by Nora Roberts
“No, I’m not a cop. It’s about fire, Joe. Joey’s got himself in a real fix down in Baltimore. That keeps up, he won’t be sending you any money.”
“You looking to get my boy in trouble?”
“Your boy’s in trouble. He’s been lighting fires back home, back in the neighborhood. He killed somebody tonight, Joe. He killed the widow of one of the arson investigators who helped put you away for the Sirico fire.”
“Bastards dragged me out of my own house.” He blew out smoke, hacked until his sunken eyes watered. “Out of my own house.” He picked up the beer, sipped and hacked some more.
“How long did they give you, Joe? How long do you have left?”
When he grinned, he looked like a nightmare. “Asshole doctors said I’d be dead already. Here I am, so what the fuck do they know? I beat ’em.”
“Joey know you’re sick?”
“Took me to the doctor a couple times. They wanted to put poison in me. Screw that. Cancer, pancreas. Said the cancer’s eating up my liver and shit now, too, and how I can’t drink, can’t smoke.” Still grinning with that death’s head, he sucked on the cigarette. “Fuck them, fuck them all.”
“Joey went back to clean things up, finish things off for you.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Take care of the people who screwed with you. Especially Catarina Hale.”
“Little slut. Sashaying around the neighborhood like she’s better than anybody else. Teasing my boy. So he tried to get a piece, so what? That asshole Hale thinks he can mess with me and mine? Showed him.”
“You paid for it.”
“Ruined my life.” The grin melted away. “That asshole Hale ruined my life. Couldn’t get a decent job after. Mopping up other people’s puke, for chrissake. Took my dignity’s what he did. Took my life away. I got sick ’cause of being in prison, no matter what the fuckhead doctors say. Probably pass this on to Joey, good chance of it. All because of that little whore.”
John decided not to point out you couldn’t catch pancreatic cancer in prison. And if you could, you couldn’t pass it on to your son.
“Pisser, all right. I guess Joey felt that way, too.”
“He’s my son, isn’t he? He respects his father. Knows it’s not my fault he maybe got the cancer genes offa me. He’s got brains. Joey’s always had brains. He didn’t get them from his stupid bitch of a mother. He’s going to send me some money, maybe take me on a trip so I can get out of this godforsaken heat.”
He closed his eyes a moment as he turned his face toward one of the fans. His wispy hair stirred in the stale breeze. “Going to Italy, up north, in the mountains where it’s cool. He’s got something going, the cops’ll never take him for it. He’s too smart.”
“He burned a woman to death in her own bed tonight.”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.” But the sudden light in those eyes showed a father’s horrible pride. “If he did, she must’ve had it coming.”
“If he gets in touch with you, Joe, do yourself a favor.” John took out a notebook, wrote down his name and number. “Give me a call. You help me find him, it’ll be better for him. Cops do, I can’t promise what’ll happen. He killed a cop’s wife. You call me, Joe, and maybe I can fix it so you get a little money.”
“How much money?”
“Couple hundred,” John said as his gut roiled with disgust. “Maybe more.”
He rose, put the number on the tray table. “He’s pushing his luck, I promise you.”
“You got brains, you don’t need luck.”
While John was driving out of the Bronx, Joey picked the lock on the rear door of his row house. A couple of stops along the way, and he was right on schedule.
He imagined the cop’s wife roasting like a suckling pig, and the image made him smile as he finessed the locks.
Places to go, he’d told her. Yeah, he had places to go. And people to burn. Big-nosed John Minger was on his short list.
He slipped in the back, took the snub-nosed .22 out of his pack. He’d shoot him first. Kneecap him. Then they’d have a little talk while he set the fire.
Going to keep the city’s heroes busy tonight, he thought and worked his way carefully through the darkened house.
Old man was probably in bed already. Already sawing them off this time of night.
He’d rather be dead than old.
Age wouldn’t be a problem for Minger much longer. He’d be dead, the whole fucking slew of them would be dead before his father bought it. That was justice.
They’d killed his father sure as if they’d carved him open with a knife. Every mother’s son of them was going to pay for it.
He made his way upstairs, excitement and pleasure building. In the knees, he thought again. Pop, pop! See how he liked it.
See how he liked watching the fire claw across the bed toward him. See how he liked having it eat at him the way the cancer was eating at his father.
He wasn’t going down that way. No fucking way. Joseph Pastorelli’s boy, Joey, wasn’t going by cancer.
Things to do, he thought again, a lot of things to do before he walked into the fire and ended it.
When Minger was done, it’d be time to move on to the main attractions. The night was young yet.
But he slipped into and searched every room, and didn’t find his prey.
His finger vibrated on the trigger, his hand shook with the effort of resisting the urge to fire into the empty bed.
Went out to watch the cop’s bitch burn, that’s what he did. People like to watch. Reena probably called crying to him, so he went to hold her hand.
Probably banged her plenty over the years.
He could wait a little bit. Yeah, the night was young so he could spare a little time. Get him when he got home. Just wait like a cat at the rat hole.
He’d just put the wait time to good use and set things up.
Smoke still curtained the room, and her boots squished in the wet of the bedroom carpet as Reena looked down on the remains of Deborah Umberio.
The sodden remains of the charred mattress told the tale.
“She burned where she lay,” O’Donnell said. “Right into the padding.”
Peterson, the ME in a short-sleeved shirt and khakis, waited while Reena took digitals. “Could have been dead before he lit the room. Or unconscious. I’ll let you know what we find. We’ll move on this right away.”
“She wouldn’t have been dead, or unconscious.” Reena lowered the camera. “He’d have wanted her alive and aware. He’d want her to know what was coming. To feel it. That would feed him. He’d have tortured her first, he’d need to. He’d have made her suffer first.”
She drew a breath. “Because she was a woman, he’d have taken his time with her. It makes him feel more important, more virile. With his history of sexual assault, he probably raped her.”
“Traces of what looks like cloth inside her mouth.” Peterson leaned over the body, close. “Indicate she was gagged.”
“She opened the door to him.” Like Josh, she thought. “Why? She was a cop’s wife for what, thirty years, and she opens the door to a strange man? He had a pass—delivery, maintenance. Someone had to see him come into the building. Canvass has to turn up something, someone.”
“We’ll start working through the layers here,” O’Donnell told her, and she nodded.
“You can see what he did. Used a flammable, focused on the bed, then set trailers around the room, built his chimneys to punch it all up. He didn’t need the other point of origin in the kitchen to kill her. That was for us. That was for the firefighters who responded. Why not take out a couple of them, too? More bang for the buck.”
She stepped carefully through and around debris, looked toward the kitchen. A pot lid protruded from a wall. Wet dripped down it, and from the jags of ceiling that remained. The street-facing wall was all but gone. Some of the charred remains of cupboards were missing doors. Moving in, crouching down, she used
a light and magnifying glass.
“These doors didn’t burn, or blow, O’Donnell. He unscrewed them, used them for his chimneys, for fuel. He’s inventive.” Frowning, she looked back at her partner. “But would he come in empty-handed, trust that she had everything he’d need for the job? He’d need rope, an inflammable of his choice, matches, maybe a weapon. Means a bag, a briefcase, a duffel. Something.”
She straightened, pulled out her ringing phone.
“It’s John,” she told O’Donnell.
“Go ahead. I’ll get the team started in here.”
They started the grids and the photographs.
“Pastorelli’s dying.” Reena pinched the bridge of her nose. “Pancreatic cancer. He told John he hasn’t seen Joey for a couple of months, that he’s supposed to send money. Something about them taking a trip soon, to Italy.”
“That’s why he’s escalated.”
“His father’s dying. He can’t let that go unsung. And from what John got out of the interview, Senior may have convinced his boy that he’s going to face the same fate. Joey wants me to know who’s doing this, who’s coming for me because it’s a tribute to his father—and Jesus, maybe a kind of suicide mission. He’s still the boy running after the police car, after his father.”
“So he figures if they live, he can get them both out of the country after he’s done here? Take his revenge, pay his tribute, whatever he wants to call it, then hide out in Italy?”
“Not hide out. He wouldn’t think of it as hiding out. That would make him weak.” She rubbed at her stinging eyes. “Getting away with it, that’s different. Enjoying the high life somewhere—for the time he thinks they have left—thumbing his nose at what he’s left behind. He had money last December. He could have used some of that for fake passports, for transportation, for a place overseas. He might have friends or a connection there. Pastorelli said northern Italy, up in the mountains. We can start working that. But he’s not going to get that far.”
She looked around at the steam and the rubble, the ruin. “I’m not going to let him get that far.”
“Is John looking to stay on Pastorelli in New York?”
“No, he doesn’t think he can get more there. He’s heading home. I nagged at him to get a room for the night instead of trying to drive all the way back. He sounded beat.”
He waited until midnight, then thought, What the fuck. He could come back for the old bastard another time. He could leave him a nice surprise, then take him out some other time.
He’d seen the cops come to the front and back doors, and he’d seen them drive away. Doing a check, getting a lay of the land. So maybe it was best to do a little work, and move on to the next.
He’d already primed the bedroom, the one where he’d found clothes in the closet. He used some of them to make trailers. Mattress stuffing—something he thought of as a trademark now. Waxed paper, methyl alcohol. Might as well sign the portrait, he thought.
Though it would be fun to spread things out through the house, it was quicker—and just as effective—to concentrate on the one room.
He’d found family photographs. These he broke out of their frames and scattered. Maybe he’d move on the real thing one of these days. You take my family, I take yours.
But for now, he struck flame, watched it come to life.
On the way out, he laid a paper takeout napkin with Sirico’s cheerful logo on the kitchen counter.
Reena worked in the bedroom, teasing out liquid that had pooled in the cracks of the floor, settled under the remains of the baseboard. She bagged traces of trailers that hadn’t burned to ash, took samples of the ash itself.
Trippley came and crouched beside her. “We found some hair in the shower drain. Might be his.”
“Good. Good. We get his DNA on scene, it’ll wrap him like a bow.”
“We’ve got glass fragments from a wine bottle in the living area. Might get prints.”
There was something else, Reena thought as she paused. Something in his tone. “What is it?”
“They found a Sirico’s takeout menu outside.”
Her fingers curled, then released. “I wondered where he’d put it.” Eyes grim, she got back to work. “Delivery. Could’ve posed as a delivery guy. Not food. She wouldn’t let him in. Package? She’d have to have ordered something. What would . . .” Flowers, she decided, remembering Bo’s brush with him at the supermarket. “Maybe flowers.”
She tilted her head back. “Why does a veteran cop’s wife open the door to a stranger? Because he’s delivering flowers. We need to ask the neighbors, the people in neighboring buildings if they saw a guy carrying a florist’s box in addition to the duffel or briefcase idea.”
“I’ll get that going.”
They both looked as O’Donnell moved into the room. “He hit again. Engines are responding to a fire at John Minger’s.”
“He’s not there.” Reena got shakily to her feet. “He can’t be there yet, even if he drove straight back.”
“Go,” Trippley told her. “We’ll stay with this.”
She moved quickly, stripping off her protective gloves on the way out. “If he’s trying to push this through tonight, he may go for my parents, my brother or sisters.”
“They’re covered, Hale.”
“Yeah.” But she made a rapid series of calls anyway.
“Don’t leave the house,” she told her father. “Nobody leaves the house. I’m on my way to John’s now. I don’t want anyone stepping foot out of the house until I say different. I’m going to get back to you as soon as I can.”
She hung up before he could argue. “He isn’t staying around here. Maybe in the county, but not in the city. Maybe down in D.C.”
“We’ve got cops flashing his picture at hotels, motels. It’s a lot to cover.”
“He’d go for high end. He’s not tapped out, and he thinks ahead. He’s got ID, he’s got a credit card to match it. Playing the traveling exec, maybe. A few days at one location, move to another.”
She popped out of the car when O’Donnell braked behind the engine. There was a clenched fist in place of her heart, though she could see the fire was contained, nearly suppressed.
She moved quickly toward Steve. “Gas lines?”
“No leaks. Word is the fire was contained in the bedroom. Smoke alarm deactivated. Woman out walking her dog saw the smoke, called it in.”
“Where is she?”
“Right over there. Nancy Long.”
“Nancy? Gina and I went to school with her.” Finding her in the crowd, Reena walked over. Nancy held her excited terrier on a leash with one hand and her husband’s arm with the other.
“Nancy.”
“Reena. God this is awful! But they said Mr. Minger wasn’t home. Nobody was inside. I saw smoke. Susie was making such a fuss I gave up and took her for a walk. She was just peeing when I looked up. Maybe I smelled it, I don’t know, but I looked up and I saw smoke coming out of the window. I didn’t know what to do, I guess I panicked. I ran over and beat on Mr. Minger’s door, shouted for him. Then I ran home. I couldn’t even dial nine-one-one my hands were shaking so hard. I had to yell for Ed to do it.”
“You might have saved John’s house. And if he had been inside, you might have saved his life.”
“I don’t know. I’m just sick about it.”
“Did you see anyone else? Someone out walking, someone driving away?”
“No. I didn’t see anyone, not then.”
“Not then?”
“I mean, there was nobody out walking around except me.”
“Maybe you saw someone earlier?”
“Housetraining a new puppy means you’re outside a lot. Before we went to bed I took Susie for what I thought was our last walk of the night. I was just opening the door to go in, and I saw this guy walk by. But that was earlier, near to midnight, I think.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“No. I wouldn’t have paid any attention, except he glanced ov
er when I spoke to Susie, and he kind of waved. And I thought, I wonder who’s getting lucky tonight?”
“Lucky?”
“He had one of those long white flower boxes, and I thought how Ed never brings me flowers anymore.”
“This was around midnight?”
“Right around.”
“I’m going to show you a picture, Nancy.”
Reena stood in John’s kitchen, stared at the Sirico’s takeout napkin on the counter. She put the evidence marker in its place, then bagged it.
“John’s on his way back.” O’Donnell closed his phone. “It’ll take him two, three hours. You want to get started on this or wait until he gets here?”
“Can you handle this for now? I want to check on my family, then get the samples we’ve got so far in.”
“Take a uniform.”
“That’s my plan. He could’ve waited on this. Given it another day or two, made sure John was home. Having us scramble tonight was more important. He was just waiting for me to click to who he is.”
“There’s a unit sitting on your house now, men front and back.”
She managed a smile. “That’s going to piss him off.” Her belly tightened when her phone rang. “Hale.”
“Too bad he wasn’t home. He’d be frying now.”
She signaled O’Donnell. “That must’ve been a disappointment to you, Joey.”
“Hell, the cop’s bitch was enough for tonight. I thought of you when I was doing her, Reena. Every time I raped her, I was thinking of you. You get your messages?”
“Yeah, I got them.”
“That’s your dad’s face in the lame chef’s hat, isn’t it? Your sexy old lady drew it.” He laughed when she said nothing. “There’s another one waiting for you. At your brother’s clinic. Better hurry.”
“God. Goddamn it.” She cleared the call, hit 911. “The clinic where my brother and his wife work. Two blocks away.”
“I’ll drive.” O’Donnell rushed out the door with her.
The Sirico’s wine list was in the gutter, and the building up in flames.
“I’m suiting up.” She popped the trunk, pulled out her gear. “Help with suppression.”