Good Chemistry

GOOD CHEMISTRY

GEORGE STEPHENSON

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

GOOD CHEMISTRY

Copyright©2015

GEORGE STEPHENSON

Cover Design by Leah Suttle

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN: 978-1-61935-
693-1

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

This book is dedicated to Jane Terzis

an excellent artist and teacher

Chapter 1

As she jogged along Debra could feel someone coming up from behind her. She pulled one of her ear buds out.

“Mornin’, Mike,” robbery Detective Amos Meacham shouted over his shoulder at Debra as he and his partner, Leonard Kane, jogged by.

Debra was shocked to see the pair of childish buffoons out on the track at all.

Both were puffy-faced, hung-over, divorced, and at least thirty pounds overweight. ‘Mornin’ Mike’ was their childish code for Debra. Mike rhymed with dyke. She wasn’t of course. She’d heard it all before and wasn’t surprised to still be hearing it even after becoming Lead Investigator with the Major Case Division of the Miami-Dade Police Department.

Her name didn’t rhyme with ‘itch’ either.

Debra put her ear buds back in while she knocked out her final set of one hundred sit-ups to complete her three-hour daily workout. The behemoth Florida sun was already fully above the horizon, clubbing anything that moved like a baby fur seal. Kane and Meacham were already down to a fast, alcohol-blurred walk after two laps. Debra just shook her head as they limped by, swinging their arms like a couple of gorillas and chattering away like schoolgirls.

Debra was finished with her workout while Kane and Meacham were just getting started. That was the story of her life: first to finish.

She graduated first in her class at the academy. She was the first woman to make Lead Detective of Major Case and the youngest to make the squad; man or woman. It went on and on. All the way back to first grade.

Debra was six when her mother Catherine took off, abandoning her to her father’s tender mercies forever. Her father never remarried. He was a drill sergeant in the United States Army. He already had his true love.

He might have remarried if it weren’t for Branson, Debra’s brother. Although she had never known him, he haunted her life like a ghost. Branson had been stillborn. That had totally destroyed Sergeant Manning. A boy was all he ever wanted in the world.

Debra was likely the only girl in the tri-state area who understood that crying meant you were a ‘weak maggot.’ So the kids in school, the guys at the academy, and her coworkers on the force didn’t really bother her much at all.

She saw Kane and Meacham as a couple of kids. And really, they were.
I mean if that’s all they had. Are you kidding me?
She thought to herself. Until one of them could put an army boot in the center of her back and actually prevent her from doing a push-up, they weren’t shit.

No, peckerwoods like these didn’t even faze her. But some things did. Mostly the ever-present feeling of being alone. Not lonely necessarily, but just alone. She felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere.

Women thought she was a freak because she was as strong as a man, both physically and mentally. She wore her gleaming black hair short and spiky. It was sexy and women hated her for it. For that, and for being the best physical specimen in the room wherever she went.

That didn’t always go over great with the fellas either. Especially if they found out that it wasn’t just superb physical fitness but deeply honed fighting skills as well.

At five-eight and a hundred twenty-seven pounds Debra wasn’t large for a woman. A point her father never failed to remind her of at every opportunity.

The few men brave enough to approach her found that she was indeed all woman in the ways that counted and more than a match for them in the ways that didn’t. She never stayed involved for very long. She’d just never met a man who was her equal.

Debra’s phone rang. “Detective Manning . . . yes . . . okay . . . got it. I’m on top of it.” Debra snapped her phone shut and jumped through a quick shower. Captain Frazier had assigned her a new case.

A building explosion, and apparently there were people inside. He said something odd was going on that had everyone at the scene rattled. Deb toweled off and got dressed. Her blue blazer and slacks completed the image of a no-nonsense cop. She checked the clip to her nine millimeter and tucked it into its well-worn shoulder holster. She shoved the towel in a hamper and rushed out to her car.

Debra jumped in her 1969 fully restored, cherry-red Ford Mustang. She gunned it over to the crime scene. As soon as she turned the corner onto Citrus, she understood what had everyone so rattled. The building was blown up, all right. No surprises there. But my God, the blast-radius.

The building on either side and the house across a four-lane street were all completely scorched on the side facing the blast. Now, in place of where a chemistry lab once stood, there was a crater thirty feet deep.

“Detective Manning.” Williams nodded.

“Morning, Williams. First on the scene?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Run it for me.”

“Well at five-thirty-seven this morning the nine-one-one switchboard went crazy. Nine hundred and six calls in a ten-minute span. Everyone who only felt it reported an earthquake. And for the few who actually saw it say it was a green fireball a thousand feet high.” Williams paused. Debra grunted her disbelief.

“Crazy, I know. But here’s the thing: they
all
reported the same thing.”

“Green, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thanks, Williams.” Manning gave him a friendly slap on the arm. He was one of the good ones.

“Morning, Manning.”

“Morning, Ray.”

Ray Marshal was a rail-thin wirehair who wore his pants a few inches too short and smoked three packs of Camels a day. He was the head of the arson investigation unit.
Go figure.

“So what does it look like, Ray?”

“Well, there was certainly an explosion. No question about that, but it wasn’t a bomb. There aren’t any bomb fragments. Just this chalky bluish residue all over everything.”

“A chemical explosion? An accident maybe?” Debra was praying to God.

“I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky, Detective. This thing burned hotter than any fire I’ve ever seen. We’re finding chunks of stainless steel as far as three blocks away. And none of them are bigger than a quarter. I’m rushing samples to the lab.”

“Bodies?”

“Well, yes and no. There were at least two people inside but there isn’t enough left to really properly call them bodies. And, Debra, walk with me . . . ”

They hopscotched across the shattered asphalt to the residential house across the street.

“Check that out.” Ray pointed at what appeared to be the chalky outline of a person stooped over tending her flower patch. Inside of the faint outline there was a fainter pattern, which looked like the outline of a skeleton. “My God. Is that bone?” Debra whispered.

“Yep. That would take over six hours in a crematory oven. This happened so fast she didn’t have time to stand up straight.”

The detective and Ray walked back and crouched down over the edge of the crater. “Hey, Doc.”

“Morning, Detective. We’re finding bits of teeth and jaw fragments. I’ll hand deliver them to the forensic odontology lab but it doesn’t look promising.”

“Can you confirm two bodies?” Debra shook her head in dismay. Doctor Platt, the Medical Examiner, copied the gesture. “No. Not to a certainty. My best guess is yes, but I couldn’t swear to that in a court of law.” The M.E. dropped the shards into a clear plastic evidence collection bag.

“So DNA is out of the question.”

“I’m afraid so. The only way we’re going to sort all of this out is to determine everyone with access to the lab and then see which two are missing.”

“Already on it.” Manning hit ‘one’ on her speed dial. “Captain Frazier, it’s Manning. I see why everyone is so rattled. This is something out of the apocalypse. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Three, but they can’t be sure . . . Templeton Management on East Fourth, I can find it. Yes . . . yes. Can do. Okay.” Manning rang off and headed over to the property management company to have a look at the lease for the property.

Debra pulled up and parked. “Detective Manning. Major Case.” Deb flipped her badge as she entered.

“Oh yes, ma’am. We’ve been expecting you. This is horrible. People are saying it’s terrorism. Is it true?” Manning pursed her lips with irritation as the receptionist studied her reaction for clues.

“Ma’am, it’s way too soon to tell. It looks like it may have been a chemical fire.” Debra always hated this part. No matter what she said, she was screwed. Say it is terrorism—everyone freaks. Tell the truth—that you have no clue—and everyone freaks
and
calls the cops incompetent. Say it’s a chemical fire—the least alarming scenario—and when the truth is finally found, you’re guilty of spreading misinformation and probably considered part of a police cover-up.

“Ma’am, can I just get a look at the lease? Time is of the essence.”

“Oh, of course, forgive me. Here.”

“Andrew McGee, a chemical researcher.” Manning read it aloud to help reinforce the chemical fire angle to the gossip. Silently, she wrote down his address and the one for Bernadette O’Malley, the second occupant named on the lease.

Debra flipped her notebook closed and headed back to headquarters to brief the Brass. “God damn it,” Debra fumed out loud. Before this, she had herself waist-deep in the Doc Robber case and she had really hoped to break it wide open.

It would be her ticket out of the Miami-Dade Police Department and possibly into the FBI. She wasn’t happy about it, but she knew the time for some big changes was coming. Her father was in the ICU at Mercy hospital with end-stage bone cancer. She would wait until he passed before she decided. With him gone she wouldn’t have any real ties to Miami. She was champing at the bit to find something more challenging.

“Damn it all to hell. They’re gonna take me off the Doc Robber case and kick it back down to Robbery. The assholes Kane and Meacham would just love that. I can hear the crap now. Couldn’t handle it and now we have to come in behind you and clean up your mess.” Debra vented as she put the top up on her convertible. A brief squall was blowing in off the Atlantic.

She was right about them pulling her off the case. Still, the assholes Kane and Meacham wouldn’t get any further than she had, which was nowhere. But, damn it, that was the challenge of it to her. Twelve second-story jobs in twenty-two months and not a shred of evidence to go on.

The guy showed up, waltzed right past security alarms, dogs, fences, night watchmen, and then went in, cracked the safe, took all the cash and jewels, and vanished without a trace. Whoever this guy was, he was good.

Hell, he was great; and Debra was bringing her A-game. Now she would have to work the bombing while she was on duty and save the search for the guy who robbed doctors and insurance bigwigs on her own time.

That was the only clue, why was it only doctors and insurance guys? The robber had bypassed sweeter plumbs on every block he’d hit so far. That was the key, Debra knew, but what in the heck did it mean?