Returning Fire

by Frans Harmon

  “I’m not surprised. Now, this phone call, did she answer it?”

  Sean knitted his brow. “No, and, Sharl told me, that after it stopped ringing, the truck backed off and turned down some side street.”

  “So, it was just this time that it seemed unusual.”

  “No,” Sean said, “that’s why she noticed, it was the third time that it happened.”

  Mace made a note again while nodding his head.

  “What’s going on, does that mean something?”

  “Yes, it does, it’s significant, the same thing happened to me. Only I answered and ended up hitting a fuel pump at a Sunoco station.”

  “Oh, yeah, I read about that fire in the Bugle, but I don’t remember them mentioning your name.”

  “No, we like to keep it out of the papers.” Mace said, then extending his hands, palm down, he started, “Look, I need to ask you a question that may not make much sense to you right now, and I don’t want you to read anything into it, but, has… has your wife tried to contact you?”

  Sean leaned forward. “What, what are you asking? She’s dead. What kind of question is that? Haven’t I and the kids been through enough? Police and their questions, reporters calling wanting to do stories, crank callers…”

  Sean slumped back into the sofa, a hand over his mouth, his eyes red, welling with tears. “Are you…” Eyes clenched tight, he shook his head, a hand waving Mace off. “Are you saying she is alive?”

  A grimace captured Mace’s face. “I don’t know for certain. What I do know is the body in that Mustang was not Sharlene’s. At that moment, she was alive. That’s why I must ask again, has she tried to contact you?”

  Sean grabbed a pillow from the sofa and covered his face. He sobbed uncontrollably.

  “Sean, I’m… I’m terribly sorry to upset you the… the pain must be so deep.”

  Sean shook his head, a sleeve over his eyes wiping them. “No, I… I was so stupid. Sabriel… Sabriel’s phone.”

  “Sabriel, your daughter, what about her phone?”

  Sean took a deep breath. “Sabriel called me yesterday. I thought it was her. She said she had lost her phone. She said, ‘Sean, it’s me, Sharl.’ I thought my daughter was joking, a dark joke kids do without thinking. But… what you just said, it was her, Sharlene is alive. Oh, God, oh God, our prayers…”

  “Okay, okay, Sean, this is really going to help. But don’t tell your kids, don’t tell anyone, this could still go south, and we will have to deal with the same grim result. But, listen, do you have a service contract or service provider invoice for your daughter’s phone?”

  “Yeah, I think. That’s important?”

  “Very, with it, we can get the IMEI number.”

  Noticing Sean’s puzzled look, Mace added, “The International Mobile Equipment number. With it, if the phone is still on, we can ping it and get a location. Listen now, listen carefully, this is a long shot, okay.”

  “Right,” Sean said, and went down a hall, disappearing into a bedroom. He came back with a service contract. Mace found the IMEI number and called Gavin.

  “Gavin, listen, Sharlene tried to contact her husband, she has a phone. I’m texting the IMEI number. See if you can get the digital techs in the FSD to ping it. We may be able to get their location.”

  Gavin acknowledged, and Mace texted the IMEI number to him.

  Mace stood and shook Sean’s hand. Sean pulled Mace towards him, hugging tightly. “Sean, I promise you one thing. If Sharlene is alive, I will do everything in my power to bring her back to you and your children. Be strong, man.”

  Mace left and returned to his car. The sun was setting behind a grove of trees behind the colonial. For the first time in days, Mace felt stronger himself.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  On a relic video player, Anstice watched as an explosive covey of birds obliterated the screen. After, like a curtain rising, the camera captured an unfolding drama. A man, in a light green jacket and dark blue jeans, ran to the edge of a roof, gesturing wildly, hands waving as if to warn something away. Another figure, dressed in a black leather-looking jacket, charged into view. Their arms flailed the air, and although she couldn’t hear, it was apparent they were screaming at each other. They grappled at the roof’s edge, and then the black-jacketed man raised the other and tossed him off the roof. The camera was a silent witness to a murder. She recognized the lone figure that remained. A pain of defeat stabbed at her emotional heart, and her eyes filled with tears, one escaping down her cheek. She brushed it away and ejected the tape from the machine. She realized what she had to do.

  Anstice stuffed the tape into a manila envelope and left the Audio-Visual lab. She took the stairs from the Fourth Precinct’s basement to her second-floor homicide division office. It wasn’t much, a desk wedged between partitions and a credenza demarking the space for another detective. A man with dense black curly hair wearing a black leather jacket had his back to her and was sitting in her cube-mates chair.

  She clutched her gut, a surge of nausea, born of fear, regret, and defeat without choice, gripped her. “Mace, what are you doing here?”

  * * * * *

  Mace spun around. “Ah, there you are,” he said, standing and reaching for her, but thinking better of it, simply gestured her to her chair. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing, Bear, and update you on the case. A lot has happened.”

  Anstice smiled and sat down. “Is that all?”

  While waiting, he had entertained ideas of dinner and another evening together, but now felt a large shaft of ice had come between them. “Well, no, I was hoping you could help me with some research and keep me off the journalist’s radar.”

  Anstice stuffed an envelope in a desk drawer. “I don’t know what I can do. I’ve been transferred to C-Ops at the Eighth.”

  “What Major Crimes to C-Ops, like going from the majors to sand-lot ball.”

  Anstice shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  Something happened. This wasn’t the same detective who talked to Helyn at the Lansing burn lab, that Anstice, was fighting for a toehold on the case. Robers was holding something serious over her. It pained Mace to see how it was affecting her. He was determined to help.

  Anstice cube mate returned to his desk. Nodding Mace relinquished the chair and faced Anstice. “Well, you’ve got ‘till the end of the month, right? This case has got to be wrapped by then.”

  “It’s not the end of the month, it’s Monday, and I’ll be working in deep cover.”

  “That’s what Robers wanted to talk about?”

  Anstice nodded. “But, okay, why are you saying you're going to wrap it up by January.”

  “Glad you asked. Bear, I was beginning to worry. I had dinner at Joe Muer’s with another woman.”

  Anstice shot up from her chair. “You better go.”

  Her cube mate looked over at them. Mace motioned for her to sit back down. “Wait, sorry, Sarge. Let me tell you what I learned, and then let’s go from there.”

  She waved off her cube mate and sank back into her chair.

  Mace scooted a chair over and sat down. “Your identifying who had the chip implant convinced Sheng Mac and Helyn to do the tedious and expensive Histomorphometry test. Their findings confirmed the bodies were not the victims. They are missing persons now, not murder victims. That was a great help.”

  Anstice spun around in her chair and began shuffling papers on her desk. “No big deal, anyone could have done that.”

  “It was a big deal. It meant a lot, especially to Gavin.”

  Anstice turned to Mace. Her face had a pink pall; her eyes were swollen with tears. She wiped her eyes. “Damned allergies,” she said with a sniffle, “so you told him.”

  “Yes, broke him up, but also got us on the same page. So, yesterday afternoon, I interviewed Sean McCrary, Sharlene’s husband. Get this, he got a call from Sharlene, it confirms she’s alive. Gavin’s working the cell towers now. So, you see, the other two women are probably aliv
e as well, and I thought you could help me with an off-the-grid search. We ID the other two bodies, I’ve got a strong case that Coria, Trina, and Sharlene are kidnap victims, not murder.”

  “And not the Vulcan.”

  “Well, yeah, right, he doesn’t do kidnapping. His thrill is in the murder and burning.”

  “That night, on the roof of the Eddystone, after the pigeons took flight. What do you remember?”

  “Nothing, that’s when I blacked out. I have no memory until I found myself at the foot of the wall, looking over the edge at Jirair’s body.”

  Anstice twisted her chair back to her desk. “I… I can’t help you, Mace.” She kept her eyes fixed on her desk. “I only have two days, things to wrap up, pack my stuff. No time.”

  “But, Anstice, this is a chance of—”

  She didn’t look at him. “And don’t come back here again. Or the Eighth. Like I said, I’ll be working deep cover. It won’t be safe.”

  “Anstice, what we shared Thursday night, we… I have feelings.”

  Anstice pounded her desk, jerking up from her chair. She starred across the back of her desk into the bullpen. “Stop. I’m sorry. You must leave. Don’t say anything, Mace, just leave.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Get her out of your head, or go somewhere’s else. There are cases to be worked.”

  Mace remained staring at his desk. “Sorry, Mo, what did you say. My mind was someplace else.”

  “Ain’t that a news flash. You’ve been sitting there for a half-hour twirling that pencil on your desk. Leave the dame at the door or leave. Your mooning is distracting.”

  Mace shifted facing Mo. “How you know it’s a woman?”

  Mo rolled his eyes and twisted his chair back from his desk. “Okay, what did your sergeant friend at DPD do, dump you?”

  Mace nodded, an embarrassed smile seeping across his face.

  Mo folded his hands on his substantial stomach. “Okay, let’s have it, or neither one of us is going to get anything done this morning.”

  “Last Thursday, Anstice was very into Sharlene’s case, Monday she seemed into me, but this morning was like an alternate universe.”

  “That’s a woman for you, all those hormones.”

  “Easy, Mo, not like we don’t have hormonal issues ourselves. But her tectonic shift in attitude, about the case, doesn’t make sense. A week ago, it was her big break on the major case squad, best thing to happen to her since being sworn in. She was happy, a change she craved, a relief from her routine of body sitting assignments. This morning, she’s not interested, can’t help, and is transferring to C-Ops at the eighth precinct.”

  “Something happened. If we are talking just you, I can understand the hormone thing. But a woman must fight for her job in the male pit, hold on like a bulldog once they get a taste.”

  Mace nodded. “She had a meeting with a Lieutenant Robers, a couple of days back, Tuesday morning.”

  “Trayn?”

  “Yes, you know him?”

  “Of. Trayn Robers’ name came up a few years back. A low life in the purple gang tried to swing a deal with the DA while in lockup at City, said he had the inside on some cops taking kick-backs. IA got involved, and then Mr. Low Life picked a fight with rival gang members at City. He didn’t survive, and all went quiet after that.”

  “Too convenient,” Mace said, “Bet the IA files didn’t go away, and maybe the wrong people got tagged. Anstice was transferring but didn’t seem too happy about it.”

  “So, wild guess here, but maybe she’s the one that got fingered.”

  Mace had a sinking feeling in his stomach. That same idea, Anstice being compromised, was beating an increasingly louder drum in the recesses of his mind. “Yeah, I was coming to that.” Mace spun completely around facing Mo. “I was hoping for her help, and now, somehow, I need to ID the other two bodies without triggering any of the press’s Google alerts.”

  “How did you uncover Sharlene’s victim double was an Emily Dupree?”

  “GPS chip serial number. Emily had Alzheimer’s and a habit of wandering off. But no medical implants were found on the other two. And that reminds me, Anstice was supposed to have Dupree’s ashes analyzed to see if they were human remains.”

  “Ashes, where from?”

  “We squeezed Dadua, Salpmore Funeral Home and Crematorium.”

  Mo wheeled his chair close to his desk, picked up a file he had been reading, and glanced at Mace from under heavy brows. “Place to start.”

  “Yeah, ‘cept…”

  Mo dropped the file and stared at Mace. “You adding me to your payroll?”

  Mace chuckled and rolled his chair to the front of Mo’s desk. He shifted a box from alongside Mo’s desk monitor to the floor. “Let’s start with Coria. TOD about December Twentieth, almost a year back.”

  Mo tapped his keys, searching the MBI database. “Okay, reported time of death from the thirteenth to twenty-fifth. Looks like we’ve got a thousand hits.”

  “Narrow to Detroit, and she was eighty so, say seventy-five to eighty-five.”

  Mo nodded. “Down to six-twenty. Want me to print it?”

  Mace laughed. “It’ll use a year’s worth of paper for the printer you’re not supposed to have. Helyn said the body had recent hip surgery.”

  Mo growled. “Have to dump the six-twenty to a file, and load them into a medical database query.” Mo did that and typed a new query against the medical database. Mo glanced up at Mace while waiting for the response. “You’ve got to do something about Anstice. She’s a good one, and you can’t leave her hanging.”

  “I’m going to try, Mo, but I can’t help if she doesn’t let me in.”

  “Best way to a woman’s heart is to open yours.”

  “Where did you get all this sage advice, Mo?”

  “Married three times,” he said as his eyes blossomed, “good parse, we are down to nine hits.”

  Mace sat back and nodded. “Now I’m hoping this will nail it. How many funerals were handled by Salpmore?”

  Mo tapped in a new query into public records. “Ex’s are all friends. Girls even formed a club, the Mocking Birds.”

  “Peter Mock, ex’s are the Mocking Birds? Cute Mo.”

  Mo’s computer beeped. “Yeah, they think so. But all’s fun. You struck gold, my boy.” Mo flipped his monitor around towards Mace, displaying a name and contact information.

  “Betty Warren, eighty-five. Print that Mo.”

  Mace and Mo went through another search for the body of Trina Burkett. They filtered down, looking for someone in their seventies that at one time had a broken arm. Salpmore handled that funeral also, and she was Gloria French.

  “Great work, Mo. If I ever get out from under this case, and my firm organized again, I will put you on my payroll, if you have a mind to. Right now, I’m taking this to Dorian and pushing for a search warrant for Salpmore.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Gavin approached a black SUV in the west parking lot of the Michigan capitol. He yanked open the passenger side door and slid inside. Emmitt was sitting behind the wheel stone-faced, his jaw set and dark eyes boring into Gavin. “The women are alive, ME found proof.” Gavin said, returning the stare, “I know you have your hocks up over Mace, but you need to give it a rest.”

  Emmitt barked a laugh and shook his head. “That what this is about? Not going to. Tape shows Mace is as guilty as all the other creeps I’ve put away. He’s going down.”

  “You don’t have enough for a warrant. The video never shows his face.”

  “My ex will give me what I need to know, his admission, that he was there, and he did it.”

  “And, if she doesn’t?”

  “No if, Gavin. A certain lieutenant will make sure of that, or she goes down too.”

  Gavin leaned over to Emmitt. “Coria Brien is alive. We have seven days to find her. Mace has got this case like a bulldog with a bone. You get in the way, I’m going to the IG with what I know. Your car
eer won’t be worth a goat’s fart. After, I couldn’t care less what you do, play your ego games.”

  “Why you so interested in this Irish lass, Coria Brien?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  * * * *

  Mace hurried across the Walnut Street skyway connecting the government complex with the legislative entrance to the Michigan capital. He had what he needed, and it was time to lay it out. A year wasted, screamed through his mind, a year looking for a killer that didn’t exist. He needed to find them, and they only had seven days.

  Inside the Victorian-styled capital, he bounded up a black cast-iron staircase to the fifth floor. Cassandra’s office was near the center of the building, a few steps from the rotunda, and had massive walnut doors framed by rose-colored marble columns. Gavin broke from his lean against one. “It’s a full house in there, not friendly either. You ready for this?”

  Mace nodded. “We have three lives to save. Shing and Emmitt can carve up my life later.”

  “I’ve got your back, let’s do this.”

  Gavin set his jaw and with a nod, pulled open the massive door. The tray ceilings in the office, ornate back-lit affairs, fed the perception of a much larger room. Pine wainscoting lined the room’s perimeter, all hand-painted to look like walnut.

  A floor to ceiling window and flags were behind Cassandra seated at her desk. She was watching the proceedings in the house chambers displayed on a wall-mounted screen to her left. Helyn in a straight back armchair was to her right, Dorian, in an overstuffed brown leather chair in front of her desk, faced Shing Mac and Emmitt, both seated on a sofa. At the end of the settee were two straight back chairs… their obvious destination.

  The door rotated closed behind them, and all five faces focused in their direction. Mace examined each one. Helyn and Dorian were poker-faced. They weren’t revealing anything. Emmitt’s pursed lips were barely containing what he wanted to say. Shing Mac had the look of a school principal facing a recurring trouble-maker, he understood, but Mace was getting a lecture nonetheless.

  Cassandra had a raised eyebrow of expectation as she clicked off the screen. “Mace, you are so predictable, now what part of your off the case didn’t you understand?”