Embers (18 page)

“Stay where you are.” Her finger flexed on the trigger. “I don’t know what you are, but nothing’s immune to bullets.”

He inclined his head. “True enough.” When he moved to turn away, Anya saw the glimmer of white gauze peeking out from his right collar. She
had
struck him the other night. For all his power, he wasn’t invincible. “I am what you could be, with the right teacher. . .”

“You’re what I could be if I was completely, entirely insane. Who would want to summon Sirrush from his dirt nap? Why?”

His gaze glowed—with magick or avarice, she couldn’t tell. “Sirrush is the city’s last hope. You’ll see. . .”

She heard footsteps racing up the grassy hill to the mausoleum, shouting. There had been enough cops at the firefighter’s burial to take down a small army, and they were coming.

“In here,” she called.

The arsonist laced his hands together. “You’re wasting time, Lieutenant Kalinczyk.”

“No. I’m keeping you from playing out your sick little fantasies.”

He smiled, seeing the police crowding behind the pierced iron door. “We’ll see whose fantasies are real.”

She’d thought that the Right Hand of Sirrush would put up more of a fight.

The cops and firefighters cut open the door with bolt cutters. Anya warned them that the suspect likely had “flammable substances and an ignition source” on his person, but he let them cuff him without incident, fire extinguishers at the ready. The Right Hand of Sirrush smiled behind the glass of the police car, the same way he smiled at her now behind the one-way glass at police headquarters.

Vross and his cronies looked through the glass at the man in the interrogation room. “His ID says his name’s Drake Ferrer.”

“Why does that name sound familiar?” Anya asked.

“Used to be a big-shot architect trying to revitalize the city. . . tried to raise some grant and private monies to tear down the warehouse district and some of the worst neighborhoods. Wanted to build low-income housing, schools, that kind of crap in their places. Real do-gooder. Couldn’t raise the money. He got the shit beaten out of him in a robbery several years back, and he dropped off the society pages. Hell, I’m surprised that he’s still here.”

Anya stared through the glass. He hadn’t seemed like a typical, nervous fire-starter. He’d been too poised for that. “Maybe the failure drove him around the bend.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Vross hitched his belt up over his considerable girth. “He says that he was minding his own business, looking at the design elements of the mausoleums when you took him prisoner. His lawyer’s on his way, making noises about unlawful imprisonment.”

Anya snorted. “You saw that note on my car.”

“There are no prints on the note. And we don’t know what the hell it means.”

“The prints at the warehouse scene, on the window grate. . . they’re his.”

“There are twelve sets of distinguishable prints on that grate. That’s assuming that the lab didn’t fuck up. None of ’em are his. . . at least, none of the ones they can find now.”

“Then he wore gloves. I’ve got his face on videotape at two of the scenes.”

“That’s circumstantial. He says he was at the school to pick up a teacher’s aide volunteer form and he was on the beauty shop street to look at a rental.”

Anya spun on him in frustration. “I shot him. Look at that wound on his shoulder.” She stabbed the glass with a finger.

“All that’s there is a burn. Could be a cauterization, could be who knows what. No record of him going to any emergency room that night.”

“I saw him.”

“Says you. It was dark. You also said that the arsonist had a blowtorch.” Sarcasm dripped from Vross’s voice. “You saw a guy that looked like him.”

“Where was he the night of the warehouse fire, then?”

“The dude’s got an alibi. He was at a high-society wedding. One of the commissioners was there. He’s got alibis for the other nights, too.”

She blew out her breath in frustration. “What are you saying to me, Vross? You working for the defense here?”

“I’m saying”—Vross crossed his arms over his stomach, and Anya could see the sweat stains in his armpits—“that we don’t have enough to hold this guy. You jumped the gun, and we got nothing. I’m saying that you made an ass of yourself at Neuman’s funeral, got his parents all riled up for no good reason. We’re going to be turning him loose in twenty-four hours.”

She slammed her fist on the wall. “How stupid are you? I just handed you this guy on a silver platter. There’s more than enough to take to a grand jury.”

“Watch your mouth with me, princess. There isn’t a case until I say there is.”

“The hell there isn’t.”

The door to the suspect observation area opened. Marsh stood in the doorway, still in his dress uniform.

“Call your bitch down, Marsh,” Vross snarled.

“Shut the fuck up, Vross,” Marsh told him.

Anya blinked. Marsh never swore.

“A word with you, please.” Marsh gestured to the hallway. Anya followed him out.

“Captain, I—” she began.

Marsh held up a finger, and her protests died away. “You just stepped on some very big toes, Lieutenant,” he said in a low voice.

“Vross isn’t. . .”

“I’m not talking about Vross. Vross is useless. I’m talking about your suspect. He’s got some friends in very high places.”

Anya’s cheeks burned. “But the evidence. . .”

“Does point in his general direction. But we need more. We need to be able to place him at the scene at the time of the fires. And we can’t. The DA won’t touch him in this case unless we’ve got a damn signed confession.”

“This is the guy, Marsh, the guy who was in the warehouse the other night. I
saw
him.”

“You and who else?”

Thinking of Brian lying in his hospital bed, Anya’s heart dropped. “The other witness is no shape to talk.”

“Get me more.” Marsh’s mouth was set in a hard line and he reopened the observation room door. “Get me enough to lock that son of a bitch up for the next fifty years. Put him at the scene.”

Anya stared at the man behind the glass. He’d kicked back in his seat, staring at the oneway glass. She could swear that he could see her behind it.

“I want to talk to him,” she said.

Vross began to protest, but Marsh held up his hand. “You didn’t get anywhere with him, right?”

“He just keeps saying he wants his lawyer.”

“Then, there’s nothing to be lost by letting her try.”

Vross crumpled his coffee cup in his hand and threw his electronic key card to the interrogation room door lock to her. It missed her head, and she plucked it from the air like a snake snapping up a bird. Her mouth quirked in amusement at him, but Anya could feel his glare on her back as she left the observation area.

Standing alone before the metal door to the interrogation room, she fingered the copper torque around her neck.

“Wake up, little dude,” she murmured.

She felt Sparky stir. He stretched, yawned against her hair, and took his full shape as he clambered down her jacket sleeve and pant leg. He stretched up to her hand, licked the keycard. He made a face, as if he could taste Vross’s fingerprints on it.

Anya swiped the card in the door lock slot. A green light flashed, and the door unlocked with a metallic thud. Anya let herself in, Sparky sidling beside her.

Ferrer leaned forward in interest. “Hello, again.”

She pulled up a chair opposite him, then rested her elbows on the table. She didn’t carry a notebook, a recorder, or have any deals on paper to offer him. But she knew he had been baiting her.

“Why are you here, Mr. Ferrer?” Conscious of the video camera over her head, she kept her tone civil.

“I think I already covered that with the police. You cornered me in the crypt, accused me of being a serial arsonist.” Amusement glinted in his good eye. She watched as his attention drifted from her face downward, trickling down her neck. It was then that she was conscious of the fact that her dress uniform jacket was unbuttoned, that it flared open when she sat. She’d opened the collar of her dress shirt to allow her burns to breathe. She hadn’t been able to stand the constriction of a bra on her charred skin, and she could feel the antibiotic ointment sticking her skin to the fabric. Her first impulse was to button her jacket, but she stubbornly refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she felt vulnerable under his scrutiny.

“Really, Mr. Ferrer. Why are you here? I don’t imagine that a man of your power and standing goes anywhere he doesn’t want to go.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Sparky reaching up the wall to lick the electronic door lock. She knew that Ferrer saw him, as his gaze twitched to the door. The light on the keycard reader changed from red to yellow.
Good boy,
Anya thought.

“I must admit that having the opportunity to talk with you again is a considerable inducement.” Ferrer brought his eyes back to her face. “You’re quite striking, in a very 1940s pinup girl kind of way. Maybe it’s the uniform. You really should let me draw you sometime.”

“Are you coming on to me, Mr. Ferrer?”

“Yes.” His gaze was direct, unflinching. “I thought I was supposed to be honest under interrogation.”

Sparky padded across the room, tail switching. He could smell the testosterone in the air, and wasn’t about to let Drake Ferrer get away with hitting on his charge. He stomped up to Ferrer and savagely bit him in the knee.

Anya smiled as Ferrer gasped, tried to cover his reaction. She was certain that, to the bystanders in the observation room, it looked as if he’d had an unfortunate muscle spasm.

Anya put her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her palms to be extra solicitous for the camera. “Are you all right, Mr. Ferrer?”

“Perfectly fine.”

“Good.” Anya unfolded the drawing from her pocket. “It seems that you’ve already been busily sketching. Is this your work?”

Ferrer turned the page to face him and pretended to examine it with a critical eye. “It’s good work. Your artist did a nice job of capturing that little moue at the corner of your mouth. The shape of your hands is quite delicate. Nice contrast to the severity of the uniform. And the gesture lines capture your posture quite well. The eyes are spot-on, shadowed and lovely.” He turned the rumpled page back to her. “Sadly, it’s not my work.”

“You do realize that we’ll be sending this to a handwriting expert, don’t you?”

“I’d expect nothing less of you. But the Detroit Crime Lab. . . well,”—he waved his hand negligently—“I’m sure that whatever analysis they come up with will be absolutely unimpeachable in court.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s your connection to these fires?”

“I don’t have one. As I told the detective, I didn’t have anything to do with them.”

“You told me in the crypt you were setting these arsons to summon some mythical beast.”

Ferrer laughed out loud. “That’s a nice theory. I’m sure it goes over well with your superiors.”

Anya flicked a glance at Sparky. The salamander reared up on his hind legs and took a bite out of Ferrer’s elbow.

Ferrer stoically refused to cry out, tried to shake Sparky off. Anya was hoping to provoke him, to get him to burst into flame, as he had at the warehouse.

But he wasn’t taking the bait. Not yet.

Anya had never hurt a suspect under interrogation before; it ran against her principles of the way an investigator should behave. That ideal clashed with the need to get him to confess, to stop the arsons. She paused, but for only a moment.

A hot voice in the back of her head hissed,
“No one will ever know.
” The voice throbbed through her temples, squelched the pang of conscience she felt at Ferrer’s discomfort. Ferrer was guilty. She had to get him to talk, whatever it took, before anyone else got hurt.

“A firefighter is dead, Mr. Ferrer.”

“I read that in the paper. That’s a terrible shame.” His expression didn’t betray the slightest twitch of remorse.

“I want you to tell me the truth. Why did you set those fires?”

“I told you. I didn’t do it,” he said through clenched teeth and a cold smile.

Anya nodded at Sparky. The salamander climbed up on the table. His nostrils flared, smelling blood. She admired the way the light played over his speckled body. Sparky wasn’t burdened by the distinction between right and wrong—he just bit what didn’t smell good. She envied him.

Ferrer watched him, not out of fear, but fascination.

“Do you have any pets, Miss Kalinczyk?” he asked. “I imagine that if you did, your pet would be very well trained. A fearsome foe, indeed.”

“If I had a pet, you would be correct, Mr. Ferrer.”

Sparky snarled and bit Ferrer in the right shoulder, where a bandage peeked out of his collar. Ferrer grunted and tried to fling the salamander off him, but it was like trying to loosen the jaws of a pit bull. Anya sat with her hands in full view on the table, watching Ferrer as he toppled out of the chair. She heard tapping on the glass, the signal for her to come out. She ignored it. She disregarded the rattling of the door handle. Sparky had jammed the lock. For all intents and purposes, she and Ferrer were alone.

Anya crossed around the edge of the table, keeping her hands and feet in full view while Ferrer wrestled with Sparky. She was certain that the videotape would show him struggling with air, perhaps a seizure. She crouched down, knowing it would give the impression that she was showing professional concern for the detainee. She called out for a medic to make sure that was recorded on tape.

“Mr. Ferrer. Tell me the truth. Tell me that you set those fires.”

Ferrer succeeded in pulling Sparky off him. Blood rimmed the seam of his jacket sleeve and speckled the floor. Breathless, he looked her directly in the eye. Outside, she heard someone prying the electric door panel off the wall. Marsh and Vross would be inside in moments.

A beatific smile crossed his handsome face. “You have much to learn about being a muse in the service of fire.”

He would say nothing else.

When Anya got home, there were flowers waiting on her doorstep.

She held the florist’s paper gingerly and looked inside. White chrysanthemums. From somewhere in her memory, she remembered her mother saying that these flowers symbolized truth. They had been among her favorites.