Skies of Ash (3 page)

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.

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… c
ombust
, 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?”