Firebreak: A Mystery (13 page)

Billy shook his head no and frowned.

“Was anyone staying at your home when you evacuated?”

“No, of course not,” Brenda said.

“Do you have friends who might drop by unannounced and stay overnight without telling you?” Josie asked.

“What are you getting at?” Brenda said.

Josie glanced at Otto to make sure he didn’t have anything else he wanted to slip in before the bombshell. He tipped his head for her to proceed.

“A body was found, burned to death, lying on your couch. We found it yesterday morning when we went to your house.”

Both of the Nixes pulled back into their chairs, as if trying to distance themselves from the news. Their eyes were wide, unbelieving, confused, all expected responses upon hearing such traumatic information, but Josie had learned not to put too much faith in the initial physical reaction of a suspect. Their reactions as the questions got tougher would be more telling.

“Who was it?” Brenda said.

“The body hasn’t been identified. We’re hoping you might be able to help us,” Josie said.

Brenda looked at Billy, who continued staring at Josie in apparent shock.

“Billy, can you think of a friend, maybe a band member or a fan, who might have stopped by your house after you left? Maybe they needed a place to crash for the night?”

He opened his mouth as if to speak but said nothing.

“We don’t run a flophouse!” Brenda said. “And who would stay at our house in the middle of an evacuation with a wildfire raging across the county?”

Josie kept her attention on Billy. “Can you think of anyone? Maybe someone you asked to stop by the house and check on things while you were away?”

He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “No, nobody. You don’t know anything about the body? A man or woman?”

“A male. We believe he was between the ages of twenty-five and fifty.”

Josie watched Billy struggle to swallow and clear his throat. “Do you have a drink? Some water?” he asked.

Brenda looked over at Billy, and Josie noted that her expression had changed slightly. She seemed irritated with him. Josie remembered Angela’s comment about Brenda calling Billy weak.

Otto stood and retrieved a bottle of water from the small refrigerator at the back of the office. Billy removed the lid and drank half the bottle.

Josie faced Brenda again. “If not friends, do you have family members who might have stopped by unannounced?”

Brenda’s face flushed and she sat up straight in her seat. “I’m not sure how else to say this to you. We don’t have people stopping by to sleep on our couch. I have no idea who that person could be.”

“The police found a dead man in your living room. We will do everything in our power to determine who that victim is. You also need to understand that you could be in danger as well. The death has been ruled a homicide.”

“What?” She whispered the word, her expression shocked again.

“Why would someone kill someone in our home?” Billy looked confused. “You’re saying that the man wasn’t killed in the fire? That someone killed him?”

Brenda’s face had turned bright red and a sheen of sweat covered her forehead. “I want an attorney. We’re done talking here. This is outrageous.”

ELEVEN

Once the Nixes requested an attorney the interview ended. Josie had already called Manny and booked a room at his motel for the Nixes. The room had just been vacated by a family who had stayed during the evacuation but whose home was not caught in the fire. Josie wanted the Nixes close by for questioning, and fortunately, they didn’t resist. The couple had left angry and thoroughly unstrung but agreed to remain reachable via their cell phones.

After the Nixes left, Otto and Josie drove back to the house to reexamine the scene. The Arroyo County judge had granted approval for the search warrant and Josie was anxious to get ahold of the computer and various files in the home office that might provide a glimpse into the Nixes’ personal life. Otto drove his jeep and Josie rode beside him.

“Anything surprise you from Billy or Brenda?” Otto asked.

“Not really. I’d hoped for more. You?”

“Considering what we learned from the band and bar interviews, I’d say they were both predictable in their answers. Brenda struggled not to dominate the interview. She pulled back to allow Billy to talk.”

“And he didn’t seem to want to talk.” She paused, recalling the conversation. “I kept thinking how I might feel, sitting down to learn that the police had found a burned body, dead on my couch. I realize because of my law enforcement background I’m not your normal suspect.”

“You think?”

She ignored the sarcasm. “But I think after the initial shock I’d be angry. I’d want to know what the police were doing. I’d want to know who was inside my house. Who the police had talked to, and what they were doing to find out who this person was. I’d want answers.”

Otto stopped the car so Josie could get out and take down the yellow crime-scene tape at the end of the Nixes’ driveway. He pulled up the driveway, parked, and joined Josie, who was now standing on the concrete pad just outside the front of the house.

“So, what’s your point?” he asked.

“I know Brenda isn’t well liked, but her reaction seemed right to me. She’s mad as hell. Her house is destroyed. Some guy not only got into her home, but he was murdered there. And now the police are asking questions that make her feel like she’s a suspect.” She turned and faced Otto. “And what did Billy do?”

“He clammed up. But doesn’t that fit his personality?”

Josie narrowed her eyes. “It was more than that though. I thought he looked scared. He got choked up and he had to drink water before he could even talk. That’s a sign of fear, not worry.”

“I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.”

Josie stared at the gaping hole in the living room. “I don’t know yet. I’m just thinking out loud.”

They spent the next hour searching through the rubble in the house for something that might explain Billy’s reaction, but they found nothing more than personal mementos, music paraphernalia, and the bills and paperwork typical of any other married couple. They retrieved several boxes of charred evidence, including a desktop computer and a file cabinet full of business and personal files, and tagged and loaded the evidence into Josie’s jeep before going back into the house.

They stood outside for a water break, sweaty from the exertion and nauseated from the stench.

“You took prints in the bedroom the day of the fire?” Josie asked.

He wiped his hands on a cloth and tried to rub the black soot off of his skin. “I did. Everything’s logged.”

“I was thinking about Billy’s question. What was the first thing he asked after he found out about the body?”

“Remind me.”

“He asked whether the victim was male or female.”

Otto shrugged. “He wants to know who the victim is.”

“But we already told him we don’t know who it is. And if Billy didn’t have any idea who was lying on his couch, then why would he care if the body was male or female?”

“He’s wondering if the body belongs to someone he knows after all. Maybe there’s a woman he’s seeing on the side?”

Josie nodded. “Let’s check the bedroom and bath again. Maybe it was a crime of passion. Maybe that’s where it started, and ended up with a dead body, and a married couple seven hours away in Austin.”

Otto walked into the master bathroom to search the cabinets and countertops for something more telling than what his original search had turned up. Josie stood in the bedroom, observing the space as a place of intimacy, shared by a married couple. The room was painted white with a few department-store framed paintings of flower arrangements in vases. The furniture was a matching set from one of the discount chains. There was nothing ornate or original to distinguish it from a hundred other bedrooms. Josie figured it fit Brenda’s sensibilities. Her focus seemed to be on Billy and his career, not material possessions or fostering a homey place to live.

The alarm clock was located on the right side of the bed, closest to the bathroom. Josie figured this was Brenda’s side. She couldn’t imagine Brenda allowing Billy to set the alarm. Next to the clock were a box of tissues and a hardback novel by C. J. Box. A small pad of sticky notes and a pen lay underneath the table lamp. Josie picked up the pad and found several notes Brenda had apparently jotted down to herself.

The first note said, “Call L. Lester follow-up recording.”

Underneath that she found another note with what appeared to be a phone number. She jotted the number down in her steno pad to call later from a restricted phone line that would protect her identity.

A drawer underneath the tabletop revealed a pile of jewelry pitched haphazardly into a glass bowl and a pile of odds and ends from earrings to lip balm and pens and pencils. Underneath the drawer was a pile of paperback mysteries and romance novels. Nothing of consequence. No photos or letters.

Billy’s side of the bed held mementos, from a CD case signed by Willie Nelson to several concert tickets signed by people Josie didn’t recognize. She found a pile of coasters from assorted restaurants. She flipped over one coaster with S
AMUEL
A
DAMS
B
OSTON
L
AGER
on the front, and on the back saw the scrawled message “Love you man.” None of the other coasters bore any writing.

After an hour of digging turned up little of consequence, they gave up the search. They were walking back down the hallway when Josie’s eye settled on a tiny brightly colored piece of paper lying on top of the edge of the baseboard. She asked Otto for a plastic bag and tweezers from the evidence kit he was carrying. He went back into the bedroom and opened up the case on the bed. The hallway and bedrooms hadn’t been burned, but the fire in the living room had left a thick coating on the tiled floor and the hallway. Since the bedroom door had been closed, the ashfall there wasn’t nearly as heavy.

Otto handed Josie the supplies, and she bent down and retrieved the piece of paper. She stood, pressing the tweezers tightly between her fingertips, holding the tiny piece of paper out for Otto to look at, a wide smile on her face. “Recognize this?”

He studied it for a moment and then laughed. “I think we have ourselves a murder investigation.”

TWELVE

Josie and Otto spent a half hour sifting through the ash on the Nixes’ hallway floor with small soft brushes, looking for more of the confetti-like pieces of paper, and plotting them on a diagram to determine the starting and stopping points of their trajectory. The brightly colored pieces of paper were ejected from a certain model Zaner stun gun when fired. Each piece of paper carried a set of numbers that a law enforcement agency could use to track down owner registration for the gun. They found several dozen pieces, which made it clear they weren’t left there from a prior use. The gun had no doubt been used to stun the victim before killing him: a brutal, premeditated murder.

On the drive back to the office Josie received a call from the coroner.

“What do you have for us?” she asked.

“It’s clear the man didn’t die of asphyxiation. There was no smoke damage to his lungs. He was dead before the fire burned him.”

“Any idea yet what caused his death?”

“I’m not finding any blunt-force trauma. My gut feeling is an overdose, but I can’t say. I was able to pull enough blood for toxicology, but that could be two weeks or longer.”

“But what about his arms pulling up to his face? You called it the boxer’s pose. If he overdosed that wouldn’t have happened, would it?” she asked.

“Think of it as shrink wrap. When you apply heat to shrink wrap it shrinks up. When intense heat is present, or the soft tissue burns, it causes the muscles to contract and pull in. The victim could have died of an overdose while lying on the couch. As long as rigor mortis hadn’t set in, his muscles would have contracted when the fire started.”

Josie ended the call and filled Otto in.

“The pieces aren’t quite fitting together. Let’s say Cowan is right and the victim overdosed. Why would a stun gun be necessary?”

“Someone used a stun gun to disable the victim, then they knocked him out and laid him on the couch.” Josie drove, absently watching the sandy desert roll by as she put the pieces together. “If Cowan is correct, someone shot him full of enough drugs to cause him to overdose, and then used accelerant to set the house on fire. There’s no way this is anything but premeditated murder.”

“So they took advantage of the wildfire to commit murder,” he said.

“Meaning the victim and the perpetrator most likely knew each other. The killer knew the victim would be there so the killer came prepared with the drugs and accelerant.”

“What if we switched up the order?” Otto asked. “Maybe the victim had already shot himself full of something. Let’s say heroin.”

Josie stopped him. “If he was shot full of enough heroin to overdose, the stun gun wouldn’t have been necessary.”

“I think you’re closing in on it.”

“If only we had the murderer.”

“And knew the victim.”

Back at the office Josie logged on to the Zaner Web site. She filled in an online form and submitted her department information. Two hours later Zaner International called her to confirm her identity and provided her with registry information for the Zaner gun. Armed with this new information, Josie hung up the phone and faced Otto, who was sitting at his computer typing up case notes from their visit to the Nixes’ house that morning.

“The gun is registered to Brenda Nix. Purchased in 2009 from a dealer in Houston,” she said.

“Ah,” Otto said, grinning. “That narrows the list of suspects considerably.”

“Let’s talk about timing. We know the body was burned at seven thirty-eight, so let’s work backwards.”

Otto went to the whiteboard and wrote:

5:00/5:10—Nixes left home

5:30—Arrived at Hell-Bent

6:00—Left for Austin (7-hour drive—arrived at 1:00 and went to Gilly’s bar)

6:00—Or went back home. Home by 6:20-6:30