Fireproof

by Alex Kava

  “Dr. Wenhoff, I think you’ll want to take a look at this.”

  He slapped the pieces of film onto the front of a light box. Secured them in place and turned on the light.

  Maggie immediately noticed the white oval in the chest X-ray.

  Stan tapped it with his pen. “The killer evidently didn’t know the victim very well.”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Racine asked.

  “But there’s only one,” Maggie said.

  “A single breast implant usually indicates cancer rather than just cosmetic surgery. Good news is, we should be able to figure out who she is. It’s considered a surgical device, so it’ll have the manufacturer and a serial number.”

  “So they can match it in a database?” Maggie asked.

  “The bastard didn’t count on that when he was bashing in her face and teeth.”

  “Should be able to give us the name and address of the surgeon,” Stan said. “You’ll need to convince him to give you the patient’s name.”

  “Simple as that,” Racine said.

  “Not quite so simple. I’ll need to cut it out completely. The serial number’s on the other side.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Tully settled into the editing studio, surprised at how small it was. His long legs folded uncomfortably, his knees against a panel of knobs, switches, and keyboards. The space reminded him more of a cockpit than a television news studio.

  The engineer Samantha Ramirez introduced as Abe Nadira was not pleased to have Tully beside him. He glanced at Tully, eyes only, head straight forward. His lips pressed together, a thin line that barely moved when he talked. He gave one-word replies most of the time. Tully was relieved that Sam stayed. He didn’t get the whole story of what had happened last night at Maggie’s, but it had changed the young camerawoman’s attitude. Suddenly she was willing to do whatever she could to help them.

  She stood behind them, directing Nadira like a backseat driver, only with a quiet and gentle patience.

  “I think you might need to go back all the way to a minute, forty seconds. I did a brief test,” Sam said, “then a full sweep of the area.”

  She was referring to her film footage from the fire, the minutes before the rescue teams arrived. Tully still didn’t buy her reason for getting to the fire so quickly. She claimed she and Jeffery Cole were supposed to meet for a late dinner after finishing up what she called a “puff piece” on the District’s homeless. They had spent several hours shooting in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where the evening buses unloaded the homeless who had commuted downtown for the day and were returning.

  That he believed.

  Racine had mentioned the program. He had checked and found that the last bus dropped off passengers at about six thirty. Even if Sam and Jeffery had hung around to do more filming, the time stamp on her footage displayed 11:10. That was a pretty late dinner for a thirty-two-year-old woman who had a six-year-old son at home.

  He’d checked out Samantha Ramirez last night, too. As remorseful as she seemed about switching cartridges on him, there was something this woman wasn’t telling him. Something she didn’t want him to know.

  Nadira had started playing the film and Tully sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, since they were up to his chest anyway. He pushed his glasses up and settled his chin on his fists. The position pulled at his shoulder, reminding him that it was still tender from his fall in the alley.

  There were very few people in Sam’s initial sweep with the camera. She caught them wide-eyed, crawling up off the sidewalk or wandering into the street from the alleys and door wells. The first flames were encased behind the windows, which were still intact. It was almost as if the fire had just started. Was it possible that they had been there that soon?

  “Do you know who called in the fire?”

  “No idea.”

  “How did Jeffery find out?”

  “He has a police scanner. He always knows stuff before anyone else. Sometimes I think he must be psychic.”

  “Jeffery psychic. That’s a scary thought,” Nadira said, and he and Sam laughed.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Sam asked Tully. “Some guy jerking off? Isn’t that what Berkowitz did?” But she didn’t wait for Tully to answer and continued, “Or that arson investigator in California during the 1980s where the fires were always close to conventions he just happened to be attending.”

  “Seriously?” Nadira asked. “Criminals can be such stupid bastards.”

  “Who was the guy in Seattle that started like seventy-some fires before his father turned him in?”

  “Paul Keller,” Tully said, and turned to look at her. “How do you know so much about all these cases?”

  “Are you kidding? Haven’t you watched any of Jeffery’s investigative pieces on these fires? He has more background trivia than Nadira will ever be able to squeeze in.”

  Tully saw Nadira smile, if you could call it that. The corner of his mouth lifted a notch.

  “He’ll be able to use some of it in his behind-bars documentary,” Nadira said. “Because he’s already pushed Big Mac to the limit on these arsons.”

  “Big Mac?” Tully asked.

  “Donald Malcolm. Our bureau chief,” Sam explained. “He’s lost interest in the fires. They’re not a big enough story.”

  “Really? How can this not be a big story?”

  “No body count.”

  Tully checked his watch. They would already be started on the autopsy. He didn’t agree with holding back the information that they had found a body in the alley and a skull inside one of the buildings. It wasn’t his call. Instead, he watched the chaos unfold on the monitor in front of him.

  He wondered who called in the fire. Then he realized Racine had never really told him how the body in the alley had been found. Did the firefighters find it? Or did the person who called in the fire know about the dead body? He made a mental note and pushed up his glasses again. That’s when he saw a block of red in the middle of the bystanders.

  “Stop the film.”

  Nadira hit a button. The screen froze.

  Tully pointed. “Is there any way to zoom in on this?”

  Without a word, Nadira tapped several keys.

  “What is it?” Sam leaned in over their shoulders.

  Tully watched the red block grow larger. It took several seconds for the blurred image to come into focus.

  It was difficult to make out the item, seeing only a slit of it between the bodies, but Tully thought it might be a red backpack.

  “Can you pull back on the zoom but keep this red block in the center and start the film again?”

  More taps and movement began, though subtle. The cluster of people stood still, watching. Soon the red started to move, snaking slowly through the group and inching away from the action. Before the man carrying it reached the corner of Sam’s viewfinder he disappeared.

  “Stop it,” Tully said. “Can you rewind and zoom in on this guy before he moves away from the crowd?”

  Nadira obeyed.

  “Who is he?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know, but I have his backpack.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Maggie drove to Quantico to meet with Keith Ganza while Racine worked on identifying the victim. Tully didn’t answer his phone and Maggie suspected he might still be at the television station.

  Even if Racine was able to find out who the woman was, there were still the questions of who killed her and why and where. How did she end up in the alley? Why did the killer set two buildings ablaze but fail to burn her body? And whose skull was inside? A homeless person looking for shelter? Or another murder victim?

  Ganza was getting his lunch when Maggie came into his lab. He pulled a couple of containers from the refrigerator, containers that Maggie could see had been sandwiched between vials of blood and packaged tissue samples. When he saw her, he raised one of the container’s lids.

  “Join me? Homemade lasagna.�
�

  “Did you make it?”

  “Oh God, no.”

  He placed it in the microwave, then retrieved two forks from a drawer. Maggie tore off several paper towels for placemats and napkins and set them on a table in the middle of the room while Ganza brought out paper plates and pulled a Diet Pepsi out of the fridge to set in front of her.

  It looked like the silent ritual of an old married couple and Maggie realized they had done this many times. Ganza had shared his lunch often and yet Maggie knew little about the man’s personal life. In fact, now that she thought about it, she had no idea who could have made the lasagna. He didn’t wear a wedding ring and had never talked about a family. She’d always assumed he was a bit like her—married to his job.

  At first glance he reminded her of Ichabod Crane, his tall, skeletal frame hunched over, his long, mostly gray hair tied back in a tight ponytail that seemed to make his face look more haggard than it was.

  “Let me show you something interesting that I found.” He pointed to the electron microscope that occupied a corner.

  Maggie put her eye to the viewer. The slide contained something long and thin, tubular with a scaly pattern.

  “I’m guessing animal hair, but it doesn’t look like a dog or cat.”

  “Correct. Her clothes had plenty of primary transfer, which I’ve already cross-checked as her own. The secondary, however, is a bit tricky.”

  “She was found in the alley. There could be all kinds of critters. Even if she wasn’t murdered there, how do you know if this strand is from the alley or the actual murder site?”

  “I’m sure it’s not from the alley. This animal most likely was never in the middle of the District.”

  “Dumpsters attract all sorts of wildlife—raccoons, rats, possums.”

  “But probably not deer.”

  Maggie stared at him for a moment, almost waiting for him to say “Just kidding.” But Ganza didn’t kid or joke about evidence. She pressed her eye against the viewfinder again.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. The scale patterns are unique features to determine different species. I had several samples to examine. All had roots, which discounts the idea that maybe they came from a fur coat. Pelts made into clothes are trimmed and usually dyed. These hairs have characteristics of being naturally dislodged, most likely by shedding.”

  The microwave’s buzzer went off and Ganza stepped aside to check on the lasagna. He opened the microwave door and the aroma of garlic and tomato sauce made Maggie’s mouth water. Ganza set the timer for another couple of minutes. He fingered a set of slides on the counter and brought another over, changing out the deer hair on the microscope’s faceplate.

  “This was also attached to the folds of her clothing.”

  Maggie stared down at what looked like a dusty yellow seed with traces of green.

  “Centaurea diffusa,” Ganza said. “It’s a typical knapweed.”

  “You know where this grows?” she asked.

  “It grows wild in the Midwest.”

  “That’s an awfully big area. And a lot of miles between here and there. Are you sure? Maybe someone grows it closer? In their backyard or garden?”

  “They’d be in violation of the law.”

  “It’s a weed.”

  “It’s on the federal noxious weed list. There are penalties for moving invasive plants.”

  “Okay, so where in the Midwest would this have come from?”

  “It’s common along the roadside or in pastures and meadows. You know … where the deer and the antelope roam.” He offered a lopsided grin.

  “Why would he kill her somewhere in the Midwest and haul the body halfway across the country to dump her in an alley in the District?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a killer drove around with a dead body in his trunk. You know these guys do strange things. Remember Edmund Kemper left a severed head in his trunk while he met with two state psychiatrists, who after that meeting pronounced him ‘safe’ and good to go.”

  Maggie pulled out the set of autopsy photos Stan had allowed her to take. She flipped through and found the imprint stamped into the dead woman’s flesh. She handed it to Ganza.

  “I was thinking this might be a grate in the pavement of another street or alley,” she told him. “But now I’m wondering, could it be the bed lining in a truck or SUV?”

  Ganza took the photo and moved to a counter, sliding it under a magnifying glass. He switched on an overhead light and examined it, his nose practically touching the glass.

  “May I keep this for a day?”

  Maggie glanced at the magnified image. “Do you see something?”

  “I’d like to scan it into the computer and break it down. Sometimes those liners have the brand imprinted on them.”

  Maggie thought about what Ganza had said about Edmund Kemper. Kemper was a textbook case every profiler hoped they never ran into. Nicknamed the Co-ed Killer, the giant of a man had murdered his grandparents when he was only fifteen. He would hang around university campuses and pick up female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area. He murdered and dismembered six of them. It wasn’t until after he killed his mother and her friend that he turned himself in to authorities.

  She looked over at Ganza just as he glanced up. The lines on his forehead bunched together in a frown when he saw something in her face that prompted him to ask, “What is it?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, but felt a sudden chill as she thought about the dead woman’s battered face. “I was just thinking of Edmund Kemper. He used a claw hammer to beat his mother to death while she was asleep.”

  She didn’t add that she was also thinking of Albert Stucky, another serial killer whose signature was to put dismembered pieces of his victims into take-out containers and leave them to be found on café tables, truck-stop counters, and hotel room service trays.

  As if he could read her mind, Ganza said, “Let’s hope we don’t have another psycho bastard like Kemper on our hands.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Sam told herself it wasn’t a lie she had told to Special Agent R. J. Tully. It was simply omitting the truth.

  Jesus! Jeffery had taught her some bad habits. But he’d call them survival tactics. With the types of assignments and the caliber of assholes they dealt with on a regular basis, lying—and being good at it—was an asset, not a bad habit.

  Sam had insinuated that she and Jeffery were in the warehouse district when the fire started. But the truth was, Sam had been home for several hours. She had tucked in her son and shared a cup of tea with her mother. She had been fast asleep when Jeffery’s phone call woke her.

  Now she tried to remember if he had told her how he’d found out about the fire. Usually she didn’t bother to ask. The man had more contacts and informants than the CIA. She just presumed he’d been tipped off.

  Although she had told Agent Tully that Jeffery had a police scanner—and he did—Sam knew he couldn’t have heard about the fire that way. She knew because she didn’t think the police or fire department had even been called yet by the time she and Jeffery arrived. Her own film footage seemed to verify that. Hell, the street people were just crawling out of their cardboard boxes and stumbling from their warm corners.

  So how did Jeffery know so early?

  Sam didn’t really care, or maybe she didn’t want to know. Same thing with Jeffery’s decision to do absolutely nothing about the story Otis P. Dodd had shared with them. It wasn’t her call. She needed to concentrate on doing her job, a job she loved and wanted to keep. The way Sam looked at it, Jeffery helped put a roof over her family’s head and food on the table. That’s all she needed to know. Jeffery had made that happen. Better than that, he had made sure she was rewarded with bonuses that she stashed away for her son. If things continued to work out the way she planned, her son would never have to struggle the way Sam and her mother had all those years without Sam’s dad.

  She wasn’t too stubborn to reali
ze that her success and financial stability depended on Jeffery Cole’s success and financial profitability. He was one of the top paid investigative reporters in the country and would become even more famous when Big Mac gave him his own show. So when things got a bit crazy, Sam reminded herself that she had attached herself to his star and had to be ready for the journey. Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she had sold her soul to Diablo.

  She pulled her car off Interstate 66 and immediately found the diner where Jeffery had asked her to meet him. As far as she could tell, it wasn’t anywhere on the way to their next interview, but again, rather than question Jeffery, she simply followed instructions.

  Sometimes he liked to eat at out-of-the-way dives, once driving them down the Virginia back roads to what looked like a two-room clapboard shanty on the river. One side sold bait and tackle, the other side served some of the best barbeque pulled pork Sam had ever eaten. Of course, there were also those places that ripped up Sam’s stomach, like the bamboo hut in Jinja, Uganda, overlooking Lake Victoria. Never again would she let anyone talk her into eating monkey.

  Today’s diner looked a bit too commercial for Jeffery, but Sam found a table by the window and waited for him.

  When he came in, his face was flushed and his shirt wrinkled, the sleeves shoved up instead of neatly rolled up. He must have left his tie and jacket in the car, even though the day was a bit chilly. Sam thought he looked out of breath.

  “Are you okay?”

  He sat across from her, grabbing a menu before he got settled.

  “Of course, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  He scooted the wooden chair in, scraping the floor and arranging himself so he could see out the window. Without looking at her, he said, “They have excellent cream of asparagus soup here.”

  Sam shrugged it off. Jeffery was an interesting study in contrasts: hot then cold, black and white, up and down. Like a sports car, he could go from calm to enraged in less than sixty seconds. However, she had no inclination to study him. It was tough enough keeping up with him and staying out of his way or on his good side.