Flame Out (3 page)

I
WORKED THREE DAYS OF DOUBLES AT THE SITE OF THE FIRE
, coming home to sleep and be told by my seven-year-old daughter that I smelled funny. The ash from the fire soaked into my clothes and my hair, which I was convinced was turning from blond to gray. Despite taking long showers, scraping the black out from under my nails, and washing my clothes twice, the scent clung to me, ground in. I figured I had another week of this before life reverted to normal, but on day four I arrived at the building site to find work stopped.

“Chemicals,” Dave said. “Vats and vats of chemicals tucked behind an illegal wall in the basement.”

My skin began to burn as I imagined all the toxins in the air. “Illegal?”

“The fire marshal said it doesn't show up in any of the plans filed at city hall.” I watched as the fire department's hazardous materials response team carried tenting through the piles of bricks surrounding the building.

“Fire department says it's Tris—”

“Tris?”

“Yeah, some chemical they used to treat pajamas with until they figured out it caused kids to get liver cancer. Banned in the late seventies. Instead of spending money to dispose of it properly, goddamned Bernie Lawler stacked vats of this stuff behind a flimsy wall in the basement.”

“In case his killing his wife left you with any doubt that he was a complete and total scumbag,” I said. Bernie Lawler was another in a long line of owners who dumped chemicals into our land and water before decamping. Usually the companies moved to the South or overseas, not prison, although plenty deserved it.

“To be fair,” Dave said, “it would've been there until the roaches ruled the earth if the place hadn't burned. We can't move until the fire department catalogs and removes the dozen or so barrels. You'll be sitting on your thumbs for a while.”

The work being done down in the basement was hidden, detox tents covering the activities of the specially trained firefighters who were opening the barrels, examining and photographing the contents, and then wrapping the barrels in protective layers for transport. They had set up a well-lit staging area over the pit of chemicals. Reinforced scaffolding provided a scenic view of the dump site below, and a platform that rose and fell—a sort of elevator—carried barrels from the pit below up to the surface, where they were transported to the waiting trucks.

A worker wearing coveralls that I suspected were made of lead tried to calm our fears. “There's no evidence of airborne contamination.”

“Fan-fuckin'-tastic,” Dave said. “I feel my sperm count dropping already.”

With the fire marshal handling most of the investigation into the fire's origin, we had little more to do than maintain the wide perimeter requested by the fire department. We talked about the burned
woman, still unconscious at St. Peter's. All the local newscasts had carried her picture, but no real leads had come in.

“With the van destroyed we ran the partial plate. It didn't pop in the system,” I said. “It was a rental with Nevada plates, and the big guns—Hertz, National, Avis—none of them report missing fleet.” We stopped talking as a car approached, and I walked forward to intercept the vehicle. The driver's side window rolled down, and a young woman leaned out, hair pulled into a tight bun and her lips lined a deep brown.

“She's the owner,” she said and pointed a blue-tipped nail at the elderly woman in the passenger seat. Small, the woman wore an Irish wool cardigan, cream colored with dark brown buttons, and a blue beret with a Claddagh circlet pinned to it. Elda Harris.

Everyone called this Bernie Lawler's factory, but in total he had owned it for only six years. On June 16, 1978 he married nineteen-year-old Luisa Harris and signed the final purchase agreements for the Sleep-Tite Factory, buying it from Luisa's parents. In August 1984, after Bernie had been convicted of murdering Luisa and Ted, Luisa's mother won a wrongful death suit and was awarded all of Bernie's assets, including his home, his boat, and the business. In July 1986, the Sleep-Tite factory went bankrupt and ceased operations, but the land and building remained in Elda's name, the fire finishing off what rust and decay hadn't taken care of.

Elda rolled down the window, and now sat watching the dump truck cart away bricks and beams. She had a halo of fuzzed hair and rheumy eyes, focused but teary. She appeared unaware of me, Dave, or the young woman who'd driven her here, despite the woman's repeated “Mrs. Harris! Mrs. Harris!”

Finally, in a voice stronger than I expected from such a frail person, she spoke.

“Good.
Good
. Now it's done. Take me home, Caitlin.” She pushed a button, the window slid closed, and the two drove off.

“We'll have to interview her soon,” I said.

“You think she torched the place?” Dave said. “I mean, everyone says she ran it into the ground intentionally. Maybe she burned it down.”

“That can't be true,” I said. “Unless she single-handedly orchestrated the fall of the manufacturing sector in the United States, in which case she
is
a criminal mastermind.”

“You know, I start to believe you're a normal person, and then you start talking like you have a master's degree. Oh wait, you do!”

“Oh, give me a break. You majored in sociology, for God's sake.”

“But Special Agent Lyons, I didn't log all those years in the FBI.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Maybe Elda was a terrorist, destroying the US from the inside. Speaking of which . . .”

Another car approached, a black SUV the size of an ocean liner. It made a fast U-turn, splashing through a puddle that had formed in a pothole, and parked on the opposite side of the street. Hale Bascom emerged, trim and sharp in a Burberry overcoat, opposite in every way of his bloated car. I'd known him since our days at Quantico, fifteen years back, where he was the guy none of the women could resist, including me. We had our one night before he moved on to his next conquest and I moved on to my husband. I definitely got the better end. Except for laugh lines around his eyes and a touch more compassion, he hadn't changed a lot since then.

“Special Agent Bascom,” Dave said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I was finishing up an investigation in Kinderhook and decided to stop by.” Kinderhook's population was less than that of Hopewell Falls, and I wondered what someone could do there to get the attention of the FBI.

“Some hedge fund manager from Connecticut hid info on money laundering for a drug cartel in his summer house.” Hale shook his head in disgust. “Forensic accounting was never my strong suit.”

“Lots and lots of spreadsheets?” I asked. “That does sound like fun.”

“Oh, it is. And we get to make spreadsheets to track the spreadsheets. Faced with such excitement, I decided to stop on by because you chose not to pull in our office officially, despite reports that the victim of this”—he waved his hand at the burned building casually, but his jaw clenched—“had a car with out-of-state plates.”

“A van, actually,” I said. “A rental. Hard to nail down since they cross state lines and aren't always rented where their plates are sourced. For all we know, she lived in Schenectady.”

“Did you get the tags before they were scorched?”

I checked my notes. “Nevada 14 . . . and the rest was obscured.”

“Obscured, or you forgot?”

Hale succeeded in life by not letting go of anything, but right now, I wanted to punch him. “Obscured. Mud all over the plate.”

“Intentionally?”

“Maybe. Schenectady's got a lot of mud.”

The site foreman called to Dave. Pissed that the fire department's hazardous materials response team had stopped work and, more importantly, cut into his crew's overtime, he had spent much of the day complaining to Dave, who was promising that demolition would restart soon. The second Dave was out of earshot, Hale switched topics.

“So I'm truly hoping”—the hard edge of his voice was gone, replaced with gentle coaxing—“that you've considered my offer to rejoin the Bureau . . .”

“I haven't decided yet. And if your management style is rolling over people, perhaps this should be a no.”

Despite there being no one within thirty feet of us, Hale stepped close, and I could see the cowlicks starting the escape from whatever expensive gel he used to keep them in place. “Don't be hasty, June. Let's not cut off our options.”

“So you're demanding an answer right now?”

“Only if the answer's yes. If it's a no, then mull it over a touch more.”

“For now it's a maybe,” I said.

Hale looked down at the ground. “Is this because of our past?”

I was caught off guard by his question. “Personally or professionally?”

“Either? Both?” His hand went to the back of his neck and I tensed. Hale didn't know it but he had a “tell,” a giveaway when he was set to lie: he rested his hand on the back of his neck. But his fingers drifted up, massaging his head, and I realized how hard this conversation was for him. “I know that I wasn't much of a friend to you when Kevin was dying, and on a case I can be a little . . .”

“Dickish?”

“Aggressive.” He glared but then smiled. “And perhaps I should let this go for now.”

“Perhaps you should, Hale. But look, the answer isn't no. Some of the things you mentioned are issues, but they wouldn't keep me away.”

“Well, that sounds like a win to me.” Hale pointed at Dave, who was having an animated conversation with the foreman. “I'll refrain from inserting the FBI into whatever's going on over there and leave while I'm ahead.” Hale gave me a backward salute as he walked toward the SUV.

“Lyons!” Dave shouted, waving me over to the ruins. I watched as the foreman clicked off his walkie-talkie and disappeared behind a pile of bricks. Dave followed.

I sprinted over, slowing down once I approached the demolished building. The engineers said the route was safe, but random bricks dotted the path, and I hesitated to touch the sides and cause a landslide.

Down below, EPA employees flooded the tent. A guy wearing a bright yellow hazmat suit held us back from the edge.

“You're about to do some real work,” he said. “We found a body.”

WITH THE CHEMICALS, WE KNEW WE HAD A CRIME SCENE—ONE
for the fire department and the EPA. With the body, we were now in charge. The other agencies were unconvinced, allowing Dave and me to go down into the pit only when we were kitted up like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man and swore that we wouldn't touch anything. We'd barely landed in the basement before they rushed us back to the surface, accompanied by the barrel containing our victim. There, we found the coroner, Norm Finch, and a crime scene tech, Annie Lin.

“Took you long enough,” Annie said.

We'd taken photos of the body from the limited angles available, but Annie repeated our work twice over. The victim was a woman. In the sealed bin in the cool underground, undisturbed for years, she'd mummified rather than decayed. Her skin was the color of old oak, and for now, we couldn't determine her race. Patches of orange mottled the red dress she wore where her bodily fluids seeped out, and her brown high-heeled boots bagged loosely around her shrunken calves, the skin coating the bones. Not even the fire had harmed her, the concrete bunker sealing off her and the Tris from the destruction above. The victim reminded me of the old ultrasound picture of Lucy, curled in on herself, one hand against her chest, the other half hiding her face and head.

Norm peered inside the barrel. “She'll break apart if we try to lift her out.”

“Let's get her back to the lab. I can have her cut out of there in fifteen minutes,” Annie said.

“Can we examine the barrel before you cut into it?” Dave said.

“Outside of the body itself, there's not a lot to see, and oxidized metal does a very poor job of maintaining forensic evidence,” Annie said. “It's possible the barrel developed the power of speech. After it tells you who put the woman here, the two of you can chat about current events. It's doubtless wondering about the status of peace talks in the Middle East.”

“There's nothing else there?”

“Nope. I mean, I'll analyze it for trace evidence, but you should probably make a nuisance of yourselves with Norm.” Annie began slotting her instruments carefully back into her case, looking up when no one replied. “He'll be the one to figure out what happened to Luisa Lawler.”

Dave sighed. “Way to keep an open mind there, Annie.”

“What? Like you all weren't thinking the same thing. There is a body of a woman in this factory. A factory that was owned, may I remind you, by a man whose murdered wife was never found.” Annie picked up her case. “And not to be unkind, but I hope they find the boy in another barrel so both of them can get the burial they deserve.”

As usual, Annie was saying what the rest of us filtered. I couldn't believe that after thirty years we'd finally found Luisa, and in a way, I was glad.

We stepped out from under the shelter, walking carefully along a path helpfully marked with flares. The sky had a glow, low clouds reflecting light, and it had begun to drizzle. Once clear of the rubble, I began to jog, anxious to get home.

Dave was in no rush. “It's nice to have a murder where our perp has been locked up for thirty years.”

Dave's statement made me pause. “Is there a chance we're wrong?”

“Who am I to question Annie?” He clicked his key chain and his headlights went on, briefly blinding us. “Want to go grab a drink, Lyons?”

“Gotta get home and type up my report. And see my daughter.” More importantly, I had to talk to my dad, tell him he could rest. We had found Luisa Lawler.

I
PUT MY GLOCK IN THE LOCKBOX, HIGH ON A SHELF IN MY
front hallway closet.

“Hello!” I called. No one responded.

I peeked into the kitchen. Lucy sat poking an iPad, a gift from my sister to my dad, who viewed it with suspicion. Lucy had no such misgivings and commandeered the device as often as I'd let her to play Angry Birds.

I walked over and kissed her. “Where's Grandpa?”

She waved vaguely to her left. The house wasn't that big, and I figured I'd run into him soon.

Dad sat in his favorite chair, squarely in front of the TV. He slumped sideways, but he had no choice—the blue corduroy recliner was missing a few springs along the left side.

“Go get cleaned up and we'll order pizza,” he said, never taking his eyes off the TV, where reporters stood in front of the factory. Luisa Lawler's picture flashed on the screen. So much for breaking it to him gently.

“We got the bastard.” He beamed, and I could see the young cop in him, excited to bring a killer to justice. Without the fresh grief
that usually accompanied a murder investigation, his expression was pure unadulterated glee.

He turned back to the TV. A photo of Luisa popped up. She was petite, and her red hair was cut in a simple pageboy, a conservative choice during the early eighties when big hair ruled. The screen showed old footage of Bernie Lawler in court, sitting up straight in a three-piece suit. Underneath the bad eighties feathered hair and the too large collars, he'd been a good-looking guy: tall, with a strong jaw and light-brown hair, bright blue eyes that came across even on TV.

If my family was going to eat, it was up to me to order. Lucy never paused from tapping the screen to get the birds to fly into a rickety structure as I placed the call, but shouted out her preference for plain cheese, which I passed on.

Upstairs, I peeled off my clothes, dropping them in a pile on the floor since putting them in the hamper would result in everything smelling like ash, possibly forever. Every day since the fire I had come home covered in grime and damp cinders that smelled like death. I touched the picture of Kevin, a three-year-old Lucy squirming in her father's lap, the two of them with the same laughing blue eyes. He wore a T-shirt, his FBI badge swinging loosely around his neck. With her chubby cheeks and short legs, Lucy was barely recognizable as the kid she was now.

“You'd find my dad freakin' funny right now,” I said to his picture. “He's like a kid in a candy store.”

I climbed into the shower, the hot spray a relief. I dropped a huge pool of shampoo into my hands, and washed my hair, and then washed it again when the water didn't run clear. I scrubbed extra hard under my nails and the back of my neck, where the dust built up. The water wasn't black the way it'd been the first day, but gray. I rinsed my hair again and shut off the faucet.

After changing into yoga pants and one of Kevin's old flannel shirts, I wrapped my dirty clothes in my towel and trudged downstairs.
Lucy didn't acknowledge me as I passed through the kitchen to the laundry room. I returned to the kitchen and asked Lucy to set the table—her job for earning her allowance. She continued poking at the iPad.

“Away,” I said. Lucy didn't hear me. I walked over and pulled the iPad out of her hand, and she briefly trailed after it, as if tethered.

“Set the table,” I said.

While I made salad, we talked about her day, which, thanks to Angry Birds and winning a race at recess had been awesome as far as she was concerned. I had the salad made by the time the doorbell rang.

I paid the pizza delivery driver, who didn't meet my eye even as I gave him the tip. I'd stopped him on the road a few times when he'd been over-eager about getting the pizza into people's hands while it was hot, and I noted he'd made pretty good time tonight.

“Drive safely,” I called.

Lucy leapt on the box with the plain pizza, and I reminded her of her manners. She kneeled on her chair, sitting back on her ankles and stretching out and touching the pizza.

“Dad?” I said. I heard no movement and walked into the living room, where my father flipped between channels. Several stations featured a college basketball player who had scored over fifty points in his third straight game—a local boy made good—but my father didn't care, racing past, stopping only when Luisa Lawler's face popped up. This was worse than Lucy and her Angry Birds.

“Dad, dinner,” I repeated. After a moment he got up, leaving the TV on. He followed me into the kitchen, blinking as if he were emerging from a cave. We kept the conversation light at dinner. Even then my Dad didn't participate much, his head tilted, trying to catch snatches of the news. Lucy and I filled the gap, chatting about the two birthday parties she was attending this upcoming weekend, how Kailin was her second best friend and Sara was her most best friend. It involved an elaborate ranking system involving who sat where at lunch and teams at school.

After I'd wrapped up leftovers and won a heated discussion with Lucy about how she couldn't bring the iPad to bed—I could kill my sister—I got her tucked in. My father skipped his normal “pretending not to listen to the bedtime story” act, which resulted in Lucy watching the door rather than paying attention to the book. She settled down once she'd started her nightly ritual, begun three years ago during Kevin's illness when nightmares tortured her every night: She stood on her bed and touched the dream catcher my mother had sent her. My mother claimed her shaman made it especially for Lucy. Lucy didn't even ask what a shaman was and had been nightmare free since then, so who was I to question what worked, dubious as it was?

Tonight, she began by tracing the purple weavings that were designed to catch her bad dreams. Her finger followed down the ribbon hanging below. She reached the feather, there to help the good dreams slide down to her, when it snapped off. The feather spiraled down to the bed, landing on her pillow. She stared at it and then looked up at me. A child of habit and tired already, she burst into tears.

I grabbed her up and comforted her.

“But how will the nice dreams reach me?” she hiccupped. “Will Grandma send me another one?”

No way was I contacting my mother for a replacement. I wondered if they sold them on the Internet?

“Tomorrow, I'll sew that back on,” I said. “I'll make it as good as new.” I picked up the feather and ran it over her forehead. She giggled.

“Do it again,” she said, and shut her eyes in anticipation.

I ran the feather back and forth across her brow. Steadily, her giggles settled into deep breathing, and eventually she dropped into sleep. I put the feather on her side table, safe until tomorrow.

I wandered downstairs and went to the living room. To my surprise, my father acknowledged me, holding out a glass of Irish whiskey in the Waterford crystal. He rarely drank since having the heart attack, and the Waterford crystal came out of the china cabinet once a year at Christmas. I took the glass.

“A toast,” my dad said. “A toast to Luisa Lawler coming home to her family.”

I swallowed. The Bushmills tasted wonderful, oaky and warm. I raised my hand for a second toast.

“And to closing your last case!”

Dad clinked his glass against mine. I curled into the corner of the couch closest to Dad's recliner, tucking my feet under me. My toes were chilled, but asking to start a fire would be admitting winter hadn't left. People were wearing shorts—wishful thinking in fifty-degree weather—but after the winter we'd had, I could see where they might want to
will
summer into being.

We settled into a comfortable silence, and I let Dad enjoy the moment. The TV was muted, but out of the corner of my eye I could see a commercial for the ten o'clock news, and a picture of Luisa and Bernie Lawler flashed on the screen, along with their son, Teddy. They'd probably had the portrait taken at Olan Mills: Bernie and Luisa in the forefront, Luisa perched on a stool wearing a corduroy jumper, Bernie standing behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, and in the corner, the silhouette of a young boy, his smile revealing a perfect line of baby teeth. My family had a similar photo, my shadow self beatific in a soft, hazy glow, an image with no resemblance to my personality. My parents had even gotten me into a dress.

Fair-haired like his father, Teddy had his mother's eyes, pale green, almost gray. I couldn't hear their announcements, but a scroll line read across the bottom said “Mystery solved!”

My dad broke the silence. “Did they find the boy?”

I shook my head no. “They're still opening bins,” I said. “They're keeping an eye out.”

“Teddy was such a little guy,” he said. “There's probably not much left of him now. Luisa was a slip of a thing who tried hard to fade into the background, keeping the focus on her husband. That worked out fine for both of them: Bernie was an attention hog.”

Dad settled into his story, describing how Luisa had come from
some money. Her father, Stephen Harris, ran the family clothing-manufacturing business. The company was founded as a collar manufacturer in the 1800s, back when washing a whole shirt was a time-consuming chore. Each generation renamed it depending on what was in fashion—girdles were big in the fifties—before Bernie took it over and started manufacturing kids' pajamas, crib sets, and bath towels.

“He had his little empire and wanted the high-status lifestyle. A nice girl like Luisa didn't fit in with his plan.”

“When did you figure out he did it?”

“I had some doubts about his guilt at first. They disappeared quick. A bunch of girls went missing at the time, young and pretty, and I was worried that we had some sort of serial killer on our hands. But most of those young women showed up alive. They just took off for a better life somewhere far from here.”

“Like Dave's mom.”

“Exactly. We got a conviction for Luisa because of the stories everyone repeated. Natalya Batko, their housekeeper, told me how Bernie shut Luisa in the house, cut her off from her friends and family. Even Sheila”—he took a deep breath after saying my mother's name—“said Bernie forbade Luisa from doing her hospital volunteer work. Of course your mother kept using the word ‘patriarchy,' so I didn't listen much.”

He reached for the bottle of Bushmills and poured himself a fingerful. “Anyway, the chatter about what a sleazeball he was, the blood all over the basement, and those bloody handprints in the trunk of his car like Luisa had tried, tried . . .” He paused, gulping down the whiskey. When he placed the glass down his eyes were bright with unshed tears. He cleared his throat twice and continued.

“So there was the stories about Bernie, the blood evidence in the basement, and bloody handprints in the trunk that looked like Luisa had tried to claw her way out, well, that finally convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt. Luisa's mother, Elda, was a woman on a mission from the get-go.” He frowned. “I think she felt guilty.”

“Why?”

“Well, I got the impression that she and her husband pushed Luisa into the marriage. Luisa's dad was struggling to keep the factory afloat.” My dad sat back on his chair, relaxing into the story. “No one could figure out why Bernie bought it. He was such a smooth operator, working some excellent real estate deals, and here he picks up the Sleep-Tite factory, which even I knew was a few years away from death. Rumor had it he took on the business because Elda promised him Luisa if he took Sleep-Tite off their hands.”

“Elda sold her daughter?”

My father nodded. “More or less. Most of Elda's fury was at herself. Families of murder victims have a certain amount of anger mixed in with their grief, but she was off the charts.”

I'd lost my husband to cancer, and the sadness almost got washed away by the rage that came over me every day for the first year. I can't imagine what I would have done had he been murdered.

“I mean, there's nothing worse than losing a child. Elda, though, she took it to another level. She sued for the business and ran it into the ground . . .”

“That's true?” I said.

My father nodded.

“She salt the earth, too?”

“She would if she could. She put countless people out of work, ruined people's livelihoods, put another nail in Hopewell Falls's coffin all because she couldn't live with herself. She could've sold the business—Bernie got the place making money, and buyers were interested. Hell, just the land. Dan Jaleda? Big developer guy? He's been trying to get the land for condos for at least ten years. And before that some investors made an offer to Elda, a group put together by Bernie's brother, the judge.”

“Judge . . .”

“Medved.”

I knew Judge Medved, although he had retired before I started
testifying in local cases. Leaving aside the different last names, he and Bernie had to be almost twenty years apart in age, but Dad was eager to explain. He was the world's leading expert on Bernie Lawler.

“Judge Medved's father died back in Ukraine during the war. A decade later, the Medveds are settled out on the Island, a couple of blocks from where Dave lives now, and his mother married a man named Lawler. It came up at trial that Bernie's dad liked to get loaded and belt his kids, beat Bernie and his sister Deirdre every day. At the trial, Judge Medved talked about how Bernie was like a son to him, but behind the scenes he was encouraging the DA to indict. Hardly brotherly love.”

“That seems . . . odd.”

“Well, the crime horrified even him. The Ukrainians, they didn't really trust cops since they equated them with the SS or Stalin's secret police or whatever showed up in the night to kill them, but they came forward in droves on this one. It was the little kid . . .” The TV caught Dad's attention, promos for the newscast set to start in a few minutes. “Dave's Aunt Natalya was more than just a housekeeper to Bernie and Luisa, she loved Luisa like a daughter, but even then it took me weeks of coaxing her before she finally agreed to testify. It was like the Wild West over there.”