J. Jance - Lying in vait

I knew better than to take her exasperation personally. "Just looking for a progress report," I returned lightly.

Janice Morraine was not amused. Without stopping what she was doing, she motioned curtly with her head in Lieutenant Rockwell's direction. "Why don't you ask her?" Janice suggested. "She seems to be standing around with nothing to do but watch me."

With a number of people working on one homicide team, it stands to reason there'll be fireworks sooner or later, but this was much sooner than I would have expected. Marian Rockwell raised one eyebrow at Janice's surly comment, but she didn't rise to the bait.

"I've already collected my samples," Marian said reasonably. "It'll take lab verification, of course, but I'd say this was a communicating fire with two points of ignition. One of them was in the lower bunk on the starboard side. The other was on the victim's clothing itself. My first guess is that the accelerant was charcoal lighter, but it's too soon to tell about that for sure."

"What two places?" Sue Danielson asked with a puzzled frown.

"The mattress was lit first and allowed to get a good blaze going. That's the main source of ignition. The man was poured down with flammable liquid, probably about the same time the mattress was lit, but the victim didn't catch fire until sometime later, until after the other fire got going good. Eventually, because of the fumes, flames flashed over from the bunk area to his clothing. When that happened, that poor bastard was history. It looks to me as though terrifying him was as important as killing him. And if whoever did it was hoping to use the fire to cover up the murder, they didn't do a very good job of it."

Isolde was riding low in the water. We were talking over the rumble of supplementary bilge pumps that had been pressed into service. They were hard at work purging the fish hole and engine room of all the excess water that had landed there as a result of the fire hoses.

Their ominous rumble was almost as dark as the thought that entered my head. "You said terrify. Do you think the victim was conscious when the first fire was set?" I asked.

Sue Danielson shot me a quizzical look. "Does that matter?"

I shrugged. "It seems like if he was, he could have called out for help. Isn't there a chance someone might have heard him?"

Janice Morraine and Marian Rockwell exchanged meaningful looks. "I'm sure he was unconscious part of the time," Janice said. "At least I hope he was. But even if he had been wide awake when the fire was set, he wouldn't have been able to say a word."

"Why not?"

Janice sighed. "Because somebody whacked off the poor bastard's family jewels and stuffed them in his mouth, that's why! Now will you two please get the hell out of here and let me concentrate on what I'm trying to do?"

"You bet," Sue breathed. "We'll be glad to." And she hustled off down the dock. I followed more slowly, with my hands stuffed deep in my pockets. If I could have crossed my legs, I would have.

"It's hard to imagine hating someone that much," I said to Sue, when I found her leaning against the Mustang. Marian Rockwell was there as well.

Sue nodded. "It sure as hell goes a step beyond the usual execution-style killing," she said.

"What it says to me," I added, "is that Gunter Gebhardt made himself an enemy. A serious, son of a bitch of an enemy. And someone with that kind of hard-assed grudge shouldn't be all that tough to find. People don't keep that kind of feud secret."

"All we have to do is ask the right questions, right?" Sue asked with just the smallest hint of sarcasm.

"Right," I answered.

I'm sure Sue Danielson had heard one version or another of this speech several times before. That's the big disadvantage of being the new man…person in Homicide-all the old-timers figure they have to take you to raise.

Marian Rockwell seemed to grasp the full import of our little Homicide Squad byplay. "My job's a lot easier than either of yours," she said.

"Oh? How's that?"

The arson investigator smiled without humor. "All I have to do is figure out what kind of accelerant this crazy asshole used," she said. "That's mostly a matter of simple chemistry. Spectrographic analysis. You two have to find whoever did it and why. When it comes down to why, I'm not so sure I want to know."

With that Marian Rockwell walked back up the dock where she once more took up a bird-dog position overlooking Janice Morraine's progress. Meanwhile, Sue stood gazing at the boat, as if just looking at the Isolde long enough would somehow reveal all the necessary answers.

"How about some lunch before we tackle all this?" I asked. "My treat."

Sue Danielson looked at me as though I were speaking some strange and incomprehensible foreign language. "Lunch?" she said blankly. "I don't think I'm particularly hungry at the moment."

"Maybe not," I told her, "but the way this case is going, we'd better grab something now while we can. It's likely to be a long day."

Sue glanced at her watch. "Oh, my God. You're right. It's after one. I told Jared I'd stop by and check on him during lunch. I wanted to make sure he's tending to business."

"Let's go do it then," I said, trying to sound more cheerful than I felt. Truth be known, I wanted to put Gunter Gebhardt out of my mind for the time being.

"In fact," I added, "if you'd like to, we could invite your son to come have lunch with us. How far away from here do you live?"

"Not that far," she told me. "Just on the other side of the Fremont Bridge."

A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of a bare-bones duplex on Dayton in the Fremont neighborhood. The place was a long way from lavish, but it was in a decent, settled part of the city. From the way the yards had been kept up and from the number of older, sedan-type cars visible on the street, I had an idea that some of those homes still housed the original owners-little old people who were just now making plans to sell off their bungalows in order to enter retirement or nursing homes.

"It's a long way from Belltown Terrace," Sue said defensively as she stopped the Mustang in the driveway in front of a minute garage.

"What do you mean?"

"Compared to where you live, this place must seem like almost as much of a dive as that bum's tent back there over the railroad tracks."

I felt a momentary flash of anger. I've never made a big deal of my money, one way or the other. All I want to do is to be left alone to do my job without having to justify where I live or how. I glanced at the house. It may have been a humble little place, but a big orange, black, and brown construction-paper turkey covered the entire lower half of the front door. A lot of time and effort and love had gone into that damn turkey. Sue Danielson didn't have anything to apologize for-certainly not to me.

"You pay the freight on this place all by yourself, don't you?" I asked.

She nodded. "Such as it is."

"With or without child support?"

"Mostly without," she admitted.

"So you earn this place, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, where I live is a goddamned accident, Detective Danielson. I'm living in the penthouse of Belltown Terrace because God reached out and struck my life with lightning once, not because I've earned the right to be there. So don't give me any crap about it. And while you're at it, don't give me any crap about where you live, either. Got it?"

After a moment, she smiled slightly and nodded. "The guys down at the department are right about you, aren't they? You can be a crotchety old bastard at times."

"Damn straight! Now, are you going to go get that kid of yours, or am I?"

"I'm going, I'm going," Sue Danielson said.

And she did.

The instant Jared Danielson trailed out of the duplex on his mother's heels, I knew why she wanted to brain him. In fact, so did I. On sight.