Charred (20 page)

“We got an interrupted 911 call,” the local sheriff said with a certain level of discomfort as he met them at the base of the steps and introduced himself. The look on his face indicated he didn’t deal with a double homicide, especially not like this one, on a usual basis. “We look at all of those, of course. I sent out a cruiser to check. It’s pretty quiet down here. The officer knocked and a man came to the door, apologizing. Said his kid was fooling around with the phone. That happens now and then, and the deputy said everything seemed fine, so he left.”

If Jason had felt a flicker of guilt for how the chief treated his partner it was gone and the case was back to being priority number one. Not to mention how she’d shaken off his hand halfway down the steps. “He see a car? If the answer is yes, tell me it was black.”

“You can ask him, we haven’t gotten that far … When I realized what this was I called DCI.”

The Division of Criminal Investigation supported all Wisconsin law enforcement. Especially in runaway situations like this one. Small departments especially need the extra expertise of detectives and labs with extensive resources.

The sheriff rubbed his jaw. “Then I called your chief too, in case there was a connection, and took my men out. The minute the fire department was able to get the situation under control, some of the deputies went in, but they weren’t all that unhappy when I pulled them out either. I’ve heard about the burnings on the news.” The sheriff, stolid and tall, with hair going white at the temples, waved at a persistent mosquito. The woods around them squeaked with frogs and cicadas. “And here I was feeling sorry for you guys and it knocks on my front door.”

“We’ve been feeling sorry for us too,” Ellie said, gazing at the blackened front of the house.

“If what you’ve been dealing with is half as bad—” He stopped, and his voice caught. “I used to be a state trooper. Worked accident scenes all the time. This is something else.”

Jason didn’t at all like the way the guy was shaking his head; it meant something particularly disturbing and he was already having trouble sleeping since this had all started. “Please tell me the kid that made the call isn’t dead in there. I can’t take the kids.”

“There’s no kid. Never was. The owner of the house was in his sixties, recently retired, and had just inherited the house from an aunt. He spends a lot of time in the Twin Cities at his place there according to the neighbors. He’s inside, dead from several gunshot wounds along with what appears to be a dismembered body. The good news is the fire department put this one out fast. One of the neighbors was driving by and saw the smoke.”

“He’s inside dead … then who answered the door?” Ellie had rallied, shaking off the rattled persona for a more composed, coplike demeanor. Her voice was sharp and cool.

“You tell me, Detective. Mr. Jarvis lived alone.”

*   *   *

The deputy proved
to be not as helpful as Ellie had hoped, obviously off balance since he’d actually talked to the man who had probably just butchered a body, chagrined he didn’t get the sense something was wrong, and also half-scared he’d probably looked a cold-blooded killer in the eye.

The description was vague. Thirties or even forties, mild-looking, pleasant and completely calm, light brown hair, apologetic smile, features blurred a little by the screen. Clothing? The officer thought baggy shorts and a T-shirt, nothing on it he could remember … could have been a Badgers logo.

Oh, yeah.
That
narrowed it down in the state of Wisconsin.

The only bright side was the young man thought he could finger him if he saw him again.

But only
thought
. And Metzger wanted a suspect in twenty-four hours.

She said to Santiago, “If the fire started later, and it obviously did, and our guy was here when the deputy came along, that means he parked somewhere.”

“It’s dry as dust, and I suspect rescue vehicles have run over everything of value, but we can try. Let DCI take care of it.” Her partner snapped on gloves.

Ellie was still processing this new development, her brain churning, in her gut trying to find a direction. They hadn’t been in the house yet, but at least the fire had been contained fairly quickly. She wished the interview with the deputy had given them more, but it was something more than a vague sighting of a faraway figure and a black car, a drugged-up unemployed man who had just lost his house, and a missing persons report that might, or might not, pan out.

“I know the scene is going to be like a Fourth of July hog-shit contest from the way everyone is acting, but let’s get to it, shall we?”

Ellie turned to look at Santiago, even under the circumstances a small hint of amusement surfacing. “A what?”

“Shit contest. You know, where you pick up a piece and see who can chuck it the farthest? God, MacIntosh, where did you grow up?”

She ducked under the tape, his face a flash in the revolving lights. “Not where you did, evidently,” she muttered. “That’s what you did for entertainment?”

“It depended on where I was.”

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer and he was right. It was personal again and she didn’t want personal. Instead he said, “Metzger gets frustrated. Ignore it. All you can do is the job to the best of your ability.”

It was unbelievable, but maybe she owed the smug, smartass son of a bitch.

There had been a moment back there when she wasn’t sure she understood just how to respond to her boss, especially the implied failure to deliver. Coupled with the recent piece on the news Bryce had told her about, she was feeling the pinch.

This would be their fourth homicide scene and included two victims.

No wonder Metzger was tensed up.

She was a little tense too.

“I guess let’s see what we’ve got.” Her voice was irritatingly uneven. The porch was wide and not that clean, especially now after firemen and other personnel had tramped across it, muddy footprints everywhere. Not only was it wet and streaked with soot, but there were more than a few warped boards and a rickety swing suspended from a ceiling she was pretty sure she wouldn’t trust
before
the fire. A dead potted plant, probably watered for the first time all summer from the hose spray to put the blaze down, sat by the door.

“Inside.” The deputy who opened the old-fashioned door for them looked a little green. He was young, fresh-faced, obviously shaken. “Better you than me.”

That wasn’t promising.

A double murder? Ellie had hoped she would never see one again. She’d worked one actually not that long ago up north, and she’d just as soon skip a repeat performance. “One of the victims is gunshot?”

He turned to her and nodded, his smile sickly. “Two to the chest. The other body is in tiny little pieces, Detective. All on the table, just for you. I swear, in case you have any idea about me helping, if I have to go in there again, I’ll maybe lose it and contaminate the scene. Almost happened the first time. I can handle a lot but … dear God.”

That was an aberration. The table smacked of a familiar scenario, but the body in pieces?

“Something happened here,” Santiago said tersely. “Holy crap, something
really
different happened here. We needed this.”

Yeah, right, we need two more bodies?

“What we need is for him to take a day off and let us work the cases,” she muttered.

“He doesn’t shoot them, and he doesn’t cut them up usually. I’d say he didn’t expect the old man.”

“Let’s go see what our victims can tell us.”

The answer to her question was particularly gruesome, and this hadn’t been the most delightful case from the very beginning.

The deputy was entirely right.

It was … indescribable. Both bodies were in the kitchen. The table was an old wooden rectangle, sturdy enough that though it had burned, it hadn’t been entirely destroyed either. The body was like charred bits on a grill, the dismembered pieces a collage, the mosaic arranged in human form. It sat near the remains of a hutch with melted glass and shattered dishes, and old, tired curtains hanging sopping wet at the broken windows, with blackened holes in the fabric that had marred tiny lilac flowers.

It was truly grotesque. She didn’t blame the deputy. She was shaken too. Those grisly bits …
God
.

However, there wasn’t time to be squeamish.

Some things never changed. The place was soaked in stinking water; the fire had destroyed a good deal of it, but not the other body.

The elderly man was different, lying on the worn rug by the back door. He was shot twice in the chest, one high and one low just above the abdomen, glazed eyes open, his expression still vaguely surprised, even in death. He wore flannel pajama pants, even in summer, and a soiled shirt, but that could have been from the fire. It looked to her like he’d been trying to go out the back of the house but was caught before he could manage it.

Santiago was right. This was the anomaly they needed.

“He
was
interrupted.” She stood in the doorway, waiting for the crime scene techs to arrive, speculating. “He doesn’t shoot people, he kills them some other way and burns them. What we need is to find out what happened
here
.”

Santiago was not nearly as affected, or so it seemed. He surveyed the display as if he was viewing a museum exhibit, and eventually nodded. “Different. Agreed. I don’t think he cared so much about the others, but he doesn’t want us to identify this one. Something about that resonates with me. The old man was just home at the wrong time. Our killer thought he’d be over in Saint Paul or something. The fire didn’t burn like it was supposed to, probably because of the deputy who knocked on the door. He was in a hurry, so he got sloppy.”

“He must have expected it at least a little. He came prepared.” Ellie went to look again at the old man, going down on her knees by the body. “He used a weapon that I suspect was a .38, but we’ll have to have that confirmed by forensic evidence. Decent-sized holes, both of them. Not a big gun, not a small one. Same weapon for sure.”

“Maybe a .45.” Santiago took one gloved hand and shifted the shooting victim, whose vacant stare was disconcerting, so it was a relief. “Might be. I don’t know if that will tell us anything. He must have picked up the casings, the fucker. We could’ve used those.”

“Inconsiderate of him,” she said dryly. “I couldn’t agree more. What else do you see?”

“Other than the dismembered body over there?” He showed true emotion for just a second, a twitch of a muscle in his face, his composure cracking only for a moment. “That’s not enough? Okay, besides the usual filthy contaminated crime scene no one could decipher even if there were bloodhounds and cameras and other forms of documentation, I am going to say that someone broke in here with the intention of dumping body parts on that table and burning the place down, and the owner woke up and came downstairs. Startled, our killer shot his saggy old ass, and that was the end of it. Body bits dumped, fire started.”

As insensitive as that recital might be, it was also probably accurate. They both stood up, looking at each other.

Fine. Her wheels were turning too.

“He had time for the 911 call.”

Santiago followed along her train of thought, indicating the doorway. “Didn’t take him down with the first shot. Old man crawled to the back, grabbed the phone, pushed the buttons … see how close he is to the door? I’m thinking The Burner was bringing in the body from his car when he realized Jarvis wasn’t where he fell. He was a little panicked, he doesn’t usually shoot people, and so he finds him here”—he pointed at the lax form on the floor—“and shoots him again. Sees the phone in the old man’s hand and realizes he’s fucked. That’s why he’s prepared for the deputy, story in place, composed, and he waits to start the fire until the officer is gone.”

“I can see that,” she said slowly. She could, watching Santiago roam around the destruction of the kitchen, his face tense, his mind obviously turned inward.

“He’s got some sort of timetable, we’ve been getting that picture, but the
locations
are the key. Did he live here once? I mean, think about it. He brought the body and he didn’t expect the old guy. The murder was already done. This is about the
house
.”

Ellie watched a piece of soggy curtain move in the breeze, which happened to be hot and stale but welcome just the same. “Okay. Okay … maybe that’s it. We keep looking at the victims when we should be pursuing other venues.” She couldn’t stand to look at the table, so she walked toward the broken window. “I can buy that. He kills the victims, but he burns the houses. Give me a why.”

Maybe Metzger was right. Maybe her partner was a good cop. He’d been able to get the scene a lot faster than she would, like he was living it.

He turned. “Why what?”

“Why is he doing it this way? He’s taking a lot of chances.”

“How the fuck would I know, but good question.”

“We need that. We need a why. Not a how. That’s obvious to the both of us. If you want to commit this sort of crime, you can figure out how, it’s just that most people don’t want to work that hard…”

“Damn straight. Murder is hard work.”

She stared at her partner, then glanced at the thing on the burned table, and then at the dead man in front of them. She was with Metzger. Twenty-four hours might not happen, but the sooner the better.

Santiago agreed. She knew he did. They dealt with it differently, but they had the same demons. Hell, they were
assigned
the same demons.

“So is solving one. Let’s get to it,” she said with cool decisiveness. “Thanks to my last case, I know someone who might be able to help us.”

Chapter 17

Before now there were several truths I’d denied myself.

There is no such thing as usual—that’s an absurd concept I don’t think I ever really had, but I confess that, in the realm of reasonably normal, I thought I fit right in. I still might, but doubts were starting to gather, like quicksilver elusive shadows in the corner of my mind, by the time I was ten years old.