Wild-eyed and terrified, Stella darted through the crowd and then tripped over someone’s feet and fell, landing face first in front of the bar. “Put it out,” she yelled frantically. “Oh, God, please, put it out.” She was rolling around on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, slapping at the burning fabric with her palms in a desperate attempt to put out the flames. People gawked and stared, but no one attempted to do anything.
Like a linebacker, Brenda used her shoulders to knock people aside. Then she leaped onto the bar and grabbed the hose the bartender used to make drinks, squirting soda water at Stella until the flames were out.
“What happened?” Brenda said, dropping down on her knees next to her.
“I don’t know,” Stella cried, covering her face with her hands. “I was just standing there, and my skirt burst into flames.”
“Let me see how bad it is,” Brenda said, reaching for the seared hem of Stella’s skirt.
Stella grabbed her hand. “Don’t touch it,” she said. “Please, Brenda, you’ll pull the skin away with the fabric.”
People were gathering around them, and Brenda felt hemmed in by a sea of legs. Removing her shield from her pocket, she quickly flashed it. “Get back,” she shouted. “This is a police emergency.” Once the onlookers stepped a few feet away, she leaned down and spoke to Stella again. “I have to know if you need an ambulance. Please, Stella, let me look at your legs.”
“No,” Stella said, her eyes enormous, “it’s all burned. I know it. I can feel it. What if they have to amputate my legs? God, I’m so scared.” She squeezed the investigator’s hand.
“Your skirt must have drifted through the railing,” Brenda said, her voice soft and consoling. “The person sitting at the table beneath you must have been smoking a cigarette and accidentally ignited your skirt. There have been several recent lawsuits over this kind of fabric. It’s highly flammable.” She waited until Stella’s breathing slowed, and then without asking, gently lifted the hem of her skirt and peered beneath it. “Look, Stella,” she said, “it’s not much worse than a bad sunburn. You’ll have some blisters tomorrow, but it’s not serious.”
“You’re certain?” Stella said, her voice shaking. “Don’t lie to me. Please, Brenda, if it’s bad—”
“I promise,” Brenda said, pulling on Stella’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Once Stella was on her feet, the investigator placed an arm around her waist and walked her down the steps to the restaurant level, her eyes darting over to the empty table beneath the railing where Stella had been standing. She flagged down a passing waitress. “Do you remember who was sitting at that table a few moments ago?”
“No one,” the girl said. “See, it’s not even set up. That’s the table we use to work on the seating charts.”
“You didn’t see a blond woman over there?” Brenda asked, searching the people’s faces at the various different tables on the ground level. “She was in the bar area and we thought she left. It’s possible she took a table down here instead.”
“If she did,” the girl said, “I didn’t see her. There was an older man, but he wasn’t really sitting at the table. He was just standing over there by the railing.”
“What did he look like?”
The girl wiped her hands on her apron. “I don’t remember. I think he had on a navy blue shirt, but I might be mistaken.”
Brenda thought of Clem Cataloni. “Did he have black hair? Was he short, tall?”
“Look,” the waitress said, “I have customers waiting. I don’t remember anything else. I’m not even sure about the things I told you. We see a lot of people in here.”
Brenda continued walking with Stella until they were outside the restaurant. “Houston,” she said, letting her shoulders fall, “is definitely not my favorite town.”
You don’t think Holly did this, do you?” I don’t really know,” Brenda said, shrugging. She’s a mammoth bitch, all right. But setting your skirt on fire? I don’t think even she would stoop that low. Like I said, it was probably an accident.”
Did Holly’s vendetta against her center around Growman? Stella wondered, still weak and terrified. Holly had accused her of being Growman’s new pet that afternoon at the police department. Was the D.A.‘s endorsement of Stella’s future candidacy what had spiked Holly into a frenzy? Enough so that she would make an attempt to set her on fire? “Should we file a police report?” Stella asked, taking several deep breaths as she tried to calm down.
“We could,” Brenda said. “I think it’s a waste of time, though. There’s nothing they can do, Stella. They could try to lift prints from the table, but dozens of people probably sat at that table today. How could we distinguish one set of prints from the other?”
“Maybe Mario did it,” Stella suggested, favoring the known over the unknown. “He could have come in and seen me, then become angry that I was hanging out at his favorite restaurant, trying to track him down.”
Brenda tilted her head. “You really believe he would do that? Just because you were looking for him? Think about what you’re saying, Stella.”
“People on drugs do irrational things,” she answered.
“No shit,” Brenda said.
Stella fingered the scorched hem of her skirt, then dropped her hands to her sides, forcing herself not to think about it. “Did you ever find out about that stewardess?”
“I think you gave me the wrong name. Korean Airlines doesn’t have a Kelly Murietta on their payroll.”
“Let’s go to Mario’s house and see if her name and number are in his address book,” Stella told her. “I think I saw it in his bedroom this morning.”
“You’re worried about Randall, right? You think your brother may have shot him to protect you.”
“Anything can happen,” Stella said, starting to shiver again. “Look what happened tonight. You really think it was an accident?”
Brenda shook her head. “This was no accident. This was deliberate.” She met Stella’s eyes. “What is the one single thing that frightens you above everything else?”
“Fire,” Stella said, without a moment’s hesitation. “You think someone wanted to scare me then, frighten me into backing off? But why? Because we’ve been dipping into the evidence on the old fire?”
“Exactly,” Brenda said. “Like I told you before, everything happens for a reason. We know more now than we knew before this happened.”
“What?” Stella asked, wrapping her arms around her chest. “You mean, what we found out about Mario?”
“No,” Anderson said, glancing behind her and scanning the cars in the parking lot. “We must be getting close, Stella. When someone does something this rash, you know you’re moving in the right direction.”
“The right direction, huh?” Stella said. “What should we do now?”
“Move faster,” Brenda said.
chapter
TEN
As soon as they reached Mario’s apartment, Stella left Brenda in the living room and retrieved her brother’s address book from the nightstand in his bedroom. “What name did I give you?”
“Kelly Murietta,” Brenda said, sitting Indian-style on the floor.
“Okay,” Stella said, taking a seat on the sofa and picking up the phone, “I found a Kelly Muriel, so that must be it. I’m calling her right now.”
The phone was picked up on the second ring. “Yes,” a woman’s voice said.
Stella identified herself and asked her when she had seen Mario last. “Not for months,” the woman said. “We had an argument. I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“Are you certain?” Stella said, her hands trembling on the phone. “The night I’m referring to is Wednesday of last week. He told me he was with you, that he spent the night with you.”
“He lied,” the woman said. “Believe me, with Mario, a lie comes easier than the truth. Is he really your brother?”
“Yes,” Stella said.
“You better get him some help, then,
” she said. “He’s in over his head. The man’s into nose candy. It’s the reason I won’t see him anymore. I don’t want anything to do with that shit.”
Before Stella could say anything else, the woman had hung up.
“This is serious,” Stella told Brenda. “If Mario wasn’t with this woman, where was he?”
“Guess we’ll have to wait for him to tell us,” Brenda said, pushing herself to a standing position. Seeing Stella’s shoulders shaking, she walked over and put her arms around her. “It’s going to be okay. I’m sure your brother didn’t do it. He’s just messed up with drugs, sweetie. Happens in the best of families.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Stella asked, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.
“No,” Brenda said, taking a seat next to Stella on the sofa. “My parents didn’t think they could afford to send more than one kid to college, so they only had me. But I have plenty of cousins with drug problems, Stella. It’s the world we live in today. Everyone is looking for a quick fix. No one wants to deal with reality anymore.”
For a long time Stella was too despondent to move. Brenda insisted on spending the night with her, and Stella finally mobilized herself to go get some blankets. She offered to change the sheets on Mario’s bed and let the investigator sleep there, but Brenda said she’d just as soon sleep on the sofa. That way, she said, she could keep an eye on the front door. “If Mario shot Randall,” Stella said, handing her the bedding, “he did it to protect me.”
Brenda unfastened her shoulder holster, removed her revolver, and then placed them both on the coffee table. “It doesn’t matter why he did it,” she said, pulling out her shield and tossing it with the rest of her stuff. “No one’s going to give him a medal. I don’t want to make you feel worse than you already do, but murder is murder.”
“Yeah,” Stella said, shuffling off down the hall to the guest room. A moment later, she returned. “Don’t shoot my brother,” she cautioned Brenda. “He may sneak in during the night. I’m almost certain he was here last night. I found cigarettes in the ashtray.”
Brenda reached over and picked up her gun, checking the ammo and then placing it back on the table. “Did you save the butts?”
“No,” she said. “Why would I do that?”
The investigator’s eyes expanded. “Maybe the person who was prowling around in here last night wasn’t your brother.”
Stella’s skin turned cold and clammy. She glanced at Brenda’s gun, then rushed out of the room, hoping the investigator was a light sleeper.
In the bathroom, she removed her clothes and doctored the burns on her calves with antiseptic cream. Once she was finished, she yanked all the hair back from her face and stared at the abraded scar tissue by her ear. “What more can they do to me?” she said, picking up the plastic drinking cup and hurling it at the mirror. Feeling her calves smarting from the burns, Stella knew she could be set on fire again, and the thought filled her with terror. Someone had tried to hurt her tonight. Would the person who set her skirt on fire come back tomorrow, next week, next month? “Just kill me,” she said to her mirror image. “I’d rather be dead.”
When Stella got up and went to retrieve the newspaper the next morning, she found a messenger had dropped the information she had requested on Mario’s doorstep. After her trip to her uncle’s house, Stella had called and asked for a roster of members for the Houston chapter of the Knights of Columbus. She’d told the person on the phone that she was organizing a charity affair through the mayor’s office and needed the names and addresses of their members for the guest list.
By six o’clock, Brenda Anderson had showered, run down to the store for doughnuts, and connected her computer and modem up in the kitchen by tapping into Mario’s phone line. As on the day before, they were using Mario’s butcher block table as a work station. “Okay,” Stella said, still in her bathrobe, “while I get dressed, go through this roster and see if Carl Winters’s name is listed.”
“Why?” Brenda asked, tilting her head. Pictures and papers were spread all over the table, and the investigator was trying to compare the evidence they had seen in the police evidence room with what was listed on the inventory sheet. She wanted to make certain nothing had disappeared during the sixteen years since the fire, particularly evidence that might provide proof of Stella’s innocence.
“I’m trying to link up conspirators,” Stella said, seeing Brenda giving her a curious look. “Please, humor me on this one. I know Winters and my uncle knew each other from the department. It’s more than that, Brenda. I have a hunch and I want to follow through on it. It could be more significant than you think.”
By the time Stella had showered and dressed, Brenda had run the list of men through the computer and had a printout ready for her to review. “Okay,” she said. “Winters doesn’t show up on the roster, but I did some other comparisons just for the hell of it. Out of the local chapter of Knights of Columbus, fifty-five men are ex-cops. Pretty high ratio since their membership is only about two hundred strong, half of them listed as inactive.” She handed the list to Stella. I’ve heard they’re pretty heavy drinkers, but I never considered the Knights of Columbus to be a sinister organization. What gives, Stella?”
“You said ex-cops?” she exclaimed, a flurry of excitement in her voice. “Victor Pilgrim is an ex-cop. That’s our common denominator. What else can you find out? Were the men all retired from the Houston Police Department or did some of them come from the sheriffs department?”
“The computer’s searching for that right now,” Brenda said, glancing at the screen. “Shit,” she said when the response came through, “this is going to be harder than I thought. These men came from all over the state, but you’re right, they’re all former officers from the Houston PD.”
“Well,” Stella said, bracing her head in her hands, “I guess that doesn’t really mean anything.”
“Maybe it does,” Brenda said, reading the information directly off the computer screen. “Hardly any of these men were on active status for longer than six months to a year before they were retired. You might stumble across one or two men with backgrounds like this, but not a whole group of men.” She looked over at Stella and smiled.
“You really think we have something, then?” Stella said.
“Hold on,” Brenda said as her fingers flew over the computer keys. “I’m still checking.” She hit the enter button and waited for the computer to respond. A second later, she looked up at Stella. “See this,” she said, pointing at the screen, “thirty-one of the fifty-five men are listed as permanently disabled on the city payroll. That means they’re receiving full pension benefits. They must have all been injured on duty. Not only that, they were all injured on duty within a time span of six months to a year. I’d say that’s a little strange, don’t you think? I mean, a bunch of ex-cops belonging to the same organization is interesting, but not anything to jump up and down about. But ex-cops who are also disabled, well, that’s more unusual. It’s even more intriguing when you consider that Pilgrim was retired on disability as well.”
“Are you sure these men are listed as disabled?” Stella said, trying not to leap to conclusions. “I mean, they would still be eligible for disability even if they suffered a heart attack or a stroke, right? They just had to be employed by the P.D. when it happened.”
“True,” Brenda said, rubbing her chin. “If you give me more time, though, I can probably find out what kind of disability they had, whether it was an on-duty injury or some kind of illness. You’re right in one respect. Many of these men are far from youngsters, so they could have been classified as disabled due to an illness.” She leaned back in her chair. “Why don’t you tell me where you’re going with this, Stella? Then I’ll know what to look for.”
Stella ignored her as she studied the printout. “I think I see a pattern,” she said a few moments later. “They were all with other departments at one time, but they were all members of Knights of Columbus. For exam
ple, this guy here,” she said, pointing to a name on the list, “was with the Dallas branch of Knights of Columbus, and was a deputy with the sheriffs department. He transferred to the P.D. in Houston, and within six months he was retired on full disability. Use him as your test case,” Stella told Brenda, sliding the paper across the table. “Check records at the Dallas S.O. and see if this man was ever injured on duty and tried to claim permanent disability, even if it was later denied. If you come back with a positive, backtrack on all of them and check the departments they came from for the same set of circumstances.”
“You think this is a scam, right?” Brenda said, arching an eyebrow. “Now I’m getting the picture. What made you think of this?”
“The other day when we were talking to the evidence clerk,” Stella said, “he mentioned something about how many men they had out on disability. He said the pension fund was almost bankrupt. Do you remember?”
“Vaguely,” Brenda said.
“Let me tell you how it might work,” Stella continued. “The men file for disability with their respective departments, get turned down, meet Uncle Clem through the Knights of Columbus, maybe at some of their regional affairs and banquets. They talk over their problems, complain they’ve been turned down for disability, and Uncle Clem tells them he can get them hired here in Houston. Once they’re on the payroll, he proceeds to push through their disability papers. He probably has a doctor helping him with the paperwork on the medical end of it.”
“Even if you’re right about the pension scam,”
Brenda said, “why would you think your uncle is involved?”
Stella smiled, tapping her fingernails on the table. “He has too much money for a cop. You should see his house, Brenda. My father thought he made all his money on a pizza parlor and a dry cleaners. Those businesses were probably only fronts, a way for him to launder the cash these men were paying him to get their pensions approved.”
Trial by Fire Page 17
