Playing With Death Read online

  Despite working together for three years, Rose knows nothing more about her superior. Baptiste has no family photos on her desk to accompany the framed Bureau graduation certificate hanging on the wall of her office.

  Baptiste glances up. ‘You took your own sweet time.’

  ‘Came as fast I could without running a red light. Fontaine is a real charmer. Could hardly tear myself away from him.’

  ‘Well, now you’re here, get your fat ass into gear.’ Baptiste gestures towards the black dome. ‘Come and meet Gary Coulter.’

  Rose steps across the rubber mats and approaches the blackened desk. Where the usual tall-backed office chair should be squats an inky black mass, blistered and peeling, the chair seemingly melted underneath and over the victim. The dome turns out to be the top of the victim’s head, angled back, mouth agape in a silent scream. All the other facial features are fused into a charred mess. It is impossible to recognize this as the same man in the photographs hanging on the landing walls.

  Every inch of his body seems to be burnt charcoal, and what looks like strips of flesh curl up or hang loose, together with a few wiry strands, possibly from the chair. The body is twisted awkwardly, its limbs at unnatural angles. The heat from the flames that engulfed Coulter had burned fiercely enough to meld the body into the plastic cover and padding of the chair, so it is hard to tell where the body ends and the chair begins. A sooty dark patch is smeared across the ceiling and over the walls. The stench of charred flesh and rubber fills the room, heavy and sickening. The body is still smoking a little. Rose steps back, feeling the burnt corpse’s heat in the air.

  ‘Handsome fellow, isn’t he?’ says Baptiste. She looks up and sees the expression on Rose’s face. ‘You all right?’

  Rose nods. ‘Fine. Just wasn’t sure what to expect.’

  ‘Goes with the job.’

  ‘Fontaine seems pretty sure it’s just a random fire,’ Rose says, looking up at the windows. They are shut, and some are shattered – no doubt from the intense heat of the blaze – but the internal security locks are still in place and look undisturbed.

  ‘No sign of a break-in. Not up here, nor on any of the doors or windows in the building. If this isn’t an electrical fault, then whoever did it knew how to get past Coulter’s security systems. That, or Coulter let him in.’

  ‘Have we considered suicide?’ Rose asks, before she sees the scornful look flash across her superior’s face. Rose shrugs. ‘I like to keep an open mind.’

  ‘Oh yeah? You know what they say about open minds, girl. You open them too far and your brain falls out . . . Suicide, huh? He pours gasoline all over himself and lights up? You smell any gas?’ Baptiste shakes her head. ‘Suicide is out. It’s either an accident or murder . . .’

  Rose glances at the desk. There’s the partial melted remains of a laptop, which could hold some clues if there’s any data that can be retrieved from the hard disk. ‘If anyone got in here they will have left a trace. There’s CCTV at the end of the street, which we should be able to check out. The vic’s security hardware looks state of the art – maybe Cyber can take a look.’

  ‘Way to go, Blake. We’ll find out soon as we leave the apartment. Meantime, there’s Coulter. We need to know more about him and how the hell he died. How do you even begin to go about lighting a fire like this?’

  Rose crouches down beside the body in the chair and examines it closely. ‘Coulter wasn’t dead when he burned. His body’s twisted all out of shape. Look at the limbs . . . Jesus, can you imagine it? If this is a murder then whoever did it wanted him to suffer as he died.’

  ‘That’s a whole lot of hate right there. Maybe he did something to deserve it.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘This doesn’t look like a robbery gone wrong. If it was a professional hit then it’d be clean. Bullet to the head, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What if they were sending a message? You know, see what you get when you play with fire.’

  ‘Nice idea. Maybe some mileage in that. We’ll work on his background. If you piss a perp off bad enough for them to do this, then chances are someone will know something about it.’

  Rose thinks it looks like Coulter himself must have been the seat of the fire. Everything from the head down is a black, glistening mess. She stares at the charred flesh in front of her for a moment before it hits her. She carefully separates the plastic chair remains from Coulter’s back.

  ‘Apart from that rubber stuff that’s burned onto him, there’s no sign of clothing. No shirt, no shoes, and there’s something else missing.’

  ‘What’s that, hon?’

  ‘I can’t find any trace of ropes, cuffs, wires, ties. Look, his arms are loose.’

  ‘Shit, you’re right. Nothing.’

  ‘Which means he just sat there while it happened to him.’

  ‘No way. You just sit there and let someone fry you? Fuck that.’

  Rose shrugs. ‘Maybe you do if they’re holding a gun to your head. Or you were sedated. There’s no sign of a struggle.’

  ‘You think? Me, if I was on fire, I sure as hell wouldn’t sit still.’

  ‘Maybe we’re looking at a suicide after all.’

  ‘So, Coulter comes home from a day at the office—’

  ‘Maybe this is his office,’ Rose says. ‘Looking at all the computer equipment and the takeaways, he’d been absorbed with something.’

  ‘OK, so he comes up to his study, takes his clothes off and sits, naked, at his desk and then sets fire to himself. Believe that?’

  ‘I’m not finding it easy,’ Rose concedes.

  ‘So where are his clothes?’

  There’s the blackened end of a belt curling out from underneath the couch. Rose crosses the room. ‘Pants and shirt. No socks, underwear. Could be underneath, or he could have still been wearing them. There’s something else there, looks like, uh, a plastic wrapper or something. Better leave it all in place for forensics to come back and have another look.’

  Baptiste surveys the room. ‘Guys, eh? Same old story. They think there’s a place for everything, and everything ends up all over the place. Well, OK. Coulter takes his clothes off and sits at his desk in his underwear, and then there’s a fire. Started by him, or by persons unknown . . . Still getting nowhere, Rose.’

  This is not a promising start to the investigation. A dead man, burned alive, while he sits at his desk, writhing in agony. Rose returns to the body and sees the faint outline of a pattern on the arm of the charred corpse.

  ‘Rosie! Baptiste!’ A cheery voice shatters the quiet and stillness in the study.

  Rose and Baptiste flinch.

  ‘Jesus, Owen, you scared the shit out of me!’ Baptiste says, hand on her chest.

  Rose turns and grimaces at the fashionably late arrival of her colleague, Owen Malinski.

  4.

  ‘Can’t say I like what he’s done with the place. Sort of “Burnt Gothic”,’ Owen says. He’s pulling on some crime scene overalls over his jeans and tan leather jacket. His blue flannel shirt is open at the neck where his FBI lanyard hangs. His clothes have dark streaks from the rain and beads of water glisten in his hair.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ says Baptiste. ‘I didn’t notify you.’

  ‘Didn’t have to. Word gets round and, truth be told, I’ve been looking at computer screens for the last month and need something else to do before my brain turns to mush . . . Are you saying you don’t want me to take a look?’

  Rose grins then turns to Baptiste. ‘He could be useful. The more eyes on this the better.’

  Baptiste waves him forward. After training at Quantico, Owen had shown her the ropes at the San Francisco field office. He hobbles slightly when he walks, still a long way from recovering from the gunshot wound to his knee that he took at Koenig
’s cabin. Rose feels a wave of warmth mixed with a pang of guilt. If only her shot had found its target that night.

  ‘As you brought it up, how is the hunt for DarkChild going?’ Baptiste asks.

  Owen scratches his jaw. ‘He hasn’t been in the chat rooms the last few days. We’re getting close though.’

  DarkChild, one of the inner circle of the Swarm, a hacktivist group, had broken into the Department of Defense network and defaced its homepage. The hackers had followed that up by taking down WadeSoft’s Multimedia Interactive Assistant system for several days. For the millions who rely on MIA, that was a real bitch of a situation, Rose recalls. Apprehending DarkChild would be a major boost for the San Francisco field office, and for Owen too. Rose looks at his leg. ‘How goes it, Long John?’

  ‘Still having physio on it. But it’s not going to get much better than it is. Still, could have been a lot worse.’ He shoots Rose a sympathetic glance. He knows she feels that it is her fault.

  Owen paces towards Coulter’s body.

  ‘Oh my God, what is that smell?’ he says, pinching his nose.

  Owen slips on his thin black glasses and pulls out his pocket flashlight, pointing the beam at the body.

  ‘Evening, Mr Chargrill. I’d say he’s a little overdone.’ He turns to Rose. ‘Did you see? There’s plastic residue around his face and some sort of . . . gunk.’

  ‘Is that a wetsuit?’ she asks.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Owen murmurs. There’s no mistaking the tang of burned rubber.

  ‘Pen. Give me a pen,’ Rose says.

  ‘We’re not supposed to touch the body, you know that,’ Baptiste cuts in.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt him.’ Owen slides a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket and hands it to Rose. Where the shoulder used to be there’s a charred sliver of what she earlier took to be muscle, peeling back from the rest of the joint. She presses it down against the shoulder with the pen. The sliver gives easily and stretches out to reveal a faint pattern on the surface, a cross hatch on the scorched material.

  ‘What is that?’ asks Baptiste stepping over her to get a better look. ‘Is that . . . flesh?’

  ‘Not muscle. See the pattern? Too regular, and it feels like . . . rubber. Or something like that. Wetsuit, maybe, like I said.’ She lifts the pen and the sliver curls back. Rose runs her eye over the body and points to another patch across Coulter’s stomach. There’s no mistaking it this time. There’s something there that is not flesh, and not like any cloth. The texture is better preserved and it yields easily under the end of the pen, like rubber.

  Rose frowns. ‘What the hell was he wearing a wetsuit for?’ She thinks there’s something familiar about the look of the suit, but she can’t put her finger on it.

  ‘There’s only one kind of diving you do on dry land,’ says Owen. ‘And you sure as hell don’t need to wear a wetsuit to do it.’

  ‘What the fuck was Coulter doing?’ Baptiste asks.

  Rose shakes her head. ‘Damned if I know.’

  The bones in Coulter’s right hand crack softly as the flesh and rubber cool, relaxing the body’s tension.

  Owen makes a face. ‘Oh my God, that’s rank.’

  There’s a sound of clattering in the hall. The coroner’s gurney has arrived. Rose takes out her smartphone, captures some pictures of the body and the blackened room.

  Owen leans close. ‘Should get a selfie. You know, for your profile picture.’

  Baptiste says: ‘I’m not sure there’s much else for us to look at in here for the moment. We’ll keep it off limits until we get the autopsy from the coroner and any leads from the forensics labs.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Owen says.

  ‘Thanks, fellas.’ Rose nods to the ambulance men, who wheel the gurney with a heavy plastic body bag into the apartment.

  Out on the landing Owen notices the dull red glimmer of a security camera in the coving at the top of the stairs. ‘I’ll have someone see if there’s anything useful recorded on that.’

  ‘If it is murder, then what could anyone ever do to deserve a death like this?’ asks Rose.

  ‘Beats me,’ says Baptiste. ‘While we’re waiting for the coroner and forensics, we need to find out about the vic. Who is Gary Coulter? Where is he from? Where does he work? Has he got friends? Family? Any hobbies of note?’

  ‘Well we know he’s got suction with the DoD,’ Rose comments.

  Owen frowns. ‘Defense? How so?’

  Baptiste sighs. ‘That’s why we’re Johnny-on-the-spot. We got the call to take this on as soon as word of the vic’s name got out. Which means someone’s been keeping a very close eye on Coulter.’

  Owen shakes his head. ‘That’s the kind of someone I really don’t want up in my shit.’

  ‘You need to man up a little, sugar. We’re the feds. We’re the guys people should be afraid of. Let’s get to it. We’ll start with the neighbours.’

  5.

  Robbie, cloaked in his dark hoodie, stands with his father as they bid Scarlet and Harry goodbye from the porch.

  ‘See ya later, Robbo!’ Harry says, reaching out to ruffle the boy’s fringe. Robbie pretends to smile, before pulling the hoodie down over his face even further. He sort of likes these evenings, but feels more comfortable playing on his smartphone, or watching TV.

  ‘Teenagers, they never change,’ Harry says with a grin as he heads down the steps.

  ‘Good luck with the senator’s debates. One down, two more to go, right?’ Scarlet says, pecking Jeff on the cheek as she waves at Robbie. They head towards Scarlet’s sports car. Jeff closes the front door as they drive away. He leaves the porch light on for Rose.

  Jeff sighs. ‘Shame Mom was called out again. But I think we had a good time.’

  ‘Yeah, it was OK,’ Robbie murmurs.

  ‘And, on the plus side, it means you can stay up and we can watch the game,’ Jeff says, breaking into a wide grin. Robbie forces a smile as they enter the open-plan living room. The curved 50-inch TV screen sits on a black glass table. On the walls is an impressive-looking surround-sound system. Robbie knows his dad loves gadgets, and they always have the best, most up-to-date models that money can buy. Mom always tells him off about it though. She doesn’t see the difference between the old and new models.

  ‘TV: on,’ Jeff commands. ‘ESN, major league baseball, Bay Area.’

  The sound of the stadium fills the room. Jeff joins Robbie on the sofa. He’s a major Giants fan, and they’re doing pretty well in the World Series.

  Robbie peers at his father. Can we go see a real game one day?’

  ‘Why sure, but you won’t get to see it so well. On the TV they have all the replays, so you don’t miss anything.’

  ‘Come on!’ Jeff shouts at the screen. Lopez has just cleared second base.

  A chime comes from his pants pocket. He pulls his smartphone out and looks at the screen, then pulls it close to him so Robbie can’t see. Robbie figures it must be important. After all, his dad is trying to help Senator Keller keep his job.

  While texting, Jeff asks Robbie, ‘How’s all your studying going? For your SATs? They’re important, you know.’

  ‘I know, I’m working hard.’

  ‘Good. That’s my boy. Robbo-Cop.’

  His son wishes that nickname had died long ago.

  Robbie wants to say how his concentration has been poor recently, how his friends are talking about lots of strange things. Sexual-sounding things. But at home, no one seems to talk. His mom can rarely discuss her cases, and his dad doesn’t talk much about his political campaigning.

  ‘When do you think Mom will be back?’

  ‘Could be a while. Those crime scenes can be . . . messy.’

  Robbie wants to talk, but his dad is on his smartphone. Here, but not here.

 
; A commercial break flashes across the screen. There are quick close-up shots of a sleek silver coffee machine. ‘Introducing the SmartCaf,’ a female voice-over says. ‘Control your coffee maker from your mobile device and save yourself up to five minutes in the morning. SmartCaf can also have multiple users, making it perfect for the office too. SmartCaf requires water.’

  Jeff looks up. ‘Very useful. I might get that.’

  Another commercial starts. A black glove being pulled on, a headset sliding down over a man’s face. Robbie’s eyes brighten.

  ‘Dad! This is the new Skin advert!’

  It looks like a car commercial, all black and silver. Moody lighting. Quick cuts between computer-generated triad henchmen fighting in the streets of Hong Kong, a soldier firing an assault rifle in a war zone, a man swimming in deep ocean. An orchestral score soars grandly. Robbie catches his breath as he reads the captions that fade over each other on the screen:

  The Skin.

  Fully compatible with the StreamPlex, includes SkyDive bundle.

  #BetterThanReal.

  Pre-order now.

  He thinks how awesome it would be to live in that world, rather than this one. Real life sucks.

  ‘Are you gonna pre-order it?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ says his dad.

  Jeff’s smartphone rings and buzzes.

  ‘Hey, Robbo, I gotta do something that may take a few minutes – be back as soon as I can.’ Jeff leaves the sofa, heads upstairs towards his study. He answers his smartphone. ‘Hey, you . . . what you doing this time of night?’

  Robbie sits alone trying to follow the baseball game for a few moments but his attention soon wanders. He leaves the TV on, drifts upstairs to his bedroom. It’s painted a light blue, with a single bed and a desk by the window. He pulls his drapes to. There are a few books on the shelves but mostly gadgets and console accessories. He falls onto his bed, picks up his smartphone. He often sleeps with his smartphone in his bed. It makes him feel safe.