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“There’s one other thing,” one of the officers at the table said. Avery knew this man’s name was Mosely, but that was about all she knew about him. “I got word two minutes before stepping into this meeting that dispatch fielded a call this morning from an elderly man claiming that he saw what he described as ‘a creepy tall man’ walking in that area. He said he was tucking some sort of a bag under a long coat. Dispatch took note of it but assumed it was just a nosy old man with nothing better to do. But then when this burn case kicked off this morning, they pinged me on it.”
“Do we have this old man’s contact information?” Avery asked.
Connelly shot her an annoyed look. She supposed he thought she was speaking out of turn – even though he had told her no more than forty-five minutes ago that this was her case.
“We do,” Mosely answered.
“I want someone on the phone with him the moment this meeting is over,” O’Malley said. “Finley…where are we on a list of places that sell chemicals that can burn this fiercely in such a short time?”
“I’ve got three places within twenty miles. Two of them are e-mailing me a list of chemicals that could do such a thing and whether or not they keep it in stock.”
Avery listened to the back-and-forth, taking mental notes and trying to sort them into the appropriate slots. With each new bit of information, the more sense the odd crime scene from this morning started to make. Although, really, there wasn’t too much sense to be made at this point.
“We still have no idea who the victim is,” O’Malley said. “We’re going to have to go on dental records alone on this one unless we can make some sort of connection with the footage from the traffic cameras.” He then looked to Avery and gestured her to the front of the table. “Detective Black is the head on this one so everything you find from here on out will go directly to her.”
Avery joined him up front and scanned the table. Her eyes landed on Jane Parks, one of the lead investigators on forensics. “Do we have any results from the broken glass shards?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Parks said. “We know for certain that there were no fingerprints, though. But we’re still working to find out what the object was. So far we can only imagine it might have been some sort of knickknack that is in no way related to the crime.”
“And what is the opinion of forensics in regards to the fire?” Avery asked. “Are you also in agreement that this was no casual burning?”
“Yes. The ash is still being studied, but it’s obvious that no standard fire could burn human flesh so thoroughly. There were barely even any charred remains on the bones and the bones themselves almost look pristine, showing no signs of scorching.”
“And can you describe to us what the usual process of a body burning might be?” Avery asked.
“Well, there’s nothing typical about burning a body unless you’re cremating it,” Parks said. “But let’s say a body is trapped in a burning house and is lit on fire that way. Body fat acts like a sort of fuel once the skin is burned away, which keeps the fire going. Almost like a candle, you know? But this burn was quick and very succinct…probably so intense that it vaporized the fat before it could even act as a fuel.”
“How long would it take a body to burn down to nothing more than bone?” Avery asked.
“Well, there are several determining factors,” Parks said. “But anywhere between five to seven hours is an accurate number. Slow and controlled burns, like the ones used at crematoriums, can take up to eight hours.”
“And this one burned in less than an hour and a half?” Connelly asked.
“Yes, that’s the assumption,” Parks said.
The conference room was awash in murmurs of disgust and awe. Avery understood it. It was hard to wrap her mind around it.
“Or,” Avery said, “the body was burned elsewhere and the remains were dumped in that lot this morning.”
“But that skeleton…that was a new skeleton,” Parks said. “It wasn’t without its skin, muscle, tissues, and so on for very long. Not long at all.”
“Can you make an educated guess as to how long ago the body was burned?” Avery asked.
“Surely no more than a day or so.”
“So this took planning and some head knowledge on the killer’s part,” Avery said. “He’d have to know a lot about burning bodies. And being that he made no attempt to hide the remains as well as killed the victim in such a startling way…that denotes a few things. And the thing that I fear the most is that this is likely the first of many.”
“What do you mean?” Connelly asked.
She felt all eyes in the room turn to her.
“I mean that this is probably the work of a serial killer.”
A heavy silence blanketed the room.
“What are you talking about?” Connelly asked. “There’s no evidence to support that.”
“Nothing obvious,” Avery admitted. “But he wanted the remains to be found. He made no attempt to hide them in that lot. There was a creek right along the back of the property. He could have dumped it all there. More than that, there was ash. Why dump ash at the scene when you could easily dispose of it at home? The planning and the method of the killing…he took great pride and pleasure in this. He wanted the remains found and speculated over. And that holds the marks of a serial killer.”
She felt the room stare back at her, felt a solemn air descend, and she knew they were thinking the same thing she was: this was evolving from an odd case involving an impromptu cremation to a time-sensitive hunt for a serial killer.
CHAPTER FIVE
After the tension of the meeting, Avery was glad to find herself back behind the wheel of her car with Ramirez in the passenger seat. There was an odd bit of silence between them that made her uneasy. Had she really been so naïve to think that sleeping together was not going to alter their working relationship?
Was it a mistake?
It was starting to feel like it. The fact that the sex had been pretty close to mind-blowing made it hard to accept, though.
“While we have a second,” Ramirez said, “are we going to talk about last night?”
“We can,” Avery said. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Well, at the risk of sounding like a stereotypical male, I was wondering if it was a one-time thing or if we were going to do it again.”
“I don’t know,” Avery said.
“Regretting it already?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “No regrets. It’s just that in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about how it would affect our working relationship.”
“I figure it can’t hurt it,” Ramirez said. “All jokes aside, you and I have been dancing around this physical chemistry for months now. We finally did something about it, so the tension should be gone, right?”
“You’d think so,” Avery said with a sly smile.
“It’s not for you?”
She thought for a while and then shrugged. “I don’t know. And quite frankly, I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it yet.”
“Fair enough. We are sort of in the middle of what looks to be a majorly fucked up case.”
“Yes, we are,” she said. “Did you get the e-mail from the precinct? What else do we know about our witness other than his address?”
Ramirez looked to his phone and pulled up his e-mail. “Got it,” he said. “Our witness is Donald Greer, eighty-one years of age. Retired. He lives in an apartment roughly half a mile away from the crime scene. He’s a widower who worked for fifty-five years as a shipyard supervisor after getting two toes blown off in Vietnam.”
“And how did he happen to see the killer?” Avery asked.
“That we don’t know yet. But I guess it’s our job to find out, right?”
“Right,” she said.
Silence fell on them again. She felt the instinct to reach out and take his hand but thought better of it. It was best to keep things strictly professional. Maybe they would end up in bed together again and maybe things would even progress to more than that – to something more emotional and concrete.
But none of that mattered now. Now, they had a job to do and anything evolving within their personal lives would just have to be put on hold.
***Donald Greer showed all eighty-one years of his age. His hair was a frazzled shock of white atop his head and his teeth were slightly discolored from age and improper care. Still, he was clearly glad to have company as he invited Avery and Ramirez into his home. When he smiled at them, it was so genuine and wide that the unsightly condition of his teeth seemed to disappear.
“Can I get you some coffee or tea?” he asked them as they came in.
“No, thank you,” Avery said.
Somewhere else in the house, a dog barked. It was a smaller dog, and one with a bark that suggested it might be just about as old as Donald.
“So is this about that man I saw this morning?” Donald asked. He plopped himself down into an armchair in the living room.
“Yes, sir, it is,” Avery said. “We were told that you saw a tall man that appeared to be hiding something under his – ”
The dog that was located somewhere in the back of the apartment started to bark even more. Its yaps were loud and sort of grizzled.
“Shut it, Daisy!” Donald said. The dog went silent, giving a little whimper. Donald shook his head and gave a chuckle. “Daisy loves company,” he said. “But she’s getting old and tends to pee on people when she gets too excited, so I had to lock her up for your visit. I was out walking her this morning when I saw that man.”
“How far do you walk her?” Avery asked.
“Oh, Daisy and I walk at least a mile and a half just about every morning. My ticker isn’t as strong as it used to be. The doctor says I need to walk as much as possible. It’s supposed to keep my joints in top order, too.”
“I see,” Avery said. “Do you take the same route every morning?”
“No. We switch it up from time to time. We have about five different routes we take.”
“And where were you when you saw the man this morning?”
“Out on Kirkley. Me and Daisy had just come around the corner of Spring Street. That part of town is always empty in the mornings. A few work trucks here and there but that’s about it. I think we’ve passed two or three people on Kirkley in the last month or so…and they were all walking their dogs. You don’t even get any of those masochistic people that like to run out in this area.”
It was obvious by the way he chatted that Donald Greer did not get many visitors. He was overly chatty and spoke very loudly. Avery wondered if it was because age had affected his hearing or if his ears were shot from listening to Daisy raise hell all day.
“And was this man coming or going?” Avery asked.
“Coming, I think. I’m not sure. He was a good ways ahead of me and he seemed to sort of stop for a second when I got on Kirkley. I think he knew I was there, behind him. He started walking again, sort of fast, and then just sort of disappeared into the fog. Maybe he took one of those side streets along Kirkley.”
“Was he maybe walking a dog?” Ramirez asked.
“Nope. I would have known. Daisy goes ballistic when she sees another dog or even smells one in the area. But she stayed just as quiet as always.”
“Do you have any idea what he might have been holding under that jacket you say he was wearing?”
“I couldn’t see,” Donald said. “I just saw him shifting something under it. But the fog this morning was just too thick.”
“And what about the coat he was wearing?” Avery asked. “What kind was it?”
Before he could answer, they were interrupted by Ramirez’s cell phone. He answered it and stepped away, speaking quietly into it.
“The coat,” Donald said, “was like one of those long fancy sort of black coats that businessmen wear sometimes. The kinds that come down to their knees.”
“Like an overcoat,” Avery.
“Yeah,” Donald said. “That’s it.”
Avery was running out of questions, feeling pretty certain that this interview with their only witness was a bust. She tried to find another relevant question as Ramirez stepped back into the room.
“I need to get going,” Ramirez said. “Connelly wants me as an extra set of hands with some matter over near Boston College.”
“That’s fine,” Avery said. “I think we’re done here anyway.” She turned to Donald and said, “Mr. Greer, thank you so much for your time.”
Donald walked them out to the apartment building entrance and waved them off as they got into the car.
“You tagging along with me?” Ramirez asked when they were headed back down the street.
“No,” she said. “I think I’m going to go back to the crime scene.”
“Kirkley Street?” he said.
“Yeah. You can take the car to do whatever errand Connelly has you running. I’ll catch a cab back to headquarters.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. It’s not like I have anything else to – ”
“To what?”
“Shit!”
“What is it?” Ramirez asked, concerned.
“Rose. I was supposed to hang out with Rose this afternoon. I made this huge deal about a girls’ day out. And it looks like that’s not going to happen. I’m going to have to let her down again.”
“She’ll understand,” Ramirez said.
“No. No, she won’t. I always do this to her.”
Ramirez had no reply to that. The car remained in silence until they reached Kirkley Street. Ramirez pulled the car to the side of the street directly across from the morning’s crime scene.
“Be careful,” Ramirez said.
“I will,” she said. She surprised herself when she leaned over and kissed him briefly on the mouth.
She then got out of the car and started studying the scene immediately. She was so focused and in the zone that she barely noticed when Ramirez pulled away behind her.
CHAPTER SIX
After staring at the scene for a moment, Avery turned and looked down the street. Her eyes followed the path that Donald Greer must have been taking, all the way down to her right, where Kirkley intersected with Spring Street. She walked down the street, came to the intersection, and then turned.
Several thoughts entered her mind as she started to walk forward. Had the killer been on foot the entire time? And if so, why had he come in from Spring Street – a street just as barren and washed up as Kirkley? Or perhaps he had come by car. If that was the case, where would he have parked? If the fog had been thick enough, he could have parked anywhere along Kirkley and his car could have gone unseen.
If the man in the long black coat was indeed their killer, he had walked along this same route less than eight hours ago. She tried to envision the scene shrouded in thick morning fog. Because it was such a desolate area of town, it was not hard to do. As she walked slowly forward to the lot where the bones and the shards hard been found, she kept her eyes open for potential places the man could have ducked out of sight.
There were plenty of them, to be sure. There were six empty lots and two side streets that the man could have hidden in. If the fog had been thick enough, any of those locations would have made for ample cover.
That raised an interesting thought. If the man had hidden in one of those areas, he had let Donald Greer go by without bothering him. That took out the possibility of the murder being an act of sheer violence. Most people capable of that sort of violence would not have let Donald pass by so easily. In fact, Donald would have become a victim in most cases.
If she needed any further proof that the body had been burned somewhere else, this thought gave it to her. Perhaps, then, the item the man had been shifting beneath his coat had been a container holding the remains that he had dumped in the lot.
It made sense and she slowly started to feel a ramped-up sense of accomplishment. Now she was getting somewhere.
She walked to the lot where the remains had been found. Ever efficient and prompt, O’Malley had already cleared police away from the scene. She assumed he had done this just as soon as forensics had come by and collected the remains.
She walked to where the bones and ash had been dumped and simply stood there, looking around. The marshy area behind the lot was more visible than ever now. It was so close and much less open than the lot. So why would someone dump the bones in the middle of the lot rather than a weeded-over creek? Why would they put the remains right out in the open rather than ditching them in mud and stagnant water?
It was a question they had already approached. And in her mind, the answer was proof that they were dealing with a serial killer.
Because he wants people to see his work. He’s proud and maybe a little arrogant.
She thought he might be clever, too. The use of fog to hide himself indicated that he had planned things very well. He’d have to be persistent about checking the weather to make sure there would be ample fog. He also had to know the area relatively well. It would have to have taken some serious planning.
And fire…he’d have to know fire well. To burn a body so cleanly without charring or otherwise damaging the bones spoke of dedication and patience. The killer would really have to know a great deal about fire and the process of burning.
Burning, she thought. Fire.
As she studied the crime scene and envisioned the killer standing in this same place, she felt like she was missing something – that some crucial clue was staring her right in the face. But all there was to see was the marshy and muddy area at the back of the property as well as the small square of space where some poor victim had been dumped out as if they were nothing more than a standard pile of trash.
She looked around the empty lot again and wondered if perhaps the location of the remains was not as important as she thought. If the killer was using fire as a way to send a message to someone (either the victim or the police), maybe that was what she needed to focus on.
With an idea coming to her mind, she pulled out her phone and called up the closest cab company for a ride out of there. After the call was placed and the cab had been requested, she looked through her contacts and stared at her daughter’s name for five seconds.
I’m so sorry, Rose, she thought.
She pressed CALL and brought the phone to her ear as her heart broke a little.
Rose answered on the third ring. She sounded happy right away. Avery could hear music playing softly in the background. She could imagine Rose getting ready for their afternoon out and hated herself a little.
“Hey, Mom,” Avery said.
“Hey, Rose.”
“What’s up?”
“Rose…” she said. She felt tears coming on. She looked out at the empty lot behind her, trying to convince herself that she had to do this and that one day, Rose would understand.
Without Avery having to say another word, Rose apparently caught on to the emotion. She let out a little angry laugh. “Perfect,” Rose said, the joy now gone from her voice. “Mom, are you fucking serious right now?”
Avery had heard Rose curse before but this time it was like a dagger to her heart because she deserved it.
“Rose, a case came up. A pretty bad one and I have to – ”
“I know what you have to do,” Rose said. She did not scream. She barely even raised her voice. And somehow, that made it that much worse.
“Rose, I can’t help this. I certainly didn’t expect this to pop up. When I made those plans with you, I had a wide open schedule for a few days. But this thing popped and…well, things change.”
“I guess they do sometimes,” Rose said. “But not with you. With you, things pretty much stay the same…when it comes to me, anyway.”
“Rose, that’s not fair.”
“Don’t you even try telling me what’s not fair right now! And you know what, Mom? Just forget about it. This time and any other time you might want to pretend to play Good Mother in the future. It’s not in the cards for us.”
“Rose – ”
“I get it, Mom. I do. But do you know how much it sucks to have this woman as your mother…a kick-ass woman with a demanding job? A woman I respect the hell out of…but a woman that time and time again disappoints me?”
Avery had no idea what to say. Which was just as well, since Rose was done.
“Bye, Mom. Thanks for letting me know in advance, though. Better than being stood up altogether, I guess.”
“Rose, I – ”
But the line went dead.
Avery shoved her phone back into her pocket and took a deep breath. A single tear rolled down her face from her right eye and she wiped it away as quickly as she could. She then walked purposefully over to the area that had been cordoned off with crime scene tape earlier in the morning and stared at it for a very long time.
Fire, she thought. Maybe it’s more than something the killer is using for his acts. Maybe it’s symbolic. Maybe fire offers more of a clue than anything else.
So as she waited for the cab to arrive, she thought of fire and what sort of person might use it to deliver some sort of a message. It was hard to get a grasp on it, though, as she knew very little about arson.
I’ll need a second mind at work on this, she thought.
And with that thought, she pulled out her phone and called up the A1 headquarters. She asked to be put through to Sloane Miller, the A1 psychologist and in-house shrink for the officers and detectives. If anyone could tap into the mind of a killer with fire on the brain, it would be Sloane.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Avery was back at A1 headquarters half an hour later. Upon entering, she did not take the elevator up to her office. Instead, she remained on the first floor and walked toward the back of the building. She’d been here before when she had been ordered to speak with Sloane Miller, the on-hand psychologist, during her last big and daunting case and it had affected her in a way she had still not quite come to terms with. But now she was visiting for another reason…for insight into a killer’s mind. And, being in her element, the visit felt more natural.
She came to Sloane’s office and was relieved to find the door cracked open. Sloane had no real set schedule and was more of a first-come-first-serve sort of resource for the police force. When Avery knocked on her door, she could hear Sloane typing something into her laptop.
“Come in,” Sloane said.
Avery did, feeling much more at ease than the last time she’d met Sloane. Here in her office rather than her lobby-like setting for patients, things were a little more formal.
“Ah, Detective Black,” Sloane said with genuine cheer as she looked up from her laptop. “It’s so good to see you! I was very pleased to hear from you when you called. How have you been?”
“Things are good,” Avery said. But in the back of her mind she knew that Sloane would jump at the opportunity to analyze her issues with Rose and her complicated relationship with Ramirez.
“What can I do for you today?” Sloane asked.
“Well, I was hoping to get your insights into a particular personality type. I’m leading up a case involving a man that we are fairly certain is burning his victims. He’s left only bones and ash behind at the crime scene – cleaned bones, with no charring or damage. There’s also a pile of ash and a slight chemical smell to the air…coming from the ash, I think. It’s pretty clear he knows what he’s doing. He knows how to burn a body, which seems like a very specific knowledge to have. But I don’t think he’s using the fire solely as a tool for his acts. I need to know what sort of person would not only use fire in such a way but also use it as some sort of symbolism.”
“The idea that he’s using the fire as a symbol of sorts is a great deduction,” Sloane said. “In a case like this, I can almost guarantee you that’s what’s going on. At the heart of it, I think you might be dealing with someone that has an interest or maybe even a background in arson. Maybe he once had a job or hobby that included fire as a part of it. Studies have shown pretty resolutely that even children who are fascinated with campfires or matches show signs of an interest in arson-related acts.”
“Can you tell me anything about that sort of personality that might help us get this guy sooner rather than later?”
“I can certainly try,” Sloane said. “First of all, there’s going be some sort of mental issues, but nothing too deep. It could just be something as simple as a tendency towards anger in even the most innocent of situations. He’ll likely also be undereducated. Most repeat arsonists didn’t graduate high school. Some see it as a way to rebel against a system they could never understand – the whole some men just want to watch the world burn nonsense. Some will claim they set fires as an act of revenge but can never define what it is they are seeking revenge against.