Nestor eased the ambulance through a larger crowd on their return to Garfield Street. Judging by the remote vans, lights, and notepads in evidence, most of the increase came from the media. Ben spotted Mark Forester, whose picture and by-line he'd seen in many an edition of the Eagle Dispatch, Duncan's paper of record. At Forester's elbow was his rival in news gathering, Jamie Watts, a reporter for the local television station, WKLD. Each looked exactly as you'd expect; Forester with uncombed hair in an unkempt suit, Watts conservative, but camera-hot. There were others, plenty, Ben knew by sight if not by name, all eager for a taste of blood.
Erin's squad remained in place but another officer, a recent Police Training graduate named Parker Traer, manned the post. Now a full-fledged flat-foot, rumor had it Traer might make a good cop, if he didn't take house explosions as welcome parties and let it go to his head. Erin was nowhere to be seen.
Never one to let dogs lay, Nestor (unwisely, Ben thought) asked, “Where's the prisoner?”
Traer didn't seem to understand. That was all right, Nestor frequently had diarrhea of the mouth. Unfortunately, Forester overheard. As reporters care about everything until they ask enough questions to discover they don't, he shouted to Ben, “What does that mean? Hey, what's your partner talking about? What prisoner?”
“No idea,” Ben said with a shrug. “Must be an inside joke.” He hurried Nestor away from the reporter, the crowd, and the cop, whispering under his breath, “One of these days you're going to get your tit in a wringer. Yours or someone else's.”
The charged lines had been pulled from the houses on the far side of the street. Ben's garage was extinguished. Activities around ground zero were reduced to hanging smoke ejectors and chasing hot spots. At the Incident Command Center, Fire Chief Anthony Castronovo, his white helmet shining like a coin in a beggar's cup, led a huddle of department bugles thinking great thoughts. Near Quint 2 some kind soul had laid out coffee and donuts. Several firefighters were there, refilling their personal tanks.
“Want a donut?” Nestor asked. “Or should we report our return?”
Ben didn't feel like a donut. Neither did he feel like visiting the bugles. “I'm going to take a look at 'A' Shift's basement. Do me a favor and report for us; Castronovo hates my guts.”
“Take things too personally. He hates everybody's guts.” Nestor laughed. “If he doesn't saddle me with a crap duty, meet up with you in a few minutes.”
Nestor went while Ben turned slowly in a circle. The few still at it were overhauling, without shifting evidence more than necessary. Ben headed for the pit of debris that earlier had been a basement. He studied what he saw, and as his fire scene 'sixth sense' kicked in, he got a feeling.
Making an effort to avoid attention, Ben lifted a scuttle hole ladder from the nearest engine, dropped it to his side, and strolled toward a rear corner of the pit. He wore his bunkers, with gloves in one of the thigh pockets, but otherwise only his uniform shirt. His coat and helmet were in the ambulance. Going near a fire without gear was against every rule and not very smart. But donning turnout, while everyone else was standing down, would make the reporters and bugles howl questions. He didn't have answers, just a feeling from an item he'd spotted below and wanted a closer look at. Phfffttt to the rules. As nonchalantly as he was able, Ben snapped the ladder open, lowered it into the basement, and started down. He'd barely reached the scorched floor when—
“See something?”
“Geez! Don't do that!” Nestor stared down at him, laughing. “I think so. I wanted a better look.”
“Here. Before you catch hell.” Nestor tossed his coat down. He followed it with his helmet and truck belt, then moved for a better look and to block the view of officers and press behind him. “Don't do anything stupid down there. My name's on the coat; they'll think you're me.”
“If they think I'm you, they'll expect me to do something stupid.” Ben carefully moved through the steaming, smoking mess scanning the mounds and spaces for the object. He found it and pointed.
“Is that plastic?”
“Looks like.” Ben moved a toppled ceiling joist from its resting place. He grabbed a bright red melted hunk on the floor, struggled to get it up, and pulled it free. “A gas can.”
“Okay. Not a good idea to store gas beside the water heater. But a lot of folks probably do.”
Ben directed his partner's attention to another red melted blob. “Another.” He pointed again. “And another.” He shoved the remains of a wooden box aside. “There's another one.”
Nestor whistled. “I'm convinced. Obsessive lawn mower or not, that's a lot of gas.”
Ben reached the least damaged corner of the cellar, protected by another collapse, grabbed a handful of fallen floor, and pulled. The wreckage fell exposing shelving and a waist-high metal cabinet. The cabinet door bulged at the top. Using Nestor's spanner, he pried it open, then pushed the helmet back on his head, staring in wonder. Inside were four gray metal boxes with GRENADES stenciled in black on their sides. “Get a load of this,” Ben called up, backing off. “Hand grenades.”
Every firefighter Ben had ever met was a pyromaniac who thought explosive ordinance great fun under the right conditions. Unexploded munitions discovered at a fire scene, on the other hand, meant get away. It also meant keep it quiet, as the reporters would love it.
“Pena! What's going on?”
The bellow was unmistakable, Tony Castronovo on the stomp. Before Nestor could answer, the chief was beside him and glowering at Ben in the basement. “Well? What are you clowns doing?”
“I'm watching Ben discover evidence of arson,” Nestor said.
“I'm discovering evidence of arson,” Ben added. He pointed. “There. There. There. And there.”
“Gas cans,” Nestor explained. “As far as the eye can see. And that ain't all.”
“Yeah?” Castronovo demanded. “What else?”
Still backing away, Ben tripped and fell over more tented debris. He rolled to his hands and knees facing the steaming pile on the floor. “You all right?” Nestor shouted.
“Yeah,” Ben replied, staring into the debris.
“Well?” the chief shouted. “What else did you find?”
Though they'd been a top priority a moment before, the boxed grenades were no longer on Ben's mind. Instead, he pointed into the steam and smoke beneath him to a thin object protruding from the rubble. Nestor and Castronovo, following his gaze, saw it too. One of them, Ben wasn't sure which, swore. He agreed. The object was a burned and blackened human foot.
Four
It had been one heck of a day off, fighting fire, doctoring, finding contraband weapons and a corpse, exposing certain arson and probable murder, with plenty of report writing on the side, not to mention the day-ending impromptu meeting with brass and bugles where the order, “Keep your mouth shut” was repeated until his head swam. Ben was all in. And he was staying in.
Ben lived in the old Port District in a closed brewery being renovated into apartments. His was the only unit so far and he the only tenant. The building was said to be haunted and, he had to admit, there were nights when it got spooky. There were always sounds of 'settling' and odds bits of light sometimes flashed in the corners of his eyes. But he believed it was mostly his imagination. He'd met no ghosts; just creaks, and groans, and 'what's-that' noises that were probably nothing at all. As sociable as a ghost himself, one sound Ben rarely heard was his own doorbell. When it rang that night, he opened the door with guarded curiosity.
On the other side, lit by a single bulb in the unfinished hall, stood a cop, Sergeant Erin Vanderjagt. Ben raised a brow. “Good evening, officer.”
“Good evening. Could I have a word?”
He stepped back and waved her in. “Please.”
Erin stepped in; Ben closed the door. He took her in his arms. She wrapped hers around his neck. They melted together, sagged against the door, and disappeared in a kiss. The rotten day vanished.
Sometime later the doodads
on Erin's gun belt stabbed Ben and they came up for air. He began the work necessary to secretly love a lady cop. He took the belt, all twenty-two pounds with holster and gun, re-loaders, pepper spray, handcuffs, and radio holster (sans radio), by the front and with Herculean effort undid the double buckle. The belt slid off Erin's slim hips and onto the nearest chair.
“No, no,” she said. She grabbed the belt, folded it, and carried it to his kitchen cupboard. “Safety first,” she added, returning to his arms. The uniform shirt came next, hastily unbuttoned and peeled away to expose a Kevlar bulletproof vest. Ben sighed, Erin laughed. Determined, he eventually found the slim blonde beneath but not before the mood had been seriously disrupted. Both were laughing.
“Artichokes and onions are a cinch compared to you.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I'm better eating.”
Ben would have agreed but he didn't get the chance. The cop spun out of his arms and was peeling off the armor. “Oh, what a day from Hell. I blame you for it.”
“Me?” he asked innocently. “Why me? I didn't buy your speeder a drink. I didn't blow up a house. I'm so far down the chain of command, I barely register as a peasant. What the heck did I do?”
“I can handle the drunks. I can even handle the explosions. But then you came along…” she looked around and dropped her voice to a whisper, “…and found hand grenades and a body.”
“And reported them like a good little brown shirt.”
“That's the problem. You should have buried them again.”
Ben laughed. “Lead to a little red tape, did they?”
“You couldn't have caused more excitement if you'd thrown a slut over a prison wall. Your chief wants them for the fire marshal. My chief wants them for the feds. They argued in whispers so the press didn't hear it. Being brothers-in-law, they'd probably still be fighting it out, but who sneaks in to add politics to the legal nightmare? Jerry Light.”
“What's the mayor got to do with it?”
“You are kidding, right? That little tin god? He ordered them both to shut their mouths. They are to offer no information on the corpse, which is fine because there isn't any information on the corpse, and to pretend the munitions don't exist until he can decide what to do about them.”
“Where's he get the authority?”
“From the back of his lap. But, since the police chief and fire chief are both appointed by the mayor, he who works beneath the gold dome makes the rules. And because the burn victim, I mean the live one, the survivor, is some kind of foreigner… You knew that?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Oh, did I know that. A loud foreigner.”
“Mayor Light is certain any nod to a higher authority is going to introduce the word 'terrorism' into the conversation. He can already feel the tourist dollars slipping from his fingers. For the moment, the grenades have been locked up in the police station and nobody knows nothing about nothing. If you haven't been told to shut up, you will be.”
“Oh, I've been told. I didn't know it was special. Castronovo rarely says anything to me but 'Shut up'. Come to think of it…” Ben reached for her. “You'd better keep me quiet.”
They kissed again. But Erin pulled away before either lost their heads. “That must wait,” she said. “I'm filthy. I'm disgusting.”
“Don't believe all those hurtful things people say.”
She hit him, playfully, but with force. “I mean I'm grungy; dirty.” She started away. “You've already washed this horrible day away. I'm covered in it and, I'm afraid, coitus is interruptus until I borrow your shower.” She headed for the hall, doffing t-shirt and panties as she went while Ben took the opportunity to notice she was firm and straight, and soft and round, in all the right places. She grabbed a towel from his hall cubby hole. He followed her glorious rear end to the bathroom, teasing her on the way. “All you did was direct a little traffic. How dirty could you have gotten?”
“For hours,” she said, starting the water running. “In the heat and smoke. Dealing with the public and the media so you heroes didn't have to. And dealing with that drunk.”
“What did you do with him anyway?”
She disappeared behind the curtain. “I let him go. By the time the fires were extinguished he was sober. Of course, he started all the usual BS about suing for false arrest.”
Her silhouette undulated in the steam. With effort, Ben kept his head. “How'd you calm him down?”
“With a counter offer. I said I'd shoot him and claim self-defense. That got his attention.” She shook a bottle, squeezed out its dregs and, with it, a sound you never hear on television. “Have you been using my body wash?”
“It's my shower. Besides, men don't use body wash. They use bar soap.”
“Uh-huh.” She was unconvinced. “Anyway, I told him I probably saved his life. I reminded him he'd served his sentence in a Lexus, so it could have been worse. I said I was ready to press a dozen charges on top of the DUI. We agreed to call it even and promised to both be better people.”
“So that was your morning. How'd the rest of the day go?”
“Crap. We're low on detectives. Judey Taylor just retired and, unlike the movies, they don't call retired detectives back for tough cases. Tankard is fishing somewhere in Canada. And everything is landing on Peter Chandler's desk. He's swamped.”
“Did I miss something? How did we get on to detectives?”
She poked her soapy head through the curtain, said, “I'm telling you,” and vanished back inside. “My point was; your discoveries gave the department lots of new things to detect. I thought I might get kicked up. They moved Shane up instead.”
On his side of the curtain, Ben grimaced. Horatio Shane had far less time on the force than Erin. In fact, she'd trained him. Any reply now would need to be carefully worded. Thankfully, Erin saved him.
“I admit it,” she said. “I'm jealous.”
“Why?”
“Why am I jealous?”
“Why Shane? You have more time. You're more qualified. I know for a fact you're Chandler's pet. There's no way he chose Shane over you.”
“He didn't choose. Peter wasn't asked. Chief Musselwhite said detectives were just detectives. That I was too valuable training patrol officers. End of story.”
It was also the end of the shower. Erin turned off the water. Ben handed in her towel. “Being valued by your chief isn't the worst thing in the world. Mine doesn't think I'm worth a damn.”
She stepped out, drying her lovely body. “He couldn't be more wrong.” The exhausted civil servants' kissed; the weary firefighter longing, the hard cop now all soap and softness.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked.
“No. I want you.”
They made love. If you've ever been passionately involved, and had to keep the affair a secret, you know the tidal wave of feelings, pleasures, fears, and thrills at work. No play by play would carry you to those heights. If you haven't known the situation you can't know the feelings. Afterward, they lay side by side, Ben stroking Erin from her muscled thigh to her velvety right breast and back again; Erin watching the stars through the bedside window and drifting at the edge of sleep.
Then a face appeared outside and pressed against the glass.
“Hell,” Erin shouted. She dove to the floor, taking the sheet with her, grabbed one of Ben's shoes as she rolled to her feet. Naked as the day she was born Erin hurled the shoe. The face retreated. The window shattered.
“What?” Ben shouted, bolting up as he came awake.
Outside, there came in quick succession a shout, a scream, a thump, and a groan.
Erin used the sheet to improvise a toga. “Someone was peeping through the window.”
“What?” Ben rolled to his knees on the bed, still not getting it.
“Someone was peeping!” Erin snapped the light on and pointed at the busted window.
“That's crazy. We're on the second floor. There's no fire escape. Who the hell would shinny… You're barefoot. Watch the glas
s.” Ben threw a blanket over the splinters, then threw their pillows on top. Erin turned the light off again; the better to see out. They came together at the window.
As their eyes adjusted, they saw Nestor Pena, flat on his back in the yard below, alternating between drunken laughter and groans of pain. His wife, Angelina, dark, lovely, and exceedingly pregnant, stood nearby. Her arms were folded over her ample belly and the poor woman looked anything but amused.
“For the love of Pete,” Ben yelled down. “Is he dead?”
Angelina studied her husband for a moment, then looked up, and in her clipped Philippine accent replied, “Only from the neck up.”
“I can't believe this,” Erin whispered.
“What?” Ben asked innocently. Then he shouted out, “You broke my window!”
“The cop broke your window,” Nestor cried. “I broke my ass.”
“Angelina, if that idiot you married isn't paralyzed, bring him up. I'll unlock the door.”
Ben's and Erin's search for their clothes was hindered. Neither was fully awake. The clothes were scattered from the bedroom to the front door. Erin wanted something to wear instead of her uniform. And she was furious. When Ben asked why she went off. “Our seeing each other was supposed to be a secret. Why is Nestor here? How does he know? And what the hell is he doing scaling the building to look in the window?”
“Good questions. But why are you mad at me?”
“He's your best friend. You must have told him.”
“I didn't tell him. I haven't told a soul despite the fact I want to shout it from a mountaintop. Like we agreed; no complications, no intrusions in our work, not a word to anyone until we're sure. Which, of course, means until you're sure.” Ben pulled on his pants. “What about you? You and Angelina are close. You didn't mention to her we're seeing each other?”
“Well, of course I did. Angelina is my best friend in the world.”
When The Tik-Tik Sings Page 3
