Skies of Ash

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  I shrugged. “Because even Baby Fat Larry and Johnny No-Thumbs wanna make legit ends off of wheat and silver.”

  Wide-eyed, Delia held up her trembling hands. “I don’t understand, Detectives. Enemies and Mob bosses? There was a fire. It was accidental. And, tragically, Juliet and the kids died. The end. It was the most horrific…” She lifted her face to the ceiling. “My eyes were burning just… standing there yesterday. There I was, out in the open, and I couldn’t breathe. Desperate, that’s how I felt, and… and… panicky. Numb. Hysterical but unable to do anything about it. If I felt that way, how did Juliet and the kids feel? To be trapped in that inferno, in that hell on earth? But then the fear of death, says Publilius Syrus, is more to be dreaded than death itself.” Her hands dropped into her lap.

  A lump formed in my throat, and I gaped at Delia Moss and wanted to stand, clap, and throw roses at her feet.

  Not a fan of the theater, Colin yawned, then said, “Okeydokey. Anything else?”

  “The guy in the hockey jersey,” Eli said. “You catch him yet?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Is this fire related to the others?” Delia asked.

  Colin said, “We can’t say right now.”

  I smiled at Eli and Delia. “Anything else?”

  The couple shook their heads.

  I picked up the DVD and waggled it. “Thanks for stopping by. And thanks for giving us this. I’m sure it will be a great help in our investigation.”

  “For your eyes only,” Eli reminded me.

  “Cross my heart,” I said, crossing my heart.

  A DVD recording of a fatal house fire.

  The devil hadn’t planned on me winning that, had he?

  19

  COLIN ESCORTED THE MOSSES DOWN TO THE LOBBY.

  I ambled to my desk, DVD in hand.

  The red light on my phone blinked. Voice mail.

  I slipped the disc into my computer’s DVD player, then listened to the phone message.

  The caller introduced herself as Adeline St. Lawrence. “I’m Juliet’s best friend,” she had said, and she wanted to talk to me, but today wouldn’t be good. “I’ll need you to come out to Corona, where I live, cuz my car’s on its last leg.” Then, she rambled off her address. “Anyway, her parents think I should talk to y’all. Guess I got a lot to say about all this. And I’ll talk to the devil himself if that means that hobbit motherfucka won’t get one thin dime of Jules’s money.”

  St. Lawrence’s last words roared in my ears. Who was the hobbit? And money? What money?

  I returned the woman’s call.

  No one answered.

  I left a message. Tomorrow. Ten in the morning. See you then.

  Colin, back in the squad room, plopped into his chair and placed his boots on the edge of my desk.

  “Were you raised in the mountains or something?” I asked, knocking his feet to the floor.

  “Yup,” he said with a smile. “Were you raised in the ghetto or somethin’?”

  “Yep. And I’ll lay it on you straight: if you put yo’ kicks on my desk one more time, I’m gon’ pop a cap in yo’ honkey ass, you dig?” And then, I clicked PLAY in the DVD menu.

  By the time Delia Moss started to record, the fire trucks had already arrived. The upstairs bathroom was on fire, and the flames had stretched catlike to reach Cody’s bedroom. Chaos reigned as firemen rushed up and down the slick, wet streets of Don Mateo Drive with an unconnected hose. Except for Norah and Micah Galbreath’s bungalow, every light in every house on the block shone bright.

  Even at my desk, five miles away and two days in the future, that monstrous, fiery glow burned my face.

  New shot: Delia, dressed in a black peacoat, standing with Ruby, bundled up in a puffy pink nylon jacket, and the twins, also wearing big coats. LaTrell held his phone in front of him, probably recording.

  I glanced at the recording’s time stamp in the lower left corner: 4:10 A.M.

  New shot: a soot-faced firefighter approached the huddled neighbors. His coat and helmet smoked. “How many people in the house?” he shouted.

  “Four!” Ruby shouted back. “Two kids and two—”

  Boom!

  The windows of the Chatman house blew. Car alarms shrieked. Glass rained from the sky.

  LaTrell shouted, “Damn!”

  LaTanya shrieked.

  Ruby ducked as Delia dropped the video camera and hid her face in her hands.

  Ashes danced in the wet air. Black smoke poured like liquid from every crack and window. Wood screeched as the fire howled and roared like a three-headed dragon, as high-pressured jets of water threatened its end.

  New shot: at 4:32 A.M., a firefighter climbed out of a broken north-facing window as smoke poured from behind him.

  New shot: Delia had recovered and had grabbed the camera from the ground.

  Between gasps, Ruby and Delia muttered back and forth—Where are they? Why can’t he find them?—as the large fireman backed down a ladder.

  Someone shouted, “Whoa!”

  Pop!

  More sirens joined the thwap-thwap-thwap of an invisible police helicopter, the shouts of men, the rush of water, the squawking of radios, and the thunder of falling debris. A fireman, lost somewhere in that burning hell, howled in pain. The mean snarls of chain saws and the hack-hack-hack of determined axes and pike poles drowned out his anguish.

  At 4:40 A.M., Ruby shouted, “He’s alive!”

  Delia panned left of the burning house.

  Christopher Chatman, dressed in a blue tracksuit and running shoes, had parked his Jag at the sawhorse and now stood in the middle of the street, eyes wide in aggravated wonder. He took one step, then another, and charged toward his burning home.

  Two firemen tackled him at the foot of the porch.

  He fought them.

  They all fell to the ground and tussled. The back of his head struck the concrete, and his cries that had carried over the roar of the fire abruptly stopped. His body finally went limp. He had lost consciousness.

  The two firemen who had saved Chatman from running into the blaze carried him to a waiting stretcher and ambulance.

  “What about Jules and the kids?” Ruby asked.

  The fire climbed, attacked, and threw bits and pieces of the house into the black sky.

  After recording for five more minutes, Delia stopped taping, and the DVD faded to a black screen.

  Colin rubbed his face and groaned.

  Mouth dry, I clucked my tongue.

  Fortunately, Luke and Pepe barged into the squad room. “Kobe’s got a pissy attitude,” Luke said, waving his hand.

  “Jordan couldn’t shoot a three to save his life,” Pepe shouted.

  I twisted in my chair. “Lucy and Ethel! Come here a minute.”

  “We’re more like Laverne and Shirley,” Luke said as he waddled to my desk.

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said. “A neighbor recorded the Chatman fire, and I need your opinion on something.” I found the frame that captured Christopher Chatman standing at the sawhorse, then clicked PAUSE. “What’s the expression on his face?”

  “That the grieving husband and father?” Luke asked, peering at the screen.

  “The one and only Christopher Chatman,” Colin said.

  We watched the grieving husband and father run, fight, and collapse. Watched the EMTs load him into the ambulance and whisk him away.

  “He doesn’t know what’s happening,” Pepe said.

  “That giete is smilin’,” Luke said. “Sick, fuckin’ awe.”

  Pepe shook his head. “He’s in pain—his family’s trapped in there.”

  “He’s thinkin’,” Luke said, “ ‘my evil plan worked.’ ”

  “No. That’s confusion. What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  “Bullshit. He knows exactly what’s going on.”

  “Terror. Pure fear.”

  Luke turned to me. “What do you think?”

  “Don’t know yet,” I said. “I ha
ve an assignment for you two.” Then, I reminded them of Cody Chatman’s fire addiction, which he had shared with his best friend, Parker. “Talk to this kid. Find out what he knows—if Cody talked about burning down the house or anything else strange.”

  “This Parker kid go to the same school?” Pepe asked.

  “Yep.” I thanked them again, then watched the duo wander back to their desks, with Luke correctly insisting that Michael Jordan was the greatest b-baller in all NBA history.

  Three more times, Colin and I studied the recording, and by then our muscles had hardened into stone. We both saw in our mind’s eye every lick of flame, every neighbor’s reaction, every twitch in Chatman’s face.

  Five minutes before three o’clock, I closed the DVD player’s application and rotated my stiff shoulders.

  Colin stood from his chair. “I need some regular, depressing crap to look at.” He slipped on his corduroy blazer. “Goin’ across the street for a taco. Want anything?”

  “Nope.” I riffled through the Chatman case file and found one of Christopher Chatman’s business cards.

  One ring, and “Vandervelde, Lansing, and Gray, this is Stacy.” The receptionist sounded young, Justin-Bieber-fan kind of young. I-just-learned-how-to-use-a-telephone-seven-minutes-before-you-called kind of young.

  “Could you connect me to Christopher Chatman’s office, please?” I asked.

  “Christian Chan?”

  “No. Chris-to-pher Chat-man,” I said slowly.

  “What extension?”

  “I don’t know. Can you find it and then connect me?”

  The young woman paused. “Umm… Well…” She sighed. “Hold on.”

  I had been holding for only five seconds when Stacy returned to the line. “Sorry. There’s no Christopher Chatman working here. So I guess there’s no office?”

  Was she asking me?

  And was that Dora the Explorer theme music playing in her world? Because, if so, Stacy saying, “There’s no Christopher Chatman working here,” was akin to her saying, “OMG gravity doesn’t exist cuz I can’t see it, LOL gtg.”

  After ending my call with Stacy, I typed “Christopher Chatman Commodities” into Google’s search bar: 1,103 results.

  I clicked on the Vandervelde, Lansing & Gray hyperlink and was taken to Christopher Chatman’s profile page.

  There he was, a decent-looking black man with those big brown eyes, a pleasant smile, good posture, and an impressive list of clients—from studio moguls to large corporations. His résumé listed a name-brand university (UCLA), as well as impressive past employers—Big Name Bank and Highfalutin Financial Services Corporation. He spoke Spanish and Mandarin and had been rated a National Master by the United States Chess Federation.

  And he wore bow ties?

  Hell. I’d give him money.

  20

  USED TO BE THE PRETTIEST HOUSE ON DON MATEO DRIVE. THE TERRA-COTTA walkway, rosebushes on each side leading to the wrought-iron front door. Inside, bamboo floors and lots of windows, agonized-over marble and granite, a large backyard with a fire pit, and interesting art, the kind found not at Cost Plus but at a gallery.

  I stared at photographs of the Chatman house taken just a year ago, then gazed at the mess beyond the Crown Vic’s windshield.

  Yellow tape… blackened wood… lots of light only because some of the house had burned away or had been torn down by axes and chain saws.

  Gawkers stood at the perimeter and took pictures of the house with camera phones.

  Fire Marshal Quigley and his team huddled around something in the living room.

  Colin stayed in the car to finish a phone call with his ex-fiancée, Dakota. His eyes had squeezed shut two minutes into the call, and his side of the phone conversation had consisted of “but,” “no,” “we’re not… we’re not.”

  I left him to his personal business and strode up Virginia Oliver’s walkway.

  The old woman threw open the front door before I reached the green welcome mat. She clutched a machete, which was rusty, lusterless, and swimming in tetanus.

  I jerked as though she had already jabbed me and I reached beneath my blazer for my Glock.

  “Oh, it’s the lady cop,” she said with a chuckle.

  “Good afternoon,” I croaked, eyes on the giant knife, fingers pinching the butt of my gun.

  “Thought you was one of them J’ovas Witness. They keep comin’ roun’ here even though I tol’ ’em to leave me be.”

  Virginia Oliver wore a curly auburn wig and a bright canary jogging suit with hot-pink Keds. She had applied a pound of makeup on her face with a paintbrush—and in the dark. She had also overplucked her eyebrows and had penciled them in two inches off the mark.

  After I stepped into the foyer, she closed the door and locked four dead bolts. Then, she slipped the machete into a hanging sheath the way other grannies stowed coats and umbrellas.

  Somewhere, the theme music of Dr. Phil blasted from a television.

  We settled at the breakfast table in the kitchen, a bright space with a red-squared tablecloth and a faded wall painting of the Last Supper.

  “Hope you don’t mind if I eat,” the old woman said, pointing to a small skillet of white rice, cabbage, and shredded pieces of chicken. No plate. Just skillet. “Ol’ ladies like me gots to eat at a certain time a day, else I’ll be up with gas and the scoots and… You hungry?”

  “No, ma’am.” I pulled a small notepad and pen from my bag. “Thank you, though.”

  She stuffed her mouth with cabbage and chewed with an opened mouth. “What you wanna know?” she asked. “I been round here since fifty-two. Back then, me and my husband was the only colored family living on this block.”

  “I’m gathering all the facts surrounding the deaths,” I said. “Facts that will help us determine what happened and who’s responsible.”

  Virginia Oliver peered at me with sharp eyes. “My grandson tol’ me not to talk to y’all. He think y’all just tryna start some mess.”

  “We’re actually trying to make sense of the mess,” I said. “To be honest, it was probably a mess before we even got the call.”

  “That’s what I tol’ him. But Benji suspicious of everybody. Just his nature.”

  “So: Christopher Chat—”

  “Them Chatmans,” the woman said, spooning her rice. “His people responsible for all this. The fires, the deaths—all of it. They dead, but that don’t make no difference.”

  “What…?” I shook my head. “Do you mean, his parents are responsible?”

  “You deaf?” she snapped. “Ain’t that what I said?”

  “I… I was just clarifying.”

  “They moved next door a year or so after me and Willie bought this house. Christopher’s daddy—Henry—was a carpenter for the state. Ava took care of the house like womens did back then.”

  She grabbed the crystal saltshaker and sprinkled sixty tablespoons’ worth of salt into the skillet. “Christopher was a peculiar boy. His momma and daddy thought he was the second comin’ of Einstein. Everything he did was amazin’, never been thought of, never been done before. ’Course he was always winning some kind of award or certificate or what have you…”

  She wiped her mouth with a crumpled napkin. “His folks always wanted things just so. O-per had a show about it a few years ago. OCD, she called it. Them Chatmans had the OCD. Nothin’ was ever out of place in that house. No keys layin’ about. No shoes in the living room. It was like one of them model homes you visit. No soul. Just shine.”

  Although Virginia Oliver’s house was very neat and smelled of lemon furniture polish, there were slippers in the pantry, a Barbie doll and the pink Barbie Corvette on the dining room side bar. And now, there was a sprinkling of salt on the breakfast table.

  “Ain’t nobody ever visited them,” the old woman continued. “Not that you wanted to. They was always tellin’ folks what they was doin’ wrong. Couldn’t eat nowhere ’cept the dining room. Couldn’t eat no chocolate. Couldn’t read
no books ’cept religious ones. Couldn’t watch no TV. They ain’t never smiled, even though childrens of God supposed to have joy.”

  “How did all of that—OCD, religion, high expectations—affect Christopher?”

  She chuckled. “He was never at rest. Always lookin’ to do better. To be more. He was a sweaty little thing cuz he had to put on this show that he was perfect. I made the mistake of mentioning to Ava that he needed to play some and just be. But she tol’ me that relaxin’ meant idleness, that good Christians ain’t nervous, and that the boy had overactive sweat glands.”

  I smiled. “In other words: mind your business.”

  She rolled her eyes, then tore into a piece of chicken. “Couldn’t even call the boy Chris,” she complained with a full mouth. “That’s not his name. Ava would always say that. That’s not his name. And then he brought home a Catholic girl.” She cackled, and meat flew from her mouth and onto my notepad.

  My stomach clenched. Blood and guts? No problem for me. Chewed-up food? Break out the smelling salts. My hand discreetly swiped across the chicken-filled notepaper.

  Virginia Oliver used her pinky nail to dislodge rice from her left molar. “Even when he got grown, he never got upset, even when he had cause to. When he asked Benji for money—”

  My pen froze on the page. “What did he need money for?”

  “Benji say he was just havin’ a little problem. Nothin’ to worry ’bout. Probably cuz that girl wanted somethin’. She always needed a new this, a better that.”

  “And how long ago was this? And how much did Mr. Chatman borrow?”

  “Oh…” She sucked her teeth as she thought. “He asked about a year or so ago. Don’t know how much. Benji was annoyed he was askin’ for that money in front of me.”

  “Did he pay Ben back?” I asked, writing a note to follow up on the status of the warrant requests for the Chatmans’ finances.

  “You gotta ask Benji that.”

  “Did you ever hear Christopher and Juliet argue? About the house? About money?”

  “They had uncomfortable conversations. That’s what Christopher called ’em. But they ain’t never shouted at each other. And Juliet hated that house. Well, that house was just one thing outta millions of things that girl hated,” the old woman said.