Alien Heat (19 page)

Just didn't like to admit it face-to-face, David decided.

Clements took the list back. “There's things on here that we found in the storage unit, Mr. Cromwell.”

He folded his arms, mouth turning down. “I don't know how that stuff got there. I've told you that, I've told that other Elaki guy, that Detective Warden. How many times you want to hear the words come out of my mouth?”

“You want to change your mind about the paralegal?” David asked.

“No. I got nothing to hide.”

David looked at him. Everyone had something to hide. “How about enemies?”

Cromwell smiled, showing teeth. “Not me. Haven't got an enemy in the world.”

“Everybody likes you,” Clements said.

People were always embarrassed to admit someone out there didn't like them, David thought. As if life was still run by the standards of junior high school.

He kept his voice low and kind. Good eye contact. “Mr. Cromwell, you run a supper club that caters to Elaki and human clientele. You know, I know, everybody in the building knows, the world is full of bigots.”

Cromwell rubbed his stomach. “I get threats, I told you that. That group, SCAE. Those guys, they're just jacking off. They paint graffiti, call and hang up, that kind of thing. Then they go buy some beers or packages of Jackie and feel big and mean. I've seen them, I've dealt with them, they're nothing. Little pissant jerkoffs.”

David liked the sound of that. Little pissant jerkoffs. “You say you had phone calls? Hang ups?”

“Yeah.”

“Trace back?”

“Didn't bother. Blocked it.”

“Anything else unusual?”

“That wasn't unusual, it was the norm, been going on since I opened the place.”

Clements waved a hand. “Mr. Cromwell, we've had two supper clubs burn in the last four weeks. Now, you didn't burn your own club down, did you?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, I did not burn my club, or kill those people inside, or take that stuff out of there and squirrel it away in that stupid storage bin.”

Clements nodded sympathetically. “Okay, Mr. Cromwell, then tell me who. Who did burn down the club? Kill the people? Cause a pregnant woman to die in childbirth?”

David flinched. The woman had not made it. He wondered if Teddy and Arthur knew. Why wasn't Teddy answering her phone?

Clements leaned back in her chair. “How long you known Tatewood?”

“Three years or so. We do business.”

“What you know about him?”

“Not a lot. We don't socialize much. He's got a sick mother, spends most of his spare time with her. He's good at what he does, or so I used to think.”

“Meaning?” David asked.

Cromwell sagged in the chair. “We're screwed on the insurance and I'm ruined. One lousy late payment, and they cancel us. I think we should take them to court, but Tatewood, he's working something out with the investors, so we'll see.”

Clements tapped her chin. “Guys who hold the mortgage. Do they—”

“You'd have thought they'd have seen it coming,” Cromwell said.

David tilted his head sideways. “What's that?”

“I said they should've seen it coming. They're psychics, aren't they? Bunch of fakes.”

David kept his voice matter-of-fact. “Your investors are psychics?”

Cromwell shrugged. “Not very good ones, obviously. Tatewood made some kind of comment, day I got the loan. My credit, see, well hell, you probably know more about it than I do. I had a bad credit history, needed to refinance or go under. Tatewood helped me out. So, I ask him, how come
he
can find people to lend me money when nobody else will? I mean, it bugged me, kind of like too good to be true.”

“And what did he say?”

“Just that it was some kind of psychic institute. Something like that.”

“Mind Institute?”

“Yeah, that's right. Said they knew I was okay. Can't be too good, can they? Didn't see this fire coming. I took their money, but I always figured Tatewood was kidding.”

“No,” David said. “I don't think he was.”

Cromwell shrugged. “It's all a racket anyway.”

THIRTY-TWO

David did not know what had happened in the hallway between String, Warden, and Della, though someone told him later that the presence of the ATF Elaki, Smokar, had somehow banded them all together. By the time he and Clements made it back to his office, the three of them were clustered around Della's terminal—Della at the keyboard, the aliens at her back.

Mel pointed a finger. “Harmony of the races.” He offered a bag to Clements.

“Doughnuts? I'm hungry, Burnett, I didn't get any lunch. Don't you guys ever send out for sandwiches?”

“This is homicide, Yo. In homicide we eat tacos in the morning, and doughnuts in the afternoon.”

“Tough guys, huh? What you eat for dinner?”

“Arson detectives.”

Clements sat on the edge of Mel's desk and leaned close. “Typical cop, I bet. All talk, and no follow-through.”

David had the unique pleasure of seeing Mel blush. He sorted through the doughnuts—all caramel, chocolate, and white powder. No plain ones. He looked at Clements.

“You think Cromwell torched his club?”

She licked caramel icing off her fingers. “Hard as hell to prove. His alibi holds.”

Warden flicked an eye prong at Clements. “But of course this human be the responsible party, Yo Free. This storage bunker holds many of the choice goods, hidden to be the squirrel.”

Della looked at David.
The squirrel
? she mouthed.

“Squirreled away,” David said.

Clements crossed her legs. “And no dust on anything, so it was all put there a day or two before we found it. But two things bother me, Wart.”

Mel scooted his chair away from the desk. “Come on, Yo, this guy led you right to the storage bin where all the stuff was stashed? You think he's that stupid?”

“He could be related to you, Burnett.”

Warden swiveled toward Mel. “But this happens the most frequent. In the arson, the perpetrators not always the criminal profession. Many the mistakes are to be made.”

Mel nodded. “So what you're saying, is even your low IQ cops got a chance working arson.”

Clements rose to the challenge, but David didn't listen. He thought about Teddy, wondered why she did not answer the phone. Was it a psychic thing? Did she know it was him on the other line? Did she know he was going to kiss her on the Ferris wheel? Did she know all his thoughts?

He was being paranoid. Besides, Rose always said it didn't take a psychic to know what was on a man's mind.

“I say
David
.”

He looked up. Blinked. “What, Della?”

“I got no other real similarities between the two names, but—”

“What two names?” David asked.

Della studied him a moment, and when she spoke her voice was kind. “The two names on the list my computer ate. Alice Caspian and Jefferson Ford. Both of them have money. Caspian's mom won a lottery and hung on to enough of it to leave Alice money to invest—which she did, and I may say shrewdly. And Ford's a pretty big gun at Nano-Dirt.”

“Those guys who do garden soil?” David said. He bought from them all the time.

“Fat salary, stock options, stuff like that.”

David looked at Clements, who was rummaging through the doughnuts. She found one with chocolate sprinkles. “This looks like your speed, Wart, want it? Last one.”

David wondered why Elaki were invariably attracted to any food that was messy, sticky, or runny. Like two-year-olds, he thought.

“Yolanda?” David said.

“Yeah?”

“Don't you mean yeah, baby?”

She grinned at him. “You homicide guys do stand-up on your days off?”

“We don't get days off,” Mel muttered.

David waggled a finger. “I want to know what you think of Cromwell. I want to know what two things bothered you.”

Yolanda folded her arms. “Okay, one. His little caddy, where he keeps all his bills and stuff? Everybody has something like that. Most of the time, somebody torches the place, or hires it done, they take it out. It's so damn inconvenient to lose all that stuff, you know? Account password numbers, all those things. And his is sitting in the office, smeared with fire gel.”

“Probably all on a disc at his home computer anyway,” Mel said.

“Maybe. But what about the man's medication? You know how hard it is to get what you need these days, much less
replace
the stuff? Worse than trying to put an unregistered car through the DMV, which is damn near impossible. People
always
take their meds out.”

“Then please to explain items in storage,” Warden said. A rainbow of sprinkles shone on his chest scales.

Clements opened both arms. “That's what I'm saying. This case doesn't hold up no matter what direction you run it. I mean, you should have heard the guy in interrogation, Wart. He says, ‘
I did not burn my club
.' Said it twice, didn't he, David?”

“Words to that effect.”

She frowned at him. “They told me you were obsessive.”

Obsessive? David thought. Did he have that reputation?

“Anyway, most guys I talk to? They use weasel words, if they're guilty. Never come out and say the touchy stuff. Caused this accident … incident, problem. This guy wasn't any kind of mealy mouth. Said the deaths were murder.” She frowned. “It could just be his personality. Could be a real cool guy.”

David shook his head. “No, because when I asked him if he'd been arrested for a felony, look how he answered.”

“
That's
right. Said he hadn't been
convicted
. And he's got to know we got the information in the computer.”

“So if he's worried, he weasels, that what you're saying?” Mel stuck a finger in his ear, wiggled it around.

Clements looked at him. “You got serious allergies or something? You're always scratching.”

Mel wiped his finger on a handkerchief. “You know how I know you're a good arson cop, there, Detective Yo?”

“How's that, baby?”

“See, my old sergeant, he always said arson was a tough job. Hard to convict. Said it took a cop with two things to do the job.”

“I know I'm a be sorry I asked, Burnett, but what two things?”

“One's a tape recorder, the other's a big mouth.”

David decided to change the subject. “We found the dog.”

Clements looked at him. “The dog? What dog?”

“One killed in the first fire. The house where we found Theresa Jenks.”

“The one with the people in the closet? Where you fell—”

“Yeah, yeah,” David said.

“Where'd you find him?”

“Garbage. We also found food packages from that first supper club, the one the Bernitski brothers own. You remember when we went in the kitchen, and you said they'd probably been taken out by—”

“The owners, yeah. And you found them in the garbage? A lot of them? Not just one or two?”

David nodded.

“That tears it,” Clements said. “These guys are being framed.”

Mel frowned. “By who? What's the point?”

“Somebody does desire this property?” Warden asked.

“They want the property, be easier to buy it than open yourself up to three hundred counts of homicide.”

Clements shrugged. “You'd be surprised, Burnett, I promise you. That Smokar from ATF—” Both String and Warden hissed. Clements looked at David and rolled her eyes. “Anyway, like I was saying, you-know-who may be right. She thinks we have a serial arsonist. You remember two years ago? Guy that was going after all the dental clinics?”

David was nodding. “You think we got somebody after supper clubs? Or places where people and Elaki hang together?”

Della's hands froze on the keyboard. “Hate crimes.”

Warden waved a fin. “The Federal Bureaus will be looking into this then. We can ask them to consult for knowledge.”

“No. They will be like the sslugbartoners and not share.”

Mel frowned. “Like the what, String? Run that by again.”

David looked at Clements. “You talked to any Feds yet?”

“Yeah, about that hate mail Tatewood showed us.”

“You go to them or they come to you?”

“Actually, you know, they came to me.”

“They ask about me?” David asked.

She looked at him. “As Wart would say, the ego is a very big thing.”

“How about Jenks? They want to know about her? They ask about the Mind Institute?”

“Shoot, Silver, I don't remember. We talked about a lot of stuff. I even told them they should talk to you some. I see they didn't.”

“Theresa Jenks is the key to this whole thing,” Mel said. “Her murder ties the arson and the Mind Institute—which by the way may hold the mortgage on at least one of the supper clubs.”

“I'll check the other one,” Clements said. “And try to confirm the first.”

“We figure Jenks out, we'll have it,” Mel said.

Warden turned to String. “Please explain to me one thing.”

“And this is?”

“What does this mean, eat the corncob?”

THIRTY-THREE

The desk clerk greeted him like an old friend. David lifted a hand, said hello. He wasn't noticing the smell of mildew anymore, or the stain on the carpet. He took the stairs slowly, tucking the loose ends of Mel's best shirt down into his pants. Mel often went out after work; usually kept a clean shirt in his desk. David had kept Mel talking while Della raided the drawer.

The shirt was big in the middle, sleeve length a hair too short, but made of fine quality cotton.

The hallway was quiet. David checked his watch—seven
P.M
. He ought to call Rose and tell her not to expect him. He ought to go home and have dinner with his kids.