Cold Blooded (Dennis McQueen 02)

by Randisi, Robert J.

  “He had a filo-fax in the office at work,” she said. “And I’m sure he has an address book somewhere. It might have gotten burned up in the fire.”

  Walking down the stairs behind her he noticed the scent of her perfume. He either hadn’t noticed it before, or she’d put some on after she left him in the office.

  When they reached the entry foyer they stopped. He noticed she had put some purple socks on to protect her feet from the cold tiles.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, Sergeant?” she asked. There was nothing overtly sexual, or flirtatious, in her words or manner, so maybe he imagined that she was coming on to him. She was standing a bit hip shot, though, as if showing off her body to him. He remembered her swaying butt as he’d followed her up the stairs, earlier.

  He took a business card from his pocket and said, “If you think of something helpful, or hear from your husband, I’d like you to give me a call.”

  “All right,” she said, accepting the card. She didn’t do anything sexy with it, like tap her teeth with it or slip it into her shirt, so it had to be him. He was just getting a vibe from her, as the kids said. “I don’t expect to hear from him, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’d had a big argument and I kicked him out of the house,” she said.

  “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  She studied him for a moment, then said, “I wasn’t comfortable with you before.”

  “And you are now?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Okay, he thought, now that’s obvious.

  “Mrs. Dean,” he asked, “when did you have the fight and kick him out?”

  “I guess this is important,” she said, with a shrug. “It was the same day of the fire.”

  Chapter 21

  Bailey Sommers was having a dissimilar experience at the mother’s house. Mrs. Wingate let her in and agreed to let her look at her son’s room. She offered tea, but Sommers refused, so they went right up to the room together.

  Unlike Victor Dean’s office, Thomas Wingate’s room was a mess. There were clothes strewn about everywhere, empty microwave soup and noodle containers everywhere, as well as empty Snapple bottles.

  “Mrs. Wingate, how old was your son?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  Sommers nodded and continued to look around without moving from the spot she was standing in. Posters on the wall ran the gamut from Britney Spears to monster trucks and Formula One. It had all the appearances of a teenager’s room.

  “He still lived at home?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t move out, and then come back, maybe?”

  “No,” Mrs. Wingate said, “no, he still lived here. He never moved out.”

  “Why was that, ma’am?”

  The woman looked confused.

  “This was his home.”

  “But he was twenty-two, ma’am,” Sommers said. “Young men don’t usually live at home until that age.”

  “I—I don’t—didn’t see anything wrong with it,” she said. “Besides, I liked the company. Ever since my husband died . . . if Thomas had moved out, I would have been . . . lonely.”

  “Did he have a job?”

  Mrs. Wingate hesitated, then said, “He had lots of jobs.”

  “Your daughter said he was in the building when the fire started,” the detective asked. “Did he work for your daughter and son-in-law?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she said, “He didn’t tell me what job he had. I just knew he had . . . different ones.”

  Sommers looked around the room again. She didn’t think she was going to be able to find anything helpful in there. It looked like a cyclone had hit it, and she wouldn’t have wanted to touch anything without gloves, anyway.

  “What are you looking for?” Wingate asked.

  “Just something . . . helpful.”

  “I’m afraid he’s not a very neat boy,” she said.

  He wasn’t a boy, Sommers thought, he was a man—or he was supposed to be.

  She wasn’t going to find anything in the room, but maybe she could still find something out from the mother.

  “Maybe I’ll have that cup of tea now, Mrs. Wingate.”

  Before leaving the Dean residence McQueen asked Lydia, “Did your brother work for you and your husband?”

  “He was working for us at the time of the fire.”

  “Doing what?”

  She shrugged.

  “Nothing, as far as I know,” she said. “Thomas wasn’t very good at anything. He certainly wasn’t good at keeping jobs. So we put him on the payroll.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Like I said, I’m not sure.”

  “Then why would he have been there?”

  She sighed.

  “Victor said that if he was going to pay Thomas then he had to be around—you know, for errands.”

  “So he was an errand boy.”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “And your husband,” he asked, “he didn’t have time to find another place to live, did he?”

  “I think he did,” she said, “but he would have only been there a couple of days when he heard that the fire had been deemed suspicious. After that I never heard from him again.”

  “Does he still have clothes here?”

  “Yes, he does,” she said. “He only packed a single bag to take with him that morning.”

  “And would he have any friends he might have stayed with?” McQueen asked.

  “I’m afraid my husband didn’t have those kinds of friends,” she replied. “He was not a very friendly man.”

  “Okay then, Mrs. Dean,” McQueen said, “we’ll be talking again.”

  “I’m sure we will, Sergeant,” she said, “but in the future, why don’t you just call me Lydia?”

  “All right, Lydia,” he said. “My name is Dennis.”

  “Nice to meet you, Dennis,” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m afraid I wasn’t at my best when we first met. I think I was rude.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “It was a shock, I know.”

  “And thank you for the compassion you and your partner showed to my mother.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he said. “I’ve got to get going now, but like I said, we’ll talk.”

  “Yes.”

  She showed him to the door, and closed it behind him before he reached the bottom of the porch steps.

  Chapter 22

  McQueen got in his car and fished out his cell phone. Doing so reminded him that he’d never had the photos he took of the scene in Coney Island “developed.” Didn’t much matter now, though.

  Before leaving the office he had arranged two things—an unmarked car for Sommers to drive, and an exchange of cell phone numbers so they could stay in touch. He took his out now and made one call before calling her, to the Arson Task Force.

  “Orson.”

  “This is Sergeant McQueen, from Brooklyn South Homicide?”

  “Hey, what can I do you for, Sarge?”

  “I’d like to get a look at the scene of that fire we talked about,” McQueen said. “What are the chances of you meeting me there?”

  “When?”

  “Within the hour.”

  “No chance,” Orson said. “I’m outta here in fifteen to do some interviews.”

  “On this case?”

  “No, another one,” Orson said. “But if you’re interested in info about the fire why not have the fire marshal meet you there? I don’t know squat about the fire. I’m lookin’ into the fraud end of it, you know? Lookin’ for the owner, gonna lock his ass up for having the fire set.”

  McQueen had a feeling the guy just didn’t want to meet him, but he actually liked the idea of speaking with a fire marshal.

  “You got his number?”

  “Hold on,” Orson said. McQueen heard some pages being turned. “Here ya go.” Orson read off the number and McQueen jotted it down. Then Orson gave him a name: Willis
.

  “Okay, got it. Thanks.”

  “So you got Brooklyn North to let you keep the case?”

  “In a way, yeah.”

  “Hey, keep in touch, okay?”

  “You do the same,” McQueen said.

  He hung up, dialed the number for the fire marshal’s office. When the phone was answered by a man he asked for Fire Marshal Willis.

  “Why do you want Willis?”

  McQueen explained who he was and what he wanted.

  “Within the hour?”

  “If possible.”

  “Sure,” the man said. “Willis will be there.”

  “Okay,” McQueen said, surprised. “What’s your nam—”

  The man hung up and McQueen stared at the phone in surprise, then dialed Sommers’s number.

  Bailey Sommers left the Wingate house after having a long conversation with Thomas’s mother in her kitchen. The woman was obviously in denial about her son who, by all appearances, was something of a bum, not to mention a slob and a mooch. He lived with his mother and worked for his sister. Not exactly the catch of the day for any woman. But to his mother he was a sensitive boy who was misunderstood by everyone he worked for, including his sister and brother-in-law. Mrs. Wingate’s disgust for her son-in-law, Victor, was obvious, and also obvious was the fact that she didn’t get along with her daughter. Sommers thought she’d be interested to hear the daughter’s side when she got back and talked to McQueen.

  She left the house and walked to the unmarked unit McQueen had managed to get for her. It was cold out, and the engine didn’t turn over right away but she finally got it running. It would be a while, though, before the heater started pumping out hot air.

  She touched her cell phone in her coat pocket and, as if by magic, it rang.

  “Sommers,” McQueen said, when she answered. “Where are you?”

  “In my car, in front of the Wingate house. I finished talking with the mother.”

  “I’m done here, also,” he said. “Meet me at the scene of the fire.”

  She got the address from him and then asked, “What are we going to do there?”

  “We’re gonna talk to the fire marshal who called it suspicious,” he said, “and, hopefully, get some answers.”

  McQueen pulled his car to a halt in front of the burnt-out building that was walking distance from Gold Street, where Brooklyn Central Booking was located.

  He got out of his car and approached the front. The outside of the brick building was intact, but the inside had been gutted by the fire, and by the fire department’s attempts to control it. Sometimes he thought the fire department did more damage than they had to do, but that feeling might have just been a result of the natural rivalry between the departments.

  He turned at the sound of another car, saw that it was Sommers’s unmarked unit. She parked and got out, approached him.

  “Fire marshal not here yet?” she asked.

  “I guess not.”

  “I’m here,” a voice said from behind him.

  He turned and saw a woman come out of the building. Had she been the one who spoke? There was still some police tape here and there, blowing in the wind in some places like yellow streamers. When he saw the short, stocky woman approaching him with her hands in her coat pockets he thought she was going to ask direction. She surprised him.

  “Sergeant McQueen?”

  “That’s right.”

  She extended her hand and said, “Fire Marshal Willis.”

  Chapter 23

  “They didn’t tell you I was a woman,” Willis said.

  “No.”

  “They think that’s funny,” she explained.

  McQueen hurriedly offered his hand, to make up for his surprise.

  “Glad to meet you.”

  “Yeah, me too,” she said.

  “This is my partner, Detective Sommers.”

  The two women simply nodded to each other.

  “You wanna go inside?” Willis asked.

  “Absolutely,” McQueen said.

  They went into the building, ducking under some crime scene tape. McQueen and Sommers followed Willis in.

  “What was the make-up of the building?” McQueen asked.

  “Three stories, offices on the top floor, manufacturing on the second floor, first floor and basement used for warehousing.”

  “Where’d the fire originate?”

  “Basement,” she said. “I’ll take you down.”

  They picked their way through the debris and followed her down some stairs to the basement. It was one long continuous room down there, used as a warehouse. McQueen could see among building debris lots of cloth materials, and packing crates.

  Deeper into the basement they found the room where the fire had started. The floor, walls and ceiling were badly scorched, but intact. There was more debris around from the company’s product, here and there some overturned metal clothing racks.

  “The fire originated here and spread throughout the building. That’s why they had to fight most of the night to keep it contained. We’re still trying to find out why it was so hot.”

  “And?”

  “This fire was started by someone who almost knew what they were doing. Just the right amount of accelerant, the alligatoring—”

  “The what?” Sommers asked.

  “Come here.”

  They followed her to a wall and looked where she was pointing.

  “See the charring of the wood? That’s alligatoring. These markings indicate an intense fire. And there was obviously some flashover.”

  “Which means what?” Sommers said.

  “Flashover,” she said, “is when the heat in the room becomes so intense that the flame can travel on it, spreading over the entire area.”

  “So this fire was not set by a pro?” Sommers asked.

  “A talented amateur is more like it.”

  “Why do you say that?” McQueen asked.

  “There’s too much fingering.” When she saw their blank looks she added, “I’ll explain. The fingering is the splash effect of the accelerant. There’s too much of it here for a real pro to have been involved. Also, it got out of hand.”

  “So the guy was good, but too sloppy?” Sommers asked.

  “Exactly,” she said. “He overdid it.”

  “Why were there not any bodies?” Sommers asked.

  McQueen answered before Willis could. “It was Saturday morning,” he said. “They were closed.”

  “But the Wingate boy . . .”

  “Was apparently working overtime,” Willis said. Sommers looked at McQueen. This didn’t jibe with the picture she had formed of the victim.

  “About the accelerant,” she said. “It wasn’t gasoline?”

  “No,” she said, “or kerosene, or anything else we could readily identify by the smell, like naphthalene.”

  “Like what?” McQueen asked.

  “It comes from mothballs.”

  “You can smell that?”

  “If you’re experienced.”

  “Is that what you smell here?” McQueen asked.

  “No,” she said, “this wasn’t quite that homemade.”

  “So how do you ID it?” McQueen asked.

  “Our lab will work on it,” she said. “Part of the problem is that extra smell.”

  “The . . . what? Packing material?”

  “Or whatever it is,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I can usually ID an accelerant from the smell, but that other odor is interfering.”

  “What all was in here?” Sommers asked, looking around.

  “Well, as you can see it was mostly empty,” she said. “There were some crates and racks of clothes against that wall, but the fire started right here, dead center.”

  McQueen and Sommers looked around, then at each other. They weren’t learning much here.

  “I understand you found a body you think came from here?” Willis asked.

  “We found the younger brother of the woman who owned
this place with her husband.” He told her where, and under what circumstances the victim had been found.

  “Burns?”

  “None,” McQueen said, “but smoke in his lungs.”

  “He might have died on one of the upper floors,” she said. “Smoke would have killed him before the flames got to him . . . but how did the body get out before it was burned?”

  “That’s what we’d like to find out,” McQueen said. “Mind if we have a look at the upper floors?”

  “I wouldn’t wander around the building without me,” she said. “If you want to have a look, I’ll take you there.”

  “I thought you said the flames didn’t get up there?” Sommers commented.

  “I said the smoke would have killed your victim before the flames got there,” she said. “Obviously, somebody got him out first, but the flames did get there. The entire interior of this structure could go at any moment.”

  McQueen and Sommers both looked up at the ceiling.

  “If you want to look at the upper floors, you better hurry.”

  “No,” McQueen said, “that’s all right. Why don’t you walk us out of here . . . safely?”

  McQueen and Sommers were still standing in front of the building after Fire Marshal Willis had left.

  “She had a lot of personality,” Sommers said.

  “She’s probably had a hard time getting to where she is,” McQueen said. “I’d think if anyone would understand that it would be you.”

  “You don’t have to become a machine,” Sommers said. “You can still maintain your personality.”

  “Have you maintained yours?” he asked.

  “I have,” she said. “You just haven’t known me long enough to notice.”

  McQueen looked up at the burnt-out brick structure.

  “Who was here?” he wondered aloud. “Who was here with the kid to pull him out? And if he was dead, why pull him out?”

  “I’ve got another question,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Like Willis said, maybe working overtime.”

  “No,” she said, “that doesn’t fit. Just talking to the mother I can see that he was a total waste.”