Combustion

by Martin J. Smith

  Shelby walked to the empty, four-foot pedestal where it had sat. Where was it?

  She looked around. Nothing else was missing, including pieces considered much more valuable. She shivered as a chill swept through her.

  Someone had been in the house.

  Were they still here?

  She climbed the stairs to her bedroom and went straight to the night table where she’d put Paul’s loaded gun on that long Tuesday night before the funeral. She made sure the safety was on, slid it into the pocket of her robe, and moved quietly down the hall to Chloe’s room. She opened the door wide enough to make sure her daughter was in her bed and still asleep, then pulled the door shut again. She pulled the gun out and clicked off the safety.

  Room by room, right hand clutching the gun like Paul had showed her, heart pounding, she moved through the sprawling house, opening closet doors, looking under beds, behind curtains, into showers. She checked the laundry room, the pantry, the wine cellar, the movie room. She worked her way back toward the front of the house, ending in Paul’s study, relieved to find no one and nothing else missing or disturbed.

  But someone had been in the house.

  Shelby thought back to the last time she noticed “Flight.” It was certainly there on Tuesday, when Maria last cleaned. She’d noticed her housekeeper tending it with her feather duster. Had it been there when she left for the funeral Wednesday morning? She thought so, but couldn’t say for sure. She definitely remembered standing in the front doorway last night, when she and Chloe got home after the funeral, with the uncertain sense that something was out of place. She’d heard that thieves sometimes scanned obituaries and death notices and target the homes of grieving families, knowing the houses would be empty while everyone attended the services.

  But how could someone get past their security system?

  And why would someone steal a single sculpture, especially one that weighed as much as “Flight”?

  For a moment, but only for a moment, she considered calling Ron Starke.

  No, she thought. No. He’d ask questions she didn’t want to answer. He’d want to know about more than the missing art. He’d ask if she thought it might be somehow connected to Paul’s murder. What could she tell him? That the nameless, faceless phantom she’d watched murder her husband was intimidating her into silence?

  No. Ron knew her too well, certainly well enough to know something was wrong. He’d see that even the possibility of a connection between this insignificant theft and Paul’s murder scared her more than anything. He’d want to know why, and she was afraid she might tell him.

  36

  True to her word, Kerrigan already was at her desk and on the phone when Starke arrived at seven on Thursday morning. She didn’t even look up as he passed her office. The support staff, including Ginger, didn’t arrive until eight, so not many people were around except Kerrigan, the dispatcher, and a couple of beat cops pushing paper at the end of their overnight shift.

  He’d stayed awake until three preparing his debrief. He’d cued Kerrigan by phone to some developments as they happened, but he hadn’t given her a full accounting of the Dwyer investigation since late Monday morning. He’d decided to begin with updates on Delgado and Beale, two of the three names that had come to the fore early on. He’d tell her how he’d tracked the Vegas hooker with whom Delgado said he was spending time the night Dwyer disappeared. He’d recount his conversations with Beale and Anna Esparza that seemed to credibly explain Beale’s recent confrontation with Dwyer, but which also raised intriguing possibilities involving Esparza’s family. He’d also explain how he was pursuing local computer collectors to see if there was any connection between them and the Vanguard monitor that anchored Dwyer’s body.

  Finally, he’d give Kerrigan what she seemed to want from him, a demonstration of his impartiality regarding Shelby Dwyer. She’d seemed mistrusting and suspicious that they’d known each other for so long. But he’d tell her how, after following Shelby to the used computer store the morning after she was notified of her husband’s murder, he’d set out to verify her story of the night her husband disappeared. He’d tell her how he tracked down Eric Barbaric, who handled the resale of Shelby Dwyer’s Apple computer. There was a good chance the machine or its hard drive was still somewhere in the local computer marketplace, possibly intact. If he could locate it, the information embedded in its memory might confirm or refute her alibi that she was working on her computer the first night Paul didn’t come home.

  He also needed to update her on the toxicology report. Eckel had called his cell at 6:00 a.m. with interesting news.

  That was all he had. He’d generated possibilities. He’d planted some seeds. But he needed a break in the case. Soon.

  He sipped Winchell’s coffee and scheduled his day until the clock said 7:30, then walked to her office. She waved him in just as she was hanging up the phone.

  “County fire,” she said by way of greeting. “It’s coming our way fast. If we have to evacuate over the next forty-eight hours, we’re going to need all hands. The coordination plan is a mess. The communications equipment doesn’t interface. Christ.”

  “Good morning,” Starke said.

  Kerrigan fanned the pages of a thick bound manual on her desk. “I don’t know who put together this emergency response plan—”

  She stopped abruptly. Did she know Starke had been on the joint police-fire task force that created the plan? His name was on the cover page.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I need to shift gears. Fill me in.”

  He filled her in.

  Delgado? “Seems like you’ve checked everything that can be checked on him personally. Nice work,” she said. “Even if his Vegas story holds up, could he have hired it out?”

  Starke made a note. Contract murder cases usually broke when someone snitched. Chasing down that possibility based on her hunch would be a long, probably impossible process. Still, he added it to his list.

  Beale and Esparza? “There could be something there,” she said. “Did their stories sound rehearsed?”

  “No. And I checked the local paper. There was an obit for Beale’s wife, and the dates match up with what he said. My gut tells me the love story part will hold up. But Dwyer was pissing in both of their punch bowls, so I’m still looking at Beale, and her. Plus, her family and its construction business has some interesting connections to the Dwyer family, so I’m running that down, too.”

  A look crossed Kerrigan’s face that Starke couldn’t immediately decipher. “Construction business?”

  “Esparza & Sons Excavation and Construction. You may know them by reputation.”

  Kerrigan offered a blank stare.

  “Or maybe not,” he said. “Local family? Sinaloa roots. Huge in the construction trades around here? Same basic management philosophy as the cartels.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Headbusters. Cross them, and you’re in for a world of hurt.”

  Kerrigan suddenly reached for her inbox and plucked a paper from the top of the pile. Starke had noticed the letterhead when he first sat down. Even upside down, he could clearly read the words DEA Intelligence Report.

  “When you said construction—” she said.

  Kerrigan focused on the report in her hand. She read the entire thing in silence, all four pages, occasionally nodding as she did. Finally: “I’ll be damned.”

  Starke waited.

  “It’s an advisory,” she said at last. “DEA. Unclassified. Just came across this morning.”

  “About?”

  Kerrigan began to read, even the acronyms, from the first page: “Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) pose the greatest criminal drug threat to the United States; no other group is currently positioned to challenge them. These Mexican poly-drug organizations traffic heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana throughout the United States, using established transportation routes and distribution networks, many across, or under, the California-Mexico bord
er. They are moving to expand their share, particularly in the heroin and methamphetamine markets. The Sinaloa Cartel maintains the most significant presence in the United States. They are the dominant TCO along the West Coast, through the Midwest, and into the Northeast. The DEA projects its presence to grow in the United States over the next year.”

  “Not exactly a news flash,” Starke said.

  She glared across the desk. “Except then there’s this.”

  She opened her lap drawer, grabbed a yellow highlighter and upcapped it, made a half dozen aggressive strokes across the DEA advisory, and handed it across the desk. Starke scanned the highlighted portions.

  Based on information developed by a joint task force of DEA and local police agencies, the Sinaloa group has been partnering with established, legal, US-based companies to build and maintain the infrastructure required for the unimpeded flow of supply across the border, including an elaborate tunnel system thought to exist between Tijuana and San Diego.

  Kerrigan interrupted his reading. “The Esparzas have a lot of heavy equipment, I assume? Digging machines?”

  Starke saw where she was heading, but something about her hunch struck him as off-key. He’d had the same thoughts after the late-night burrito conversation with his dad, and he’d made a call to one of his DEA contacts. The Esparzas were dirty, alright, and the agency was close to connecting the dots between the family’s US businesses and the Sinaloa cartel. Just a matter of time, the DEA guy said. But he also said the Esparzas did legitimate business with a lot of Southern California builders, not just Dwyer Development. It was what made Esparza & Sons perfect for hiding money.

  Could there be a criminal connection to Paul Dwyer’s company? His charitable foundation? His murder? Starke flashed to the news story he’d just read about the eight dead tunnel rats in Otay Mesa, and the brutal clip of videotaped torture of a rival released by the same organization.

  “You saw the reports about the Otay Mesa murders, right? And their latest video?”

  Kerrigan nodded.

  Starke’s doubts crystallized into words. “The Sinaloa boys don’t use heavy equipment. Too big. Too obvious. It’s less risky to snatch barrio kids to do the work by hand. And when they’re done—” He formed his right hand into the shape of a pistol and aimed it at the base of his skull.

  The police chief looked away. “Animals.”

  “It’s a big leap to link all that to Dwyer.”

  “But his development company does business with the Esparzas. And has for years.”

  “So do a lot of people.”

  “And Dwyer’s daughter—” She stalled, grasping for a name.

  “Chloe.”

  “She has a personal relationship with someone from that family.”

  “Also true.”

  Kerrigan stared. Starke scribbled a few fresh lines in his notebook. Her questions were legitimate. Coming from someone else, he might actually have thought them insightful. Not that he’d ever say that.

  “I’ll nose around,” he said. “Even if there’s no Sinaloa connection, it’s possible they got crossways with Dwyer on some developer-contractor thing. Or the family things.”

  “You think it’s a detour,” Kerrigan said.

  “No. You’re right. They’ve done business for years, so there’s a complicated history. And Dwyer was hound-dogging Anna, and her family knew about it. Sounds like her dad may have felt disrepected. It’s just a whole new channel of posibilities, and running them down will take more time. I can make more calls.”

  “Share the load with Susan Garza. Just because you’re the lead detective—”

  “I get it.”

  “She’s feeling marginalized.”

  “I get it,” he repeated. “But if you’ll let me finish the debrief, I think—”

  Kerrigan sat back in her chair. “Of course.”

  He flipped back through his notes, mentioning covetous neighbor Craig Demott as a follow-up possibility before offering one last thought, the computer-collector lead.

  “Long shot,” Kerrigan said.

  Long shot? Starke leaned forward. “It’s the single most compelling piece of physical evidence we have right now,” he said. “That old monitor is rare, there’s a limited number of them in existence, and it links directly to the killer. I think it could be important.”

  Kerrigan shrugged. “Or like I said, it could be something somebody picked up at a garage sale. But you prioritize your time any way you see fit. I assume you’re focusing on local collectors?”

  Starke nodded.

  “What else?”

  He sat forward. “Turns out the guy that’s helping me track collectors around here handled the computer Shelby Dwyer sold the morning after Paul vanished. I’m working with him to track it down.”

  Kerrigan stared. “You mentioned that idea before. Seems like a long way to go to get some marginal information. What am I missing here?”

  Starke took a deep, calming breath. “Remember, Shelby Dwyer says she stayed home the night Paul disappeared, worked on her computer for a couple of hours, then went to bed. Then, the next day, she dumps the computer, an Apple, at a local used-computer store and buys a PC. And she goes back to that store three weeks later, after his body turns up, asking about what happened to it, if there might still be information on it, that sort of thing.”

  “And you’re thinking what?”

  “Nothing about that story that makes sense to me,” Starke said. “Nobody dumps a perfectly good computer to replace it with an equivalent machine. People upgrade, but that’s not what this was. And why would she suddenly get paranoid about it after the body turned up? If her old computer is a blank slate, we get nothing. If it’s not, though—I don’t know. Maybe she created a file or sent an e-mail that night that’s time-stamped. That would confirm her story. Or not.”

  Kerrigan seemed to consider the possibilities. “Interesting,” she said, “but flawed. We don’t have an exact time of death. He could have been killed anytime between the last time he was seen at his office and—” She closed her eyes. “What was the coroner’s best guess again?”

  “Two and a half to three weeks in the water.”

  “Right. So there’s a potential three- or four-day lag in the timeline. Knowing what she was doing that particular night, when her husband may or may not have been killed, I’m just not sure that tells us much.”

  She was right. Starke couldn’t fault her for her mind.

  “I’m still gonna pursue it,” he said. “Paul suspected she was having an affair, remember? When I pushed her about how she knew Paul was shot, she shut down fast until she could call an attorney. It just makes me think the computer could be another piece of the puzzle. Maybe we’ll find proof of an affair on it and we can leverage that to open her up.”

  “Anything new from forensics?”

  “I phoned you about the Taser, right? And that he was tied up at some point?”

  She nodded. “Got it. Tox?”

  Starke flipped to his notes from his last cell conversation with Eckel. “That’s new. Just got the call before I came in: heavy dose of sedatives.” He paused. “Rohypnol.”

  “Roofies? The date-rape drug?”

  Starke nodded.

  “Now there’s a switch,” she said. “So that explains how the killer got him tied up.”

  “Roofies dissolve fast,” he said. “I’m thinking maybe it started with a drink or two with his killer. Dwyer was a drinker, we know that. Meets somebody he knows for dinner. He gets up to take a piss, comes back to a spiked drink.”

  “Clear premeditation. That’ll be nice to have in court.” Kerrigan sipped from her Starbucks cup. “You’ve checked his calendar for that night, I assume?”

  Starke nodded. “Blank. Which actually might tell us a lot.”

  Kerrigan looked confused.

  “We know booze wasn’t Dwyer’s only vice, right?” he said. “He wasn’t particularly conscientious about his marriage vows. But ‘evening with
mistress’ isn’t the sort of thing you log into your office calendar. Shelby says he wasn’t home most nights. Not many of his nights were ‘scheduled,’ either.”

  Kerrigan leaned forward. “Now that’s promising,” she said. “You’re tracking the women?”

  “Just got the tox report an hour ago, but I’ll start as soon as we’re done here.”

  “Then again,” she said, “how does that seduced-to-his-death scenario fit with everything else we know about this? The torture, the execution, transporting the body up the hill to the pond. Does any of that say female to you?”

  “No.” Starke hesitated, then couldn’t help himself. “But we’re going to build this case on physical evidence, not guesswork and assumptions.”

  Kerrigan narrowed her gaze, recognizing her own words as he echoed them back to her. Starke had seen that same look on dogs about to bite. He was glad she let the comment pass, but knew he’d just undone any goodwill his sparkling debrief might have earned. He imagined her putting another note in his personnel file.

  “I’ll be focused on this fire for the next couple of days,” Kerrigan said, her voice even despite what he saw in her eyes. She gave the emergency-management manual a contemptuous little shove across her desk. “We might as well be operating without a plan.”

  He stared her down. “This isn’t the first fire we’ve handled here, Chief. Some of us have handled a lot of them, and we put everything we learned over the years down on paper. It’s all right there, the collected wisdom of people who know this community a lot better than you.”

  “It’s disorganized and unprofessional,” she said.

  Starke gathered his things and stood up. “You already got the job,” he said. “You can stop campaigning for it.”

  He turned around and didn’t look back.

  37

  Shelby laid the gun on the kitchen counter and fumbled into the space behind her cookbooks for a cigarette. She usually smoked about three a week. This would be her third of the morning.