The Burnt Remains

by Alex P. Berg

  “But it doesn’t put us anywhere closer to determining who murdered her, if indeed she’s even the one who’s dead.”

  “No, but there are other avenues to pursue.” Moss waved toward the enclosure. “I say we track the remains.”

  “Are you talking about dental records?” I said. “Because I already asked Mr. Vernon to put us in touch with his wife’s dentist.”

  “That might give us a positive ID on the bones, which would be useful,” said Moss. “But no, I mean we should track where the remains came from. We’re assuming the body was cremated and dumped here, so why not visit a few nearby crematoriums and see if any of them experienced break-ins overnight?”

  That seemed like a logical enough course of action. “You think Dean’ll be fine with that?”

  “Dean wants to solve the case by any means necessary, I assure you,” said Moss. “Besides, everything here is under control. Cortez and the coroner are finishing up. We’ve got officers canvassing the grounds. All we need is to track down Justice.”

  “Yeah, I imagine he’d be pretty miffed if we left him behind.”

  Moss smiled. “There’s that. Plus he’s the only one of us who drove here. Come on. I think I know where he is.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Justice parked his matte black Howardson Phantom outside the doors to Fogel and Sons Crematorium. It was the third such business Justice, Moss, and I had visited, so by now I knew what to expect: a fancy storefront where the owners sold expensive caskets and funeral packages to grieving families and tucked behind it, the guts of the building, where the furnaces and ball mills were hidden.

  Fogel and Sons apparently hadn’t gotten the memo about the fancy storefront, though. The building looked like a warehouse, with a corrugated metal roof pockmarked by hail damage and built of speckled brown bricks that might’ve been cream once upon a time. The name that hung across the facade was big enough to be easily seen from the roadway, but up close, the paint was peeling and the letters were rusted at the edges.

  I clambered out of the back seat—Justice’s Phantom was more boat than car—and shut the door with a clang.

  Moss eyed the sign with the same distaste I felt as she climbed out of the front seat. “I don’t think Fogel and Sons are going to sell a lot of premium headstones with a sign like that.”

  Justice grunted as he walked around the car’s mile long hood. “Not everybody can cater to the rich. You think most people can afford granite mausoleums and aged redwood caskets? Most folks die penniless, and it falls onto their kids to foot the bill. Besides, who cares what happens after you die. You could get burned in a fruit crate and it wouldn’t make a difference.”

  Moss smirked. “Good to know that when I die in the line of duty, Ogden, you’ll make sure my corpse gets laid to rest in the finest cardboard money can buy.”

  Justice shook his head as he pulled the door open for us. The shopkeeper’s bell rang as we stepped into the lobby. True to form, the front room was filled with samples, same as the others we’d visited, but Justice had sniffed the place out. There wasn’t a luxury material to be found amid the displays, and the prices were roughly a quarter of what I’d seen at the other crematoriums.

  A shopkeeper with a salt-and-pepper goatee and similarly colored hair that fell to his shoulders sat behind a desk at the far side of the room, his face buried in a ledger that was so large it could’ve served as ballast on a tanker. He looked up at the sound of the bell.

  “Good morning.” He stood and glanced at a wall-mounted clock above the casket displays. “Err… afternoon. What can I help you with today?”

  The man had probably figured out we were cops based on my uniform, but Moss nonetheless dug her badge out of her pocket. “Detective Moss, NWPD. This is Detective Justice and Officer Phair. Are you in charge?”

  “Indeed, I am. Harvey Fogel, at your service.” He skirted the desk and met us at the floor samples. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “I’ve got a bit of an odd question for you, Mr. Fogel.” Moss returned her badge to her pocket. “Have you had any remains go missing recently?”

  The man blinked. “Pardon me?”

  Justice had split from Moss and me, opting to wander the isles and thumb through the merchandise, but his smooth voice carried over. “We found some cremated remains. We’re trying to determine if they were stolen.”

  “Cremated remains?” said the man. “Nearby?”

  Moss shook her head. “Not exactly. At the Vernon and Daly Circus. We think someone might’ve broken into a crematorium and swiped them, though I couldn’t tell you why.”

  Fogel’s brow furrowed. “Huh…”

  Moss lifted an eyebrow and leaned in. “Is that a that’s curious, huh, or a this explains everything, huh?”

  Fogel focused back on Moss. “What? Oh, no. Sorry. We haven’t had anyone’s remains go missing, I can assure you. And yet…”

  “And yet what?”

  Fogel’s eyebrows hadn’t uncoiled themselves. “Well, you said you thought someone might’ve broken into a crematorium, and although I don’t have any reason to believe someone’s done that to my business, I did find our back door unlocked when I arrived this morning. It’s happened several times over the past month.”

  “Several times?” Moss shot me a sideways glance. “Has anything gone missing?”

  “Nothing,” said Fogel. “I would’ve called to report a burglary if that were the case. I’d chalked it up to careless employees until now.”

  I snorted and shook my head. “Can’t even trust your sons, huh?”

  Fogel’s face scrunched up. “What? Oh. No, I’m not Fogel. I mean, I am Fogel, but the Fogel and Sons refers to my dad. I’m one of the sons. I hire help now, though. My brothers moved on to other endeavors long ago.”

  Justice joined us from the adjoining aisle. “So to be clear, you haven’t found any evidence to suggest anyone’s broken into your shop?”

  “Not exactly, but… bear with me.” Fogel held up a finger as he retreated to his desk. He grabbed a piece of paper and hustled back with it. “I got our gas bill this morning, and it’s high. A lot high. Twenty percent higher than normal, at least. That might not sound like a lot, but given the fact that we run furnaces all day long, gas is one of our bigger monthly expenses. This business doesn’t exactly have high margins, you know. I was going to call the utility to complain, but I was checking our records to make sure I hadn’t overlooked a dozen cremations over the past month. Thought I might be going crazy.”

  “A dozen?” said Moss. “How big a discrepancy between your estimated and billed gas usage is there?”

  “In terms of furnace hours?” said Fogel. “Thirty-five, maybe forty hours. Like I said. A lot.”

  I looked at Moss. “Cortez said it takes about an hour and a half to four hours to cremate someone. That could add up to a dozen people.”

  Moss lifted an eyebrow. “There’s no way a dozen people have been murdered and cremated over the past month without us hearing about it.”

  “What? Murdered?” Fogel took a step back. “You didn’t say anything about murder.”

  “We’re homicide detectives.” Justice turned to Moss. “Something doesn’t add up.”

  “I agree,” she said. “Mr. Fogel? Could you show us your furnaces? We’d like to take a look at them.”

  The man bobbed his head nervously. “Uh… of course. Anything to help.”

  Fogel headed into the hallway behind his desk, and the three of us followed. We passed a few doors that led to offices and storage closets before punching through the heavy steel door at the end of the hall. That led into a high-ceilinged room that felt as much like a garage as a mortuary. There was a ten-foot tall door on rolling shutters against the west wall, probably to allow trucks to back up to the three hulking furnaces along the back wall. Each of them were built out of dull gray fire bricks and had thick steel doors with long levers on the end through which they could be locked shut. A half dozen gurneys ha
d been parked at their sides, all of them currently empty of any dead.

  There were a few living souls in the room, however. A quartet of four-foot tall green goblins sat at a round table, holding cards and with a pile of chips on the table between them. One of them spotted us and pointed, causing all of them to spring from their seats. One of them even grabbed a nearby white sheet and threw it over the table, obscuring their illicit poker game from view. A little too late for that, though…

  Fogel smiled nervously as he led us down a few steps to the concrete floor. “Heh… My apologies. They play for fun, not for keeps. I have to admit I let them when business is slow. Good help is hard to find, you know, especially when you run a funeral home.”

  “No worries,” said Moss, shooting the help a quick glance. “We’re here to see the furnaces, not to bust anyone for gambling.”

  The goblins breathed a sigh of relief. Some of them returned to their chairs, though they left the sheet in place.

  Fogel led us to the nearest of the furnaces. He slapped the bricks as he turned to us. “Here they are. They’re nothing special, but they do the trick. My dad built them himself when I was a toddler. Fire bricks, Sherman gas burners, and some doors he had cast special from a local foundry. Exhaust flues in back. The gurneys were modified for the task, too. They tilt to allow us to slide folks in and out. The gas controls are on the side, and we use a thermocouple to keep track of temperature. That’s all there is to it. Oh, and the ball mills are over there.”

  Fogel pointed to the far side of the room to a couple metal cylinders that looked like raffle drums. The metal seemed thicker, though, and there was a power cord coming out one end.

  Moss nodded to the furnaces. “You’re not cremating anyone now, are you?”

  Fogel shook his head. “Last time we used one was yesterday, midday.”

  “You mind opening one?”

  “Guys?” Fogel waved at the goblins, and they hopped to it. A pair came over, setting a stool next to the furnace door. One jumped up and cranked on the lever, which gave a rusty groan as it unlocked, and the other grunted as he pulled the door open.

  Moss moved in as the goblins stepped aside, peering into the dark mouth of the furnace. “Phair? Can you get in here with your flashlight?”

  I pulled the torch off my belt and clicked it on as I joined her. I half expected to be greeted by a foul stench of death, but the aroma was more subdued. The furnace smelled of ash and char, of old stone and centuries old death, but it lacked that pleasant aroma of a campfire.

  I cast about the inside of the furnace with my flashlight’s beam. A thin layer of ash covered every surface, and the odd fragment of bone gleamed as the light caught its edge, but the tomb was otherwise empty. “Looks picked clean.”

  Moss turned to Fogel. “You empty these after each use?”

  Fogel nodded. “We sweep them clean and take the remains to the mills. Run those for ten to fifteen minutes to reduce the bones to a nice powdery consistency. Then we bag the powder and put it in a vase, if the clients purchased one. Sometimes the families don’t want the ashes. In those cases, we toss them in the dumpster out back.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way for you to tell when the last time one of these was used, is there?”

  “Like I said, my dad built these by hand,” said Fogel. “There aren’t any fancy sensors or printouts. I can control the gas flow. That’s about it.”

  “And you don’t have a night watchman?”

  Fogel snorted. “Are you kidding? There’s nothing here worth stealing.”

  Moss chewed on her lip as she stared into the furnace’s yawning maw.

  I gave her a nudge. “What are you thinking?”

  She shot me a sideways glance. “I’m thinking this doesn’t help us much, but maybe Emmett can make sense of it.”

  “Emmett?”

  “Emmett Jowynn. Our coroner. One of them anyway. He was helping Cortez at the scene.” Moss turned toward the owner. “Mr. Fogel, I’m going to need you to sweep these three furnaces again, bag any bits that might’ve been missed during the last cleaning. With any luck, our coroner can match the bone fragments to the remains we found.”

  “Of course.” Fogel waved to the goblins, and the quartet got to work.

  Justice came over, shaking his head. “You know this isn’t going to tell us who’s behind this. At best, we’ll get a match on Mrs. Vernon’s remains.”

  “That would be better than nothing,” said Moss. “At least it would let us put a timeline together on this homicide. Plus it could lead to a positive ID on a suspect. We can canvass the other businesses in the area. This place might’ve not been open at night, but someone might’ve seen something.”

  Justice rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. That’s a lot of legwork for our lone rookie.”

  “She can handle it. Can’t you, Phair?” Moss clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Sure,” I said. “Give me a few hours.”

  Moss laughed. “I like you. You don’t say no. But I’m pulling your leg. Once we get these remains from Fogel, it’s time to head out.”

  “So… no canvassing?”

  “We’ll order some patrol officers to do it,” said Moss. “Besides, we’ve got more important things to do, like get Justice some lunch. He’s starving. Haven’t you noticed?”

  I looked at the big guy, who stood there with his hands in his pockets and a neutral look on his face. “If I say no, is that a strike against me when I try to make detective?”

  “All it means is you haven’t spent the last few years at my side,” said Justice. “I get quiet and broody when I’m hungry. Better than quick-tempered and aggressive, though.”

  Justice shot a finger toward Moss, which produced a playful sneer from her in turn, but luckily Fogel came over at that moment with a small bag of remains in hand, ending the spat. Moss waved us toward the exit, and we headed out.

  Chapter Twelve

  As Justice and I walked to our workstations on the third floor of the Fifth Street precinct, we found Detective Dean hunched over his desk. A pair of books were open before him, and there were several stacks of documents strewn about, though all were contained to neat piles in the fashion I’d come to expect from him.

  Dean gave us a quick glance as we reached our chairs. “You two ditched Moss?”

  “She’s delivering remains to the morgue,” said Justice.

  Dean set his pen down and spun around. “I thought the remains were already here.”

  Justice’s chair groaned as he settled into it. “Not the remains from the aviary. We visited a few crematoriums. Tried to see if any had been broken into and used overnight. Seems like we found one, so we had the owner sweep the furnaces and give us what was left inside. With luck, we’ll match something to the bones from Vernon and Daly’s.”

  My chair sank as I put my weight on it. Part of me thought the thing might give entirely if I lifted my feet off the ground. Was this really the best chair Moss had been able to find, or was it part of some initiation prank?

  Dean glanced at me as I tried not to break any government property. “And was this before or after the… I’m going to say burgers and fries?”

  I squinted as I returned the man’s glance. “How did you know what we had for lunch?”

  Justice snorted. “This is Dean we’re talking about. You think he flips his detective switch on and off for cases? He’s always like this. Chances are he smelled the char-grilled meat stink on us, or maybe I have something stuck in my incisors. You’d tell me if I did, wouldn’t you?” The well-dressed ogre sucked on his teeth preemptively.

  Dean smiled. “I would, and no, my sense of smell isn’t that acute. I just notice things. Specifically, Phair…” He mimed pinching his cuffs.

  I looked down. Sure enough, there was a red stain at the tip of my sleeve. I’d probably dunked it while dragging my fries through ketchup. It probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d eaten inside, but since Justice had wanted to get back
to work, we’d visited the drive through and taken the meal in the car. Then again, given my penchant for acquiring stains, if we’d sat down for lunch, I probably would’ve traded a ketchup-covered sleeve for a lap full of milkshake or something equally embarrassing.

  I sighed. “Thanks. You don’t have any napkins, do you?”

  Dean held out a box of tissues, and I plucked one. As I fruitlessly dabbed at the spot, Dean turned to Justice. “Did you get any physical evidence of a break-in at this funeral home?”

  “Just the owner’s word,” said Justice. “Said he’d found the door unlocked several times over the past month, and his gas bill suggests someone’s been the using the place after hours.”

  Dean lifted an eyebrow. “Did you also find men in black robes digging an unlicensed mass grave behind this funeral home?”

  Justice smirked. “Trust me, I don’t think it adds up, either. But maybe one of the bone fragments will match the remains from the circus. Even if they don’t, might be worth keeping an eye on the place. The words after-hours and crematorium don’t exactly mix.”

  Dean nodded. “Agreed. Phair? Any progress on the drug front?”

  I looked up from my thoroughly ineffective de-staining efforts. Moss had argued Dean didn’t want me to ask each carnie at the circus if they were dealing benzos on the side, yet here I was, looking the fool even apart from my ketchup-covered sleeve.

  I cleared my throat as I gathered my nerve. “No. Moss and I talked it over, and it seemed to us that if anyone at Vernon and Daly’s was dealing, or buying for that matter, they’d keep it under wraps. But we instructed the patrol officers to ask around to see if anyone caught sight of Mrs. Vernon last night.”

  Dean gave a small shrug. “Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I called Detective Harmon and asked him if he knew of anyone at the circus who was selling dope. He didn’t, so it’s probably not worth putting the bulk of our efforts into that avenue. Anything else you’ve learned?”