by Alex P. Berg
“Not necessarily,” said a creaky new voice.
I looked up to find two individuals walking along the path toward us. One of them I knew. Detective Ogden Justice, the fourth member of Alton Dean’s investigative team, was hard to miss. At six and a half feet tall and tipping the scales somewhere north of three hundred and fifty pounds, he would’ve made a mountain of a man, but since he was an ogre, he wasn’t too far off the median. With buttery smooth, espresso-colored skin, a bright white smile, and dark hair that he kept trimmed almost to the skull, he was quite the looker, although the crisp, three-piece suits he wore certainly contributed to his overall image. All in all, he was a bit brawny for my tastes, but if jokes were any indication of true feelings, Moss had a bit of a thing for him.
The man next to him was everything Justice wasn’t. He was barely over five feet tall, rotund, and had a squished face that made him look like a mole. A bit of wispy hair hung over his ears and around the base of his head, but his crown was as bald as an egg. Suspenders stretched and heaved, barely keeping his waistband in place, although one of his shirt tails had somehow broken free and hung over the front of his trousers. Given that Justice’s voice was deep and smooth like a professional radio host’s, I figured he’d been the one who’d spoken.
Dean stood as the pair approached. “Morning, Cortez. Did Justice drag you out here?”
The mole man shook Dean’s hand. “Captain Ellison asked me to come given what he’d heard about the remains. Justice grabbed me as I was walking through the front door.”
“And I’d barely been at the station a minute myself,” said Justice. “Could’ve waited for me, you know.”
Moss smirked. “We left a note. Not like we’d take one car, anyway. You bottom out the shocks almost by your lonesome.”
Dean nodded at me. “Phair, this is Detective Gaspar Cortez; arson. Cortez, this is Officer Penelope Phair. She’s joined our investigative team.”
Cortez smiled as I shook his hand, which was somewhat limp and spongy. “Finally convinced the captain to spring for a gopher, did you, Dean?”
Given his subterranean appearance, I couldn’t help but picture the rodent rather than the demeaning position. Thankfully, I didn’t have to defend my own honor.
“She’s a little more useful than that, Cortez,” said Dean. “She solved our last case. I think she has a bright future in the department.”
Cortez put up his hands in supplication, which made him look even more mole-like. “My mistake. Just trying to tickle the old funny bone.”
Moss shouldered her way into the circle. “No tickling, Cortez, unless you want to have a long talk with HR. You were saying something about the remains?”
“Right. I heard you say something about the body—” Cortez glanced at the pile of ash and bones. “Err, remains—not being able to have burned on site. And while I admit I haven’t combed the scene yet, I will say I’ve seen many a person reduced to ash in fires before. It happens more often than people think.”
“But you’re talking about house fires, right?” said Moss. “Big blazes with lots of fuel, not small ones set in the middle of a bird enclosure.”
Cortez cocked his head and stretched his eyebrows. “Well, people cremated the dead on funeral pyres long before the modern furnace was invented, but those required a lot of wood and oil and were quite large. The flames from a pyre would’ve spread and charred this entire forest. That said, it’s at least plausible a body could’ve been burned here if the proper accelerants were employed. Someone would’ve had to put serious fire breaks in place to keep the flames from spreading, though. I don’t think a metal ring would’ve done the job.”
Moss’s lips puckered, and she lifted one of her eyebrows as far as if would go.
Cortez caught the look. “Hey, I’m not saying it’s likely.”
“What kind of accelerants are we talking about?” asked Justice.
“Anything would do,” said Cortez. “Most liquid fuels get plenty hot. Propane, butane, gasoline, even ethyl alcohol. Most cremation furnaces only run at about sixteen to eighteen hundred degrees. But you’d need a lot of it, and that stuff ain’t light.”
“How long would it take to reduce a body to this state?” asked Dean.
Cortez’s forehead scrunched as he peered at the pile of ash and bones. “Normally cremation takes anywhere from an hour and a half to four hours, depending on the temperature of the furnace and the size of the individual. Someone like me with a little extra peanut butter and jelly in the middle would take a lot longer than a pinup.” Cortez chuckled, but no one else joined him. “Ahh… but in all seriousness, given the condition of the bones, I’d wager we’re looking at the lower end of the spectrum. The longer you subject bones to high heat, the more cracking and embrittlement that occurs. Burn a body for four hours, and the resulting remains barely need more than a minute in the ball mill to get to a nice, powdery consistency. These seem like they would take a good bit longer.”
Dean rubbed his chin before giving his head a slight shake. “That’s too long. It’s not plausible to think someone wheeled enough accelerants in to keep a fire going for an hour and a half, failed to char a space more than five feet in diameter, and did so without alerting anyone as to what was going on.” A monkey barked in a tree overhead, drawing Dean’s attention. Leaves rattled and shook as the thing took off upon being spotted. “Not to mention, I can’t imagine the wildlife would’ve stayed quiet if someone set fire to this place in the middle of the night. Monkeys aren’t known for their discretion. We have to presume these remains were dumped here, although why is anyone’s guess.”
“But if someone left them here,” I said, “then why did they try to make it look as if the body was cremated on site? The ground is clearly scorched. There was a fire, though it appears to have been a small one.”
Most of our eyes turned toward Cortez. The guy shrugged. “Beats me. In theory, if you deposited recently cremated remains, the latent heat might be enough to set a small blaze, but carrying piping hot remains around seems like a logistical nightmare, not to mention a weird thing to do. My guess is someone set the blaze to confuse the issue.”
Dean stared at the pile of bones and ash, lightly chewing his lip. “It’s a question in need of an answer, but far from the most pressing one. What we need to determine is who placed these remains here, why they did so, and most importantly, whose remains they are. Let’s not get too caught up in the oddity of what’s before us and forget we’re likely dealing with murder.”
Dean’s pragmatic focus lay a pall over us. We all nodded solemnly, curiosity momentarily overtaken by the grim reality of what might’ve happened.
Dean continued after a short pause. “Cortez, you should stay here. See if you can find any clues we haven’t uncovered, specifically anything that might help identify the deceased. I’m going to track down a facilities manager or overseer, see if they can give me any information about who has access to this enclosure. Justice? Maybe you can track down the circus’s fire performance artists. Just because this body didn’t burn at our feet doesn’t mean someone in the circus isn’t responsible. Check stores of accelerants, see if anything is missing. Moss and Phair? I want you to interview whoever found the remains, see what they have to say. Are we all clear?”
I nodded, as did the other detectives.
“Good,” said Dean. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter Four
I stood outside the aviary, next to the snake, lizard, and frog house, if its sign could be believed. A cool breeze whipped past, and I wished the sun would make an appearance from behind the clouds.
Moss stood next to me, hands stuffed in the pockets of her leather jacket. “Mr. Radoslaw, please start at the beginning and run us through the morning.”
The man who stood before us, Krzysztof Radoslaw, was apparently the circus’s chief zookeeper, or at least the one in charge of the bird pen. Finger-length brown hair framed his oval-shaped face, and three day old stubble
that was gray in patches covered his chin. He wore a tattered canvas jacket that might’ve been stitched together before he was born, though it was hard to tell exactly how old the man was. Sallow skin hung loosely from his bones, and dark circles spread underneath his eyes. He could’ve been anywhere from in his thirties to his sixties, but even if he was on the older end of the spectrum, he still looked terrible.
Radoslaw spoke with a bit of an accent, though I couldn’t place it. “I would say it started about five in the morning. At least that is when I woke. I heard the macaques shrieking and squeaking, which they do when they are hungry, but to be honest, they are not the loudest monkeys in the world. I usually do not hear them from my trailer, but when I got out of bed and looked out the window, there were two of them, perched on the edge of my trashcan, fighting over apple cores and watermelon rinds. They had knocked it over, spilling garbage everywhere. It was a mess…
“Anyway, as soon as I saw them, I knew something was wrong. My first thought was that one of them had ripped through the netting, and if that happened, who knows how many birds we would have lost. So I threw on my clothes and ran out to the enclosure. I could not see well so early in the morning, but the problem was obvious. Someone had left the outer gate open. When I got my nephew out of bed, he swore it had not been him, but who knows. He probably would not admit to doing it even if he had.
“The pair of us spent the next two hours trying to lure the macaques into cages so we could take them back into the enclosure. It was not easy. They are smarter than they look, but they have their weaknesses, same as anyone. A dozen bananas and many grapes later, we were pretty sure we had them all, though it was hard to know for certain. We did not hear any more fighting, which made me think we had. We might have lost a couple birds, though. I heard one of the honeycreepers calling at sunrise, and I thought it was coming from the acrobat’s pavilion. I am not sure if we will be able to lure those back. They are not as smart as the macaques, but maybe we will get lucky.”
“So when did you find the burnt remains?” asked Moss.
Radoslaw coughed into the elbow of his jacket, a wracking, dry cough that shook his whole body. It took him a second to get his breath afterwards. “That was not until later. As my nephew Mateusz and I caught the macaques, we let them into the enclosure one by one. When I could no longer hear them around the grounds, I went into the aviary to see if I could count them, make sure they were inside. That is when I found the bones.”
“And that’s when you called the police?” said Moss.
“Not at first,” said Radoslaw. “I thought I was being tricked. Why would there be human bones in the pen? And I got mad, because I figured whoever was behind it was the one who had left the enclosure open, but none of the other keepers knew what I was talking about when I confronted them. After a bit, Mateusz said we should call the police, so that is what we did.”
Moss gave me a sideways glance. “See? I’m not the only one who thought it was a prank.”
“I’m not judging you. It’s a bizarre thing to find.” I turned back to Radoslaw. “The bird enclosure normally stays locked?”
The man cleared his throat noisily. I thought he might go into another coughing fit, but thankfully he didn’t. “Locked at night, yes. Not during the day, otherwise the crowds would not be able to get in. It is supposed to stay closed, though. There is a sign on the chain links saying so.”
“Did you see any signs of forced entry?” I asked. “Was the lock damaged or any of the chains cut?”
Radoslaw shook his head. “Nothing. At least not at the bird pen.”
Moss cocked her head. “What do you mean by that?”
“After we were done with the monkeys, Mateusz discovered one of the supply trailers had been broken into. The window in back had been smashed to bits, and the stuff inside looked as if it had been gone through.”
“What do you keep in the trailer?” asked Moss.
“Costumes, mostly,” said Radoslaw. “I suppose it could have been one of the macaques who broke the window. They are strong enough, and I have seen them throw rocks before, among other more fragrant things. But I cannot imagine they would break the glass unless they smelled ripe fruit on the other side.”
“Was anything missing?” asked Moss.
Radoslaw shrugged. “I do not know. Ask one of the acrobats or the showgirls.”
“What about the enclosure?” I said. “Do you think someone intended to rob it, too?”
Radoslaw erupted in another chorus of coughs, but this time he got them under control quickly. He shook his head. “I do not know what you mean by robbing it, but Mateusz and I found the macaques. A few of the birds are missing, but I would bet they flew off. Besides, if someone broke in to steal our birds, why would they leave a dead person behind?”
I glanced at Moss. “You got any ideas?”
She snorted. “If I was that good, I’d be in charge of the team, not Dean. Thanks for your time, Mr. Radoslaw. You’re free to go.”
The guy dipped his head and shuffled off. In addition to the pallor of his skin, he walked with a limp. I kind of felt bad for him.
“I think that guy needs to see a doctor,” I said.
“Undoubtedly, but circus work isn’t known for its benefits.” Moss stared at the bird enclosure. “Am I the only one getting a setup vibe from this case?”
“How so?”
“We’re operating under the assumption that someone was murdered, their remains cremated and subsequently dumped in that pen. We don’t know who’s dead, but if it’s someone with a connection to these carnies, it could easily be a frame job.”
My brow furrowed. “If someone was trying to frame someone else for murder, wouldn’t they leave the body? As you said, we don’t even know who’s dead.”
“Normally, yes, but ashes are easier to move than a corpse.” She massaged her temple. “I don’t know. I’m spit-balling. If I’m being honest, I’m not convinced this isn’t a prank.”
I heard a rattle and turned toward the enclosure. Detective Cortez had opened the outer gate and was looking around.
He waved when he spotted us. “Moss! I found something you should take a look at.”
Moss gave me a nod, and we both followed Cortez into the pen. He led us to the pile of ash and bones and knelt next to it, grunting as he shifted his bulk into a comfortable position.
“So I was sifting through the ashes, seeing if there was anything here other than bones, and sure enough, I found something.” Cortez wore a rubber glove on his right hand. With his left, he pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket. He used the eraser to point to a couple items he’d dragged from the ashes onto the scorched earth. One was a nebulous blob, and the other looked like a pebble.
“What are we looking at?” asked Moss.
Cortez picked up the oval-shaped blob with his gloved hand. “I’m no metallurgist, but I’m pretty sure this is gold.” He dragged the eraser lightly along the top of the blob. The rubber cleaned the soot from the surface, revealing a yellowish gleam. “I don’t remember the exact melting temperature of the stuff off the top of my head, but it’s in the range of what you’d get from a cremation furnace. And this—” He picked up the pebble and performed the same eraser trick on the surface, revealing a crystalline gleam. “This, Detective, is a diamond. Pretty good sized one, too. Maybe two, three carats.”
Moss whistled. “That would fetch a neat crown or two. You think this is from a ring?”
“Engagement would be my guess,” said Cortez. “Could be from a brooch, I suppose, but the fact that the gold is in a glob suggests the diamond wasn’t hanging from a chain. Likewise, I only found one, so it probably didn’t come off earrings, not to mention I’ve never seen any woman wearing earrings with diamonds that big.”
“You’re sure the remains belong to a woman?” said Moss.
“Not a hundred percent,” said Cortez. “I’m no coroner, but based on the gold and that diamond, as well as the shape of the pelvis? Pretty
sure.”
Moss patted her jacket a couple times before reaching into an inside pocket and producing a handkerchief. She laid it across her hand and held it out. “Let me see the diamond.”
Cortez did as she asked, placing the soot-covered gemstone on the white kerchief. “The strange thing is this was among the remains at all. Mortuaries strip bodies of everything before cremation. Clothes, jewelry. All of it. It suggests whoever cremated this woman didn’t know what they were doing.”
“And it suggests whoever was responsible wasn’t motivated by money.” Moss cleaned the soot with the handkerchief, revealing a gleaming stone underneath, seemingly unaffected by the heat and flames. “Not many people would leave something this valuable behind.”
“So this was a crime of passion?” I asked.
“Hard to know,” said Moss. “We still have no idea how this woman died, whether from murder, manslaughter, or natural causes. What we do have, however, is this.” She held up the diamond. “And it might be enough to identify her.”
Chapter Five
Moss and I found Dean crossing the grounds in front of the main tent, headed our way from a cluster of bright red trailers that were less dingy than the green ones we’d passed en route to the aviary. Apparently, Dean located the circus’s foreman, but he hadn’t known a thing about the circumstances leading to the discovery of the burnt remains. Dean’s frustration with the man fled, however, as we told him about the diamond Cortez uncovered. He peered at it intently while we filled him in on our thoughts, agreeing afterwards that it might be our best option for identifying the deceased.
With the diamond wrapped and pocketed, Dean led us in search of Justice. Though they’d split before Justice found his targets, Dean had seen a map of the circus in the foreman’s office, so he knew more or less where to look. Indeed, as Dean led us behind the tent, we entered a more industrial section of the grounds. A pile of timbers of equal length and diameter lay on their sides between a quartet of metal posts. Wooden pallets and crates alike had been stacked in tall piles, creating homes for mice if the tiny squeaks and piles of pill-like droppings around them was any indication. Near the back of the space was a rectangular patch of concrete surrounded by chain link fencing. From its general direction rumbled Justice’s smooth basso.