Returning Fire

by Frans Harmon

  Haunted by her mother’s acrimonious phone calls, he tried to only remember the short weekend with her five weeks before she left, the first and last time he ever saw her. Opening his door, he knew at once she was his daughter. No longer a name in a letter discarded and forgotten in a spate of bitterness, but a sweet diminutive-faced young woman with long red untamable hair, searching green eyes, and pouting mouth. Her visit occurred during a mid-term break at Wayne State, a long Columbus Day weekend, perfect fall weather, crisp air, the trees at their peak, golden yellow oaks, crimson ash.

  Dressed in a simple white long-sleeved blouse and below-the-knee green plaid skirt, she held a tan overnight back in front of her. She instantly captured Gavin, taking his breath away and disarming him with her smile.

  “I ‘spect horns, or at least a patch or stumped leg,” she said, “the way Mom got on about you.”

  Gavin remembered barking a laugh and giving her a tearful hug. She deposited her overnight bag and chatted about school. She had a river of life questions, impatiently asked before the prior one was answered.

  The city, Sault Ste Marie, always referred to as The Sault, sat at the tip of Michigan’s glove and, in a sense, straddled the Saint Mary’s River, the locks, and international boundaries, since her like-named Canadian sister city was across the river. They had lunch at the Freighter’s Restaurant overlooking the Sault Locks and park. She never stopped talking until midnight when Gavin finally collapsed in his room, exhausted, but very happy. Six weeks later, she was dead, although Gavin didn’t know until four weeks after that when her mother called berating him.

  Brok was still processing the Mustang, but Gavin realized there was little hope anything would be found. Each car fire had been so intense, trace evidence, even DNA was impossible to find, let alone fiber or hair samples. He had spent yesterday and this morning sifting through all three case boxes that now sat in front of him. He noticed Coria Brien’s box had its red tape missing. He wondered why, but dismissed the thought quickly, and added another red stripe to the carton. He fingered the lid but decided he could not bear to look at the crime scene photos again.

  He turned around and faced his desk and opened his leather-bound case notes, carefully turning the pages. Coria had given him the notebook when she first arrived from Ireland two years ago. He had promised himself that he would one day add the name of her killer to it, and that would be his final entry.

  He noted the timing between murders seemed constant, not escalating, and he had a sense, that was significant. The locations seemed random, but he knew from experience there was a pattern, he just wasn’t seeing it yet.

  “Got something, pal, going to break the case wide open.”

  Gavin looked up. It was Emmitt, his elongated head topped with short-cropped brown hair, a long straight nose, and now a gaping smile. He wore his signature black leather jacket with an open-collared shirt that made Gavin in the strict-suit-and-tie MBI environment feel uneasy.

  “What you got, Emmitt?”

  Emmitt dropped a DVD on Gavin’s desk. “This what you called about?”

  Emmitt nodded. “I’ve looked at it, but I thought you would want to see it for yourself.”

  Gavin looked at the disc. “You find a camera feed at MCS?”

  “Even better,” Emmitt said, “pop it in your DVD drive.”

  Gavin inserted the disc into his drive and expanded his viewer APP to full screen.

  Emmitt stood behind him. “Fast forward it to the twenty-two-thirty timestamp,” Emmitt said, “or you are going to watch a lot of roosting pigeons.”

  Gavin did that. He watched a man in a light gray jacket and jeans run into view.

  “That is Jirair Houssain, Mace’s prime for the Vulcan.”

  After a dense flight of pigeons swept across the screen, Gavin saw a second man in a dark jacket charge across the roof away from the camera.

  “That’s Mace.”

  Gavin backed up the video, increased the magnification, and played it again.

  Gavin craned his head around to Emmitt. “You can’t see his face, how d’you know?”

  “Trust me, that’s him. He goes after Jirair, watch.”

  Gavin watched as the two men fought, ending with Jirair going over the roof. The second man never faced the cameras. To Gavin, that meant he knew the cameras were there. Gavin stopped the player.

  “What did I just see?” Gavin asked.

  “That was proof.”

  “Of what?”

  “Mace and Jirair. That’s the roof of the Eddystone Hotel.” Emmitt rewound the video to the time stamp. “That is Mace charging Jirair Houssain. Mace was obsessed with Houssain being the Vulcan. I know it is the Eddystone because of the billboard.”

  He pointed to a corner of the screen. “That is the billboard there. No doubt in my mind.”

  Gavin stroked his beard. “And how do you know it is Mace?”

  “You kidding, that hair, he always wore a black jacket. That’s why he went to the Eddystone the other day. He knew there were tapes, he was making sure they were gone.”

  “How did you get this one.”

  “Anonymous, dropped in my inbox this morning.”

  Gavin pushed back from the TV and spun around facing Emmitt. “And what does this have to do with this case?”

  “Jirair didn’t do it. He is dead, and I’m going to nail Mace for it. It’s a twofer, and we are looking for a copycat.”

  “Jirair, or some other sick bwystfil, killed three women, and we have to stop him before he does another. You can play testosterone soccer all you want, but it won’t get us any closer to the truth.”

  “What about Mace? Do you want him working for the MBI? You’ve got to take this to Dorian.”

  Gavin stood facing Emmitt. “I’m not taking it anywhere. You’ve got nothing. A fuzzy black and white that shows a man going over a wall, thrown three feet, three stories, or thirteen. You probably can get a positive on Jirair, but the other person could be anybody. Don’t call or come here unless you have something for this case.”

  Gavin walked away from his desk.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To light a fire under the ME. I’m not sitting on my hands while someone’s wife or daughter is murdered. But don’t worry, if I find anything, I’ll make sure you are in the headlines.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Gavin’s insides were roiling, and a growing throb in his head an alarm bell he couldn’t ignore. He had to do something. Walking to building three would usually lower his blood pressure, but Emmitt’s grudge match attitude toward Mace, and the case was fueling Gavin’s frustration. A year since the day he muscled his way onto the investigation, and today he was no closer to learning the W’s, the who, what, and why behind his daughter’s murder.

  He pulled open the door to building three.

  A stab of guilt, a memory of Coria in his open doorway, triggered a Welsh expletive spit out with the suddenness of a sneeze. Taking determined strides, Gavin continued along a sterile hallway, thinking if only he had known, he would have sent her back to Ireland that day. But that crisp fall day, her green eyes sparkling, wisps of red blowing across her face, how could he have foreseen the danger. He couldn’t. Pinching his eyes, Gavin brushed away the accumulating tears. He took in a deep breath

  He pressed the visitor button to the burn-lab. But, he vowed, someone soon would pay, and he would make that entry in his daughter’s notebook.

  Gavin pounded on the window-less door, then again, and a third time.

  The electronic lock clicked, releasing the door, and Gavin pulled it sharply open.

  “Gavin, I am in the middle of an exam, why didn’t you call ahead?”

  “I needed the exercise, Helyn.” Gavin moved toward the inner doors. Helyn remained at the outer doors.

  “You can’t go in.”

  Gavin paced back to Helyn, being a foot taller, he moved into her space, his head arching over her. “Coc y gath, it’s my case. You’ve got to
know something.” Helyn, not looking up, pushed him back. He closed his eyes and exhaled, raising an apologetic hand.

  “Has Dorian spoken to you?”

  “Spoken? About what?’

  “My report, Gavin.”

  “Coc y gath,” he said, and stepped over to the inner doors, pulling and rattling the handles.”

  The inner door locks buzzed. Gavin gave a quick look back at Helyn and pulled the doors open. His eyes blossomed full in shock, his jaw set and fist clenched. The chains of his restraint strained with his anger. Mace was standing at the threshold. Gavin scowled back at Helyn. “So, this is why? You’re playing footsy with Mace? I am going to talk to Dorian, and you, Mr. Franklyn, are going to be out of a job.”

  “Fine,” Helyn said, “you can do that, or, since you’re here, go inside, sit down, and listen to what we have to say.”

  Mace stepped back from the doorway, Helyn stood with her arms folded. “And before you say Coc y gath again, there are no cats in there, and no cat’s willy, as you Welshmen like to phrase it, so you can keep your epithets to yourself.”

  Gavin could hear a spot of his mother in her admonition. It wasn’t about him, and not about Mace, it was for his daughter. Perhaps some of the W’s could be answered. Gavin pushed aside his anger, dropped his head, and nodded.

  Helyn ushered Gavin and Mace into her office. Helyn sat behind her desk, Mace took a seat to her right behind her. Gavin sat on the other side of Helyn’s desk.

  “We haven’t confirmed our analysis, and we had hoped Dorian talked to you by now, Gavin, because, well—”

  “Let’s start,” Mace said, “with your discovery almost a week ago.”

  “Yes,” Helyn sighed, “but I must give Mace credit, Gavin. he thought the bodies recovered in Romulus, Wayne, and at MCS were not consistent with their reported height on their driver’s licenses.”

  “I looked at that,” Gavin said, “but the ME’s always pushed back, given the intensity of the fire, a comparison for identity purposes would not be reliable.”

  “True,” Helyn agreed.

  “But my gut,” Mace said, told me the fire was more for hiding something than the cause of death.”

  “We did a CT scan of all three bodies,” Helyn said, “in what was supposed to be Sharlene’s body, we found a GPS tracking chip.”

  “A tracking chip?”

  Mace nodded. “Yes, and DPD dug deeper and found the chip belonged to an elderly Emily Dupree who recently died of natural causes.”

  “The body is not Sharlene McCrary?”

  “Afraid not,” Helyn said.

  “Does Emmitt know about this?”

  Helyn shook her head. “No, we haven’t released this information yet.”

  “Why not?” Gavin questioned.

  “Because there is more,” Helyn said.

  Gavin rotated his neck. “I’m about to mention that cat again. What is it?”

  Mace and Helyn shared a look, Mace tilted his head towards Helyn. “These findings led us to try another test,” she said. “One Shing Mac and I were familiar with, Histomorphometry.”

  Gavin dropped his head and repeatedly ran his hands like rapidly firing pistons through the fuzz of his hair.

  “Hold on, Gavin,” she said. “It’s a tedious test requiring many bone samples. It is based on the science that bones are continually breaking and healing themselves, a process called remodeling. Anthropologists use this test to determine the physical age of fossils.”

  “Is it accurate?” Gavin asked.

  “To within five to ten years, yes,” Helyn answered.

  “What we found,” Mace said, “is that Emily Dupree was eighty-five, the body ID’d as Trina Burkett was in her seventies…”

  “And…” Gavin said.

  Helyn got up from behind her desk and sat down next to Gavin. She touched his shoulder. “What?” he said.

  “The body identified as that of Coria Brien,” Mace continued, “was that of an eighty-year-old woman.”

  “What are you saying? She’s alive?”

  Helyn nodded. “Possible.”

  Gavin’s face flushed; his eyes flooded with tears. A sob escaped his control. “Coria, my daughter is alive? Some monster is doing…”

  Gavin jumped up out of his chair, hands to his head. “For a year, we have done nothing,” he screamed. Helyn nodded, and reached out to him, touching his jacket, and whispering soothing hushing sounds, urged him back down.

  “The past we can’t change,” Mace said, “but we have now, Gavin. We’ve done something. I believe she is likely alive, but we don’t have much time. I think this all ends on the twenty-ninth.”

  Gavin grabbed some tissue from Helyn’s desk, blew his nose, and thanked Helyn. “Give it to me, all of it,” Gavin said to Mace.

  Mace detailed his discussion with Mo the evening before about the blue moons and feast of the sacrifice.

  “So, with the three elderly deceased, my Coria,” Gavin said, choking back his emotions, “and the two others, we have six victims, and it hasn’t been the Vulcan all along.”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” Mace said, “it still could be—"

  “But he’s dead,” Gavin said.

  Mace and Helyn locked eyes again, both remembering his words to Helyn. “Why, why would you say that, Gavin?”

  Gavin raised a hand, tilting his head towards it. “That’s what you said at the meeting with Dorian.”

  “I don’t recall saying that, but whatever, we have just seven days to find the women. I’m officially off the case, but we need a full-court press with the FBI onboard. You need to update Dorian on what we found, and you need to get Emmitt on board. Have you talked to him recently?”

  “No,” Gavin said, dropping his head. “I haven’t, but I’ll do as you suggest and Emmitt will be on board.”

  Mace moved over to Gavin and extended his hand. “You understand why we didn’t want to say anything until we were certain, but I think we are on the same page, friends?”

  Gavin stood and took his hand, pumping it vigorously. “All good, Mace. What’s your next move?”

  “I’m going back to DPD and follow up on the other two bodies. Then, update Sharlene’s husband and re-interview, see if anything springs to mind. We’ll circle back when we meet with Dorian.”

  “Sounds good,” Gavin said. He gave Helyn a hug and thanked her again. Feeling calmer, he took the stairs to the main floor and exited the building. The weather was mild for December, and usually an omen for snow, but for now the fresh air would clear his head. He had a lot to think about. Protecting Mace from Emmitt was foremost in his mind, at least until they found Coria.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Sharlene McCrary’s house was on a quiet cul-de-sac in the small town of Salene on the western outskirts of Ypsilanti. Mace paused in his car to take in what he saw, a brown brick colonial with a tricycle and a small two-wheeler bike with training wheels pulled to one side of a two-car garage. He exited his rental and began walking up the short driveway to the house. His thoughts were on the family. Barely two weeks since Sharlene’s reported death, her family was still coping with their loss, the youngest likely not comprehending that mommy wasn’t coming back. Mace was determined to change that.

  Mace knocked on the aluminum and glass storm door, the hollow tin-drum sound summoned crisp footsteps.

  A tall thin man with intense brown eyes, black hair conservatively combed from the side, and a narrow black beard outlining his face answered the door. “Yes?”

  “Are you Sean McCrary?”

  He nodded.

  “Hi, I’m Mace Franklyn, I called you earlier, about Sharlene.”

  Sean waved Mace inside for another conversation about his wife, the associated sadness and pain evident on his taut face. His two children were in the living room. One on the floor with some plastic blocks, the other on a sofa with a slender older woman in traditional dress, a long garment, and headscarf typical of someone from the middle east.

&
nbsp; “Adie, please give the children their dinner now in the kitchen.”

  She coaxed the one child up from the floor and with a gentle grasp of their hands, shepherded them into the kitchen.

  “Our nanny,” Sean said, then his head dipped, and a hand stifled a sob, “sorry, I guess she is my nanny, now. Please…” He motioned for Mace to sit in a red leather armchair next to an overstuffed beige sofa. He sat on the couch.

  “I thought I would be over this by now, but it never seems to stop.”

  “I’m sorry, I truly am,” Mace said, “and you probably have been asked the same questions I will ask, but believe me, it could make a difference.”

  “Won’t bring her back,” Sean said with his hands folded in his lap, “how can I help?”

  “You may or may not know this, but your wife contacted me a week before she went… before the accident.”

  “An accident, that what they are calling it, when a car explodes, burning her to death? Is that what you say it is? So, you don’t offend…” Sean covered his face, sobbed a short burst, then seemed to gain control. He wiped his eyes and then sat with his hands clamped between his legs. He nodded. “Yes, she mentioned that. She was scared.”

  “Did she say what was scaring her? What happened?”

  Sean wiped his eyes again, absently looked from side to side, and then cleared his throat as he nodded. “Yeah, said she noticed a truck following her.”

  “Did she say what kind, what kind of truck?”

  “A wrecker, er, tow truck of some kind. Ones with the flatbed on the back where they pull the cars up. Black, a black truck, I think she said.”

  Mace made a note on his pad. “Why did she notice? Had she seen it before? Following close? Anything like that?”

  “Yes, she had,” he said, nodding his head, “but this time, she got a call from me on her cell phone.”

  “Is that unusual that you call her on her cell phone?”

  “When she is driving, yes. We don’t do that. I almost had a bad accident once, so she made it our family rule, but it gets weirder.”

  “How so?”

  “I didn’t call her.”