The Burnt Remains

by Alex P. Berg

  Vernon chopped his hand through the air. “Absolutely not. I can’t risk having this thief escape with fake cash. Can you imagine their anger? That would ensure they’d ruin me! I’ll deliver the money. I can get it from my bank on short order, but what I can’t do is risk the lot of you bungling the trap and tipping this person off. That would be even worse! Promise me you’ll only move in if you’re certain you can arrest this person. I won’t go along with it otherwise!”

  Dean leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Vernon, when it comes to volatile situations like this one, it’s impossible to make promises. Any number of events can—”

  Vernon leaned forward, his scowl taking over his face. “Promise me, Detective, or I will be withdrawing my assistance in this investigation, effective immediately.”

  Luckily for us, it was Dean who’d led the interview, as I would’ve told Vernon exactly where he could stuff his assistance. “We’ll do our absolute best, Mr. Vernon. I can’t promise you we’ll catch this extortionist, or even your wife’s killer, but I can promise you that we won’t rest until we do.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I sat on the bleachers inside the tent at the Vernon and Daly Circus as crowds filled in around me. Underneath me, on the cold concrete hiding amidst the steel jungle of the bleacher supports, was a black canvas bag stuffed with a hundred thousand crowns of unmarked bills. I wasn’t supposed to stare at it lest I give away that I was a police officer, but if I didn’t stare at it, how would I know if someone was about to steal it? Just thinking about it was giving me heartburn.

  After leaving Vernon’s, Dean and I drove to the Fifth where Dean immediately met with Captain Ellison and requisitioned a team to help us. With Moss and Justice and a few other officers in tow, we’d headed to Vernon and Daly’s and started to set up a stakeout.

  It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. For one thing, the circus’s main tent was more architecturally intricate than it appeared. As I’d noticed while interviewing the contortionists, the main stages and surrounding bleachers sat on poured concrete, and as I’d suspected, there was more to the floor than met the eye. A series of tunnels crisscrossed underneath the stages, allowing magicians and animal handlers to sneak in and out unnoticed, but the tunnels also extended to underneath each of the bleachers and to hatches outside the tent altogether.

  Dean wasn’t pleased when he discovered that, but it did solidify his thinking that we were dealing with a new blackmailer, one with a sharper mind than whoever initially mailed the dirty pictures to Vernon. I spent the next couple hours sweeping the tunnels underneath the tent alongside the rest of the officers, making sure no one was hiding in them and mapping them so we knew which exits to place officers at once the show started. Meanwhile, Dean, Moss, and Justice developed a plan of action alongside a lieutenant by the name of Oglethorpe, who apparently was an expert in blackmail drops.

  As the afternoon bled into the evening, it was time to get into position. I’d changed out of my police uniform into plain clothes, as had the other officers on duty. Dean and Oglethorpe ran through the plan, giving us instructions on how we’d be distributed, what to look for, and how to act. As Dean mentioned at Vernon’s, the evening would be a balancing act. If we acted too suspicious, the blackmailer might spot us and choose not to pick up the package. Act too lackadaisical and we might not notice when the criminal struck. We also didn’t know when the blackmailer intended to make the pickup. They’d demanded the package be in place by six, but the show wouldn’t start until seven. That would make it hard to hide our presence at the beginning of the window, but Oglethorpe didn’t think anyone would move on the package until crowds had moved in for the show.

  As Dean wrapped up, he listed where each officer and detective would be stationed. Unsurprisingly, he placed Justice above the bleachers where the bag was to be stashed, on the end near a side hatch where someone might sneak in. I didn’t, however, expect Dean to place me on the opposite side of the same bleachers. Perhaps he chose me for my broad shoulders and quick feet. I’d never tackled anyone outside of the academy, but I was athletic enough that I felt confident I could catch most folks in a footrace. Then again, perhaps he chose me as another way to build my confidence. It seemed to be a focus of his, although given the stakes, I thought it made sense to give the position to someone more experienced. The third option was that he trusted me. He’d placed Moss in the underground tunnels, and he himself was going to hide in the upper portions of the scaffolding intended for performers. There, he’d use a flag to signal us if he saw any suspicious activity those of us on the ground missed.

  If it was the latter option, I appreciated the trust, but it didn’t settle the butterflies in my stomach one iota.

  I eyed the folks filling in around me, trying to judge if any of them looked suspicious or out of place, all while keeping eye on the isle at my side where someone might slip underneath the bleachers to grab the duffel. In general, the folks didn’t seem threatening. Most were couples, some families with older children, and only a few who appeared to be on their own: an older gentleman with a thick gray beard, a teen boy with his jacket wrapped tight around his thin frame, and a fae girl in her twenties who’d never before been to a circus if her doe eyes and eager expression meant anything. I cast a glance at Justice, who’d changed into a pair of jeans and a plain grey coat, but the ogre was too busy keeping tabs on his end of the bleachers to shoot me any non-verbal signs.

  A loud bang startled me. I jumped in my seat, reaching for the pistol I wasn’t wearing, but music blared through the loudspeakers even as I noticed smoke from the pyrotechnics that had erupted on stage. A line of dancing girls streamed out of the main tunnel across from me, arm in arm and wearing bright red and gold tutus. As they did so, gymnasts back-sprung their way from the side aisles onto the main floor, though not the one next to our bleachers. As the ladies danced and the gymnasts spun and twirled, more pyrotechnics fired from the cannons, and the show was off and running.

  After the initial dancing number, the gymnasts took over, standing upon each other, flipping in the air, forming pyramids, and performing feats of balance and strength that made me think I should spend the next year or twelve in a gym. Afterwards came the trapeze show and the trampolinists, then following a brief session of silly antics from a cadre of clowns, the animal trainers took to the stage with their trained dogs and apes and eventually the big cats. I caught a general sense of the action, but I didn’t pay close attention, instead keeping my focus on the bleachers and the aisle to my left. I didn’t catch anyone shimmying their way through the slats or skulking about, and though I cast my glance into the scaffolding more than once, I never caught sight of Dean’s flag. As the first hour of the show stretched into the second, I started to wonder if our crew of officers had been made by the blackmailer or if the drop had been a ruse to keep us busy while someone robbed Vernon’s home or cleaned out a safe elsewhere on the grounds. Maybe someone had already swapped out the duffel while we set everything into place, or they’d do so later in the evening, stealing the cash as we delivered it back to Vernon.

  I banished the thoughts as the big cats were herded back into their cages and wheeled off the floor. All I could do was my best. To maintain my vigilance and make sure the cash didn’t go missing on my watch, and I intended to do just that. Besides, if the throng of performers streaming onto the floor was any indication, the show was nearly over. The dancing girls came back out and pranced about, showing off their long lean legs while the clowns juggled, the gymnasts flipped, and the trampolinists bounced. Music blared throughout the tent, the pyrotechnics burst with light and burped acrid smoke, and the loudspeakers warbled as the performers took a bow: “Ladies and gentleman, the world’s greatest spectacle! Thank you, and good night!”

  The audience rose from their seats, all except the skinny kid with his jacket collar turned up. He took a quick glance over his shoulder, flipped himself around, slid his feet between his bleacher seat and the footboard, and wig
gled through the gap into the space underneath, as fluid as a fish through water.

  I shot to my feet, shocked at how quick it happened. Through the slats, I could see flashes of the kid’s jacket as he headed toward the far side of the bleachers.

  I took a deep breath and yelled as loud as I could, hoping my voice would carry. “Justice!”

  The big detective heard me. He saw my wild gesturing toward his side of the bleachers, too. He leaped the railing and dropped over his side in hopes of intercepting the kid at the hatch. I pushed my way through the people getting to their feet, ignoring their indignant cries as I climbed to the top of the bleachers and ran along them toward Justice’s side. Once there, I leapfrogged the railing and dropped to the ground below, excusing myself as the exiting circus goers backed away in horror.

  Justice was bent over the hatch. As I got to my feet, I instructed people to step back. Justice pulled back out, bringing with him the young man who’d sat near me the whole show. The kid’s eyes were stretched wide, and his face had gone pale.

  Justice slammed him against the side of the bleachers, snarling. “NWPD, kid. No sudden moves.”

  The kid shook like a leaf, shrinking under Justice’s fury. “P..P...Please. I don’t want any trouble!”

  I glanced at the kid’s hands. They were empty. “Justice. He doesn’t have the duffel.”

  “I caught that,” he said. “Start flapping those gums, kid. NOW. What’s going on? Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  Even more blood drained from the youth’s cheeks. “I… I don’t have a crew. Some lady bought me a circus ticket and paid me a couple crowns. Told me she’d give me a couple more if I snuck out underneath the bleachers at the end of the show. That’s all I know! I swear!”

  “A woman?” I said. “What did she look like?”

  The kid’s voice shook, just as he did. “I don’t know. Medium height. She was wearing a floppy hat, a dress, and dark glasses.”

  I glanced at the hatch Justice couldn’t quite fit through. This time, I took charge without thinking about it. “Justice. Head out. See if you can find her in the crowd. I’ll check on the duffel.”

  I dove underneath the bleachers, not waiting for Justice’s response. I ducked and weaved around poles and under supports, almost too big to spelunk through the darkened space, but I moved as quickly as I could, fueled by my worst fears. Fears that came true as soon as I reached the drop site.

  Where once the duffel had rested, I found nothing but popcorn and peanut shells.

  I cursed and ran back to my side of the bleachers, my heart beating hard in my chest. I smacked my head on a low hanging support, but I pushed forth, forcing myself on as fast as I could. As I reached the hatch, I found it hanging open by an inch. I pushed my way out, surprising circus goers who were shuffling through the aisle to the grounds. On the scaffolding above the main floor, Dean was nowhere to be seen.

  I cursed again, apologizing as I shoved people on my way out of the tent. I was tall but not tall enough to properly survey the scene, so I worked my way to the nearest lamppost and shimmied up it, holding it for support while I stood atop a raised ridge three feet off the ground. Ignoring the alarmed whispers from those around me, I cast my gaze across the crowd, looking for any sign of a woman in a floppy hat.

  Perhaps during the day, my task might’ve been easier, but with night having arrived, vast stretches of darkness shrouded the crowds. I looked at the yellow cones lit by the lampposts, hoping I might get lucky, but I saw nothing.

  My heart rose into my throat, a sense of panic burbling alongside it. My fingers tingled, and I feared I might vomit. This couldn’t be happening. The bleachers were my responsibility. If I’d kept my post, I could’ve stopped the heist, but I hadn’t. Now a hundred thousand crowns had been hauled off, all of it on my head. All because of me! My heart beat like a drum, blood rushed through my ears, and visions of my failed career flashed before me.

  And then I saw her.

  In the glow of the lights near the exit, I spotted a hat, wide-brimmed with edges hanging low. Almost as if by fate, the crowd opened up, and the slight woman in the hat cast one last look over her shoulder toward the circus. She was at quite a distance from me, and much of her face was covered by a pair of dark glasses, but there was nonetheless a sense of familiarity to her, as if I’d seen her before. Not in person, but in photos.

  It was Stella Vernon.

  I hopped off the lamppost and raced toward the exit as fast as I could, but by the time I arrived, she was gone. She’d disappeared without a trace, leaving not even ash in her wake.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Moss frowned, her arms crossed in front of her. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  I stood outside the tent in one of the lamppost’s cones of light. Justice, Moss, and Dean stood around me, but the circus patrons had long since left. The performers were still around, changing and cleaning and decompressing, as were the other officers, many of whom continued to sweep the grounds and the surrounding blocks in a futile attempt to find the woman in the floppy hat.

  I sighed. “No, I’m not absolutely sure. How could I be? I saw her from afar, and only for a moment. Even then, I never met Stella Vernon. I’ve only seen photos of her—some of them showing far more than I needed to see. But if you’re asking me my impression from where I stood? Yeah. It looked like Stella.”

  Dean warmed his hands in his pockets, his lips pursed. “For what it’s worth, that was my reaction when I saw her enter the bleachers. Admittedly, my vantage in the scaffolding didn’t allow me to get up close and personal, and I only got a quick glance, but if it wasn’t Stella Vernon, it was someone who’d gone to a lot of trouble to look like her.”

  Justice shook his head. “It has to have been someone dressed as her. She’s dead, after all. We identified her remains.”

  Dean lifted a finger. “The most likely explanation is someone was impersonating her, I’ll give you that. Take a woman of her build, color her hair, give her the right makeup, then hide what you can’t change behind a hat and glasses and it wouldn’t be hard to fool someone, especially from a distance. But I don’t want to exclude the possibility, however minor, that Stella isn’t dead. Identifying remains is a tricky business. Jowynn matched her skull to her x-rays, true, but it could be possible to fake it. To take someone else’s skull and mandible and damage them in a way that they could pass as her own.”

  Moss scoffed. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Dean. Are you suggesting not only that Stella Vernon faked her own death, but that she had the wherewithal to disfigure another woman’s remains in a way such that they might be misconstrued as her own? What sort of criminal mastermind do you think this woman is?”

  “I don’t know that I’d call this the work of a criminal mastermind,” said Justice. “More like the work of someone whose motives we can’t fathom. We’ve been struggling to make sense of this case from the start. From the placement of the remains to the cremation to the blackmail. It all seems haphazard rather than meticulously planned.”

  “All except this heist,” I said.

  Dean regarded me with cool eyes, his lips still puckered. “What are you getting at, Phair?”

  “As Justice said, nothing about this case makes sense. It’s all random and weird. None of it seems planned—until tonight. And of all the crimes we’ve investigated—the murder, the blackmail, the asbestos—it seems to me this heist is the one crime Stella could’ve pulled off. Whoever recovered that duffel and slipped away must’ve had an intricate knowledge of the grounds, as well as have known precisely when the show was about to end. We know Stella visited the circus frequently. Her husband confirmed it, as have several of the hands. If anyone could’ve set herself up to steal the hundred thousand crowns, Stella could’ve.”

  Moss’s brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “I’m not buying it. Even if Stella had the know-how to properly fake her death, which she didn’t, how does she pull it off? Where does she get a body? Where d
oes she cremate it? How does she tamper with the skull to make it look like hers? Why does she leave her car behind? And what’s driving her to do this in the first place? Because she hates her husband? Fine. Get a divorce. But fake her own death? Come on.”

  Dean took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Normally I’d agree with you, Ginger, but Stella pulling this off herself makes about as much sense as does Vernon’s blackmailer impersonating Stella while swiping his cash out from under our noses. I’ll tell you what I do know for certain, though: that there was more to Stella Vernon than meets the eye. And one way or another, we need to figure out what it was.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I sat at my desk, staring at the blackmail photographs of Stella Vernon, when I heard Detective Dean’s voice behind me.

  “Phair. You’re early.”

  I turned around in my chair and gave the detective a nod. As usual, he looked fetching; today in an olive green sports coat and well-tailored grey slacks. “Good morning, Dean.”

  Dean checked his wristwatch, his brow slightly furrowed. “In fact, you’re very early. I did tell you to arrive at nine, didn’t I? Or is my wristwatch running behind?”

  I shook my head. “It’s as early as you think it is. I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d come in.”

  Dean stripped off his jacket and draped it across his chair, revealing a crisp white shirt underneath that was as form-fitting as his pants. “Mind stuck on the case, is it? Seems you and I have something in common.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh.” Dean’s face fell as he seated himself, and I realized the thought of someone else being as devoted to the work as he was had cheered him. “Something else bothering you?”