Done for a Dime

by David Corbett

  Along the streets, sanitation crews pried open manholes to ventilate the sewers. Smoke ejectors chugged noisily, pumping out fumes, while utility crews bled gas lines, creating eerie plumes of blue flame amid the ruin. If you watched long enough, out of the corner of your eye you’d spot a crouched shape, edging from one shadow to the next, as a pet ventured back into its former neighborhood, nose piqued, ears and tail slack as it hunted for food or just something, someone, familiar.

  A few of the stay-behinds showed up in their soot-black doorways to watch, blinking like sleepers suddenly wakened. Neckerchiefs obscured their faces, to help against the smoke and windblown ash.

  Patrol and fire units were parked in front of the house where Holmes was waiting, if house was still the word for it. The front window was shattered; the roof and walls had burned away in places. It seemed a miracle of sorts the thing still stood there. Other houses up and down the block had suffered, too, but not like this. He showed his badge to the officer manning entry/exit and ducked inside.

  Unfolding a handkerchief, he covered his mouth and nose. Like shoving your face in a damp ash pit, the smell. The fire had reduced the living room to cinders, the furniture nothing but blackened debris from the flashover. Everything, ceiling to floor, dripped black water, sodden from the pumper hoses and bucket drops. Toward the back, where the fire damage was less, window glass bellied in toward the room in syrupy shapes, and the aluminum frames had melted, too, like wax, oozing down the walls to form hardened shapes on the floor. Above, you could see sky where the fire had eaten through the ceiling. The floor underneath was a mulchy bog of char and ash.

  The overhaul crew plodded about in their turn-out gear, prodding the ash beds with hooks and halligan tools as they hunted for melted copper or brass that might reignite. An arson investigator, holding a tool intended to check tire tread, plunged it into the wall, trying to measure char depth. How in God’s name do you control your crime scene, Murchison thought, when you throw in fire, the men who fight it, and the way they have to do their job?

  Seeing Murchison, the arson man gestured toward the back. “Through there.”

  Holmes, dressed in street clothes, conferred with a uniformed officer outside a bathroom just inside a black gutted doorway leading out to the garage. Seeing Murchison, he broke off the conversation and came forward.

  “This one’s mean.” Holmes nodded back over his shoulder toward the bathroom door. “Seen two houses up here already look like the folks who lived there set fire to the place before taking off. Or somebody else did.”

  It was a common problem in major fires and riots. Storekeepers torched their shops, figuring blame would fall on looters. Renters who hated their landlords got revenge.

  “We’ll see some insurance fraud,” Murchison guessed.

  “Or covering up crime scenes.”

  “We got that here?”

  Holmes gestured him back. “What we got here defies description.”

  The bathroom had been sandwiched between the two advancing fires. Part of the wall had burned away, revealing melted copper piping, oxidized black and coiled into oddball shapes. The floor tiles had peeled up, the edges curled like plastic flower petals. The floor beneath was spalled and tarred with ghost marks.

  The glass in the mirror above the sink, melted slightly from the heat, reflected back funhouse images of Holmes and Murchison in the doorway. The faucet handles and water spout were weirdly malformed as well. A body sheet lay across the blackened tub. The aluminum shower rod and plastic curtain were history, melted. No windows. Up top, the ceiling, made of Sheetrock, had survived reasonably well. And trapped the smoke, Murchison guessed.

  “Owner here worked on a landscaping crew and did handyman jobs around the hill. Garage was filled with mowers and blowers. All junk now. Plenty of gas and oil, too, I figure. Some solvents, maybe. One side of the fire started there and all that stuff just blew. Other fire started in front and moved in from the opposite direction.”

  “The owner,” Murchison said, “the landscaper, we know where he is?”

  “Yeah,” Holmes said. He stepped to the tub and pulled the drape away. “Owner, plus his wife and child, maybe five years old.”

  All three lay facedown in the tub, charred black from soot and smoke, their bodies twisted into inhuman shapes, muscle shriveled up on bone from the fierce heat. Here and there, reddish pink skin blistered through the grime. Nothing like faces remained, but their tongues protruded, revealing smutty teeth. Worse, the tub was gory with blood spatters, a lot of them. They’d clawed each other raw, fighting for the last gasp of air trickling up through the drain.

  Holmes gingerly covered them up again. “Never seen anything like that.”

  “I have.”

  Murchison suffered another disquieting surge of déja vu, like he had with the MPs at the checkpoints, this time recalling that first killing, almost thirty years ago, the naked young woman cut to shreds in the shower stall by the drunken Spec. 4 from Fort Ord. It seemed a bad omen, that echo.

  “People run to the bathroom because the surfaces are cool. There’s water, and the tub, it seems protective. They think it’s safe.”

  Holmes couldn’t stop staring at the draped bodies. He chewed his lower lip hard.

  “People stay strangely rational in a fire,” Murchison told him, “unless they have to compete for an exit. Or air. That’s when panic sets in.”

  The arson investigator called out from the front, “You guys ready to talk?”

  Back in the living room, the guy introduced himself. “Name’s Gladden. I’m with the CDF.” Rio Mirada had no arson investigators with either the fire or police department, a sore spot during the recent spate of SUV and carport fires. Thus the need for the California Department of Forestry to step in. “You’ve got a broken window in front, next to no glass shards outside, almost all in. And the point of origin is in a direct line from that window. So first guess? Somebody walked up, shattered the window with a hammer or ax, then tossed in not one but three Molotov cocktails.” He pointed to the center of the room. “There’s shards of bottle glass all over.”

  “How come that didn’t melt, like the windows?” Murchison asked.

  “It’s on the floor. Coolest place in a fire like this. Even right next to the point of origin. Know what else is interesting?” He pointed in turn to three intact bottle necks, all clotted with singed rags. “This was clever. You want a Molotov to work, the bottle needs to shatter. Lot of guys forget that, throw the thing into a house, it hits the carpet? Oops. These guys planned for that. The rags, they weren’t fuses, they were stoppers.” He pointed to a curled-up sliver of fabric, a hint of silver under the char. “They put firecrackers of some kind, M-80s be my guess, slapped them to the sides of the bottles. Used duct tape.”

  “They’ve done this before,” Murchison said.

  “Or know someone who has. You’re gonna want to preserve all that glass, check for prints.”

  “Fire didn’t destroy them?” Holmes asked.

  “That’s a myth. Your evidence techs should know all about that, if they don’t they can connect with ours. By the way, we’re gonna need a protocol for who bags and tags—you guys or us?”

  “Us,” Murchison said, jealous for control by instinct, not even sure yet if this was his scene. “But it’d be great to have you walk us through, point out what you want saved.”

  “What about the garage?” Holmes pointed toward the back. “The fire there, I mean.”

  “Same deal. You looked?”

  “A little.”

  “Back door, the window’s broken, from outside again. My guess is it went second. Created a fireball when all the gas and other accelerants went. Whoever did this, he started in front. I figure the family was in the kitchen. There’s a phone there, they were calling somebody, let them know they were heading out to someplace safe. Maybe they tried to fight the fire, then gave up. Can’t get out the front through here, so they head toward the garage. By that time your p
erp, or an accomplice, had hit there, too. They’re trapped. Father probably put the mother and kid in the bathroom, figuring that was the safest spot at that time. He left them, tried to find a way out. Smoke got to him, he crawled back. Looks like they tried to lie still, stay calm, but they ran out of time. Fire burns like this, sucks out all the oxygen. They were breathing smoke, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide.”

  Murchison turned away. “Leave you guys alone for a minute?”

  He walked out of the house and onto the scorched lawn. He thought of just getting into the car and driving, till nothing and no one looked familiar. But he knew it wouldn’t help. The horror show came from inside as well as out. Stulka, dying. The remembered smell of his blood, tinged with the stench of smoke. Doubled now, by what he’d just seen. And strangely, Willy had been on his mind, too. As though scraps of memory from every pointless death he’d ever had to face were floating up from the brain’s graveyard, each one whispering, Feel this. Or worse: Do something.

  He heard footsteps behind. Holmes rested a hand on Murchison’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  Murchison shrugged off the hand. Too harshly. He didn’t know why. “You look none too okay yourself.”

  Holmes flinched at his attitude but let it go unremarked. He nodded back at the burned-out house. “I knew these people. Not well, but we’d met on a call.” He looked out across the neighborhood, the ruin, his eyes red from the smoke. “Father worked two jobs, the landscaping and handyman gig plus he drove a truck for a mover, too. Mother worked in the cafeteria at the high school. The little girl, she was a preemie, weighed three pounds at birth, been sick her whole life.”

  “Why them?” Murchison felt sick to his stomach. The smells were getting to him. The new ones, the remembered ones. “There a story?”

  Holmes pointed up the block. “See that fence?” The chain link was twisted and coiled by the heat, blackened by smoke. “People lived there kept fighting dogs. Mean-ass pits, you would not believe. Let the monsters out sometimes, just to fool with people, scare them. Man here, he called the tip line twice.”

  Murchison’s jaw dropped. “All this—over a dog call?”

  “Guy inside, he took it into his own hands. Dumped strychnine mixed with birdseed over the fence one night.”

  “Ah, Jesus.” He felt disgusted with the thing now. “That works? Birdseed?”

  “Killed one of the dogs, two others got real sick. Couldn’t prove who did it, but the fool who owned the pits said he’d get even.”

  “We know where to find this guy?”

  “Now? Hell no. I know his name, though. Spoonie McNown. I’ll find him.”

  A helicopter thundered low overhead, its monsoon bucket leaking pumpkin-sized spillage as it headed for an uphill hot spot. At the same time, Murchison’s pager throbbed on his hip. Checking the display, he recognized the number for his in-laws. Joan was trying to get in touch.

  “Need to get that?”

  “I’ll do it later,” Murchison said, knowing he wouldn’t. What would he say? What had he ever said? “So what exactly do you need from me here?”

  Holmes looked chastened. “Word is—I mean, nothing’s official yet, but word is, you and me, we’ll be partnered up.”

  “This is my scene?”

  Holmes didn’t look chastened now. He looked pissed. “Our scene.”

  Murchison suffered a clash of emotions he doubted he’d make sense of for a long while, if ever. And even if he did, what then? He’d spent much of his life keeping a lid on his insides, why change that now? What was different, really? Just more dead.

  He was spared further reflection on the matter as a cruiser pulled up, chirping its siren. The cop driving rolled down his window and poked his head out. “Yo, Murch.” It was Hennessey. “Chief’s got the conniptions, trying to track you down. You, too, Holmesy. You’re wanted.”

  Murchison just stared, like he’d been called out. Holmes said, “Reason being? We’re trying to process a crime scene here.”

  “The big sit with the federales, I think. Figure out who brags, who begs.”

  • • •

  In the basement of Mission Baptist, the Red Cross served soup with sliced white bread for breakfast, and there was coffee to be had. Volunteers handed out portions with apologies and promises of better fare come noontime. The smells mingled with those of sleepy, unwashed bodies still tinged with smoke.

  Toby collected soup and coffee for him and Nadya and Miss Carvela and returned with it on a tray, only to find a stranger sitting with them now. The man was dressed in a three-piece suit, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Miss Carvela was saying as Toby walked up.

  “You have to see it from their side, Miss Grimes.” The man spoke in a fluid, chesty baritone. “Now I’ve been your insurance agent what, five years? Seven years?”

  “Since Walter Toomis retired, sold the agency.”

  “And I’ve done right by you. But what happened last night, those are arson fires, and arson can’t but slow down a casualty claim. Here you got dozens, hell, hundreds of claims—between you and me, Miss Grimes, way too many of those gonna show up inflated—and that means the insurance company’s sure to dig through every single one.”

  Toby cleared his throat to let them know he was standing there with food. Miss Carvela looked up. “This is Ralston Polhemus, Toby. My insurance agent.”

  The man popped up, shooting out his hand with a smile—broad shoulders, ramrod posture, thinning hair cut just so. Even his fingernails were pared to perfection and glossy. Toby gestured with the tray that the handshake would have to wait. At the same time he looked at Nadya, who in two movements of her eyes conveyed that Ralston Polhemus vastly overrated his welcome.

  “I’ll set this down,” Toby said, dropping to his knees and handing out bowls of soup to Miss Carvela and Nadya.

  “Absolutely. Food for the body, food for the soul, am I right?”

  No one responded. Toby dipped a corner of bread in the soup. The broth tasted like weak powdered chicken stock laced with dish liquid. Celery and onion, boiled to transparency, bobbed with carrots amid dubious bubbles of fat.

  Polhemus now directed himself toward Toby. The man. “I was just explaining to Miss Grimes that the claims process in the wake of those fires will go slow. She’s going to need a place to live, and—”

  “Her coverage doesn’t provide for an interim rental?”

  It caught Polhemus off guard. The charm faltered. “It’s a bare-bones policy. She owns the property outright, no lender to indemnify, she’s on a fixed income.”

  “You’ve got a copy at your office?”

  “The carrier does. I’m sure—”

  “Miss Carvela, don’t make any decisions till my lawyer gets a chance to look your policy over, okay?”

  The agent tried to rework his smile, but his lips only crept back halfway, the eyes not even that. He was finished with Toby.

  “I’m going to tell you what will happen, Miss Grimes. The carrier’s going to make a good faith offer of seventy percent of face value, give or take, right up front. I mean, I don’t know, but that’s my educated guess. So you can take your money now, move on, find yourself a new place—”

  “New?” The old woman looked heartsick. “But I’ve lived—”

  “Rebuilding alone will take years most likely. That hill is destroyed. And with all these claims, and arson in the picture, carriers will have a right to investigate for fraud. They’ll foot drag—I’ll tell it like it is—because they can’t afford the losses. World Trade Center disaster hit the industry hard. And there’ll be eminent domain hearings, an appraiser will be called in to determine fair market value—”

  Toby cut in now. “Eminent domain?”

  Polhemus shot a baldly spiteful glance toward Toby, all the while trying to keep a grip on that smile. “That hill was a disaster waiting to happen. That was one reason I chose to run for council. Every time the subject came up, all people wante
d to do was bicker. Who’s the blight consultant gonna be? The bond brokers? The lawyers who draw up the Disposition and Development Agreement? Bicker and bitch and get nothing done. Time to straighten out all the problems up there. It’s what eminent domain is for.”

  “I understand what eminent domain is. My question—”

  “City’s got to act. It’s a question of morality.” He said the word like it had been flying around inside his brain for weeks, searching for a way out. “Sewer lines all fouled up, water mains crumbling, streets too narrow, only one way in or out, fire hydrants fifty years old. And those houses up there, half of them firetraps to begin with and burned down to the slab now. City’s going to buy up the property for a fair price and put out the bid so somebody does it right.”

  “And the people who live there now?”

  “Nobody lives there now.” The contempt poisoned his voice now, too. Toby thought he heard as well an undertone of panic, like the man felt trapped. “That’s the tragedy of it. Place will be condemned. Not safe for anybody.”

  “That can’t be right.” Toby looked at Miss Carvela. “I want you to talk to my lawyer—”

  “Seventy percent of face value, cash in hand. Now, not later, Miss Grimes. Get yourself a little town house, a nice place, new. That old thing up top the hill, it needed work bad, and that’ll come into account when they figure your payout. Too big for a woman your age anyway. And those walls, thin as cardboard. How much you spend in heating bills?”

  “That’s bad faith,” Toby said.

  He might as well have thrown the bowl of soup at the man. “You want to argue that, you got to go to court. That’s foolish, just goddamn foolish.” His own intensity caught him off guard. He shifted back to Miss Carvela, softened. “That’s three to five years before you see a penny, if you see that. Again, Miss Carvela, I gotta point out that the World Trade Center changed everything. You heard what happened with the Victims Compensation Fund. People had to agree to a fixed sum up front or see the whole thing grind to a standstill. And there’s so much confusion surrounding this—I will tell it like it is—insurers got a million excuses built in. No jury will ever bring back a damage verdict worth the bother, you go to court. You figure the cost of the lawyers and experts, there’s no benefit.” He tented his fingers, a plea. “Sometimes, Miss Carvela, we have to put aside what we think is just and do what’s wise.”