Burn (5 page)

“Yeah? How far east have you ever been?”

“I knew a guy at SMPD from South Boston. Pronounced his Rs the same way.”

“Not bad. Baltimore.” Drea began to gesture with her hands while she spoke. “Borland, he's like, ‘Anything I can do to help, Detective. I don't know what he did, but I told Caroline’—that's the wife—‘I told her I don't want the guy around. I don't care if he's family. He should be in prison. Instead, he's living in my beach house.’ ”

“Was this before or after you showed Borland the letter?”

“Didn't even mention the letter.”

“No kidding.” Timms folded his arms on the table. “Should be in prison, huh?”

“That seems to be Borland's opinion.”

“He give a reason why?”

“Oh, you'll love this, ” Drea said. “I called a pal of mine in the Bureau field office, asked him to run Kindler through NCIC for me while I was in court. Haven't heard back yet. But Borland mentions a juvie beef that never stuck. He's all, like, hey, you didn't hear it from me.”

Timms had learned to listen patiently. With Drea, it usually paid off in the end.

“I made some calls, ” she said. “No record in Maryland. But here's Borland's story. You ready?”

“More than.”

“Put it this way.” Drea seemed to be savoring her punch line. “Does ‘Kindler’ sound like an occupational name to you?”

Timms narrowed his eyes. “What'd he do?”

“Nothing much. Burned his stepfather's house down. Allegedly. Like, allegedly to the ground. Stepdad happened to be home at the time.”

Timms leaned back in the booth.

“Guy made it out. Middle of the night, shitfaced drunk, no serious injuries. But I haven't even told you the best part.”

“What's the best part?”

“The stepfather? He was an arson investigator.” Drea beamed and clapped her hands. “Baltimore Life and Casualty. Twelve years!”

“Please.”

“The way Borland tells it, the guy's running around in his BVDs screaming stepkid's name in the streets. Local cops hauled the kid in, worked him through the drill—he's fourteen—but he sails with flying colors. Sleeping over at a friend's house, he tells 'em. The friend checks out, parents back it up. Meanwhile, the fire guys rule the house accidental. Said the stepdad fell asleep smoking a cigarette. Whoomp!”

“And Borland's just laying this all out.”

“Like he's driving the tram at Universal Studios. Says the stepfather got canned at the insurance company before the week was out. Left the mother, moved to the Meadowlands to sell Jacuzzis.”

Timms shook his head again.

“Some story, huh?”

“Some story.”

“That's about where Borland leaves it. Says everybody
in the neighborhood knew the Kindler kid did it, but nobody was crying over the stepdad leaving town, and the cops and the marshals had no reason not to be satisfied with the cigarette theory. Guy was a known boozer. He gets plowed, passes out watching television in the chair, drops his Camel on a pile of newspapers, should be counting his blessings he's alive. Next case.”

She leaned forward, still acting out her meeting with Lane Borland. Though he hadn't known Drea Munoz a great deal of time, Timms had come to enjoy his partner's demonstrative narrative style. She was the original Type A personality. The A stood for Attitude.

“Then he gets all hush-hush, right? I mean he actually looks this way, looks that way.” She looked to her left and to her right as she spoke. “Walks over and shuts his office door. I mean, he's playing this for all it's worth, trying to show me how serious he is. Says he really can't tell me much more. For personal safety reasons, he says. It could be that Kindler ended up getting recruited by some pros later on, he tells me. But he really wouldn't know.”

“Interesting, ” Timms said.

“I thought you'd like it.” Drea settled back to her side of the booth again. “So what do you think?”

Timms didn't need to think about it. “I think the whole thing stinks. That letter sticks in my craw.”

Monday morning, after putting in his own court appearance for a previous case, Timms had gone home to lose the suit and the tie and found an unmarked, dun-colored business envelope with his personal mail. The envelope contained a plain white sheet of paper with a typed note. Not printed from a computer: actually typed on a typewriter. The note read:

If not for the signature at the bottom, Timms would have tossed the letter on the pile along with the thousand other bogus tips and cheap pranks they'd received so far. But at a glance, compared to documents they'd collected from Lomax's office files, the sig looked close enough to earn a flag and a follow-up.

“I swung by the lab on my way here, ” Drea said. “No prints. They're still looking at it.”

Timms nodded. “I already checked in.”

“Say we're taking this guy Kindler seriously. Theoretically, what? An OC angle, maybe?”

Timms shrugged. Nothing about the case had pointed to an organized-crime connection before now. “Possibility.”

“Possible enough to haul him in?”

“Don't see what good it would do us at this point, ” Timms said. “Theoretically, he'd just play dumb and go home. Or take off.”

“We could put Reese and Carvajal on the Baltimore thing. See if they can dig up any ties with Lomax or Tavlin there.”

“Somebody besides us is already looking into Kindler, ” he said. “Guy was snapping photos of the house while I was there.”

“No shit.”

“Nope. Kindler came up with a story. Said the house is on celebrity maps.”

“And?”

“Not on any I could find.”

“He's quick on his feet, though, ” Drea said. “How'd you leave it?”

“I dropped a bug in his ear when I left, ” Timms said. “Hung back and watched awhile, see if it got him moving.”

“And?”

“He might have taken another nap.”

“I love it.”

“Went somewhere after about an hour, ” Timms said.

“Driving fast?”

“Not particularly.”

Even if he'd been inclined, Timms had no hope of tailing, given the logistics. Kindler's borrowed neighborhood consisted of a short row of expensive beachfront homes fifteen feet off the beachside shoulder of PCH. Sandstone cliffs for an eastern shoulder and two lanes of fast traffic in either direction. After talking with Kindler, Timms had to move his car to a nearby pay lot and decide between the beach side of the property or the highway side. From the highway side, he'd had a fantastic view of a gated brick wall and a closed garage door. So he'd found a spot on the beach path that offered decent line-of-sight through the field binoculars he kept in the glovebox of the Oldsmobile. What the position had lacked in cover it made up for in immobility.

“So are we calling this guy a player?”

“Don't have much choice until the lab on that letter comes back, ” Timms said. “I'll say this, though. Kindler may have a cool streak, but he's a shitty liar.”

“Think he's holding something?”

“That's just it, ” Timms said. “When he said he didn't know our guy, I believed him.”

“Then what?”

“You want to know the only time I really knew for sure this guy Kindler was full of shit?”

Drea watched as he dumped back the last of his cold coffee. She didn't bother making a guess.

Timms popped a breath mint and said, “When he pretended he knew what I was talking about when I mentioned the Tavlin thing.”

BORLAND
Management hung its shingle on the fifth floor of an unimaginative high rise downtown. Andrew had never been to the place, but it wasn't hard to find. He took the elevator up, followed the floor directory, and arrived in Lane's neo-primitive reception area a little after one o'clock.

After giving his name, Andrew stood and absorbed the decor, which featured lots of brushed aluminum, glass, burnished cherrywood, trendy earth tones, and mass-produced totems meant to look imported from dark exotic locales. He doubted very much that Caroline had anything to do with the scheme.

At a desk made of improbable angles sat an attractive middle-aged woman with a spiky platinum crew cut. Without looking at Andrew, she poked a button with a gunmetal fingernail, repeated his name, and told him to have a seat.

Andrew had a seat.

He didn't intend to get into a conversation in the process. But the ponytailed guy already waiting tipped a nod, which Andrew returned. The guy asked if Andrew had the time, which Andrew did. After that, the guy just sort of kept on chatting.

Before long, Andrew found himself leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He figured he had a few minutes to spare.

“Wait, back up a minute, ” he said. “Tell me again about the det cord?”

The guy, who had introduced himself as Kyle, claimed to own his own business.
Crash and Burn Productions.
He was—of all things—a special-effects technician for Hollywood.

Andrew couldn't help but enjoy the professional coincidence. By the time Kyle started naming off a few of the movies he'd worked on, Andrew was hooked. He'd actually seen a few of them.

“Okay” Kyle said, re-explaining the type of detonating fuse he'd already described. “It's frequency-activated. Right?
Frequency-activated.
As in, you use padded plastic snips to cut it if you wanna keep all your hands attached.”

He waggled his fingers for emphasis. Andrew grinned and shook his head, imagining the scenario.

Kyle said he'd been working on a small-budget horror flick when the incident occurred. According to Kyle, his first mistake had been putting moves on the female day player who had gotten hacked apart in a dormitory shower sequence earlier that morning.

“But come on, ” he said. “This girl's like twenty-two, and she's stacked, like, bam. Cutest little flirt, right? I'm a human being. So we're on the lot, back of my van. I'm just getting my freak on, and I get a buzz on my pager.
Great. So I climb out and use my cell. For like a minute.” He held his fingers an inch apart. “A
minute.”

Long enough, apparently, for the girl to decide that when Kyle returned to the van, tying each other up might be fun. She'd rummaged around amongst his supplies until she'd found a spool of what she'd believed to be yellow rope. And a pair of bolt cutters.

“I don't even know how she found the stuff, ” Kyle said for the third time. “I keep it in a reinforced trunk. Wrapped up in blast blankets.”

Andrew didn't mean to laugh. “But she's okay?”

“Sonja? Nothing a little vascular surgery couldn't fix, ” he said. “If the girl ever gets engaged, okay she's probably gonna wear the ring on her other hand. But I'd say she came through pretty lucky.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. And now she's suing me. You believe that?”

“Not so lucky for you, ” Andrew said.

“Tell me about it. Here I sit. Supposed to meet the lawyers here for the deposition today.” He looked at his wrist, which still wore no watch, and shrugged. “Guess I'm early.”

Andrew looked up at the big double doors closed on Lane's office at the end of the short track-lighted hallway opposite the waiting area. He decided that was his cue. He stuck out his hand.

“Well, hey, ” he said, “good luck to you. Hope everything works out.”

Kyle blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

As Andrew strode past the desk on his way toward Lane's office, the receptionist sat up in her chair and took the phone away from her ear.

“Sir? Mr. Borland is in a meeting. You need to wait … hey….”

He used both hands, one on each knob, and left the big doors open behind him as he passed through.

Lane sat behind a blond wood desk the size of a basketball court. When Andrew walked in, Lane's eyes snapped open, and he lurched forward. From beneath the desk there came a hollow thud, followed by a muffled yelp.

“Jesus, take it easy, ” said a female voice.

Lane plunged his hands beneath the desk, glared at Andrew, and said, “What the hell do you think you're doing? Margot!”

Margot—the tall receptionist, Andrew surmised— had followed him into the office. When she saw Lane, her expression flared like a match. Her green eyes smoldered a moment before narrowing to predatory slits. She said: “You sorry son of a bitch.”

By the time Andrew turned to agree, Margot had already disappeared in a swirl of citrus perfume.

“Just a minute, ” Lane whispered to somebody, then hung on to his pants. His fancy black mesh office chair scooted back from the desk as though operating under its own power.

Andrew heard a shifting, another thump, and a soft grunt as a petite young woman with copper-colored spiral curls appeared as if crawling from a cave. She kicked Lane once in the ankle as she smoothed a snug blue minidress over her bottom with one palm. Lane worked to fasten his belt as quickly as he could without standing up from the chair.

Andrew folded his arms and observed the display without comment. The girl gave him a demure sideways glance as she corrected the corner of her lipstick with a fingernail. She had a tiny waist and slender hips and breasts like soccer balls. Andrew couldn't help but notice
the padded white club of gauze encasing the girl's left hand from fingertips to mid-forearm. An elaborate framework of pins and wires stood over the bandages like bionic scaffolding.

“You must be Sonja, ” Andrew said.

She smiled brightly. “That's right! Do we know each other?”

“Nah. But I met your friend Kyle outside.”

“Oh.”

“He seems like a nice guy. Very regretful.”

Lane said, “Sonja, could you excuse us?”

“Excuse you where? I'm not sitting out there with that jerk.”

“You can go now.” Lane gestured to the open doorway. “Shut the doors on your way out.”

Sonja looked at him as though he'd just sprouted a snout and tusks. He looked back at her as if to say,
which word didn't you understand?
She cocked a hip and held it a moment. Then she pivoted like a runway model for surgical hardware. Using her good hand, Sonja slammed Lane's doors one at a time with a force that startled even Andrew.