Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

“Tell me, Sergeant Heller.”

“It’s pretty clever, actually. The invoice prices they charge for the parts are all reasonably standard. A little high, maybe, but this is the Pentagon we’re talking about.”

“So where’s the padding?”

“Check this out,” I said, pulling out a file folder. “LED headlights for the Humvee, right? Around two hundred bucks a pop. You can get them for half that on eBay, but this is still within the realm of normal. But it’s the shipping that’s inflated, and hugely. A crate of ten headlights weigh almost a thousand pounds? I don’t think so. More like ten pounds. They’re padding the shipping. A lot. That’s where they’re making the money.”

She inspected the pages I showed her. “All these shipments, from a company in Indiana, use the same less-than-truckload carrier RedLine Ball Shipping.”

She was taking notes on one of the yellow pads she always used. I could see redline ball shipping underlined and circled. led headlights underlined three times.

“Right,” I went on. “RedLine Ball is in on it with Harkins, I’ll guarantee that.”

“Hot damn, Heller! You found it!” She dropped her yellow pad on her desk.

“It was just a lot of grunt work,” I said, attempting modesty, which is not one of my strengths.

“You brought the baton home,” she said.

She left the room and came back a minute later with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two plastic cups. She splashed some into each cup and handed me one.

“Thank you, Major Benson.”

“After hours I’m Maggie, Heller,” she said.

“And I’m Nick. But I prefer Heller.”

“So it’ll be Heller, then. Heller, do you ever leave this place? You ever get dinner?”

Was she asking me out? “Once in a while, yeah.”

“How about tomorrow night?”

Devastated, I followed Santiago along the low stone wall for a few hundred feet until the wall ended. Ahead, a path led steeply down to the gulley.

I was in a state of shock, or close to it. At the same time, I felt queasy. Maggie had been on her way into the house; how could she have been diverted back to the yard and the adjacent property? It didn’t make sense.

“Por aquí. Empujé la carretilla pa’ acá pa’ tirar la hojarasca del jardín. Y entonces me topé con... esto.” He’d rolled his wheelbarrow down here to dump the leaves from the yard and then he saw the body down below.

Soon we were clambering over the low stone wall and down the steep hill. Santiago was like a mountain goat, steady on his feet, grabbing branches to steady himself. I followed his lead. It was steep enough that you could lose your footing and tumble headlong. But I held on to brush and vines and branches and rock faces. I stepped carefully, finally turned around to face the hillside. Then I climbed down using my hands and legs, like it was some climbing wall in a fancy gym.

I saw the body again and scrambled through the woods toward it.

Maggie Benson lay on the ground, her white T-shirt soiled, her legs and arms splayed oddly. Her copper wig was astray. I knelt beside her. From this angle I could see her face. Her eyes were open, staring. It looked like her neck was broken.

There was no question she was dead; I didn’t need to feel her pulse.

No envelope, no file on the ground near her, but I didn’t expect there would be.

“ No lo toque, ” the gardener warned me as he approached. “No toque al muerto.” Don’t touch the body.

He waggled his index finger. He knew something about American police work.

As we scrabbled up the steep hillside, I could see red and blue lights flashing faintly in the sky. Emergency vehicles, the police, had arrived. Their lights bounced against the clouds on the other side of the mansion.

The blood was hot in my veins. My heart was racing, and not from the exertion of climbing. I was in another place. I prickled with anger. Someone had killed Maggie for some reason. She wasn’t drunk, and she hadn’t just fallen. I couldn’t get the image of Maggie’s broken neck and staring eyes out of my mind.

Anger can be a great motivator, and I was angry as I’d never been before. But anger can also cause you to act irrationally. I reminded myself that the best chance of getting to the truth was to maintain my cover. Which meant putting my anger in a deep freeze with a thick layer of pond ice over it.

In battle there was no time to grieve for your fallen comrades; you had to remain focused and tactical. So it was here. I couldn’t let anyone know that I knew the victim, that we had a connection, that she wasn’t who everybody else thought she was, except Cameron and Megan. And neither was I.

When we reached the stone wall, Santiago excused himself and returned to his work. I told him the police would want to talk with him, and he said he already expected that.

As I approached the house, the kitchen door was flung open and Kimball’s security director, Fritz Heston, came out. “Excuse me, sir,” Heston said to me. He was wearing a blue Patagonia fleece over a collared white shirt. “Mr. Brown. Did you see the body?”

I told him I did.

“Was it one of our guests?”

“Yes,” I said. “Cameron’s date, I’ve forgotten her name.”

“Oh, dear God. What happened, can you tell?”

“Her neck is broken,” I said. “It could have been any number of things.”

“The woman was pretty intoxicated last night, last I saw her. She must have gone out into the woods for some reason. And fallen. That’s probably what happened.”

“Could be,” I said with a grunt.

“How far into the woods was it?”

“In the ravine right below the stone wall.”

A man in a suit was approaching from around the side of the house. “I’m looking for Mr. Heston,” the man said. He was middle-aged and overweight and balding and had a short gray beard.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Heston said.

“Mr. Heston, I’m Detective-Sergeant Goldman from the Town of Bedford homicide squad. I understand you’re the gentleman to talk to.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you see the victim?”

Heston pointed at me. “He just did.”

“Sir,” Detective Goldman said, looking at me, “did you get close enough to the body to see any signs of life?”

“I did, and the woman is dead.” It was sickening just to say the words. I fairly successfully feigned an expression of nonchalance, but my heart was revving.

“Who found her?”

“One of the gardeners. He’s working near the pool.” I’d seen Santiago wrapping burlap bags over the scraggly sticks of a hydrangea bush, protecting it from the coming winter.

Detective Goldman took out a small pad of paper and made a note.

Heston said to the policeman, “The woman was a guest of one of Dr. Kimball’s sons, and I think you should know that she was seriously intoxicated last night.”

“She was?” said the detective, looking to me for confirmation.

I said nothing.

“That’s right,” Heston went on. “I mean, it’s tragic, certainly, but I think it’s clear what happened. She must have taken a tumble while intoxicated. A terrible thing. But not a homicide. Let’s be clear on that.”

“Well, sir, we’ll have to investigate and make sure,” Detective Goldman said to Heston. “Standard procedure. Tell me something. This was a birthday party for Dr. Kimball, and several of his dinner guests spent the night here, is that right?”

“Right,” Heston said.

“How many?”

“Well.” He counted on his fingers. “Dr. Kimball and his fiancée, four of his children, and their three guests. Including Miss Andersen.”