Smoke and Mirrors (Goosey Larsen Book 2), page 3
“I’m assuming that since y’all are such dedicated law enforcement professionals, you’ve already taken the time to become familiar with the particulars of this assignment.” Heads nodded up and down across the room. The safest thing to do was to ride the tide, so I allowed my head to bob along with the waves.
“That’s good. That’s real good.” He stopped to hitch up his duty belt one more time. “But just to make sure we’re all singing from the same hymnal…” He paused for a moment right then, looking me up and down in a way that made me feel underdressed. “…let’s go over the facts just one more time. This morning, sometime between 0300 and 0330, Team One patrol officers responded to a structure fire at number twelve Sires Street. By the time they arrived, the front of the building was fully engulfed in flames.”
The Captain was still looking directly at me, so I did my best to bite back a yawn. He wrinkled his nose but looked away and continued. “As it turns out, the tenant was home in bed at the time of the fire.” He clicked off the facts from memory while most of the cops scribbled down notes to create the impression that they actually cared about what happened. “Mister Carl Thompson. White male. Twenty-two years old. College of Charleston student, naturally. Suffered third degree burns over most of his body. While recovering at the Medical University, he told Detective Powers that he’d made his way outside immediately after smelling smoke. Only seconds later, the front porch collapsed.”
The room had fallen into an awkward silence, so naturally it fell to me to liven things up a little. I raised my hand and spoke up without waiting to be called on. “At least he had sense enough to get out, huh Cap? That’s more than you can say for most of these college kids!”
The shifting of chairs made an eerie screeching sound as the collected bodies rotated around to face me. Every eye in the room was staring directly at me, and even Katie Maslow wore a shocked look across her wide face.
There was another long, uncomfortable moment of silence before Captain Russell’s icy glare thawed just enough for his lips to move. “Unfortunately, Detective Larsen, you are correct in your assessment of these children’s overall intelligence. But since it’s painfully obvious that you don’t have a clue as to what’s going on, you should probably know the rest of the story before you open your trap again.”
I felt my face go hot as I slumped back down in my seat. Finally, after another long stare of warning, the Captain went on. As he spoke, his beady little eyes bore a hole into my skull. “Mister Thompson had been out drinking at several bars on King Street last night, as our college students have a tendency to do. During the course of the evening he met a young woman, Miss Summer Newberry, and she accompanied him back to his house. Unfortunately she didn’t wake up in time, and subsequently died of smoke inhalation.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment once more. I imagine that my color must have been a close match for Captain Russell’s usual shade, although his craggy mug had been permanently stained from a mixture of high blood pressure and pent-up rage. I could tell that my comment must have pissed him off beyond words, since he didn’t take even a minute to preach about the immorality of shacking up outside of wedlock. I tried to slump even further down in my chair. It wasn’t quite far enough.
Slipper leaned over to hiss in my ear. “Nice one, cool breeze.”
The Captain took another deep breath, and I braced for the worst. It looked as if he was about to really let me have it, right there in front of God and everyone, but thankfully the hallway door swung open just in time. It slammed against the wall as my boss, Lieutenant Jim Cobb, barreled through it and into the Squad Room. Without even stopping to say please, he shoved a patrol rookie out of his chair and claimed it for his own.
Big Jim was looking a little red in the face himself, but that was probably a result of climbing the five steps in front of the back door. His faded uniform was soaked with rain, and it clung to his body’s wobbly rolls of fat. Jim’s hair, which he usually wore greased down into this impossible 1960s television news anchor part, had slipped down along one side of his skull. If there had been the slightest doubt in anyone’s mind about the authenticity of his follicles, it disappeared at that very moment. No question about it, Big Jim wore a toupee.
Jim didn’t even stop to acknowledge the Captain. He pulled up a brown paper Piggly Wiggly grocery sack, slamming it down on the table with a wet plop. Big Jim unrolled the top and pulled out three boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts, the one-dozen size, passing each one off to a neighbor. Once the sack was empty, he finally looked up at the Captain and flashed his trademark yellow grin. “As long as we’re stuck here on this bullshit, we might as well enjoy it! Am I right, sir?”
Captain Russell bit his lip, and I felt a rare moment of respect for my boss. Big Jim was only a Lieutenant, but ever since he’d turned in his retirement papers and taken two weeks’ vacation before coming right back to work a few years back, he could get away with saying things like that. If any mid-career cop ever pulled that stunt I guarantee there’d be a big bite mark in his ass, but my personal theory was that nobody ever felt like Jim Cobb was worth the effort. I mean sure, you can scream at somebody like that until you’re blue in the face, but it just won’t do any good. How can you expect to hurt a guy’s feelings when he’s got absolutely no shame in the first place?
Captain Russell took a deep breath. I had to hand it to the crusty old dude, he was doing an admirable job of keeping his composure under fire. “Thank you so very much for gracing us with your presence, Lieutenant Cobb. You know what they say: Better late than never.”
Jim flipped the Captain a thick, warty thumbs-up. “My pleasure, sir! No place I’d rather be than CPD!” He flashed another one of his trademark grins, possibly the phoniest one I’d ever seen, although it was surprisingly radiant. It might’ve just been the squad room’s fluorescent lighting, but I swear that his teeth seemed a lighter shade of yellow than usual.
Big Jim reached down deep into the grocery sack and pulled out a padded foam ring, which he set down on the exact center of his chair. Next he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and gently eased his wide bottom down, letting out a loud sigh of relief once firmly planted. We all watched as Jim sat there for a long moment before finally opening his eyes. He crumpled his grocery sack into a ball, then tossed it to the rookie he’d displaced. “Here, throw that out for me, Junior.”
All the while, Captain Russell just stood there giving Big Jim an evil stare. It was his very best facial expression, the one where he looks seconds away from shooting bloody daggers out of his corneas, but I doubt Jim noticed at all. See, he’s got this one lazy eye that usually just sort of hangs there, all shaky and unfocused. These days even Jim’s one good eye isn’t quite what it used to be.
It was a tense, silent showdown for at least half a minute, but eventually the Captain gave in. He unclenched his tiny fists and cleared his throat once again. “Detective Rothschild! Front and center!” Slipper and I both let out quiet groans as creaky old Abbie Rothschild stood up and shuffled towards the podium. That jerk had a lazy habit of dragging his feet as he walked, and his slip-on shoes were worn through to the point where they made this terrible scraping sound on the linoleum floor. That guy had been wearing the same pair of shoes every day for as long as I could remember. Abbie Rothschild was such a cheapskate that he’d probably never even put a pair of pennies into his loafers to begin with.
“Awright, ya heard what the Captain said. That’s why we’re all here.” He said the word “here” with this disgusting Boston accent which chopped the ‘R’ right off the end, making it sound like “heah”. I snatched a pen out of Slipper’s shirt pocket and began doodling on the table, doing my damndest to ignore Abbie, although that high-pitched Yankee voice had a way of slipping past my best defenses.
“Detective Powahs and I were out at the residence this morning with the Fire Department’s ah-son investigators. After reviewing the burn patterns, it was apparent that the point of origin was on the front porch. The fire spread quickly upward from there, into the front bedroom where those two lovebirds were sleeping.” Captain Russell shot him a dirty look at the passing mention of fornication, but Abbie kept right on trucking.
“The firemen found a number of dirty rags tossed down on the porch. Also, there were a couple of burnt matches and cigarette butts found in the front yard, although none of the tenants were smokers. Best we can tell, it looks as if an ah-sonist used the cigarettes to make a crude delay fuse that ignited the rags, which were soaked with some kind of accelerant. Gasoline, probably. The burn patterns led to this old couch the kid kept on the porch, and once the flames hit that, the polyester stuffing went up in seconds. The rest of that old, wooden house wasn’t far behind.”
So that was why Powers’ clothes had stunk so badly, I thought, as I took another look at the kid’s sooty face. Anyone with any sense at all would’ve just thrown their slacks into a dumpster after spending the day poking around a smoldering house, but not Jeff. I swear, some rookies have no common sense at all.
Rothschild took a long look around the room just in case there were any questions, but nobody was jumping in. Everyone was keeping their heads down, mourning the loss of their Saturday night and trying to avoid any type of eye contact. Abbie looked a little dismayed at the lack of audience participation, but he drove on regardless. “Judging by the materials used, and keeping in mind the location and the timeframe, I think it’s safe to say that last night’s fire was the work of the same serial ah-sonist that’s been targeting the downtown peninsula over the last five years.”
Slipper leaned in towards me and whispered, “First I’ve heard about a serial arsonist, and I work downtown. You know anything about that? You are still a detective, right?”
I shrugged. “Only cereal I know is Froot Loops.”
Thankfully, some kid from the patrol division was foolish enough to raise his hand. The shine on his boots marked him as another worthless member of Team Two, which covers both the rich and touristy sections of downtown. He was clearly a rookie as well, because he actually stood up when Abbie acknowledged him. “Sir, I’m sorry, but I’m new to the Department.”
Big Jim leaned forward in his chair, clapping a hairy-knuckled paw on the kid’s shoulder. “We’re sorry for you too, boy. Get out while you still can.” That got a good laugh from nearly everyone present, Captain Russell being the lone holdout.
The rookie blushed, but fought through the embarrassment. He obviously hadn’t been on the job long and didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. “Detective, what I meant to say was that I hadn’t heard anything official about a serial offender. Can you please give us some background information?” The kid finally sat back down, pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket, then looked up expectantly with his pen at the ready. Slipper sneered, and I groaned in agreement. It was simply unbelievable, all the collegey bookworms who were trying to pass themselves off as cops these days.
Abbie smiled, grateful for the opportunity to strut his stuff. I’d never noticed that dude’s teeth before, probably because I’d never been able to look past his greased handlebar mustache without getting the shivers, but that night I observed his choppers to be a glossy, almost reflective shade of white. There were thin gaps in between each tooth, all perfectly identical in width, and my guess was that they were evenly worn as a result of his re-using the same strand of dental floss every day. I swear, it must have tickled Rothschild to death back when those Democrat tree huggers first came out with that recycling nonsense. Overnight, Abbie went from being an old tightwad to a hip, environmentally conscious citizen of the earth.
“Well to be quite honest, young man, I really don’t have much more information to give ya.” Abbie stretched, pulling up on his duty belt. The dull black leather had long since faded to a flat shade of brown. “Other than the unique MO, there’s still not a whole lot of evidence to go on.”
Slipper leaned over again. “MO? What is that, some kind of detective speak? Can you translate?”
I nodded. “Stands for Male Offender.”
Abbie shuffled his way over to the bulletin board, next to where the Wanted posters of both Whitey Bulger and Osama Bin Laden were hanging just in case some clueless beat cop happened to spot them waiting in line for a carriage tour. He pointed at a big, faded wall map of the peninsula which had been yellow and peeling since I was a rookie. It wasn’t hard to imagine Captain Russell and all his redneck cronies gathered up around it during the Civil Rights era, plotting out the best ways to break up a desegregation rally. The only reason that no one had ever bothered to tear down that old map was that all the streets on it were still correct, seeing as how nothing new had been built in Charleston since at least the Civil War.
Abbie waved his arm in the general direction of the Elliotborough and Cannonborough neighborhoods, this matching pair of crapholes where only the crackheads and the college students were stupid enough to live. Those two neighborhoods were almost exclusively made up of ramshackle, dilapidated houses. “Over the past four yeahs”, he started, and I winced and clapped my hands over my ears at the sound of that nasally Boston accent. “Theah’s been a series of suspicious house fires in these areas, almost all of them within a four block radius of Spring Street. Up until last night, only vacant or abandoned houses have been torched.”
All eyes were on Abbie as he traced an outline of the target areas, but I couldn’t bring myself to look. Rothschild was a cold-blooded Yankee transplant, which meant that he could break a sweat walking down King Street in December. I knew without a doubt that there must have been two dark sweat stains forming under his short sleeves, and I saw no need to make my eyes suffer more than they already had from seeing Katie Maslow in a state of near nudity.
That same brazen patrol rookie must have had more guts than me, though. He actually made eye contact with Abbie while raising his hand high in the air again. No sweat stains coming from his armpits, so I pegged the kid as a local boy. “What is it about these fires that makes them so suspicious, Detective?”
Abbie stared at the kid with a look of disdain that only a career detective could manage. “Because somebody set them. Is that good enough for ya?”
The kid withered as he scribbled something down in his notebook, probably a reminder not to ever ask questions during roll call. Well, I thought, at least he’s finally learning the ropes. Better late than never.
Abbie paused for a long second before going on. “The follow up investigations on all these cases were conducted by SLED’s arson investigators, in cooperation with our Fire Department. All of the suspicious fires were similar in that an accelerant was detected near the point of origin. Gasoline in most cases, but in a couple of the earliest blazes they found it to be lighter fluid. Our theory is that this suspect will pour a load of gas over a pile of old rags, which he uses as kindling to set the front porch burning. In the more recent cases the guy’s gotten sophisticated and used a lit cigarette as a way of delaying the ignition.”
I looked around the room and noticed that a couple more officers had started taking notes. Not Big Jim, though. That guy was leaning back on two chair legs, arms crossed, looking just as cool as a man sitting on a hemorrhoid donut could. He caught my eye, winked, and raised his own paw high in the air. Lifting that massive arm was a slow process, since beneath all those liver spots were some, weak flabby triceps.
Abbie tried his best not to notice him, but Big Jim had this way of making himself hard to miss. He pulled rank by calling out sweetly, “Oh, Detective Rothschild?”
Being only a Sergeant, Abbie pretty much had to respond. “Yes sir, Lieutenant?”
“That’s some good information on the actual crimes, but what can you tell us about the suspect? Who could possibly be behind these nefarious deeds?” Big Jim was doing his best to conceal a smug grin, and I knew something was up. That question wasn’t just loaded, it was stuffed.
Abbie scratched his head, then discreetly wiped his hand on his pants leg. Probably trying to save some of that Vitalis to use again, I thought. “Well. Sir. We do not have any actual suspects at this time.” Captain Russell shot a glower his way, and he hurried on. “But we do have a couple theories we’re actively pursuing.”
Jim smiled. He snatched a pen from the cop sitting next to him, almost like he was actually going to take notes or something. “Please, go on.”
“Since all of these fires were set with similar methods, we’re working under the assumption that most, if not all of them, were set by the same person. And since the most common characteristic of any serial offender is that they’re a white male, the most likely suspect down in our target area would be a student from the College of Charleston.”
That same hopeless patrol rookie piped up once again. “Or a recent graduate!” He looked around the room self-consciously, probably since he couldn’t have been more than six months out of college himself. “Because the fires have been going on for a couple years now, I mean.”
Big Jim gave the kid another hammy pat on the shoulder. “Good thinking, young man.”
Slipper leaned over and whispered, “What the hell’s gotten into your boss?”
I just shrugged. Big Jim definitely had an ace up his sleeve, but there was no telling what it could be.
Rothschild went on. “But we also have to consider another motive, one apart from the sheer exhilaration that might motivate a serial arsonist. Keep in mind that these areas have seen an awful lot of gentrification in recent years.” A few of the eager beaver note-takers looked up in confusion at the ten cent word, but if anyone had been considering asking the definition, they wisely decided against it. A move like that would only prolong the briefing, and our misery with it.
