The Burnt House

19

S OMETIMES L.A. SUNRISES were preceded by spectacular, awe-inspiring displays of color-brilliant oranges, royal purples, and shocking pinks. On other occasions, they consisted of an insipid, dishwater-gray light breaking through an overcast sky. Such was the case this morning. June gloom had covered the basin with a layer of lint, and it was chilly and damp: what the locals would describe as just plain yucky.

It didn’t help that Decker was staring into a desolate area-a seven-foot Cyclone fence encircling a pit as if it were a zoo cage under restoration. Inside, several excavators and steel bins of biohazardous material stood inert and ominous. Yellow caution tape flapped in a wind pungent with the odor of charred blackness. He raised the zipper on his bomber jacket and sipped hot coffee from his thermos. Then he checked his watch. It was a little before seven. The crew wasn’t scheduled to be out until ten, and the one person he did manage to reach-an NTSB field officer named Catalina Melendez-was a mother of two school-age children and couldn’t make it down before eight.

That was okay. It gave Decker ample time to look around and absorb what he had neglected. He capped the thermos and laid it on the sidewalk. He grasped the cold metal of the makeshift fencing and peered inside the perimeter.

What had it been like…to have been trapped in that inferno?

Staring into bleakness, he suddenly sensed motion from the corner of his eye. “Hey,” he yelled out. “Hey! Police!”

A shadowed figure pivoted and took off, scaling over the fence and dropping to the ground on the opposite side from where Decker was standing, vanishing within moments. There was no way that Decker could catch up and he let it ride. The person could have been someone homeless camping out, or more likely, it was a vulture, scavenging for coins. Disaster sites were often pilfered for valuables.

Decker scribbled down a few cursory notes, then took out a camera and began snapping pictures. By the time he had taken most of his detailed photographs, it was almost eight. Catalina Melendez showed up twenty minutes later. She was small, with mocha-colored skin, and solidly built. Wisps of curly black hair were blowing about her face and in her mouth. She pulled them from her lips with fingers topped with clipped nails. She wore black slacks, boots, and a black bomber jacket with a yellow NTSB emblazoned on back.

“Sorry I’m late.” She pulled out a set of keys and began sorting through them. “My six-year-old had an accident involving a carton of orange juice. How long have you been waiting?”

“Not so long,” Decker lied. “I really appreciate you coming down this early…it’s Officer Melendez, right?”

“Yeah, but call me Cat.” Again, she pulled strands of hair from her mouth. “It looks like we’ve got a little wind and that’s not helpful. It blows the residue around. I hope you have a mask. You don’t want to be breathing in this muck.”

Decker pulled a face mask from his jacket and put it on.

“Here we go.” Cat opened one of the five padlocks that secured the area. “It’s Detective Decker, isn’t it?”

“Pete is fine.”

“You’re from local homicide.”

“Yes…West Valley.”

“And this is regarding the Jane Doe we found about ten days ago.”

“That’s the story. Can you tell me where you found the body?”

“Sure can,” Cat said. “Watch your step and try to stay on the pathway.”

Decker looked down at a well-worn, rutted groove running through the area. He was surprised at how much powdery burned material remained and remarked upon it.

“Yeah, we’re going through it really slowly, not only for the purpose of gathering corroborating evidence for the accident, but to make sure we don’t overlook any biological material. Technically, body parts are the coroner’s responsibility, but we’re much more used to doing this than they are.”

“And technically, anything revolving around Jane Doe is our department because it’s pretty clear that she was a murder victim.”

“Yeah, we all knew that the Jane Doe wasn’t our missing body from the accident-the flight attendant.”

“Roseanne Dresden.”

“Yes, mysterious Roseanne.”

“Any signs that she was on the plane?”

“You’d have to ask the coroner for details, but frankly…” Cat lowered her voice. “I think someone made a mistake…or worse.”

Decker said, “Fraud.”

Cat shrugged. “Insurance detectives are pretty much on the ball, but you can’t catch every liar out there. And the more time that goes by, the harder it is.”

Decker knew it wouldn’t have been the first time that some scamster badass had disappeared after telling the spouse to make a death claim. Afterward, the two of them would ride into the sunset with the insurance money. It was possible that Roseanne and Ivan were in cahoots with the intent of defrauding insurance.

He and Cat walked gingerly around pits and pools of the charred material. Evidence buried under the ruins, not unlike the house in Jerusalem that Rina had been talking about. An occasional wind kicked up. Swirling cinders encircled their ankles like a swarm of bees. It was a black, barren landscape of fire and smoke, yet healthy shoots of emerald-green plant matter had surfaced and stretched toward the sunlight. Ash was a terrific fertilizer. The only other colors in the lightless painting were provided by wrappers and cups from fast-food chains. Cat bent down and picked up a McDonald’s bag filled with garbage and ants.

“Ick!” She looked around for a designated garbage bag and dropped the refuse inside. “So freaking annoying. It contaminates everything. Lucky for us, we’re almost finished.”

A preliminary conclusion reached by at least the media was that faulty hydraulics were to blame. Decker asked her about it.

“Not for me to say,” Cat answered. “We’ve got zillions of pieces in an airplane hangar. Engineers will sort them out and get to the bottom of it, but it takes about a year. Sometimes longer. Sometimes never.”

Decker said, “You said you knew right away that the body wasn’t a crash victim. How’d you know if you weren’t the one who examined the body?”

“Experience. The remains were too intact. Most of what is pulled up has been scattered and pulverized.”

“Still, you’ve identified everyone else involved in the accident.”

“Yes, the coroner’s office has done an amazing job. Incredible what a good team can do with a single tooth and a femur. Anyway, after you see enough accident sites, you know what belongs and what doesn’t.” Cat checked an electronic compass. “Okay, we found her right about there.” She pointed to small white chalked spot. “I entered the coordinates in my little organizer. I figured that eventually someone from homicide might want to take a look at the spot.”

The area was near the southwest corner of the apartment building. Decker gloved up and squatted down. “Can I take a look?”

Cat squatted next to him. “Sure. Just go slowly.”

Using his fingers, he pushed aside ash and debris, filtering the material through his fingers, attempting to pick up anything that might have been associated with his Jane Doe. “Do you know if she was found under or above the foundation?”

“It’s hard to say because the collapse of the building broke through a lot of the foundation. And when we started digging around, it was hard to separate before and after. I’ll tell you this much. We always recover lots of incidentals at accident sites, especially if the integrity of the building was compromised.”

“Like what?”

“Money, jewelry, drugs, guns…almost anything people want to hide.”

Decker continued sifting. He wasn’t having much luck. Things that appeared solid at first glance disintegrated through the gaps in his fingers. He scooped up more of the cinders and let them fall through his fingers, repeating the process for several minutes as he dug deeper. Abruptly, Decker touched upon something embedded in the soil. His fingers dug around the object until he loosened it from the packed ground. What he pulled up was hard and round and sooty with a hole in the middle. Despite the heat and the fire and what must have been several thousand degrees’ worth of Fahrenheit temperature, the object had managed to retain its original shape.

“What is it?” Cat asked.

Decker wiped the object on his bomber jacket to remove some of the soil and gave it to her.

“A plastic ring,” she said. “Looks like something you’d find in an eight-year-old’s goody bag…or a prize that you’d find in a quarter gumball machine.”

“Can I take a look at that again?”

She handed the ring to him. Even though it had been scorched with dirt, Decker could make out a blue stone or piece of glass in the center. If it had been gold and the glass had been a gem, it would have resembled a cabochon sapphire in the middle of a man’s pinkie ring. He was amazed that the plastic had not melted. Perhaps it had been shielded by the body or had been buried even deeper. He held it up to the strong, midmorning sunlight. As he bathed the object in the warmth of the rays, the stone began to change from dark blue, to ice blue, to pale pink. He let out a chuckle.

“What?” Cat asked.

“I know what this is. It’s a mood ring.” He regarded her face. “You’re too young to remember the original fad; mood rings were really popular in the sixties and seventies. This may have belonged to my Jane Doe. Can I keep it?”

“If you think it might help.”

“It might. Maybe someone remembers a young woman wearing a mood ring.”

Cat stood up and so did Decker. She said, “First, let me take a picture of the ring and categorize it-date, time, and place. We need to make sure it didn’t belong to any of the victims of the accident.”

“Yes, of course.” Decker waited until she was done and then dropped the ring into a small paper evidence bag. He peeked inside. Bereft of light and heat, the stone had paled to something between cold steel and graveyard gray.

IT FELT EERIE to be taking a flight from Burbank to San Jose on WestAir, sitting in an aircraft identical to the one that had plunged into nothingness just months ago. Decker felt a palpable tension during takeoff, and relief after the plane had reached cruising altitude and a quick beverage service had begun. He checked his watch, first to measure his heartbeat, which was thumping more than normal, then to calculate the time until arrival. It was almost two and they had about forty minutes to go. He glanced at Marge, who was looking over her notes. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail and wore a white shirt and a black skirt. Black pumps on her feet. Recently she’d started wearing reading glasses. These were small and dark framed. It gave her a sort of sexy, schoolteacher look.

Decker said, “So you found Raymond Holmes to be cooperative?”

“Very.”

“Even though we’re interviewing him about his mistress and he’s married?”

“That was his only request…that we keep the family out of it. I told him I didn’t see a reason to include the wife and kids, and after that, he was easy.” She took her glasses off, regarded Decker, and raised her eyebrows. “Almost too easy.”

“Glib?”

“I don’t know, Pete. We’ve all been thinking along the same lines, that Roseanne wasn’t on that plane. That means we could be interviewing her murderer.”

“True. But first let’s just find out about their relationship. If he’s involved in her disappearance, at the very least we need him to admit that he saw her the night before she vanished.”

“So how do you want to handle the interview?”

“I guess it depends what we find out from WestAir in San Jose. Were you able to get any cooperation from the corporate honchos or are they still being difficult and referring you to their special task force?”

“Actually, WestAir has seemed to ease up a little. Someone gave me a name-Leslie Bracco. Apparently, she manned the check-in desk for the five A.M. flight from San Jose to Burbank. I couldn’t get an interview with her first thing, so we’re talking to her after we talk to Holmes. I made it around five.”

“That’ll work. Let’s handle Holmes like we handled Ivan Dresden. We’re just talking to him to get a timetable of Roseanne’s last movements.”

“Makes total sense.” She leaned to her left and looked out the window. “How long do you think the interview with the flight attendant will take?”

“I don’t know. Could be twenty minutes, could be two hours. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Decker chuckled. “Dinner date?”

“I told Will to make it for eight. I figured that would give me enough time.”

“I would hope so. I’m scheduled to leave on an eight-forty flight back home. When are you getting home?”

She squirmed in her seat. “I’m taking the five-thirty tomorrow morning.”

Decker smiled.

“What?” she protested. “I’m a natural early riser. Why fight mother nature?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re being technical, Decker.” She punched his shoulder. “One smirk said it all.”