Shatter the Night

by Emily Littlejohn

  “Word gets around. Everyone knows you’re suddenly itching to get out of the valley.” I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Come on, it’s no big deal. This town isn’t for everyone. You’ve put in a good stint. I can see how the action in a larger city would appeal to you.”

  Finn clenched his jaw and resumed walking. I paced myself with his long strides.

  “Does the chief know?”

  “I don’t think so.” I didn’t add that it was probably a matter of weeks, though, before Chavez heard the rumors. Secrets never last in a town, or a police department, our size.

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way. There’s a lot of unknowns at this time, including a firm job offer.” Finn shot me a look, relaxed his jaw. “Have you ever been to New York? Restaurants like you wouldn’t believe.”

  I started to respond, but we’d reached the car and Investigator Ramirez stood there, near the trunk, watching our approach. At her side, Fuego stared at us with big, watchful amber-colored eyes.

  I introduced her and Finn.

  “First-timers to the party?” she asked us. She noted our confusion and clarified, “First time up close? To a burn vic?”

  Finn said, “I worked a homicide a few years back where the perp tried to cover the murder by torching the victim’s apartment. It was a mess.”

  Ramirez sniffed. “Yeah … this is probably a little fresher.”

  “That’s my friend in the car that you’re talking about.” Might as well get everything on the table now, before she said something that really offended me.

  Ramirez turned to me. “I’m sorry. You may want to take a minute to prepare yourself. It’s … well, it’s visceral. There’s no other way to put it.”

  “Sure.” I took a moment, then moved to the driver’s side of the sedan. Leaning down, I stared in at the charred mass in the driver’s seat. The smell was indescribable. I tried to breathe slowly, shallowly, through my mouth; tried to maintain a professional composure.

  It was no use; I stepped away, turning from what remained of the body of the man who’d been my friend.

  A breeze from the south drifted through and I gagged as the stench of still-smoldering human fat blossomed in the air. Beside me, Finn looked equally nauseous. “I don’t think I’ve ever smelled anything so terrible in my life.” He turned away and dry-heaved, then spat.

  Ramirez leaned in next to me. In a hushed voice, she said, “I did three tours in Iraq as a medic. You never do get used to it. One burnt body’s bad enough. Just imagine dozens. It was unbelievable.”

  Finn straightened. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and cleared his throat. “Where were you stationed?”

  “Fallujah, mostly.” Ramirez looked away. “Anyway, my hope is that the initial explosion rendered the victim unconscious. At least that way, when the flames got to him, he didn’t suffer.”

  I turned from Caleb’s remains and glanced at the crowd gathered on the far side of the street. If this was an intentional act of murder, was the perpetrator somewhere close by? Was he standing there, among the bystanders and witnesses, watching us attempt to start unraveling the damage he’d done?

  Someone in the group shifted and I caught a glimpse of a man at the back of the crowd. At least, I thought it was a man. He wore a burlap sack pulled over his head, with two black slits for eyes, and a hooded sweatshirt, worn with the hood pulled up over the top of the sack.

  Many in the crowd wore costumes, including a handful dressed as famous dead celebrities, but there was something unsettling, even disturbing about the man’s ramrod posture, his body turned in my direction.

  The man slowly raised a finger to his mouth in a gesture of silence and shook his head back and forth. Then he turned tail and took off, north along Main Street.

  “Finn,” I gasped and began pursuit of the individual. Finn stayed on my heels and I shouted to him what I’d seen. Up ahead, we saw the masked man duck right, down a long alley that I knew came to a dead end at a chain-link fence.

  We stopped short of the alley. In between deep breaths, I managed to get out, “He’s trapped. Unless he’s Spider-Man. That fence goes twenty feet high; it backs up to the hospital.”

  “He’s not trapped at all. There’s half a dozen doors that open onto the alley.” Finn turned around, looked backward. “We need a third man, to cover us.”

  “We don’t have time. You cover the street, don’t let him backtrack. I’m going in.”

  I entered the alley before Finn could say a word. Behind me, ten, now twelve feet, I heard him swear. The alley was dark, the light from the streetlamps barely penetrating the gloomy darkness. Slowly, I pulled my flashlight from my jacket pocket and clicked it on. The light played low on the ground and then I raised it, swiveling the beam in front of and to the sides of me as I moved down the alley. Every couple of feet, I stopped to listen and check the doors; all were locked. Aside from a steady drip of water from a pipe somewhere, and the occasional rumble of a car passing by on Main Street, the alley was quiet.

  Too quiet, in fact.

  There should have been the rustle of mice, rats maybe, or a breath of wind.

  But there was nothing, and finally I stopped, nearly three-quarters of the way down the alley, and turned around. At the entrance, illuminated by a streetlamp, Finn’s silhouette provided some, though not much, reassurance. I took a deep breath, turned around, and walked the last twenty feet of the alley and reached the chain-link fence.

  Mystified, I ran the beam of my flashlight all over the fence, looking for a cutout, a section where the links had been broken. An escape. Finding none, I sighed. The man, whoever he was, had somehow eluded us.

  Chapter Three

  “This guy might really be Spider-Man after all. He must have scaled the fence and dropped down to the other side. Freaking monkey, is what he is.” Finn slowed his pace, matching mine, as we made our way back to the scene.

  We rejoined Liv Ramirez at Caleb’s car.

  “You guys took off like the devil was on your heels.”

  We caught her up on the man with the mask. She asked, “You think this guy might be involved with the explosion?”

  “Maybe.” I glanced at her, noting how Fuego, the Lab, seemed to mimic his owner’s every move. Even now, the two of them were mirror images, each one with one leg forward and one back (in the dog’s case, one leg forward and three back) and twin looks of inquisitiveness on their faces. “You said that you were certain this was murder, an intentional act. Was it a car bomb?”

  “It’s too early in the investigation to know.” Ramirez walked to the front of the vehicle, then crouched, peering intently at the melted tires, the ruined undercarriage, and the crater beneath the car. She stood back up. “I won’t be certain of anything until we get the vehicle in the lab, run forensics, and hear statements from eyewitnesses.”

  “Of course.” It was obvious that Ramirez was smart. I suspected that in spite of what she’d just said, she already had a working theory. I was curious to hear it. “How about your best guess?”

  Ramirez cocked her head, pursed her lips. After a few moments of thought, she sighed. “This is off the record. I think someone laced this car with explosives and then possibly remotely detonated it. That’s about the only thing that would cause this kind of damage.”

  “So it was a car bomb.” Finn rolled up his shirtsleeves, then crouched by the side of the car and looked under it. “What kind of explosives were used? Would they have been placed under the carriage? Or in the trunk? How much would it take to do a job like this?”

  “Didn’t I just say that I won’t know anything more until I run some tests?” Ramirez said as Finn stood back up. She punched him lightly on the shoulder, an overly familiar gesture. “You cops are all the same … stubborn and aggressive.”

  He flashed her a dry grin. “You forgot good-looking and charming.”

  Finn would flirt with a brick wall if it would get him what he was looking for. I cleared my throat. “You
said the bomb was remotely detonated. What did you mean by that? A timer?”

  Even as I said it, though, I realized just how hard it would have been to pinpoint Caleb’s departure from the law offices to an exact time. A timer would have been extremely risky.

  Ramirez shook her head. “I don’t think a timer was involved. I’m fairly certain that you’re looking for a killer with a gun.”

  “A gun?” I asked in disbelief.

  Ramirez asked, “How much do you know about explosives?”

  “Not much,” Finn and I responded in unison.

  “I’ll keep things basic, then.” The fire investigator thought a moment, blinking her catlike green-gold eyes. “You both know what a detonator is, right? It’s the mechanism that triggers the explosive device. A lot of the time, the detonator is a blasting cap containing some kind of compound material. Think of it as a fuse, a sort of first mini bomb that triggers the much larger explosive materials. Anyway, explosives can be set up to detonate in different ways; timers, movement of the car, ignition, et cetera.”

  “But you think this one was remotely detonated?” I asked again.

  “Yes. A few people, including Buddy Holly and Marilyn Monroe over there by the streetlight, said they heard a gunshot blast immediately before the explosion. Buddy Holly, who is an avid hunter, is certain it was a rifle.”

  Surprised, I asked, “You’ve already spoken to eyewitnesses?”

  “Just a couple.” It was Ramirez’s turn to grin. Her teeth were small and even and shone brightly against the bronze of her skin. “I guess I can be a little aggressive, too.”

  “A rifle. That explains the noise the neighbor heard just before the explosion.” Finn glanced up at the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. “Maybe it was a bullet that killed Montgomery. He could have been dead by the time the car exploded. It’s a clear shot from five or six different rooftops, straight through the front windshield.”

  Ramirez looked up, then turned in a slow circle, taking in each of the buildings on Main Street. She ended her scan back at Finn. “Yeah, sure, maybe.”

  I assumed she and I were thinking the same thing: why shoot someone if you’ve already laced his car with explosives? Ramirez asked the question aloud. “Why go to the effort of a car bomb if you’re going to get the same result with a rifle? If this was a remote location, it might make more sense; the fire might cover up the evidence of a gunshot. Enough damage and the ME might even skip a thorough autopsy. But this is a busy, public space. Witnesses heard the gunshot. So no, no I don’t think a bullet killed the victim. I think the sniper waited and watched and at the right moment, he pulled the trigger and either hit the detonator or the explosives themselves.”

  Ramirez pointed across the street at a long-closed restaurant. “And if it was me, if I was going to do it, I’d plant myself up there. It’s the cleanest shot to the car. Then I’d clear the hell out in the ensuing chaos.”

  “There’s a lot of assumptions there,” Finn replied after a moment of silence. “Something like that would take weeks of planning. How did the gunman know to be here, at this spot, at this exact time?”

  I swallowed. “Because the killer’s been watching Caleb. He hunted him. We don’t deal in coincidences, Finn, not in our line of work. Caleb showed me the threats he’s received and a few minutes later, he’s dead.”

  Ramirez stepped away from us to take a call on her radio.

  Finn moved closer to me. “Gemma. Think about it, think about the tone of the letter. It expressed glee, excitement at the prospect of watching Montgomery suffer a slow death. A car bomb is quick, dirty, and effective.”

  Before he could say more, Ramirez ended her call. She moved back to us. “As I was saying, I can’t be sure of anything until I get the evidence in the lab. But I stand by my theory, though I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourselves until I can confirm a few things.”

  “Have you run across something like this before?” Finn asked. “A bullet used to detonate a car bomb?”

  Ramirez nodded. “Sure. I wouldn’t say it’s common, but it happens.” A short burst of sirens pierced the night again, and the crowd parted to let the ME’s car through. “Looks like the medical examiner is here. I’ll get out of the way, but I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything conclusive for your team.”

  She left us, Fuego trotting beside her. Even their strides matched, purposeful and deliberate.

  “Cool dog.” Finn watched them walk away. “Interesting woman.”

  “Yes. Let’s get a team to canvas every building that faces this intersection, including residential properties. Some have security systems, cameras. We might get lucky.”

  “And every roof as well; there may be trace evidence.” Finn stepped away to speak with a patrol officer and wrangle a support team together.

  I scanned the crowd again, which was finally starting to disperse, taking it in, all too aware that though we’d collect evidence and take photographs, a crime scene is by its very nature a shifting, changing thing. We’d never again be in this moment, in this place, this close to the actual criminal act. Each moment that ticked past was another moment farther from the event, farther from the killer’s last few actions that led to the death.

  The beginning of this murder investigation, like most, would start with an ending: the intentional ending of a life. And then the investigation would work backward, but the earth continues to rotate and time moves forward and if you’re lucky, you end up somewhere in the middle, at the truth.

  “Hell of a day.” The scowl on Dr. Ravi Hussen’s face deepened at the sight of what remained of Caleb’s body. She was already suited and gloved up, with a mask hanging loosely around her neck. Her eyeliner was thick, her hair pulled up in an elaborate twist under her cap. Like Finn, she, too, must have been enjoying the Halloween spirit.

  “Hi, Ravi.” I was glad to see her. Cool and collected, competent and charming, Ravi was not only an ace medical examiner, she was a dear friend.

  Ravi said, “I left Los Angeles to get away from things like this. Thank heavens no one else was hurt. I understand this is likely Caleb Montgomery?”

  “Yes. A neighbor observed him enter the vehicle just before the explosion. And as if things weren’t complicated enough, we have witnesses who report hearing a gunshot before the explosion.”

  “I see.” Ravi leaned close to the car, peered in for a few moments, then stepped back. A look of deep sadness had entered her eyes. “I testified before Caleb many times. He was one of our own, wasn’t he? This one hurts, Gemma. The damage to the body is extensive, but I’ve worked with worse. If he was shot, I’ll find the bullet. The explosion was shortly after seven thirty, correct?”

  “Yes. Did you hear it?”

  Ravi shook her head, looking pained. “I was trying to get out of a terrible blind date at some terrible Halloween party. The hosts had the stereo on full blast.”

  Finn approached us, Jimmy hot on his heels. The young intern spoke first, excitedly. “I got a match! It’s a Mercedes C-Class sedan registered to Edith and Caleb Montgomery.”

  My heart sank. Though I’d been certain this was the outcome we were facing, it still hurt to hear confirmation of the car’s ownership. A part of me had hoped that the neighbor had been mistaken. “Damn it.”

  Ravi gestured to her two technicians, twin brothers, both as pale and ghostly as any morgue attendants you’d find in a horror story. They moved to her in tandem, silently, with precision and speed. “Lars, Jeff … let’s get the body out of here as soon as possible.”

  As Ravi walked away to gather the tools needed to begin the tricky task of removing the fragile corpse from the burnt shell of the Mercedes, she added with a soft mutter, “Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

  Usually, the Shakespeare quotes Ravi seemed to have an endless supply of were reassuring, timeless. Today, the message felt sinister. It was an ugly reminder that there is rarely the opportunity to stop the Reaper once he’s on his wa
y.

  The quote also begged the question: was this a necessary death? Why had Caleb been targeted? He’d been off the bench for six months … but over the years, how many people had he put away or angered?

  Hundreds? Thousands?

  Of course, it only took one angry man or woman to pull a trigger, detonate a bomb.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Finn and I were ready to leave the scene. We’d watched as the crime scene technicians collected evidence and took photographs, then we’d taken turns interviewing witnesses. There was the young couple dressed as Buddy Holly and Marilyn Monroe, who confirmed that they heard a sound, similar to a gunshot, immediately before the explosion.

  There were others, too, who heard the same noise; some of whom had been sure the shot was a prelude to an active shooter situation.

  To my surprise, Judge Gloria Dumont appeared at the edge of the perimeter as I was finishing up with a witness who had dressed as a couch potato. Dumont, who’d been promoted from associate to presiding judge upon Caleb’s retirement, stood stock-still, taking in the carnage. With her hands jammed in a thick down jacket, we made eye contact across the street from each other. She gave me the briefest of head nods and I wondered who had called her, who had alerted her to the murder. To my knowledge, she didn’t typically monitor the police scanners.

  Dumont waited patiently until I wrapped up the interview, then we went to a small park adjacent to the closed restaurant across the street. We sat in the flickering light of a streetlamp, on a metal bench that was hard and cold. Dumont was about forty, with blond hair cut in a precise bob and piercing blue eyes that might have been called cold save for the deep laugh lines at their corners.

  Dumont was shaken. She fished a small flask from her purse and removed the cap, then chugged back a large swig. “Gin. It’s my emergency stash. Please don’t tell anyone.”

  I considered asking her for a sip myself. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure, I’m all right. I’m alive, aren’t I? I have a great career, an adoring and younger husband in Nash. And he’s the darling of Cedar Valley, after all, just days away from opening the long-slumbering Shotgun Playhouse and restoring the old theater to its prime. Like me: I’m in the prime of my life, still young enough to turn heads but old enough not to give a fuck.” The judge held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. “This life. Of course I’m all right. Though I’m beginning to believe there’s something rotten, as they say, in the state of Denmark. Between the recent museum murders and the killings last winter, I wonder if it isn’t time to move to somewhere less violent. Like Chicago.”