool like a piece of ripe fruit in a still life. Merrick stood in the doorway admiring it, wondering if she thought his hard drive would crash if she showed him that other tattoo. “Making any headway?”

  “Oh, hi,” Pam chirped. The jeans were topped by a scoop-neck blouse that revealed the word WIRED tattooed on her breast in computer-style letters just below the tan line. “Pretty slow going. It’s a digital Motorola. A vibrator, not a beeper. Very popular model.”

  “Registered to who?”

  “Won’t know until I come up with the cap code.”

  “The what?”

  “The cap code. It’s a number. Not the one people use to beep you. The one that IDs you at the paging center. See, if your beeper crashes or something, its cap code is canceled; then when you get a new one, its cap code is assigned the same number people have been calling to beep you. That way you don’t have to—”

  “Give everyone on the planet your new number,” Merrick interjected with a thoughtful drag of his cigarette. “If we had that number . . . you could come up with who it’s registered to, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He gestured to the components. “Can’t you get it from that?”

  “I’m trying, but the chip got a little fried and the data starts breaking down when I try to extract it. So . . .” She paused and hissed in frustration.

  “Sometimes it helps to get away from it,” Merrick philosophized, producing the surveillance video. “Need your opinion on this.” He inserted the cassette into a VCR and began fast-forwarding the tape in search of the section with the obscure figure and ponytail.

  Pam wat
ched the image streaking across the monitor. “I hear you live in Manhattan Beach.”

  Merrick grunted.

  “You ever go Rollerblading on the bike path?”

  “Not in this life,” he replied, making her laugh. “I think maybe hanging out at, you know . . . Starbucks is more my speed.”

  “All those wanna-bes working on their screenplays? You want to loosen up, try the Sandpiper.” She leaned against the table, thumbs hooked in her jeans, like a Calvin Klein kiddie porn ad. “My boyfriend’s band does gigs there. I play guitar sometimes.”

  Merrick swept his eyes over her, making a decision. “I hear it’s your favorite sleep toy.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. I just picked it up . . .” “Fletcher,” she guessed smartly, eliciting a boyish smile from Merrick that confirmed it. “Married guys in their twenties are the horniest. I don’t get it.”

  Merrick was about to explain that divorced arson investigators have been known to come down with the same affliction when the obscure figure appeared on the monitor. He advanced the image frame by frame and froze it. “See that thing that looks like a ponytail?”

  Pam nodded.

  “Any chance we can enhance it enough to identify that—that man? That woman? That Martian?”

  Pam waggled a hand. “Iffy. Give it my best shot.”

  “Shall I wait?” Merrick asked.

  “Not unless you brought your sleep toys.”

  Merrick smiled thinly. “How long?”

  “Hard to say. Coupla days, with luck.”

  “Coupla days?” Merrick echoed with a groan. “Come on, Tattoo, I’ve got a victim out there who’s terrified. She damn near lost it today.”

  “Well, it’d go faster if I could get my hands on some snapshots of the suspects. I mean, then I could do topographic scans and computer-compare them to the image on the tape.”

  “You got ’em,” Merrick said, making a mental list: Fiona Schaefer, followed by Jack Palmquist, Marge Graham, James Eagleton, Serena Chen, and Paul Schaefer. “Pedal to the metal, soon as you have ’em, okay? The doc’s feeling the heat, but she’s not a crispy critter yet. We have to nail this weirdo before he turns her into one.”