Alien Heat (5 page)

The Elaki skittered sideways. “Little ones sad?”

“They're missing him,” David said.

Mel nodded. “He was a great little pet. What's that you said about him just last month, David? You were going to wring his little green—”

“He bit me,” David said.

“Yeah, what an endearing little guy. Bit the kids, whipped them with his tail, ate like a pig.”

David tried not to laugh. “Come on, Mel. The
kids
miss him.”

“I guess 'cause he was so affectionate.”

“The whipping of small girls with the tail. This does not to me seem the affectionate.” String rolled toward the sensor control box.

Mel shrugged. “That's just females, String. They like you more when you treat them bad, even when they're little bitty.”

“I do not believe this, Detective Mel. Why do you have such a pet? Is it the Rose Silver who has brought him? It is another animal rescue, like the ostrich?”

David looked over his shoulder at String. “The less said about that ostrich the better. Rose is still suspicious as hell.”

String skittered backward. “You will not tell?”

Mel grinned. “He will not. Or he will be in as much trouble as you.”

“And you,” David said.

The supper club was roped off, sensors up. David passed his ID into the control slot and waited for the green light. The sensors had been known to malfunction, zapping officers with enough volts to knock them off their feet.

David looked at his partner. “After you, Mel.”

“Nah, David, you go ahead, you got seniority.”

“I will go.” String rolled toward the glowing crime-scene tape.

Mel put an arm out, catching him across the fin. “Nah, we don't need a fish fry, Gumby.”

“Please to explain?” String said.

“Too much voltage for a little twerp like you.”

“I am one foot taller than the average height male human, Detective Mel. Though many inches thinner.”

“Don't get nasty.” Mel pushed through the barrier.

The screech of brakes caught their attention. String surged back toward the sensor line.

“That van has hit itself into my van!”

Mel craned his neck, looking back over his shoulder. “It's okay, String, I don't think it connected.”

David turned, saw another white van, police issue. The passenger door opened violently and Detective Clements climbed out, hair swinging, hands pawing the air.

“I
don't
care, you keep it on the track, Wart, and watch those sudden stops, or I'm not letting you drive anymore. Scare my baby to death.”

Detective Warden slid out of the driver's side ramp. “Pouchling seems happy to sudden stop.”

Clements leaned into the back of the car. “Come on, sweetheart, we got to move, Mama needs to work.”

Mel and David exchanged looks.

“Is little baby one,” String said. He scooted back and forth, moving around David, trying to get a better look.

The boy looked about eight years old, and wore bright red shorts and a grey tank top that said
SAIGO CITY ANGELS
. David looked at the high-top tennis shoes. Chippers, he thought, the kind Mattie was wanting, the kind that told stories and sang songs.

An expensive brand.

The boy's movements were jerky and restless, and David watched, thinking there was something different about him. Clements took the child by the hand, and passed her ID through the sensor. She hummed softly, under her breath. She wore heavy rubber boots. She glanced down at her son, looked at his feet.

“Watch where you step, Calib. You hear Mama?”

The boy was looking at String. An experienced father, David knew quite well Calib had not registered a word that Clements had said.

“Detective Yo,” Mel said loudly.

She acknowledged them for the first time, not breaking stride as she passed through the sensor. David was impressed. It took a tough cop not to flinch. Or a distracted one.

“I told you, didn't I, Burnett? You can't say Yolanda all the way out, call me Detective Clements.”

“Call me Mel,” he said.

She put a hand on her hip. “Introduce me to your Elaki.”

String was standing next to the vans, looking between them. He waved a fin. “I am String.”

“You know Wart over there?”

“Warden, yes, I know him. He has hit my van.”

Wart moved close to the vans and String. “I did not make metal to metal contact.”

Clements looked at them over her shoulder, lips tight. “Boys, I got work to do, and laundry waiting at home, so let's get along.”

Ever the mother, David thought.

Detective Yolanda Free Clements led them into the ravaged supper club.

SEVEN

The orb of light stayed with them, bobbing overhead, giving off a harsh, blue-white light that hurt David's eyes, and washed them all in a cone of illumination that dispelled every shadow and made them look ill and exhausted.

“Fire started here,” Clements said. Calib tugged her blouse and she hugged him, then pulled her handcuffs out of her pocket, securing his small bony wrists. “Play, Calib.”

The boy smiled beatifically. David raised an eyebrow.

“It's not as bad as it looks. Calib loves locks, and it keeps him busy.”

“He's awful quiet,” Mel said.

Clements smiled at her son, ran her hand over the tight nap of his hair. “He doesn't talk, one of many things Calib doesn't do. They made a mistake with some minor in-utero surgery. These things do happen.”

David watched the boy with the handcuffs. “They could use him in technics.”

Clements grinned. “They won't let me take him down there anymore. He dismantled a padlock that was supposed to be pick proof, and they haven't forgiven him yet.” She looked over her shoulder. “Where are the damn—'scuse me, Calib—the Elaki?”

“Still arguing over the vans,” Mel said.

“Hang 'em, let's get on with this.” She picked her way through the lumps of charred debris. “We haven't got a lot. I've talked to three people and one Elaki who made it out alive. Not a one of them have any idea what happened. Fire seemed to be all over the room before they noticed. Looks like it started in several places at once.”

“Arson?” David asked.

“I say so. We got three alligators—”

“Three what?” David asked.

“Come here and look, behind the bar, see that? See the ragged way it's burned, like the skin of an—”

“Crocodile?” Mel said.

“God, the
mind
on this man. Anyway, it's a matter of where the charring goes the deepest, where the most damage is. That'll be where the fire starts. Looks like we got three points of origin here, and it didn't smolder long anywhere before everything else went up. So what it looks like we got is some kind of delayed action, set up in three places, so this place would really burn. There, behind the bar.” She pointed to one side of the room, then waved an arm. “Over here, where they had the music, and there beside the kitchen.”

David looked at the gel-saturated lumps of incinerated garbage, thinking that Clements saw the room as it had been, instead of as it was now.

“That means that likely the bomb threat was tied up with the arson,” David said.

She was nodding. “Could well be. Get the grids tied and locked so the fire department can't get through. No safety system in this building, thanks to yet another fifty-year extension on the grandfather clauses.”

David grimaced. “Whoever it was, wanted to make sure it went all the way down.”

“Somebody hiding something?” Mel asked.

Clements glanced at her son. “More likely insurance scam. We look into this, we're going to find the owner's got money trouble, big time.”

“Why do it when it's full of people, then?” David said.

Clements frowned. “That's a sticking point. But if they were hiding something, they hid it.”

David glanced at the ceiling. “Anything from the emergency sensors?”

“Not much more than a head count. We got one strip of carbonized disc, and it's in the lab. If they can bring up just one segment, we'll get all the compressed images. Be blurry, but we'll have it. Be nice to see it as it happened. If nothing else, we may confirm ID on some of the bodies. Make sure we don't match wrong DNA to the right person. The death claims are pouring in, and we already got two hundred more requests for benefits than there are bodies.”

Calib pulled a short plastic flute from the pocket of his shorts and blew hard, making squeaky noises.

Clements waved at him absently. “You already got those cuffs off?”

David saw that the boy's hands were free. Clements bent down and clipped his wrists back together. Calib smiled sweetly and dropped the tiny flute.

“Anything else you can tell us?” Mel asked.

She was nodding. “Sensor dogs got traces of sulfuric acid and sugar, right there near the kitchen.”

“Which means?”

“Which means it was there innocently, or it was used to set the fire. Either case, we just got the barest trace—not enough to present in court.”

“But
you
think it's arson? It's enough to convince you?” Mel asked.

“That's not what convinced me,” Clements said. “Come on into the kitchen here, and I'll show you what I mean.”

They took her word for it, that the small cramped room, knee-high in sheets and wads of burned lumps, was a kitchen. She pointed to a blackened rectangle, said “Stove,” then went to a waist-high crumple of melted metal.

“Food storage. See those ashes there?”

Mel looked over her shoulder. “See what? I don't see anything.”

“Exactly right, baby. No food. Should be some packages, some cans, some residue of something. Instead, somebody's carted it out of here. Beforehand. Some little tightwad who didn't want to see all that food go to waste. Somebody who knew the place was going up.”

Mel pulled his ear. “Sounds like management to me.”

A thin trail of music came from the next room. The melody was unfamiliar, and it made David think of darkness, and full moons, and being alone.

Clements looked at him. “That's Calib.”

“You kidding?”

The music stopped.

“No, Burnett, I'm not kidding. He usually can't play worth a damn, just makes those squeaky noises that make you want to scream. Then, every now and then, you get this.”

“He had lessons?”

“No, he hasn't had lessons. Boy has no attention span for anything except locks, music, and those story-telling tennis shoes—been through three pair in the last six months, but it keeps him interested. He doesn't talk, can't read, hates vids. But he loves that little flute. Comes by it naturally, his daddy was a musician.”

David knew he shouldn't ask, but he wanted to know. “Where is his daddy?”

“Left me when Calib was a few months old, soon as we knew the boy wasn't right.” Clements turned her head sideways, listening. She frowned and went to the edge of the kitchen, sticking her head into the bar. “Calib?”

David heard the edge of panic in her voice, parent-familiar. “He'll be close.”

“Silver, you're a prime example of a man who doesn't understand fire scenes. Close does not mean safe.”

David went to the window and looked out. It was dark and hard to see. “String?”

“Yesss, please?”

“The boy out there?”

“He has unlocked your car and is playing with this radio.” String flowed to one side. “We have had message. Must go to morgue, Detective David.”

“Got you. Keep track of the boy.” David pulled his head back in. String was a fine homicide cop, but he'd be a hell of an au pair. He saw Detective Clements in the doorway. “He's okay, he's with String.”

Clements took a deep breath. “Good. Thanks.”

Mel looked over her shoulder. “Find him?”

“Outside with String,” David said.

“Figures. Here, Yo, here are your cuffs. And the little flute.” Mel held the small ivory cylinder up to the light. “I never seen one like this.”

“Besides Calib, that's the only thing his daddy left behind.”

“His loss,” David said.

EIGHT

The colored lights of the fair rides burned bright in the hot humid air. The Crazy Eight Wheel dipped and whipped sideways, riders held in their seats by centrifugal force, the restraints nothing more than show. David heard a wave of shrill screams, muted by traffic noise and distance, and the faint cadence of music from the carousel.

He had loved going to the homey city carnivals when he was a boy. His father had taken him regularly, unable to resist the blinking lights, the happy screams, the pleading look in David's eyes.

David had been ten when his father left the house to buy doughnuts and never returned. David and his mother had never known for sure what happened, but they had long since mourned him as dead. He was not the kind of man who walked away from responsibility.

There had been no more carnivals, not with his mother slipping into a chronic series of paralytic depressions that landed them on the hard edge of poverty. Carnivals were beside the point while they struggled to stay alive in Little Saigo, the underground underbelly of Saigo City that catered to squatters, gangs; predators and prey.

“Attention, David Silver. Pollution index and allergens are in the danger zone. Temperature and humidity levels are conducive to heat exhaustion.”

“Thank you so much,” David said.

“You might want to consider closing the windows. The air-conditioning will operate more efficiently that way. You might also wish to know—”

“Shut up,” David said.

The car's voice stayed pleasant. “Certainly, David Silver. However—”

“
Quiet
.”

Bad enough that one's children argued over everything. Did he have to take this stuff from the car?