Skies of Ash E-Book

Rachel Howzell Hall

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Los Angeles homicide detective Elouise "Lou" Norton arrives at the scene of a tragic house fire, to find the bodies of a mother and two children. Left behind is grieving husband Christopher Chatman. Unless, of course, he's the one who killed them. Or was the fire sparked by a serial arsonist known as The Burning Man? Searching for justice through the ashes of a picture-perfect family, Lou doesn't know if she will catch an arsonist or be burned ...

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for the Elouise Norton Novels

Also by Rachel Howzell Hall

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

PRAISE FOR THE ELOUISE NORTON NOVELS

“Readers have met with gimlet-eyed gumshoes, dead-eyed tough guys and doe-eyed femme fatales. But they’ve never met anybody quite like Hall.”

The Times

“Lou Norton is a black female cop worthy of following in Philip Marlowe’s footsteps down the mean streets of LA.”

The Telegraph

“A racially explosive Los Angeles provides the backdrop for this exceptional crime novel… Dead-on dialogue and atmospheric details.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A riveting exploration of crime and its repercussions in the poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles… Land of Shadows proves that Hall is a star at weaving fast-paced, layered, and gripping stories.”

Huffington Post

“Lou is a good cop and fun to watch—great instincts, a no-nonsense interviewing style, and uncompromising in her efforts to catch the bad guy. She’s a well-rounded character who can keep her sense of humor even when her work hits painfully close to home.”

Booklist

“The story shines… a welcome addition for collections seeking more diverse characters in the mystery genre.”

Library Journal

“Explosive debut thriller… it will blow your socks off! Racks up the tension right from the off and simply doesn’t slow down.”

Books Monthly

“A fresh voice in crime fiction. Fast, funny, heartbreaking and wise… Elouise Norton is the best new character you’ll meet this year.”

Lee Child,New York Times bestselling author

“Spellbinding. Gritty. Original, complex, profound, and riveting. This is a voice you have never heard—and will be unable to forget. Prepare to be blown away.”

Hank Phillippi Ryan, Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author

“Intense, gritty and absolutely riveting, Land of Shadows took my breath away. A phenomenal book I’m recommending far and wide.”

Hilary Davidson, Anthony Award-winning author

“A hardhitting tale of a modern, complex Los Angeles. Well-written and deftly paced.”

Gary Phillips, author of Warlord of Willow Ridge

“Hall has written a first class police procedural which has the potential to shoot up the bestseller lists.”

Crime Fiction Lover

“[Hall] writes with skill and flair. Her first novel exhibits a keen sense of pace and place, and an equally keen sense of what makes her wide and varied cast of characters tick.”

Mystery Scene Magazine

“It’s the most addictive book I’ve read this year, and I’m already viewing it as a likely contender for my best books of the year, it’s simply that good… an amazing novel.”

Life of Crime

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM RACHEL HOWZELL HALL AND TITAN BOOKS

Land of Shadows

Trail of Echoes (May 2016)

SKIES OF ASH Print edition ISBN: 9781783292745 E-book edition ISBN: 9781783292752

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 2015 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2015 by Rachel Howzell Hall. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For Maya, my blue-sky girl

I’m all done with hating you. It’s all washed out of me. I hate people hard, but I don’t hate them very long.

RAYMOND CHANDLER, The Lady in the Lake

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11

1

I TOOK GREG BACK THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE HE SAID HE LOVED ME.

I took Greg back the second time because my heart still ring-a-dinged every time he touched me.

I took Greg back the last time because my sister’s bones had been discovered after twenty-five years and my heart and head had become tangled messes and I needed him to fix me.

And so, on this Tuesday morning, with my blood racing and my heart pounding, I was ready to take him back in every way.

Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled out that rubber.

Copper-colored sunlight crawled across our bed as my beloved of eleven years gawked at me. His pecan-colored eyes, the color of that copper sunlight in happy times, now darkened into skies of tornado and flash-flood warnings. He went stiff with my touch (and not the good stiff) and gaped at the silver-foil square between my fingers. “It’s been six months, Lou. You still don’t…?” His voice softened like the rest of him.

I flinched and opened my mouth to say, “Hell no, I don’t trust you. You just ended your fling with what’s-her-face six months ago, so are you kidding me with that question?”

But I didn’t say that. Instead, I waggled the condom as playfully as a woman could waggle a condom at her husband. “Yes or no?” Then, I kissed his lips. “Yes?”

His jaw clenched.

So… not a yes.

The telephone rang from the nightstand. Caller ID droned, “Rodriguez, Zak Rodriguez.” Another man was calling me.

“Lou,” Greg barked, “ignore it.”

“Can’t,” I choked. “I’m back on call.”

Greg rolled away from me and clenched his body into a tight bronze ball.

I sat up in bed. “We spent all Sunday and yesterday together. No dead bodies. No zombies. Nobody but us for two days. That’s a record, right?”

No response from him—which was a response.

The phone rang.

And Greg pouted.

And whatever murder my boss had chosen for me kept going unsolved.

I slung the condom toward the bathroom, then grabbed the receiver. “Morning, L.T.”

Greg climbed out of bed with his wide shoulders hunched high and his bare ass tight as a clam. He muttered, “Fuck this,” then stomped to the bathroom and slammed the door.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Lieutenant Rodriguez cracked.

I tugged at my earlobe. “Same as it ever was.”

“So,” he said, “there’s been a house fire in Baldwin Hills.”

“Been a lot of house fires in Baldwin Hills.”

“This one has bodies.”

“Oh dear.”

“Strange circumstances surrounding those bodies,” he added. “In the 911 call, a female occupant’s heard saying, ‘Something, something kill me.’ And then, there’s a cough. And then, there’s nothin’.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Kill me? You win. Strange circumstances. Hence your call to me on this beautiful Tuesday morning.”

“And with all the fires in the neighborhood lately,” he said, “and budget cuts, Arson is happy to throw us a bone.”

Just moments ago, I’d had a bone in my possession but had gambled it away because of my silly fear of herpes.

As soon as I hung up with my boss, the phone rang again.

Caller ID said, “Taggert, Colin Taggert.”

Another man calling.

“So you startin’ fires just to see me again?” Colin said.

“Yep. I’m hoping a beam drops on your head. Maybe then I’ll get a good partner.”

“Brought you coffee,” he said, “but you need to bust your ass.”

I threw off the comforter and hopped out of bed. “Getting dressed now.”

As my partner talked about a woman he had picked up in the coffee shop, I pushed aside the gauzy window curtain and peeked out.

The wet asphalt twinkled with sunlight. The silver collar on the beagle in the yard across the street twinkled with sunlight. The chrome on the neighbor’s VW Bug twinkled with sunlight. Everything and its mother twinkled with sunlight except for the crap in my frigid bedroom.

Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled out that rubber.

The bathroom door opened.

Greg stepped out wearing black boxer briefs. Even in his midthirties, he still rocked hard abs, that firm ass, and those eyes—how I loved those eyes.

“…thinks possible murder, with the arson to cover it up,” Colin was saying. “You’re not talking. Mr. Norton hoverin’ and glarin’ at me through the phone?”

“Yeah,” I said. “See you over there.” I tossed the phone on the bed.

Greg, arms crossed, leaned against the dresser. “That Colin?”

I found my nightshirt in the sheets and slipped it over my head.

Greg plucked the rubber from the carpet. “This is crazy, Lou. But I get it. I messed up. Again. And I can’t apologize enough for that.” He forced himself to meet my eyes. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go to the doctor and have myself checked out.” He dropped the condom on the dresser. “No problem. It’s all good.”

A kiss, a hug, and ten minutes later I was dressed in heavy work boots, a blue long-sleeved department T-shirt and jeans. And from the closet shelf, I retrieved my Glock from its gun case.

Downstairs, our living room smelled of forest—we had purchased a Christmas tree on Sunday, but the seven-foot noble pine still sat there, naked.

“Maybe we can decorate the tree tonight,” I suggested.

“Probably have to work late,” Greg said. “You can start, though.”

I froze—who decorates a tree alone?—then grabbed my bag from the couch.

On the way to the garage, we walked past his home office, a grotto filled with video-game boxes piled atop art books perched against tubs of markers, pencils, and empty Gatorade bottles. I noticed on his drawing table a charcoal sketch of a busty, brown-skinned female with long, windswept hair, a badge on her giant left boob, and a big-ass cannon on her ultracurvy hip.

“Look familiar?” Greg asked, standing behind me. “Pretty good, huh?”

My skin flushed—I was staring at me, reimagined and hypersexualized for teenage boys and their gamer dads. The complexity of Lou had been rendered to boobs, hair, and gun. “New character?” I asked as my inner June Jordan wept.

He gave me a lopsided smile. “Maybe.”

This drawing of Sexy Cop would soon join drawings of Sexy She-Elf and Sexy Marine on our walls. Yay?

My favorite LAPD unmarked Crown Vic, a light blue beauty that reeked of sweat, Drakkar Noir cologne, and dill pickles, awaited my arrival. It was parked next to Greg’s red and black motorbike and my silver Porsche Cayenne SUV, the automotive equivalent of a decathlon-competing supermodel who built rockets in her spare time.

Greg hit the switch on the wall and the garage door rumbled up and away.

The sky was bright blue and the sun was as high and white as a crank head in San Bernardino. Little clouds puffed from my mouth as my skin tightened. No breeze wafted from the west—no salty, decaying smells from the Ballona Wetlands at the end of our block or from the Pacific Ocean just a mile away.

“What are you doing today?” I asked, watching him amble to the driveway. My mind ran that query again to ensure that it didn’t sound as suspicious as I had meant.

He grabbed the newspaper from the pavement. “A stand-up at ten to see where we are on Last Days and then over to the mall for surveillance.”

Even though he was now vice president of creative development for M80 Games, Greg still enjoyed watching customers play the titles he had designed. He had spent a month in Tokyo working on the art for his new “zombies meet the Book of Revelation” series. Between meetings, he had also worked on a purse designer named Michiko Yurikami. Greg was a master multitasker, an unfortunate result of my soft-gloved management style.

For this last transgression, I had won a “baby, I’m sorry, maybe I have an addiction” diamond-platinum cross pendant. Even though I’m not religious enough to buy or wear a cross. I wore it, though, and ignored the frothy anger in my stomach, just like I drove the “please, baby, please” Porsche with whitened knuckles.

“This you?” Greg held out his phone to show the Times’s Web site and its picture of a two-story, Spanish-style house engulfed in flames. The headline screamed, FIERY BLAZE IN THE HILLS.

I startled seeing that house on fire, knowing that someone had died in one of its rooms. “Think so.” I stopped reading—I needed to see the mess firsthand to make my own calls.

“How does Rodriguez know this is a homicide and not an accident?” Greg asked. “People die in house fires all the time.”

I shrugged. “There was this strange 911 call. Guess I’ll soon find out.”

He slipped his arms around my waist. This time, he melted against me, and we kissed slowly… deeply… “And you will solve the case,” he said. “A winner is you.”

“Totally.”

“Your ass looks great in those jeans.”

“Not intentional.”

“Never is. Where’s your jacket? It’s cold out here.”

“In the car,” I said, certain he didn’t want me covered up cuz of the weather, not really.

After one last kiss, I slipped behind the Crown Vic’s steering wheel. After a whinny and a cough, the giant Ford rattled to life.

Greg smiled and waved at me as I backed the beast out of the garage. Strange (but not infrequent) rigidity filled me again.

Because of his smile…

What was he hiding?

2

THE CHATTER AND BURSTS OF STATIC FROM THE CROWN VIC’S POLICE RADIO pulled me from lingering unease about Greg’s smile, and I loosened my grip on the steering wheel.

“…requires additional units…”

“…still in the house, one may be a Hispanic male…”

“…4893 Crenshaw… Stand by… Shots fired…”

All of this as the city sipped its first cup of coffee.

I raced toward the sun, toward Baldwin Hills, a neighborhood just three miles east of mine. Stark columns of black-and-white smoke hung over upper-middle-class homes, waiting for me to see them before they smeared like paint and pencil across the sky. I passed La Brea Avenue, where I should’ve turned right but didn’t. I kept east and passed the McDonald’s, the ghetto Ralphs supermarket, and the KFC that always forgot to put in your biscuits. I glanced to my right at the perimeters of the Jungle, my childhood home.

Moldy, cramped apartments surrounded by prison-yard wire. Check.

Red spray-painted tags of BPS JUNGLES and BFL dripping like blood on walls. Check.

Plaster and glass and telephone poles shot to shit by bullets and poverty. Stumbling crackheads. Gangbanging drug dealers. Storefront payday check-advance scams. Still too early for that, but “check” in advance.

I worked this part of Los Angeles and visited here more than my own home. Twenty-five years ago, a man named Max Crase had murdered my big sister, Victoria, at a liquor store right down that street. Crase had later helped build fancy condominiums on that street over there. Six months ago, he murdered another seventeen-year-old girl as well as her sister, a case—my case—that still haunted me. And as I passed Crase Parc and Promenade (Units Still Available!), I lifted my middle finger and then controlled the urge to ram the car into the condo’s terra-cotta lobby. Later, Lou. Not today.

Memorial tour complete, I busted a U-turn and headed back to La Brea. As I sped up the hill, gray powder swirled and flecked on my windshield. Los Angeles’s version of snow. The snowstorm intensified, and the smell of smoke and melted plastic wafted through the air vents. I hated the smell of toxic chemicals and burned dining room tables in the morning. Smelled like… job security. Unfortunately.

Fires kicked our asses. First of all, murder is hard to nearly impossible to prove. And then, most times, homicide detectives reached the scene hours after the fire’s start. By then, witnesses had wandered back home. Crucial evidence had been destroyed by flame, water, and heroes wearing galoshes. And the victims—they rarely survived swelling and blistering so severe and complete that no one, not even their mothers, recognized them, and so the coroner had to study porcelain uppers to call them officially by name.

My Motorola radio blipped from the passenger seat. “What’s taking you so long?” Colin asked.

“Dude. I can’t fly there.”

“It’s a tragedy, Lou. Guess there were some kids in the house.”

My fingers went cold. “I hate this case already.”

“You need to get here, though.”

“The fire all the way out?”

“No. Still some hot spots here and there.”

“Those bodies getting more dead?”

“C’mon, Lou—”

“Stop wringing your hands, Taggert,” I snapped. “I’ll be there, all right?”

Last year this time, Colin had been working homicide in a Colorado Springs suburb. But he had shared the D with a chick who was not his fiancée. The fiancée’s dad, who was also the city’s police chief, took Colin’s betrayal of his daughter personally, forcing the young detective immediately to serve and protect a city with no bounty on his head.

On my best days, Colin merely annoyed me—like the constant beeping of a truck backing up. To be fair, I didn’t know many (okay, any) twenty-eight-year-old, white-boy detectives from the Rocky Mountains. And he didn’t know any thirty-seven-year-old black female detectives from Los Angeles. So there was a cultural rift between my partner and me. A rift that was three galaxies wide.

Before I pulled onto the street that would shoot me up to the fire site, I parked near an elementary school closed for winter break. I grabbed my iPhone from my bag and held my breath as I tapped the Bust-a-Cheat icon.

Should I

1. Turn on Greg’s cell-phone mic and use it as a bug to listen to his conversations?

2. Use the GPS tracking system to pinpoint the whereabouts of his phone and him?

3. Or, simply check the phone’s RECENT CALLS log?

But then what would I do if a Japanese country code—Tokyo’s was 011 + 81 + 3—showed up in RECENT CALLS?

I bought Bust-a-Cheat two weeks after I had forgiven him.

I bought Bust-a-Cheat because he had never let his iPhone out of his sight.

“You bought Bust-a-Cheat cuz you know you’s a sucka.” That’s what my girl Lena had blurted on my deck, where we had been guzzling tall glasses of absinthe and cranberry juice. “And if you gotta do this,” she had continued, “gotta buy spyware—which, by the way, why didn’t they have that when Chauncey was diddlin’ homeboy in the back of my Range Rover—then you don’t trust him, and à quoi bon?”

Six months later, here I sat. Not trusting him.

I tapped RECENT CALLS.

The phone’s screen blinked, blanked, then filled.

NO CALLS ON 12/11.

“Thank you, Lord,” I whispered, sounding small, sounding like a woman not packing a semiautomatic in her bra and a .22 Magnum Pug mini-revolver in her ponytail.

Personal drama handled, my heart found its regular pace, and I shoved the phone back into my bag. I muttered another “thank you,” then jammed up the hill, following a dank river of water and ashes that would end in blood.

3

DON MATEO DRIVE RESEMBLED A NEIGHBORHOOD IN A NORMAN ROCKWELL painting. A baby grand piano sparkled in the living room window of an army-green bungalow. The Cape Cod’s hedges had been shaped into snowmen, squirrels, and rabbits. Christmas lights glowed on the eaves of the ranch-style, and fire-hose water shimmered on its roof. Sludge gathered at the base of every window frame at every house.

Except for 6381 Don Mateo Drive, the former Spanish-style house I’d glimpsed on the Times’s Web site. There was no sludge on those windows. Barely any windows. Hell, there was barely any house.

Crews from every local news station had set up at the saw-horses. And as I rolled past, reporters shouted, “Detective, detective!” One brave soul knocked on my passenger-side window. A flash from a camera blinded me. I bared my teeth and growled, “Back the hell off.”

I grabbed the Motorola from the passenger seat and toggled the switch. “I’m here,” I told Colin. “Have one of the guys move the press back some more.”

“Crazy, right?” Colin asked.

Just glimpsing the destruction, the angriness of this fire made me shiver. “I don’t like it here.”

“Hell, Lou, you don’t like a whole lotta things. But on this: yeah, I don’t like it, either.”

A patrol cop lifted the yellow tape, and I drove through, parking near a Frank Sinatra–style house, all weird, cool angles and bop-bop-bum. I wrapped my Windbreaker around my hip and clipped my silver badge to my belt loop, then grabbed the small digital camera from the glove compartment. I climbed out of the car and took pictures of a smoking, charred heap now boasting crime-scene tape and broken ceramic roof tiles. Every house, except this house, had its trio of trash cans—blue, green, black—sitting out at the curb. I snapped pictures of that, and then I photographed the crowd: a bald black man holding a toddler, an elderly Asian couple wearing matching jogging suits, a dark-skinned weight lifter with headphones around his thick neck, and the heroines of Waiting to Exhale wearing yoga pants and fruit-colored tank tops.

Did one of you do this?

The tchick-tchick-tchick of lawn sprinklers and terp-terp-terp of birds had been drowned out by the growl of fire trucks and the roar of chain saws cutting holes in walls.

A sky of poison loomed over the neighborhood—we shouldn’t have been breathing this crap or walking through muddy ashes flecked with half-melted police tape, warped household plastics, and shards of charred wood, some pieces slick with paint and varnish. Even with no visible flame, the ground still burned beneath the thick soles of my boots.

Colin, coffee cup in hand, and the fire marshal, Denton Quigley, who clutched a walkie-talkie, stood in the house’s driveway next to an ash-covered Mercedes Benz SUV and a garage door now hacked to pieces. Sweat had darkened and flattened Colin’s blond hair. Ashes had landed on his LAPD Windbreaker. But his brown cowboy boots looked right at home. In that strange morning sun, my partner looked golden, bizarrely handsome, Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno.

Dixie Shipman, her nougat-colored skin also sweaty and ashy, stood on the lawn with a digital camera and a jumbo tape measure.

“Hunh,” I muttered. “She’s already here?”

In her former life, Dixie had worked the LAPD’s Arson Squad, but two years ago she had been caught in a big, fat lie. Which is why she now wore a blue and white Windbreaker with the logo of MG Standard Insurance on the sleeve.

Her ex-coworkers, men in black jackets, ARSON in white letters on their backs, were also taking pictures.

I trudged toward the wreck, its death scent assaulting my nostrils.

Colin met me halfway with the coffee cup extended.

I took the drink and glanced at his crisp blue jeans. The creases were as sharp as thousand-year-old cheddar. “You just take the dry cleaner’s plastic off?” I asked.

He held up a leg. “Can you tell?”

“Not at all.”

“Bodies are still in the house,” he said, “and the firefighters need to get some debris out of the way so we can see ’em. They’re thinkin’ we can go in, in about an hour.”

I checked my watch—that would take us to eleven.

“So the next-door neighbor,” Colin said, “an old lady named Virginia Oliver.” He pivoted and pointed at the house with the animal-shaped hedges. “She lives right there. She called it in around three-forty this mornin’. Mrs. Oliver says she started not to call cuz the smoke detectors in that house were always goin’ off. Seemed like the Chatmans—”

“That the family name?” I asked.

He nodded. “The son was always settin’ shit on fire. So the old lady thought nothin’ of it ’til she heard the fire. She said, and I quote, ‘Sounded like God was frying bacon.’ According to another neighbor, Eli Moss”—he pointed to the green bungalow with the baby grand piano—“a patrol unit got here before the fire trucks. I’m guessin’ because of the ‘kill me’ part of Mrs. Chatman’s 911 call.”

“You talk to the R/O?”

Colin nodded. “His name is Bridges. He says when he got here, the fire was mostly in the center of the house, second story. He tried to get in, but that”—he pointed to the wrought-iron security door propped against the house’s side—“kept him out. The fire trucks got here a few minutes later. The neighbor says that once the trucks got here, it took them some time to find the hydrant, which is at the end of the block and too far for the one-hundred-foot hose.”

I shook my head. “Ticktock.”

“Almost an hour into the fire—that would be close to five o’clock—the man of the house, Christopher Chatman, pulled up in his car.” He pointed to the dark blue Jaguar sedan now covered in LA snow and abandoned near a sawhorse.

I frowned. “It’s five in the morning and Christopher Chatman ain’t home?”

Colin smirked. “Yep.”

“Why the wonky hours? He a doctor or an astronaut or something?”

“He’s a commodities broker. Don’t know what the hell that is, but there you go. Anyway, he pulls up, runs to the house, makes it a few feet away from the front porch, where he’s tackled by a few of the heroes. Seems he was tryin’ to save his wife and kids. Her name is Juliet and the kids are Chloe and Cody.”

“Are all three dead?”

“Yeah.”

Lieutenant Rodriguez had warned me that there would be blood, but I still wanted to make him a liar.

“And where the hell was Mr. Chatman?” I asked.

Colin peered at me. “Pissed already?”

“No time like the present. Where was he?”

“At work.”

I jammed my lips together and said nothing. A chill ran up my back, split at my collarbone, and numbed my neck and scalp. “And where is Mr. Chatman now?”

“At the hospital,” Colin said. “Concussion, minor burns, scratches, and shock.”

I forced out a breath and said, “Okay.” Then, I strolled over to the Jag and pulled a small flashlight from my jacket pocket. I aimed its beam at the Jag’s thick tires, the chrome, and its tan interior.

“What are you lookin’ for?” Colin asked.

“That.” A dark drop of dried liquid on the back of the driver’s seat. “And that.” Another drop, this one on the driver’s-side passenger door.

Colin checked out the cabin. “Looks old. Could be ketchup.”

“Does this car look like it sees a lot of Happy Meals, ketchup squirts, and milk shake spills? Cuz other than these two strange drops of dried, reddish shit, there ain’t a crumb, a crumpled straw paper, not one crushed piece of nothing in this car.”

Colin stared at the drops. “Warrant?”

“Yep. And is that Benz SUV her car?”

“I’m guessin’.”

We walked to the truck. I clicked on the flashlight again and took a look inside.

“Definitely a mom car,” I said.

Scattered about the cabin: an open bag of gummy worms, phone charger, broken pencil, lip balm, school bulletin, paperback novel, and an empty McDonald’s cup.

The back windows were tinted, but I still hit them with light. “Interesting. When you call Luke, tell him to get a warrant for the Benzo, too.”

Colin peered inside. “I see… one, two, three suitcases. What’s crazy about that?”

“Suitcases combined with that 911 call of ‘something, something kill me.’ What if they were trying to escape? We need to figure out what happened yesterday when they were packing these suitcases. Before shit got real. What’s in this truck may help us figure out what happened in that house.”

“Got it.” Colin brought the radio to his mouth and called Luke Gomez back at the station.

I turned away from him and watched big men in yellow field jackets remove a charred… thing out onto the porch. My shoulders drooped as I gazed at the Chatman house, as I held my breath, as the cold that came with death pinched my heart.

4

FIVE MINUTES AFTER ELEVEN O’CLOCK, COLIN AND I MOVED UP THE WALKWAY, glass and wood crunching beneath our shoes. Every third step, I stopped and sniffed the heavy air: smelled burned wood, as well as the fabrics and synthetics that filled every home. But there was something else, too. Something toxic and harsh.

Colin sniffed. “Turpentine, maybe?”

On the porch, past banks of drifting white smoke, I saw a used-to-be couch left next to an end table and footstool. The house’s decorative security door sat against the fence. But as we moved into the house’s foyer, that smell continued to hold my attention. And just like the scent of the dead, this odor would cling to me long after I had left this house and showered.

The spongy, sopping-wet carpet bubbled with each step or gave way to the crack of broken glass. Books, plates, and cushions had been knocked down and trampled, then marred with black boot prints or scorch marks.

A firefighter with bloodshot eyes and brilliant white teeth handed me a disposable respirator that would cover half of my face. “To keep you alive a little longer,” he said, handing Colin his own mask.

“LAPD’s finest is finally here.” The fire marshal, Denton Quigley, had lumbered straight out of central casting and into this damp foyer. Ashes flecked his ruddy Irish skin and chocolate handlebar mustache. “How’s it goin’, Detective Norton?” He towered over me with a clipboard in one hand and the radio handset in the other.

“Depends on what you’re about to tell me, Quig.”

“So the fire started up there, on the second level.” Quigley pointed above us, to where parts of the ceiling had been pulled down.

I followed his finger to see blue sky and the exposed second story.

“You’ll have to climb up a ladder to see the heaviest damage and the three vics,” Quigley was saying. “A boy, in a smaller bedroom. And then the mom and daughter in the master suite. Wanna see them before we talk?”

“Please.” I glanced one last time at the blackened rafters, at the flaking and peeling plaster, at the pool of water glistening on the dining room table.

“Hold up,” Quigley shouted to the heavens.

The banging and sawing stopped. Eerie silence swept through the house.

Joined by the squad’s videographer, a thick white woman named Sue, we ignored the burned, frosted-looking staircase and climbed up the silver ladder. We reached the hallway, and five careful steps brought us to the master bedroom.

My heart punched against my chest—there they were. The bodies of a woman and a school-aged girl, huddled in the corner farthest from the door. Their brown skin was blistered, and their noses and mouths were crusted black from breathing poison. The woman wore a sweatshirt and leggings, and the girl wore a nightgown.

In the woman’s left hand, she clutched a pink rosary, its cross lost somewhere in her daughter’s hair. And in the right hand… silver barrel, black grip.

The video camera whirred—Sue was zooming in.

Colin stooped and said, “Smith and Wesson .22.”

Guns—I knew guns. Fire was Tasmania to me. But guns and the people who used them? Just another day in Southern California.

Colin snapped pictures of the rosary and the revolver. “Why was she packin’?”

“Something, something kill me,” I said. “Don’t forget that.” Eyes still on the gun, I asked, “You see a phone? The one she used to call 911?”

Colin regarded the room. “I don’t see shit. Everything’s wet and Cajun-style.”

The woman’s fingernails didn’t appear splintered or ripped—no indication that she was trying to escape the fire by clawing her way out. Nor were there defensive wounds on her palms or wrists to suggest a struggle.

“On our next trip up,” I told Colin, “after the ME takes custody, we’ll tag and bag the gun, and hopefully we’ll find the phone.”

The bedroom walls were shades of gray and brown. The pictures and mirrors that had remained on the wall were blackened, but the wall behind them had remained white.

To reach the second bedroom, we tiptoed past charred paint cans, twisted nails, and heaps of splintered, charred wood. Here, the walls were almost completely black with soot. The thick bedroom door and heavy plaster had shielded the room from open flames, but it had not been enough protection.

The adolescent boy in bed wore a Lakers jersey and shorts. His skin had also blistered, and there was soot around his nostrils and lips, though not as much as his mother’s and sister’s. He clutched a melted Nintendo Gameboy to his chest.

We took video, still pictures, and measurements of our three victims, of the darkened bedroom walls, of burned posters, of wood window frames where varnish had bubbled and hardened. We took more measurements, stared out broken windows, stared at the dead. For several minutes, we studied what had been a bathroom just a day ago and gaped at the surviving porcelain bathtub now clogged with water, wood, and ashes. Crisped, black paint cans lay around the small room. The faceplate around the bathroom’s electrical outlet had blackened completely. Colin and Sue captured that image more than any others.

Then, down the ladder we climbed. As we joined Quigley at the base of the porch, the growls of chain saws and the hacks of axes resumed.

My hands trembled as I pulled off the mask.

“One of your guys was telling me,” Colin shouted, “that the house went up pretty quick. Why’s that?”

“Cuz most of it was made of wood,” Quigley snarked.

Colin cocked his head. “But houses just don’t… combust, even if they’re wood, right? And your guy used that word. Combust. Houses don’t do that normally. Right?”

“No, they don’t normally combust.”

“So the cause?” Colin asked.

“Don’t know. Looks like that outlet in the upstairs bath has the heaviest char pattern.”

“Has the power company been out?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Them and the gas company.”

“So no natural gas?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Electrical?”

“Possibly. There’s that bathroom outlet to consider.”

“Deliberately set?” Colin asked.

Quigley frowned. “You mean arson?”

Colin smirked. “That’s what a fire’s called when it’s deliberately set.”

“Anything’s a possibility,” Quigley said. “It’s possible that a meteor came hurtling out of space and crashed into the Chatman’s attic, thus starting the conflagration.”

“A meteor,” I said. “That would be one for the ages.” I waited for his smile, but Quigley’s grimace only hardened. Onward, then. I sniffed the air.

There it was again: sharp, chemical, brief.

“Hey, Quig,” I said, “would I be smelling whatever it is I’m smelling if the house had caught because of faulty wiring or kerosene?”

Quigley waggled his mustache. “I would say yes if the structure had been a paint store. Cuz that’s what you smell.” He dropped his chin to his chest. “It appears that the Chatmans were redecoratin’ and… none of this is official yet, understand? So the Chatmans were painting that upstairs bathroom, and for whatever reason the socket in there shorted. There were paint cans and thinners and drop cloths on the ground—”

“And the spark from the outlet hit the thinner and rags,” I said.

“Then, ka-boom,” Colin added.

“Is ‘ka-boom’ my guy’s word or yours?” Quigley asked. “Anyway, the hallway goes up cuz thinner’s everywhere. And it burned like it did cuz the whole neighborhood was asleep.” He sighed. “We warn folks all the time about properly storing paint cans and rags.”

Colin dumped Tic Tacs into his mouth, then said, “When I was a kid, the lightbulb in my pet iguana’s tank caught fire.” He chewed and chewed, then chuckled. “I thought my mother had set the fire. She hated Iggy.”

Quigley and I waited for Colin to finish his stroll down memory lane.

But the faraway look in Colin’s eyes meant that he was now lingering in its gift shop.

“We’re starting at the least-damaged area,” Quigley said, “which is right where we’re standing, to the most damaged. And that’s the bathroom.”

“So if this is arson,” I said, “who should I look for?”

“Nowadays?” He shrugged. “Anybody. The boy was an aspiring firebug, but this… This ain’t the work of a kid. And in this neighborhood, you won’t find your typical suspect: white male, midteens to thirty, undereducated, troubled, angry at the world.”

I scribbled into my notepad. “A white male. What the hell would he be angry about?”

Colin glanced at the exposed rafters. “How about a black woman gettin’ to carry a gun and a badge? What kind of world allows that shit?”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

“This fire ain’t like the other ones Burning Man’s been setting around here,” Quigley noted. “Those fires occurred outdoors, with leaves piled next to the side of the house and kerosene used as an accelerant. This one, the MO is different. This fire started inside, not with leaves, not with kerosene, I don’t think.”

“So you don’t think this is a serial pyro?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Anything missing inside the house that shouldn’t be?” I asked. “Photo albums, wall safes, jewelry? Stuff folks wanna save before they burn down their house?”

“Can’t say right now.”

“Any signs of forced entry?” I asked. “Someone leave a window open or open the doors for ventilation to help the fire spread?”

“Nope, but we did find PVC pipe in the window sliders. Guess to keep out intruders.”

I cocked my head. “You’d have to pluck out the pipes to open the windows, right?”

As Quigley started to respond, two blue and white medical examiner’s vans eased past the yellow tape. They would ferry the three bodies to the coroner’s office near downtown.

My stomach twisted as we watched the vans maneuver past trucks and police cars and roll closer to the house.

“We lookin’ at a total loss?” I asked.

“Except for the converted garage,” Quigley said. “That’ll only need minor repairs.”

“So,” I said to Colin, “we need—”

“Yep.” He reached into his Windbreaker and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Already got the warrant to search the house.”

Dixie Shipman joined our little group. “If I was a betting man—”

“You are a betting man,” Quigley quipped.

“Which is why Winston is divorcing you,” I added.

“If I was a betting man,” Dixie said, not missing a beat, “I’d say the butler did it in the library with a candlestick.” Then, she laughed. Huh-huh-huh.

Quigley rolled his eyes, then tapped my shoulder. “I’ll get you something more official first thing tomorrow morning.” Off he went, radio to mouth, eyes on the worrisome piece of drywall sagging near the living room.

After introducing Colin to Dixie, I flicked a gaze at her jacket. “Fleece. Very official. Very la-di-da.”

She sighed. “Here we go.”

“You can always come back to the force,” I said. “A mea culpa, a sword in your gut, and it’s all good.”

“I don’t miss the force’s bullshit,” Dixie said. “And I like having a personal life.”

“Stop frontin’, Dix,” I joked. “It won’t become true even if you say it a million times.”

She glared at me, then said, “Did you hear back about your interview with HSS?”

My face burned, and I forced myself to smile. “Touché, Dixie Shipman.”

Homicide Special Section, a part of the famed Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD, handled high-profile murders like the O. J. Simpson case. I wanted a spot that had become available after a squad dick’s retirement, and I had applied with Lieutenant Rodriguez’s very reluctant blessing.

“They told me I was this close to being selected.” I pinched my finger and thumb together. “But see: Southwest needs good detectives like me in the division, and Rodriguez really didn’t want me to go. But I was this close, Dix,” I said, pinching my fingers together again.

A smile crept to the edges of Dixie’s lips. “It ain’t horseshoes, boo. You lost.” She pulled from her bag an expandable folder already thick with papers and photographs. “So Christopher Chatman’s parents, Henry and Ava, purchased this place back in the fifties for ninety thousand dollars. Twenty years later, they bought their first hundred-thousand-dollar policy from MG Standard. About thirteen years ago, Christopher Chatman and his wife moved in.

“In 2009, the house was burglarized while the Chatmans were out. Homie stole five computers, three cameras, and the Blu-ray disc player. We paid the fifty-thousand-dollar claim. Then, last year, the Chatmans raised their policy from four hundred thousand to five hundred and fifty thousand. Since then, they’ve been remodeling, and up until early this morning, the house had five bedrooms, two full baths, a half bath, formal dining room, home office, den, laundry, and the studio apartment out back.”

“So why are you here?” I asked the ex-cop.

“ ‘MG Standard: we live to improve life.’ And I’m here cuz my ass was on call.” Her gaze wandered to a black Jaguar sedan pulling into the driveway of the weird-shrubbed house.

A man with skin the color of French-roasted coffee climbed from behind the Jag’s steering wheel. He wore a blue pinstripe suit and a steel-blue dress shirt, no tie. A silver watch flashed from beneath the shirt’s left cuff.

“Who’s Oscar de la Renta?” I asked.

“Girl, that’s Ben Oliver,” she said, gaze trained on the man now striding up the house’s walkway. “Ummmhmmm.”

“Stop purring, Dix,” I said, even though the same feline rumbling vibrated in my belly.

“You gon’ have your work cut out for you. Mr. Oliver is a big-time insurance attorney. We been on opposite sides of the table many times. He’s the one who called us on behalf of Mr. Chatman, and he’s also Chatman’s best friend.”

Ben Oliver glanced over to Dixie and me as though we were crushed pylons. Then, his eyes shifted to his friend’s house. A frown flashed across his face—the same pissy-sexy look Abercrombie & Fitch had been hustling since the eighties.

“He’s an asshole,” Dixie said, “but he’s a fine-assed asshole. He got that pimp juice, Lou. Watch ya back and your panties.” And then she laughed. Huh-huh-huh.

5

EVEN AS THE NOONDAY SUN WORKED ACROSS A SKY CROWDED WITH SOFT, KILLER clouds of smoke, no one rushed through the on-site investigation. And no one rushed through the slow extraction of three bodies.

The press hunkered at the yellow tape as LAPD spokeswoman Val Xiomara offered our official statement—three fatalities, no suspect, no comment, a tragedy. Print reporters, their heads down, scribbled furiously onto pads or tapped words into tablets. The talking bobbleheads with don’t-get-too-close-to-an-open-flame hair held mics to their plumped lips and flicked sound bites to viewers at home like birdseed.

Early this morning, firefighters were called…

…pronounced dead at the scene…

…investigate the origins of the blaze…

Silence came to Don Mateo Drive as one blue body bag, followed by another and then another, was gurney-rolled to the coroner’s vans by men in LACCO Windbreakers.

My muscles tightened as I watched that somber recessional.

Cameras clicked. Neighbors gasped and sobbed into their hands. A woman in the crowd whispered a prayer for the dead. “May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed…”

And then the vans drove away.