Temeke studied a rueful smile which didn’t quite reach the eyes. “What do you recall about the fire?”
Flynn looked out of the window at the parking lot as if searching his memory for the beginning. “You could feel the heat, smell the smoke. I tried crawling to the hall but I couldn’t get to her.”
“Where was your cell phone?”
“On the hall table.”
“So you grabbed it on the way out?”
“To call 911, yes.”
“Is that the one?” Temeke pointed at the cell phone Flynn kept rubbing.
“Yeah.”
Dispatch received several calls from neighbors but none from Flynn’s number. It was possible he never completed the call. It was also possible he never made one. Temeke recalled the floorplan of the house. A hallway leading from the front door, master bedroom on the left, spare on the right. Beyond was an open-plan living room and kitchen with French doors leading into the back yard. One question kept swirling in Temeke’s mind. “Where were you before you got to the hall table?”
“Kitchen... yeah, that’s where I was.”
“Is there carpet on the kitchen floor?”
“Hardwood.”
Bang went the notion of carpet-burn to his testicles, Temeke thought. The report confirmed Flynn was found face-down in the kitchen about a foot from the back door. First degree burns to his right ankle down to the soles of both feet. The hours after dinner were unaccounted for. A fight perhaps? One Flynn didn’t feel comfortable talking about? Temeke was still waiting for the medical report and it would likely be four more days before they got it.
“Apart from not being a great cook, were there any other disputes?”
Flynn shook his head, eyes wider than before. “No.”
“Were you intimate?”
Flynn looked from Temeke to Malin and back again. “No.”
“Were you aware of a faulty smoke alarm in the bedroom? I shouldn’t say faulty since the batteries had been taken out.”
“Tarian hated it. It was the sensor, always going off when someone took a shower. Maybe she took the batteries out.”
“There’s always the mute button.” Temeke gave a small smile.
He couldn’t work out if Flynn’s explanation was a clever distraction or if he was suffering behind a nod and a fake smile. Temeke looked down at the file, which consisted of a stapled copy of the restraining order and photographs of bruises to Tarian’s face and body.
“Then there’s the case of domestic violence your wife thought the police should know about. She looks a little banged up.”
Flynn’s eyebrow fused into a straight line. “I didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
“Listen—”
“I’m all ears.” Temeke cocked his head sideways.
“There was someone else in her life. Someone who might have been after her.”
“Why would this someone be after her?”
“She was an easy target. Owed money. Maybe it was robbery gone wrong.”
“A home invasion?” Temeke asked. “That’s an interesting thought.”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
“Oh, we’ll find out. And this is how. I’m going to talk to witnesses, run descriptions through the database and find the bastard who did this. Am I right in thinking Ms. Rosie Ellis is an admin at Manzano National Labs?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s also your ex, right?”
“That was years ago.”
As if an old flame could never be revived, Temeke thought. “It says here there was a violation to the restraining order on Sunday 17 February at six in the evening. Your wife showed up at a residence on 4300 Ridgerunner Road. That’s where you were staying, right? With Ms. Rosie Ellis?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There was an altercation and the police were called. And then you moved back in. Defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
Flynn nodded, as if he knew Temeke would bring it up. “Tarian wanted to give us one last chance. I thought it was fair.”
“Do you think it was fair you survived and she didn’t?”
“I couldn’t have saved her.”
Couldn’t have saved her. Interesting choice of words and repeated so heroically, Temeke thought. “But if there was too much smoke between you and the master bedroom, how did you see your cell phone on the hall table.”
“Before the smoke... I saw sparks. It was easy to see.”
“Are you aware your neighbor tried to help? Mr. Quinn broke a window with a fire extinguisher. Tried to get you out. Sadly he died in the process.”
“I had no idea.”
“There’s something else, though, isn’t there, Mr. McCann?” Temeke knew that the use of Flynn’s last name would provoke a feeling of distance and make him tense. “There’s still the question of how the fire started.”
Temeke could see how Flynn paused and stared at him, brain spinning for details, something he could make up so it would all go away.
“Why? What are you saying?”
“Gasoline’s what I’m saying. A nice squirt of it all over the bloody place. Now, why would someone do a thing like that?”
Flynn shook his head, still staring at the cell phone on the table. “I don’t know.”
“If I were you, I’d make sure your attorney’s worth every cent. And what about the chair? The one in the shed? Doesn’t scream of Mastermind, does it? Looks like someone was getting a pounding.”
“Hell, you don’t think...”
“I don’t think what, Mr. McCann?”
“That we were into that stuff?”
“You could persuade me otherwise.”
Flynn drew himself up an extra few inches and held up a hand. “Listen, I didn’t touch her.”
“What I’m seeing here are bruises and cuts. Maybe you guys went too far... beginners’ mistake.”
Flynn’s face screwed up and he looked from Temeke to Malin as if he was a rabbit cornered between two terriers. “You don’t get it, do you? I’m not into S and M.”
“No, of course not, Mr. McCann. But our job is sifting through evidence because every contact leaves a trace. On a different note, do you remember seeing your father-in-law last night? You’d have remembered. He was outside the ambulance screaming. This,” Temeke said, slamming the poem on the desk, “was hand delivered to your mailbox.”
He watched Flynn read the words, studied the minutest twitch at the corner of his mouth. If he wasn’t mistaken, Flynn looked like he’d be more comfortable talking about his future, rather than coming face to face with his past.
“I have no idea what it is,” Flynn said.
“You’re not thinking of leaving the state, are you?”
“No. I’m staying at the Howard Johnson.”
“The one on Rio Rancho drive?”
Temeke saw Flynn nod, saw the sparkle of sweat on his temples. “Mr. McCann, there are always two sides to a homicide. There’s the dead side. The other... well, let’s say there are clues in every lie. I would take this as a warning. Because things are about to get worse.”
FIVE
For thirty dollars a day, a Jeep Compass wasn’t a bad vehicle, a mid-sized car and big enough to sleep in. Flynn left the Howard Johnson at nine thirty on Tuesday morning and drove out of Pennywise Rental to I-40. He wasn’t going to stop until he reached the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.
He’d taken enough painkillers to almost numb the burn off his feet. But every time he stepped on the gas he was reminded of it. His mind wasn’t the same. It kept spewing out scenes—flashes of them at a time—and all he could think of was the paramedic’s lips moving as he shoved a flashlight inside Flynn’s mouth.
If, as the detective said, things were going to get worse, he would be better off finding his real dad now. If not now, there might never be a later. What if the detectives never found the killer? What if they had to pin it on someone else? Someone like him, for instance.
It was too dangerous to stay.
Birds soared across indigo skies and billowing clouds settled on the western horizon. There would be rain when he got there, a steady patter on the motel window and slate gray shadow to hide in.
He was OK. It would all be OK.
It didn’t stop him gripping the steering wheel and sighing now and then, a strangled sound each time he got a jolt of adrenaline. He’d lost everything: books, paintings, his house. Almost lost a healthy bank account. Tarian would have blown through it if he hadn’t cashed some of it a week ago and hidden it in a drawer at work. Now it was inside the backpack on the passenger seat.
That thug of a detective didn’t believe a word and Flynn knew he’d be hooked and booked before he opened his mouth a second time. Once he found his biological father he would have somewhere to hide out until the press found bigger fish and the dust settled.
There was a house in Sedona his dad renovated in the eighties, when he worked as a benefit rep for Arizona Oncology. A rusted-out railroad car off Schnebly Hill Road nestled into the cliff face and camouflaged by the red terrain. His mom said the wind whined through every hole it had, but it was home to them. When Flynn was a toddler his mom had taken a picture of him in front of a road sign near the house and he’d remember it if he saw it again.
By all accounts his dad still lived there and by all accounts the only photo Flynn had was a good likeness; a big man wearing a denim railroad cap and a cluster of brown hair. They looked alike. Sometimes he hated his mom for leaving his dad, hated that she’d torn them apart. It was closure Flynn needed.
Memories kept rattling in and out as he drove along a highway of rosy deserts and broken mesas. Burrograss grew among the piñon-juniper. At least he thought it was burrograss; could have been black grama, mile-upon-mile of it which covered the semi-arid plains.
It was then he smacked his forehead for using a credit card to rent the car. After the police realized he had disappeared they would expect him to make a mad dash for the border. He didn’t want to go to jail. They say ninety percent of jail inmates are so banged up by their peers they’re never the same when they get out. If they get out. Here he was, twenty-five, too young to be a widower.
An image of his father-in-law came to mind. Richard Walley-Bennett, Never been late with a bill. Never been arrested. He was fit for his age, handsome in a seventy-year-old kind of way. Even Rosie said ‘he still has it going on’. He’d made enough money to support an affluent lifestyle, to shepherd a daughter through graduate school and to take vacations in Cicely.
He’d talk about how he rose—completely on his own —from a working class background in the south valley to the upper middle class in the heights. How sheer will and dedication were key, and how he’d gingerly dance around Flynn’s career asking if Flynn was proud of it, whether he was in fact financially secure. But they never talked about Tarian’s past, the real issues that kept her from being sane.
Here out in the middle of nowhere, Flynn could still feel her. Tarian was haunting him every chance she got. Scorning his background, how he’d once lived in a junkyard and walked all the way to school on his own. Reminding him constantly of how his parents had barely scraped through High School and how hers had graduated from Harvard. The Walley-Bennetts lived high on the hog and expected a wedding to go with it.
That bittersweet day, his mom and stepdad had been dressed in clothes they could hardly afford, looking out-of-place in a club house where they knew no one and no one wanted to know them. His stepdad’s apologetic smile as Flynn kissed him goodbye, his mother’s tears. It was heartbreaking.
Tarian’s side of the family were trussed up in thousand dollar suits. Her best friend Violet wore a shade of purple with a stupid name and Tarian’s wedding dress had cost ten grand from a must-have haute couture store in New York. If anyone had told him he would have felt like this, he would have laughed at them.
It was a year after his wedding when the abuse started. Tarian was different and it scared him. She wasn’t the woman he had spent so many glorious hours with, the woman who draped herself over his arm and told him how wonderful he was. The Esmeralda to his Quasimodo, a pathetic hunchback with gargoyles for friends. Friends she was ashamed of. Friends who should have tried harder to rise above the common herd. She had opened the door into a different room, a room without a view.
The full horrors of what it took to be married to Tarian eluded Flynn then. How she swooped on him and delighted in each vicious peck. He was pathetic in his sidestepping. Should have seen it coming. Should have run when he had the chance.
As he passed signs to Laguna, he tried to remember the events leading up to the fire to give his mind something to chew over. Tarian hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t answered his calls, hadn’t worn her wedding ring, complained that it had been stolen at the mall after she’d washed her hands in the bathroom. Tarian never used the bathrooms in the mall. They were disgusting, dirty, everything she wasn’t.
Smoke, so much of it... he could make out an abstract image, a shadow without a face and in all that chaos he knew he’d have to face it one day. He tried to stop imagining her standing at the side of the road with her thumb in the air, strings of cloth fluttering in the breeze and charred flesh you could almost smell. But it was the stare... an empty faraway stare that made his heart pound.
He almost jumped when he heard the vibration of his cell phone on the console. It was a work number, and if he guessed correctly, the boardroom extension. A room rarely used by the executives at Manzano National Labs.
“Flynn, it’s me. I tried calling you three times.”
“Well, now you’ve got me.”
Rosie. The flashback of an upturned mouth and pale skin nearly overwhelmed him and he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?” The tremor in her voice made him think twice before answering.
“Here and there.”
“You’re driving, aren’t you?”
“I’m stunned by your insight.”
“Don’t leave,” she said, sobbing.
“Why do you think I’m leaving?” Flynn knew he should not be shouting at her, but he couldn’t help it. “Rosie... call Jesky for me. Tell him I’m OK.”
They always called his stepdad Jesky, the man with a bible for brains and a big heart. If he knew where Flynn was he’d be driving out to get him.
“They’re saying someone called 911 before the fire,” she said. “It’s bad.”
“What? The fire? Or the fact someone called 911?”
“No... I think it was your neighbor. Mrs. Quinn? She said she heard people shouting. Thought Tarian was in trouble. Apparently you said something in the ambulance. They’re calling it ‘excited utterance’.”
Flynn had no idea what excited utterance meant. What had he said in the ambulance? Did the police take a stressed and barely conscious man seriously?
“The papers are saying Mr. Quinn’s a hero.”
Quinn? Walking-stick Quinn? A figure bent over like a desert willow in a high wind. Hardly the type to play superman. Flynn often saw him peering over the wall or sitting in his living room watching the street. Neighborhood watch. My ass. It was more like neighborhood snitch.
Rosie might have heard a pile of static, or a hanging silence and began to speak again. “Flynn, are you there?”
Flynn felt a rush of irritation and hung up. Except for the drone of Rosie’s voice which curled in and out of his mind, he also felt a pang of guilt. He gripped the steering wheel and tried to process that last piece of information. Tried to eradicate the nasty things he’d said about the old man now he was dead.
You’re a class act, Flynn. A class act.
He was stupid too. If the detective was half the man Flynn thought he was the phone line was already tapped and there would be light bars flashing in his rear view mirror soon. Silence filled the void between his thoughts and the purr of the engin
e, and driving along a gray highway behind a Peterbilt made him feel more conspicuous than he had been in years.
He fumbled with the settings on the phone and turned the wretched thing to silence. Barely saw signs to Acoma Pueblo... Grants... barely cared if he was even going the right way. He’d be in Flagstaff by noon.
The road seemed clear of traffic until the Peterbilt’s rear lights flashed a warning and the big rig began to brake at something Flynn couldn’t see.
SIX
Driving back from her annual service weapon qualification, Detective Malin Santiago took a detour. It was easy to find the house by the crime scene tape that fluttered around the perimeter of 10508 Vista Bella Place and the crime scene van outside. The mailbox stood on a patch of brown grass, head stooping slightly like a drunkard about to vomit.
She stepped out onto the curb aware of a black, choking odor still present in the air. There was no sign of birds, not even in the trees of the surrounding houses and there was a calm about the place she hadn’t expected. She felt lightheaded and a little nauseous and she forced herself to breathe.
A woman with square rimmed glasses stood behind a bay window in the next door house, hands clasped under her chin as she watched the street. There was something about her—the silver hair and the passive expression—as if she understood perfectly that her neighbors were gone and she was somehow at peace with it. Malin waved and got no response.
She stood behind the tape and studied timbers bowing inward over a soup of soot and water. The remaining walls were streaked with slag and there was a strong concentration of death over the place that made her want to leave. The crime scene technicians continued to pick away at the debris, hauling the remaining items into a truck before vandals compromised the scene.
Dead Cold Page 3
