What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  “App..poinned to go before the last days of fire.”

  “To cleanse the wayward of their sins.”

  “To cleanse the wayward of their sins.”

  “To teach the true word and prepare the chosen.”

  “To teach the true word and prepare the chosen.”

  “To make those whom God sees fit ready for His service.”

  “To make those whom God sees fit …”

  “You interviewed Vish?” Craig asked Daly.

  “Yes. He said he was called out to a fire last night and had left a message for Lori on her cell. He didn’t get home until almost ten AM. He found her in the bedroom. Naked, lying on her stomach across the bed, her hands bound. She had rope burn from trying to get free.”

  Craig swallowed.

  “What is it?”

  “He found her at ten, and we got this call late this afternoon.”

  “You aren’t thinking—”

  “It makes no sense. Lori knows how important it is for us to get to the scene right away. Delays can cause contamination to the scene. There’s some physical evidence that can deteriorate and be unusable.”

  “It’s not like you can expect her to be thinking rationally about this, Craig.”

  “I know that, but it rained last night. Not much, but enough to soak the earth. We could have gotten a footprint. As it is, we may have lost our best chance at a solid lead because this call came in hours after it should have. I have a lot of people looking for answers, not just Lori.”

  “We’ve got to do the best we can with what we have and try to find a way to crack this case open.”

  “We need a profile. We need somebody who understands the way people think who can help us get inside the guy’s mind and figure him out. So far, he’s attacked blondes, brunettes, redheads. Some of these women are tall like Lori, and others are short. They’re scattered across the city. I can’t find any physical characteristic or geographic rationale that’s giving me a clue about how he’s picking his targets or where he’s going to strike next, and without much physical evidence, we’re stuck.”

  Daly rubbed his forehead and then nodded. “I agree. We have to do what ever it takes, especially since this guy has graduated to murder. So far, that’s the only case where anything has been different, and I want to know why.”

  “Actually, it isn’t. There was something different with Lori,” Craig said slowly, flipping his notebook open to the right page. “Lori had turned, so she was partially facing him when he moved to grab her. He tried to twist her around. She kicked him, and he called her a bitch.”

  “He spoke?”

  “Yes, and he struck her on the head.”

  Daly was silent for a moment. “You think she rattled him?”

  “I…I’m not sure. It’s odd that he spoke. Four other women and not one has heard a word from him, but after the rape, he took Lori’s gag and blindfold off and told her he’d cut her to pieces if she tried anything.”

  “What time was he here?”

  “Around ten PM, as best as I can figure, based on Lori’s statement. Could have been a bit earlier because it got dark earlier last night with the rain, or a bit later.”

  “But Nitara Sandhu was killed around midnight, so it sounds likely that he was here first and then went there.”

  “We should have a team go back over there and check for any dirt, anything that might link this house to that one.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Daly said. “And we can come up with the possible routes for him to have used and see if we can identify a suspicious vehicle. It stands to reason that he was upset if he spoke to her. It’s a huge change in his MO.”

  “Not even a screaming baby prompted him to curse before.”

  Daly shook his head. “You know, Craig, she’d probably hate me for saying it, but good for her. Maybe we can voice ID him when we get him.”

  “At this point, I’m prepared to take anything we can use. It’s certainly the best lead we’ve got.”

  “Says a hell of a lot about this case, doesn’t it?”

  “Huh. You don’t have to tell me that.”

  Daly sank into his chair as though under the weight of a five hundred-pound barbell that he simply didn’t have the strength to carry any longer. His cheeks sagged, and his eyes looked lifeless. “Tell me you have some good news.”

  “Greg matched four distinct sets of prints that are on both the pop machine at the recreation center and the fire door,” Tain replied.

  Ashlyn hadn’t waited for an invitation to sit down and Tain finally sat beside her.

  “That’s something,” Daly mumbled.

  “Unfortunately, none of them were in the system,” Ashlyn said.

  Daly seemed to be forcing his head to rotate so he could look at her directly. “Since when did you become the voice of gloom?”

  “I’m just relaying the facts.”

  His brow wrinkled, and he gave her a look that said, Oh, please. Don’t play innocent with me. “I know that tone of voice, Ashlyn. God, this better be good.”

  “It could be.”

  Daly’s shoulders drooped even farther, and he sighed. “I’m listening.”

  Ashlyn glanced at Tain, pushing her hair back behind her left ear. “I want to try to get prints from the scene where Isabella’s body was found.”

  Daly frowned. “You tried. And failed.”

  “We did,” Tain said, trying to keep his eyes from narrowing. “And, as I recall, Paul Quinlan told us it was our one shot and that if he ordered us out, it was the end of the discussion. After what happened, I can’t see him agreeing to take us back in.”

  “Neither can I,” Daly said, his gaze shifting to Ashlyn’s face. “I appreciate that you want to do anything you can to make some headway. Having a crime scene, even a secondary crime scene, to work with could help, but I can’t risk your lives and the safety of other officers by letting you go into a building that’s been condemned. You’re damn lucky as it is that Tain wasn’t seriously injured before.”

  “I know that. I’m not suggesting we go inside the building.”

  “Then how do you propose we look for evidence? Telekinetically?” Daly’s eyes had widened as he glared at her.

  Ashlyn stared back. “Are you going to listen to what I have to say, or just provide dismissive jokes?”

  Daly held his hands up and sighed.

  “Firefighters access buildings all the time through secondary means,” she started. “They use ladder trucks to get to windows, rappel from rooftops, climb fire escapes. What I was going to propose is that we use a hydro truck, or something with a bucket, to lift one person up there who can dust the window, photograph the area, see about reaching the table for prints. At the very least, a visual survey would provide us with more information than we have already.”

  “How so?”

  “For starters, we don’t know if that window was deliberately opened or if it was broken. We know Isabella was already dead, so she didn’t break it trying to escape. But if the window was deliberately opened, we could have prints, and it could be that her abductor wanted to make sure that room burned.”

  “But why not just put her in the room where he started the fire?”

  “I don’t know, Daly. The other thing is that when Tain fell through the floor in the hallway, Paul said it looked like part of the floorboards had been removed. He theorized for firewood because that happens in some vacant buildings frequented by homeless people. But this building didn’t have that kind of reputation.”

  “So, you’re wondering if our arsonist removed the wood from the hallway. I don’t see how you could know for certain without going back to where Tain fell through, and there’s no way I’m letting you do that.”

  “I’m not proposing that. Paul figured we weakened the boards there when we walked across, and that’s why Tain went through. There’s no telling if there are other areas like that, ready to give way.” She shook her head. “No, what I actually want to do is
check under the table to see if there’s kindling there.”

  Daly’s mouth opened slightly. “You mean, you think maybe he was going to start the fire under her?”

  “The preliminary report puts the fire starting on the second or third floor, in the room at the back on the right side.”

  “Why is it so vague?” Tain asked.

  “They’ve only been able to take a look at the ground floor. Typically, people who start fires start them on the ground floor, and because of what happened when we went in, Paul wouldn’t approve going any higher in the building. But the one thing they know from the charring and debris is that the fire definitely started in one of the two rooms directly below where Isabella’s body was left.”

  Daly’s face wrinkled. “So, you want to do a visual survey, hope for some prints. This sounds like a hell of an undertaking without the chance of getting us much.”

  “Look, I know there are no guarantees. We could send somebody up there and get nothing. But this isn’t just one case, and we owe it to these families to explore every possible avenue of investigation. If we did get prints up there, we could check them against the prints found at the recreation center. It could give us conclusive proof that these cases are linked, a piece of physical evidence that would help us convict this guy once we get him.”

  Tain nodded. “She has a point, sir. Right now, unless we catch this guy in the act or get a living witness who can ID him, we haven’t got much to tie him to these cases.”

  “I know.” Daly sat still, his eyes turned down toward his desk, his sober expression not hinting at any of his thoughts about Ashlyn’s proposal.

  When the silence hadn’t been broken after another moment, Tain cleared his throat. “I’ll do it.”

  Tain kept his gaze straight ahead, on Daly, so Ashlyn couldn’t make eye contact with him. She knew he’d always had excellent peripheral vision, which usually came in handy, but he seemed to be ignoring her.

  “So, you support this idea then?”

  Tain nodded.

  “If you’re going to sign off on this, I’ll be the one to go up,” Ashlyn said, pointing a finger at her chest. “I suggested this. I’ll take the risks.”

  Tain still didn’t look at her. “Just because it was your idea, it doesn’t mean you own it.”

  “I’m as capable as you are.”

  “I know that,” Tain retorted. “I—”

  “You know, right now I’m glad I didn’t have more children.” After a moment of silence, Daly continued, “I’ll make some calls and see what we can do. It’s late. Have you two even eaten dinner?” Daly glanced from Ashlyn to Tain. “Didn’t think so. Go home. Get some sleep. You’ve got the meeting with Burnaby tomorrow, and you need to go through the open abduction cases before then. That’s your priority now. Not the evidence recovery from the building, not who should climb the ladder, but being ready for that meeting. Understood?”

  Ashlyn nodded.

  “Then I don’t want to see either of you until tomorrow. Go home.”

  Craig blinked as the light went on.

  “Can’t get much done in the dark, can you?”

  Hawkins was still displaying that nervous energy so different from his usual demeanor, pacing, reaching out to fiddle with things and then pulling his hand back, like he’d just remembered he was in a crime scene.

  “I’m just going over the checklists, making sure we’ve covered absolutely everything.”

  Hawkins nodded, moving to the window, looking outside. “They’re getting restless, you know. Wondering why you haven’t cut them loose.”

  “Respectfully, I didn’t think that was my call.”

  “Right.” Hawkins spun on his heel, scratching his head, his gaze darting across the floor and around the room, looking at everything but Craig. “You’ve done a good job on this. I shouldn’t have charged in. Do we have everything?”

  “As far as I can tell. I’m going to do one more walkthrough with the lists, but from what I’ve seen already, if Vish’s nephew wet the bed when he was having a nap three years ago, we’ll have the hard evidence to back it up.”

  Hawkins nodded. “Good.”

  “Maybe you should go ahead, tell them to pack up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think they need to hear it from you on this one, sir. Besides, every RCMP officer is trained in evidence recovery. I can handle anything that might turn up, and if I see something big that’s been overlooked, I’ll just call them back. Vish and Lori are staying with family, so there’s no rush.”

  “You’re going to be here for a while then?”

  “As long as it takes for me to be certain there isn’t something obvious staring me in the face that I’ve overlooked.”

  Hawkins walked out of the room without another word. Within minutes, Craig could hear a number of doors closing, followed by the sound of motors starting.

  He walked to the window. Hawkins was standing on the sidewalk as the rest of the officers drove away. Hawkins turned, looked back at the house, then trudged back to his own car.

  What a nightmare. Craig’s eyes took in things about the room he hadn’t really noticed before, the symmetry of the wall hanging, the way the display of flowers and figurines on the cabinet seemed to suggest they’d been stolen from a feng shui coffee-table book. His gaze stopped on a framed photo and he moved toward it, then picked it up.

  Vish and Lori, posed, smiling, looking like the picture-perfect couple, Lori in a flattering dress unlike anything Craig had seen her in at work, Vish in a suit.

  What did Vish do? He realized that, in all the tension of the investigation and, because he hadn’t interviewed Vish himself, he wasn’t sure if that had been relayed or if he’d just forgotten. Not that it really mattered. Once they’d ruled out Dan Chalmers when his wife was raped, it didn’t seem as important to know about the husbands. Especially not once Stephanie Bonnis had been raped in the exact same way.

  Those first few weeks, looking as hard at the family of the victim as anyone else…Craig walked to the kitchen on autopi lot. He couldn’t blame them if they hated the police.

  Each partner’s alibi had been checked by uniformed officers who were assisting in the investigation. None of them had ever given any cause for doubt.

  There it was, the ever-important list of contact numbers. His finger traced the list until it came to Vish’s work. The Coquitlam Fire Department.

  Craig flipped his notebook open and wrote that down. He could feel the pins and needles sensations in his arms, prickling their way up to his shoulders and his neck, but he shrugged them off and moved to the bedroom to review everything one last time.

  TUESDAY

  “What do you want first? Red-light camera reports or the open abduction cases?”

  Ashlyn didn’t answer, but kept fiddling with her pen as she rocked up and down in her chair, which produced a cry for WD-40 every time she rapidly shifted position. Tain leaned across their desks and snatched the pen from her hands.

  “You heard what Sergeant Daly said yesterday. If you spent half the night worrying about getting into that crime scene that’s unfortunate, but not my problem. Right now I need your head in the game. We have to get through this.”

  Her mouth twisted as her eyes narrowed. “I know. What did you start on yesterday? The abduction cases?”

  He nodded as he sank down into his chair. “I’m halfway through, and I’ve only found two that are even remotely comparable. It isn’t looking good.”

  “Do you want me to start on the red-light cameras, or would you prefer to get through these first for sure? After all, Burnaby expects this. They don’t know about Greg Galloway’s due diligence.”

  “You go ahead with the camera records. If it starts to look like I might not make it through the pile, you can always put those aside.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s eight am now. We have until ten, right?”

  “As far as we know.”

  He pulled the file and opened it, still havin
g the feeling that she was watching him. When he couldn’t shake it after a moment, he looked up.

  “What?”

  “Can I have my pen back?”

  “Only if you promise to use it properly.”

  She stood and reached over to the second pile tottering on his desk, pulling the folders toward her.

  He tossed the pen back and turned his eyes to the file.

  “Do you want an examination table and a blanket?” Craig frowned at Bill Burke, the coroner, who responded with a simple smile. “You look worse than some of my regular clients.”