Best Place to Die

by Charles Atkins

  ‘Solvents, not gas . . .’ The experienced Marshall sniffed, like a connoisseur swilling a Pinot Noir. ‘Definitely turpentine . . . alcohol, some kind of lacquer, and oil, too. I knew it from the dark gray smoke when I got here. There should be laws against having this kind of stuff in a nursing home . . . there are. This should have been reported. Someone knew about this, and if word gets out . . .’

  ‘It’s not a nursing home.’ Hank corrected him as he examined the forms on the one semi-clear area of counter space – all medical in nature, and neatly stacked; like the guy who’d been living here was using it as a desk. ‘These are apartments.’ And, careful to leave things as he’d found them, he focused his camera on the top three forms and snapped close ups. At the bottom of each page was a signature line, below which was printed, Norman Trask, MD. From there he systematically took shots of each surface in the kitchen, getting a couple extra of the weird pyramid of jumbo coffee cans in front of the room’s only window. As an afterthought he pulled a random envelope from the bottom of a mail stack – it was an advertising package filled with coupons for local businesses; the postmark was June 2001, not long after Nillewaug opened over ten years ago. ‘Jesus, why would somebody keep this kind of crap?’

  As they’d climbed over tumbled and drenched stacks of boxes, clock gears, and papers they came to what had once been a bright and spacious living and dining area. With the exception of a small cleared area, in front of which sat a melted computer and flat-screen monitor that now looked like odd pieces of modern art, the room was packed. Blackened shelves lined three walls, but only the very tops of those, filled with incinerated old clocks and books, could be glimpsed. The bank of windows on the fourth wall had all been broken, and the floor was a drenched swamp with thick puddles. The only other slightly passable space was in front of a cluttered table to the left of the computer, positioned to catch light through the windows.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ Sam pulled a partially melted yellow plastic lid off a coffee can, one of several that lined the back of the table and identical to ones in the kitchen. He stuck in a finger, smelled it.

  ‘What is it?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Cause of the fire . . . but where . . .’ Turning slowly in place, the Fire Marshall scanned the floor and the stacks of charred and drenched clutter. His gaze landed on mounds of garbage behind the workbench so blackened it was impossible to tell what they’d been, other than fuel for a fire.

  ‘Hank, give me a hand. I think we just found ground zero.’

  They both took pictures and then gingerly edged the table back a few inches so Sam could squeeze his ample gut through.

  As Hank stood back, he caught himself in a kind of prayer: Please God let this be an accident, just one God-awful fucked-up accident.

  ‘From the burn,’ Sam said, ‘I’d say this is it . . . rags in solvent. We’ll get it analyzed but I’m willing to bet it’s turpentine and some other crap this geezer was using.’ The Marshall dropped what might have been a clump of rags into a plastic evidence bag.

  Hank, who’d been around at more than his share of Grenville fires, felt something lighten in his gut, as Sam vented, ‘Can’t people read the friggin’ labels? They say right on ‘em, dispose of the rags in a sealed container. Danger of spontaneous combustion.’

  Hank caught himself about to defend the resident; if this was really Norman Trask’s place the guy knew the risk. For God’s sakes, he was a doctor. That’s why all the sealed coffee cans were filled with water-soaked rags. So what happened? Knowing their time alone at the scene – of the accident, not crime . . . at least not yet – was limited. ‘Sam, I want to check the bedrooms.’

  And that’s when they found him. The firefighters – or evidence eradication unit – as he’d come to think of them, hadn’t made it back here. If they had, they’d have taken Norman Trask – who was quite obviously dead in bed – hauled him out, tried to resuscitate and then pack him in an ambulance. At the hospital they’d have pulled him out, all the while doing CPR, shooting drugs into his veins, and zapping him with a defibrillator. They’d put him in an emergency-room cubicle and finally have a nurse and then an ER doctor state the obvious – DOA. The room had been untouched, the door shut. The densely packed clutter, long hall and closed door had deprived the fire of oxygen. Cause of death was going to be smoke inhalation, which from all reports wasn’t the worst way to go. The guy looked peaceful, eyes closed, head neatly centered on his pillow, covered in a sheet up to his bare shoulders, glass of something evaporated by the heat, by the bedside. Went to bed, forgot about an oily rag, few hours later . . . nothing, just one hell of a nightmare for the living.

  ‘Hey, Hank.’

  He grunted at the sound of a deep female voice. ‘Was wondering when you guys would get here,’ he said. ‘So Grenville’s yours now?’ He turned and nodded, noting Detective Mattie Perez in black pants, turtle neck and state-issue blazer. Her dark curly hair shot through with strands of silver, her deep brown eyes, on him and then back to the body in bed. Beside her was a tall young woman in navy slacks, dark shirt and a vest covered with pockets. Her face eager and intent, her glossy auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. Clipped over her right breast was a state police picture ID with large letters at the bottom – DETECTIVE JAMIE PLANK.

  ‘We were working the overnight,’ Mattie explained. ‘Heard it called in and figured, what the hell? Seems I’ve got a soft spot for this town.’

  ‘Yeah, right . . . murder capital of Connecticut.’

  ‘Getting there,’ she said. ‘But your Fire Marshall says it’s an accident.’

  ‘If there’s a God it is . . .’

  ‘So how’d it get so big?’ she asked. ‘You’d think in a place like this at the first whiff of smoke there’d have been a response.’

  Hank felt a wave of déjà vu as Mattie, a seasoned detective with the state’s major crime squad, quickly honed in on uncomfortable details, the kind of things that could quickly turn this from a tragic accident to arson, and from there, with three dead that he knew about, to homicide.

  ‘Alarms never went off,’ Sam said, having followed Mattie from the living room to the bedroom. ‘It got called in a little after three a.m. by a guy delivering papers. I picked it up on the scanner, and got here pretty much with the first truck.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Mattie said. ‘The sprinklers went off but the alarms didn’t? Aren’t they connected?’

  Sam looked troubled. ‘Yeah, when water flows through the pipes it triggers the audible alarm . . . except.’

  ‘Except?’

  ‘If someone put it in test mode, or the wire to the flow alarm got disconnected or, God forbid, someone cut it.’

  ‘All things to check. How long ago do you think it started?’ she asked, carefully stepping over the mounds of debris around the dead man’s bed.

  ‘Well, figure for those rags to combust you’re talking four hours from whenever they fell. Lord knows there was ample fuel, so once they sparked, lots of dry paper, plenty of oxygen. It spread quick.’ He paused. ‘It was big when we got here, had to have been going at least a couple hours.’

  She put on light blue propylene gloves, and pulled back the soaked sheet, noting that Dr Trask was naked, and trim, from the scars on his knees he’d had the joints replaced, but other than that . . . healthy-looking old guy. The once white sheets now soaked with ashy water. ‘A place like this; there’s smoke detectors all over the place. Right? Not just the ones connected to the sprinklers. Why didn’t they go off?’

  ‘Just one reason,’ Sam offered. ‘They weren’t on.’ He glanced up at the round white sensor outside Norman Trask’s bedroom. He watched and waited for the flashing red dot; it never came. ‘They still aren’t.’

  ‘How can that happen?’ the young detective asked. ‘Aren’t they hard-wired?’

  ‘Sure they are,’ Sam said. ‘Somebody shut them down. I’d be willing to bet both the smoke detectors and the flow alarm were on the same system and that�
�s why there were no audible alarms.’

  ‘Not good,’ Mattie said, lifting the crystal tumbler off a stack of journals that obscured a nightstand. She looked in at a sludge of viscous amber on the bottom. ‘Any chance this place is wired into your fire department?’

  ‘Not for years,’ Sam said. ‘Wish it was, but it’s cheaper using central stations – just pay a monthly fee. The calls go to Jersey, Miami, Atlanta, then they call it in to the local police and fire. I think it’s just a matter of time before even those get shifted to India.’

  She sniffed the glass, the liquid boiled off in the heat of the fire, an oily residue on the bottom, she detected bourbon, the hint of something else – vermouth? – and a desiccated maraschino cherry on the bottom. Drinking alone in bed . . . and cocktails? ‘Hank, do me a favor and find out when the alarms went down.’ Her gaze raked over the jumbled room, her focus wide, taking in random bits of information, and landing on a bit of unmistakable green sticking out of a shoebox wedged between a black plastic bag, and a dangerously canted yard-high wall of yellowed newspapers. She pried the box out, careful to not start an avalanche. The lid slid back. ‘Wow!’

  ‘Holy shit!’ Hank muttered as he stared in at the packed contents, all hundred-dollar bills in small folded clumps, one jammed on top of the next.

  Mattie grabbed a smallish wad. ‘All new bills,’ she said, and she counted the stack and then a couple more. ‘Six hundred, one thousand, four hundred, one thousand three hundred . . .’ She looked up at Hank. ‘You knew him?’ she asked, while quickly guessing the box’s contents as upwards of forty grand. Her gloved fingers dug down to the bottom and retrieved a small stack of old folded documents. She opened them out and examined the one on top. It was beautifully engraved with the image of Lady Liberty in ink the color of mulberry wine and ‘$5,000’ written in the four corners and spelled out across the bottom.

  ‘What are those?’ Detective Jamie Plank asked, her height giving her an unobstructed view over Mattie’s shoulder.

  ‘Some kind of bond,’ Hank said, ‘and old.’ He found the date. ‘Forty-nine. Just after World War Two. How many are there?’

  Mattie pried the notes apart. ‘Ten. So face value of fifty grand.’

  ‘Bearer bonds,’ Sam offered. ‘I don’t think they make those any more. But if that’s what they are, they’re still good. Don’t need any proof of ownership to cash them, just walk into a bank, turn ‘em over, and get your cash.’

  ‘Who was this guy?’ Mattie asked. ‘Who keeps this kind of money in a shoebox? And are there more of them?’

  Hank gave her the rough outline of Dr Norman Trask, retired surgeon, father of three boys. The oldest had played on the Grenville Ravens during their brief glory years in the 1970s. As he spoke, he watched Mattie carefully examine the piles of stuff packed in the surgeon’s bedroom. He remembered her first outing in Grenville last fall when she’d been the lead detective in a string of murders that had created a panic in Grenville. This brief trip down memory lane was like a drill ripping through his gut. If this turns into a homicide . . . shit!

  With her gloved hands deep inside a garbage bag filled with sweaters, she turned back to him. ‘Can you think of any reason someone would want this guy dead?’

  ‘No,’ he said, but his thoughts spun fast. Could this have something to do with Dennis? And, wishing he could keep his mouth shut, but knowing she’d find out anyway, ‘His youngest son, Dennis. Got in a lot of trouble when he was young, occasionally still gets up to something . . . but nothing big. At least nothing that sticks.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Kid’s got a temper, and used to drink. Did some time for a DUI. Sold pot when he was in high school and had a couple short stints in detention.’

  ‘Fights with his dad?’

  Hank’s thoughts skittered back thirty-odd years. ‘Not recent, not as far as I know. But when he was in high school. He was your typical rich kid in and out of trouble. Had his parents wrapped around his finger. Middle of the night, kid would get picked up drunk at a party or behind the wheel, and dad always showed. A couple times I told him it would be good to leave Dennis in lock-up for the night, maybe scare some sense into him. He wouldn’t go for it.’

  ‘Spare the rod,’ Mattie commented, staring at the naked dead guy, running likely scenarios. On one end, guy gets buzzed on bourbon, goes to bed, forgets some oily rags and presto. On the other, homicide, but with a box full of cash and God knows what else of value. If this was murder a simple robbery seems out. The guy was a doctor . . . ‘Hank, how old was Dr Trask?’

  ‘I’ll find out, but at least in his eighties.’

  ‘So retired, right? Has to be.’

  ‘You’d think, but . . .’ He told her about the forms he’d found in the kitchen.

  Mattie listened, taking in Hank’s information, the scene in front of her, and the doings of the local Fire Marshall – Sam something – on his cell in the background. She’d been pulling an extra overnight shift when the call had come in – five-alarm blaze in Grenville. Just the mention of the town perked her interest and when she’d heard it was Nillewaug Village, well, something about this place had stunk the last time she was here. It had been a no-brainer, at least go and make sure this wasn’t a crime. It had been a good call, with three dead – at least that they knew of – crime scene or not this was big. At the very least there’d be civil suits, and one hell of a mess for the insurance companies. She retraced her steps from the bedroom, pulled out her cell, and called for the crime-scene team. Her young colleague trailed behind – me and my shadow, she mused, a part of her glad to have someone so obviously interested in learning, while another part wondered how she’d gotten to this point where she’d become the mentor.

  ‘Around ten last night,’ the Fire Marshall said, as he answered her earlier question about the alarms, his phone in hand.

  ‘Really? Who turned them off?’ she asked.

  ‘Someone with the access code.’

  She paused, standing in the center of the living room that reeked of smoke and mingled solvents. Her feet sloshing through blackened water. The windows shattered, charred crap that created a casing around mostly unscathed stacks of stuffed garbage bags and cardboard boxes so tightly crammed the fire hadn’t gotten to them. ‘Why would someone turn off the fire alarm in a place like this?’

  ‘Few reasons,’ the Fire Marshall offered. ‘System gets brought down for servicing or testing . . . but you sure wouldn’t do that on a Saturday night. Maybe there was a false alarm or a faulty sensor and they needed to check it out, and figured it’s just easier to shut it down and then fix it during the work week. Or . . . you know it’s probably not just the fire that got shut down. All the systems go through the same line.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, following his train. ‘It’ll be security too.’ She turned to her partner. ‘Jamie, call the security company, have them fax us a list of everyone who could disarm the system. And see if there’s any way of telling who shut it down.’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Good.’ Mattie slowly turned in place, her thoughts clicking. ‘I want you to stay here and don’t let anyone else in until the CSI team gets here. I’m going to check out the office of the jumper . . . if she really was a jumper.’

  Jamie Plank struggled to contain her excitement. This was the biggest case she’d ever been a part of. As a new detective she’d been exiled to third shift – the land that time forgot. Having someone like Mattie as her partner was an unexpected bonus and this . . . ‘Anything else?’ she asked. ‘You think this was arson?’

  ‘We’ll find out,’ Mattie said, ‘but I’ve got a bad feeling.’

  FOUR

  ‘You should have just let me burn to death in that hell hole!’ Rose spat at Ada from the back of Lil’s Lincoln Town Car, as she pulled past the roadblock outside Nillewaug. It was just after seven a.m., the last hour and a half a confused blur. Retrieving the car, trying to get it around to the back of the burning bui
lding. Various emergency personnel and cops asking what Lil was doing there, lies tumbling from her lips, as she’d maneuvered her way back to Ada, now next to her, and Aaron, Alice and Rose now in the back. Along the way, she’d spotted familiar faces, old patients of Bradley’s who’d moved to Nillewaug for its promise of safety and comfort. And one face that made her wonder if maybe there’d be more to this story than just a fire – Detective Mattie Perez.

  ‘Mother . . .’ Ada’s jaw was clenched. ‘Are you sure you won’t let us take you to the hospital?’

  ‘Why? So you can kill me there?’ Rose turned to her new, albeit confused, BFF, Alice in her soaked nightdress, the two of them huddled under a red wool horse blanket that Lil kept in the trunk for emergencies. ‘Do you have children, Alice?’