Smoke Screen (24 page)

“Somebody’s going to connect the dots, George. You, Fordyce, Pat Wickham, Jay, Suzi Monroe, me, Britt Shelley.”

“I was about to ring Jay’s doorbell when I saw them through the window.”

“Somebody’s going to make that connection, George, and the common thread is the fire.”

“Your girl’s legs were draped over the arms of a chair, and Jay was on his knees, his face buried in her pussy, and she was loving it.”

“This cast of characters originated with the
fire.”

Raley said it loud enough to draw attention to them and halt the conversations taking place nearby. George, his face suffused with heat, looked around, smiling, but his worry of being overheard was apparent.

In that moment of suspended animation, the hearse pulled away. Raley and George, like the others, solemnly watched its slow progress down the hill. No one moved or said anything until it turned at the end of the lane and disappeared behind a dense hedge of evergreens, then a collective sigh of relief could be heard among the last of the mourners.

George mumbled, “Well, that’s that.”

“You wish.” Raley turned back to George and thumped him softly in the chest. “You’d better go have that drink, George. Have two. I think you need them.” Then he smiled. “See you around.”

“But if he’s any judge of smiles at all,” Raley told Britt an hour later, “he’ll know mine wasn’t for grins.”

“I’ve seen that smile.” She dunked a French fry into a puddle of ketchup. “It’s wicked.”

“Wicked?”

“Villainous. Hungry. Wolfish.”

Raley scoffed. “I don’t think any of those descriptions fit me. Especially now that I’ve shaved off my beard.”

“They fit you
more
without the beard. The jaw, the eyes. Definitely lupine.”

He had returned to the motor court, bringing with him, along with a six-pack of Diet Coke and a can of Lysol spray, a sack of cheeseburgers and fries with a side order of fried shrimp, and two milk shakes. In the amount of time it had taken him to pull his shirttail from the waistband of his trousers and toe off his shoes, Britt had had the food unwrapped and on the table. They’d dug in.

While they ate, he recounted his conversation with George McGowan, trying to be as precise as possible. Britt didn’t allow anything to be glossed over or summarized. She demanded elaboration and details.

“Is she gorgeous?” she asked now.

“Miranda?”

She smiled wryly. “I see you didn’t have to pause and think about who I meant.”

“Yes. Gorgeous.”

“I’ve only seen pictures of her. Did Jay…you know?”

He raised one shoulder. “Maybe. Probably. Everybody else has.”

Britt stopped chewing, the unasked question evident in her expression.

He wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “The first time Miranda caught my eye, she was a high school cheerleader in a short skirt, doing high kicks on the sidelines. Jailbait. By the time she was old enough, I was away at school, and after that I was with Hallie.”

“I see. Lousy timing and lack of opportunity.”

He thought,
Let her wonder,
and reached for his milk shake. He took a long pull on the straw, then for the next several minutes they ate in silence.

“Raley?” When he looked across at her, her gaze was soft, earnest. “How did you feel? During the service, I mean. How was it for you, coming to grips with Jay’s death?”

“You’re not going to say the word
closure,
are you?”

She frowned at that. “Despite what he’d done to you, he was your oldest friend. Did you feel a loss? Were you able to mourn?”

He popped a shrimp into his mouth. “Always the interviewer, aren’t you?”

She yanked her head back as though he’d slapped her. Then she tossed down her last French fry and began gathering up the trash, stuffing it into the sack. “Forget it. I thought you might be feeling some conflicting emotions and would appreciate a sounding board to help you sort them out. My mistake.”

She moved back her chair and stood up. Raley caught her arm. “Okay, sorry.”

She pulled her arm from his grasp. “You’re still looking for an ulterior motive in everything I say and do. I thought we were past that.”

“I may never be past that.”

Angrily, she held his gaze for several moments, then expelled a long breath, her shoulders relaxing. “I deserve your mistrust, I guess. But I honestly thought you might want to talk about you and Jay.”

He hesitated, then with a small motion of his head, invited her to sit back down, which she did. He leaned back in the chair, which was much too small for his tall frame, and stretched his legs out in front of him. “You’re not a reporter for nothing, and I mean that as a compliment. Your instincts are excellent. Your questions about the funeral struck a nerve. That’s why I said what I did.”

He shot her a quick glance but found it difficult to look her in the eye while he verbalized these particular thoughts, so he focused on the happy face printed on the cup of his milk shake. “Jay was one of those people you make excuses for. Excuses to yourself.”

“How do you mean?”

“We’d make plans. To go to a ball game. To water-ski. Whatever. He’d arrive an hour late. I’d be furious. He’d be apologetic and penitent. ‘You have every right to be sore,’ he’d say. And even though I did have every right to be mad as hell, I’d let it go. I’d excuse him.

“He’d borrow my car and return it with an empty gas tank. I’d be steamed, but I’d never say anything. We’d be out to dinner. He’d let me pick up the check, saying he would get it the next time, but ‘next time’ never came. It wasn’t a matter of money. That’s not what I resented. It was his taking for granted that I’d pay and never make an issue of it.

“He treated all his friends like that. With a casual disregard that would piss people off if it was anybody else besides Jay.” He sliced the air with the back of his hand. “No matter what the offense, people excused him, saying, ‘That’s just Jay.’

“But—and that’s a big word here—he also had a talent for cheering you up when you were having a crummy day. He could get you to laugh when you felt like crushing something. He was the life of the party. He was never in a bad mood. He was affectionate and fun. That’s why people were drawn to him. Everybody wanted to be near Jay, inside his energy field. Because it was electric and exciting. The air around him crackled. From the outside looking in, it seemed like he had a thousand friends.”

He paused and thoughtfully uncrossed his ankles, pulling his legs in and setting his elbows on his thighs, leaning forward. “But I wonder. Did he have friends, or just acquaintances he could manipulate and get away with it? Was he a friend, or a man who could use you with such finesse you didn’t even realize you were being used?”

He paused a moment, then said, “Looking at his casket today, I had to wonder if
anything
he had ever said to me, in our entire lives, was honest and real. When I was down or in doubt and he doled out encouragement, was it just so much rhetoric? When I shared my ambitions and dreams, was he bored? Secretly laughing up his sleeve? I think maybe his special gift was just knowing the right thing to say and when to say it, to make you think he was your friend.”

He sighed. “Did I feel a loss? Yeah, I did. I thought my friendship with Jay ended five years ago. Today I realized that it had never existed. We’d never had a true friendship. That’s what I mourned.” Feeling slightly embarrassed over the sentimentality, he slapped his thighs lightly and stood up. “Finished?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes. Thank you. It was delicious.”

He slipped on his sneakers and carried the debris to a trash can outside so as not to stink up their small quarters. As he headed back toward the cottage, he questioned whether or not to tell Britt about what had happened after he parted company with George McGowan. She deserved to know, but did she need to be any more frightened than she already was?

He scanned the parking lot, but there was only one other car parked outside a cabin, and it had been there when they checked in. He went back inside, making certain the door was locked and the dead bolt secured.

He turned to find Britt facing him squarely, hands on her hips. “When are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re walking around with that cannon tucked into your waistband.” She lifted his shirttail and pointed at the pistol grip. “Tell me why you got up to look out the window twice while we were eating. Why—”

“They were at the funeral.”

“Who?”

“Butch and Sundance. The two men who came to the cabin.”

She backed up until her knees hit the edge of the bed, then plopped down on it. “Did they see you?”

“Yes, but I pretended not to recognize them.”

“What happened?”

He’d left George looking ready to implode. Going down the incline toward his car, he’d spotted the maroon sedan out of the corner of his eye. He tried not to give any indication that he recognized the car or the man sitting behind the wheel, although he was sure it was the same man who’d searched his cabin. He was still wearing the pale blue shirt. There was another man in the passenger seat, and although Raley had never got a good look at him, he saw that he was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and had to assume it was the man who’d gone through his truck.

He had no choice but to drive away in the sedan he’d recently purchased for the express purpose of getting rid of an identifiable vehicle. “A wasted thirty-five hundred dollars, asshole.” Covertly he shot the finger at the driver of the maroon sedan.

He nosed his way into the line of cars leaving the funeral and was glad to see that the maroon sedan had to wait for another opening in the stream, which didn’t come until six more cars had passed. When Raley reached the exit, he turned onto the thoroughfare, going in the direction opposite from the motor court where he and Britt were registered. He drove as fast as he dared without risking getting stopped for speeding.

Nevertheless, the maroon sedan caught up with him at the second traffic light. It remained in his rearview mirror for the next few blocks, keeping several cars between them but matching Raley’s speed and shifting lanes whenever he did.

It took him five miles in heavy traffic to finally shake the other vehicle, but he couldn’t be certain that Butch didn’t have someone else bird-dogging him. He continued to weave through traffic on the boulevards, got on and off the expressway several times, and doubled back on his route so many times he didn’t think he could possibly have been followed.

That was what he told Britt now, and wished his voice held more conviction. “I think I evaded them, but I can’t be sure.”

“We won’t know until someone comes barging through the door, guns blazing.”

“I’ve got a gun, too.”

That didn’t seem to console her all that much. “You’re not always here, Raley. And now that they’ve seen the new car, they know what we’re driving.”

“I drove into a parking garage at the hospital and switched license plates with a minivan, then I got a felt marker and made an eight out of a three. And I chose this car because there are a lot of boxy gray sedans similar to it. So it’ll be hard for them to track us.”

“They’ve done okay so far.”

She was right, so he didn’t insult her with a lame contradiction. “You could still turn yourself in.”

“Not until I’m better equipped, ready to fight fire with fire. So to speak.” Reaching behind her, she took several copied documents off the bed, where she had obviously been reading them during his absence.

“You took pains to hide all this stuff. Why?”

“I wanted to be sure a copy of the original records existed. I was afraid that, after I left the department, they would be doctored or accidentally-on-purpose misplaced, never to be found.”

“When you were stonewalled by Jay, what specifically were you investigating?”

“The seven victims.”

“According to these reports, one was a file clerk.”

“Her body was found in a stairwell. She was trapped there when the ceiling collapsed. Cause of death, she was crushed, but she probably would have died of smoke inhalation anyway.”

“The jailer.”

“Was rescued but died two days later of burns and smoke inhalation. It wasn’t a merciful death,” Raley said grimly.

“Five prisoners died in the holding cell.”

“Four
died in the holding cell. But there was a fifth detainee who also died.”

She glanced down at the sheets of paper in her hand. “You’ve circled a name in red.”

“Cleveland Jones.”

C
LEVELAND
J
ONES WAS IN A SMALL, ENCLOSED OFFICE WITH
no window, not even in the door. It was being used that day as an interrogation room,” Raley said.

“Why that day?”

“Curious, isn’t it? Especially when there were two other bona fide interrogation rooms. Anyway, it’s believed that he set the fire.”

“By igniting the contents of a wastebasket. You said it wasn’t that simple.”

“It wasn’t. As a seasoned inspector, Brunner knew that, too. Ordinarily, the trash can fire would have burned itself out in a matter of minutes, when all the combustibles were consumed. But this trash can was placed near an intake air vent. The grille was missing and no telling for how long.”

“I only saw the building as a pile of charred rubble,” she said. “But I understand that it was old. The department was mere months away from moving into new headquarters.”

“That’s right. The building was overcrowded, outdated, and in need of extensive repair. The insulation was old. There were holes in the ductwork. Old wood beams formed the infrastructure, and many were rotted. The wiring was faulty. It had a sprinkler system, but it was an antique, insufficient and unreliable on its best day. The day of the fire, it failed completely.

“But no one wanted to spend money on extensive repairs when the department would soon be vacating the place for the new facility. Repairs that were absolutely necessary were done hastily and sloppily. Band-Aids put on a massive hemorrhage. Unfortunately, all this was discovered during our inspection after the fire, not before. Even dust is flammable, and it had been accumulating in the structure since the turn of the last century. It was a disaster waiting to happen.”

“When the small trash can flame was sucked into the wall through the intake vent…”

Raley made a motion with his hands, indicating ignition. “It had a draft pulling it upward. It had more than enough flammable material and virtually nothing to impede its path through the walls. From the first spark, it was deadly.”

“Seven people,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

“Six.”

She gave him a sharp look. “What?”

“Six. Cleveland Jones didn’t die in the fire. He was dead before it started.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “How do you know?”

“Did you come across Jones’s autopsy report?”

“I did, yes. It’s here somewhere.” She shuffled through the documents scattered across the bed until she found that report and handed it to him. “It says his body was found on the floor of that locked room, curled inward, hands under the chin.”

“Which is typical. As a burning body dehydrates, the muscles contract and pull it into a fetal-like position. That doesn’t mean the victim burned to death. Cleveland Jones didn’t. His cause of death was blunt trauma to the head.”

He flipped over a few pages of the autopsy report to a page on which there was a diagram of a human male body. He pointed to the head, where the coroner had made markings. “Skull fractures. Both significant.”

Britt read out loud what the coroner had written. “Fatal.” She looked up at Raley. “A falling beam? Collapsing ceiling?”

He shook his head. “If that was the case, the fire would have been raging for some time. Jones’s lungs would have shown significant soot and smoke inhalation. There would have been a high level of carbon monoxide.” He held up the report. “That’s not what the ME found. As soon as he made these determinations, he called Brunner and told him that one of the victims was dead before the fire started. Brunner asked me to inform detectives that they had a possible homicide. I was to work with them on the investigation. That’s what I was doing when Jay called to invite me to his party.”

She exhaled deeply, readily seeing the import of that.

“As soon as I started asking questions about Jones and his arrest, I began to get the runaround. Jay claimed not to remember the details of Jones’s arrest. It wasn’t his case, he said, but he promised to find out what he could.

“Keep in mind that the PD was in chaos. Construction on the new building was still months away from completion, so they were working out of temporary headquarters. Jay’s procrastination made sense. Now, I see it as avoidance. He didn’t want me to know anything about Cleveland Jones, other than that he was the firebug. And that’s another thing. Jones had committed a wide range of crimes, but arson wasn’t one of them. I learned that from his rap sheet, which I had to obtain from the state.”

Tiredly, he rolled his shoulders. He was tempted to save some of this until tomorrow, but he knew Britt wouldn’t let him stop until she had the whole story, so he continued. “After repeated calls, Jay finally sent me a message through a PD secretary, telling me that Jones’s blows to the head had been sustained
prior
to his arrest. The arresting officers—never identified—didn’t realize how serious the injuries were until Jones began behaving irrationally while under interrogation.

“He was left alone while arrangements were being made to transfer him to the hospital. Apparently that’s when he started the fire. Jay’s message went on to say that he was sorry, that was all he knew, but he was checking into it and when he had further details he would get back to me. He didn’t, of course.”

“What about Brunner? After you were ousted, didn’t he pursue the matter of Jones’s death?”

“In the final report, he went with Jay’s explanation. The paperwork regarding Cleveland Jones’s arrest had been destroyed in the flames, so there was no documentation, but Jay was a hero, so Brunner didn’t doubt his word. You and the other media were so swept up in my story, so busy extolling the heroes, that the small footnote about Jones faded into obscurity. And anyway, he was the arsonist who’d caused death and destruction. Who cared how he’d died?”

“Brunner might now. If you went to him—”

“Can’t. He died. About six months after the fire. Cardiac arrest.”

“Oh.”

“In a way I’m glad he won’t be here to experience the shakedown. Whatever form it ultimately takes, a lot of blame would fall on him. I don’t think he was corrupt. A bit tired and lazy, maybe. Or just unwilling to rock the boat.”

She thought this over for several seconds, then said, “What about Cleveland Jones’s family?”

“A father. I called him, hoping to get some background information. The guy was hostile, said he didn’t want to talk about his wayward son. I stayed after him and finally wore him down. He agreed to meet with me. But when I got to his place, he wasn’t there. I went back several times. Called. Never could contact him again.”

“You know no more details than you did the night you went to the party.”

“No.”

“Did you ever learn why Jones was arrested?”

“Assault. Conveniently, no one could remember the nature of his crime, or where it was committed, or what time of day he was brought into the station. Amid all this hazy information, there was one fact of which everyone was absolutely certain: Jones’s fatal head injuries hadn’t been inflicted by anyone within the CPD.”

“Hmm. Just a tad suspicious.”

“You think?”

“Jay promised he’d have the arrest report to you by Monday.”

“It was an easy promise for him to make. He knew that by Sunday morning I’d have a dead girl in bed with me.”

He went to the window and parted the faded orange curtains, which matched the ugly carpet. Satisfied that no one was about to ambush them, he turned back into the room. “There was another unanswered question, and it was a dilly. How did Jones start the fire? With what? When he was arrested, his pockets would have been emptied, right?”

She shrugged. “He sneaked something past.”

“I’d buy that, except that no accelerants were found in that room.”

“They would have burned up.”

“Gasoline, kerosene leak into cracks and corners. It would have been detected even in that devastation. Anyway, Jones couldn’t have carted a gas can in there.”

“Matchbook?” she suggested. “Something that small would have been easy for him to conceal. In his sock or something. He could have lit one match, then thrown the book of them into the trash can, maybe saving some to light debris inside the air vent.”

Long before she finished, he was shaking his head. “No silica. It’s a compound found on match heads. It can withstand a fire. There was none.”

“So it was never determined exactly what was used to ignite the matter in the wastebasket?”

Facetiously he replied, “I suppose Jones could have rubbed two sticks together. Besides that, how did he light the fire, and see to it that it spread into the building, without inhaling any smoke? But for the sake of argument, let’s say he did. What did he hope to accomplish?”

“Escape?”

“Okay. That’s reasonable. But he’d been through this process dozens of times. He was only twenty-one, but he was a veteran criminal. He would have known that he would be locked inside that room. Seems really stupid, doesn’t it, to set a fire in a room where he’d be trapped?”

“If he was suffering from a skull fracture and behaving irrationally—”

“Assuming that much is true.”

“He could have been trying to commit suicide.”

“A tough guy like that?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. And who, even someone with a bone fragment short-circuiting his brain, would condemn himself to such a horrible death?”

“Maybe he only wanted to scare people,” she said. “He didn’t realize that, once the fire was inside the walls, it could spread that quickly. It was a prank, or the desperate act of an irrational man, that went haywire.”

“That still doesn’t explain the absence of smoke in his airways,” he argued. “But the biggest mystery of this whole thing is Jay’s stonewalling. He loved being in the spotlight, Britt. You know that. He was ambitious, and he had high goals. He freely admitted that he wanted to work his way up to chief of police. So why wouldn’t he want to be in the thick of the investigation, especially when the ME determined that one of the casualties was a possible murder?”

He began to pace. “Jay was a homicide detective. He should have been all over that unexpected development. The investigation would have kept him in the news, made his celebrity star shine even brighter. Instead, he distanced himself from it and avoided involvement. Very unlike Jay.”

“Very.”

“I think he stayed at arm’s length of the investigation because he feared the outcome. He was afraid it would be ruinous to either him or one of his buddies.”

“You were his buddy, too, Raley.”

“But I wasn’t in on the crime.” He stopped pacing and looked directly at her. “My gut tells me that our four heroes were covering up something having to do with Cleveland Jones, specifically the way he died. The fire was set so no one would ever know what took place in that room. That’s what Jay was going to confess to you at The Wheelhouse.”

She didn’t rush to either dispute him or agree, but held his stare, her brow furrowed with contemplation. After several long moments, she looked away, releasing a long breath. “You think someone killed him in that room.”

“Yes, I do. Do you believe I’m right?”

Her eyes moved back to him. “More than I believe you’re wrong. Everything points to it. Why would they go to such lengths to cover up anything less? But how do we prove it? How do we prove it and remain alive?”

“I’m not sure we can.”

She was still sitting on the edge of the bed, her face turned up to him. He could tell that the candid statement had taken her aback. He’d outlined the problem; she’d expected him to have ideas on how to solve it.

He had an intense but misplaced urge to reach down and touch her cheek, but he restrained it. After holding her gaze for a long moment, he said, “Britt, listen to me now, and listen good. You saw how I live. I’ve got nothing to lose. No career, no possessions or relationship…no nothing. But you’ve got everything going for you. You’re on the brink of a career breakthrough.”

“What are you saying?”

“Turn yourself in.”

“To Clark and Javier?”

“To the FBI.”

Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She actually smiled. “I’ll admit, I’ve considered it. But murder is a state offense. The FBI would be reluctant to touch it. They don’t like interfering with local and state agencies unless they’re invited to, and the chances of that happening in this case are slim to none. Within hours, I’d be right back with Clark and Javier, and would look even more desperate than I already do. Not to mention how chapped they’d be that I’d gone over their heads.”

“You could tell them where to find your car.”

“But could I prove I was forced off the road?”

“Did the guys ram your bumper?”

“No.”

“Bump against your fender enough to scrape paint?”

“I don’t think so. Near misses, but—”

“No metal-to-metal contact?”

She shook her head. “Clark and Javier, probably even the FBI, would think I’d staged it to appear innocent.”

“Shit. That only goes to show how good Butch and Sundance are.” He plowed his fingers through his hair and, after a litany of curses, said stubbornly, “You can’t be convicted of murdering Jay. Not without more solid evidence than they’ve got.”

“Maybe not, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling. Besides, what do you think a murder trial would do to my career? Not to mention my checking account. Retaining a good defense attorney would deplete my savings in about a week and a half. After the trial, I’d have an enormous debt. Even if I was acquitted, I would have lost a year of my life defending myself, and who would hire me with that taint on my record?

“Just like you, Raley, the moment I woke up with Jay, the life I had lived to that point was over. They used me, just like they used Suzi Monroe to get to you. I’m lucky they kept me alive, a decision which they obviously regret now. I had a good thing going, and they robbed me of it. So, not only do I want the story, and want to see justice done, but I want my payback from these bastards.”

Secretly he admired the fire he saw in her eyes, but he was still afraid for her. Afraid for them both. “Sleep on it.”

“I don’t need to.”