Charred (16 page)

Bryce’s ex-wife wore a flattering red silk sleeveless tunic that came down to her hips, and a pair of white capri pants. Her toenail polish matched her blouse and her skin was as perfect as Ellie remembered. On the other hand,
she’d
been up since about four in the morning and was pretty sure she looked as tired as she felt.

“I’d heard you’d moved south.” Suzanne’s smile was about as sincere as a cat apologizing for devouring a mouse. Almond-shaped eyes accented by perfectly applied cosmetics regarded her with steady appraisal. “I assume Milwaukee is a bit more exciting than a county job.”

Of all the fucking people to run into
 …

The Santiago-like sentiment of that thought almost made her laugh. Almost.

She nodded. “Ms. Colgan-Grantham. Nice to see you again.”

“Bryce said you’ve been promoted to MPD homicide. Congratulations. We were bound to cross paths sometime, but I assumed it would be at the courthouse.”

Oh, and that was something to look forward to. His ex-wife was an attorney; a pretty high-powered defense attorney at that, and she was probably right, they would eventually have to deal with each other. Ellie hooked the basket over her arm. “I suppose we might run into each other.”

When on this side of hell had Bryce talked to his ex?
Their parting of ways had been far from amicable.

Maybe over their steaks, they might need to have that conversation. He certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

“It sounds like you all are probably more than a little busy right now.”

She was doing her best to forget the case for a few hours, not rehash it in the gourmet bread aisle. “Unfortunately, we are. It has actually been a rather long day. I hope you have an enjoyable evening.”

Ellie couldn’t bring herself to say it had been nice to see her. The insincerity of it stuck in her throat. Instead it had been uncomfortable and awkward and just about the last thing she needed. As Ellie turned to walk away, Suzanne said pleasantly, “Tell Bryce it was good to see him the other night.”

The other night?

Maybe if she hadn’t been so tired she could have guarded her reaction better, but evidently her surprise showed. Suzanne just gave a satisfied smile and walked away.

Yes, they were going to have to talk about this. Definitely.

But not tonight.

Chapter 13

If creation is an art form, surely destruction is even more so.

Combine the two and it can be … beautiful.

The house was filthy, broken crates in a haphazard pile, a rolled-up piece of ratty carpet against the stained wall, two chairs with the caning broken out of the bottom toppled over in the middle of what had once been the living room. It smelled of disuse, stale and empty, with maybe a hint of dead mouse.

No table.

That was fine. I’d brought one with me. Carefully I unfolded it, snapping the legs in place, not even bothering to hide the smudges my shoes made in the dust. I moved quickly, quietly, and with swift efficiency.

Maybe my soul was that lonely creature in the swamp, long since drowned, haunting the edges, covered with slime, grotesque and alone.

Where the hell we go, I’m not sure at all. If I believed in an avenging God, I would have confronted him a long time ago.

Or maybe it would be the other way around.

My sins were piling up, building like a shaky house on stilts, all that murky water flowing underneath …

If I didn’t need to do this … but I did.

I grabbed the handle of the bag and tugged. It was too early for rigor, which was an advantage, for at the steps I just stopped at the top and shoved, watching the dark form tumble clumsily downward until it hit the bottom with a sickening thud.

I whispered out loud, “Welcome home.”

JULY 7

Carl pressed a
button and Rachel answered on the third ring.

“Tell me something, how soon can you get a story on air?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Fairly soon … today. How big are we talking?”

“We have another murder, same MO. National channels will be picking this up.”

“What is in this for you?”

“Just point out that Detective Ellie MacIntosh is on this case and maybe a hint about the murder five years ago. There’s been a third murder—or a fourth if you can count my old case.”

“Seriously?” Her voice held a hint of shock that he was fairly certain would echo through the entire state of Wisconsin.

“Would I call otherwise?”

“I can’t promise how exactly they’ll present the story, but I know they’ll want the tip.”

“Thanks. I need to go … thanks.”

“Call me,” she said quietly.

*   *   *

Jason surveyed the
scene. The place was a tenement at best, long since abandoned, the fire had started earlier in the day according to what they were told, turning into a conflagration as the entire decrepit building went up like a well-lit torch. Luckily, next to it was a weed-choked empty corner lot, littered with cans and bits of trash with a broken basketball hoop at the far end, and on the other side the building there previously had been torn down.

It wasn’t the finest neighborhood. The only two cars parked down the shimmering street were spotted with rust and one of them was missing a front bumper.

“We’re just going to start calling you to every fire in this damn city, Detectives.” The fire chief, in full gear, didn’t sound like he was joking. “Once it was contained one of my men spotted what looked like a possible body below through a hole on the first floor. Point of origin a basement apartment at one time. It’s a mess down there and swimming with water. I don’t think I need to caution you to be careful, but at least the electricity is off. You’ll need to wear hats.” He jerked his head toward one of the trucks. “Jimmy will give you each one.”

“This is out of control.” MacIntosh said it in a matter-of-fact voice a few minutes later as she slipped on the hard hat and fastened the strap, echoing his thoughts.

Jason didn’t disagree. The frame was intact but the door itself was missing and the dark hole didn’t look very appealing. He almost slipped on the greasy stairs, said a very bad word, and righted himself at the last moment. MacIntosh didn’t even glance back, her flashlight beam skittering over the blackened walls, a mask just like his over the lower part of her face to prevent inhaling potential toxins.

The basement was old, the ceiling half collapsed, the awful smell something he was getting used to, but the table was new.

That was interesting.

This time the body was displayed as usual, but it was different, not part of the usual scenery obviously, and this was actually the first clue they might have delivered at their doorstop. He said tightly, “He brought the table.”

Ellie stared at the body, not rattled by the gruesome sight, probably because, lucky them, it wasn’t their first horrific scene in the past few days. Her brow knitted. “I noticed. That means this isn’t a random choice. He knew what he needed wasn’t going to be here.”

Water dripped everywhere, just like all the other crime scenes, but this was worse. The floor, walls, ceiling, all soaked, ruined, and it probably hadn’t been good to begin with from the general state of disrepair.

Jason walked around, his feet splashing water, the place way too warm considering the smell. The foul liquid was ankle deep in some places, ash and water and God only knew what else, probably dead rats … Jesus. He said, “He has a connection to this specific place.”

“How can we know that?”

He liked that it was asked with due consideration. That it was his theory didn’t mean it was tossed out the window. He’d had more than one partner and some of them wanted their ideas to be considered first and then to hog all the credit.

“Would you ever even guess this was here?” He tested a rickety step. “I wouldn’t. If all he wanted was to burn another body there are a shitload of other places that would work better and be easier.”

“Shitload?”

“The official departmental word for it. Try it.”

She didn’t. “Like where?”

He grimaced. “This is in the city, but it has some significance. He chose it. Took the trouble to buy a new table. That might be his big mistake. If we can track down what retailer sells that brand of table, maybe someone will remember him.”

“That’s a possibility and more than what we’ve had before now.” Ellie bent down and, with her gloved fingers, touched an old rag on the floor that could’ve been a piece of clothing. She glanced up at him and her hazel eyes were narrowed. “What are we dealing with here and what set it off? This is like wildfire. One after the other. He’s on a rampage.”

And it would be their asses if they didn’t stop him. He knew that already. His testicles were tightening in the crosshairs. Whether she knew it or not, the chief had stepped in for him already—shit, Internal Affairs had a hard-on for him ever since he’d strong-armed an arrest back when he was first promoted and put the kid in the hospital. There had been a few other complaints involving foul language and suspect harassment, to which, if he was allowed to reply, he might point out that the suspects were scumbags who deserved it. What was he supposed to do, send them flowers? Each day he went in, he expected to be called into the office and, given his background, he’d be one of the first to go if they decided to make changes in the department.

Look at what had happened to Carl Grasso. A former legend but busted down. Individual style was frowned upon in the homicide division. True, the guy had gone over the top—way over the top—but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t thought of once or twice himself.

“I know.” Jason couldn’t even imagine trying to glean clues from this decrepit space, all of it saturated and destroyed. The crime scene unit was going to have a ball making sense of any of it. He took in a breath cautiously, and exhaled. Everything stank of smoke and decay, and he was getting tired of that particular odor.

“It’s our job to figure out how to stop him,” she replied grimly.

“Lucky us,” he muttered.

*   *   *

“Let’s both sit
in on this one.”

Ellie glanced up from her computer screen. The report was late, but quite frankly, how in the hell was she supposed to keep up when someone was dying practically every single day? Even a trip to the morgue was preferable to all the paperwork lining up.

“It’s late,” she said, glancing at the clock. “After six. Surely Dr. Reubens is going to wait until tomorrow morning.” She’d been trying to catch up on reports, which was not exactly easy, and they had spent most of the day trying to find a witness or anyone else who might help them with the latest crime scene, which had been even harder.

“He just sent me a text and he’s not going to wait. It said specifically ‘gloves on, mask in place.’ Maybe he has plans tomorrow. God knows we’ve all worked quite a few days straight and it seems like that isn’t going to change until we get this guy.” Santiago ran his fingers through his blond curls in a manner that was becoming increasingly familiar. “Three bodies in five days? Anyway, I’m heading down and I thought it might not hurt if we both heard his notes during the procedure. We need something.”

The suggestion was somewhat of an olive branch and she recognized that. She still hadn’t told him about her visit to Cedarburg to see Michelle Tobias without him the night before, mostly because it hadn’t done anything to help with the case. Maybe it would pay off if Michelle ever called her with the name of the doctor who was giving her husband the drugs.

Ellie rose and clicked a key to shut down the screen. She’d text Bryce from the elevator to tell him she’d be late in case he’d planned something for dinner. There was no formal date. They’d left it at a vague maybe over whether or not she’d stop by. “Let’s go.”

As awful as it sounded, she was looking forward to how cold it would be in the morgue. The air-conditioning upstairs was not keeping up, and since the visit to the scene she felt as if she needed a long, cool shower.

In reality, the next hour did not help. Yes, the temperature was more acceptable, but autopsies weren’t her favorite pastime, and Reubens, with his schoolboy face and businesslike approach, wore a headset and dictated notes as if they were not in the room. Every medical examiner was different; she had no problem with the way he did his job, but sometimes the medical terminology made it hard to understand exactly what he was saying until he submitted his summary and opinion.

Like the other burnings, at the end, she got the impression there was no clear manner of death.

“This is your guy’s work again,” Reubens said, his pragmatic voice loud in the silence of the room after he was done. “No inhalation toxicity. The victim was dead first, and burned after.”

“Any idea of her age?” Santiago had been remarkably silent for him during the whole procedure. Not one rude comment. In fact, she was starting to think the morgue bothered him more than he cared to show.

“No uterus. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it is an indication that maybe she was at least in her middle age. No one would ever recognize her visually, you don’t have to be a physician to discern that, but her organs were fairly intact. I didn’t find any definitive sign of a cause of death.”

“Other than the crispy-as-hell body?” Santiago looked pointedly at the blackened corpse on the stainless steel table. “The fucker lit her on fire.”

Reubens didn’t quite smile, but it was in there somewhere, maybe a hint of humor in his blue eyes. “Yes, the ‘fucker’ lit her on fire, as you put it, Detective. It wasn’t what killed her, though. Like the others she was already dead. This one has all her teeth, so if you can come up with a name, we can probably figure out who she is.”

“But we aren’t going to,” Ellie said, thinking out loud. “We aren’t going to come up with a name. I can feel it. He’s just too damn smart. Usually
who
is what drives the investigation in a case, but this is about
why
.”