Faye Kellerman - The Burnt House

Decker’s head had been so immersed in the Hernandez boys that he had to think a moment about the assignment. Condo-complex canvassing: the Roseanne Dresden case. They had been looking and looking for any witnesses who might have seen Roseanne coming in or going out on the morning of the plane crash. He put his sandwich down and took out his notepad. “Good. Go on.”

Wanda checked her own notes. Her hands were shaking. “The woman’s name is Hermione Cutlass and she’s a nurse. This time we phrased the question differently. We asked, ‘Do you remember where you were the morning of the crash?’ instead of ‘Do you remember seeing Roseanne the morning of the crash?’ We figured if anyone had seen Roseanne that morning, we would have heard about it by now.”

“Okay.”

“So this is what we got.” Wanda cleared her throat. “On the morning of the crash, Hermione Cutlass was scheduled to work the seven A.M.-to-three-P.M. shift at St. Luke’s in Simi Valley, but she was running late. Her daughter was home sick with the flu, and Hermione had to wait until a babysitter came so she could go off to work. By the time the sitter came, she was real late.”

“What time was that?”

“She thinks it was around seven, when she shoulda been at work already. She remembered running to her car, running through the parking area, not really paying too much attention to what was going on other than getting to her car, when all of a sudden a black Beemer pulled out in front of her and almost crashed into her. She said she had to jump back to avoid getting hit. She was screaming nasty words at the driver, but she was talking to the air. The car just bolted the hell out of the lot. She was so angry that she wrote down the license plate…”

“She has the license number?”

“She said she planned to report it to the condo board when she got back home.”

Decker’s heart started whacking in his chest. “So tell me it was Roseanne’s BMW.”

“Yes, it was, but she didn’t know it at the time.”

“Good Lord!” He smiled genuinely. “And she’s just remembering the car now?”

“Y’see, the first time we asked her questions, we asked if she saw Roseanne that morning. The answer to that question was no. This time we asked her what she did that morning.”

“Recalling her morning of the crash jogged her memory about the car.”

“Yes, but she didn’t know it was Roseanne’s car. She just wrote down the license number, worked a long day, and then forgot about the whole thing, especially once she heard about the airplane crash. That kinda took the wind out of her sails to be mad at anyone. All she could think about was poor Roseanne.”

“Okay, okay, give me a minute to digest this.” He closed his eyes and opened them. “Does she remember what time the Beemer almost crashed into her?”

“Sometime after seven but before eight.”

“Before flight 1324 crashed.”

“Definitely before the crash, because she heard about the accident at the hospital.” Wanda took in a deep breath and let it out. “When she got home that night, it was all over the condo that Roseanne had died. Everyone felt absolutely sick about it.”

“Did she know Roseanne?”

“Casual acquaintance. You know, they saw each other in the Jacuzzi or the gym or the laundry room. It’s always awful when someone you know dies unnaturally.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I asked her, ‘Are you sure you’re remembering the correct day?’ And she said, ‘Absolutely, positively.’ And then she told me the story. When she got to the part about the car being a BMW, I was holding my breath. I asked her to describe the car and that’s when she remembered she wrote down the license plate.”

“And she still had the number?”

“In the glove compartment, right where she left it. When I asked to see it, she asked me why. I told her I’d tell her as soon as I got off the phone with DMV. When the license plate matched, I told her that Roseanne drove a black BMW. The poor girl just about fainted. She started crying and carrying on, because she told me that it was probably Roseanne rushing to make her flight. And she said some real nasty things to the driver. In some respects, she said she wished the car would have crashed into her because then Roseanne would have stopped and missed the plane.”

Decker nodded. “If it was closer to seven, maybe it was Roseanne rushing off to work. If it was closer to eight, there is no way Roseanne could have made the doomed flight. Can she narrow down the time a little more?”

“No, sir, I tried that. She doesn’t remember beyond sometime between seven and eight.” Wanda raised her eyebrows and licked her pink glossy lips. “And we got one other major problem. It was Roseanne’s car; that is definite because the number she wrote down matched Roseanne’s plates.”

“But she couldn’t see who was driving the car.”

Wanda nodded. “It happened real fast. She was in a rush and she was flustered. And the Beemer was in a rush.”

“Could she tell you something about the driver?”

“She said it happened so fast, she couldn’t even see if it was a man or a woman. She thinks there was only one person in the car, but she won’t even swear to that.”

EVEN WITH JUST a skeleton crew in the squad room, Hannah’s batch of forty-eight cookies was gone. Decker had resorted to picking the crumbs left behind.

“Those were good,” Wanda Bontemps said. “Ask your daughter for the recipe.”

“I think I’m in sugar narcosis,” Marge said. “Can I adopt your daughter?”

“You’ve never seen her before a trig test.”

“I’ve seen my own daughter before a particle-physics test. She can’t be any worse.” Marge’s cell phone rang. She looked at her watch. “Speaking of which…It’s eight o’clock, it must be Vega. Excuse me for a moment.”

Oliver said, “I’m making more coffee. Any takers?”

Four hands went up. Marge covered the cell’s mouthpiece and shouted, “Count me in.” She talked to her daughter for a moment longer then rejoined the group. They had decided to talk in the squad room because the common tables provided more space than Decker’s office. “What did I miss?”

“As it stands right now, the Loo was just saying that it’s unlikely that a judge is going to issue a warrant for the Beemer unless we can implicate the car in a crime.”

“We’re out of luck.” Oliver had returned, balancing coffee cups, cream, and sweetener. “There are no outstanding wants or warrants on the car. Ivan may be a murderer, but he obeys traffic signs.”

Wanda helped him with the coffee. “Are we still thinking about Ivan as his wife’s murderer?”

“What do you mean?”

The newest detective said, “If we get a match for Raymond Holmes as Belize Hernandez, isn’t it likely that Hernandez was Roseanne’s killer? He did it once to his sister-in-law. Why couldn’t he do it again?”

Oliver said, “He could, but something’s still not making sense with that.”

Marge broke in. “Scott and I were talking about this. Why is the man we call Raymond Holmes hanging around, knowing full well that we found his sister-in-law’s body?”

Wang sipped coffee. “Maybe he thinks we can’t identify the body.”

“Maybe, but I know what Scott and Marge are getting at,” Decker said. “There’s something out there that we’re missing and it has something to do with Manny Hernandez. The old man told me that as far as he knows, Manny’s still missing. According to him, Raymond Holmes is Belize, but Martin’s eighty and a con, so everything is suspect until we have evidence to back it up. Until we have a positive on the prints, we don’t know if Ray is Belize or if Ray is Manny.”