Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House

“Now you’re being sarcastic again.”

Decker smiled. “Look, sweetheart, I understand what you’re saying. And I know Jerusalem is filled with history despite all the destruction. But the Second Temple area was a lot bigger than the apartment house on Seacrest. So it stands to reason that more of it would have survived.”

“Okay, that’s true,” Rina admitted. “But it doesn’t have to be a massive structure to tell a story. Look at the Burnt House in Jerusalem. In the early seventies, archaeologists unearthed a Roman house from the Second Temple that had been burned down. Much of was preserved by ash. Not just the structure, Peter, but also they dug up a lot of ancient artifacts. And that house wasn’t nearly as big as the apartment building on Seacrest. So what do you have to say to that?”

Decker smoothed his mustache. “Point well taken.”

And it was true. At a crime scene, he often wound up looking through piles of detritus to locate that one crucial nugget of evidence. Because of his conversation with Rina, he realized that he had neglected a very important aspect of the investigation. No one had actually gone down to the original crime scene-the place where recovery had found the Jane Doe-and checked it out for forensic material in person.

“Now what are you thinking about?” Rina asked him.

“I’m thinking that you are a very bright lady. It’s time I visited a crime scene.”

S OMETIMES L.A. SUNRISES were preceded by spectacular, awe-inspiring displays of color-brilliant oranges, royal purples, and shocking pinks. On other occasions, they consisted of an insipid, dishwater-gray light breaking through an overcast sky. Such was the case this morning. June gloom had covered the basin with a layer of lint, and it was chilly and damp: what the locals would describe as just plain yucky.

It didn’t help that Decker was staring into a desolate area-a seven-foot Cyclone fence encircling a pit as if it were a zoo cage under restoration. Inside, several excavators and steel bins of biohazardous material stood inert and ominous. Yellow caution tape flapped in a wind pungent with the odor of charred blackness. He raised the zipper on his bomber jacket and sipped hot coffee from his thermos. Then he checked his watch. It was a little before seven. The crew wasn’t scheduled to be out until ten, and the one person he did manage to reach-an NTSB field officer named Catalina Melendez-was a mother of two school-age children and couldn’t make it down before eight.

That was okay. It gave Decker ample time to look around and absorb what he had neglected. He capped the thermos and laid it on the sidewalk. He grasped the cold metal of the makeshift fencing and peered inside the perimeter.

What had it been like…to have been trapped in that inferno?

Staring into bleakness, he suddenly sensed motion from the corner of his eye. “Hey,” he yelled out. “Hey! Police!”

A shadowed figure pivoted and took off, scaling over the fence and dropping to the ground on the opposite side from where Decker was standing, vanishing within moments. There was no way that Decker could catch up and he let it ride. The person could have been someone homeless camping out, or more likely, it was a vulture, scavenging for coins. Disaster sites were often pilfered for valuables.

Decker scribbled down a few cursory notes, then took out a camera and began snapping pictures. By the time he had taken most of his detailed photographs, it was almost eight. Catalina Melendez showed up twenty minutes later. She was small, with mocha-colored skin, and solidly built. Wisps of curly black hair were blowing about her face and in her mouth. She pulled them from her lips with fingers topped with clipped nails. She wore black slacks, boots, and a black bomber jacket with a yellow NTSB emblazoned on back.

“Sorry I’m late.” She pulled out a set of keys and began sorting through them. “My six-year-old had an accident involving a carton of orange juice. How long have you been waiting?”

“Not so long,” Decker lied. “I really appreciate you coming down this early…it’s Officer Melendez, right?”

“Yeah, but call me Cat.” Again, she pulled strands of hair from her mouth. “It looks like we’ve got a little wind and that’s not helpful. It blows the residue around. I hope you have a mask. You don’t want to be breathing in this muck.”

Decker pulled a face mask from his jacket and put it on.

“Here we go.” Cat opened one of the five padlocks that secured the area. “It’s Detective Decker, isn’t it?”

“Pete is fine.”

“You’re from local homicide.”

“Yes…West Valley.”

“And this is regarding the Jane Doe we found about ten days ago.”

“That’s the story. Can you tell me where you found the body?”

“Sure can,” Cat said. “Watch your step and try to stay on the pathway.”

Decker looked down at a well-worn, rutted groove running through the area. He was surprised at how much powdery burned material remained and remarked upon it.

“Yeah, we’re going through it really slowly, not only for the purpose of gathering corroborating evidence for the accident, but to make sure we don’t overlook any biological material. Technically, body parts are the coroner’s responsibility, but we’re much more used to doing this than they are.”

“And technically, anything revolving around Jane Doe is our department because it’s pretty clear that she was a murder victim.”

“Yeah, we all knew that the Jane Doe wasn’t our missing body from the accident-the flight attendant.”

“Roseanne Dresden.”

“Yes, mysterious Roseanne.”

“Any signs that she was on the plane?”

“You’d have to ask the coroner for details, but frankly…” Cat lowered her voice. “I think someone made a mistake…or worse.”

Decker said, “Fraud.”

Cat shrugged. “Insurance detectives are pretty much on the ball, but you can’t catch every liar out there. And the more time that goes by, the harder it is.”

Decker knew it wouldn’t have been the first time that some scamster badass had disappeared after telling the spouse to make a death claim. Afterward, the two of them would ride into the sunset with the insurance money. It was possible that Roseanne and Ivan were in cahoots with the intent of defrauding insurance.

He and Cat walked gingerly around pits and pools of the charred material. Evidence buried under the ruins, not unlike the house in Jerusalem that Rina had been talking about. An occasional wind kicked up. Swirling cinders encircled their ankles like a swarm of bees. It was a black, barren landscape of fire and smoke, yet healthy shoots of emerald-green plant matter had surfaced and stretched toward the sunlight. Ash was a terrific fertilizer. The only other colors in the lightless painting were provided by wrappers and cups from fast-food chains. Cat bent down and picked up a McDonald’s bag filled with garbage and ants.

“Ick!” She looked around for a designated garbage bag and dropped the refuse inside. “So freaking annoying. It contaminates everything. Lucky for us, we’re almost finished.”

A preliminary conclusion reached by at least the media was that faulty hydraulics were to blame. Decker asked her about it.

“Not for me to say,” Cat answered. “We’ve got zillions of pieces in an airplane hangar. Engineers will sort them out and get to the bottom of it, but it takes about a year. Sometimes longer. Sometimes never.”

Decker said, “You said you knew right away that the body wasn’t a crash victim. How’d you know if you weren’t the one who examined the body?”

“Experience. The remains were too intact. Most of what is pulled up has been scattered and pulverized.”