Playing With Death Read online

  Harry chuckles. ‘Boy, how things have changed. Time was when your home was your own and no one could bother you once you closed the front door. Now they can get you anytime, anywhere. You’ll all be screwed up in the head if the world carries on this way, I tell you.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Rose says, smiling.

  Scarlet checks her smartphone.

  ‘Oooh, my pic’s got sixteen likes.’ She scrolls down. ‘He looks cute. See?’ She holds up the phone to reveal a cheesy shot of a slick-haired guy in a business suit, tanned and expensively dentured. She reads the profile. ‘Oh no, he likes jazz. Sorry, babe.’ She flicks the profile away.

  ‘Harsh,’ Jeff says. ‘I mean, Rose likes country music, but I still married her. No one’s perfect.’

  ‘Well with this I can find Mr Perfect.’

  There’s a single electronic tone from Rose’s smartphone and she reaches into her jacket pocket and takes it out. She reads the message on the screen and stands up.

  ‘Excuse me for a moment.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Jeff frowns. ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘Criminals don’t work nine to five,’ Rose replies. ‘Or haven’t you heard about that?’

  There’s laughter as Rose retreats to the kitchen and hits the quick-dial button. A deep female voice coughs before speaking.

  ‘Baptiste.’

  ‘I got the message,’ says Rose. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Hey, sugar, there’s something I want you to take a look at. There’s been a fire in Palo Alto. Possible arson. One person dead. Happened a few hours back. Local PD are handling it. Or were, until we got the call.’

  ‘Who from? I mean, since when did the Bureau deal with this kind of thing? Arson? Suspected arson? What’s that got to do with us?’

  ‘Normally? Nothing. But this isn’t exactly normal.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ll see for yourself when you get there. I’m on the scene now and I’ll send you the address soon as I hang up. Get there as fast as you can.’

  ‘Now? Tonight?’

  ‘Yes, tonight,’ Baptiste replies testily.

  ‘But I’ve got my family here. At dinner. Can’t it wait until morning?’

  ‘No chance. This has come down from the top.’ Baptiste lowers her voice slightly. ‘Seems that someone at the Defense Department has requested our assistance.’

  ‘Defense?’ Rose feels a twinge of anxiety. ‘But this isn’t their jurisdiction, any more than it’s ours.’

  ‘Technically, no,’ Baptiste admits. ‘But someone at the Pentagon has asked for our help, so we’re to head up the case with our experience, our labs. Seems there’s a computer angle to it – that’s where Defense comes into it. In any case, Palo Alto PD hasn’t got the budget for this kind of investigation.’

  Rose sighs. It is true local police forces are undermanned and struggling to deal with the rising tide of crime. Civil offences and minor crimes are all but overlooked, and many forces have ceased to even investigate them. The amount of technology-related crime has soared in recent years, everything from bitter ex-partners posting intimate pictures online to fraud on a massive scale, but departmental budgets including the Bureau’s have not increased to cope.

  Baptiste continues. ‘What I have been told is that the vic has recently been accused of stealing defence contractor secrets, which is our jurisdiction. Defense want a tight lid on it. I don’t know any more than that. We’ve just been given the word and told to deal with it, like now. And now I’m telling you. So you better skip from soup to nuts in five and get in your car. They want our best agents on the case and you’re still my best agent.’

  Rose sighs. She owes Baptiste.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘That’s my girl. You can get to the scene in forty-five minutes. Make it forty.’ Her faintly husky smoker’s voice softens: ‘Sorry to get you at home . . . but I really need you to take a look at this, while it’s hot, so to speak. This isn’t your usual murder scene.’

  ‘Murder? I thought you said it was arson?’

  ‘Feels like murder to me. It could be just a damn fire, but the DoD wants to be sure. At any rate, this one’s unusual, and then some. Christ . . . It’s a fucking mess. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Our forensics guys are already on the road.’ There’s a brief pause. ‘Hope you haven’t eaten anything tonight.’

  The line goes dead. Rose bites back on her frustration and anger before she thumbs the off button and thrusts the smartphone back in her pocket. She takes a deep breath and leaves the kitchen.

  Maybe a new case is what she needs, so she can let Koenig go.

  ‘Guys, I gotta run.’

  ‘Right now?’ Jeff asks, his soft voice hardening.

  ‘Sorry, honey. It happens. You’ll have to take over. The salmon is in the oven. Sauce in the microwave. Make sure Robbie gets to bed before ten thirty and no games after ten.’

  He nods.

  Rose hurriedly kisses her son, her sister and Harry. Jeff cranes his neck to kiss her on the lips but Rose deflects his kiss onto her left cheek. His texting to Pandora has been very regular lately. It’s hard to avoid being suspicious.

  ‘See you later, guys.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Jeff calls after her.

  There’s a locked desk in the hall. Rose slips her key in, opens a shallow drawer and picks up her badge and the Glock 22 .40 cal in its holster. She pockets the badge and tucks the holster clip over her belt. Her palm presses against the cold metal grip of the gun so it hangs neatly over her right hip.

  As soon as she steps outside she is no longer a mother and wife. She’s Bureau through and through. It’s a trick she has made herself learn. You can’t mix two different worlds at once, not without fucking them up. That’s one thing Rose holds on to. By the time she reverses her navy Changan out into the street, the dinner party is a distant memory. She feels a familiar quickening of her heartbeat as she drives towards the crime scene and the gravelly voice of Baptiste echoes inside her head.

  It’s the uneasy tone that troubles Rose. Baptiste had served fifteen years before Rose joined her team. There was nothing that she had not seen in that time, and nothing unsettled her.

  Well, almost nothing.

  Rose remembers the aftermath at the cabin, when Koenig had escaped. She had noticed Baptiste sitting alone on a felled log, facing away, in a moment of private reflection. She seemed to be crying. Rose drew back, knowing she’d witnessed a rare, intimate moment for her boss, but Baptiste had looked up and seen her. She’d wiped her face and fixed it into a frown as she stood up. They’d never spoken about it then, or since.

  As Rose drives towards Palo Alto, she wonders: what could possibly have unsettled Baptiste tonight?

  2.

  It is sheeting rain as Rose’s Changan rolls to a stop on the street in an affluent-looking neighbourhood in Palo Alto. She knows little about the area, except that it’s the kind of place she could never afford to live in. There are several parked police patrol cars, blue and red lights strobing Sand Creek Road.

  ‘You have reached your destination,’ the personalized satnav chimes from the dashboard. ‘Have a good evening, Rose.’

  A few other cars are parked up on the kerb as well as a fire engine and a forensics van. Two firefighters are rolling their hoses back into the truck. Police officers in glistening capes and covered caps provide a loose cordon to protect the scene and keep the civilians out. The lights are on in most of the houses down the street and in every window of the apartment building at the heart of the crime scene, illuminating the gleaming slivers of rain. Already there are several streaming news bloggers on site, holding their cellphones at arm’s length as they make their reports to the news hubs, vying for the breaking news fee. Rose is thankful that the networks have not sent an
y teams to the scene yet. But they will, and soon enough. And they’ll be hard to avoid.

  Water runs in torrents down the road into the drains as Rose opens her driver door. She pushes her umbrella up, heading quickly towards the trunk of her car. Inside she has a selection of equipment neatly zipped up in plastic packs. She grabs her flashlight, the one with the precise beam, and some clear polythene bags. These are standard items at a crime scene, but over the years Rose has learned to always take her own supplies.

  She passes the shared pool and barbecue area, softly lit by concealed lamps, avoiding puddles as she goes. Behind the taped-off area, the neighbours gawk from under their umbrellas as Rose approaches the property’s front gate. Looking up she sees the blackened first-storey window of what must be the victim’s apartment. She stoops under a cordon of the yellow crime scene tapes.

  Rose observes the various security features; the doors have to be buzzed open from the inside, and there is also CCTV. If this is indeed a murder, the perpetrator would either have known the victim or somehow bypassed these safeguards.

  At the sight of Rose, a young uniformed officer from Palo Alto PD steps up to her. ‘Identification, ma’am?’

  Rose takes out her badge shield and clips it onto her breast pocket. The policeman reads the FBI security hologram at the bottom of the shield: Senior Special Agent Rose Blake, Violent Crime, San Francisco Division. He nods and steps aside, tapping in her name and time of arrival on his tablet.

  ‘Who is the police officer in charge here?’ asks Rose.

  ‘Detective Fontaine – he’s inside.’ The policeman jerks his thumb behind him.

  Rose climbs the glistening steps to the front door, shakes her umbrella and folds it quickly as she enters. The hall of the victim’s apartment is bright white, although the firefighters have tramped dirt into the cream carpet and scuffed the walls. There’s a modern side table and several generic abstract paintings hanging on the walls, the kind that say more about the depth of a person’s wallet than the breadth of their taste. Several uniformed police officers and firefighters are clustered at the foot of the staircase. Rose turns her attention to the tall man with unruly hair in a black jacket who seems to be the one in authority.

  ‘Detective Fontaine?’

  ‘Yeah. And you?’

  ‘Special Agent Blake – FBI, Violent Crime,’ Rose replies, sensing that this is not a man who is concerned about getting on first-name terms.

  Fontaine peers down at her. ‘Violent Crime?’ He laughs. ‘Lady, this is a done deal. Ten gets you one this is a simple house fire. One casualty. Case solved. That’s what I already told your boss. You guys are here for nothing.’ He eyes the badge once again. Rose stifles a sigh of frustration.

  ‘Victim’s name?’

  ‘Gary Coulter. When the fire team got here, he was already dead. Took ’em ten minutes to put the blaze out. Gutted the study. Shame. An apartment in this area has got to be worth a piece of change.’

  Rose nods, but makes no move towards the staircase. Relationships between federal agents and local law enforcers are crucial, but sometimes tinged with resentment. The FBI usually only get involved with the most significant cases, and faced with uncooperative local officers it can be challenging not to appear arrogant, especially with the kind of cops who don’t think the Bureau has ‘earned’ the case. Fontaine is one of those. But Rose needs as much as she can glean from him.

  ‘So, what have you got?’

  ‘Not much. Coulter lived alone. The neighbour, Mrs Tofell, said she smelled burning and heard loud screaming. The lights cut out in the whole building, and when she stepped outside she could see flames and smoke in the study window. Called 911, fire team arrived first and we arrived shortly after. We’ve taken her statement.’

  ‘Anything else on the vic?’

  ‘We found Coulter’s wallet on the kitchen counter. Bank cards, workplace IDs. Worked freelance for some fancy computer hardware company, by the look of it.’

  The DoD hires many private contractors, supplying everything from additional military personnel to expertise on new technologies. Rose has had to deal with the Pentagon before and knows how unhelpful they can be when it comes to providing information necessary to an investigation. Even now, a few presidents on from the attack on the Twin Towers, with Islamic fundamentalists an ongoing threat, some officials are still fighting turf wars over funding and influence at the White House. Information is the currency of power, and vendetta, although in politics these days it seems there’s no longer any requirement to distinguish between true and false information. She pushes aside such thoughts. They are an unhelpful distraction at a crime scene, but these have been troubling times. Even if Coulter had suction at the DoD, he is still a dead human being, and it is his death that Rose is here to investigate.

  ‘What time was the fire?’

  Fontaine flicks through some notes. ‘Just after seven. Like I said, done deal. It’s all here.’ Despite being an asshole, Fontaine and his squad had done everything by the book.

  ‘Was the apartment door locked?’

  ‘Yeah, fire service guys had to break it down. Forensics are now taking pictures and dusting. Guess I’ll be handing over to you from here on.’

  He pauses and stares at her. ‘Rose Blake . . . You’re one of the leads on the Koenig case, right?’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Strange he’s just stopped. Maybe you guys scared him off for good.’

  ‘You ever hear of a serial killer going into retirement?’

  Fontaine smiles briefly. ‘Nope. But he’ll slip up again. Those crazy bastards always do.’ He turns and strides off down the hallway.

  Rose has only climbed a few steps before the smell hits her: roasted meat and the sharp tang of burned rubber. By the time she reaches the galleried landing the smell is a penetrating stench and she pinches her nostrils. There are several framed photos mounted on Coulter’s landing wall. Posed in some holiday pictures is a round-faced man with cropped blond hair and a neatly trimmed beard that does nothing to hide his fleshy jowls. There’s a small corridor leading off the landing, and outside a door at the end, two forensics guys in plastic overalls are packing evidence bags into cases. One looks up as Rose approaches and glances at her badge before he announces to his colleague, ‘More fed reinforcements.’

  He stands up to give Rose space to reach the doorway and hands her a pair of rubber gloves. She pulls them on and stretches her fingers to make sure they fit well. He gives her a disposable set of transparent overalls, shoe covers and a hairnet. Rose knows that when a crime scene has been subjected to fire, like this one, there is a risk that crucial evidence will be compromised. The most common contamination results come from police, first responders and witnesses.

  The forensic holds out a small tub of Noxzema, a minted gel.

  ‘You might want some. Smells like a torched abattoir in there.’

  Rose smears a small amount under each nostril.

  ‘Ready?’ asks the forensic.

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  He lifts the yellow tape for Rose to duck under as she clears her mind and feels the familiar surge of adrenalin, and the eerie sensation of entering a stranger’s home. A stranger she now has to get to know everything about. Anything and everything should be considered as evidence. Most homicides – if this is a homicide – are solved within seventy-two hours. As Rose takes her first step across the threshold, she knows the clock has already started.

  3.

  Rose enters the black hole that is the remains of Coulter’s study, now lit by bright portable floodlights. The fire has ravaged the soft cream carpets, sofa and bookcases into a twisted, charred mess. Scorch marks stain the light-blue painted walls.

  The forensics team has laid the ‘grid’ – a line of small blue rubber mats – across the room to the desk, and covered t
he area surrounding it. Those entering the crime scene stay on the mats to prevent any contamination of the evidence. Several numbered cards are propped up around the room to mark the location of the evidence the forensics team has taken. Rose notes there are very few of them, which is unusual if it’s a murder. The carpet is soaked from the fire hoses.

  Rose steps further into Coulter’s study. By the light of two portable LED floodlights she sees that it is a large room some twenty feet square with pale polished floorboards, now mostly scorched brown and black. It overlooks the small urban yard at the back of the condo building. The remains of a bookcase line one wall, loosely filled with charred novels, histories, travel guides, magazines and technical manuals. A quick glance at some of the undamaged spines reveals titles related to software programming, mathematics and erotic art.

  Against the opposite wall is a long, low couch, and in front of it is what’s left of a glass-topped table, a steel chess set melded into it. A standard lamp with a reading light lies stretched over the couch. At the far end, opposite the door, is a desk with an outsize computer monitor on it, now melted into a tortured lump. Two scorched filing cabinets stand against the wall beside the window. Rose hopes that some documents inside may have survived. She notices the windows in the study are cracked, most likely due to the fire, but it could be a sign of a break-in.

  Rose sees something dark just above and behind the monitor – a glistening, misshapen black dome. Piles of scorched takeaway boxes are scattered around the desk. Coulter looks like he was a shut-in, spending day upon day on his computer, too busy to eat in the kitchen. There is another bookshelf behind the desk, lined with technical manuals, stained by grey-white ash but not burnt by the fire.

  Flora Baptiste, special agent in charge of the San Francisco FBI field office, is standing to one side of the desk, gazing down at the seat. She is a tall woman in her late forties, with shoulder-length copper hair. Baptiste is mixed race, the daughter of a Haitian doctor and an American missionary who had gone to Haiti when it was ruled by ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier to do God’s work. Her mother’s affair with the handsome doctor was short-lived as he was murdered by some masked paramilitaries on the doorstep of his surgery. The missionary returned home to Maryland, where her daughter was born and raised as an American. Her skin colour and name are Baptiste’s only reminders of her father. That, and a lifelong determination to bring the guilty to justice.