Midnight Guardians (17 page)

“Hey, how you doin’?” he said as he met my eyes. The accent made me think ex-New York cop, or inveterate watcher of bad television.

“All right. How
you
doin’?” I said, mocking the accent, even though I didn’t have a reason to make my situation any worse. His eyes narrowed.

“I was ah, interviewing some neighbors. Witnesses,” he said. “Do you live here?”

“No,” I said, and then looked back at the burn. They hate it when you ignore them. I hated it when they ignored me. I wasn’t sure why I was being a jerk.

“I’m Detective Sheldon Woller from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office. I’d still like to speak to you.”

Now the accent was gone. I looked back at him. He was younger than me by several years, had thinning brown hair, pale eyes, and dark frame glasses. He was almost my height, slim in the chest and right down through the hips—an athlete by the carriage, probably a longdistance runner or bicyclist. His shoulders weren’t broad enough for a natural swimmer.

“I’ll be glad to do so as soon as my lawyer gets here,” I said, and continued watching the fire marshal as he bent to his knees and adjusted his camera.

Detective Woller took out a pad and pen, like a reporter.

“I’m going to need your name, sir.”

“No, you won’t,” I said, continuing to look out at the marshal.

I heard the guy exhale in frustration. He stayed quiet for a few seconds, strategizing. Then, by the nature of his next question, he took a chance.

“My information is that you were in the area last night, sir,” he finally said, mustering some authority to his voice. “Witnesses said you were sneaking through the neighborhood and that you were visiting the people who lived in this trailer shortly before the fire.”

“Witnesses?” I said. “You mean a twelve-year-old who was doing her homework in the dark by candlelight while the boyfriend was beating the shit out of her mom inside?”

Given that I hadn’t turned toward him, I couldn’t see the open mouth of the detective, or the regathering of his face.

“Were you in that trailer last night, or weren’t you?” Woller said, the tone of authority changing to pissed off. “In my experience, sir, arsonists like to come back and observe their handiwork. Maybe you’d like to take a trip with me to the station, and we can talk there?”

I had to admire the guy’s persistence even in the light of the fact that I’d already mentioned my lawyer. He was questioning me without arrest or Miranda.

“In your experience? Does that mean you worked for ATF before you became a sheriff’s detective?” I said. “Because it’s ATF that investigates most incidences of arson down here. Or did you get that bit about the perp coming back to the scene of the crime from
CSI Miami
?”

This time, I turned and looked into Woller’s face and saw his lips go into a solid line and his left hand reach behind his back, where I assumed his belt held his handcuffs. He kept the right hand free, hovering above the clip-on holster for his service weapon.

I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t put up with an asshole like me, either.

Fortuitously, and yes, coincidentally, I looked over the young detective’s shoulder to see a familiar figure walking up the street. I held up my palm to Woller and said, “Look, I’m sorry, Detective, but before you arrest me, you’ll have to deal with my lawyer, who’s right behind you.”

To his credit, Woller did not turn to look. He held my eyes until he heard Billy’s voice.

“Detective Woller, I presume,” Billy said in his pleasant greeting voice. “I come with t-tidings from your sergeant, Ray Lynch. M-May I and my investigator, Max Freeman, be of s-service to you, sir?”

Deferring to Billy, I took a step back. Woller put his hands back in front and clasped them, but watched me suspiciously.

“And how is it that you know Sergeant Lynch,” the detective said to Billy. “Mister, uh…”

“Manchester,” Billy said. “William Manchester.” He offered his hand, and Woller shook it. “I’ve known Sergeant Lynch for s-several years and sp-spoke to him this morning on the way here.

“He informed m-me that you had b-been dispatched due to the deaths of three people. Apparently, it is st-standard to send a detective is such circumstances.”

I watched Woller looking into Billy’s face. If he was put off by the stutter, it didn’t show. Whether he believed Billy had a connection with his boss, that didn’t show, either. But I had to give him props for holding his tongue when most people would have started responding to Billy’s statement.

“And…?” he said simply.

“And we are here to offer any help we m-might,” Billy said, gesturing to include me in the offer. “One of the victims was essentially a cl-client, a Mr. Andrés Carmen. Mr. Carmen was the apparent target of a recent gang sh-shooting, an attempt that was, in fact, thw-thwarted by Mr. Freeman.”

Again, the detective did not immediately respond. I was only a little disappointed when he gave in.

“And you told Sergeant Lynch all of this?”

“Yes,” Billy said.

“That’s weird because it’s always hard to get Rich in the morning. He’s usually taking his kids to school,” the detective said.

“I don’t know about Rich, but Sergeant Lynch’s first name is Ray, and his t-twin girls are in college up in Gainesville,” Billy said, maintaining his stoic face, even though the detective had essentially just called him a liar. “If you are skeptical, Detective, you should call the sergeant and verify who I am rather than try to game me,” Billy said, and offered Woller his cell phone. “His p-private number is at the top of the recently dialed list.”

Woller kept his hands clasped. I figured he was probably new to the squad, unsure about bothering his boss. He wanted to show he could handle such simplicities on his own.

“OK, Mr. Manchester,” he said. “We removed the bodies early at sunup. The ME here is very good, and with all due respect to the dead, we didn’t want to have to take them out with the news helicopters and shit birds clustering around.”

Shit birds—I’d heard the term before. Cops used it to refer to the rubberneckers and ambulance sniffers who always show up when there’s ghoulishness in the air.

The detective nodded toward the pile of ash. “The marshal determined they were all in their beds in the back when the gas exploded.”

“Gas?” Billy said.

“It’s an old-style trailer, with a propane gas tank and line to the interior heater. The marshal is going on the theory that the connection rusted out or separated with age and filled the back end of the trailer with gas,” Woller said. “Someone inside lit a cigarette, and boom!”

I thought of the girlfriend, recalled the bobbling Marlboro on her lip.

“The ME didn’t find anything obvious before they carted them off to the morgue, but then they were burned pretty badly,” Woller continued. “If they don’t find any sign of these people being tied up or shot or bludgeoned or of the gas line being tampered with, they’ll end up calling it accidental.”

“Even if there was a recent attempt on Andrés Carmen’s life?” I said, jumping in for the first time.

“Forensics, Mr. Freeman,” Woller said, now looking at me. “Unless you get someone to talk, it’ll sit for months on the crime scene backlog. Unless someone high up the line takes an interest. Shit, you know—you were a cop.”

I matched his look, searching his face, maybe letting the surprise show on my own features. “That obvious?”

“Pretty much,” the detective said. “You’re working as a PI—probably retired from up north somewhere. Hard to cover up the look of a man out of uniform.”

“So you’ve already ditched the lead that the little girl gave you?”

“What little girl would that be?”

“The one who said she saw me poking around last night.”

He shook his head, looked away, and smiled a little.

“Can’t blame me, man. You gotta take what you can get.”

“I’d have done the same,” I said, and finally offered my hand. As he shook it, I looked over his shoulder and watched Billy walk gingerly toward the fire marshal. I tried to hold the detective’s focus for another few seconds to give Billy the chance to ask his questions.

“Anybody see any other suspicious strangers in the night?” I asked. “Maybe a couple of gangbangers tossing flaming bottles through a window?”

“No. And nobody heard anything, either, until they were nearly blown out of their own beds at four in the morning.”

“Lucky,” I said, taking another peek at Billy.

But the detective picked up on it and turned. “Hey,” he yelped. “Hey, Manchester, you can’t go in there.” As he started toward Billy and the marshal, the detective turned and gave me an appropriately dirty look.

Twenty minutes later, Billy and I were standing at his Lexus out beyond the entrance to the trailer park. Billy had gotten little from the fire marshal. Woller was pissed enough to tell us both that if we wanted any more information, it would have to come through “your friend Sergeant Lynch,” and that we would be banned from the fire scene unless we were in the sergeant’s presence.

“Was it worth losing a good source in the sheriff’s office,” I said to Billy, who was scrolling through a contact list on his cell phone.

“It won’t be a loss,” he said without looking up from the screen. He punched in a number and looked out at the tree line. After a couple of seconds, he said, “Yes, I’ll wait.”

“The marshal was more helpful than he w-wanted to b-be,” Billy said, twisting the microphone end of the phone away from his mouth while keeping the earpiece near.

“He was still tracing the gas p-piping to the outside tank but hadn’t reached an end point. He’s going to have to f-find the outside f-fixture and then determine if it was tampered with. He said it’s p-possible it could have rusted loose or simply fallen apart. The salt in the ocean air down here p-plays havoc on anything whether it’s copper or aluminum or even wood.”

“So at least they’re looking at the possibility that someone blew up the place,” I said.

“Yes. Jim Fisher, please,” Billy said into the phone. Then to me, “I’m not s-sure how hard they’ll look. But yes, they are entertaining the p-possibility.”

“So what did he tell you that he didn’t want to tell you?” I asked.

But Billy was back on the phone. Usually, I find this kind of cell phone etiquette rude, but Billy can get focused. And after all, he’s my friend, not some dork talking to his girlfriend while having a conversation with me.

“Yes, Jim. Fine, how are you? Yes, well, I’ve got a bit of a job for you. Right up your alley, my friend. There was a trailer home fire out in Lantana, and the remains of a dog have been left at the scene.

“No, actually, the known family are all dead. The authorities have no interest in dead dogs, but I do.

“Yes, you will have permission to remove the remains. Are you able to do that?

“No. I need the results of the necropsy as soon as possible. Yes. Yes. I’m sending you a text with the address right now. Thank you, Jimmy.”

Billy folded the phone and looked out at the tree line, thinking.

“The dog?” I said.

“Did you m-miss that gang of flies buzzing the corner of the fence line? That’s unlike you,” Billy said.

I shrugged, and looked stupidly back toward the fire scene, even though it was impossible to see it from here.

“Can you imagine that p-pit bull letting someone crawl in and uncouple a gas line and set a fuse or light a candle or whatever under that trailer w-without taking a bite out of said someone?”

“No,” I said, remembering the eyes of the beast. “No, I can’t.”

I
DON’T DO sympathy well. I know this.

As a cop, I was useless at consolation when family would arrive at a shooting scene. I could not watch relatives wail at fatal accident scenes. “I’m sorry for your loss” seems rudely inadequate in the face of death.

I know I made improvements in this lack of empathy after Sherry’s surgery when I spent hours at her bedside, mostly just watching her sleep, watching helplessly as every twitch and mild groan worked at my insides. I was at fault for her pain, and helpless.

I was sure she saw through my reassuring smiles when she awakened. My inane, happy talk ramblings sounded insincere even to my own ears. My kisses hello and good-bye seemed dry and perfunctory. One day when her strength was up, Sherry finally told me to get lost. She said she’d call me when they released her to go home. But I was in the bedside chair the next morning when she awoke.

“I am sorry for your loss,” I said to Luz Carmen as I stood uncomfortably before her in the living room of Billy’s seaside hideaway in Deerfield Beach. She did not look up. One of her woman friends, whom Billy had brought to comfort her, had an arm around Carmen’s shoulders, and looked up into my eyes as she subtly shook her head.

I went back outside and stared at the breaking waves on the ocean, silently thanking this woman for my dismissal.

At the fire scene, Billy said he would wait for his man to come and collect the remains of the pit bull. He also wanted to get on his cell to badger the federal authorities to take steps to protect Luz Carmen as a criminal enterprise whistle-blower.

In the meantime, he dispatched me to his seaside getaway to watch over her. Early this morning, Billy had convinced Luz Carmen to avoid the fire scene until authorities determined when she could see her brother’s body. After witnessing the molten ash of the trailer, I doubted that event was ever going to take place. There would not be much left of Andrés Carmen, and certainly there could be no comfort in viewing his charred remains.

For the entire drive from the fire, I’d been rolling the facts of what we knew around in my head, grinding away at what didn’t fit, the coincidences that left gouges in any known pattern. I sat down on a retaining wall just outside the villa, put my feet on the beach sand, and watched nature do the same thing, the in and out of the tide smoothing each piece of shell, coral, and stone down to a grain.

Like a good investigator, Billy had put himself inside the head of the killer, if there indeed was a killer. While I was foolishly tossing around thoughts of how a group of gangbangers would throw a Molotov cocktail into the trailer, he was thinking how a quiet assassin would sneak onto the lot, crack the gas line, and then set some sort of fuse that would grant him clear distance before the place exploded. In that scenario, the guy would have had to get past the dog. How did he silence the beast?