by Alex P. Berg
“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” I said. “What about Jim Worth? That name ring any bells?”
Another judgmental, over the glasses sort of look. “Should it?”
“He died in another fire last night. We’re trying to see if there’s a connection.”
Kieran sighed. “Well, if I’ve ever heard the name, I don’t remember it. Look, I’m terribly sorry to hear about Guzmann, and of course I’m willing to help in your investigation, but I didn’t know him that well. With that said though, he did serve in the military.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“You should know. You work for the government. It means there’s an extensive file on him. Again, mostly about his time in service, but I document my work, too. I’d be happy to lead you down to the store room.”
Griggs grunted again, and for once, I mirrored his enthusiasm.
“Great,” I said. “Just how I wanted to spend the morning.”
“Does that means you want me to show you the way?”
“Oh, I don’t want you to,” I said. “But I suppose you should anyway. Go on. We’ll follow.”
9
“So. Tell me about Jim.”
I stood in an empty courtroom, or at least one empty of judges, jurors, lawyers, and defendants. A trio sat before me, however: a portly middle-aged woman with a chin-length bob cut, an elderly, diminutive woman who might’ve been part gnome, and a young lady with curly dark brown hair that framed a pleasing face. The latter gave me a halfhearted smile. I tried not to ascribe to it any meaning.
“Do you mind telling us what this is about, exactly?” said the gray-haired woman, who stood maybe four feet tall in heels.
“I’m the one asking the questions here, ladies.”
“You realize we work in the city courthouse,” said the middle-aged woman. “We’re going to find out sooner or later. You might as well tell us.”
I sighed. After toiling for hours in the depths of the VA’s store room, Griggs and I left with little more than we’d entered. The social worker had been right both that the file on Guzmann was extensive and that it included very little of his current life. Though we’d learned about his transfers between regiments, his military assignments, the interactions between him and his superiors, and more than I ever wanted to know about the damage a spear could do to a man’s knee ligaments, of his current acquaintances, there wasn’t a single line. I should’ve trusted Kieran’s testimony and left it at that.
Of course, that left us without any particular leads to follow except for taking a closer look at Guzmann’s maid, but something told me she’d be a dead end. Besides, the city courthouse had been much closer to the VA building than the public records office, which we’d need to visit to find out more about the maid.
Upon arriving, I’d found the three women in front of me, all of whom apparently shared the same position as Worth. I hadn’t revealed to them what had befallen the man, not yet anyway. Given that they worked with him on a daily basis, I thought they might take his loss more personally. But, now that I’d isolated them and they were all sitting down…
“I’m sorry to tell you this,” I said. “But Jim died last night. His apartment building caught on fire. It might’ve been arson.”
The lady with the bob muttered an, “Oh, my,” and the other two women responded with looks of disbelief but nothing more.
“You’re all stenographers like he was, right?” I said. “Court reporters?”
The trio nodded their assent.
“And you did work with him, correct?”
“Yes, why?” said the old half-gnome.
“None of you seem terribly upset to hear he’s gone.”
They all looked at each other. The young lady with the curly hair ventured a response. “Well, it’s just that… How do I put this? Jim was, ah…”
“An enormous dick who agitated everyone he ever met?”
The middle-aged woman sniffed. “Agitated might be too feeble a word.”
“So you all hated his guts?”
“Not at all,” said the young lady. “I mean… I didn’t, anyway.”
I looked at the other two. They shook their heads in an indeterminate way.
“Well, tell me about him anyway,” I said. “Right now all I know is that he was a miserable cuss, so anything besides that could prove useful. How about you start, Miss…?”
I nodded to the young lady with the curly hair. She smiled. “Um…Wadley. Emily Wadley.”
“Go on.”
“Well, it’s not as if I knew him any better than the others,” she said. “I probably knew him worse, actually. I’ve only worked here for…let’s see. Four years? But he wasn’t a particularly nice individual. Honestly, with his attitude, I’m surprised he’d kept his job for as long as he had.”
The gnome woman snorted. “My theory is he had a relative somewhere deep in the courts, maybe on the city council. No way he could get by insulting the judges and not get booted onto the street otherwise.”
“He insulted judges?” I said.
“Carol’s exaggerating,” said the middle-aged woman. “He’d get snippy, but he was never outright rude. Not to anyone with the authority to fire him, anyway.”
“But he was to you?”
Emily nodded. “That’s why we all steered clear of him, which I think was fine by him. He avoided other people. Ate lunch by himself. I guess being a court reporter was a good profession for him, in that sense. He didn’t have to talk almost ever. Just write stuff down. Actually…”
Emily smiled and sniffed. The grin gave her mouth a pleasing curve, her eyes crinkling. She was certainly cute, but if I had a hard time imagining Kieran walking the night and selling herself on the side, I couldn’t even fathom it with Emily. Everything about her seemed eminently wholesome.
“Actually, what?” I said.
Emily hesitated. “Well, we, ah…sometimes joked that he lived his life in shorthand.” Her smile vanished. “I’m not sure why I said that. It’s not even funny.”
“It’s alright,” I said. “Laughter in the face of death is a natural response. You shouldn’t feel bad about it.”
“Really?” said Emily.
“Sure. I joke at dead people’s expense all the time.”
“Yeah, but you’re an asshole,” said Griggs. “Don’t take life advice from him, Miss.”
I turned around to glance at the old codger. I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Anyway. I don’t suppose any of you might have any ideas about why he might’ve been murdered?”
The two older ladies shook their heads.
So did Emily. “As I told you, he kept everything to himself. If there was a reason, he didn’t share it with us.”
“I hesitate to even ask this,” I said, “but did he have any close friends?”
Gnome lady laughed.
“Enemies?” I said.
“Probably dozens,” said the middle-aged one.
“But ones that would kill him?” I said. “And burn down his apartment complex in the process?”
This time, I got silence in response.
I turned back to Griggs. “You got any ideas, you old sack of bones?”
“Sure do,” he said. “Graziano’s Bistro, on seventh.”
“What?”
“For lunch,” he said. “It’s about that time.”
For Griggs, anytime after ten-thirty qualified as lunch time. “I meant about the case.”
“Should’ve been more specific, then.”
I wiped a hand across my face. “Sorry for that ladies. My partner’s cut from a similar mold as your ex-coworker. Thanks for your time. If you think of anything, or hear anything through the grapevine, don’t hesitate to come by the station.”
The stenographers all nodded, but Emily was the only one to shoot me a smile. Again, I tried not to make anything of it. If she’d been misguided enough to try to befriend a rage-filled jerk li
ke Worth, then her friendliness meant less than nothing.
10
I scowled as I looked down on a stain that had attached itself to me during the last half hour. I lifted the edge of the shirt and sniffed. It smelled like vinegar, but it looked like oil. Must’ve been salad dressing. I knew I should’ve gone for the cheese steak instead of the ham, capicola, and salami trio.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Griggs.
I dropped the shirt as we turned the corner onto 5th. “Nothing. Just a stain. I bet I can blot it out back at the station.”
“And why do you care about a stain?”
“Hey. I’ve got pride. I’m not some disheveled slob.”
Griggs snorted and shook his head, which was about as close as he ever got to having a heart-to-heart talk.
I could guess pretty easily what he was judging me over, though. He might not have seen me at my worst first thing in the morning, but his nose worked. The coffee couldn’t have totally hidden my vomit breath, nor the hasty grooming job I’d performed in the bathroom hidden the rumples in my clothes and my slovenliness. He knew I’d been out drinking, that I’d never gone home last night—or at least that I’d ended up at the station. He may not have been the world’s best detective, but he could figure that out on his own.
Was he too embarrassed to say anything about it, or was he trying to send me a message by going out of his way to not say anything? Or there was a third option, that he disliked opening his mouth so much that it would take an act from a higher power to make him talk about anything not work related. Either way, for once I appreciated his silence. I had no interest in discussing the events of last night with anyone. Not even Nicole, though I’d have to get to that sooner or later. Probably sooner.
I shook my head. I couldn’t deal with it right now. I needed to focus on our case. Guzmann and Worth. There had to be a connection between the two, even if it wasn’t obvious on the surface. Maybe Guzmann had been involved in a court case that Worth had recorded. Perhaps they’d met. Maybe Worth misrepresented what Guzmann or another witness had said, either because he was in cahoots with Guzmann or because he’d been paid off by another party. That sort of thing, if discovered, could be grounds for a case being thrown out and retried, but it almost certainly would’ve resulted in Worth losing his job.
I heard a noise as we approached the precinct, distant at first, but growing louder. It was sharp and piercing but irregular. A whistle. And something else. Pounding feet. Or something else much rarer in a city that relied on rickshaws for travel. Pounding hooves.
A tanker truck careened around a corner some two blocks up, the reinsman cracking a whip as he drove the horses in front at a breakneck pace. A fireman clinging to the side of the truck blew on a whistle, the piercing blasts cutting through the air as if it were butter. Another cart followed the first, fishtailing as it barreled around the corner, this one packed with firemen in heavy coats, armed with axes, and with a pair of hulking crank-turning ogres perched on the benches in back.
I gazed into the heavens. Patchy clouds blocked about a third of the sky, but in the distance, I noticed it. A thin dark column, rising from the direction of the financial district.
“Uh, oh,” I said.
The precinct’s doors burst open, and out of them ran Rodgers and Quinto. The pair were set to race up the street in pursuit of the firemen, but Rodgers caught a glimpse of us. He snatched Quinto’s coat and managed not to get dragged off before the big detective figured out what was going on.
“Daggers. Griggs,” said Rodgers. “What are you waiting for? There’s another fire. Ninth and Magnolia. Let’s go!”
Quinto and Rodgers took off, as did I, though I paused a second later after realizing I was on my own.
“Griggs? You coming?”
The old fart waved a hand. “I’ll try to snag a rickshaw. I’m too old for this crap.”
“Whatever. See you there.”
I applied shoe leather to cobblestones and got going, following the fading sounds of the firemen’s carts and whistle bursts as much as Quinto and Rodgers. Within a couple blocks, I wished I’d had the foresight to hire a rickshaw, but my detective pals in front of me weren’t slowing, and I was too stubborn to give up half way. By the time we arrived at our destination, I was sucking down air like it was going out of style, sounding as if I’d surfaced from a lake after five minutes spent at the bottom. I surveyed the scene in bursts, bent over, holding my knees for support, and looking up when I felt physically able.
The firefighters had beaten us there, and by a wide margin I imagined. They already crawled over the building in question, a six-story high rise with a clean granite exterior, lots of tall windows, and a fancy, leaf-patterned cornice that ran across the top edge. Smoke poured from one of the third story windows, darkening the side of the fourth and fifth stories, but a pair of firefighters on ladders and armed with hoses were already there. The grunts of the ogre crank team punctuated the air, and their efforts didn’t appear to be in vain. I couldn’t spot the red-orange glow of active flames, and the amount of smoke paled in comparison to what we’d seen at yesterday’s apartment complex.
Someone burst through the front door, a wide thing with glass inlay that spoke to the building’s rents, and gosh darn it if it wasn’t Mr. Good-Looking himself. Fire Marshal Transom. He spotted us and waved us over.
“Detectives,” he said. “Glad to see you here. Just got down from the scene.”
I was too busy trying to reoxygenate my blood to respond, but luckily Rodgers and Quinto weren’t in as poor shape as me.
“Already?” said Quinto. “Is it safe up there? You all must’ve just arrived.”
“We got lucky,” said Transom. “Lots of stone in this building. The fire didn’t spread quickly, plus we were ready. Had to be, given the events of the last two nights.”
“And,” said Rodgers. “Was there, ah…a casualty?”
Transom nodded. “Unfortunately. Two could be a coincidence, but three’s undoubtedly a pattern. Here. Grab some masks. We might’ve killed the fire, but it’s still smoky as all get out up there.”
I finally caught my breath enough to straighten. My stomach heaved, and I thought I might vomit again. Given my lunch and last night’s remaining queasiness, it was a miracle I hadn’t already.
I glanced at Transom. He was a bit on the sweaty side, but not drenched. “Is it as hot as yesterday’s blaze?” I wasn’t sure I could handle that particular atmosphere at the moment.
“Lucked out there too,” he said. “Fire didn’t get a chance to set in, which makes the scene all the stranger…”
“What do you mean?” asked Quinto.
“Come with me,” said Transom. “Better you see for yourself.”
We wet and donned our masks, then followed Transom inside and up the stairs. We passed a number of firefighters before arriving at the third floor landing.
I’d expected a disaster similar to the one I’d already experienced, but Transom hadn’t oversold it. Smoke and moisture choked the air, and though I felt as if I’d entered a sauna, the heat didn’t overwhelm. Soot darkened the walls, but the walls still stood, having failed to burn through.
Transom pushed past another fireman into an apartment. There, I found the damage more severe. Char covered most every surface. A few pieces of furniture still smoldered, but though disfigured, I recognized them for what they were. A lumpy, wide thing in the middle of the entry must’ve been a couch, the boxy things along the walls cabinets, and a carbonized shelf or two gave away the remains of a bookshelf across the far wall.
I took a deep breath, my heart still pounding from the run. “Where’s the body?”
“Over here,” said Transom.
We followed him into another room, and the where became immediately obvious. On the floor in the middle of the space, surrounded by a scorch mark that looked as if it could’ve been caused by an explosion, lay the corpse—or rather, the r
emains, because a full corpse it wasn’t.
“Gods,” I said. “There’s nothing but bones left.”
The fire-darkened skeleton lay there, devoid of muscle or fat or gristle, almost as if the arsonist had excavated someone long dead and set their bones carefully at the center of the scorch mark.
“Hold on,” said Quinto, his rumbling voice muffled by the mask. “This fire wasn’t going that long. You and your team wrestled it under control before it brought the building down, before it even took out the rest of the floor.”
“So how is it the victim was fully immolated?” said Transom. “I don’t know.”
I blinked, the confusion probably evident on my face. “You ever seen anything like this?”
“Personally?” Transom shook his head. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t read transcripts of other unsolved arsons. That I haven’t heard certain rumors and myths.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know how you asked me at the apartment complex yesterday if I there was something on my mind? And I said the fire hadn’t spread as quickly as I thought it should’ve?”
“Yeah.”
Transom nodded toward the body. “This is similar, if not exactly the same. A fire that burned this hot, this fast, that reduced a person to their bones, should’ve taken out the entire building, even in the ten minutes it took us to respond. Yet it didn’t. It stayed contained. Almost as if the fire stayed here for a reason.”
“I’m still not following you, Marshal.”
Transom sighed. “Laugh at me if you want, Detective, but I believe there are things in this world besides the sentient races who are capable of setting fire. Beings that bring the fire with them, that harness it from within—and we might be dealing with one of those here.”
11
Transom and his crews might’ve managed to get the fire smothered, but that didn’t mean they’d controlled the situation as a whole. A trio of gawkers arrived at the foot of the burned out apartment husk as Transom, Rodgers, Quinto, and I left, asking questions and looking concerned. I’d given Transom a hard time at that point, thinking he’d already evacuated the building, and he’d taken my berating like a champ. Of course, he’d also produced a quality response, namely that he’d been pretty gods damn busy getting the fire under control and that he’d trusted the rest of his team to do the whole door to door thing.
