“You made coffee. Thanks.” He wandered out into the kitchen, boxers only, his hair an unruly mess of midnight curls, opened the cupboard and took out a cup.
“I fell asleep on you,” she said by way of apology.
“If only.” He opened the refrigerator and rummaged for the milk, of which there was none—she already knew because she’d looked for it earlier. “
On
me would have been great, but next to me is still nice. Damn, no milk. This happens all the time.”
It was impossible not to laugh at the disappointed mutter. “I’ll go out and get some. Least I can do.”
“No, I throw most of it out anyway because I only use it in coffee. You’d think I’d figure that out. It’s more sensible economically to just never buy it. Half the time when I pour it out it’s like cottage cheese.” He filled his cup and came over to drop into an opposite chair at the kitchen table. “You’re up early.”
The neutral tone of his voice spoke volumes.
“I’d love to sleep in.” She meant it. With all her heart. But then again, she was finally
working
. “The case … I don’t know. I woke up and started to think about it and that was the end of that.”
The air-conditioning hummed in the background. It was predicted to be another scorcher, highs in the nineties, humidity over the top. The heat wave was apparently determined to hang on. Bryce sat back, extended his long legs, and nodded. “It would keep me awake too if it was my problem.”
She moodily stared at him across the oak surface between them. The question that had really woken her was on her mind. “Why the hell did he jump?”
“Matthew … Tobias, is it? Interesting question. Since you asked it, I’m going to guess you don’t think he stuck a body in his house and burned it. Otherwise it would seem pretty clear. He was worried he was going to be arrested for murder.”
“I don’t think so. I really wouldn’t have suspected, other than investigating in a routine way, that he had anything to do with it. Both he and his wife seemed so shocked.”
“Good acting?”
“Superb, if it proves to be the case.”
He took another sip of coffee. “If he was battling depression, the fire might have literally sent him over the edge.”
That had occurred to her too, and Bryce had gone through a very acrimonious divorce so he knew a little about depression. She murmured, “Could be. He worked nearby before he was fired. He could have been thinking about it for a while. Maybe it sent him over the edge.”
“But a good case of the blues isn’t necessarily the fast track to suicide. Jumping, though. Not how I’d choose to go. Any chance he was pushed?”
Good question. She’d thought of that too, but it really didn’t make much sense. “A chance, I suppose. No witnesses. The medical examiner might be able to tell us something, but a push leaves no trace when you go splat on a sidewalk.”
Bryce winced, his glass halfway to his mouth. “God, don’t put it that way.”
“That might have come off a little insensitive. Sorry. He was the one that jumped. Blame him.” She regarded the window, the view of the backyard showing smooth grass and one large oak, shading almost the entire space. “But unless he’s an idiot, why kill someone and put them in your own house and then set it on fire? Hello … you might just be who we look at first. At the least, you know we’ll be all over your background, plus you just burned down your
own
house.”
“One would think that would make no sense, but can I point out he jumped off a parking garage? Not a lot of rational thought going on.”
“I’m not arguing that. He’s clean at first glance anyway. No record, no history to make us think he’s the one, and the insurance from the fire will probably only cover the balance of the mortgage they owe Helton since the market has tanked here like everywhere else. He isn’t a bank, but the documents they signed are still legally binding.” She shrugged, wishing it wasn’t already in the eighties so she could go for a run to clear her head. “There’s no motive. Opportunity, yes. We look at that first. Motive is more tricky.”
“Sounds like a great way to pass the day.”
“Versus writing computer software?”
“Is that a challenge, Detective?”
She regarded him directly. “No, you are one of the smartest men I know. That said, you use an entirely different part of your brain, so how the hell do I know how hard it is to do what you do? I couldn’t walk around a program like what you design to save my life, but I do know how to find someone like the person who set that fire. More information would be good, but I can deal if it isn’t going to be easy.”
His mouth quirked into the reluctant smile she loved. Really rare, like a glimpse of a protected species, reserved by him for special occasions only. “I
know
you can find him.”
Six simple words. It diffused her argumentative stance, set her back on her heels in a figurative sense and brought it all to a halt. “How do you know that?”
“You have something.”
“Oh, that’s specific.”
“You have what I think is a pretty glaring clue that Tobias didn’t do it.”
It was impossible not to stare at him. In general Bryce was good to look at anyway, so it wasn’t much of a chore. With a hint of a dark morning beard he resembled a pirate in a romance novel, bare-chested and surprisingly muscular for a man she knew didn’t work out more than playing the occasional round of golf. Good genes were hard to beat. “I’m all ears,” she told him, getting up to refill her cup. When she turned back around she caught him still faintly smiling and demanded, “What?”
“You love this … for the lack of a better phrase, the hunt.”
“If you mean to imply that I like that there are people out there—”
“I don’t,” Bryce interrupted. “I mean that when something like this happens, you are exactly the right person who wants to find out who could have possibly done it. We need you, and I admire it.”
Said that way, she wasn’t sure how to respond. Maybe he had a point. Having a relationship with a woman like her had to be pretty interesting and she worried on a daily basis that he was going to get tired of her schedule, her constant abstraction … her. He didn’t flatter himself that she’d taken the job with MPD solely just to be near him, she knew that … it had been a promotion and a chance to do more of what she was really good at, which was solving crimes like the one they were discussing at the moment.
This case was just what she needed to convince her she’d made the right move.
She said mildly, “There’s no doubt that Tobias could be the one who torched his house, but I can’t see it. Why do
you
doubt it?” Her eyes were narrowed over the rim of her cup, her back propped against the counter.
He set his elbows on the table and frowned. “It was clearly planned. The body was put there, the fire set … and if I were the one who had gone to all that trouble, I really would have left a note explaining myself if I’d decided to end it all. The sequence of the events seems to me his death is more a cause and effect. The insurance, as you said, will pay the mortgage off, but he and his wife lost whatever equity they might have had because they don’t actually hold the mortgage. A blow like that is pretty brutal.”
“But not enough to kill yourself over.”
His smile was brief. “Not someone like you. Not even someone like me. But not everyone is resilient. If he thought it was the end of the world, then it was. You don’t live in his reality. Didn’t you say he’d moved from job to job?”
“Yes.” She chewed briefly on her lower lip. “All right, I buy that well enough and overlook the implied inference that you are somehow more sensitive than I am because it might be true. I’m still not seeing your glaring clue.”
“The suicide was impulsive. Your arsonist on the other hand is pretty damned methodical.”
“I hate to break it to you, Dr. Grantham, but that is not a clue. It is a conclusion. For the record, we are not allowed to draw conclusions.”
“But you do. You just call them hunches, or intuition.”
It took her a moment, but she acquiesced. “True enough. If we only operated on facts we wouldn’t ever get anywhere. The system is cumbersome enough as it is.”
Outside the sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless, almost metallic. No doubt his last electric bill had been ridiculous, but this month promised to be worse. The air hadn’t shut off in days. He crossed his ankles. “So what next?”
“We couldn’t talk to his wife yesterday.”
“She couldn’t talk to homicide detectives?”
“Sedated, or so we were told. I suppose, given everything that happened, that makes sense. She was more than a little shook up over the house … we didn’t push it. Her father’s a doctor and he stood firm against us seeing her. It made for a difficult argument.”
“You have to admit it was one hell of a day for her.” He rose and went to dump out the last bit in his cup in the sink.
“I’m sorry I was late. Stood your parents up and then I missed dinner.”
The change in her tone caught his attention and he turned, capturing her gaze. “I told you last night it was okay, Ellie.”
“People tell other people all the time something is fine when it really isn’t.”
The insecurity wasn’t her. But neither was dancing around a touchy subject.
Was he in love with her?
They had almost discussed it the night before, but not quite. She wasn’t convinced she
wanted
to discuss it.
You don’t want me to tell you I’m in love with you
.
“I’m being honest.” He said it in a prosaic tone. “My parents like you, they get your job, and they never have sweated the small stuff.”
“I’m not worried about them.”
“Oh? Then?”
“You.” Now she was being really honest.
“Me how?”
“Cops don’t have the greatest relationships. There’s a reason for it.” Her mouth lifted at the corner. “We’re suspicious and don’t usually think the best of people because too many of them are assholes, and have I mentioned we work long, irregular hours? I’m sure I wouldn’t date a police officer if I was at all a normal person.”
“I’d use ordinary if it was my choice. Abnormal implies something much worse than my possible inference of greater sensitivity.”
“Okay.” It was reluctant, but she laughed as she downed the last bit of her coffee. “I’ve got to go.”
“Can we have dinner tonight?”
“Sure.” Her voice went soft. “Absolutely.” She could use a night out.
“Preference?”
“What do you think?”
“Lulu’s it is.”
She yawned. “I’m going to take a shower. Santiago is swinging by to pick me up in half an hour.”
She knew he wasn’t thrilled about Santiago. Cocky males weren’t Bryce’s favorite type. All he asked was, “Here?”
“I hope you don’t mind.”
“I prefer it, actually.”
She padded over in bare feet and rose to kiss him very lightly on the lips, her breasts brushing his chest through the thin material of her shirt. “Possessive doesn’t suit you at all, but it is cute in fleeting moments.”
It was, and maybe even more so since it was out of character. She worked with men and that wasn’t going to change.
He caught her as she went to turn away and gave her a much more satisfying version of a good morning kiss. He tasted like coffee with a hint of mint toothpaste and his lips were firm and warm. Afterward, when he received a quizzical look, he merely said, “I think I forgot yesterday to put a new bar of soap in the shower. You might want to check.”
Half an hour. Not a lot of time, but …
She lightly touched his cheek. “Or you could just join me.”
Chapter 7
There’s a swamp in my brain. It sounds melodramatic put that way, but in a metaphorical sense it is accurate enough. Muddy and deep, opaque and dangerous
.
I can’t see what’s in there sometimes until it is just too late.
I dreamed my first fire.
It was magnificent … orange running into scarlet, licking upward, shadows leaping, the heat searing, destroying everything it touched. It was alive, rippling with power, devastatingly beautiful.
It singed me, washed me clean, took off every strip of skin, melted my bones into puddles of cells and atoms and crushed the blackened stumps. I was devoured, swallowed whole … and I woke screaming in the middle of the inferno, drowning in the boiling swamp.
My mother told me later my fever was 105 and that the flames licking up the walls and covering the bed were part of the delirium.
She was wrong. It was vivid and real, and I can prove it.
It left me irrevocably scarred.
The way I see it is if the saints can experience divine visions, why can’t the sinners?
* * *
The prestigious neighborhood
surprised him a little. He didn’t know a lot about MacIntosh’s personal life, but Jason was pretty sure on her salary she couldn’t afford a house like the sprawling split-level Tudor with the neat if unimaginative big sloping lawn. Just the intricate etched-glass front door alone he was pretty sure cost more than his car. The department had its share of gossip—in any work environment people talked—and a little more than usual about her because of the circumstances that won her the job offer in the first place.
If he had to guess, the house belonged to the fairly infamous guy who had the misfortune of catching the attention of the serial killer she’d finally caught last fall. He was supposed to be some kind of brilliant computer guy and his house sure looked like he was brilliant, all right.
He pulled in, punched in her number. “I’m outside.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Damn. Kate had told him a hundred times he should at least say hello. He was going to have to work on that. “I thought you’d probably hear my car.”
Luckily his partner didn’t seem to take offense. “Be right there.”
She was true to her word. Detective MacIntosh came out the front door, no nonsense as usual, hair loose around her shoulders, her hazel eyes direct as she opened the door of the Mustang and slid in. “Where are we going first? Helton or Mrs. Tobias?”