Fireproof

by Alex Kava

  The skull looked as if someone had taken a fist-size rock and bashed a hole into the top of it. The fire investigative team had just begun moving and raking smoldering debris into ridges along the concrete floor, where they would later sift and examine it.

  “Think of the skull as a sealed container,” Stan explained to his audience, ignoring the pitter-patter hitting his umbrella. “Like a ceramic jug filled with liquid. Heat it up and it doesn’t take long for the liquid inside to reach a boiling point. That creates pressure.”

  Just when Tully envisioned the ceramic jug bursting apart, Stan put an end to his own analogy and added, “The cranium explodes. Boiling blood, brain, and tissue expand and have nowhere to go. The skull literally explodes into pieces. Sometimes it can blow a head right off a body.”

  “It was a hot fire,” the fire chief admitted, nodding. “This thing burned upward of a thousand degrees. That doesn’t happen without some help. Definitely used an accelerant. May have been a chemical reaction. We found the start point at the back door. Actually on the outside of the back door.”

  All of them continued to stare down at the rubble as if expecting more bones to appear, like one of those picture puzzles that if you looked hard enough and long enough you’d see the hidden objects.

  “The intense heat makes the blood boil inside the bones, too,” Stan said. “Same kind of pressure builds up as in the skull. Makes bones fracture and break apart. Could be blown all over the place.”

  Which set them all looking around.

  “There are other floors.” Ivan pointed up. “Is it possible the rest of the body’s still up there?”

  And again, as if on cue, all heads swiveled upward to the smoldering, dripping rafters.

  “Chief,” one of the techs interrupted.

  He held up a finger to tell the man he’d be right here. As he turned to leave he told them, “Give my folks time to sift through this mess. We should have some answers for you, but remember I’ve got two sites here.” And he walked away.

  Ivan followed close behind, his neck still craning up as if he expected body parts to fall down from the second floor.

  “What are the chances of IDing this …” Racine paused, searching for words as she referred to the skull. “This victim?”

  Stan set aside his umbrella, dug in his Tyvek pocket, and pulled out a pair of purple latex gloves.

  “Teeth don’t burn. They might have broken or been jarred off from the pressure.” He picked up the skull and carefully examined the jaw. “Well, this is unusual.” He turned the skull to get a better look inside the jaw. He scraped at the soot with his gloved thumb.

  “What’s wrong?” Racine asked.

  “The bone doc will need to examine this. But I think the teeth may have been shattered.”

  “The fire couldn’t do that?”

  “No. Not that I know of.” He was studying the top of the skull now and turned to show them the hole at the top. “Usually when a skull bursts from heat pressure, it shatters. It is a bit odd to have a hole this big without fracturing the skull into pieces. Unless the skull was compromised before the fire.”

  “What do you mean ‘compromised’?” Tully wanted to know. “Are you saying the victim may have been bashed in the head and teeth before the fire?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Tully and Racine exchanged a look and Stan noticed.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The victim out by the Dumpster. Her face is bashed in.”

  CHAPTER 15

  It was complicated. That’s what Maggie wanted to tell Ben.

  In just a little over a year Benjamin Platt had gone from being her doctor to her friend to her … what? What were they exactly?

  Boyfriend, girlfriend sounded sophomoric. And although they had shared a hotel room—and a bed, once—as well as many intimate thoughts and conversations, they weren’t lovers. Yet.

  Just when both of them confided that they wanted to be more than friends Ben had put the skids on. All it took was his admission that he wanted children, and Maggie found herself backing off, way off.

  His only daughter had died five years ago, ending his marriage and causing him to focus all his energy on his career. Maggie had buried herself in her work, too, ever since her divorce. But Ben still ached for his daughter. And while he longed to replace that ache, Maggie wanted to shield herself from another potential loss. Being alone was safer than feeling too much.

  Yes, it was complicated.

  But she was glad to see him. So why didn’t she tell him that? He was still her friend. Partly because he had reverted to acting like her doctor as soon as he crossed the exam room threshold.

  “An occupational hazard,” he had said when he saw her impatience with his incessant questions. But then he continued, “Did you lose consciousness? Any blurred vision? Dizziness?”

  “I’m fine.” And she finally put up her hands in surrender. “Tully insisted. That’s all.”

  And she convinced herself that this lapse back to a doctor-patient relationship was enough reason not to tell him that her head still throbbed, that she’d been getting killer headaches for months now.

  Ben had been her doctor at USAMRIID after Maggie was exposed to the Ebola virus. She had been in the Slammer, an isolation unit. No one could talk to her without an inch-thick glass wall in between. No one could touch her without wearing a blue hazmat suit. Her conversations with Ben had kept her from panicking, from diving deep inside herself. When they discovered they both loved classic movies, Ben had used them to entertain and transport her to another world outside the Slammer’s walls. He had shown her how to escape reality to gain a grasp on sanity.

  Dr. Benjamin Platt—army colonel, scientist, soldier—was one of the strongest, most gentle men she’d ever met. There were times when he looked at her and she felt as though he could see so deep inside her that he must have gotten a glimpse of her soul. He understood her, sometimes more than she understood herself. And for the last several months what she had started to feel for him scared the hell out of her.

  He offered to take her home. Her car was still at the fire site and she asked if he would drop her there instead. Besides, she wanted to get back to the investigation. She didn’t want Kunze to have any more ammunition against her than this little trip to the ER had already given him.

  Ben suggested breakfast first. Before he could slip back into his role as doctor, Maggie asked, “Are you sure you have time? You look dressed for something important.”

  She wanted to lighten the mood and almost added, Who died? Then she was very glad she had not, when Ben said he had a funeral to attend later. Another soldier, another comrade coming home in a box.

  She didn’t know how he stayed strong and positive with so much death around him. She told him that once and he said he wondered the same thing about her.

  “But my dead people are usually strangers,” Maggie had told him. Which wasn’t exactly true. By the time she closed the file on a murder case she often knew more about the victim than his or her family did. And sometimes the victims had been people she knew. Always, she knew much more about the killers than she ever cared to know.

  She chose the McDonald’s just off the interstate. Maggie let Ben order while she found a quiet corner table where she could sit with her back to the wall. It was an old compulsion, one she hadn’t recognized until she started sharing meals in restaurants with Ben. He wanted to do the same thing—they laughed the first time they realized each of them wanted—needed—to sit where they could see the doors and where no one could come up from behind them.

  They were quite the pair: a woman who expected killers in every corner and a soldier who looked for grenades or suicide bombers. And yet the similarities were a surprising comfort to Maggie. She’d never met a man who understood her so well and, more surprisingly, who accepted her and all the insane components that made her who she was. But this morning there was a disarming quiet between them. She knew he was disappoin
ted that her first instinct hadn’t been to call him.

  It wouldn’t help to explain. He knew the reason and grudgingly even accepted it. That didn’t mean he had to like it. Being a loner and being alone were two separate things. Maggie had been alone since her divorce but she’d been a loner since she was twelve. She had learned back then not to count on anyone other than herself. If you didn’t count on anyone, they couldn’t let you down. More important, they couldn’t hurt you.

  She watched Ben standing in line from across the room. He was so damned handsome. She glanced around, noticing the looks he was getting from the other women customers. There was something so graceful in the way he moved, broad shoulders back, chin up, eyes intense and aware of the surroundings.

  Racine said he was too “spit and polish,” but after working with Ben on a school contamination case last fall, even Racine had a new respect for him. The uniform did make him look pressed and proper, but Maggie had seen him out of uniform enough to know that this man had a keen sense of who he was and what he valued, and he knew it without the uniform, without a stitch of clothing on.

  That’s when it hit her. The obvious smacking her in the face. Ben didn’t consider a phone call from her a courtesy or an obligation. He hoped it would be an extension of herself. An instinct, second nature. Of course he did.

  And why wasn’t it?

  Was she simply not capable of allowing someone else to be a part of her?

  She watched him let a mother with a little girl go in line before him. She saw him smile down at the girl. The mother looked like she was giving her daughter instructions to thank him.

  Even from across the restaurant Maggie could see the sadness in his face. That was where the major difference lay between them, like a thick wedge. Both of them had scars from their pasts, but the hole Ben’s daughter, Ali, had left in his heart was not one Maggie would ever be able to repair.

  For the first time Maggie realized this was why she hadn’t called, why she hadn’t allowed him to get any closer. Rather than lose him, she was already pushing him away. And suddenly that revelation made her feel terribly sad and empty.

  CHAPTER 16

  Patrick unpacked the last of the groceries that he’d picked up on his way back from his official slapdown. At least it didn’t come with a suspension. Since he was fifteen he had had some kind of job. Money was always tight, but he had always pulled his weight, paid his way. He promised—no, he swore—he wouldn’t take advantage of Maggie’s generosity.

  He stood in front of the open kitchen cabinets trying to figure out her system. She was neat and tidy, but it looked like she didn’t cook beyond the basics. Patrick had been cooking since he was ten. During college he volunteered at the fire department in a nearby community outside of New Haven, Connecticut. Firefighters were some of the best cooks and Patrick had learned how to experiment and improvise, building a repertoire that included everything from chateaubriand to a killer jambalaya. Tonight he’d fix pan-seared scallops with a rice pilaf, a baby-greens salad, and a peach-raspberry crisp for dessert. Hopefully it wouldn’t make her suspicious.

  Maggie had already made it clear that she didn’t like him working for a private firefighting company. Like government-run departments were any more ethical? He did have to hand it to her. She listened, heard him out, even refrained from commenting many times when he could see her pretending not to wince, not to clench her teeth. As a public servant, she believed it was wrong to decide who to save and who not to save depending only on whether they could afford it.

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t stop to put out a fire at a house because the owner wasn’t on your roster of policyholders? You’d drive your truck and equipment and special skills right on by? Could you really do that?”

  “It isn’t my decision,” he’d argued. Reasoning that if he hadn’t been paid by the policyholders he would not be driving by that house in the first place. Even he didn’t quite believe that logic, but that’s exactly what had been drilled into him during training.

  Yet that’s exactly what had happened during this last assignment. There hadn’t been just one house—there were dozens. The fire had spread quickly, like liquid racing over the grass. The policyholders they had been sent to protect were a good ten miles away from the fire. They had spent the day cleaning gutters, removing flammables from the yards, hosing down the houses and the perimeter with fire-retardant chemicals and helping to evacuate. They were finished with all their preparations. There was nothing more to do except sit back and wait until and unless the fire got closer.

  So Patrick and his partner, Wes Harper, drove back to their staging area. To get back they had to maneuver around the burn zone. Patrick was team captain for the day. Switching built confidence, fairness, and reliability. You didn’t screw with your partner because tomorrow it was his turn to screw with you. That’s not exactly the way they explained it in training, but that was the basic idea. And that was what happened. Because Patrick made the team decision to stop. And Wes made the team decision the next day, to rat Patrick out.

  Harvey, Maggie’s white Lab, stood whining and watching even though Patrick had filled both dog bowls. That’s when Patrick realized that Jake hadn’t come in from the backyard. Then he remembered Maggie’s concern earlier. Jake had been escaping and a neighbor had already been complaining. Actually, now that Patrick thought about it, Maggie had said the neighbor had been threatening, not complaining.

  It wasn’t hard to understand. The black German shepherd looked menacing, and from Maggie’s brief explanation as to why the dog made the trip back with her from Nebraska, it sounded like Jake had proved to be not only menacing but also dangerous. It was obvious the dog had a fierce loyalty to Maggie. It cut both ways. Maggie had panicked this morning when she thought Jake had dug his way out of the backyard.

  Patrick felt his stomach drop. After all that Maggie had done for him. Damn if he’d let this dog get out on his watch. He left the cabinets open, grabbed a leash and a jacket, and ran out the back door.

  CHAPTER 17

  Maggie arrived back at the scene just as Tully and Racine were walking out of the blasted wall of the second site. She almost wished they had left for the day. Anything to avoid those looks of concern. Tully had already called to check on her, offered to pick her up and take her home. She had declined. Told him she was on her way back, and yet the two of them looked surprised to see her.

  “Just a few stitches,” she told them before either had a chance to ask. She said it in midstride and in a tone that closed the subject. “You mind catching me up?”

  Racine gave her details about “the stiff” behind the Dumpster, including her theory that the kill had been made somewhere else.

  “Stan’s office bagged and carted her,” Racine added. “He promised to do the autopsy himself first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Any chance she was homeless?” Maggie asked.

  Racine shook her head. “Feet were exposed. Looked like a professional pedicure.”

  “We did find the remains of a cardboard box,” Tully said. “Ganza’s back there seeing what trace he can find.”

  Keith Ganza was the director of the FBI crime lab. Maggie wondered why this case suddenly warranted the director’s presence instead of a crime scene tech. Their boss, Assistant Director Kunze, lived by a political code Maggie abhorred. Twice in the past year that code had almost gotten her killed. She hoped Ganza was on the site simply because he wanted to be here instead of sending one of his techs. He was good. She liked working with him. If there were any answers in the rubble, Ganza would find them.

  “I’ve got uniforms talking to the locals,” Racine continued. “They’re checking deliveries to the area and cab drivers. Maybe we get lucky and one of them saw something.”

  Maggie stopped outside the opening Tully and Racine had just exited. The scent accosted her and she pretended it didn’t bother her. Why had she thought the scorched stench would have dissipated? She knew better. What she didn�
�t know, what still surprised her, was her body’s involuntary reaction to it. She caught herself wanting to hold her breath as the smell seeped into her throat, her lungs. Even her mouth tasted the charred remains like the black carbon on an overdone charcoal-grilled steak.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself.

  Tully kept his fingers at the top of his Tyvek overalls’ zipper, almost as if waiting for Maggie’s signal whether they were going back inside.

  That’s when it occurred to her that she didn’t need to go in. What could she possibly learn that Tully and Racine hadn’t found? Her jaw relaxed. To insist on going for a look-see would be overkill. She didn’t need to drive home any point here.

  She saw the fire department’s crew still sifting and raking the ashes and rubble.

  “Any signs of the timing device?” she asked, not making a move.

  Tully shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Fire chief believes they found the start point on the outside of the first building,” Racine said. “Preliminary guess is some kind of chemical reaction, because of the intensity of the fire. Said it looked similar to last week’s.”

  “There was gasoline poured along the alley from the front of the building to the Dumpster,” Tully told her. “It was against the brick wall. Burned up the line of accelerant without going anywhere else.”

  “The alley wasn’t the start point?”

  “Not even close. It might have been an afterthought. And a poorly executed one.”

  “The killer didn’t even try to burn the body?”

  Tully shrugged. “If that was his intention he didn’t do a very good job. The guy torches two buildings but his murder victim doesn’t quite catch fire. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Oh, and there was another body inside the first building,” Racine said casually, almost absentmindedly. “Or at least someone’s head. They haven’t found the body yet.”