Silent Scream (3 page)

“I believe you,” Scotty said. “But it’s regs. Show me where he is.” Together, Scotty and Carrie set off around the building
with the first cop.

The second cop straightened with a sigh. “I’ll get Homicide, the ME, and CSU out here. They’ll want to talk to all of you.
Especially Hunter, since he brought her out.”

Homicide
. David’s throat closed as the word left the cop’s mouth and for a moment another thought scrambled to the top of his mind.
There were lots of detectives in Homicide. Odds were it wouldn’t be her. And if it was?
I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.
He cleared his throat harshly and nodded. “Of course. Whatever they need.”

“As soon as we’re done,” Captain Casey added. “We’ve got to get the second floor under control. Hunter, you and Zell go back
in. Search the upper floors. Find out if anyone else was where they shouldn’t have been, and make sure we got no fire in the
walls.”

“Will do,” Jeff said.

David pushed homicide detectives from his mind and took a last look at the girl on the gurney. What the hell was she doing
in there?
Why wasn’t someone taking care of you?
But he knew all too well that life wasn’t nearly that idyllic. “I’ll check where I found her, see if I can find some ID.
She’s just a kid. She’s got to belong to somebody.”

“Don’t touch anything,” the cop said and David fought the urge to roll his eyes. Cops treated them like damn kindergartners
sometimes. “Got it?”

“Don’t worry. I got it.”

Monday, September 20, 1:15 a.m.

Homicide detective Olivia Sutherland flashed her badge at the uniform guarding the condo’s construction entrance and drove
through the gate, past the news vans and cameramen, acutely aware of all the flashing bulbs at her back. By the questions
the press were shouting, they’d already correctly concluded it was arson.

Her churning gut tightened further. Just by being here she’d stirred up their recent collective memory. Amid their shouted
arson questions were targeted references to her last big case. It was inevitable, she knew. Didn’t mean she had to like it.

“How’ve you been, Detective?” A reporter she knew and at one time hadn’t despised ran along side her car until the uniform
stopped him cold. “Are you over the Body Pit yet?” the reporter shouted at her back. “Still seeing the department shrink?”

Olivia gritted her teeth. She’d been to the shrink three department-mandated times and this guy made it sound like she had
a standing appointment with a couch.

With a cold glare Olivia raised her window, not slowing down until she reached the bank of parked official vehicles and rolled
to a stop next to her partner’s Ford. A piece of her settled. Kane was here.
He’ll know what to do.

The thought startled her. “And so do I,” she said aloud. Firmly. “Get a grip.” But she was afraid she couldn’t.
Because her breathing was changing, hitching up in her lungs and her heart was racing. Because the three department-mandated
visits to the shrink hadn’t helped. She still wasn’t over the body pit, the mass burial pit they’d discovered in the basement
of a serial killer seven months before.

In four years on the homicide squad she’d seen a lot of bodies, but nothing could compare to the serial killer they’d chased
last February. Dubbed the “Red Dress Killer” by the press for the way he’d dressed his final victims, he’d been quietly murdering
for thirty years and burying his victims in a lime pit in his basement. It wasn’t until he’d stepped up his pace that he’d
made mistakes and they’d caught him, discovering his grisly secret.

And it had fallen to Olivia and her partner, Kane, to process the dead. There had been blocks of days when she hadn’t slept,
hadn’t eaten, hadn’t done anything but process the dead, inform their families, and return to the pit for more. Lime was not
kind to human flesh. She didn’t need nightmares. The reality was plenty bad enough.

The press could call him what they wished. In her mind he was “Pit-Guy,” because it was the pit that ruled her dreams—dark,
bottomless, and filled with the dead.

She kneaded her steering wheel, taking deep breaths, trying to will the panic away. Because seven months and dozens of bodies
later, she froze every time she knew a new victim waited.
A wee bit of a problem for a homicide detective
, she thought bitterly.

“Get out of the car,” she muttered. “Do your job.” Clenching her jaw, she pushed her door open and forced her feet to move,
her lungs to take one more breath. Then forced her face to look like she didn’t harbor a thought
that didn’t have to do with this scene. This night. These two victims. A middle-aged guard and a teenaged girl.

Think about them. Think about justice for them. Do your damn job.

She drew another breath, grimacing at the stench of smoke. It had been a bad fire. Two companies had responded to the scene—two
pumpers, an aerial tower truck, and the two rescue squads they wouldn’t be needing after all.

Only the morgue rig would be transporting tonight.

As her feet moved, she found herself searching the fire trucks for station numbers, another habit she’d picked up in the last
seven months, one she found nearly as distasteful as her new fear of dead bodies. That she even knew which truck was his was
completely humiliating. Like she should care if he was here or not. But of course she did.
How pathetic am I? Pretty damn.

She winced when she saw the
L2I
painted on the side of the tower truck with its aerial platform. He was here. Or his firehouse was, at least.
Don’t let him be on duty tonight. Just find Kane. Do your job.

She easily found Kane in the crowd. Her partner was a big man, even compared to the firefighters and cops, standing head and
shoulders above everyone else. He was also the only one in the crowd wearing a black fedora. It was his fire fedora, she knew,
the one he always wore when he knew he’d be going to an arson. It smelled like stale smoke, and his wife Jennie made him keep
it in their garage.

All of his other fedoras were kept with care on Styrofoam heads in their guest room. Every man in the homicide division wore
fedoras on the job, a nice tradition someone had started long before her time. It was a
symbol, a connection to detectives past, and now it was part of local lore. Homicide was known around town as the “Hat Squad.”

New detectives, on solving their first homicide, were presented with their first fedora by the squad, their peers. Kane had
presented Olivia’s to her, but she’d felt a little silly wearing it. Her hat sat on her desk back at the office, adorning
the head of a Grecian goddess bust she’d found at a yard sale.

But Kane, he liked his hats. He must have had a dozen. Kane liked to look good.

At the moment, Kane looked perplexed. Olivia made her way up the hill to where he stood over a gurney, a uniformed cop at
his side. The ME crouched next to the body, bagging the victim’s hands, and Olivia’s heart started to pound, her stomach lurching
dangerously.
Not again. Not again.

Look at her
, she told herself harshly
. She’ll be… whole.
Olivia drew a steadying breath, forced her eyes down, then let the breath out as relief washed over her. The victim was indeed
intact. Flesh covered her bones. All of her bones.

The worst was over.
Now I can do my job.
The girl looked about sixteen. Her waxen face and long blond hair were streaked with soot and grime, as was the faded, thin
T-shirt she wore. Her jeans were tattered, by design versus genuine wear. Her feet were bare, her soles burned badly. Her
toenails were painted bright orange.

Fighting the shakes that always seemed to follow the relief, Olivia waited until she could trust her voice not to tremble.
“What do we have?”

“Caucasian female,” the uniform said. “No ID. Was found on the fourth floor. She was already dead when the firefighter got
to her.”

“Cause?” she asked.

Isaac Londo, the ME tech, looked up from bagging the victim’s hands. “Probably smoke inhalation. I didn’t see any recent injuries.
She’s got older ones, though.”

“Where and what?” Kane asked.

“Finger appears to be fractured, and there’s a twist burn on the right forearm.”

Olivia’s eyes narrowed. The last vestiges of her panic were receding, replaced by cold fury.
Runaway
, her instincts told her. She’d made working with runaways a personal mission over the last few years, since meeting her two
half sisters. Mia was a decorated cop, but Kelsey was a convict, having been a runaway first. The signs were crystal clear.
“Someone put their hands on her.”

“That’s my guess.” Londo sat back on his heels. “Your other guy? Different story. The guard took a blow to the head with a
blunt instrument, then a slug to the chest.”

“Where is he?” Olivia asked.

“On the other side of the building, by the lake. Dale and Mick are over there now.”

Dale was Londo’s partner and Micki Ridgewell was the CSU leader. “And that guy?” She pointed to a fortyish man in a jogging
suit who paced behind the crime scene tape looking very worried.

“Sammy Sothberg,” the uniform said. “He’s the construction manager. Sothberg said the guard’s name was Henry Weems, age fifty-seven.
He’s local.”

“You talk to him yet?” she asked Kane.

“Yeah,” Kane said. “Briefly. He’s shaken. Has an alibi. We’ll have to check it out. He gave us Henry Weems’s personnel info.
We’ll need to inform Mrs. Weems.”

And what fun that always is
. Olivia looked way up and
saw a large hole with jagged edges in one of the picture windows on the fourth floor. “She came from up there?”

“Yeah.” This answer came from Micah Barlow, the police department’s arson investigator, who’d walked up to join them. Immediately
Olivia’s hackles rose and she had to choke back what would have been a hiss.

“Hell,” Kane muttered, loud enough for Barlow to hear. “Not him.”

“Kane,” Olivia rebuked under her breath and was rewarded by Kane’s long-suffering sigh. She and Micah Barlow had gone through
the academy together. They’d been friends once. Now, not so much. Because Barlow was a meddling, arrogant bastard.

Barlow looked from Olivia to Kane, then shook his head with exaggerated patience. “Let’s just get this done, okay? The firefighters
saw her handprints on the glass. It’s impact-resistant, so they had to cut their way in. The guy that brought her out made
sure they cut the far side of the window. He wanted to leave her prints intact for you.”

“Forward-thinking of him,” Olivia said mildly. “We’ll want to talk to him.”

“He’s still inside. I’ll bring him to you when he comes out.”

“Fine,” Olivia said, shrugging off the annoyance she felt every time she was subjected to Barlow’s presence. “How did the
arsonist set the fire?”

“From what we can see, they opened several cans of carpet-padding adhesive, spread them on the first and second floors. Sprinklers
were rendered inoperable. Somebody cut the chain on the OS and Y and closed the valve.”

The OS&Y was the outside screw and yoke valve on the line that brought city water to the sprinklers, Olivia knew. “Are any
bolt cutters missing from the toolshed?”

“Don’t seem to be. We’ll get a full inventory, but it looks like they brought their own.”

“They came prepared then. Incendiary devices?” Kane asked.

“Nothing yet, but we haven’t really been able to start looking. I don’t think they used a simple match. After dumping an entire
can of adhesive, the fumes would have already been hanging in the air. If they’d dropped a match, they wouldn’t have made
it to the door. That stuff is incredibly flammable.”

“Had the carpet been laid?” Olivia asked.

“No, the construction manager said that was going to be done tomorrow. Well, today, now. The carpet, padding, and cans of
adhesive had been staged on the first three floors. Floors four through six have mostly hardwood floors and were finished.”

“Somebody knew those materials were there,” Kane mused. “Surveillance tapes?”

Barlow frowned. “Cameras were rendered inoperable five minutes before midnight. The guard would have come outside on his normal
beat at five after twelve.”

“Inside job,” Olivia said. “Or at least inside information.”

Barlow nodded. “We’re getting the personnel list.”

“Where’s the control room?” Kane asked.

Barlow pointed to the closer of two construction trailers. “Up until last month, they had a man in the trailer, monitoring
the camera feeds. Budget overruns cut staff. They were down to one guard per shift. The trailer was always the night guy’s
first stop.”

“You’re sending the used adhesive cans to the lab for prints?” Olivia asked.

“Already gave them to CSU,” Barlow answered. “The
manager seems pretty ripped up. Weems was his friend, and he was working two jobs to send his kid to college.”

Olivia sighed. “We’ll check his financials anyway. Somebody profits from the insurance. Maybe nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
She looked down at the gurney, at the girl’s lifeless body. “I guess something went wrong.”

“Check out her hands, Liv,” Kane said. “Some kind of gel.”

ME tech Londo held up the victim’s left hand and Olivia could see that whatever covered the girl’s palms had already smeared
the plastic bag. “Accelerant?” she asked.

“No,” Barlow said. “We ran a sniffer over her. The gel didn’t register. Nothing on her clothes either, so if she was involved
in spreading the carpet-pad adhesive, she was careful enough not to splash any on herself.”

The sniffer measured the hydrocarbons in accelerants, so Barlow was most likely right. “Did the firefighters find anything
with her?”

“Nothing yet. They just finished knocking the fire down a half hour ago. They’re up there now, checking for any other vics.
We’ll give you and CSU the go-ahead as soon as we know it’s safe.” And he would. Obnoxious as he was on a personal level,
Micah Barlow did his job.
As do we. So do yours. Look at her, Liv. Really look.