Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

“Worse than most?” Boldt attempted to clarify.

“Not even close. Worse by a long shot.”

“What exactly should I look for?” Boldt asked.

“Most of it will probably be down there,” Bahan answered. “The cellar catches most of the debris. It falls into it like a cup: lumber, glass, tile, electrical conduit, insulation.” He shined his flashlight into the hole. Garman glanced up at them and went on about his work. “You see what’s missing?” Bahan asked Boldt. Pointing, he said, “Sinks. Toilets. Where are they? Same as Enwright. I’ll tell you where: They’re down there, melted flat, which means we’re looking at temps in excess of two or three thousand degrees Fahrenheit, which basically puts this baby into a class by itself. Add to that the fact that the adjacent structures did not catch fire-because the thing burned so frigging fast-and you have one confused fire inspector.”

“So the evidence is down there?” Boldt questioned.

“And not much of it at that. Most everything in this center core was vaporized.” Bahan repeated for the sake of emphasis, “Vaporized.”

A news helicopter flew overhead, training a blinding spotlight onto the structure. Bahan’s face was dirt-smudged and his eyes were bloodshot. The air smelled suddenly different, yet familiar, and Boldt glanced around anxiously.

“What is it?” Bahan asked, sensing Boldt’s agitation.

“It’s a body,” Boldt answered solemnly.

There was traffic noise and ambient two-way radio sounds and the occasional shudder of helicopter thunder. An angry dog barked in the distance.

Bahan dragged his forearm across his face, mopping sweat and smudging himself. “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure,” Boldt answered. Panic gripped him. The neighbors who had been interviewed could not swear that anyone had been inside at the time of the fire. “Maybe a pet. Maybe not a human.” Though he suspected it was. It was wafting up from below. Did only homicide cops know that smell? he wondered. He had no desire to be on hand when a cooked body was found. He’d seen one in autopsy. Once was enough.

He reached for Bahan’s arm and caught the man, saying, “If it’s all the same with you, someone should conduct a perimeter search before we lose it to contamination. Gum wrappers, Popsicle sticks, bottle caps, toothpicks, pieces of clothing-”

“I’m with you.” He pointed down. “The action is all down there, anyway. Area of origin was right in the center of the structure. They don’t want us in their way. It’ll be another hour or two at least.”

“We’ll each take a side and then swap.” Boldt felt on familiar ground as they cleared the structure and reached dirt and mud. “Eyes to the ground,” he instructed. “Eyes wide open.”

Understanding what Boldt was after, Bahan said, “Anything this close to the structure went up with the fire. Not gonna be any gum wrappers on the ground.”

Boldt appealed to the man. “Humor me.”

“Hey, gladly,” Bahan replied. “Beats wandering the charcoal waiting for Marshal Five to move his sorry butt.”

Boldt winced and glanced down into the black pit where Garman and the other inspector searched the rubble. He thought everything was too far burned to find a body, and without a body there was no homicide. No investigation. His squad had a knifing up on Pill Hill to work, an apparent drowning near Shilshole. His nose knew what eyes could not confirm. Perhaps the body he had smelled would never be found.

The grass surrounding the structure’s foundation was charred black from the heat and the ground beneath it soaked to a spongy mud by water from the fire hoses. Boldt looked for bottle caps, cigarette butts-anything at all that might tie in to a suspect. As he moved around the concrete foundation of the burned-out home, he attempted to reconstruct the crime. There were mythic stories of cops able to “see” a crime-to visualize a killing. Boldt possessed no such prescience. But on occasion he could reconstruct the methodology of a homicide based on the observable facts. On rare occasions, his imagination overpowered him, ran away from him, leaving him a spectator as the crime played out before him. That night in early October was just such an occurrence.

He looked up, and suddenly the unburned house stood before him, a house he had never seen. It had brown shingles and chipped white paint trim around the windows. It was a simple saltbox, two-story. No chimney, only an old TV antenna, bent and rusting, long out of service to the cable system. He saw a ladder leaning against the side of the house and the back of a man climbing up this ladder.

A siren sounded behind him, and Boldt lost the image. He looked around, taking his bearings, like a person just coming awake. These hallucinations were never shared with anyone, not even Liz. Part of his reluctance arose from the potential for embarrassment, part from superstition-he didn’t want to do anything that might jinx his ability to occasionally transcend.

He knew enough from past experience not to move from this location. He knew from his discussions with Daphne that such moments of vivid “imagination” were typically triggered by an observation, a sound, a smell; that such stimuli imprinted themselves subconsciously. He understood that the trigger was probably close by or just past. He listened first for any sounds in the air. Then he paid attention to the burn smells overpowering him. All the while he visually scanned his surroundings.

The answer lay at his feet, not in the smells or sounds. Twin impressions in the mud. Two rectangular indentations in the black grass. Next to the right-hand dent were some blue flecks in the mud. He crouched and studied the area, disappointed as he identified them as ladder impressions. Firemen, he thought. The legs of the ladder had sunk about two inches into the turf and mud, leaving a distinctive stamped imprint of chevrons.

Boldt immediately sketched what he saw, after which he looked up to see Bahan standing alongside.

“Got something?” Bahan asked.

Boldt pointed, “I take it the fire crew used ladders fighting this one?”

“No way. Too hot for that. Besides,” he said, pointing to the area in front of the impressions. “There was no wall there at all; the fire destroyed it. A little hard to lean a ladder against that.”

Again Boldt glanced up into the air where the wall should have been, and again he was overcome with the image of a man climbing a ladder. He took time to mark the area with police tape before continuing around the foundation. By the time they had finished, only the ladder impressions were of interest to him.

Boldt telephoned the office and requested Bernie Lofgrin, the senior Identification Tech, to send someone out to cast and photograph the impressions and take samples of the colored flecks alongside. Excitement welled inside him. Crime-scene evidence, any evidence at all, is paramount in a case. Two fires too many, he thought. No more, he promised himself.

It was only as Boldt stepped inside his house later that night that another piece of crime-scene evidence revealed itself. He had stayed on-site for hours, overseeing the collection of the ladder evidence, and had been on hand for the grotesque discovery of the charred partial remains of a body discovered in the basement, trapped underneath an overturned bathtub. The removal of the remains had been conducted carefully. Dixie had showed up personally to help, something Boldt appreciated. The sex and age of the victim remained undetermined. More would be revealed in autopsy the following day.

But it was back at his house that Boldt stumbled-literally stumbled-onto that additional evidence, for his boots stuck to the kitchen floor as he stepped inside. They stuck, and Boldt fell forward and tumbled like a drunkard after a long night out.