Dead Man District

by Julie Miller

  “On Fridays and Saturdays, we close at midnight.”

  “Evan?”

  “He’ll be with me. There’s a cot in the back room if he’s not at one of the tables, drawing or playing or chatting with the regular customers.”

  With a nod, he released her entirely and backed away with his hands raised, making her feel like pure temptation despite her baby-blue polyester dress and messy hair. “I’ll meet you guys there when my shift ends. You still owe me a pie.”

  She laughed out loud at that and clapped her hand over her mouth as the sound seemed to echo down the hallway. Matt smiled—just a small curve at one corner of his mouth transformed him into a handsome man. And those dark, coffee-colored eyes about swallowed her up. She reached up to rest her hand against the stubble on his jaw. “Good night, Matt.”

  “Good night, Corie.” She drifted into her apartment and closed the door, leaning back against it. From the hallway, she heard him exhale and whisper, “Dead bolt.”

  Why did that reminder sound like some kind of endearment?

  Corie quickly turned and threw the bolt, alleviating his concern. She splayed her hand against the door, imagining that his hand was there on the other side, protecting her, connecting them. Corie caught her abraded, swollen lip between her teeth and savored the taste of him that lingered there.

  She had never in her life been kissed like that. She’d never before understood how a man could make every part of her tingle with such a sharp need with just a kiss. She’d never understood how freeing trust could be, never understood how hope and laughter could make falling in love so exciting.

  Falling in love. Was that what was happening here? Was it foolish of her to want like this? To believe she was getting a second chance to be happy? To hope that Matt was feeling this way, too?

  After a moment, she heard Matt’s door open and close. It had been six long years since her divorce from Kenny, and this was the first time in all those years that she was looking forward to seeing a man again. She was looking forward to seeing Matt.

  She heard the cat scrabbling down the fire escape steps as she pushed away from the door and headed through the apartment to get ready for bed herself and idly wondered what was making the feline so restless. Pulling the curtain aside, she peered out into the night. It was too dark to see much beyond the glass. The box beneath the chair had been knocked askew, and the snow around it had been disturbed enough that the paw prints were indistinct. Maybe there’d been one occupant too many trying to share the box tonight. Seeing no critter outside for her to worry about, Corie made sure the window was locked and pulled the drape back into place.

  Kenny hadn’t found them. She’d freaked out for nothing.

  Besides, she had more pleasant things to think about.

  Like kissing Matt Taylor again.

  Many, many times.

  Chapter Nine

  Matt pulled the steering wheel and hung a sharp left at just the right distance to avoid the cars parked against the curb, guiding the big fire engine onto the skinny side street beside the dubiously named KC’s Best automotive repair shop off McGee Street. Talk about a dead man district. This was their third job of the day, and each fire had been bigger than the last. Counting the five medical calls to back up their EMTs, the cat that was stuck in a drainpipe and the two false alarms, Firehouse 13 was way above its daily call average.

  After the engine hissed and squealed to a stop, Matt set the brakes and killed the siren. The red and blue flashing lights bounced off nearby shop windows and windshields but seemed to be absorbed by the swirling orange and yellow flames shooting out of the repair shop’s garage doors. Inky smoke billowed skyward, staining the snow on the branches of the ancient oaks that lined the sidewalk and bringing an early night to the evening sky.

  “Nice driving, Taylor.” Captain Redding put on his white scene commander’s helmet. “Mark, Jackson—priority one is to make sure we don’t have gas tanks, oxyacetylene canisters or other flammables on site that haven’t already gone up. Remove them if we can. Clear a perimeter if we can’t.”

  “Yes, sir,” they answered, fastening up their gear and securing their air tanks in the back seat.

  Redding glanced across the cab to Matt. “You coordinate with the utility crew to make sure we’ve got all the gas lines cut off. I’ll track down the owner and talk to whoever reported it.” He studied the fully engulfed building. “This was burning awhile before anyone called it in. As far as I know, Friday’s still a workday. Why didn’t anyone call sooner?”

  “You think we’ve got casualties?” Matt asked.

  “I’m thinking I don’t want to send any more men in there than I have to. Something’s off with this one.” Redding made a quick scan of the police cars blocking traffic and the local residents hanging out at a relatively safe distance from the fire scene. “Where are all the mechanics?” There was one nondescript guy with muscles and an aversion to holding his head up huddled inside his grimy insulated coveralls, talking with an older man in a suit and tie and long dress coat. “He’s the only one in this crowd wearing a uniform of any kind.”

  Twenty-plus years of service gave Kyle Redding almost a sixth sense about fires. Hell. Matt hadn’t been with KCFD for half that long, and he had a feeling there was nothing accidental about this blaze. Matt nodded toward the line of tow trucks and trailers on the far side of the building holding expensive cars and souped-up trucks in various states of repair. “Looks like they got most of their vehicles out.”

  “The ones worth some real money.” Redding nodded. “Which is what I would do if I was going to torch my own place.”

  Matt followed up on Kyle’s suspicion. “I’ll give my dad a call and alert the arson team.”

  “Do that.”

  While the captain led Mark, Ray and the rest of the team off the truck to meet with the men and women on the second and third trucks and move them into position, Matt turned off the engine and called in their twenty to dispatch. “Lucky 13 on scene, 819 McGee Street. Captain Redding has the command. Taylor 13 Alpha out.”

  Then he swapped out his ball cap for his own helmet and tuned in to the chatter coming over his body radio as he climbed down to assess the scene more closely. The heat from the blaze was intense enough for him to feel it as he approached. Although hoses were out and the team was laying down a defensive perimeter to keep the fire from spreading, there was probably little they could do.

  Matt adjusted his mask over his face, radioed his position to the crew and moved inside, clinging to the walls to keep his bearings as he tried to pinpoint the source of the blaze. Steam from the water gushing through the garage bay doors was as thick as the smoke, making visibility almost nil. After signaling Mark and Ray that he understood their all-clear on the ground floor, he made his way past the charred shell of a pickup up on lifts in one of the bays. A quick exploration confirmed that no one was trapped inside or beneath the vehicle. He made it to a set of metal stairs leading up to the second floor. But he was forced to reverse course as flames curled in a sinuous dance across the ceiling above him and cut off access to the top of the stairs. One by one, ceiling tiles melted and fell away, and the wood support beams holding up the second floor began to sag and crack as fire, water and heat weakened them. The thick stone walls and iron window frames would probably survive anything short of a massive explosion, but the interior of the two-story 1920s-era shop was fully involved and about to collapse.

  “Taylor 13 Alpha,” he called over his radio. “Everybody clear out. The top floor’s about to rain down on us. Immediate source of ignition not evident. Cannot access second floor from interior. I repeat, everybody clear out.”

  Mark and Ray were already outside, waiting for the ladder truck to move into position to access the roof when Matt emerged. His mask fogged up as he met the wintry air and he pulled it down beneath his chin.

  “Incendiaries
down here are contained,” Mark shouted. “The ignition point has to be upstairs.”

  He gave them a thumbs-up, showing his understanding. “Did you see the way the interior supports were burning? It’s like somebody doused the top floor with an accelerant. This baby is going to end up a total gut. All we can do now is put it out.” Matt tapped his radio, indicating to the crew that this had become strictly a containment mission. “Lucky 13, let’s go to work. Watch yourselves up on that roof.”

  Matt was heading across the driveway to report to Captain Redding when a window exploded over his head. He jerked at the sound and instinctively raised his arm as glass rained down around him. But that was what the helmet and bunker gear were for, since falling debris and collapsing buildings were a firefighter’s most common threat. Unharmed, he moved his mask up to shield his face, and looked up to see if the pressure that had blown out that window was the first in a chain reaction, and he needed to move his men back to a safe distance. Flashover would certainly occur now that fresh oxygen was flooding the confined space.

  “Son of a...” What Matt saw was even worse. “Stop!”

  A dark-haired man in grimy coveralls was leaning over the window ledge, engulfed by the black smoke billowing out around him. Coughing racked his body, and when he drew in a breath, Matt could hear the shallow wheeze of lungs that wouldn’t fill. His face was smudged with soot and red smears he’d guess were blood, making his expression unreadable. But there was no mistaking his intention as the chair he’d smashed the window with came flying toward Matt.

  Matt ran forward, dodging the chair that splintered around him, shouting to be heard over the roar of the fire and thunder of the hoses. A leg came over the edge of the windowsill. “Wait up! We’ll get a ladder to you. Stop! Take a deep breath and stay put. We’re coming.” He waved the man back inside, pointed to the fire escape at the end of the building. “Can you reach—?” Matt turned to his radio. “Ladder! Northeast side, second floor. I’ve got a jumper—”

  The man teetered over the edge into the smoke, leaping, falling, hurling himself away from the flames. Matt dived in one Hail Mary effort to break his fall. But he was too late. The victim hit the pavement before him with a sickening thud.

  On his hands and knees, Matt scrambled forward. “Medic! I need a board now!”

  Matt tugged off his mask and placed it over the man’s face, giving him the oxygen he must have been starving for. He peeled off his gloves to check for a pulse. But as the EMTs swarmed in and pushed him aside, he already knew the diagnosis. Whether it was a broken neck or a broken skull, the man was dead.

  Matt rocked back on his heels as Redding rushed over. Although the paramedics rolled the mechanic onto a back board to stabilize him and intubated him to push oxygen directly into his lungs, it was too late. After giving Matt’s shoulder a supportive squeeze, the captain knelt beside the paramedics. “I think I understand now why someone started this fire.”

  Matt scrambled over to join him, needing to know why this man had died, needing to understand why he hadn’t been able to save him. Faulty fire suppression system? Not passing any fire inspection period? What the hell kind of business left a man behind without making any effort to rescue him, or alerting the KCFD to attempt a rescue? “Did you find out anything from the owner?”

  “That he’s an entitled ass full of hot air. But take a look at this.” After a sad shake of his head from one of the EMTs working on the victim, Redding picked up the man’s wrist and pushed back the cuff of his coveralls. The man’s fingers and knuckles were bruised and bloodied, like he’d been in a fight. Matt might have thought the fight had been with the heavy iron and leaded glass of that window upstairs, but that didn’t account for the shred of duct tape clinging to his wrist.

  Before the medics covered him up, Matt glimpsed the dark-haired man’s bruised and swollen face. He’d clearly been in a fight. “Those wounds are hours old. They didn’t happen when he impacted the concrete.” Matt picked up the other wrist and discovered the skin was raw from where he’d pulled or gnawed his way free. “He didn’t bind himself up like this.”

  “Crime scene cover-up.” Redding placed the victim’s hand back under the blanket and nodded for the EMTs to lift him onto the gurney and move him to the ambulance, keeping him out of sight from curious onlookers and the press photographers who were showing up to take pictures or capture some footage for the evening news. “Somebody left this man for dead in there.”

  “Hold up a sec.” Matt asked the medics to wait while he took another look at the man’s damaged wrist.

  The captain leaned in beside him. “What is that? A homemade tattoo?”

  Matt studied the markings that looked like they’d been scratched into the skin by the same instrument the man had used to free himself. Suspicion prickled the back of Matt’s neck, and he wiped the soot away from the patch sewn above the man’s chest pocket to read his name. “Maldonado.” The man whose car had been remotely set on fire a few days ago. The confidential informant who was allegedly ratting out the next generation of the Meade crime family. “My uncle Cole needs to see this.”

  Redding ordered the medics to stay with the body and protect it. “I’ll call KCPD.”

  Two hours later, night had fallen, and with the fire out, the temperature had dropped to a chilly twenty-three degrees. And while the Lucky 13 crew was combing the building to check for remaining hot spots and overhaul the debris, KCPD had arrived on the scene in the form of Matt’s uncle Cole, along with his NCIS partner, Amos Rand.

  Matt was running on fumes, taking a break and sitting on the running board of his fire truck while he downed a bottle of water. Other than removing his helmet and breathing apparatus, he still wore his bunker gear for the warmth the layers provided. He stood when his uncle and his partner walked up, extending his hand to greet them. “Uncle Cole. Agent Rand.”

  “Matt.” Cole held on to his nephew’s hand for an extra moment, his eyes narrowed in familial concern. “You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet. You okay?”

  “Long day.”

  Cole nodded his understanding. Sometimes, first responders saw some wicked things that stuck with you—like a man desperate enough to choose one kind of death over another. “I’ll need your statement when you’re ready.”

  “Let’s get it done.” Matt crushed the empty water bottle and tossed it inside the truck. He told them what he’d witnessed with Enrique Maldonado’s death and his suspicion about the cause of the fire. There was only one worker on site besides the dead man, and he hadn’t seen that first mechanic since he’d had time to walk away from the fire and scan the crowd again. Finally, someone had managed to save all the expensive vehicles they had on site—but not their last employee?

  “Sounds like potential insurance fraud to me,” Cole suggested.

  Amos agreed. “Maybe Meade needed an influx of cash and decided to torch his own place.”

  “Or he was destroying evidence.” Matt nodded toward the forensics team from the crime lab who’d been talking to Cole and Amos. “Has your crime scene team found anything?”

  Amos pulled his wool cap more securely over his buzz cut of hair and hunched against the damp chill in the air. “They can’t get into what’s left of the offices upstairs yet, but they found a sticky substance on the arm of the chair Maldonado used to break out the window. They’ll have to match it in the lab, but it looks like remnants of duct tape. He was secured to the chair and worked over before the fire started. Trapped and unable to evacuate. Maybe he was unconscious—maybe they thought he was dead. Nobody tried to save that guy.”

  Somebody had. But it had been too little, too late. Matt heard the sound of the victim hitting the pavement again and again in his head. “If I could have just gotten to him sooner. If I had known he was up there—”

  “This isn’t on you, Matt,” Cole insisted. Captain Redding had said the same th
ing, ordered him to take tomorrow off and to check in with one of the KCFD counselors, if necessary. “Whether as a result of another crime like arson or assault, or deliberately planned to play out like this, we’ve got ourselves a homicide. One we should be able to tie to the owner of this place, Chad Meade.”

  Amos turned his back to the graying, slightly heavyset man in the suit and tie being escorted by a uniformed officer across the driveway to join them. “Speak of the devil.”

  Although Matt had spotted him in the crowd with the missing mechanic when the Lucky 13 crew had first arrived on the scene, he hadn’t realized this well-to-do man who wore polished patent-leather oxfords instead of sensible snow boots was the business owner. He didn’t strike Matt as an auto repair sort of guy. But then, he didn’t look like Matt’s image of a man who’d spent several years in prison, either. But this was Chad Meade, wannabe crime boss and the object of Cole and Amos’s investigation.

  “If it isn’t Mr. Taylor and his enigmatic partner,” Meade said in a friendly enough tone, although Matt got the distinct impression there was nothing friendly between him and the police. “We meet again. I was told you wanted to speak to me and, of course, I was eager to help find out who is responsible for this monstrous tragedy. Thought I could spare you a few minutes between phone calls and press interviews.” He held up the cell phone he carried. “I’ve been talking back and forth with my insurance gal. I’m guessing this will be a total write-off.” He glanced up at Matt and gave a practiced laugh. “These old buildings from the ’20s are built like bomb shelters on the outside. But KCFD couldn’t save much on the inside, could they?”

  Cole made no pretensions of this being a civil conversation. “How much of a profit is this write-off worth to you, Chad? Aren’t you on parole?”

  He turned the collar of his coat up against the cold. “That’s why I’m running a legitimate business here, Officer.”

  “It’s Detective.”