by Kate Flora
As fresh air whooshed through the door with me, her clothes burst into little tongues of flame and her long russet-brown braid caught fire. Above the smoke and flames, her eyes, wide with pain and terror, fixed on me. She mumbled behind the tape as I stood and stared, frozen in place, trying to process what I was seeing. The horror. The incongruity. The utterly incomprehensible nature of what was happening. Ginger was being cooked. I stood in the doorway, paralyzed.
Then I dove into action.
I sprinted toward the circle. Heat and hot metal seared my ankles as I kicked the nearest heaters out of the way. I grabbed the back of the chair, the paint blistering hot under my fingers. As tongues of flame licked at me, I dragged her into a cooler part of the room. I tore off my jacket, balled it up to protect my hands, and used it to smother the flames from her still-burning clothing and her hair. Then I tore at the tape that covered her mouth and nearly covered her nose, gagging from the smell of burned flesh and singed hair and the horror of realizing that I hadn't smelled barbecue at all. I'd smelled this woman, Ginger Stevens, my kind, sweet, sometimes too chatty realtor, being burned alive.
As I pulled out my phone and dialed 9-1-1, Ginger tried to speak.
"Hush," I said. "Hold on. Hold on. I'm calling for help. I'm going to get someone here to help you. We're going to get you to a hospital, Ginger. It's going to be okay."
I wished I believed what I was saying.
Her mouth moved. Dry split lips. Her swollen tongue trying to form words. I bent down so my mouth was close. There was a faint mumble I could barely make out, a few sounds that seemed like words.
"Don't try to talk," I said, because the effort was so clearly painful. But her effort was extreme. There was something she had to tell me.
"...airy," she gasped. "Bobby." Her blackened hands clawed at the air. "So long. Safe." A grasp for the strength to go on, and then, "Sorry."
As the operator answered and went through her spiel, this call is being recorded, blah, blah, I tried to give her the details. My name. The address of this house. The awful scene, a woman being burned alive. Our need for an ambulance and EMTS. Our need for cops, for a crime scene team because this was no accident.
Now that the tape was off her mouth and she'd delivered her incomprehensible message, Ginger's muffled sounds had become a ceaseless high-pitched scream, a primitive, animal cry of agony. Most people know what a burn feels like. Multiply that times a thousand and you wouldn't even come close. Her eyes had a dulled glaze that made me fear she was dying. That she'd die here before help could arrive.
I could barely hear the operator over the screaming. She kept asking me questions I couldn't answer. Finally, I gave up.
"Just send help," I said. I repeated my number and the address. "Send help. And please, for God's sake, have someone call me and tell what I should be doing for her. If there's any way to help her."
"Please stay on the line," she began.
"Don't be stupid," I said. "I can't stay on the line. I've got to go unplug those damned heaters before the whole place burns down."
The ones I'd kicked over were already scorching the floor, heating up the shiny new finish and adding a hot chemical reek to the already fouled air. It was only a matter of moments before the whole place caught fire.
She was starting to say something about staying out of a burning building when I disconnected. Emergency operators can be amazing. They can talk people in crisis through a lot, they can help people deliver babies and save someone who's choking, but in this case she wasn't helpful. She didn't understand the situation I was in and it was way too bizarre to explain.
I dropped the phone in my pocket and ran around the room, jerking on the cords and unplugging all of the heaters. It was so hot I felt like I was in an oven. Where they'd been burned, my ankles and hands felt raw and sore. I raced back to Ginger's chair and dragged her out into the hall where it was cooler, the chair legs leaving ugly scrapes on the shiny floor.
I tore at the knots, trying to get them undone, wanting to set her free, but they were too tight. Not that she would notice. They were all that was holding her up now. Her body had collapsed and she slumped against them, only semi-conscious. I figured that I couldn't get her out of the chair, anyway. There was no place I could touch her that wouldn't be agonizing. And those knots, those rather strange knots, might be evidence. There might be DNA on them.
Dammit. I was hopeless. Thea Kozak. The woman who couldn't stop being a detective, even when she'd sworn she'd left all that behind her.
The screaming didn't stop. Ginger screamed like I had never heard screaming before, screams of such awful intensity I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to scream myself. I wanted to beg her to please stop, even though I knew she couldn't, because I knew I would never get those screams out of my head.
I couldn't leave her. I couldn't do anything for her. I couldn't even take her hand or touch her to lend some comfort. The only thing I could do was talk to her. Keep my voice calm and reassuring and remind her to hold on. To stay with me because help was coming.
It felt like I knelt there in the foyer and tried to say comforting things for about four lifetimes, using my charred jacket as padding because the hardwood floor was torturing my knees, while the smell of burned flesh imbedded itself in my hair, my clothes, my lungs, and my brain.
My phone rang several times, but each time, as I answered it, hoping for someone who could tell me what to do or give me a clue about how to ease her suffering, it was another call from work, including one from my partner, Suzanne. Before I could finish saying hello or explain my situation, she was off and running, beginning with, "What the heck are you thinking, Thea, going off to look at real estate on a day like this. We've got a real emergency on our hands."
"I've spoken with Reeve. We're working on it. But I can't talk right now," I told her, "I've got an emergency of my own. Someone has tried to murder my realtor."
I disconnected while she was still speaking. I could probably guess what she was saying, though. She was starting a lecture on staying out of trouble and my need to live a more normal life. Like this was something I'd engineered because things were getting too dull. Or because I couldn't resist helping people. Little did she know how hard I was trying for normal. It wasn't my fault that bad things kept finding me.
* * *
I couldn't say how much time passed—minutes? hours? weeks?—before Ginger's screams blended with the scream of approaching sirens. The gate slammed, the front door burst open, and a moving, shouting blend of emergency personnel exploded into the small space, observing, assessing and talking all at once as I pushed up off my knees and backed toward the wall to give them room.
The EMTs went to work on Ginger while a uniformed cop, looking like he was finding it as hard to hold himself together as I was, fixed me with beady eyes, demanded my name, and said, "What happened here?"
"I have no idea," I said, knowing, from all my experience with cops, that the answer wouldn't satisfy him, and that soon he'd start pecking at me like a hungry bird, demanding information.
I watched his gaze shift from my face to the EMTs, who were cutting the knots that bound poor Ginger to the chair. As they shifted her, her screams rose to a pitch so shrill they should have shattered glass. They absolutely shattered my nerves.
"Save those knots," I said. "They may be important."
He would think me absurd and I didn't care. Then my stomach gave a violent lurch and I dove for the powder room under the stairs behind me.
Chapter 2
The silence after the ambulance had taken Ginger away was so profound it felt tangible, like someone had suddenly stopped hitting me, or like a heavy weight had been lifted off the room. It didn't last long. I'd barely had time to take a breath before the cops started in with their questions.
There were two of them, the cop who'd been first on the scene and another, older one who'd arrived soon after. The older man wore the weary, dutiful sport coat of a detective. His face
was fissured with cynicism and disappointment. Maybe the screaming had damaged my hearing, though, because I could see their mouths move, but I couldn't hear their questions.
It was as if we had a bad cell phone connection. Or like listening to one of those distant radio stations you get in the car late at night with a song you really want to hear that keeps fading in and out. I got bits and pieces of what they said, interrupted by static and dropped calls. I couldn't hear anything clearly, or get my focus back, never mind process their questions and give them useful answers.
I tried. Honestly, I tried, because although I have a natural resentment of cops, except the ones I loved, I knew they needed answers from me. Sooner rather than later and in as much detail as possible. Yet somehow I couldn't seem to move beyond the charred, empty chair that sat like Ginger's ghost in the center of the room, surrounded by blackened bits of rope and the detritus of a medical emergency—torn packages, blackened gauze, discarded blue gloves. Thea the great and terrible, natural adversary of bad guys and compulsive rescuer of the downtrodden and the helpless, had become an incoherent, trembling bundle of nerves.
I was ashamed of myself and powerless to do anything about it.
As I watched their faces morph from blank to frustrated, I made a timeout sign. "Look. I'm sorry. I don't know if this is shock or what. Usually I'm coherent. But I can't understand a word you're saying."
Instead of producing the desired results—understanding, a comforting arm, or the suggestion that we move to a different venue where there might be a glass of water or some place to sit down away from such vivid reminders of the horrors I'd just seen—they raised their voices. It's such an oddly universal human instinct. If someone doesn't understand you, talk louder, as though loud static is more comprehensible.
Since my attempt at an explanation hadn't worked, I decided to join their club. I didn't do it gracefully. "Shut up!" I yelled. "Just shut up. Shut up. Shut up. I can't hear you. I can't process your questions. I can't hear anything but Ginger screaming. Yelling at me will not make it better."
I marched through the door and out onto the porch, greedily inhaling the chilly March air as though if I could just take in enough of it I could purge my lungs of the stench of burned flesh and maybe some oxygen would restore my fumbling brain. It was like going from a noisy bar to the circus. The street swarmed with police cars with flashing blue lights, with news vans, and crowds of curious people. I'd forgotten about the blood maggots, as Andre and his cohort called them.
A made-up blonde carrying a large mike pushed past the cop guarding the gate and rushed toward me, her incomprehensible questions streaming from shiny, blood-red lips. I fled back inside.
Motioning for my inquisitors to follow me, I headed for the kitchen, farther from the horrors of that living room. They waited while I bathed my face in cold water and mopped it dry with some paper towels. As soon as I turned back toward them, they started in again, like a pair of mismatched twins.
"Only one of you," I said, pointing at the senior guy.
"What were you..."
In my pocket, my phone vibrated like a trapped bee. I pulled it out and checked the number. Andre. This was the one call I wanted to take.
"I just heard," he said.
"I can't hear," I said. "I can't think. They want me to answer questions and all I hear is screaming. What do I do?"
"Not now." The older cop snatched my phone out of my hand, shaking his head like he was chiding a naughty child.
"Give that back!" I dove for it.
He backed up, holding it out of my reach like a taunting older sibling. "Not until you answer my questions."
My hearing was getting better. Getting angry makes some people less coherent but for some reason it helps me to focus. Yes, definitely getting better, because from the little device that idiot was holding in his hand, I could hear Andre's anxious voice. "Thea? Thea? What the hell is going on?"
"You might want to stop acting like a boob and tell that guy on the phone what's happening," I said, folding my arms over my chest and giving him my best "let's settle down and act like grownups" glare. "He's Maine State Police homicide, and if Ginger dies, you're going to be dealing with him anyway. No reason to piss him off now. Really. Is there?"
Sporty—I had no other name for him, as he hadn't had the courtesy to introduce himself or given me a card, he'd just hollered questions—stared at me like I'd betrayed some trust, even though no trust had been built between us. Or as if I'd taken leave of my senses. Which, in fairness, I temporarily had. But I was coming back now.
"What the fuck?" he said. "You already called the staties?"
"No." I shook my head. "Detective Andre Lemieux," I said, pointing at the phone. "My husband. If you won't let me speak to him, please tell him I'm in shock. That I really need him. Right here. Right now."
In the spirit of people yelling to be sure they were heard, I was yelling now so that Andre would hear me. I wanted to help these guys out. I absolutely did. But I've never understood how bullying people, never mind refusing to listen to people you want information from, is supposed to advance any investigation. It seemed to me that the details of this one were critical. Someone had done something utterly horrific here, and that someone needed to be found and roasted over a slow fire, or at least brought to justice. I was the person who'd found the victim and tried to save her, which kind of made me a victim, too, even if not in the same league. A victim, and someone who could reasonably be expected to be in shock. And they weren't treating me like a victim, or like someone who might be affected by such a terrible experience. They were acting like I was being deliberately difficult.
Meanwhile, Sporty had temporarily stopped acting like someone's mean big brother. He'd lowered the phone to his ear and was talking. As someone who reads people for a living, which consultants have to do almost as often as cops, especially when their clients aren't telling them the truth, I was getting a wealth of information from his face. It appeared that Sporty was getting an earful of Andre's displeasure. My husband, it seemed, was not happy about being unable to speak with his traumatized wife, and he was explaining that now. No way to know if he and Sporty knew each other. It was likely, since the Maine law enforcement community isn't that big. If he did, he'd know that Detective Andre Lemieux was not someone to be messed with.
Eventually, Sporty withdrew the phone from his ear, shook it like it was coated with something that should require a Hazmat suit, and held it out to me.
"Can you hold it together until I get there?" Andre said. "I'm about twenty minutes out."
"I can try." Even as I said it, I felt like I wasn't going to be able to hold it together for two minutes, let alone twenty. "But hurry. The street out there. It's like a circus. And oh my God! Poor Ginger. I've never seen..."
"Tell Lieutenant Scafaro what you saw. Everything you saw. He's not an idiot, even if he's acting like one. It's important, okay? Just keep breathing. Stay calm. And tell him what you know. I'm on my way."
Sporty Scafaro was watching me warily, like he wasn't sure what to do with me now. I wasn't just an uncooperative witness anymore. Not that I ever had been. I was a cop's wife. It complicated the hell out of what he wanted to do, which was yell, bully, and generally be a cop asshole.
I disconnected and put my phone away, ready to make a genuine effort at cooperation. When my honey tells me to do something, I try to comply. Especially when it's cop-related. He's a good cop. And anyway, he was right. Scafaro did need to know things if he was going to find out who had done this to Ginger.
"There's no place to sit," I said. "And we don't want to go out there." I waved vaguely toward the street. "We'll just have to make the best of it. So, what do you want to know?"
Scafaro flipped over his notebook. "Everything. From the beginning. Who are you and why are you here?"
"My name is Thea Kozak," I said. "Ginger Stevens, that's the woman who was... in the... tied to the chair, is my realtor. Our realtor. Andre and I are looki
ng for a house." I gave him the name of the company. "I was supposed to meet her here this morning at nine to look at the house—"
"At nine?" he interrupted. "You didn't call us until 10:45."
"I know when I called you."
I could feel myself unraveling. Oh. God. I had to hang on to my temper. This was going to be hard enough without another shouting match. "Is this how it's going to be?" I said. "You're going to keep interrupting me? Can't you just listen until I've finished and then ask your questions? And stop being so damned accusatory. I'm just a realtor's customer who's trying to buy a house."
Okay. I was not being all sweetness and light. "Please," I said. "I'm just trying to get this out the way I remember it. It doesn't help if you keep interrupting."
"Go on," he said.
"Just as I was about to leave, right around 8:30, Ginger's office called and said she'd been delayed and the showing needed to be pushed back to 10:30. That was a bad time for me, I've got a lot on my..."
I stopped. He didn't need to hear about my day. Just the facts, ma'am, as they say. Among those facts was who had made the call. I tried to remember. It had not been Ginger. Had it been a man or a woman? Either a man, or a woman with a deep voice. I told him that.
"I got here about five minutes late. Ginger's car was in the driveway. I knocked. She didn't answer, but the door was open, so I went in. I called her name a few times. No response. I thought she might be out in the back... in the yard. I knew the house has a big back yard from the listing photos she'd sent. So I started to look around."
Scafaro was scribbling. The other cop was watching me like he was some kind of human polygraph assigned to tell when my body's responses said I'd veered from the straight and narrow.
"Backing up," I said. "When I came through the door into the foyer, the pocket doors into the living room were closed, so I went the other way, into the dining room. I thought I was going to love the living room. I wanted to save it for last."
I rubbed a hand over my face, and when I looked down, I saw my hand was black. My face was probably streaked with black now, too. I probably looked primitive and savage. They could have told me. It wasn't nice to let someone think they looked normal when they were covered in soot. No. Not soot. Charred flesh, burned hair and clothes.
