The Rook (12 page)

In line for the brunch buffet, I tried to guide the conversation away from Ralph’s comments as quickly as I could. “So what took you two so long to get downstairs?”

“Shower,” said Tessa.

“I was on the phone with Aina,” said Lien-hua. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She told me Austin Hunter wasn’t home, but MAST managed to get a warrant. Aina wants to talk to you.

She said to give her a call as soon as you can. They found gasoline and a professional makeup kit in his spare bedroom.”

I began ticking through the possibilities.
Gasoline? I thought
we’d eliminated that as the accelerant for the earlier fires. Unless …
my mind flashed back to previous arson cases I’d worked over the years …

Unless …

I saw Tessa grab her plate and I remembered that even though I’d already had a full morning, the last thing she probably remembered was the bloody pork tenderloin and John Doe’s suicide last night.

The arsonist could have mixed it with something to make it burn
longer. That would do it.

I was torn; the biggest parts of who I am were wrestling with each other again: the FBI agent part and the dad part. I knew the dad part was supposed to win, and I wanted it to, but I didn’t know exactly what that was supposed to look like in real life. Tessa was busy lifting the metal lids off the chafing dishes to see what was for breakfast.

Sausage links. “Ew.” Then bacon. “You have got to be kidding me.” And finally breakfast patties. “I am so done with this.” She clomped to a nearby spread of fruit and pastries.

Well, she seemed to be acting normal enough. I decided it would be OK to return Aina’s call. I loaded a bowl with oatmeal, and dialed her number.

“Dr. Bowers.
Gracias
.”

“What do you have, Aina?”

I piled a plate with hash browns and followed my nose to the coffee carafes.

“No sign of Hunter,” she said. “But, it looks like someone broke into his apartment. His dresser drawers were disturbed, but his checkbook is sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter, so I don’t think it was a robbery. And, even though his cell phone and laptop are gone, he left the cords here.”

“Car keys?”

“Gone.”

“So, Hunter left in a hurry.”

“Si. And you were right about the gloves. We lifted a partial. It’s not Hunter. But—”

He would have pulled off the first glove with his dominant hand, and then left the print with his non-dominant one. “Which glove had the print?”

“The left. But I need to tell you
—
”
So, the arsonist from last
night is most likely left-handed.
Then she finished her sentence by saying, “It’s the print of one of our officers.”

“What? He contaminated the evidence?”

“Si.”

Why didn’t that surprise me.

“Just a minute.” Exasperated, I balanced the phone on my plate. One of the restaurant staff was standing beside the coffee carafes.

“We proudly serve Starbucks coffee,” she told me with a smile.

I didn’t say the words aloud, only thought them:
Starbucks is to
coffee what McDonald’s is to steak.

The woman was still smiling at me. “Oh,” I told her as cordially as I could. “Actually, I’m just looking for the juice bar.”

“Right over there, sir.”

“Thank you.” I headed over to get a glass of OJ. Maybe later in the morning I could track down a cup of coffee that had actually been roasted within the last two months.

Wait a minute.

Juice.

Yes.

Orange juice.

I grabbed the phone. “Aina. Check Hunter’s freezer.”

“His freezer?”

“Give it a shot.”

By the time I’d found my seat she’d finished her search. “Mr.

Hunter must be a juice lover.”

“So, he’s got the juice,” I said softly. “Have one of your officers check the nearest dumpster to his apartment. Look for empty boxes of laundry detergent.”

“Concentrated orange juice and powdered laundry detergent,”

she said. I could hear agitation in her voice. “
Claro.
I should have thought of that earlier. Mix them together with low-octane gasoline, make a paste. Burns hot enough to create full room involvement—”

“But slow enough to sustain sufficient oxygen in the room for the fire to spread.”

“So, you have worked arson cases before,” she said.

“A few.”

“Between the two of us we should have thought of it earlier.”

“Well, without any suspects I’m not sure it would have done us
a
ny good.” I downed some of my juice. “So, if he’s got his laptop and his cell phone, what does that leave us? Any snail mail there?

Return addresses, postcards we can check on?”

I heard her shuffling through some letters. “All bills. That would have been too easy anyway.”

“OK, GPS. Track his cell phone or his car.”

“We tried. Nothing. Older models.”

“Ex-wife, fiancee, girlfriend? Someone he might have gone to stay with?”

“We’re working on it. He has a photo on the wall of him on the beach with an attractive young woman, late twenties, scuba gear beside them. Her hand is resting on his thigh so I think they’re more than just friends. We checked his phone records, found his favorite number to call, and sent some cars to her place. She’s a shark researcher. Works for the Sherrod Aquarium. Cassandra Lillo.”

“Cassandra Lillo,” I mumbled. “The aquarium, huh? OK. Email me whatever you pull up on her, and call me back if you find the detergent boxes.” As I hung up, I noticed that Tessa, who had been watching me carefully, let her eyes wander past me toward a couple of cute guys laughing in a booth nearby.

During the next few minutes, I ate in hungry silence but then I noticed Tessa’s long-sleeve T-shirt slide back from her wrist, exposing a red, inflamed streak beneath her bracelets.

“What happened to your wrist, Tessa?”

She pulled the sleeve back in place. “Nothing.”

Over the last year Tessa had struggled with cutting, and I wondered if maybe the rubber band snapping was her way of trying to break the habit, kind of like smokers who start to chew gum instead of lighting up. But it was still a bad habit, and obviously, since her wrist was raw, she was taking it too far. “You need to stop snapping that rubber band so much. You’re hurting yourself.”

“I’m all right.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I’m all right!”

Lien-hua, who had been eating quietly beside us, cleared her throat softly. “Anyone else want some coffee? I’m going for a refill.”

Tessa and I both shook our heads.

Lien-hua rose and I decided that now was as good a time as any to tell Tessa what I’d started considering while I was waiting in the lobby. “Hey, listen. I was wondering if maybe we should head back to Denver.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, I just thought that after last night, after that guy, well …”

“Killed himself? Ew. Yeah. That was totally disturbing.”

“Well, I thought if we went back to Denver, we could maybe, you know, deal with it together. Talk it through.”

“He’s dead, what is there to talk about?”

“I know. But it happened so close to us.”

“As if people don’t die in Denver. Besides, I want to stay.”

“You’re right, people do die everywhere, but …” I let my words trail off as I noticed Lien-hua pause beside one of the tables. A woman who appeared to be deaf was anxiously trying to communicate with one of the restaurant managers. Lien-hua stood between them, interpreting. She watched the deaf woman’s quick gestures, then spoke softly to the manager, listened to his reply, and let her own fingers fly nimbly through a series of words to the deaf woman.

A sandy-haired boy, maybe eight or nine years old, sat beside the worried-looking woman. Lien-hua had mentioned to me a few weeks ago that one of her brothers had been born deaf, just like her paternal grandfather, so I wasn’t surprised she knew sign language, but this was the first time I’d seen her use it.

“Patrick,
hello
!” Tessa was waving her hand in front of my face.

She didn’t look happy that Lien-hua had grabbed my attention.

“I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

Tessa’s eyes flickered toward Lien-hua, then back to me. “I was saying that they need you here. And besides, we only have a couple days, and what am I supposed to do at home? I’m fine. Really.”

The two guys in the neighboring booth had finished their meal and were now busy checking out Tessa, that is, until they saw me glaring at them. They looked at least three or four years older than she was. I leaned close to her. “You’re sure you don’t want to stay just so you can scope out those cute surfer guys at the booth over there?”

She purposely avoided looking at them. “What? I was not.”

“Yeah, right. They were checking you out too.”

Her eyes brightened and skipped toward the boys. “They were?”

“Watch out for those older guys. They’re nothing but trouble.”

You’re getting off track here, Pat. Decide if you’re staying here or
going to Denver.

“So, seriously, Raven.” My cell phone started to ring. “You want to stay?”

“Yeah,” she said. My phone rang again. “I want to stay here, see the beach, the aquarium. The sharks. All that stuff.” Phone still ringing. She stared at my pocket. “Are you gonna answer that already?”

I flipped out my phone.

“Dr. Bowers, it’s Aina. We found the boxes but no girlfriend.

We contacted the aquarium. Ms. Lillo never showed up for work today.”

Hunter’s keys were gone from his apartment. Maybe they took
off together.

“Aina,” I said. “That’s great. But I’m in the middle of something.”

“Her car’s still in the parking lot of the aquarium, though. Dispatch sent a team of criminalists to look through it.”

She told me that last part on purpose. I know she did.

“Thanks, Aina.” I hung up.

“OK,” I told Tessa. “I don’t want to argue with you here. If you’re good to stay, we stay.”

“I’m good to stay.”

“OK.”

“Good.”

Lien-hua returned with her coffee, and I asked her, “Was everything all right over there?”

She nodded. “The boy is allergic to peanuts. His mother saw him eating one of the cinnamon rolls with walnuts and pecans and was afraid it might contain peanuts as well. But the manager assured her that there weren’t any.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Tessa said, staring at the boy. She’s allergic to peanuts, so I knew she could relate.

“Good.” I really wanted to inspect Cassandra’s car and work space before the criminalists got to them. If Hunter was the arsonist, it was possible she was working with him, and we could wrap this whole thing up if we could locate her. I stood. “Tessa. I think Agent Jiang and I are going to go check—”

“Can I come to the aquarium with you?” Tessa asked.

I blinked. “I never said we were going to the aquarium.”

“But you are, and I want to come too, and don’t tell me it’s not safe or anything, because if Austin Hunter really is the arsonist and he was taking off with Cassandra, they wouldn’t hang out at the place she works; they’d get out of town. Right? Besides, it sounds like you should be looking for him at a Keva Juice or a Laundromat, not an aquarium.”

Lien-hua and I just stared at her. Before I could say a word, Lien-hua said, “Tessa, how do you know all that?”

“I was listening to you guys. He talks loud on the phone, and you oughta know that when you whisper something it just makes people nearby listen more closely.” She pushed back from the table.

“It’s a good thing you two aren’t spies.”

“But you only heard my side of the phone conversation,” I said.

“I filled in the rest.”

Forget college. I should send her to the FBI academy.

“Sharks are cool, right?” she said. “Remember? So, can I come?”

Something didn’t quite jibe. “Hang on, Tessa, you’re always asking to go off by yourself, to do things by yourself, to be left on your own. But whenever I’m working a case, you want to tag along. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not consistent.”

“I’m a teenage girl. I’m exempt from being consistent.”

I looked at Lien-hua, who shrugged. “She’s right about one thing, they wouldn’t hang out at the aquarium.”

Well, that was helpful.

“So,” said Tessa. “Can I come? We were gonna go to the aquarium anyway.”

“OK. Look. You stay in the public section while we check out Cassandra’s office. You stay by a crowd of people. No sneaking around. You’re never alone. Got it?”

“Got it,” she said. “No problem.”