by J. R. Ward
Framed against a view out to the vast ocean, Mr. Ripkin was seated behind a gray marble desk that was uncluttered by even a phone. The man was seventy, but he looked sixty, no doubt the result of some very expensive, very subtle plastic surgery. His hair was snow white and thick as a snow drift, and his expression of calm professionalism reminded her of a hockey goalie’s mask.
He was protecting a lot behind that composure, making sure no one pucked him in the face.
She instantly mistrusted him, and she thought about that stationhouse the man had bought the department.
“Inspector Ashburn.” Voice was even, the townie in the vowels mostly brushed out, like stain from a cloth. “How nice of you to come.”
As if he’d issued an invitation? “Thanks for seeing me.”
“Perhaps we’ll sit over here. Would you care for coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
He issued a curt nod and Anne knew without looking over her shoulder that Persephone had vanished sure as a shadow chased away by the light. And as they processed over to some silk-covered chairs, she was aware that her hand was beginning to sweat.
“You will sit here,” he announced as he pointed to a seat that appeared to be no different from any other.
Yeah, except for the wire that was running out the back and into the floor. She would have chosen another, but she was willing to bet that whatever he had had installed there was the same in all of the others . . . except for the one he picked.
As Anne sat, she wondered what was being monitored in her body. How much was being recorded. There were ways now that people could measure the slightest deviations in skin temperature, weight shift, breathing.
She sat on the very edge of the cushion. “So about those fires.”
The man smiled slowly, and it was only then that she realized his eyes were the color of his decor, the color of dangerous fog on the sea.
“Won’t you sit back and relax, Inspector Ashburn. We aren’t in any kind of hurry.”
Anne glanced back at the double doors she’d entered through. “My boss is expecting me back in the office ASAP.”
“He’ll wait.”
chapter
28
As the engine’s brakes squealed and Company 17 pulled up to an apartment building with a second-story burn, Danny hopped down to the pavement and went for the lines in the back.
“Dannyboy, you’re on clear.” Captain Baker nodded at Moose. “You, too.”
“Roger that.”
He and Moose got their tanks and masks on and then went for the equipment, pulling up the panels. As the lineup of axes and tools were revealed, Moose palmed two long handles and turned to Danny.
The sight of the axe made Danny sweat underneath his turnouts. “I’ma take the Boston.”
“Why? We need axes to get through doors—oh. Sorry.”
Don’t dwell on it. Just keep going.
Danny grabbed a tool that had a metal piercer on one end and looked forward to using it to pry down rafts of Sheetrock. Besides, one axe was enough. They didn’t both need one. It was better this way, more efficient.
As they jogged over to the front door of the apartment building, he kept going with the list of reasons why there was a strategic imperative for him not to have an axe.
Residents were funneling out of the entrance, some still in bathrobes even though it was by now eleven thirty in the morning. Most were elderly and he anticipated a lot of cats. The building’s alarm system was going over, the shrill warning making his ears ring. The smell of smoke was in the air and he cursed.
This was a hot one, he thought. He could tell by the scent.
An old guy with Albert Einstein hair and a robe that looked like it had come out of Archie Bunker’s closet stopped in front of Danny.
“I told her that kid was going to kill her. Be careful—I don’t know if he’s got a gun.”
“Who?”
“Her grandson. Bad news. Been with her for the last three weeks. Has someone called the cops?”
“You better get moving.” Danny nodded to the slow-up the guy was causing. “We’ll handle everything.”
“Righto.”
As the man kept going, Danny hit his communicator. “Two-fiver-eight-seven, over.” When he was acknowledged, he said, “Confirm NBPD arrival, over.”
Captain Baker replied, “ETA three to four minutes. Over.”
“Two-fiver-eight-seven, over and out.”
He and Moose hit the second-floor landing and peeled off from traffic on the stairs. One look down to the far end, and Danny’s warning bells went off: There were eight doors on the hall, four on each side, and all but one were open or cracked, the residents in a rush to get out—or adhering to a not-uncommon building protocol requiring that everything be accessible during evacs.
The lone standout? The only one that was closed? Was where the smoke was coming out.
“I think we should wait for the badges to get here,” Danny said. “I got a bad feeling about this.”
“Are you kidding me? Don’t be paranoid.”
They started down the well-trod carpet, the chemical sting in the air irritating his nose and back of the throat. The smoke curling out of the affected apartment, both from around the door and outside, made him run through the analysis quick: volume, velocity, density, and color.
Volume was sizable, suggesting a hot fire in a limited, poorly ventilated area: There was a layer of smoke up along the ceiling in the corridor that was thickening, and through the window at the end of the hall, he could see great black clouds billowing from the apartment into the open area. Velocity was bad news, the smoke choppy and spastic, another sign of poor ventilation and a warning that an autoignition flashover was likely. Density was trouble as well; the smoke was like a solid, laden with airborne fuel solids, aerosols, and gases, all of which were ready to party. Finally, the color was the worst. Black meant high toxicity, and so the likelihood anyone was alive in there was very low.
A few breaths of that kind of “air” and a person loses consciousness, with death to follow in a matter of minutes.
Danny hit his communicator. “Two-fiver-eight-seven, over.” When the acknowledgement came, he stated, “We have black smoke in a chop on the second floor. Closed door. We need this vented and cooled right fucking now or this corner of the building is going to go H-bomb. Over.”
Captain Baker responded. “Can you open the door?”
“Not advisable—”
“Yup,” Moose interrupted on the line. “I’m doing it now.”
Danny grabbed the sleeve of the guy’s turnout. “Anybody in there is already dead.”
“Maybe not. We have to try.”
Captain Baker’s voice came over the connection. “Get in there. The ladder is in position and we are venting.”
There was a distant crash of glass, and instantly the volume of smoke dropped, the pressure released.
“We need to wait for that temp to cool,” Danny said.
“Don’t be a pussy.”
Moose marched over to the door, positioning himself off to one side. Taking the heel of the axe, he banged on the thing. “Fire and Rescue. Open your door.” When there was no response, Moose pulled a repeat. “Open up or we’re coming in.”
Through the window at the hall’s terminal wall, Danny saw the ladder shift position. They were breaking more windows, giving the fire a chance to lose heat and stabilize.
Moose tried the knob and, finding it locked, yelled, “We’re coming in!”
He swung that axe in a fat circle, and Danny had to look away from that sharp blade biting into the smooth surface. A couple of good hits and Moose punched his fist in, feeling for a dead bolt.
“Sonofabitch.”
Danny put his mask on. “I’ll shoulder.”
Moose stepped bac
k to secure his own air source as Danny threw his weight into the panels. The wood, weakened by incineration, splintered, and a wave of heat and smoke knocked him back. Crouching down, he hit his head lamp and entered. Daylight didn’t mean shit with the air so thick with soot and contaminants, and he proceeded through the interior, visualizing burned furniture, blackened walls, rugs that were nothing but stains on the floor. Everything was still combusting, even the lowered temperature still hot enough to consume all manner of wood, plastic, and metal.
He found the first body in the hall.
It was lying with the arms and legs outstretched, as if the person had been running for the door when an explosion or other force knocked them off their feet. Impossible to tell whether they were face-up or facedown, male or female, clothed or naked. All the hair and any clothing had been burned off, and charring of the skin and meat over the skeleton was so extensive, there were no discernible features.
“Two-fiver-eight-seven, we have one deceased in the hall off living room. Proceeding back, over.”
“Two-fiver-eight-seven, prepare for water.”
“Roger. Over.”
The hoses were opened from the ladders, gallons and gallons of H2O arching in through the windows that had been broken. Smoke flared, white now from evaporation.
The first charred door he opened revealed a crappy bathroom that had been spared some of the damage, the plastic shower curtained melted like modern art on the edge of the tub, the walls glazed and sweating, the color scheme of pale blue and yellow dulled but extant.
The next door was probably going to be a bedroom—
As Danny opened the way in, he couldn’t process what he was looking at. Walls were stained with something, the pink-flowered paper marked with . . . brown handprints? That was when he saw, through the haze, the body spread-eagled on the bed. The wrists and ankles had been tied to the posts and there was a red gag in the mouth.
No movement.
Then again, the older woman appeared to have been gutted like a deer. Very recently. There was no meaty smell of anatomy, however. The stench of the fire was too loud in his nose.
Danny spoke into his communicator. “Second victim, bedroom. This is a murder scene.”
He forgot to ID himself, but he didn’t care. He went over. The old woman was staring through sightless eyes in terror at the ceiling overhead. Her loose skin was like folds of pale felt pooling under her arm pits, at her neck, on either side of her bony thighs.
He wanted to cover her up. Find a sheet or a blanket and give her some dignity. This was a crime scene, however.
“What the fuck.” Moose came in and stood next to him. “So that’s what was cooking when the fire started.”
chapter
29
“You know, I like unusual women.”
As Charles Ripkin spoke, his eyes focused on Anne’s prosthesis. “Tell me, how did you lose your arm?”
He already knew the answer, she thought. He had to have researched her.
“I think we need to stay on topic. Let’s talk about those fires in your warehouses.”
“Did it hurt?” The man smiled. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be deformed.”
“I understand that they’re held by various LLCs. I’m curious why you haven’t put them in the name of Ripkin Inc.”
“Do you feel ugly now? You know, as a woman. Now that you’re not whole anymore.”
“I’m also curious why they’re insured by different companies. It’s like your spreading risk.”
“Not to get too personal, but when you’re with a lover, do you hide the stump? Keep it under a pillow, a sleeve, a fold of sheet? So they don’t see it. Get distracted. Lose the mood.”
“Because I’m wondering why the concentration of arson.”
His left eyebrow twitched. “Are you ashamed now? Of yourself. Do you miss who you used to be?”
“Yet no one has been charged. I realize that the argument will be derelicts, but if that were true, that area of the city has been run-down for decades. Why in the last two years is all of this happening?”
“Once a firefighter. Now a pencil pusher. You are your own cliché, you realize.”
“Do you have any explanation?”
“Of course I do. It’s a bit obvious to have to paint a picture to a smart girl like you, but since you asked—you lose your arm, and now you’re an also-ran with an unsatisfied yearning to get back to work. The problem is, you can’t do the work you want anymore because you can’t pass the physical tests you used to ace. You’re stir-crazy, searching for purpose, and this itch that cannot be scratched no matter how many forms you fill out or investigations you do is driving you insane. So your brain is finding connections that do not exist, which is what women do, and all of that mental storm got you in your little gray municipal sedan and drove you all the way up to the big city.” The man sat forward. “I permitted you this one get-together because I feel sorry for you. I have a daughter whom I care for very much, and she, too, had a fire ruin her. She was once very pretty. Now she looks like a monster. But you people saved her life and that’s why I gave you that new stationhouse. I am very pro-firefighter, very supportive of your previous profession.”
“So you have no comment.”
“I just gave you plenty.”
“You didn’t explain anything, but I’m not going to argue with you.”
“Good.” The man stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go on about my day. I have indulged you this visit because I feel sorry for you, but anything past this I will regard as harassment. There are consequences to things, as you have learned firsthand. Let’s both make sure you don’t lose anything else, shall we?”
Anne got to her feet. “I’m going to do my job, Mr. Ripkin. If you’re hiding anything, it’s going to come out. You need to be prepared.”
“I always think it’s wise to take our own advice.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“We’ll see about that. Oh, before you go, how’s your mother?”
“Excuse me?”
“Nancy Janice. She lives alone, doesn’t she? In that house on Crandall Avenue. A tree fell on it from the storms, didn’t it.”
Anne froze and her stomach knotted up. She thought about Bob Burlington, the arson investigator whose body had washed ashore in the bay, and her boss’s warning. But she was also not going to be bullied.
“Mr. Ripkin, I am very sure this act of yours works with most of the people you come in contact with, and I congratulate you on the cultivation of such a successful intimidation tool.” She put her hand up. “Wait, before you tell me that I need to take you seriously, I’d like to show you something.”
She took her cell phone out and turned the screen around to him. “I’ve recorded this entire conversation and every two minutes this handy app has sent a file to my boss, Don Marshall.”
“That is not admissible as evidence,” Ripkin said in a bored tone.
“You’re right. But Don believes you had Bob Burlington murdered because he investigated the fire at your mansion. So if anything happens to me, my family, or anyone close to me, I’ve got that little comment of yours about my mother’s house on lock—” As her phone vibrated, she smiled and pointed at the screen. “Oh, look. It’s just sent another file—swatch what happens next.” A text notification came through. “And here’s Don, confirming receipt.”
“No one can do anything with it. You gave me no notice.”
She pointed to the chair she was in. “Don’t pretend you didn’t record this, either. Guess we’re even.”
The double doors opened and the animatron with the great legs waited in between the jambs like a Doberman pinscher.
Anne walked over and then looked over her shoulder. “One more thing. I’d rather have a plastic hand and a clear conscience than be an OCD-ridden Cia
lis candidate with hair plugs and murder in his background. I can change jobs and enjoy the satisfaction of helping to put sociopathic criminals like you behind bars. Your future, on the other hand, is going to involve more male pattern baldness as well as the joy of sharing a communal shower with all kinds of people who you will view as beneath you. Oh, and as for the erectile dysfunction, I’m just guessing at that because only a guy who can’t get it up would try to play the ‘you’re lesser as a woman’ bullshit with someone like me—oh, look.” She indicated her phone’s screen again. “Another file got sent. I think I’ll make a best-of CD and send it to the local CBS affiliate—no, wait, you’re so excited about being in the big city, CNN is even better. Have a good day, Mr. Ripkin.”
Anne left the office and did not look back. As she went down the corridor, her legs were like rubber and she wanted to wipe the sheen of sweat off her forehead—but she resisted the latter because she didn’t want to look weak.
Behind her, the executive assistant’s footfalls were sharp as curses.
As Anne came up to the glass wall that fronted the reception area, she was glad when she could push it open and get the hell out of there.
At the elevators, she used her prosthetic hand to push the down button.
Her real one was shaking too badly.
By the time she reemerged into the parking garage, she was light-headed from the adrenaline and fear, and as she went over to her car, she looked up. Pods containing security cameras were set into the ceiling at regular intervals, and she was willing to bet every property that Ripkin owned was the same.
A man who watched everything like this? No accidents happened on his land without his knowledge.
Approaching her municipal sedan, she half expected her tires to be slashed, and she gave into paranoia, covering her hand with the sleeve of her jacket as she touched the handle to open her door. She didn’t take a deep breath until she was out on the streets and merging into traffic. When she was back on 93 and heading for New Brunswick, she called her boss.