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Nancy Tobias folded her fingers around her glass. “Wait. I hadn’t thought of this before but Mr. Helton might be able to help.”

Santiago had risen also in one impatient movement, his eyes narrowing. “And he is?”

“They don’t own the house. They’re buying it on contract. He lived there before them. The housing market has been so lousy that he went ahead and took an offer without a bank loan. I don’t know if it will help, but I suppose it is possible.”

Not much, but better than nothing. Worth a trip to West Allis? Maybe. Ellie doubted it would be a big breakthrough though; nothing was that easy. How the hell did they not know that already? “Thanks,” she said, her overall feeling that this was a dead end easing at least a little bit. If this Mr. Helton could give them any sort of lead, then maybe it was worth it.

They left, walking out onto a sidewalk that radiated heat like a blast furnace. Her partner drove an old muscle car of some sort, a Mustang, she noted, sleek and shiny, the dark blue color more than a little showy. It was parked at the curb of the busy street. She pointed. “That thing have air-conditioning?”

“Built in.” He gestured at the convertible top. “Though I got to admit it is a pain to take the top down. Should we go shake down the Tobiases for Helton’s address?”

“They’ve been fairly cooperative so far. I think a phone call will do it.”

“I’ll take care of it.” He fished his keys from his pocket, tossed them in the air, and caught them in a whiplike swoop of his hand.

“Ask them if they found their dog, will you?”

“Why, you going to interview it?”

Smartass
. She said, “It bothers me to think they not only lost their house, but maybe even their pet too.”

“Ever think you might be in the wrong profession, MacIntosh?”

“The day they assigned me to partner with you it occurred to me,” she responded dryly.

He laughed. “Kind of brought that on myself. Fine, but don’t worry about the dog.”

Ellie turned in the act of stepping out onto the street. “Why not? Did they find it?”

“Yeah, they got it back. Remember the old guy next door was looking for it?”

How she didn’t know that the dog had been found and he did was a mystery, but it was good news. “I remember. Good for him.”

She and Bryce were supposed to go to his parents’ for dinner and fireworks and she needed to go to her apartment and change. Unlike Santiago, she liked to look like a detective when doing an interview.

Of course, maybe she was being too hard on the guy. After all, here it was a holiday weekend and he’d taken the time to drop by the morgue, never her favorite chore, and if he was dressed for beach volleyball, it could be argued he wasn’t officially on the clock.

“If I can get ahold of the Tobiases, and get that number, I’ll call you. Everyone I know is doing something this weekend. How about you? Plans?”

“Yes.” She didn’t elaborate. “You obviously have some.”

“I do.” He unlocked the door to the car. “Speaking of which, I’m late. Kate’s going to kill me.”

Kate.
Girlfriend? Not wife; she knew he wasn’t married. No wonder. He left without so much as a good-bye or even a cursory wave, and Ellie watched him drive away a shade too fast for the speed limit. This Kate had to be an interesting person to want to put up with him.

Ellie crossed the street, slipped into her car, and punched on the AC, taking out her cell phone. She called and left a message for Bryce, told him where she was, and pulled out a moment later, still thinking about the case.

It was good to be working a true homicide again, not just wading through paperwork because some junkie overdosed in a back alley, or two street kids got into a brawl that ended badly. That wasn’t murder, that was cleanup duty. Back up north she’d been assigned all sorts of cases, but so had all of the other detectives.

Fourth of July weekend.

Fireworks. Hot dogs. Murder?

She pondered as she drove down the main street, brow furrowed, almost inattentive to traffic. Did that have any significance? Was the date a catalyst? Probably not. The fire had happened the day before.

But it was a possibility it had something to do with the holiday.

Like what?

She had rented a small condo when she moved several months ago, not a permanent solution by any means, but until her house in Lincoln County sold, it was comfortable enough. Then she’d have to make a decision about moving in with Bryce, an option they hadn’t thoroughly discussed yet. His place was certainly big enough, but that was part of the problem. It was
his
place. She liked the house and the neighborhood, but it was what he’d selected after his divorce, and why the hell that mattered she wasn’t sure, but on some psychological level it did. She equated the house to his former marriage, which added another layer to the problem she had of how to approach their relationship.

As she pulled into her neat little driveway, her phone rang. She glanced at the number and pushed a button. “MacIntosh.”

“You aren’t going to believe this one,” Santiago told her. “Chief Metzger just called me. Matthew Tobias killed himself about an hour ago by jumping off a parking garage downtown. No wonder he wouldn’t answer his cell. The guy kind of did me a favor. I didn’t want to go to that damned cookout anyway.”

Chapter 5

I
clearly remember the day my grandmother died.

The unnatural quiet when I came home from school, the scorched scent of the cake she’d been baking when it happened, the sight of her crumpled body on the floor, the hem of her dress hiked up enough to show the top of her stocking on one leg, the pool of urine soaking her clothes and on the worn linoleum …

I didn’t run outside, or panic, or do anything really but stand there with my book bag dangling from one hand and assess exactly what this was going to mean to me. In vivid clarity I remember no sense of grief, though I suppose I really was sorry, but that wasn’t what resonated through my soul.

Grief? How is that defined? A sincere regret and sense of loss?

It felt more like a resignation over the whims of fate that even at that tender age I recognized as being out of my control. I tried to cry. I really did. I stood there and told myself I probably should. I should cry. Wouldn’t an average kid cry? She’d been, all in all, very good to me.

Stepping over her body carefully, I can clearly recall switching off the oven. The house smelled and there was smoke drifting from the still-closed door of the old range.

Smoke and death.

I knelt down and touched her hand.

It was already stiff and cold.

I was fascinated.

*   *   *

Carl picked up
the crate and went to set it on the desk. It took a few minutes to find the file he wanted, but it finally fit into his hand and he had to wonder in a moment of wry introspection just how often he’d handled it.

Dozens of times? A hundred?

Probably. You’d think he’d have a better way to spend the Fourth of July, but at least he was having dinner with Rachel later, though Italian food wasn’t hamburgers, grilled corn, and ice cream. Thank God. He had to admit to an aversion to celebrations that involved families and laughter. He’d lost his parents in a car accident when he was twenty. No siblings. One ailing grandfather left in Seattle he saw maybe once a year.

The accident had happened on Thanksgiving. Maybe it was why he disliked any holiday. No turkey for him. He usually grilled a steak and watched television.

His own name jumped out at him first, the initial report dated over five years ago. He pulled it off the top of the stack and set it down, adjusting the desk light. By pulling a few strings he’d gotten the ME report on the current burning/homicide almost the minute it hit the desks of the two detectives investigating the case. In the department it was always who you know, and he had been around a lot longer than the pretty little blonde and that hotshot Santiago, who reportedly liked to think with his dick now and then but somehow still wasn’t thrilled about the assignment with MacIntosh. Carl would have thought she was just his type.

Office politics aside, he was damned curious to see what the ME report had to offer.

Half an hour later, he experienced a familiar elation that he had missed like hell. The case
was
suspiciously the same … not exactly, nothing could be that easy, but the coffee table, that was unusual … the burning, the house lit up afterward …

“What are you doing here, Lieutenant?”

He glanced up to see Chief Metzger propped in the doorway, his eyebrows slightly raised in inquiry. The chief was probably a little young for the job, five years or so older than his forty-two years, stocky but fit, his arms right now folded across his chest. His hair had thinned prematurely and he’d decided to go with it, trimming it to almost nothing, but once upon a time, he’d been a marine, so it seemed to suit him. On a weekend he wore jeans and a golf shirt, but he looked good in a suit, knew how to handle his authority without being too much of a prick, and basically, Carl liked him. He wasn’t sure he could accurately say they were old friends any longer, but they were long-term acquaintances on cautious good terms, even after their differences on the case that had gotten him reassigned.

“I’m going through an old case file.” He patted the papers on his desk casually.

“Today?”

“Why are
you
here, Joe?”

His boss just chuckled. “Okay, point taken, but my list is a must-do, not a volunteer project. What file brought you here?” He put up a hand. “No, wait, let me guess. The homicide yesterday. Am I right?”

There was a disadvantage to working with someone for years. He might just know you a little too well. Carl sat back in his chair. “It caught my eye.”

“I figured it would.”

Damn Metzger
. He remembered everything. Carl set aside the file and folded his hands on his desk. “Why is that?”

The other man’s gaze was razor sharp. “You had a case … years ago; how long was it? When I got the call and heard the murder included arson I wondered about it, and I suspect that’s the file right there on your desk. Look, Carl, I’ve assigned detectives to this case already.”

Oh, he knew it. He knew it all too well. “I could do it better,” he said evenly. “Come on, Joe, I know it and
you
know it. I’ve got more experience.”

“Don’t sell Santiago or MacIntosh short. He’s better at breaking down a witness than any cop I know, including you, by the way, and she’s got that special edge I’ve been looking for since I had to move you to vice.”

That wasn’t easy to hear. Demoted was bad enough, but replaced was worse. “It really could be the same person that did that burning five years ago, and this is my case.”

“
Was
your case, but I’m listening. Come into my office.”

This wasn’t exactly a coup, but then again, Metzger was at least
listening
.

Carl followed him down the hall and took a chair by a desk that was cluttered with paperwork, but he knew he was organized, just no one but Metzger could find anything in that daunting pile. The chief sat down behind his desk and rubbed his chin. “Why do you think there is a connection?”

“I feel it.”

“Well crap, Carl, I’m not one to discount instincts in police work, but give me a fact or two, will you?”

His smile was tight. “I can do that. There are some dissimilarities. The latest victim, for instance was a woman and the first was a local reverend. A pastor. Middle-aged. There’s no connection between them. Not that I can see anyway, except that table.”

Metzger folded his hands and stared at him. “The table? It is apparently enough for you to come in on your day off when you could be lying by the pool with a cold beer in your hand. You go ahead, convince me this is pertinent.”

With confidence, Carl said, “I can do that.”

*   *   *

“Can’t be a
different perp.” Fingering a glass of scotch, his gaze intent on the face of the woman across from him, Carl spoke slowly but surely. “He’s the same one.”

Rachel gave him one of
those
smiles. The kind he hadn’t ever been able to decipher, even after sex, even when they were sweating and breathless in the aftermath, because it always felt like she was on camera, even now, after she’d left television for academia.

He hated that. This wasn’t a production. It was an investigation.

“Maybe, but you couldn’t find him the first time, so what makes you think you’ll have any success now?”

The restaurant was noisy, which was good. Though their conversation wasn’t necessarily secret, he was not interested in anyone overhearing them either. “I went over my notes. I went over
your
notes from when you were following it. All of it has a purpose and the presentation is the same. Exactly.”

“How can you tell? Has the body been identified?”

His sources in the department had said no. Now that he was no longer a homicide detective he wouldn’t get the real reports unless he really called in some favors, and it wasn’t to that point yet.

He leaned back and shook his head. “No. But we have the table, and a fire.”

“There are some similarities, I agree.” She had ordered white wine and sipped it, her long elegant fingers curling around the stem of her glass.

Rachel looked good, he thought. Older by a few years, but then again, they
were
older, undeniably. Still fresh, her auburn hair suited her fair complexion though it was cut shorter than he liked, but she wasn’t on television any longer, and maybe it was easier; he had no idea. She wore it brushed back from a face that had character; high cheekbones and a full mouth and large blue eyes. Her lipstick was a little dark, but then again she’d been on the dramatic side her entire life. Nice breasts and rounded hips completed the picture, along with a shimmery indigo dress and a silver bracelet on her wrist. She was cool and sophisticated and driven.