House on Fire

31

As we scrabbled up the steep hillside, I could see red and blue lights flashing faintly in the sky. Emergency vehicles, the police, had arrived. Their lights bounced against the clouds on the other side of the mansion.

The blood was hot in my veins. My heart was racing, and not from the exertion of climbing. I was in another place. I prickled with anger. Someone had killed Maggie for some reason. She wasn’t drunk, and she hadn’t just fallen. I couldn’t get the image of Maggie’s broken neck and staring eyes out of my mind.

Anger can be a great motivator, and I was angry as I’d never been before. But anger can also cause you to act irrationally. I reminded myself that the best chance of getting to the truth was to maintain my cover. Which meant putting my anger in a deep freeze with a thick layer of pond ice over it.

In battle there was no time to grieve for your fallen comrades; you had to remain focused and tactical. So it was here. I couldn’t let anyone know that I knew the victim, that we had a connection, that she wasn’t who everybody else thought she was, except Cameron and Megan. And neither was I.

When we reached the stone wall, Santiago excused himself and returned to his work. I told him the police would want to talk with him, and he said he already expected that.

As I approached the house, the kitchen door was flung open and Kimball’s security director, Fritz Heston, came out. “Excuse me, sir,” Heston said to me. He was wearing a blue Patagonia fleece over a collared white shirt. “Mr. Brown. Did you see the body?”

I told him I did.

“Was it one of our guests?”

“Yes,” I said. “Cameron’s date, I’ve forgotten her name.”

“Oh, dear God. What happened, can you tell?”

“Her neck is broken,” I said. “It could have been any number of things.”

“The woman was pretty intoxicated last night, last I saw her. She must have gone out into the woods for some reason. And fallen. That’s probably what happened.”

“Could be,” I said with a grunt.

“How far into the woods was it?”

“In the ravine right below the stone wall.”

A man in a suit was approaching from around the side of the house. “I’m looking for Mr. Heston,” the man said. He was middle-aged and overweight and balding and had a short gray beard.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Heston said.

“Mr. Heston, I’m Detective-Sergeant Goldman from the Town of Bedford homicide squad. I understand you’re the gentleman to talk to.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you see the victim?”

Heston pointed at me. “He just did.”

“Sir,” Detective Goldman said, looking at me, “did you get close enough to the body to see any signs of life?”

“I did, and the woman is dead.” It was sickening just to say the words. I fairly successfully feigned an expression of nonchalance, but my heart was revving.

“Who found her?”

“One of the gardeners. He’s working near the pool.” I’d seen Santiago wrapping burlap bags over the scraggly sticks of a hydrangea bush, protecting it from the coming winter.

Detective Goldman took out a small pad of paper and made a note.

Heston said to the policeman, “The woman was a guest of one of Dr. Kimball’s sons, and I think you should know that she was seriously intoxicated last night.”

“She was?” said the detective, looking to me for confirmation.

I said nothing.

“That’s right,” Heston went on. “I mean, it’s tragic, certainly, but I think it’s clear what happened. She must have taken a tumble while intoxicated. A terrible thing. But not a homicide. Let’s be clear on that.”

“Well, sir, we’ll have to investigate and make sure,” Detective Goldman said to Heston. “Standard procedure. Tell me something. This was a birthday party for Dr. Kimball, and several of his dinner guests spent the night here, is that right?”

“Right,” Heston said.

“How many?”

“Well.” He counted on his fingers. “Dr. Kimball and his fiancée, four of his children, and their three guests. Including Miss Andersen.”

“Andersen, with an e?”

“Right. Hildy Andersen. She was a guest of Cameron’s.”

He took another note. “We’re going to need to talk to all of your guests and all family members and any employees in the residence.”

Heston shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. The guests are all about to leave.”

“Not anymore, they’re not,” Goldman said.

“Dr. Kimball’s houseguests are not prisoners. How about you collect names and phone numbers and you can follow up with each person if you need to? If you have any questions. But let his guests go now. Because this is so obviously a tragic accident. That’s all.”

Detective Goldman was not going to be big-footed by some corporate security director. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Heston. I’m going to order up a small bus to transport everyone in the house to the police station, where we can interview everybody separately, one at a time.”

“What? There’s no need for that! Fine. You can talk to everyone here. There are plenty of rooms.”

Detective Goldman smiled graciously. I liked this guy right away. He was clever. “Would that be all right with Dr. Kimball?”

“Let me ask, but I’m sure that would be fine.”

“Thank you. Your guests can leave as soon as we’ve talked to them.” Goldman asked us to all go into the house. On my way in, I passed a team of EMTs carrying a stretcher.

Sukie, standing outside vaping something, grabbed me as I passed. “Is it — was it — Cameron’s date?”

I nodded.

“Is she...?”

I kept nodding.

“What was she doing in the woods? What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She looked around before saying, “Did you get it?” She didn’t seem to be concerned that a woman had been killed.

“I didn’t succeed in getting the file,” I said, keeping it ambiguous. I couldn’t tell her about Maggie, who she really was and what she was up to.

“Shit.”

“But there’s a lot of interesting stuff there.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t think we should be talking about this now.”

She fell silent, nodded. Took another puff on her electronic cigarette. “Nick, are the police going to find out your real name?”

“Probably.”

“Oh, God. When it gets out, my family’s going to go ballistic.”

“I’ll handle it. Don’t worry about it.”

I had a lot more on my mind than that.