Faye Kellerman: The Burnt House

No one would have definitive answers for many months. Maybe it would even be years before the total puzzle was put back together. The nature of the beast required time and patience. Rina had told him that immediately after the crash, people in the area had seemed to move a bit slower, taking more time to smile and say hello. Traffic had been sparser and much more polite. And despite the initial looting and break-ins that had happened directly after the crash, overall monthly crime had actually taken a drop.

A temporary aberration it seemed, because the statisticians reported that the following month, life and crime in the San Fernando Valley had returned to their precrash status.

FORTY-SIX DAYS AFTER the crash, as Decker was looking over the upcoming court cases of his detectives, his extension rang. It was Marissa Kornblatt, one of the three department secretaries who manned the front desk for the squad room. Over the intercom, her voice sounded tentative.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant. I have someone on the line who is demanding to speak to the head honcho.”

“Head honcho?”

“His words, Lieutenant, not mine. His name is Farley Lodestone, and as far as I could make out, he’s ranting about his missing daughter.”

“How old is his daughter?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight?”

“I told him our standard policy is thirty-six hours before we file a report, but then he said he’s been waiting over a month and he has had enough.”

The man sounded like a nutcase. Decker said, “Why don’t you patch the call to Matt Thurgood and have him take a missing-persons report-”

“Lieutenant, Mr. Lodestone is screaming that it’s a homicide. I don’t think he’s going to be happy with an MP report…sir.”

“I’ll take it.” Decker punched the blinking light. “Lieutenant Decker.”

“Lieutenant?” The voice was surprised. “Finally! Now we’re getting somewhere! You know how many phone calls I’ve made over the last few days?”

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Farley Lodestone is the name and you certainly can help me, Lieutenant Deckman. My stepdaughter’s missing. Me and her mom haven’t heard from her in forty-six days. We thought about it and thought about it and came to the same conclusion. That sumbitch husband of hers finally went out and did it.”

“Did it?”

“You know what I mean, Deckman. The sumbitch finally killed her!”

Decker looked at the phone monitor and took down the calling number. It appeared to be a cell phone and was from an out-of-the-city area code. “Mr. Lodestone, why don’t you come in to the station house and we can talk about this? Things that are this serious shouldn’t be discussed over the phone.”

There was a long pause. “You think so?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I could see you in about an hour. How does that sound?”

“Too quick! It’ll take time for me and the missus to get over there.”

“Where are you calling from, Mr. Lodestone?”

“Fresno.”

One hundred and eighty-six miles away as the crow flies. “And you’re calling this station house because your stepdaughter lives in this area?”

“Two-three-one-one-six Octavia Avenue. That’s where you’ll find the sumbitch.”

“And who is this sumbitch?”

“Ivan Dresden. He’s a broker for Merrill Lynch in Porter Ranch. My stepdaughter’s name is Roseanne. Roseanne Dresden.”

Decker tucked the receiver under his chin as he wrote it down. As he saw Roseanne’s name in print, he realized he wasn’t reading it for the first time. “Her name is familiar. Would there be any reason that I might know her?”

“Well, you mighta probably read her name in the papers saying she was on that WestAir flight that crashed down on the apartment building.”

That was it! Decker’s mind was racing, trying to understand the purpose of the call. “Mr. Lodestone, are you saying that your stepdaughter wasn’t on that WestAir flight?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But the papers reported her as one of the victims.”

“Young man, I’m sure someone somewhere musta told you that you should never believe what you read in the papers.”

THEY MATERIALIZED AT the station house at ten minutes to five in the afternoon. Farley and Shareen Lodestone were dressed in their Sunday finest, the man in a decently fitting gray suit with a white shirt and a tie, and Shareen in a flowered dress and low heels. She had taken the time to put on rouge and lipstick. Blond and blue-eyed, with good skin, at one time the woman had been attractive, but grief had deepened her eyes and depressed their light, giving her face a beetle brow.

Farley was thin and of average height with a mop of white hair. Yet Decker had seen enough of these guys to know that they were deceptively strong and wiry. He knew that beneath that jacket and shirt were some stringy arms with good grip strength. The man looked more mad than upset, but that was often a man’s way of coping with heartache.

Decker got them both cups of coffee and settled them into two seats opposite his desk. After closing the door, he sat down and took out a notepad, although he suspected that what they were going to tell him was a case of extreme denial. He said, “Before we get started, Mr. and Mrs. Lodestone, I want to express my condolences. I am very sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, I am, too,” Lodestone grunted out. “So if you want to help, you’ll put that sumbitch behind bars.”

“I always had a queasy feeling about him,” Shareen added.

“Him…meaning your son-in-law?”

“That’s right,” Shareen said. “Ivan Dresden.”

Decker wrote down the name. “And you suspect…what?”

“That Ivan killed her.”

“Didn’t I already tell you that?” Lodestone butted in.

“Yes, you did.” Decker paused. “Before you came in, I called up WestAir. They verified that Roseanne had been on the flight.”

“Yeah, verified in what way?” Lodestone said. “They haven’t found her body.”

“They haven’t finished all the recovery, Mr. Lodestone.”

“They finished most of it,” Shareen added. “They got thirty-eight so far.”

“Then maybe we should wait until they have all forty-seven.”

“They aren’t gonna find forty-seven bodies, Lieutenant,” Farley said. “Besides, it don’t matter if they do find everyone on the passenger list because WestAir didn’t issue her a ticket.”

That threw Decker momentarily off guard. “They didn’t?”

“No, they didn’t!” Farley said triumphantly. “So how the hell did they know she was on the flight?”

Decker didn’t answer. He wrote down no ticket? while stalling for time.

Shareen rescued him. “Let me start from the beginning, Lieutenant. Roseanne was a flight attendant for WestAir. After the crash, when we couldn’t get hold of Roseanne, we called up the airlines. But WestAir told us she wasn’t working on flight 1324. Then the company called us up a couple of days later and backtracked. No, she wasn’t working 1324, but she was on the plane, hopping a ride to San Jose to work the route up there for a couple of nights…which is why they claimed they didn’t issue her a ticket.”

“Wait a minute.” Decker started to take notes in earnest. “I thought every passenger who flew on an airline had to be issued a ticket.”

“That’s what I thought,” Shareen said. “But I was wrong. This was told to me by one of Roseanne’s friends, so I hope I’m getting this right.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Here we go. I think if you work for the airlines and you’re flying to work at a destination, you don’t have to be issued a ticket even if you’re not working the flight.”

Decker nodded. “So it was possible for her to be on the flight and for the airlines not to have a record of it. But then they’d have a record of the assignment, wouldn’t they?”