The Burning Season Read online

  “I’m sure you are, ma’am,” Sara said. “Do you mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”

  “It’s late,” the man said.

  “But not too late for some weed,” Nick said. “We’re not here about drug use, sir. We really just have some questions about your candles.”

  “Candles?”

  Sara nodded her head toward the front room. “There is a candle burning in there, right?”

  “It’s not a crime to like candles, is it? Is that the latest assault on our civil liberties?”

  “Not at all. No one’s accusing you of any crimes.”

  “Your friend just did,” the woman said.

  “Let’s back up a minute, here,” Nick offered. “I’m Assistant Supervisor Nick Stokes with the Crime Lab. This is Sara Sidle. And you are . . . ?

  “I’m Arnold Cox. Arnie,” the man said. “My wife, Cynthia.”

  “If you don’t mind, we’d like to take a small sample of that candle,” Sara said. “And any other candles on the premises. We’ll be careful.”

  Arnold Cox swallowed hard and tilted his chin up, displaying resistance Sara had not expected. “Do you have a search warrant?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then absolutely not. That’s a gross invasion of our right to privacy.”

  “Invading your privacy is not our intent, Mr. Cox,” Nick said. “Solving a multiple murder is.”

  “Well, I can assure you, we’ve got nothing to do with—”

  Cynthia Cox’s protest was cut off by the slamming of an upstairs door. She whirled around, covered the space to the stairs in two quick steps, and started up. “Kevin?”

  More noise came from upstairs, shuffling and pounding, then a loud squeal. Arnold joined Cynthia on the staircase, both of them rushing up and calling Kevin’s name.

  “That noise was a window,” Nick said.

  “Come on.” Sara remembered Kevin Cox, the kid who was always on the periphery of things. She went down the steps three at a time, Nick right behind her. They raced around the house, hearing a loud crash and thump just before they made the corner.

  “Kevin Cox!” Nick shouted. “Stop!”

  His cry was answered only by further crashing. Kevin had gone out his window and torn off into the forest. Sara and Nick clicked on flashlights and beamed them behind the house, but he was gone.

  “You think he’s our guy?” Sara asked.

  “Maybe he’s the one who’s been smoking dope, and he’s paranoid about it,” Nick said. “But jumping out the window seems a little extreme for a pot-head. And a little physical, too, unless someone’s out there waving a bag of chips at him.”

  “I think he heard us,” Sara said. She went into the trees after him, shining her light to illuminate her path. “As soon as you mentioned murder, he took off.”

  “Well, he knows these woods better than we do.” The sound of Kevin’s passing had almost faded to nothing, replaced by the buzz of cicadas and the dry click of burned branches in the breeze. “But he doesn’t know how much tracking experience we have.”

  Most of Sara’s tracking, prior to this case, had been in urban settings. It was easy to follow bloody sneaker prints down a sidewalk. Trailing someone through a dark, blackened forest was another matter altogether.

  Except that, as before, when they were following the path of the campers up the slope, it turned out to be easier and more natural than she thought. The insides of scorched branches snapped by his passing gleamed white in the flashlight’s beam, set off from their surroundings as if spotlit. Footprints left a distinct trail through the thick coating of ash. Although he had a decent head start, he wasn’t carrying a light, and his progress was noisy and uneven.

  Cynthia and Arnold Cox followed, calling out Kevin’s name. They drowned out some of his flight, but not enough to make Sara turn back and warn them off.

  On the bright side, she didn’t think he was headed toward a vehicle. If he was, they would almost certainly lose him. But in the direction he had fled, there were no roads for miles and miles.

  After a brief time, Kevin’s noises grew louder, the ragged gasps of his breathing audible over the splinter and shake of his forward progress, and the shouts of his parents grew dimmer and distant. “We’ve got him,” Nick said.

  “Not yet,” Sara corrected. “Soon, maybe.”

  “Oh, he’s ours now.”

  As it happened, Nick was right. In another couple of minutes, they came upon Kevin Cox beside a burned tree trunk. He was bent forward at the waist, hands on his knees, breathing hard. Pink spots blossomed on his cheeks, and his mouth was open, his long hair hanging in his face.

  “Kevin Cox,” Nick said. He saw them but couldn’t gather the energy to run again. “You’re under arrest, for arson and murder.”

  Kevin tried to reply, but his words were lost in labored panting. Nick took handcuffs from his belt, straightened Kevin, drew his arms behind his back and snapped a bracelet over each wrist. Sara read Kevin his Miranda rights.

  When that was done, Nick released Kevin again. The young man sagged against the tree. His face was streaked with ash.

  Sara shined her light on Kevin’s footprints in the ash. “Nick, look. Those are our prints.”

  Nick eyeballed the markings, then grabbed Kevin’s right foot, lifted it off the ground. “No question.”

  “We’ll still have to check the candle. But that’ll wrap it up. No jury’s going to think the prints and the candle both are a coincidence.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kevin asked when he was able to speak. “That fire?”

  “That’s right, Kevin,” Sara said. “You started it, didn’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why?”

  Kevin offered only a shrug. She couldn’t push—minors had to be accompanied by parents and/or counsel before being questioned, and she suspected he was not yet eighteen. But anything he put forward on his own might point them toward more evidence.

  “You must have had some reason. You went to great pains, covering the matches in wax, bundling them together.”

  “I was bored, I guess.”

  “Bored?”

  “Dude,” he said, though he was still addressing Sara. “I live on a mountain. All my folks do is get high and listen to old music. When they’re not high, they argue, and I can’t stand being in the house. But there’s nothing outside except trees and squirrels and shit. I got bored, I started a fire. End of story.”

  “Except it’s not,” Sara reminded him. “There’s more to it than you’re saying, right? What’s going on?” She thought about what he had said. “Your parents?”

  “Yeah, blame them,” Kevin said. “That’s what Freud would say, right?”

  “I’m not blaming anyone,” Sara argued. “I’m just trying to understand. Lots of people get bored. You started a fire that cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. When all the property damage is added up, it’ll almost certainly go over a million. Worse, you killed six firefighters, brave men and women who were only trying to limit the damage you caused. It’s going to take the people up here years to rebuild their homes and their lives, those that can be rebuilt. That doesn’t come from just being bored. But it could be a cry for help.”

  He started to shrug again, thought better of it, and stopped mid-motion. But he didn’t replace it with anything else, so he stood there awkwardly, one shoulder raised, handcuff chain jingling softly.

  “Your folks get high a lot?”

  “Depends. Is every day a lot? Or does it have to be hourly?”

  “It bothers you.”

  “Whatever. It is what it is.”

  “But you know that not every family is that way. What are they like when they’re high?”

  “Ever watched rocks?”

  “What does that mean?”

  Kevin reached down and lifted a pebble from the ground, held it out on his palm. “Watch this for a couple of hours. Maybe all day. Let me know if it does anything
interesting.”

  “I think I get the idea,” Sara said. His must have been a miserable existence . . . on this mountain with few people his own age around, in a house with parents who, when they were using—which was constantly—paid him not the slightest attention. In the midst of his own family, he was at his most solitary. No wonder he had acted out. “I’m sorry, Kevin. I know it’s been rough.”

  Kevin gave a snicker, but his eyes were moist. “Hey, at least they got off the couch to watch the flames. We had to stay in a motel, and they were afraid to smoke. We watched TV, played some cards. It was pretty cool.”

  “Maybe this will be a wake-up call for them,” Nick said. “Things will be different now.” Nick took his arm, led him away from the tree. “Come on, man. Let’s get going.”

  He started walking Kevin up the hill. Cynthia and Arnold Cox were coming, without lights, threading their way noisily through the darkness. In the near distance Sara heard the plaintive hooting of an owl; a bird sound, at last. The forest would recover. By the time Kevin got out of prison, it would be green and vibrant again.

  Sara let Nick and Kevin get away from her. She got out her cell phone, which surprisingly had a decent signal. Time to call Juan Castillo, to tell him what they’d learned.

  She didn’t know if Castillo had anyone in mind for the firestarter, but believed he would be surprised by their suspect. She was. She had wanted there to be a motive, something that made sense, greed or lust or passion. But the motive was more tragic than those. It was loneliness. It was a message sent to parents who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge their own son’s existence.

  If anything could have made Sara sadder, she didn’t know what it would be.

  29

  “HERE’S YOUR DNA result,” David Hodges said, handing Ray a manila file folder. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

  “What happened to Carrie?”

  “She’s off duty. Guess who’s on night shift DNA? Like I don’t have anything else to do.”

  Hodges was still on the testy side, and had been since Wendy Simms had left the lab. Ray kept hoping he would get over it. Then again, he was Hodges. He had been testy the first time Ray had met him, and no doubt long before that. “Thanks, David,” he said.

  “In case it’s too much reading for you, the touch DNA off that stripper you fondled—”

  “I didn’t fondle her.”

  “—whatever, is a match for the epithelial cells you brought in from that abduction scene. And under the fingernails of the severed hand found earlier. Which means . . .”

  “Which means that Ruben Solis was taken by the same crew who’ve been cutting off hands, and Erwin was one of the people who took Ruben Solis. Or at the very least, he was at the Solis house. And given the specifics of how we found Erwin . . .”

  “Far more likely that he was one of the snatchers.”

  “Correct.” Ray flipped open the file, scanning it quickly. Hodges had summed up the important points, though. “This should be enough to get me a warrant.”

  “If you’re going back to that strip club . . .”

  “I think you’re needed here at the lab, David. But thanks again for offering.”

  “Verbal thanks. All I ever get,” Hodges mumbled. He walked away, still grumbling to himself, but Ray ignored him, already reaching for the phone to try to arrange that warrant.

  Before he and Sam Vega could make it back to Cougars, though, Ray received a call about the Friends of the East Side Community Center. He listened, asked a couple of pointed questions, and put his phone away. “Change of plans,” he said.

  Vega, behind the wheel, slowed the car. “What’s up?”

  “Mickey Ritz’s been snatched.”

  “Who?”

  “He runs the Friends of the East Side Community Center. He’s the one who told me I was looking for someone called Oz or Ozzie.”

  “Oswaldo Carrizoza.”

  “Precisely. He was worried about the possibility that someone might overhear our conversation.”

  “Sounds like he had good reason.”

  “So it appears.”

  “You think we should head over there?”

  “I do,” Ray said. “He lives at the community center. We may be too late to help Ruben Solis, but I’d rather not be too late for Mickey Ritz.”

  “Tell me where to go.”

  Ray did. In less than twenty minutes, they had pulled up outside the community center. There was already a cruiser parked in front, and a uniformed cop was doing his best to keep neighbors and onlookers off the property.

  Ray and Vega flashed their badges and went inside. The first person Ray saw was the white woman who had been helping out with the cooking earlier. She was standing in the hallway, near the door. “You’re a detective, right?” she asked.

  “I’m with the Crime Lab,” Ray corrected. “Sam Vega here is a detective.”

  “I want to know what’s being done to help Mickey,” she declared. “These officers here don’t seem to know anything at all.”

  “They’re patrol officers,” Vega said. “Not part of the investigation. And even if they did know anything, they wouldn’t be at liberty to tell you.”

  “But you? You’re part of the investigation?”

  “We just got here, ma’am. The investigation begins now.” Vega flipped open a notebook with a wire spiral at the top. “Do you mind telling me your name?”

  She gave it to him. Her eyes wouldn’t be still, but darted this way and that, as if afraid the attackers might return from any direction. “Were you here when Mr. Ritz was abducted?” Vega asked.

  “Yeah, I was. He lives here, you know.”

  “His apartment is off his office,” Ray said. “He told me.”

  “Yeah, well, he likes to be on the scene in case there’s some kind of emergency. So he can open the doors, get the community whatever support he can on a moment’s notice. And sometimes, if there’s someone in the neighborhood who doesn’t have a place to stay, he’ll let them sleep on the premises. So he likes to have a couple of staff people on hand at night.”

  “And you’re one of those people?”

  “Honey, nobody’s been with Mickey as long as I have. I used to be married to him, way back when. We were just kids, really, then. Married too young, what a mistake. But he was quite a guy. Still is, for that matter. Just not someone I could stay married to, now or then.”

  The name she had given wasn’t Ritz. But she might not have taken his name. She might have given it up after their divorce, might even have remarried.

  “So what happened tonight?”

  “I was going to bunk in one of the community rooms. I think you saw it, the one with the TVs and the board games? One of the sofas there is a hideaway bed. There was a family, temporarily homeless because of a fire at their apartment complex, using another room, and Mickey wanted me around as backup. If someone needed something that we didn’t have handy, one of us would have to go out for it, and there has to be someone employed by the center on the premises at all times, if there are guests here.”

  “Was anyone else here?”

  “Candy hadn’t gone home yet. She was making the bed up with me, then she was going to take off.”

  “Candy’s another employee?” Vega asked.

  “Volunteer. There are only four paid employees, rest of the staff are volunteers.”

  “That’s a noble thing,” Ray said.

  The woman shrugged, wiped an errant lock of hair away from her face. “I guess. Anyway, somebody knocked on the door. I had my hands full with the bed, so Candy went to see who it was. Next thing I know, she screams, just a little scream, you know? Like, cut off.”

  “Go on,” Vega urged.

  “These three dudes came inside. They had guns. Candy was holding her neck, I guess one of the guys punched her or something. They waved the iron at me and told me to keep quiet. I told them I wouldn’t make a peep. By then, Mickey was coming out of his office. They pointed their
guns at him, told him he was going for a ride. He said no, and one of the guys shoved his piece against Candy’s chest. He would start with her, he said, then he was going to shoot me, if Mickey didn’t go easy. At that point, Mickey gave in. He told them not to hurt us, we had nothing to do with anything. The men agreed, and they left with Mickey.”

  “Is Candy still here?” Ray asked.

  “I keep a flask of something out in the car, for emergencies. Not while I’m driving, you know,” she added quickly. “I gave her a couple snorts and that calmed her down a little.”

  “We generally like crime witnesses to be sober when we talk to them,” Vega pointed out.

  “Listen, I hadn’t of medicated her some, she wouldn’t be talking to anyone. She was a wreck.”

  “Can you describe the men?” Ray asked.

  “I can describe their guns. Big and mean looking. The guys, I hardly noticed. Latino, I think, or something else. Dark skin, but not African-American.” She nodded toward Vega, then Ray. “More like you than you.”

  “Surely you see plenty of Latinos on the job here,” Vega said.

  “Yeah, but like I said, once I saw the guns, I stopped looking anyplace but at those. When you think one might be used on you . . . it gets your attention, let’s say.”

  “Understandable,” Ray said. “Did they say anything else, before they left?”

  “Not to me. I had Candy, and I was trying to calm her down, and they talked to Mickey for maybe a minute. Then they were all gone and I was dialing 911.”

  “You did the right thing, ma’am,” Vega said. “Did the other family see anything? The folks who are staying here?”

  “They’ve been sleeping in a car for a week, four of them. They were probably out the second their heads hit the pillow. Didn’t wake up until that car came tearing in with its siren going.”

  “All right, ma’am,” Ray said. “Where can we find Candy?”

  “She’s in the kitchen. Still got my flask, too. If there’s anything left in it, I could use a taste.”

  “We’ll mention it,” Vega said. “Thanks for your help.”

  Ray showed him the way to the kitchen. Candy had indeed polished off the flask. Ray wished she hadn’t done that. She had also scrubbed her face and neck red with a kitchen sponge, probably eliminating any trace evidence that might have been left on her skin. She had a bruise on her throat that would be ugly by morning. Her speech was slurred, and when Vega introduced himself as a detective, she fell against him, clinging to him like a teenybopper to a pop star. For all Ray knew, she had done the same to the other woman, and to the uniforms who had responded to the 911 call. So much for trace from her clothing.