Fireproof (8 page)

Which made Tully wonder—what was it about
this
case that had Kunze sending in two of his top profilers? Who did he owe or want to please? Had he already suspected last week that the case would take a violent turn?

“Hey, Tully, Racine,” Ivan called out, interrupting Tully’s thoughts as he waved at them from the opening of the alley. “We just found another one for you inside.”

Maggie already regretted her decision.

A nurse had poked and cleaned and prepped her wounds, murmuring a few “uh-huhs” with the appropriate inflections for the bloodier ones. She left Maggie with a sterile towel to hold against the back of her head.

“Don’t be lifting this off now to take a look,” she warned.

As soon as the nurse cleared the doorway Maggie lifted the towel and took a look. There was enough blood on the towel that it looked as if someone had wiped up puddles of it. She fingered the same wounds the nurse had just cleaned. The one on her neck would require sutures. The others were minor scrapes. Scalp wounds bled a lot. Didn’t mean much. None of it was worth a trip to the ER. The guy sitting next to her in the waiting area had had his lip hanging down on his chin. Now, he needed to be here.

In the waiting area Maggie had spent the time watching the others, checking for burns, especially on the hands. Sometimes criminals made mistakes, got hurt, and didn’t think twice before going to an ER. Gunshot or knife wounds would require a police report, but burns were easily explained away. It wouldn’t be the
first time an arsonist sat in an ER waiting room while a blaze he’d started still burned.

Now Maggie considered getting up and leaving the exam room to continue looking at the other patients. At least she’d be doing something. Would anyone notice if she left? The place was crazy busy. The fact that she was law enforcement moved her up the list. However, she had insisted they treat the man with half his lip ripped off before they took her.

She had scooted to the edge of the table, ready to hop down, when the door opened.

“I am Dr. Dabu. You are O’Dell, Margaret?”

The man was short, had an Indian accent, and looked too young to be a resident, let alone a doctor.

“Yes. It’s Maggie actually.”

He looked at her over the computer tablet, then back at the screen as if checking to make sure the name hadn’t changed.

“Explosion, yes?” He sounded eager, like a contestant on a game show.

“Right.”

“We need sutures, yes?”

We need our head examined
, was what she wanted to tell him, but she simply nodded.

Regret suddenly became a lump in her stomach. She realized she wouldn’t be able to put off Kunze’s psychological evaluation now. She wasn’t sure which was worse—listening to her career regurgitated in psychobabble or seeing that scared concern on R. J. Tully’s face.

She paid little attention when Dr. Dabu pulled open a suture tray. She could feel the needle poke into the back of her neck. The
nurse had returned to assist and Maggie tuned out their bits of communication. Neither asked about her blurred vision or the jackhammer at her temple. Had she mentioned either to the paramedic who had shined the tiny laser-beamed flashlight into each of her eyes? He had asked her a series of questions. She couldn’t remember any of them or her answers.

All she remembered was that look on Tully’s face and the panic in his voice when he said, “I don’t think you’re okay either.”

It was the fire, the flames and the heat. All of it too much like a gunshot. She closed her eyes. She’d be okay. It would just take time. She never had patience. Hated feeling vulnerable, out of control. But not to have control over her body …

No one needed to know how disoriented she really had been at the fire site. She didn’t have to tell anyone about the blurred vision or the scent that permeated the lining of her memory, that smell of scorched flesh from the bullet scraping her scalp.

The gunshot wound had happened four months ago. The fire’s blast had simply been a reminder. It threw her off her game. That’s all. But this little slip-up would be enough to trigger Kunze. It’d be enough for him to justify his psychological tests.

So let him. Bring it on
.

There’d be nothing to report. Maggie had a degree in psychology. She knew exactly what they’d be looking for and she simply wouldn’t give it to them.

Just then she realized she could still feel the needle as the doctor pulled it through her skin. The local anesthesia hadn’t been enough to numb the area. Her jaw clenched and her eyes stayed closed. This pain—this prick of the needle sliding through, the tug of the suture thread following—
this
was nothing. She wanted
all of it to be over. To get back to the crime scene. This was just a distraction.

When they were finished the doctor quietly left. The nurse told Maggie she had some papers to get for a signature and she left. She hadn’t been gone long when the examination room door opened again.

Benjamin Platt wore his military dress uniform, had his hat tucked under his arm, and his stance was that of a soldier delivering dreadful news. The look on his face wasn’t much better. Worry creased an indent between his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asked in almost a whisper.

“I can’t believe Tully called you.”

“It wasn’t Tully.”

“Racine?”

“I wish it had been you.”

“This isn’t unusual,” Stan Wenhoff, the District’s chief medical examiner, told them.

Tully stared at the blackened skull. The pile of rubble didn’t appear to include a body. He took a couple of careful steps closer. Something about a fire scene made him expect the floor—what was left of it—to still burn all the way through the fire boots and the soles of his shoes.

The scent of smoke and ashes hung in the air. Water and foam dripped from the skeletal rafters that remained. He wished he had a baseball cap. Stan had brought an umbrella and looked ridiculous, like an English gentleman in from a stroll along the countryside. That is if the English gentleman wore Tyvek overalls.

Something wet and solid slopped onto the back of Tully’s neck. He snatched at the debris and flung it aside, drawing a few scowls from Ivan and the fire chief, who had stopped their own inspections to hear what Stan had to say about their latest “not unusual” discovery.

The skull looked as if someone had taken a fist-size rock and bashed a hole into the top of it. The fire investigative team had just
begun moving and raking smoldering debris into ridges along the concrete floor, where they would later sift and examine it.

“Think of the skull as a sealed container,” Stan explained to his audience, ignoring the pitter-patter hitting his umbrella. “Like a ceramic jug filled with liquid. Heat it up and it doesn’t take long for the liquid inside to reach a boiling point. That creates pressure.”

Just when Tully envisioned the ceramic jug bursting apart, Stan put an end to his own analogy and added, “The cranium explodes. Boiling blood, brain, and tissue expand and have nowhere to go. The skull literally explodes into pieces. Sometimes it can blow a head right off a body.”

“It was a hot fire,” the fire chief admitted, nodding. “This thing burned upward of a thousand degrees. That doesn’t happen without some help. Definitely used an accelerant. May have been a chemical reaction. We found the start point at the back door. Actually on the
outside
of the back door.”

All of them continued to stare down at the rubble as if expecting more bones to appear, like one of those picture puzzles that if you looked hard enough and long enough you’d see the hidden objects.

“The intense heat makes the blood boil inside the bones, too,” Stan said. “Same kind of pressure builds up as in the skull. Makes bones fracture and break apart. Could be blown all over the place.”

Which set them all looking around.

“There are other floors.” Ivan pointed up. “Is it possible the rest of the body’s still up there?”

And again, as if on cue, all heads swiveled upward to the smoldering, dripping rafters.

“Chief,” one of the techs interrupted.

He held up a finger to tell the man he’d be right here. As he turned to leave he told them, “Give my folks time to sift through this mess. We should have some answers for you, but remember I’ve got two sites here.” And he walked away.

Ivan followed close behind, his neck still craning up as if he expected body parts to fall down from the second floor.

“What are the chances of IDing this …” Racine paused, searching for words as she referred to the skull. “This victim?”

Stan set aside his umbrella, dug in his Tyvek pocket, and pulled out a pair of purple latex gloves.

“Teeth don’t burn. They might have broken or been jarred off from the pressure.” He picked up the skull and carefully examined the jaw. “Well, this is unusual.” He turned the skull to get a better look inside the jaw. He scraped at the soot with his gloved thumb.

“What’s wrong?” Racine asked.

“The bone doc will need to examine this. But I think the teeth may have been shattered.”

“The fire couldn’t do that?”

“No. Not that I know of.” He was studying the top of the skull now and turned to show them the hole at the top. “Usually when a skull bursts from heat pressure, it shatters. It is a bit odd to have a hole this big without fracturing the skull into pieces. Unless the skull was compromised before the fire.”

“What do you mean ‘compromised’?” Tully wanted to know. “Are you saying the victim may have been bashed in the head and teeth before the fire?”

“It’s possible.”

Tully and Racine exchanged a look and Stan noticed.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The victim out by the Dumpster. Her face is bashed in.”

It was complicated
. That’s what Maggie wanted to tell Ben.

In just a little over a year Benjamin Platt had gone from being her doctor to her friend to her … what? What were they exactly?

Boyfriend, girlfriend sounded sophomoric. And although they had shared a hotel room—
and a bed, once
—as well as many intimate thoughts and conversations, they weren’t lovers.
Yet
.

Just when both of them confided that they wanted to be more than friends Ben had put the skids on. All it took was his admission that he wanted children, and Maggie found herself backing off, way off.

His only daughter had died five years ago, ending his marriage and causing him to focus all his energy on his career. Maggie had buried herself in her work, too, ever since her divorce. But Ben still ached for his daughter. And while he longed to replace that ache, Maggie wanted to shield herself from another potential loss. Being alone was safer than feeling too much.

Yes, it was complicated.

But she was glad to see him. So why didn’t she tell him that? He was still her friend. Partly because he had reverted to acting like her doctor as soon as he crossed the exam room threshold.

“An occupational hazard,” he had said when he saw her impatience with his incessant questions. But then he continued, “Did you lose consciousness? Any blurred vision? Dizziness?”