Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House

“Still, you’ve identified everyone else involved in the accident.”

“Yes, the coroner’s office has done an amazing job. Incredible what a good team can do with a single tooth and a femur. Anyway, after you see enough accident sites, you know what belongs and what doesn’t.” Cat checked an electronic compass. “Okay, we found her right about there.” She pointed to small white chalked spot. “I entered the coordinates in my little organizer. I figured that eventually someone from homicide might want to take a look at the spot.”

The area was near the southwest corner of the apartment building. Decker gloved up and squatted down. “Can I take a look?”

Cat squatted next to him. “Sure. Just go slowly.”

Using his fingers, he pushed aside ash and debris, filtering the material through his fingers, attempting to pick up anything that might have been associated with his Jane Doe. “Do you know if she was found under or above the foundation?”

“It’s hard to say because the collapse of the building broke through a lot of the foundation. And when we started digging around, it was hard to separate before and after. I’ll tell you this much. We always recover lots of incidentals at accident sites, especially if the integrity of the building was compromised.”

“Like what?”

“Money, jewelry, drugs, guns…almost anything people want to hide.”

Decker continued sifting. He wasn’t having much luck. Things that appeared solid at first glance disintegrated through the gaps in his fingers. He scooped up more of the cinders and let them fall through his fingers, repeating the process for several minutes as he dug deeper. Abruptly, Decker touched upon something embedded in the soil. His fingers dug around the object until he loosened it from the packed ground. What he pulled up was hard and round and sooty with a hole in the middle. Despite the heat and the fire and what must have been several thousand degrees’ worth of Fahrenheit temperature, the object had managed to retain its original shape.

“What is it?” Cat asked.

Decker wiped the object on his bomber jacket to remove some of the soil and gave it to her.

“A plastic ring,” she said. “Looks like something you’d find in an eight-year-old’s goody bag…or a prize that you’d find in a quarter gumball machine.”

“Can I take a look at that again?”

She handed the ring to him. Even though it had been scorched with dirt, Decker could make out a blue stone or piece of glass in the center. If it had been gold and the glass had been a gem, it would have resembled a cabochon sapphire in the middle of a man’s pinkie ring. He was amazed that the plastic had not melted. Perhaps it had been shielded by the body or had been buried even deeper. He held it up to the strong, midmorning sunlight. As he bathed the object in the warmth of the rays, the stone began to change from dark blue, to ice blue, to pale pink. He let out a chuckle.

“What?” Cat asked.

“I know what this is. It’s a mood ring.” He regarded her face. “You’re too young to remember the original fad; mood rings were really popular in the sixties and seventies. This may have belonged to my Jane Doe. Can I keep it?”

“If you think it might help.”

“It might. Maybe someone remembers a young woman wearing a mood ring.”

Cat stood up and so did Decker. She said, “First, let me take a picture of the ring and categorize it-date, time, and place. We need to make sure it didn’t belong to any of the victims of the accident.”

“Yes, of course.” Decker waited until she was done and then dropped the ring into a small paper evidence bag. He peeked inside. Bereft of light and heat, the stone had paled to something between cold steel and graveyard gray.

IT FELT EERIE to be taking a flight from Burbank to San Jose on WestAir, sitting in an aircraft identical to the one that had plunged into nothingness just months ago. Decker felt a palpable tension during takeoff, and relief after the plane had reached cruising altitude and a quick beverage service had begun. He checked his watch, first to measure his heartbeat, which was thumping more than normal, then to calculate the time until arrival. It was almost two and they had about forty minutes to go. He glanced at Marge, who was looking over her notes. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail and wore a white shirt and a black skirt. Black pumps on her feet. Recently she’d started wearing reading glasses. These were small and dark framed. It gave her a sort of sexy, schoolteacher look.

Decker said, “So you found Raymond Holmes to be cooperative?”

“Very.”

“Even though we’re interviewing him about his mistress and he’s married?”

“That was his only request…that we keep the family out of it. I told him I didn’t see a reason to include the wife and kids, and after that, he was easy.” She took her glasses off, regarded Decker, and raised her eyebrows. “Almost too easy.”

“Glib?”

“I don’t know, Pete. We’ve all been thinking along the same lines, that Roseanne wasn’t on that plane. That means we could be interviewing her murderer.”

“True. But first let’s just find out about their relationship. If he’s involved in her disappearance, at the very least we need him to admit that he saw her the night before she vanished.”

“So how do you want to handle the interview?”

“I guess it depends what we find out from WestAir in San Jose. Were you able to get any cooperation from the corporate honchos or are they still being difficult and referring you to their special task force?”

“Actually, WestAir has seemed to ease up a little. Someone gave me a name-Leslie Bracco. Apparently, she manned the check-in desk for the five A.M. flight from San Jose to Burbank. I couldn’t get an interview with her first thing, so we’re talking to her after we talk to Holmes. I made it around five.”

“That’ll work. Let’s handle Holmes like we handled Ivan Dresden. We’re just talking to him to get a timetable of Roseanne’s last movements.”

“Makes total sense.” She leaned to her left and looked out the window. “How long do you think the interview with the flight attendant will take?”

“I don’t know. Could be twenty minutes, could be two hours. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Decker chuckled. “Dinner date?”

“I told Will to make it for eight. I figured that would give me enough time.”

“I would hope so. I’m scheduled to leave on an eight-forty flight back home. When are you getting home?”

She squirmed in her seat. “I’m taking the five-thirty tomorrow morning.”

Decker smiled.

“What?” she protested. “I’m a natural early riser. Why fight mother nature?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re being technical, Decker.” She punched his shoulder. “One smirk said it all.”

A S THE THIRD-LARGEST city in California and the tenth largest in the United States, San Jose didn’t get much respect. Mainly noted from the sixties Hal David and Burt Bacharach song “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?”-a name they used because it fit the lyrics rather than for any other specific purpose-the city wasn’t the sleepy little burg that most people assumed. It was a megalopolis of a million people with skyscrapers, museums, parks, colleges, and lots and lots of high-tech headquarters. San Jose and its burbs of Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and Santa Clara made up the heart of Silicon Valley-the core of everything electronic and technical.

There were about a dozen people who lived in the area who were not associated with Apple, IBM, Intel, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, etc., etc., and Raymond Holmes was one of them. The man was self-described as a real-estate developer, but his house wasn’t an advertisement for his financial prowess. It was a modest one-story, wood-sided, ranch-style abode-white with green shutters-and sat on a lot of around six thousand square feet. There was a nice patch of green lawn that ended in an eclectic, multicolored flower bed that was in bloom-impatiens, begonias, daisies, rosemary bushes, azaleas, and purple statis.