by Kate Flora
And Grant You Peace
A Joe Burgess Mystery
Book Four
by
Kate Flora
AND GRANT YOU PEACE
Reviews & Accolades
Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction
"Flora pours on the intensity in this criminal, legal and moral maze."
~Kirkus Reviews
"It's the richness of characterization, refreshing dialogue, and startlingly good writing that recommend Flora's novel."
~Booklist
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ISBN: 978-1-61417-822-4
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Please Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2016 by Kate Flora All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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Dedication
To my family
Acknowledgements
Gratitude, as always, to those who have tried to make my police procedure realistic: Deputy Chief Joseph K. Loughlin and Sergeant Bruce Coffin of the Portland, Maine, police department; Deputy Chief Brian Cummings of the Miramichi, New Brunswick, police department; and Lieutenant Pat Dorian and Roger Guay of the Maine Warden Service. Thanks also to the many Maine librarians who support my writing and answer my questions, including Lisa Joyce and John Clark, and Charlene Clemmons, who is my greatest fan. No writer gets far without the help of librarians. I am grateful to Nancy Ross McJennett for her careful reading, to Gordon Aalborg and Deni Dietz for continuing to believe in the Joe Burgess series, and to Tiffany Schofield and Nivette Jackaway at Five Star, who remind me of what a joy it is to have a responsive publisher. I also owe a deep debt of thanks to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for granting me a writing fellowship so I could finish this book. VCCA is a magical place. I have been well-advised. I have also taken liberties with geography and allowed my fictional cops to deviate from Standard Operating Procedure.
Chapter 1
Most people run away from fires; firemen and cops run toward them, especially when someone inside is screaming.
Joe Burgess was sitting in his car, window down to catch the soft spring air, not ready to face the chaos at home, when a kid he knew from the street came running up. He got a gasped "Fire at the mosque and someone's in there," and a frantic gesture toward the battered old commercial building that now served the religious needs of part of Portland's growing Somali community.
The kid's name was Jason, a spindly towhead with a bad haircut and shabby clothes. A few years earlier, he would have been a likely candidate for setting the fire, but a good social worker and a decent foster family were gradually turning him around. Now his eyes were wide with alarm and there was an audible asthmatic wheeze in his chest. "You gotta come right now, Sergeant Burgess," he said, "there's someone in there screaming."
Burgess was out of the truck, flashlight in his pocket and phone to his ear, before the boy had finished saying "screaming," making the calls to get the fire department on the way and for more officers to help manage the scene. It was a dense neighborhood, both in terms of the number of residents and their average IQs. He couldn't count on anyone having reported the fire, and crowd control would be necessary to let the firemen do their jobs. Despite three decades on the job, he'd never understood people's avid desire to gawk at tragedy.
Jason at his heels like a puppy, he sprinted past some shabby older houses and across the ragged, muddy space that passed for lawn. The cheaply built one-story had been thrown up for some small business, long defunct. Set back from the street behind a parking lot and that lawn, it had a double entry door, a couple of picture windows now covered with heavy fabric, and a cement walkway leading to cement steps. To the right of the door, someone had spray-painted "Go Back to Africa" and "Ragheads Suck Pig Dick" across the dirty white siding.
So much for "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
He paused at the walkway and turned to Jason. He knew the boy would follow him right into the building, and an undersized, undernourished, asthmatic kid as a sidekick going into a smoky building would be a very bad idea. "See if you can flag down some cars, Jase, will you? Maybe get us some more help here?"
Happy to have a task, the boy trotted off.
As he headed up the walkway, Burgess could hear a desperate female voice, pleading for help, and see billowing smoke and flames licking the north end of the building. Behind him, he heard a vehicle screech to the curb, a door opening, and running footsteps. By the time he reached the building, the runner was right beside him.
He had a fleeting impression of youngish, and large, but he didn't turn to look. His focus was on the building.
He tried the knob. Hot. And locked.
"Let's kick it in." The voice had just a faint trace of Ireland.
Together, he and the runner backed off and then attacked the door with their feet, the flimsy lock giving way and the hollow-core doors splintering. They shouldered them open and stepped inside. The wide hallway was dark and smoky.
"Hold on," the runner said. "You got a handkerchief?" He held out a bottle of water. "You might wanna wet it, hold it over your face."
They soaked their handkerchiefs and headed inside. The building was bigger than it had seemed from outside. A long, dark corridor with many closed doors stretched ahead of them.
"You take the right side, I'll take the left," Burgess said. "If the knob feels too hot, don't open it." He snapped on his flashlight. The other man had a little LED light on his keychain.
Wet handkerchief pressed to his face, Burgess started trying doors, opening and closing one after another, flashing his light around dark, empty rooms. Calling out, "Police. Here to help you. Let us know where you are?" then pausing to close his eyes and listen.
But the screaming woman had fallen silent.
"Hello? Hello? Please. Let us know where you are?" he called. There was only the opening and closing of doors, and the crackle of flames. No smoke detectors or alarms were going off. So far, all he'd found were small offices. Nothing that looked like a sanctuary, or whatever the Muslims called their actual place of worship. The runner had disappeared, so maybe it was on that side and he was searching some large room.
The deeper he went into the building, the denser the smoke got. He was having trouble breathing. From outside, he could hear the deep roar of distant fire trucks, their sirens echoing through the streets, and he thought about the times over the years when cops and firemen had clashed at scenes like this. Could already he
ar the ration of shit he was going to get when they arrived, about going into a burning building without proper equipment. Not his job. Overstepping.
"Hello?" he called. "Hello? Please, if you can hear me, let me know where you are? Hello?" His lungs hurt. He was having trouble getting enough air to yell.
He thought he heard a muffled response. Closing his eyes, he listened hard, trying to shut out all other sounds. He heard it again and hurried toward the door it seemed to be coming from. He grabbed the knob and turned. After so many unlocked doors, this one was locked.
"We're right here," he called, "we're going to get you out."
He slammed his shoulder into the door. Unlike the others, this door was solid, the lock strong. He called to the stranger working the other side of the hall. "This door's locked. Help me."
"I got it." The man's work-booted foot slammed into the door just below the lock. The door splintered, but didn't give.
There was a whoosh as flames shot down from the ceiling above them.
The man backed off and hit it again, then Burgess put his shoulder to the door. It gave, finally, and he catapulted into a small, dark space that felt like he was flying into an oven. He'd expected a room, maybe even one with something of value in it because of the lock, but he was standing in a closet.
He flashed his light around shelves crowded with boxes. There was so much smoke his light barely picked out a figure in a long skirt and headscarf curled on the floor in the corner. As he shoved his arms under her to lift her up, the wall behind her burst into flame, setting her clothes on fire. He grabbed her, turned, and ran, holding her with one arm while he beat at the flames with the other.
Behind him, he heard the other man. "Oh my God. There's another. It's a... there's a baby here."
Then they were pounding down the hallway toward the door, flames leaping toward a fresh oxygen supply and chasing them like something from a horror movie.
Outside, they handed the limp woman and her bundled child over to the waiting firemen. Then, as though they'd been doing this together all their lives, Burgess and the man he didn't know dropped to their knees together on the muddy grass, trying to cough up the smoke from their lungs. Some senior firefighter, his voice only a harsh drone behind their racking coughs, stood over them like Sister Mary Peter and castigated them for taking foolish chances.
When he could breathe again, Burgess got up, wiped his muddy hands on his muddy pants, and then thrust one toward his fellow rescuer. "Joe Burgess," he said.
"Connor O'Day." O'Day was a big man with unruly reddish hair and surprisingly blue eyes. "Do you think they're going to make it? That baby wasn't breathing. And who the fuck locks a woman and a baby in a closet? What do you suppose that's about?"
Burgess wondered about that, too, but cops didn't share their wondering with the public. He was already making lists and taking notes. Trying to file away what he'd seen.
He looked toward the curb, where O'Day's truck sat, the driver's door still open. It was a surprisingly quick and heroic response, one not too many people would have had. Parked, maybe, and thought about helping, but most men would have waited for the firemen or instructions Burgess had not had time to give.
It was a well-worn truck, one of thousands of silver trucks in a state where trucks probably outnumbered cars. A medium-sized Ford with some dings. A silver toolbox mounted in the rear. A rack for carrying equipment or supplies, loaded with cardboard boxes and lengths of white PVC pipe. A plumber, maybe.
"Let's go and see how they're doing."
On his way over to where EMTs were working on the victims, he spotted Jason, hanging at the edge of the crowd, bouncing in his agitated way. Burgess went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "You did good today, Jase. Probably saved a couple of lives." The boy's pinched face lit up. "You'll get a letter from the chief for this. Maybe get your picture in the paper."
Jason shook his head vigorously. "Don't do that, Sergeant Burgess, please. I don't want my picture in the paper."
The boy's reaction surprised him. But then he thought about it. Something else for his follow-up list. Maybe Jason had seen something and didn't want anyone to know he had. A kid like that, always around the neighborhood, became invisible. Maybe it was better to keep it that way.
"Just so you know that we're grateful," Burgess said. "You're a hero today." He tousled the spiky blond hair. "At least let me take you out to breakfast sometime?"
"Pancakes?" Jason said. "Blueberry pancakes and lots of bacon?"
"You bet. Whatever you want."
The boy was wheezing badly. "You have an inhaler?" A faint nod, like the boy really didn't like to have to admit that. "Well, use it, okay? All that smoke is bad for your lungs."
"Yes, sir." The boy ducked his head, pulled his inhaler from his pocket, and melted away into the crowd.
Burgess and O'Day continued toward the EMTs. One of them looked up and recognized him. Her face was tense, her steady hands continuing to work on the infant. "Hey, Joe," she said. "Not looking good for this baby."
Beside him, he heard a groan from O'Day. He shot a glance at the man, saw big fists curled at the ends of weight-lifter's arms.
He nodded. "I'm going to keep hoping for good news."
"Me, too," she said, shaking her head. She rose, already moving toward the ambo, the tiny body on the gurney looking like a lifeless doll. A dark, alien doll, given the mask and the tubing. "We'll see you over there?"
He nodded, watching the tiny body disappearing into the brightly lit vehicle. They all wanted good news. He wasn't an optimist, though. Burgess had lived in the sewer of other people's lives for too long.
He hadn't caught his breath yet and he smelled like a fireplace. Now the weight of this was settling on him like a heavy black cape. He wanted to go home, sit down with his new, crazy family, and hold them all, reassuring himself that everyone was okay. Instead, he would be making a series of phone calls back to the higher-ups at 109. Then he'd be heading over to the hospital to learn the condition—and identity—of the two victims.
A young woman and a baby locked in a closet at an empty mosque? A fire that instinct already told him was not accidental? Serious personal injury and possibly a death? The violent crimes detectives were going to be involved. The arson unit would be involved. The fire department's investigators would be involved. Most likely the state fire marshal's office, too. A bureaucratic cluster fuck where everyone would be arguing about who owned what, too many people would be holding too many cards close to their chests, and getting answers and justice would be as easy as swimming in a tar pit.
He sighed and turned to O'Day. "Thanks," he said.
His fellow rescuer sketched a salute, turned, and headed back to his truck. In a moment, he was gone. As he hurried toward the ambo, Burgess realized he'd just let a prime witness walk away, and he'd never gotten anything more than the man's name.
Chapter 2
It looked like they were being pretty successful at knocking the fire down, but Burgess knew fires were deceptive. They liked to hide and lurk, waiting for someone's inattention, then springing out to finish devouring their prey. So just in case the PFD didn't win this one, he took out his phone and snapped some pictures of the writing on the wall. Adding the possibility that this was a hate crime would bring even more people into the mix. By morning, the reflexive bleeding hearts who hated anything that felt like an unfriendly gesture toward their new African citizens—never mind what the facts were—would be out with posters and flags, interfering with fire investigation and getting them all kinds of press attention they didn't need. No one ever believed that when the cops came into these things, their bias was against bad guys and bad acts, not people's racial or ethnic makeup.
He hated fire scenes. All the cops did. In addition to the necessary disruption and destruction that came with firefighting, too often the fire department's own looky-loos had to stomp through the scene after the fact, staring at things and further destroying their ability to co
llect evidence or get a sense of what might have taken place. At least there were no bodies at this scene. Get a body so crisp it didn't take an ME to declare death, and someone was still likely to tromp right up to it, just to get a closer look.
Okay. His prejudices were showing. He was just as territorial as anyone else. At least he tried not to make other people's jobs harder. He wished people would do the same for him.
His call back to 109 had brought Stan Perry and Terry Kyle, the two detectives he thought of as his team, out to the fire scene. They'd brought Rudy Carr along, with his video camera, to take pictures of the crowd. With fire-setters, more than any other type of criminal, there was a significant likelihood that the bad guy would show up at the scene. Sometimes they performed heroics, getting into it to rescue victims. Other times, they'd just stand in the crowd and watch. This was a big crowd, plenty of gawkers to record. And Rudy was a master at getting the pictures without people being aware of what he was doing.
Burgess's plan was to hand the scene off to Kyle and Perry, and get over to the hospital to check on his victims. Hoping he might even have a chance to interview the woman who'd been locked in the closet, if she was well enough to talk and the dragons over at Maine Med didn't lock him out to "protect" their patient. As always, with a major crime, the first hours and days were critical, before memories failed or witnesses were influenced by their friends or what they read in the paper.
But getting away wasn't so easy. First, as a matter of interdepartmental courtesy, he had to let the fire guy finish his lecture on Burgess's careless and irresponsible behavior. Then he had to bring Kyle and Perry up to speed. He let the droning finally come to stop, then pointed toward the building. "Thing flared up right after we brought that woman and her baby out, didn't it?"
Fire guy nodded.
"So would your guys still have gone in after them?"
