by Kate Flora
"Once they got their gear on."
"How long you figure that would have taken?" He didn't wait for an answer. Yes, safety mattered, but so did human life. It might have already been too late for the baby. Another few minutes and it would have been too late for the mom. Instead, he changed the subject. "You think someone set this fire?"
Fire guy gave him a look. "Too soon to tell," he said. "We'll have our people on it once we get this knocked down."
"Yeah. We'll have our guys on it, too. Probably the fire marshal's office, too. Keep us up on what you learn, okay?"
The guy nodded, but Burgess knew the only way they'd get decent information any time before the snow fell again was because the department had its own arson investigators. Territorialism was rampant among safety organizations. And too often stupid. But culture was culture, and he wasn't changing any of that. He'd put Lieutenant Melia in the loop, get brass talking to brass, and they'd get what they could.
He pulled Kyle and Perry aside. "We'll do a canvass once things calm down, but for now, work the crowd, find out what people know about this place. Who runs it. What population it serves, whether anyone saw anything before the fire broke out. The usual stuff."
"You think it was set, Joe?" Perry asked.
He nodded.
"This place is a mosque," Kyle said. "We know if it's Somali or Sudanese? Shiite or Sunni? How long it's been here?"
"Community relations will know," he said. "I'm surprised there isn't someone here, saying he's in charge, asking us about the situation."
"Community relations. FBI, DEA, Homeland Security, the gang squad," Perry said. "Lotta people around with an interest in our new refugees. You gotta wonder, did the resettlement agency have any clue what they were doing when they started inviting them here?"
It sounded uncharitable, Burgess knew, but the truth was it was an ongoing challenge for a small, financially strapped, mainly white city to integrate and understand such culturally different populations as the flood of refugees from Somalia and the Sudan who had come on the heels of Cambodian refugees. They'd taken a bunch of workshops on the subject—subjects—and the cops were trying hard, but the cultural gap was wide. Many of the refugees came with a deep fear or hatred of the police, and it made investigations a thousand times harder when one of the first things their new neighbors learned was to play the racism card early and often.
He hadn't had much more than glimpse of her before he'd handed the mom over to the EMTs, but she hadn't looked Somali or Sudanese. The baby had been darker. Another thing that made him wonder what she'd been doing in that closet.
He looked around at the crowd, figures as merry as though they were at a block party, everyone out on this mild spring night to be entertained by destruction and tragedy. He gestured toward a small knot of people standing apart, arguing among themselves, the only watchers who didn't seem to be having a good time. Women in headscarves and long skirts, the men dark and glowering. "You might start with them. See if you can find out who's in charge of this place, and how to get in touch to set up an interview with him."
He wasn't being sexist when he used the word "him." Like the Catholic Church, the Muslim religions had no place for women leaders. "I'm heading over to the hospital. See how our victims are doing."
"Sheesh, Joe," Perry said. "You really found 'em locked in a closet in there? They didn't just lock themselves in, then panicked and couldn't find their way out?"
"Door only locked from the outside," he said. "It was a closet, Stan."
In the moment, in the dark, the heat, the smoke, he could only focus on saving lives. Little time to observe the situation, take his usual mental notes. Now the scene was probably destroyed. Certainly contaminated. He needed to be alone for a while, consolidate what he had seen, and preserve it for the record. Something he could do on the drive to Maine Med.
Perry shook his head. "Gonna take a detective to figure that one out."
Kyle patted him on the shoulder. "Well, son. That would be you."
Perry shook him off. "Wish you two old farts would stop treating me like a kid. It's not like you're so old, Terry. You just act old and think old, 'cuz you've spent so much time around Joe."
"Methuselah," Burgess agreed. "Back when I was helping Noah build the ark—" He broke off, feeling the weight of time, and all the unknowns. "Go work the crowd, my children. And bring me something."
"Yes, Dad," Perry said.
His standard joke. Until recently, the closest Burgess had come to having kids was the detectives he trained.
"You'll call me about the baby, Joe?" Terry Kyle, a father himself, always worried about the kids in their cases. Hoped for the best and feared the worst. Burgess took it one step further. He hated cases involving children. Even when you solved them, got justice or what passed for justice, they stayed with you. And babies were the worst. He desperately wanted this baby and this mom to be okay.
Stan Perry was still young, impulsive, unattached. Still into the adrenaline of the chase. Burgess was losing that. These days, the hard cases felt more like ten cords of firewood to be shifted than like facts to be chased down and bad guys to be nabbed. It made him appreciate Stan's youthful energy and ponder retirement. But this was all he knew how to do.
He left his guys to work the scene, hefted himself back into the Explorer, and headed across town. It had gotten colder, but he left the windows down. They'd had another endless Maine winter, snow piled up until there was no place left to put it. The city had had to truck it away, creating dirty gray mountains in empty parking lots. There were still stubborn snow piles in shady corners and deep drifts of the sand they'd used on slippery roads banked along the roadsides. This suddenly mild April weather felt like a gift. A gift they'd earned through suffering.
He dictated a memo of everything he'd observed, getting the detail into his phone before it was crowded out of his mind by later observations, then called Chris to say he wouldn't be home any time soon. Another night when she'd shoulder the tasks of homework police and referee alone. She said she didn't mind, and the fact that she smiled more often, and sang while she bustled around the house, were probably clues that she was telling the truth. But Burgess minded for her.
In his fifties, and after years of letting his fear that he'd inherited his father's violent nature force him into a monkish existence, Burgess had become a family man. In a matter of months, he and his live-in girlfriend, Chris, had acquired three children, two of them teenagers. The learning curve was steep and his long-held belief that he'd be bad at it was often confirmed. His once spare and quiet home now resembled a lunatic asylum. Toys, clothes, books, electronics, and people and noise everywhere.
Sometimes, before going home, he found himself driving around the neighborhood after an especially bad case while he took the visuals and the emotions of what he'd dealt with and stuffed them in the lockbox cops carried in their heads. Tonight, he'd have plenty of mental housekeeping to do.
"Hey," she said, "Neddy got one hundred on his spelling test. Nina thinks she's too fat and needs to go on a diet. And Dylan has locked himself in his room and is playing his guitar so loud I'm expecting the neighbors will be calling the police soon. How's everything with you?"
"Just dragged a woman and a baby out of a locked closet in a burning building," he said. "Heading over to Maine Med to see how they're doing."
"Damn," she said. "You don't need that." A pause, then, "I was hoping you were coming home."
"So was I."
There was a crash behind her. "Oops," she said. "Got a little bit of warfare going on here." Her voice dropped into a lower register. The voice that always made his pulse quicken. That had brought them together and kept them together. Her "meet me in the bed" voice. "Catch you later."
"Count on it." What he said. And wanted. They both knew a case could sweep him up and keep him away for as long as it took.
He drove through his darkened city, the warm red of brick buildings in the West End still glowin
g faintly in the fading light. Elegant homes now cut up into condos and doctors' offices. He pulled into the emergency room lot and got out. Stiff and sore from a little door kicking and rescue op. Getting too old for what the job sometimes called for.
Chris said he had a bad attitude. So did his boss's boss, Captain Cote. He thought there wasn't much to be upbeat about, doing what he did. Chris had taken to calling him "Mudgy," short for curmudgeon. Like that was supposed to lighten him up.
He shoved through the doors and up to the information desk, two officers in tow that patrol had sent over. He'd station one of them in each room to note what happened, collect clothes and anything else that might be evidence. They got directed to a curtained cubicle where a team was bent over the baby, desperately trying to revive it. It was a very small infant, not more than a month old, with fine dark hair. He could tell from their faces that they were losing a battle they didn't want to lose. Heard the doctor whisper, "Come on, little guy. Stay with us."
So his baby was a boy. He left an officer named Rob Staines in the room, Staines looking like he'd rather be any place else on earth. Staines, he recalled, had a newborn at home.
He and Remy Aucoin moved along to another cubicle, another set of curtains, where the faces told him they were having better luck with the baby's mother.
"Sergeant Burgess, Portland police," he said. "How's she doing?"
Without looking up, the dark-haired young woman in the long white coat, who seemed to be at the center of the operation, said, "She'll be okay."
Peremptory. Dismissive. Words he read as "stand back and let us do our jobs."
Remy, who'd done this before, stepped into the corner, making himself as invisible as possible, and started taking notes.
The head nurse caught his eye and stepped outside the curtain with him. Good relations being the one plus of a job that sent them way too often to the hospital with victims. Maryann O'Malley. A friend of Chris's. "She's just a baby herself, Joe. And scared stiff. Hasn't said a word to us. I think she's processing, she just won't speak."
"She have any ID? We got any idea who she is?"
"No. No tats, no scars, no piercings. No rings. No jewelry. Nothing in her pockets. Someone should be with her, but she won't tell us who to call." She hesitated. "You really find her locked in a closet?"
The nurse shouldn't have even known that detail, but of course she did. Protocol was not to answer, but it would be all over soon enough. "Yeah."
He'd have to wait. Move on to the other questions, like "when can we talk to her?" when they had her more stable. Both sides were used to this—the cops anxious to get their information before someone died or lapsed into unconsciousness. The doctors protective of their patients and wanting to be left alone to work. A collision of objectives where everyone wanted to win. Nurses were frequently the go-betweens, trying to balance everyone's needs.
"You'll call me when she's ready to talk?"
"If she's ready to talk. She's terrified of something, Joe, and it isn't us."
"Thanks, Maryann." Someone had locked the girl in that closet. Someone who very much wanted her under control. Until he knew who, and why, he needed to keep her safe. He crossed to Remy. "Stay with her," he said, "wherever they take her."
Aucoin nodded.
He went back to where they were working on the baby, meaning only to watch and merge his hopes with theirs, as though collective will could make a difference. He came through the curtain just as everyone stepped back, heads bowed and shoulders slumped, Staines looking as drawn as the rest of them.
A tired-looking man in blue scrubs glanced up at the big clock on the wall and said, "Time of death: six twenty-three p.m."
Chapter 3
His phone rang, and he stepped back into the waiting room to take the call. Stan Perry's voice, a burst of aggravation and profanity before he got to the point. "Took us all this freakin' time to get them to cough up the name of their Imam," he said. "Like it was some kind of secret. Anyway, Terry and I have got an address, thought we'd head over there and ask some questions. Terry thought you might want to be in on it."
"Terry's right." He checked his watch, an unnecessary gesture. It had only been about three minutes since the baby had been declared dead. He had told his boss, Lieutenant Melia, "No more dead kids." And this was worse. It was a baby. But he couldn't lay it at Melia's door. This one had come straight to him.
"Listen Joe, Terry's got a source here in the neighborhood he wants to track down. Says can you and I do the Imam so he can follow up with that?"
"Sure," he said.
"How are things over there?"
"The baby died," he said. "Give me the address." Stan read it off and he wrote it down.
It would be one of those long nights of driving back and forth across the city. No way around it. After he and Perry went to see the Imam and Kyle spoke with his source, they'd have to circle up back at 109 and share what they'd learned. By then, maybe the mom would be stable enough so he could talk to her. At least he wouldn't have to be the one to tell her that her baby had died. A scrap of silver lining in this big dark cloud.
He'd left word at the hospital that he'd need a call when the mom could be interviewed. Sometimes they called, sometimes they didn't. He'd drop back later, see how things were going. He'd had little chance to form an impression of her when he'd carried her, other than small as a child herself, and light. Too small and too young to have a child of her own. Seeing her on the gurney, surrounded by medical personnel, he'd learned little more. She was pale skinned, not simply from shock and trauma, and had long dark hair.
As he drove, he called dispatch, gave the address of the building that had burned, and asked if they could get him the name and address of the owner. He called Melia, to let him know about the baby, asked if Melia could have the department's fire investigator liaise with the fire department and the state fire marshal's office, so they could stay in the loop about the cause of the fire.
Stan Perry would have done a records check on the man they were going to meet and called for an interpreter to meet them there, just in case there were language issues. Sometimes they dealt with people who didn't speak English, sometimes with those who were just more comfortable in their own language—and, sometimes, with those who hid behind language barriers as a way of controlling the conversation. Offering an interpreter was part of their efforts to improve their relationship with the Somalis, something the department was trying to do.
Burgess understood that the refugees had come from a place where the police were feared, and he worked hard to change that image. He just sometimes wished they'd try and understand where he was coming from, too. But there he was, doing that generic "put people in a box" thing again. One-on-one, he had often been very successful in crossing barriers and establishing trust.
Burgess didn't know much about the Muslim religion. Probably, depending on what they learned tonight, he'd have to get himself some kind of a tutorial. He also knew that he came into this situation with assumptions based on experience that he'd have to guard against if he wanted to keep an open mind about what he was learning. It had not been—it still was not—easy for Portlanders to integrate this raft of foreigners into their city. The cultural differences were great.
Taxpaying Mainers, by and large, had a deep dislike for people who lived off public resources, as many of the refugees did. It wasn't just refugees; they had the same prejudices against welfare mothers, people on disability who weren't disabled, and people on unemployment who wouldn't look for work. When you work hard for meager pay, you want everyone else to do their share.
They hadn't called ahead. They wanted a purely spontaneous interview. They wanted the opportunity to observe the leader of this spiritual community as they questioned him about what they had found in his mosque.
He parked behind Perry's car and slid into Perry's front seat. "Our translator on the way?"
"Says he is. Oh lookie..." They both watched a gray van creep around the c
orner and slowly nudge its way into the curb.
"Sure doesn't look like he wants to be here, does he?" Burgess said, as the van's driver sorted through some papers on the passenger seat, adjusted his glasses, adjusted them again, and only then climbed slowly out of the vehicle.
They went to meet him. "Hussain Osman," the man said, extending his hand. He was small and neat, and in his white shirt and wire-rimmed glasses looked an engineering student.
Burgess and Perry introduced themselves. "We're going to see a man named Muhammad Ibrahim," Burgess said. "We need to ask him some questions about his mosque."
Osman looked troubled. "Questioning an Imam? That's not a proper thing to do, Detectives."
"There was a fire at the mosque," Burgess said. "We need basics for our investigation. Whether they own or rent. Have there been threats or trouble with the neighbors. Things like that. To know how that fire might have started. It's perfectly proper." He wasn't mentioning the girl in the closet until they'd gotten the conversation well under way.
Osman nodded, looked toward the house, and waited. Burgess led their little party to the door.
The young man who opened it looked pretty Americanized, if a rapper t-shirt and baggy jeans showing a wide swath of cartoon boxers meant anything. He had a rounded, baby-faced look and round, innocent eyes. He stood blocking the doorway, and, innocent face or not, he looked as sullen as the teenagers Burgess had at home. Some things, it seemed, were universal.
"Detective Sergeant Joe Burgess, Portland police, here to see Muhammad Ibrahim." He flashed his badge. He did not add "May we come in?" It was too easy for people to say no.
When the boy's face didn't change and he didn't move, Burgess added, "It's urgent police business. About the fire?"
"What fire?" The question seemed genuine.
"At the mosque."
Even in societies vastly different from America's, common facial expressions like happiness, fear, surprise, and shock are the same. What he was seeing was surprise and shock, followed by a nervous shifting of the eyes. He didn't know if the boy knew about the people who'd been locked in the closet, but something about a fire at the mosque alarmed him.
