by Lyle Howard
Surely with all of the talents he had been blessed with, he could be doing something more important with the precious little time he had here. He was spreading himself too thin, and both his personal life and his career were suffering because of it. His life with Julie was just ambling along, bouncing back and forth between commitment and duplicity, like a tennis match.
In his work, he never seemed to be able to finish a single case without starting three more. The paperwork was backing up faster than the toilets at the Orange Bowl during a University of Miami football game. He needed to focus himself. He needed to dedicate himself to something.
From somewhere under a stack of files, Lance could here Stephanie’s muffled voice coming over the speakerphone. “I’ve found your messages.”
Lance clasped his hands behind his back and continued to gaze down on the traffic as it passed by on the street below. There was no need to hunt for the phone under the folders since his office door was partially ajar. “Go ahead,” he said, loud enough for her to hear.
“The chief wants to see you in his office tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp regarding the Elkins case.”
Lance stared down on the busy sidewalk below. A hot dog vendor was topping two wieners with chili for a couple of lawyers. “Which one is the Elkins case?”
“Do you want me to look it up for you?”
Lance shook his head. “No, that’s alright, I’ll find It … somehow.”
Stephanie realized the phone was useless, so she got up and stood in the doorway between the two offices. “You had two more calls.”
Lance glanced around at her and then returned his attention to the street. “I’m listening.”
“Both from Julie.”
“Was she home?”
“She called from the station.”
“Oh.”
Stephanie took hold of the doorknob and toyed with it as she spoke. “Are you two an item again?”
Lance shoved his hands into his pockets and watched the two lawyers partake of their late lunch. “Who knows? Sometimes, I think it depends on the phases of the moon.”
Stephanie never tried to hide the feelings she had for Lance, but he was always so preoccupied he never quite deciphered her signals. “Do you need someone to talk to?” she asked compassionately.
Lance twisted the pulley to close the blinds. “Yeah, buzz Julie for me.”
Stephanie was used to the unintentional indifference by now. He chipped away at her heart a little more with each passing day, but her devotion was intact as she walked back to her desk to place the call for her boss.
Lance sat down and leaned back in his chair, lightly beginning to rock. He thought the gentle swaying motion would ease his distress, but nothing could seem to stop his thoughts of emptiness from spinning out of control. The lack of purpose in his life continued to gnaw at him.
“Julie’s on line one,” Stephanie’s voice filtered through the clutter.
Lance leaned forward and quickly tried to shuffle as many of the file folders as he could into four neat stacks like oversized decks of playing cards. Pressing the only lit button on the phone brought Julie on the line. “So, how are you?”
“I’m okay. It’s slow around here today … thank God.”
“Well, that could change at any minute.”
Julie’s voice turned callous. “You don’t have to remind me of that.”
“Sorry.”
There was an awkward pause as Julie let her mind mull over the uneventful night before. “Are you stopping by again tonight?”
Lance squeezed the bridge of his nose. He could feel the tension knotting up his nerves like the center of a pretzel. “Aren’t you working tonight?”
“I am, but if you wanted to come by, I’d take off a little surplus sick time.”
“You don’t have to do that for me, Julie.”
Julie sounded completely sincere. “You just seemed so distant last night, I thought maybe we could try again.”
“I can’t explain it, Jules,” Lance said softly. “Have you ever gone shopping with something in mind and you couldn’t find it, so you chose something else, but not exactly what you needed?” There was another long harsh silence. “Jules?” he asked.
“Is that what I am to you?” she said coldly. “Huh? I’m just something that you’re settling for?”
Lance felt as though he had stumbled blindly into quicksand. “Maybe I used a bad analogy.”
Julie’s words snapped like a whip. “Or maybe not.”
The last thing Lance wanted was to hurt Julie’s feelings. “I’m sorry that it came out that way. Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain.”
Julie’s reaction was rapier like. “I don’t know if that’s physically possible in your case.”
“Okay, I deserved that. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so frustrated right now, I just don’t know what I want.”
Lance suddenly saw another light flashing on his phone. From the outer office, Stephanie called him. “You’ve got another call on line three.”
Lance covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Who is it?”
“Toby Bilston from Metro-Dade.”
Lance uncovered the phone. “Julie, I’ve got another call.”
“So that’s it? You’re just going to hang up on me?”
It was amazing how the anticipation of one simple phone call could start the adrenaline flowing again, he thought. “No, I’m not just hanging up on you,” Lance defended himself. “This is an important call and I’ve got to take it.”
“More important than us?”
“Come on, Jules. It’s Toby Bilston. He might have something for me.”
“Something about Crystal’s death?”
“Quite possibly.”
Julie understood. “I’m sorry, that really is important. Take the call.”
“Thanks for not being mad. Can I call you back?”
Julie spoke fast. “I’m still planning on taking the evening off. Why don’t you come over later and we can talk some more?”
Lance held his finger over the button for line three. “Unless you hear otherwise, I’ll be there.”
“I’ll look forward … “
Lance didn’t mean to cut her off, but he was really anxious to speak to Toby. “Good news, I hope,” he greeted his friend.
On the seventh floor of the Metro-Dade Police Building, Toby Bilston flipped through the chemical analysis reports in front of him. “Well, hello to you, too! Yeah, I’ve got some news for you.”
Lance leaned forward and grabbed a pen from his desk set. “You’ve got the reports back from Los Angeles?”
Toby scanned down the second page. “I’m staring at them with my own beady little eyes.”
“So tell me.”
Toby straightened the receiver in front of his mouth because he wanted his words to come out sharp and clear. “It looks as though you have three homicides on your hands.”
Lance wasn’t surprised, but he slammed his fist down on the desk anyway. “Spontaneous combustion, my ass! I knew it … I knew it!”
“You’re dealing with one clever cookie, Lance, my boy.”
The pen was trembling in Lance’s hand. “You’ve got to tell me how it was done. It had something to do with the animals, right?”
Toby was sitting in his lab on a stool which rotated 360 degrees. The phone was on a far wall and the cord stretched a good twenty-five feet across the room. As he spun on his stool, he had to lift the cord over his head to avoid strangling himself. “From what you’ve told me about the crime scenes, I would think that the animals were definitely involved.”
Lance started to jot down his thoughts on a note-pad. “You mean whoever is doing this is putting some sort of incendiary devices inside of these animals?”
Toby traced his fingers across two peaks on a graph on the first page of the report. “There’s nothing mechanical about it. It’s all done with chemicals.”
“What, someone injected the anima
ls with a flammable chemical?”
“You’re in the ballpark, but you’re swinging at air.”
Lance scratched through the word “injections” on his pad.
“I don’t understand.”
“The chemicals were introduced topically.”
Lance looked perplexed, but he wrote down the word “skin.”
“It’s something that was on, not in, the animals?”
“Exactly. The gas chromatograph reports revealed a combination of carbon disulfide and white phosphorus. Both are extremely flammable at room temperature. One burns white-hot, while the other spreads uncontrollably.”
“You mean, someone shook this stuff all over the animals, like sprinkling a flea powder?”
Toby tapped his finger on the two peaks. “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I’m sure these two chemicals come in powdered form, but I think a liquid is the way I would go, if I were doing it.”
“Why’s that?”
Toby studied the percentages of the chemicals found in the tissue samples submitted. “If you used this in powder form, the same way you would put on talcum powder after a shower, I would think that these chemicals would shake off whenever the animal moved. If I were trying to incinerate someone this way, I would shampoo the animal with these chemicals and let it dry so it would remain in their fur.”
Lance rolled his pen between his fingers. “So what triggers the reaction?”
“Both of these chemicals are highly unstable and ignite at somewhere around 87 degrees Fahrenheit. All you would have to do is raise the room temperature high enough, or else rub the animal.”
“Rub it?”
“Friction, my friend. Two or three good strokes and you can start toasting the marshmallows on the bonfire.”
Something was troubling Lance. “Okay, I understand what you’re telling me so far, but isn’t the animal’s natural body temperature over 87 degrees? Why doesn’t the animal go up in flames on his own?”
Toby smiled because he had already figured this part out. “I’ll give you the scientific truth, and you give me the answer. When you mentioned the animal’s body temperature, you were thinking about the internal temperature, like ours at 98.6. Animals, on the average, are closer to 100 degrees internally. Externally, it would be quite simple to keep the animal colder than 87 degrees.”
Lance threw his pen down on the note pad. “Of course! The wet blanket. Simple cold water was used to keep the animal cool.”
“Bingo.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“So, have you got any leads yet?” Toby asked.
Lance frowned. “One, but it’s weak.”
Toby loved a good mystery and since it was almost quitting time, he had an extra few minutes to kill. “Tell me about it.”
“There’s a guy, his name is Eddie Dolan, that works over at Broward County Animal Control … a real animal rights supporter. He goes ballistic anytime an animal is returned for what he would regard as an insufficient reason. That’s why I thought it might be him.”
Now it was Toby’s turned to look confused. “I don’t follow.”
“Two out of the three victims supposedly returned their animals to the pound hours or days before the pets mysteriously reappeared at their doorsteps.”
“What about the third victim?” Toby asked.
Lance leaned back in his chair. “That’s where the theory falls apart like crackers in bed. The third victim, Winslow Kirby, had never owned an animal in his life.”
Toby scratched at his beard. “Well, that kind of breaks the connection, doesn’t it?”
“The only thing we really know about him is that he wasn’t well-liked, and that he worked in a bank.”
Toby rubbed his fingers across his lips as he contemplated the problem. “What did he do at the bank?”
Lance began searching for the file. “Hold on a second and I’ll tell you …”
Toby swiveled back and forth on his stool. “You know, Cutter, I’m thinking about something, and if you come up with the answer I’m thinking about, you still might be in the batter’s box.”
Lance opened the Winslow Kirby file. “Here it is … he worked in the foreclosure department.”
Toby punched his fist into the air. “Bingo again!”
Lance jotted down “foreclosures.”
“Why bingo again?”
“Think about it,” Toby said convincingly. “It was this man’s job to put people out of their houses! In this economy, can you imagine how many families we must be talking about here? I’d hate to hazard a guess as to how many people gave up their pets because they were forced out onto the street by that man.”
The speed at which Lance’s pen tapped on the desk, increased rapidly. “That might make sense.”
Toby held up his hands as though Lance were sitting directly across from him and not some forty miles away. “Make sense? Lance, my boy, if your animal rights maniac did any investigating at all, every time one of these displaced animals was returned, he could easily find out who was to blame! You don’ t think that whenever one of these uprooted pet owners who returned their pets was asked who was responsible, they didn’t lay the blame on the late Mr. Kirby?”
Lance couldn’t go off half-cocked without more proof. His mind was racing at the thought of finally following through on something. “Can anyone get hold of these chemicals?”
Toby sighed dismally. “No,” he said, scratching his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Lance had written the name “Eddie Dolan” on his pad, and now he was surrounding it with a smaller spiraling design. “So there would be no way that my man, Dolan, could get his hands on the stuff?”
Toby shook his head. “Not working at Animal Control. He wouldn’t be able to order it.”
“Then who else uses these chemicals?”
Toby deliberated for a moment. “It’s really too volatile for everyday use. Sometimes they can be used as an ingredient in the manufacturing of a heavy-duty cleaning solvent, or perhaps a high school chemistry teacher might use it for an experiment for his class. That’s about all I can think of. They’re pretty tough chemicals to buy … strictly regulated … you would have to go through a specialized wholesaler.”
“Well, none of those applications relate to this case, anyway.”
Then Toby thought of another purpose, just as obscure, but he thought he should mention it anyway. “I think it can be used in commercial photography.”
Lance’s hand suddenly turned sweaty and the pen dropped out of his grip. “I beg your pardon?”
“Photography … you know … pictures … Canon … Kodak … click, click.”
Black and white photographs of animals running in the wild materialized like déjà vu in the back of Lance’s mind. “Dolan’s a photographer,” he blurted out.
“Say what?”
Lance circled the name on his note-pad with rings that grew darker and darker. “Dolan is an amateur photographer. His photos are hanging all over the wall in the front office of Animal Control, and he even works part-time in a photo lab! That means he has to have access to those chemicals!”
Toby folded up the chemical analysis reports and slipped them into the pocket of his lab coat. “Then I think you’ve found your man.”
Lance slammed shut the Kirby file. “Oh, Toby, I really owe you one.”
Bilston shook his head. “Do you know how long the list is of people who have told me that?”
“But I really mean it,” Lance said excitedly.
Toby stood up and began walking to the wall to hang up the phone. “Just nail the son of a bitch, Cutter … and we’ll call it even!”
SIXTEEN
3:33 P.M.
Harry Kaplan grabbed the remote control off the ottoman and began flipping back and forth between the Weather Channel and the local news. As he poked and prodded with his fork at the macaroni and cheese dinner set up on the tray table in front of him, he cursed at himself for having missed the tropic
al storm update on the Weather Channel for the second time this hour. He stared at the television with disdain as a young woman, probably fresh out of college, babbled on about an upper air disturbance which was drifting slowly over the plain states. Harry wondered to himself how many people actually knew which part of the country comprised the plain states.
Wiping away a smudge of yellow cheddar from the corner of his mouth, Harry took a swig of Hawaiian Punch to wash another pasty mouthful of noodles down his throat. Frozen dinners were about all he ever ate these days. His wife, Vivian, had always been the cook in the household, and in the six years since she had passed away from kidney failure, Harry had sampled just about every taste abomination that the frozen food section had to offer. He was scraping his fork around the edge of the plastic serving tray, trying to loosen a stubborn strand of crusty cheese topping, when he thought he heard a noise.
It was as faint as a whisper, but it was loud enough to make him look up from his dinner, take off his glasses, and lower the volume on the television set. He sat forward curiously with his head cocked to one side, straining to hear the indistinct sound again. After a few seconds without success, he increased the volume level once again and returned to finishing the last morsels of his supper.
As he set down his fork, a large yellow and black school bus rumbled past his front window. A quick glance at his wristwatch advised him that the neighborhood kids, who attended the late shift at the local junior high school, would soon be racing down the block, screaming like they were on a carnival ride. Watching the children from his front porch as they playfully ran down the sidewalk to their respective homes was a vicarious thrill that Harry truly believed would keep him young, like a sip from the fountain of youth.
Setting the tray off to one side, Harry took one last gulp of punch and turned off the television. The din of the teenagers’ laughter grew louder, like the distant warning of thunder rolling across the horizon before a rainstorm. Harry delighted in the simple effervescent symphony of childhood as he hurried out the front door onto his porch.
