The Violet Crow (22 page)

From Bruno's perspective, the men of Ladder Company No. 1 seemed to have superhuman agility and courage. They scaled the ladder as though it were a toy and began attacking the roof with axes and chain saws. Almost instantly, gases rushed up through the vent, flared up and died back just as quickly. Somehow the firemen managed to dodge the blast of flame. And then the men from the engine company came up, aiming water from their pressure hoses at the blaze.

When it was over, Gary would claim he'd had the time of his life. He'd talk about how hard it was to see anything. How sections of the floor were gone, so you'd have to pray you weren't stepping into a hole. How burning sections of the ceiling and walls came crashing down around him. Gary was supposed to work through an official checklist of known meth lab booby traps. First was electronically controlled detonators. No worries there. They'd shut down the power right off the bat.
Check
. Number two, light bulbs filled with gasoline. Wouldn't be a problem either: If there had been any, they surely would have exploded by now.
Check-check
.

No man or bear traps by the front door; no boards with nails driven through under the window that allowed access to the fire escape.

Rattlesnakes did not seem likely to present a problem. Those were on the list as a tribute to the ingenuity of cookers in rural areas of states like Florida and Arkansas. No attack dogs either.

Trip wires were a trickier problem. Gary had to crack open cabinet doors and closets—gently, gently—then visually inspect, if possible. In cases where visual inspection was not possible—like when there was so much smoke you could barely see—then he could risk inserting a blade, using extreme caution. According to the manual, this technique was “not recommended, for emergencies only.” But in Gary's experience, whenever you were poking around for bombs to defuse in a meth lab, it was always an emergency. Who were they kidding? You just had to get good with the blade and hope to God it never encountered resistance.

Gary worked his way around the kitchen, testing as many cabinets as the fire would allow. The blaze raging next to the sink suggested that was where the chemicals had been stored. No sign of a tank, though. Was that a good sign? Yes, if it meant they hadn't stolen any anhydrous ammonia yet. No, if it meant the tank was someplace else.

He retreated to the living room. It was empty of furniture and did not have any closets. All clear. Gary let out a sigh and headed for the bedroom.
Just a few more minutes
, he told himself. With any luck he'd be out of this hellhole and back on the street in time for lunch.

Unfortunately the bedroom door was either wedged shut or locked from the inside. No way he was going to break it open. He could sense the heat in there; forcing this door would be asking for all kinds of trouble. They'd need to go in through the roof—and fast.

It was time to go. Gary placed a backwards-check next to number six and got his black ass moving out as fast as he could.

As he downed his third latte, Bruno saw nothing but chaos. He was in limbo looking out at perdition. Hoses snaked everywhere. The water curtain cascaded toward the street, while the smoke just got thicker and thicker. Not many people were gawking at the barricades. The news that there were hazardous chemical vapors kept all but the most curious and foolhardy souls at bay.

Besides, they could watch it at home on TV. There were multiple crews filming the blaze from a safe distance with telephoto lenses. One diminutive reporter, dressed in a Barbour jacket, Timberline construction boots, and a Maine lobsterman rain hat was right in the thick of things. Who'd let her in? She seemed to be interrupting firemen while they were working and asking them for comments. It could only be Peaches. She had a respirator in one hand, tape recorder in the other, worrying the crowd like a hungry jackal on the fringes of a savannah barbecue.

The Starbucks crew was pouring free beverages and sending them outside to anyone who needed them. Bruno was tired of feeling useless, so he volunteered to pass out coffee. As he moved from group to group, he kept overhearing snatches of conversation:

“These guys are real heroes. They got day jobs, for Chrissakes.”

“See that man over there with the droopy mustache? That's Farouz what's-his-face, the owner of the rug shop. He looks like someone who just sold his entire inventory at retail.”

“The cops didn't find any booby traps; now they can put out the fire.”

“I hear it's a Nazi lab, which is way worse than Red P.”

“Everything bad that could happen has already happened.”

Miraculously, the fire company contained the fire with minimal damage—most of it from water sprayed at the building next door. All of the firemen and police were present and accounted for. Two were suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion, but nothing serious. With the fire out, the Chiefs were giving interviews to the press. “No, we haven't determined what caused the blaze.” “Yes, there will be a complete investigation.” “No, we do not have any tentative conclusions. The investigation will take a while.” “Yes, it was a meth lab.” “Yes, of course we are surprised it blew up …” On and on.

The police and firemen waited for the camera crews and reporters to leave. Then Chief Cushing sent two firemen back inside. Five minutes later they reappeared, carrying what was, unmistakably, a body bag. They loaded it into an emergency vehicle, which pulled away on the long, slow ride to Dr. Cronkite's lab in Pennsauken.

Chapter 44

“
FATAL EXPLOSION STUNS GARDENFIELD

“
We're all terrorized now

“by P.C. Cromwell

“GARDENFIELD, NJ—Yesterday was our September 11. There was no dramatic attack from the sky. But the acrid smoke, the shell-shocked faces were the same. The Fire Department performed heroically, but couldn't protect us from the reality of death. I guess we should feel lucky only one person is dead or missing—not thousands. But that's a question of scale, not substance.

“What is the substance? That's the question I was asking myself as I left the scene. The embers still glowed and my face was smeared with soot because I got too close. What does it all mean?

“This is the answer I came up with as I drove home. It's not comforting. It's not flattering. But it's the truth.

“Yesterday was the tipping point. We had already experienced the unknown girl—‘Ginnie Doe'—found dead in the Quaker meeting house.

“Then came little Gussie Parker, found in the pond. First bludgeoned, then drowned. But yesterday was the day that changed us forever. It was our Pearl Harbor, our Inchon, our Tet. The lesson couldn't be clearer …”

“We have to take the offensive, right?” said Biff. “We coulda won in Korea and Vietnam if we'd taken the offensive the way we did in World War II.” All of the cops were assembled in the situation room while Chief Black read Peaches' article aloud.

“Wrong. You're not going to believe this …” the Chief resumed reading.

“The lesson couldn't be clearer. We've already tried to meet violence with violence. We've taken the ‘law enforcement' approach. We've locked down our town, trying to keep the troublemakers out. We've turned ourselves into vigilantes.

“I can't walk the streets with my video camera without getting a funny look from passersby. In our local library, the librarians tell me they are uncomfortable because the police asked them to report anything suspicious.

“Our charming, historical town has been transformed into an Orwellian nightmare.

“And whom do we have to blame? Mayor Dove? He had the right idea, authorizing a variety of approaches. Chief Black? He tried his best, but came up empty and, in some cases, contributed to a heightened level of violence …”

Several voices rose in protest: “What's that supposed to mean? What a bunch a B.S.!” But the Chief silenced them. “We're just getting to the good part.

“But it's not all the Chief's fault. I think we also have to blame ourselves.

“For too long Gardenfield has been an island of complacency in the midst of a world that has far more grit and substance than we do. We're just across the bridge from Philadelphia and all its corruption. We're just up the road from Camden, crime capital of the U.S. two years running. Prosperity and privilege can't exist in a vacuum. It's the new law of social thermodynamics.

“Who do we think we are?

“Why should we be different?

“Let's tell the vigilantes to take off their sashes and go home.

“Let's let meter maids be meter maids again.

“The war on terror has come to Gardenfield. We're just going to have to live with it.”

The room was silent as the Chief finished reading. Finally someone hazarded a mystified, “That's it?”

The Chief nodded.

“She's out of her mind.”

“Is she trying to start a panic?”

“Whose side is she on?”

“What a loser! No way we're going to let some creep take our town away from us.”

“That's it exactly,” said the Chief. “I want to ask everybody, here in front of the entire force, do any of you think we're defeated? That we can't do this job? That we can't restore peace and safety to Gardenfield, like it was before?”

“Hell no!” they roared in unison.

Bruno felt a glow work its way up his spine. Though the language might have been a bit
purple
, the feeling was most definitely genuine. It was an inspiring moment.

Even the Chief seemed a bit choked up. “Thanks.” He smiled. “That's what I hoped you'd say. Now if any of you run into Ms. Cromwell, make sure to be polite and treat her with respect. We don't want to give her any more ammunition.”

“I'm having lunch with her tomorrow,” Bruno announced to a chorus of boos, hisses, and pointedly rude suggestions.

Before he could explain that he was meeting Peaches as part of “a proactive public relations strategy,” the phone rang. It was a call from the medical examiner's office. Dr. Cronkite was reporting that the dental records confirmed the identity of the body found charred beyond recognition in the fire.

“Everybody here had some kind of connection with him, for better or worse,” the Chief said. “The man killed in the fire was Newton Ichabod Murphy III, better known to all of us as Icky.”

Chapter 45

After the meeting, the Chief invited Bruno to join him in his office.

“What do you make of all this?” asked the psychic.

“I think it's connected. We now have three deaths. All of them senseless attacks on innocent young people.” He wrote a list: “GINNIE DOE—GUSSIE PARKER—ICKY,” adding, “Icky wasn't exactly innocent. But … you know what I mean. They had no reason to kill him.”

Bruno nodded. “Plus Maggie. You don't get more innocent than a dog.”

“Right.” The Chief added Maggie's name to the list, with the designation “K-9” in parenthesis. “And don't forget the threat against your niece.” He wrote “MIMI C-MCRAE” in brackets, continuing, “None of this fits the profile of a serial killer. There's no sexual component. No pattern of physical abuse.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“My hunch is that the first murder is the key,” said the Chief, circling Ginnie Doe's name on the board. “The rest of it's all an attempt to distract us or cover up the first one.” He crossed out the other four names on the list. “That's the one thing that is consistent, by the way, with serial killers. The first crime is the most significant, in terms of M.O.” The Chief circled Ginnie's name yet again.

“Why's that?”

“The killer reads what they're reporting in the press. He knows what we're looking for and deliberately alters the pattern to confuse us.”

“That's why I wanted to talk to Peaches!” Bruno punched his right palm with his left fist, making a loud smacking noise. “Remind her that bad guys read the paper too.”

“Hopeless cause, in my book. I'd stay away if I were you.”

“I'm thinking we could feed her some information, you know, strategically. Throw her off the track. Use it to our advantage.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. I'm trying to think of something. Maybe tell her Mayor Dove's wife's a suspect. Something like that.”

“Don't. It could get us all fired. Speaking of which, did I ever formally re-hire you after the Mayor made me fire you?”

“I can't remember. You did let me out of jail early, but I can't remember if I'm officially working for you or not.”

“Well now it's official. But you have to keep a low profile.”

“Tell me about it.” Bruno rubbed his battered forehead ruefully.

“Alison Wales is our best lead,” the Chief continued. He erased the list of names and wrote Alison's instead in huge letters. “Ginnie Doe was wearing Alison's clothes when Mimi found her. Remember, we were talking about that just before the building blew up? That's the thread we need to pick up now.”

“You don't think she was in the building?”

“We only found one body.”

“I heard there wasn't much left of Icky.”

“Until we have evidence otherwise, Alison lives. She is our number-one person of interest.” The Chief circled Alison's name several times, then capped and put away the marker for emphasis.

Bruno sensed the meeting was coming to a close. “Too bad Peaches is so unreliable …” He yawned and stretched. “With the right publicity, we could have the whole county looking for her.”

“That'd just ensure the bad guys would be looking for her too. I was hoping you could find her more discreetly.”

“Sure, I just need a recent photograph.”

“Good. We'll see what we can come up with. It's nice to have you back. But remember, your job right now is to make sure we're the first ones to find Alison Wales.”