E Is for Evidence

2

The next morning, December 24, I jogged three miles, showered, ate a bowl of cereal, packed a canvas tote with supplies, and was heading toward Colgate by 8:45, a quick ten-mile drive. I'd reviewed the file over breakfast, and I was already puzzled about what the big rush was. The newspaper account indicated that the warehouse was gut-ted, but there was no telltale closing line about arson, investigations pending, or any speculation that the nature of the blaze was suspect. The fire-department report was included, and I'd read that twice. It all looked routine. Apparently the origin of the fire was a malfunction in the electrical system, which had simultaneously shorted out the sprinklers. Since the materials stored in the two-story structure were largely paper goods, the 2:00 A.M. fire had spread rapidly. According to the fire inspector at the scene, there was no sign of firetraps, no gasoline or other flammables, and no sign of obstacles placed so as to impede the work of the firemen. There was no indication that doors or windows had been left open to create favorable drafts and no other physical evidence of incendiary origin. I'd read dozens of reports just like this one. So what was the big deal here? I wondered. Maybe I was missing a crucial piece of information, but as far as I could see, this was a standard claim. I had to guess that somebody at Wood/Warren was putting the squeeze on California Fi-delity for a speedy settlement, which might explain Andy 's panic. He's a nail-biter by inclination, anxious for approval, worried about censure, in the middle of marital problems, from what I'd heard. He was probably the source of the little note of hysteria that had crept into the case. Maybe Mac was leaning on him, too.

Colgate is the bedroom community that adjoins Santa Teresa, providing affordable housing for average working folk. While new construction in Santa Teresa is closely regulated by the Architectural Board of Review, building in Colgate has proceeded according to no known plan, though it leans toward the nondescript. There is one major street lined with donut shops, hardware stores, fast-food establishments, beauty salons, and furniture stores that feature veneer and laminate, velour and Naugahyde. From the main thoroughfare, tract homes stretch out in all directions, housing styles appearing like concentric rings on a tree stump, spiraling out decade by decade until the new neighborhoods peter out into raw countryside, or what's left of it. In isolated patches there are still signs of the old citrus groves that once flourished there.

Wood/Warren was located on a side street that angled back toward an abandoned drive-in theater that functions as a permanent location for weekend swap sales. The lawns of the neighboring manufacturing plants were a close-clipped green, and the shrubs were trimmed into perfect rectangles. I found a parking place out front and locked up. The building was a compact story and a half of stucco and fieldstone. The address of the warehouse itself was two blocks away. I'd inspect the fire scene after I talked to Lance Wood.

The reception area was small and plain, furnished with a desk, a bookcase, and an enlarged photograph of the FIFA 5000 Hydrogen/Vacuum Furnace, the mainstay of the company fortunes. It looked like an oversized unit for an efficiency kitchen, complete with stainless-steel counter and built-in microwave. According to the data neatly framed nearby, the front-loading FIFA 5000 provided five thousand cubic inches of uniform hot zone for hydrogen or vacuum brazing, for metallizing ceramics, or manufactur-ing ceramic-to-metal seals. I should have guessed.

Behind me, the receptionist was returning to her desk with a fresh cup of coffee and a Styrofoam container that smelled of sausage and eggs. The laminated plastic sign on her desk indicated that her name was Heather. She was in her twenties and apparently hadn't yet heard about the hazards of cholesterol and fat. She would find the latter on her fanny one day soon.

"May I help you?" Her smile was quick, exposing braces on her teeth. Her complexion was still ruddy from last night's application of an acne cure that so far hadn't had much effect.

"I have an appointment with Lance Wood at nine," I said. "I'm with California Fidelity Insurance."

Her smile faded slightly. "You're the arson investiga-tor?"

"Well, I'm here on the fire claim," I said, wondering if she mistakenly assumed that "arson" and "fire" were in-terchangeable terms.

"Oh. Mr. Wood isn't in yet, but he should be here momentarily," she said. The braces infused her speech with a sibilance that amused her when she heard herself. "Can I get you some coffee while you wait?"

I shook my head. There was one chair available and I took a seat, amusing myself by leafing through a brochure on the molybdenum work rack designed specifically for metallizing alumina at 1450° C. in a bell-style hydrogen furnace. These people had about as many laughs as I do at home, where a prime source of entertainment is a text-book on practical aspects of ballistics, firearms, and foren-sic techniques.

Through a doorway to my left, I could see some of the office staff, casually dressed and busy, but glum. I didn't pick up any sense of camaraderie among them, but maybe hydrogen furnace-making doesn't generate the kind of good-natured bantering I'm accustomed to with California Fidelity. Two desks were unoccupied, bare of equipment or accouterments.

Some attempt had been made to decorate for Christ-mas. There was an artificial tree across the room from me, tall and skeletal, hung with multicolored ornaments. There didn't seem to be any lights strung on the tree, which gave it a lifeless air and only pointed up the unifor-mity of the detachable limbs stuck into pre-bored holes in the aluminum shaft. The effect was dispiriting. From the information I'd been given, Wood/Warren grossed close to fifteen million bucks a year, and I wondered why they wouldn't pop for a live pine.

Heather gave me a self-conscious smile and began to eat. Behind her was a bulletin board decorated with gar-lands of tinsel and covered with snapshots of the family and staff. H-A-P-P-Y H-O-L-I-D-A-Y-S was spelled out in jaunty store-bought silver letters.

"Mind if I look at that?" I asked, indicating the collage.

By then, she had a mouth full of breakfast croissant, but she managed assent, holding a hand in front of her mouth to spare me the sight of her masticated food. "Help yourself."

Most of the photographs were of company employees, some of whom I'd seen on the premises. Heather was fea-tured in one, her fair hair much shorter, her face still framed in baby fat. The braces on her teeth probably rep-resented the last vestige of her teens. Wood/Warren must have hired her right out of high school. In one photograph, four guys in company coveralls stood in a relaxed group on the front doorstep. Some of the shots were stiffly posed, but for the most part they seemed to capture an aura of good-will I wasn't picking up on currently. The founder of the company, Linden "Woody" Wood, had died two years be-fore, and I wondered if some of the joy had gone out of the place with his demise.

The Woods themselves formed the centerpiece in a studio portrait that looked like it was taken at the family home. Mrs. Wood was seated in a French Provincial chair. Linden stood with his hand resting on his wife's shoulder. The five grown children were ranged around their par-ents. Lance I'd never met before, but I knew Ash because I'd gone to high school with her. Olive, older by a year, had attended Santa Teresa High briefly, but had been sent off to a boarding school in her senior year. There was probably a minor scandal attached to that, but I wasn't sure what it was. The oldest of the five was Ebony, who by now must be nearly forty. I remembered hearing that she'd married some rich playboy and was living in France. The youngest was a son named Bass, not quite thirty, reckless, irresponsi-ble, a failed actor and no-talent musician, living in New York City, the last I'd heard. I had met him briefly eight years before through my ex-husband, Daniel, a jazz pian-ist. Bass was the black sheep of the family. I wasn't sure what the story was on Lance.

Seated across his desk from him sixty-six minutes later, I began to pick up a few hints. Lance had breezed in at 9:30. The receptionist indicated who I was. He introduced himself and we shook hands. He said he had a quick phone call to make and then he'd be right with me. I said "Fine" and that was the last I saw of him until 10:06. By then, he'd shed his suit coat and loosened his tie along with the top button of his dress shirt. He was sitting with his feet up on the desk, his face oily-looking under the fluorescent lights. He must have been in his late thirties, but he wasn't aging well. Some combination of temper and discontent had etched lines near his mouth and spoiled the clear brown of his eyes, leaving an impression of a man beleaguered by the Fates. His hair was light brown, thinning on top, and combed straight back from his face. I thought the business about the phone call was bullshit. He struck me as the sort of man who pumped up his own sense of importance by making people wait. His smile was self-satisfied, and the energy he radiated was charged with tension.

"Sorry for the delay," he said, "What can I do for you?" He was tipped back in his swivel chair, his thighs splayed.

"I understand you filed a claim for a recent fire loss."

"That's right, and I hope you're not going to give me any static over that. Believe me, I'm not asking for any-thing I'm not entitled to."

I made a noncommittal murmur of some sort, hoping to conceal the fact that I'd gone on "fraud alert." Every insurance piker I'd ever met said just that, right down to the pious little toss of the head. I took out my tape re-corder, flicked it on, and set it on the desk. "The company requires that I tape the interview," I said.

"That's fine."

I directed my next few remarks to the recorder, estab-lishing my name, the fact that I worked for California Fidelity, the date and time of the interview, and the fact that I was speaking to Lance Wood in his capacity as president and CEO of Wood/Warren, the address of the com-pany, and the nature of the loss.

"Mr. Wood, you do understand that this is being taped," I said for the benefit of the record.

"Yes."

"And do I have your permission to make this record-ing of the conversation we're about to have?"

"Yes, yes," he said, making that little rolling hand ges-ture that means "Let's get on with it."

I glanced down at the file. "Can you tell me the cir-cumstances of the fire that occurred at the Wood/Warren warehouse at 606 Fairweather on December nineteenth of this year?"

He shifted impatiently. "Actually, I was out of town, but from what I'm told…" The telephone intercom buzzed and he snatched up the receiver, barking at it like a dog. "Yes?"

There was a pause. "Well, goddamn it, put her through." He gave me a quick look. "No, wait a minute, I'll take it out there." He put the phone down, excused him-self brusquely, and left the room. I clicked off the recorder, mentally assessing the brief impression I'd had of him as he passed. He was getting heavy in the waist and his gabar-dine pants rode up unbecomingly, his shirt sticking to the center of his back. He smelled harshly of sweat-not that clean animal scent that comes from a hard workout, but the pungent, faintly repellant odor of stress. His complex-ion was sallow and he looked vaguely unhealthy.

I waited for fifteen minutes and then tiptoed to the door. The reception area was deserted. No sign of Lance Wood. No sign of Heather. I moved over to the door lead-ing into the inner office. I caught a glimpse of someone passing into the rear of the building who looked very much like Ebony, but I couldn't be sure. A woman looked up at me. The name plate on her desk indicated that she was Ava Daugherty, the office manager. She was in her late forties, with a small, dusky face and a nose that looked as if it had been surgically tampered with. Her hair was short and black, with the glossy patina of hair spray. She was un-happy about something, possibly the fact that she'd just cracked one of her bright-red acrylic fingernails.

"I'm supposed to be meeting with Lance Wood, but he's disappeared. Do you know where he went?"

"He left the plant." She was licking the cracked nail experimentally, as if the chemistry of her saliva might serve as adhesive.

"He left?"

"That's what I said."

"Did he say how soon he'd be back?"

"Mr. Wood doesn't consult with me," she said snap-pishly. "If you'd like to leave your name, I'm sure he'll get back to you."

A voice cut in. "Something wrong?"

We both looked up to find a dark-haired man standing in the doorway behind me. Ava Daugherty's manner be-came somewhat less antagonistic. "This is the company vice-president," she said to me. And to him, "She's sup-posed to be in a meeting with Lance, but he left the plant."

"Terry Kohler," he said to me, holding out his hand. "I'm Lance Wood's brother-in-law."

"Kinsey Millhone, from California Fidelity," I said, shaking hands with him. "Nice to meet you." His grip was hard and hot. He was wiry, with a dark moustache and large, dark eyes that were full of intelligence. He must have been in his early forties. I wondered which sister he was married to.

"What's the problem? Something I can help you with?"

I told him briefly what I was doing there and the fact that Lance Wood had abandoned me without a word of explanation.

"Why don't I show you the warehouse?" he said. "At least you can go ahead and inspect the fire scene, which I'm assuming is one of your responsibilities."

"I'd appreciate that. Is anybody else out here autho-rized to give me the information I need?"

Terry Kohler and Ava Daugherty exchanged a look I couldn't decipher.

"You better wait for Lance," he said. "Hold on and I'll see if I can find out where he went." He moved toward the outer office.

Ava and I avoided small talk. She opened her top right-hand drawer and took out a tube of Krazy Glue, ignoring me pointedly as she snipped off the tip and squeezed one clear drop on the cracked fingernail. She frowned. A long dark hair was caught in the glue and I watched her struggle to extract it.

Idly I tuned into the conversation behind me, three engineers in a languid discussion about the problem before them.

"Now maybe the calculation is off, but I don't think so," one was saying,

"We'll find out," someone interjected. All three men laughed.

"The question came up… oh, this has occurred to me many times… What would it take to convert this to a pulse power supply for the main hot cell?"

"Depends on what your pulsing frequency is."

"About ten hertz."

"Whoa."

"Anything that would allow you to modulate a signal away that was being influenced by the juice going through the susceptors. You know, power on for nine-tenths of a second, off for a tenth. Take measurements…"

"Urn-hum. On for a half a second, off for a tenth of a second. You can't really do it easily, can you?"

"The PID controller could send the output that fast. I'm not sure what that would do to the NCRs. To the VRT setup itself, whether that would follow it…"

I tuned them out again. They could have been plot-ting the end of the world for all I knew.

It was another ten minutes before Terry Kohler reap-peared. He was shaking his head in apparent exasperation.

"I don't know what's going on around here," he said. "Lance had to go out on some emergency and Heather's still away from her desk." He held up a key ring. "I'll take you over to the warehouse. Tell Heather I've got these if she shows up."

"I should get my camera," I said. "It's with my handbag."-

He tagged along patiently while I moved back to Lance Wood's office, where I retrieved the camera, tucked my wallet in my tote, and left my handbag where it was.

Together we retraced a path through the reception room and the offices beyond. Nobody actually looked up as we passed, but curious gazes followed us in silence, like those portraits where the eyes seem to move.

The assembly work was done in a large, well-venti-lated area in the back half of the building with walls of corrugated metal and a floor of concrete.

We paused only once while Terry introduced me to a man named John Salkowitz. "John's a chemical engineer and consulting associate," Terry said. "He's been with us since 'sixty-six. You have any questions about high-temper-ature processing, he's the man you want to ask."

Offhand, I couldn't think of one-except maybe about that pulse power supply for the main hot cell. That was a poser.

Terry was moving toward the rear door, and I trotted after him.

To the right, there was a double-wide rolling steel door that could be raised to accommodate incoming ship-ments or to load finished units ready for delivery. We went out into the alleyway, cutting through to the street be-yond.

"Which of the Wood sisters are you married to?" I asked. "I went to high school with Ash."

"Olive," he said with a smile. "What's your name again?"

I told him and we chatted idly for the remainder of the short walk, dropping into silence only when the charred skeleton of the warehouse loomed into view.