by Nora Roberts
know what was coming. To feel it. That would feed him. He’d have tortured her first, he’d need to. He’d have made her suffer first.”
She drew a breath. “Because she was a woman, he’d have taken his time with her. It makes him feel more important, more virile. With his history of sexual assault, he probably raped her.”
“Traces of what looks like cloth inside her mouth.” Peterson leaned over the body, close. “Indicate she was gagged.”
“She opened the door to him.” Like Josh, she thought. “Why? She was a cop’s wife for what, thirty years, and she opens the door to a strange man? He had a pass—delivery, maintenance. Someone had to see him come into the building. Canvass has to turn up something, someone.”
“We’ll start working through the layers here,” O’Donnell told her, and she nodded.
“You can see what he did. Used a flammable, focused on the bed, then set trailers around the room, built his chimneys to punch it all up. He didn’t need the other point of origin in the kitchen to kill her. That was for us. That was for the firefighters who responded. Why not take out a couple of them, too? More bang for the buck.”
She stepped carefully through and around debris, looked toward the kitchen. A pot lid protruded from a wall. Wet dripped down it, and from the jags of ceiling that remained. The street-facing wall was all but gone. Some of the charred remains of cupboards were missing doors. Moving in, crouching down, she used a light and magnifying glass.
“These doors didn’t burn, or blow, O’Donnell. He unscrewed them, used them for his chimneys, for fuel. He’s inventive.” Frowning, she looked back at her partner. “But would he come in empty-handed, trust that she had everything he’d need for the job? He’d need rope, an inflammable of his choice, matches, maybe a weapon. Means a bag, a briefcase, a duffel. Something.”
She straightened, pulled out her ringing phone.
“It’s John,” she told O’Donnell.
“Go ahead. I’ll get the team started in here.”
They started the grids and the photographs.
“Pastorelli’s dying.” Reena pinched the bridge of her nose. “Pancreatic cancer. He told John he hasn’t seen Joey for a couple of months, that he’s supposed to send money. Something about them taking a trip soon, to Italy.”
“That’s why he’s escalated.”
“His father’s dying. He can’t let that go unsung. And from what John got out of the interview, Senior may have convinced his boy that he’s going to face the same fate. Joey wants me to know who’s doing this, who’s coming for me because it’s a tribute to his father—and Jesus, maybe a kind of suicide mission. He’s still the boy running after the police car, after his father.”
“So he figures if they live, he can get them both out of the country after he’s done here? Take his revenge, pay his tribute, whatever he wants to call it, then hide out in Italy?”
“Not hide out. He wouldn’t think of it as hiding out. That would make him weak.” She rubbed at her stinging eyes. “Getting away with it, that’s different. Enjoying the high life somewhere—for the time he thinks they have left—thumbing his nose at what he’s left behind. He had money last December. He could have used some of that for fake passports, for transportation, for a place overseas. He might have friends or a connection there. Pastorelli said northern Italy, up in the mountains. We can start working that. But he’s not going to get that far.”
She looked around at the steam and the rubble, the ruin. “I’m not going to let him get that far.”
“Is John looking to stay on Pastorelli in New York?”
“No, he doesn’t think he can get more there. He’s heading home. I nagged at him to get a room for the night instead of trying to drive all the way back. He sounded beat.”
He waited until midnight, then thought, What the fuck. He could come back for the old bastard another time. He could leave him a nice surprise, then take him out some other time.
He’d seen the cops come to the front and back doors, and he’d seen them drive away. Doing a check, getting a lay of the land. So maybe it was best to do a little work, and move on to the next.
He’d already primed the bedroom, the one where he’d found clothes in the closet. He used some of them to make trailers. Mattress stuffing—something he thought of as a trademark now. Waxed paper, methyl alcohol. Might as well sign the portrait, he thought.
Though it would be fun to spread things out through the house, it was quicker—and just as effective—to concentrate on the one room.
He’d found family photographs. These he broke out of their frames and scattered. Maybe he’d move on the real thing one of these days. You take my family, I take yours.
But for now, he struck flame, watched it come to life.
On the way out, he laid a paper takeout napkin with Sirico’s cheerful logo on the kitchen counter.
Reena worked in the bedroom, teasing out liquid that had pooled in the cracks of the floor, settled under the remains of the baseboard. She bagged traces of trailers that hadn’t burned to ash, took samples of the ash itself.
Trippley came and crouched beside her. “We found some hair in the shower drain. Might be his.”
“Good. Good. We get his DNA on scene, it’ll wrap him like a bow.”
“We’ve got glass fragments from a wine bottle in the living area. Might get prints.”
There was something else, Reena thought as she paused. Something in his tone. “What is it?”
“They found a Sirico’s takeout menu outside.”
Her fingers curled, then released. “I wondered where he’d put it.” Eyes grim, she got back to work. “Delivery. Could’ve posed as a delivery guy. Not food. She wouldn’t let him in. Package? She’d have to have ordered something. What would . . .” Flowers, she decided, remembering Bo’s brush with him at the supermarket. “Maybe flowers.”
She tilted her head back. “Why does a veteran cop’s wife open the door to a stranger? Because he’s delivering flowers. We need to ask the neighbors, the people in neighboring buildings if they saw a guy carrying a florist’s box in addition to the duffel or briefcase idea.”
“I’ll get that going.”
They both looked as O’Donnell moved into the room. “He hit again. Engines are responding to a fire at John Minger’s.”
“He’s not there.” Reena got shakily to her feet. “He can’t be there yet, even if he drove straight back.”
“Go,” Trippley told her. “We’ll stay with this.”
She moved quickly, stripping off her protective gloves on the way out. “If he’s trying to push this through tonight, he may go for my parents, my brother or sisters.”
“They’re covered, Hale.”
“Yeah.” But she made a rapid series of calls anyway.
“Don’t leave the house,” she told her father. “Nobody leaves the house. I’m on my way to John’s now. I don’t want anyone stepping foot out of the house until I say different. I’m going to get back to you as soon as I can.”
She hung up before he could argue. “He isn’t staying around here. Maybe in the county, but not in the city. Maybe down in D.C.”
“We’ve got cops flashing his picture at hotels, motels. It’s a lot to cover.”
“He’d go for high end. He’s not tapped out, and he thinks ahead. He’s got ID, he’s got a credit card to match it. Playing the traveling exec, maybe. A few days at one location, move to another.”
She popped out of the car when O’Donnell braked behind the engine. There was a clenched fist in place of her heart, though she could see the fire was contained, nearly suppressed.
She moved quickly toward Steve. “Gas lines?”
“No leaks. Word is the fire was contained in the bedroom. Smoke alarm deactivated. Woman out walking her dog saw the smoke, called it in.”
“Where is she?”
“Right over there. Nancy Long.”
“Nancy? Gina and I went to school with her.” Finding her in the crowd,
Reena walked over. Nancy held her excited terrier on a leash with one hand and her husband’s arm with the other.
“Nancy.”
“Reena. God this is awful! But they said Mr. Minger wasn’t home. Nobody was inside. I saw smoke. Susie was making such a fuss I gave up and took her for a walk. She was just peeing when I looked up. Maybe I smelled it, I don’t know, but I looked up and I saw smoke coming out of the window. I didn’t know what to do, I guess I panicked. I ran over and beat on Mr. Minger’s door, shouted for him. Then I ran home. I couldn’t even dial nine-one-one my hands were shaking so hard. I had to yell for Ed to do it.”
“You might have saved John’s house. And if he had been inside, you might have saved his life.”
“I don’t know. I’m just sick about it.”
“Did you see anyone else? Someone out walking, someone driving away?”
“No. I didn’t see anyone, not then.”
“Not then?”
“I mean, there was nobody out walking around except me.”
“Maybe you saw someone earlier?”
“Housetraining a new puppy means you’re outside a lot. Before we went to bed I took Susie for what I thought was our last walk of the night. I was just opening the door to go in, and I saw this guy walk by. But that was earlier, near to midnight, I think.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“No. I wouldn’t have paid any attention, except he glanced over when I spoke to Susie, and he kind of waved. And I thought, I wonder who’s getting lucky tonight?”
“Lucky?”
“He had one of those long white flower boxes, and I thought how Ed never brings me flowers anymore.”
“This was around midnight?”
“Right around.”
“I’m going to show you a picture, Nancy.”
Reena stood in John’s kitchen, stared at the Sirico’s takeout napkin on the counter. She put the evidence marker in its place, then bagged it.
“John’s on his way back.” O’Donnell closed his phone. “It’ll take him two, three hours. You want to get started on this or wait until he gets here?”
“Can you handle this for now? I want to check on my family, then get the samples we’ve got so far in.”
“Take a uniform.”
“That’s my plan. He could’ve waited on this. Given it another day or two, made sure John was home. Having us scramble tonight was more important. He was just waiting for me to click to who he is.”
“There’s a unit sitting on your house now, men front and back.”
She managed a smile. “That’s going to piss him off.” Her belly tightened when her phone rang. “Hale.”
“Too bad he wasn’t home. He’d be frying now.”
She signaled O’Donnell. “That must’ve been a disappointment to you, Joey.”
“Hell, the cop’s bitch was enough for tonight. I thought of you when I was doing her, Reena. Every time I raped her, I was thinking of you. You get your messages?”
“Yeah, I got them.”
“That’s your dad’s face in the lame chef’s hat, isn’t it? Your sexy old lady drew it.” He laughed when she said nothing. “There’s another one waiting for you. At your brother’s clinic. Better hurry.”
“God. Goddamn it.” She cleared the call, hit 911. “The clinic where my brother and his wife work. Two blocks away.”
“I’ll drive.” O’Donnell rushed out the door with her.
The Sirico’s wine list was in the gutter, and the building up in flames.
“I’m suiting up.” She popped the trunk, pulled out her gear. “Help with suppression.”
“Reena.”
The surprise of hearing him use her first name stopped her. “You’ve been going what, closing on eighteen hours? Let the engine company handle it.”
“He’s running us in circles, spreading us thin.” She slammed the trunk. “He can’t hit Sirico’s or me or my family directly, so he does this. Just pissing on me.”
She stood, the helmet dangling from her fingers and the fire dancing in front of her. “He’s caught now,” she stated firmly. “He’s caught in it. He can’t stop, how can he stop? It’s hypnotizing. It’s so compelling.”
“What else is there for him to hit? Everything left is under guard.”
Smoke brought tears to her eyes. “The school, then Bo—but Bo was just, I think, a moment of opportunity. Giving me a little tune-up. Umberio’s wife, then John. Now Xander.”
“Working his way to you.”
“I’m the finish line. It’s all payback, but it’s not in order. Xander should’ve come after the school. Xander was the next step, then my father, then the restaurant, and so on. So he’s bouncing, but it’s still a pattern.”
“His old house. It plays,” O’Donnell added when Reena turned to stare at him. “They come to get his father there, he never comes back. He gets pulled out of the house himself by his mother.”
She tossed the helmet into the car. “This time I’ll drive.”
30
Flames licked out of the windows on the second and third floors of the house that had once been the Pastorellis’. There were no alarms, no screams, no crowds. There was only the fire, torching in the dark.
“Call it in!” she shouted to O’Donnell, and grabbed her helmet, raced to the trunk for gear. “There are people in there. Two—probably second-floor bedroom. I’m going in.”
“Wait for the squad.”
She pulled on turnout gear. “I’ve got to try. They could be alive, restrained. I’m not going to let someone else burn to death tonight.”
She grabbed a fire extinguisher, heard in some part of her brain O’Donnell’s voice clipping out the situation and address. He was right behind her as she raced up the steps.
“He could be in there.” O’Donnell’s weapon was in his hand. “I’ve got your back.”
“Take the first floor,” she snapped back. “I’m going up.”
He’d left the door off the latch, she saw. Like an invitation to come on in, make yourself at home. She locked eyes with O’Donnell, nodded, then shoved through the door.
There was light, the backwash from the street, silver slivers of moon. Shadows and silhouettes that were furniture and doorways, all swept with eyes and weapons while her heart galloped at the base of her throat.
And there was ice in her belly as she raced up the steps where smoke bloomed along the ceiling.
It gathered, that smoke, thickened and boiled in a filthy brew as she climbed. The sound of the fire was like a roll of raging surf that she knew could become a tidal wave. She tested a closed door for heat, found it cool. After a quick sweep, she continued down the hall.
Fire danced on the ceiling over her head, surrounded the door like a golden frame. It licked slyly at her boots.
She heard her own muffled cry of fear as she swept foam over flame. There were screams now, but of sirens. No one answered her shouts. She gathered her courage, her breath, and ran through the wall of fire.
The room was blazing, a small mouth of hell. Fire plumed from the floor, clawed up the dresser where a vase of flowers was already engulfed. For a heartbeat she stood surrounded by it, its brilliance and fantastic heat, the colors and movement and power.
Her weapons were so small, pathetic she knew, against the sheer passion of it. And she was already, pitifully, too late.
He hadn’t lit the bed. He’d saved that for her, had wanted her to see.
He’d arranged them, of course. After he’d shot them, he propped them both up so they seemed to be watching. A captive audience to the fire’s majesty.
She moved. Part of her mind stayed rooted to the spot, appalled and fascinated. But she moved, rushing the bed, risking the burn. She had to be sure. Had to be sure she was too late.
“Get back! Get clear!”
She turned at O’Donnell’s shout. Part of her mind registered him standing in the doorway, framed by the violent dance of flames. His face was stained with sweat
and smoke, but his eyes were clear and hard.
