Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

But he was wrong again. The responsibility was mine, and mine alone. I lost three good men and women — I don't count Darius, and I hope they pulled him apart much more slowly than they did Amy. The rest of my team was permanently scarred, one physically, all mentally.

Their blood is on my hands. I grieve them every day. The responsibility is mine.

So ends the narrative of J. Robert Belew, USSF, retired.

"Hannah, don't sit down! Let's movel"

"At least let me drink my coffee; traffic was hell coming from Washington. What's up, Arnold?"

"The call just came in from NYPD. You know that creep Ramblur we talked to the other day — Flashfire? He blew himself up."

"Jesus — "

They arrived to chaos. Ramblur had lived in the basement of his apartment building. A hole had been blown in the corner of the foundation, and half the windows in the building were gone. Black streaks showed where fire had gushed from the apartment, but there looked to be little actual fire damage. Hannah and Simpson, both now in slicks and helmets, walked over the thick snarl of firehoses and into the water-dripping stairwell. Chief Reiger greeted them at the door.

"Well, Ms. Davis! Arnold — how's those kids of yours? Came to see what's left of Flashfire? Come on in…. It ain't a pretty sight."

The chief was right about that, Hannah decided immediately. Ramblur had evidently been at a workbench set along the wall. Most of the damage to the room seemed to be from the initial explosion — there'd been a small fire, but the force of the blast had snuffed out most of the flames. There were shards of glass everywhere and a few unbroken containers of variously colored powders and granules; Hannah opened the screw top lid to one of them and sniffed. She sifted a little of the powder inside onto her palm. "Calcium hypochlorite," she said. "This guy had a regular chemist's shop here. Better tell your people to be careful in here, Chief, and you'd better keep the tenants out. If he has lithium or potassium around, all you have to do is get them wet and we'll have a real beauty of an explosion and fire here again. Where is he, by the way?"

Reiger snorted and pointed across the room. Hannah looked, then gasped involuntarily. Bamblur was unrecognizable. The entire front of the body was a charred mess. The right arm was missing; so was part of the torso on that side. The corpse was in two parts lying close together, severed just below the ribcage; bone poked whitely from the black and red tangle. He'd been flung across the room so viciously that the plasterboard above him was cracked and dented from where he'd hit. The entire mess still steamed. "Bet he didn't even have a chance to say 'Oops!'" Reiger said. Swallowing once, Hannah went over and looked more closely at the remains. She crouched down in front of Ramblur, studying the skeletal, charcoal-black face. The jaw hung open as if in eternal surprise.

"You'd think a pyro with his background and this kind of stockpile would have known What he was doing," she said.

"Maybe he flunked chemistry 101," Reiger said. "Or maybe something slipped."

"Maybe."

Simpson had gone into the bedroom of the apartment. Now he called out. "Hey, Hannah, better take a look over here."

"On my way." She rose, walked across the room, and then stopped at the door.

Simpson was holding an iron bar in one hand, a steel rod exactly like those which had held the doors at the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker. At his feet were two canisters the size of small fire extinguishers. Both of them were a bright, telltale green. There were several gallon and a half drums near the bed. Hannah already knew what they would find in them: jet fuel.

"Congratulations, Ms. Davis," Chief Reiger said, peering into the bedroom behind Hannah. "Looks like you caught your torch."

The pool clerk congratulated her like everyone else in the department as he came into her cubicle. Hannah gave him the same tight-lipped smile she'd given the others. "Thanks, Ned. Listen, I have a meeting with Malcolm at three, and I need these tapes and transcripts copied before then. Think you can do it?"

"Sure. Plenty of time. Bet you get a commendation."

"Well see," Hannah said. "The earlier you can get that done …"

Ned had them back to her at two. Hannah put the copies in a box, sealed it, and walked it down to the mailing department. Then she went and finished typing her report for Malcolm.

The director glanced through the report, riffling the pages without reading, then set it down in front of him. He folded his hands over it and looked up at her. He gave her his best imitation of a smile. "Very good work, Ms. Davis. I'll be drafting a letter for your personal file with my recommendation that you be considered for promotion."

"Malcolm — " Hannah started, then exhaled. "I don't want to close this case. I want to keep working on it."

"Whatever for?" Malcolm blinked. Hannah realized that it was the first time she'd ever seen him do that. "All the evidence is here, Ms. Davis. In fact, it's rare that we have such a clear-out case against a person."

"That's exactly what bothers me, Malcolm. I … I'm not saying that Ramblur didn't set the fire. He probably did. I already had the paperwork in motion to get a search warrant for his apartment. But it seems awfully convenient that he managed to blow himself to kingdom come just before we moved."

"And just what angle do you wish to pursue in this?"

Hannah hesitated. "I want to go to Saigon and see what I can find on Dr. Faneuil and his nurse. I have the Free Vietnam government's permission to go there, and they're willing to pay my way …"

Hannah stopped. Malcolm sat behind his desk like a blue-suited statue, his eyes cold. "Let me get this straight," he said, and there was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice. "We have an air-tight case against the arsonist. We have found not only the history of arson with him and a prejudice against jokers, but also the very materials that were used in the fire: the steel bars, the oxygen canisters, and the jet fuel. Yet you want to pursue a far-fetched conspiracy theory, one that not only takes you out of the city, out of the state, but across the entire Pacific Ocean toa country that half the civilized world has yet to recognize as legal. No, Ms. Davis. Absolutely and emphatically, no. Please do yourself a very large favor and accept the rewards your hard work on this case will undoubtedly garner."

"Malcolm, you have to trust me in this. After all, it's not costing us anything but my time. Not even the plane fare. All I'm asking for is another week or so. If I have to, let me take an unpaid leave. I just … I just want to be sure ."

"Ms. Davis, which is more likely: that a deranged pyromaniac with a grudge against jokers would burn down the church, or that the fire was a deliberate part of some decades-old conspiracy?"

"I know what it sounds like …"

"Do you? Do you really? Ms. Davis, I am aware that you have gone to the World Health Organization, that you contacted the UN, that you spoke with Free Vietnam's delegation in Washington. I'm telling you now — enough. You will drop this investigation."

"Or?"

His expression didn't change. "I should think that someone with your imagination would be able to figure that out," he said.

Hannah stood. "I don't need to," she told him. "I quit."

She threw her identification and pass down on his desk.

***

David came in while she was packing. He stood in the doorway of their — his , she reminded herself — bedroom and watched her throwing clothes into her suitcases. "Malcolm Coan called me at the office," he said. "I thought I might find you here, but I really didn't think you'd be this crazy, Hannah. What is it with you? Can't you stand having success? You enjoy wrecking everything anyone's done for you?"