Service Dress Blues (13 page)

The guy on the deck directed a powerful stream of water at the center of the mound and then moved the gushing liquid in controlled and gradually widening circles. In less than thirty seconds the mound and the surrounding carpet looked like nothing but cold ashes.

Without pausing he then pushed the door open wider and charged into the room. He played the water on the walls and now the ceiling that the flames had reached, literally pouring it on until all trace of fire had disappeared and only the acrid smoke remained. Then he turned the hose back to the smoldering mound, saturating it.

At that point he twisted the nozzle valve back and the length of hose in Rep's arms gave up its fight. He crept warily toward the mound, as if stalking dangerous prey. Rep heard
galumphs
through the snow and glanced over to see the fireman who had exited through the house approaching.

“How ya doin'?” he asked jovially.

“Still breathing,” Rep answered.

“Looks like you came through it all right, I guess. Want me to grab a piece of that snake so you can go count your fingers?”

“I love that plan.”

The fireman stepped in front of Rep and got a good grip on the hose. Rep gratefully let go. The fireman inside was cautiously peeling layers of the mound away with the toe of his boot. As he cleared the third or fourth layer, Rep saw a gust of smoke spurt from the middle of the mound, where a dull, orange-red glow suddenly appeared. The guy inside glanced at his colleague, who nodded. One valve-twist later the nozzle was bathing the mound at point-blank range in another high-pressure stream of water. Only when pooling water lapped over the insteps of his boots did the firefighter stop the flow.

Sagging slightly, as if a bit let down by the end of the fight and the sudden adrenaline drop, the firemen retreated onto the deck. Rep came up there to get out of the snow and join them.

“Arson, huh?” one of them suggested.

“Sure wasn't careless use of smoking materials,” the other said.

Rep wasn't sure which said what because he was gazing transfixed at the wreckage of what had once been Ole Lindstrom's club room. The firefighters had saved the house, but the room looked like a total loss. Five decades of political memories and partisan booty—the sum and substance of two human lives, for all practical purposes—lay in smoking ruins.

“What's your name, anyway?”

Realizing that the question was directed at him, Rep turned to the fireman who'd taken the hose over from him.

“Rep Pennyworth.”

“‘Rep Pennyworth? ' The hell kind of a name is that?”

Rep recognized the good-natured locker room josh, the jock towel-snapping the equipment manager.

“It's the one Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth gave me. I didn't have a vote.”

“Well, Rep Pennyworth, after a deal like this on a cold night a smoke-eater gets his choice of coffee or brandy. Which will it be for you?”

“Brandy.”

“That's the right answer.”

They stepped off the deck and began trudging back toward the pumper. As they walked, the firefighter gave him a little pop on the bicep with his fist.

“You did all right, bub.”

Chapter 16

“Arson, huh?” Kuchinski asked.

“That's what the firemen said.”

Rep leaned against the side of his Taurus next to Kuchinski as the two of them gazed at a bevy of cops and other emergency personnel swarming around the Lindstrom home. He shifted his hips a little. He hoped that some sense of feeling would return soon to his rear end, which like his feet and legs was now penetrated by a chill that even Korbel brandy couldn't reach.

“That would make the skier you had a close encounter with the prime candidate for arsonist,” Kuchinski said.

“She certainly is.”

“‘She'? I'd raise my eyebrows to indicate surprise, but they're frozen in place.”

“She yelled something at me while she was skiing past. It was a woman's voice.”

“So a woman comes around at nightfall to burn the place down. The cops show up for one more look, just in case Lena returns tomorrow. They surprise the arsonist, who leads them on a merry chase and escapes—but not before one of the cops trashes my ride.”

“There's an interesting nuance I picked up while I was walking around trying to avoid hypothermia before you and Melissa got out here. I overheard the deputy who
didn't
trash your Escalade using a wireless digital dictaphone to call his report in to a computer back at headquarters.”

“Digital dictation? Is Sylvanus County going metrosexual on us? I figured deputies up here still typed their reports with the hunt-and-peck method on Royal Underwood manuals.” Kuchinski paused to take a breath. “What did you accidentally-on purpose overhear while you were sorta standing around, ready to be useful if they asked you?”

“He said they had ‘effected entry' through the front door and had just gotten inside when they were ‘alerted by a noise of indeterminate origin from the vicinity' of the club room. They ‘initiated investigation immediately,' but by the time they got back there ‘the perpetrator had fled, the fire was in progress,' and after they called in the fire they ‘initiated pursuit' of the perpetrator outside.”

“A noise of indeterminate origin.”

“Right.”

“Just like Lena heard.”

“Right.”

“But in the
maybe
ten seconds it would take them to get back there,” Kuchinski said, “assuming they didn't stand around for awhile polishing their badges, this talented perp gets outside, slips into a pair of cross-country skis, and sprints out to a twenty-yard head start.”

“Which I don't buy,” Rep said. “Have you ever put on a pair of cross-country skis?”

“I'm more of an
après
-ski guy myself. I skip the out-in-the-cold-where-you-could-break-an-ankle part and just go straight to the sitting-around-a-fire-at-the-chalet-sipping-Tom-and-Jerrys part.”

“Well, I've done it twice. There's a sort of flexible tab that extends beyond the toes on each of your boots. It has three small holes in it. You have to fit tiny pegs on the bindings into the holes and then clamp the bindings shut over the toes. No way anyone this side of the Olympic biathalon team gets that done in less than eight seconds—and that's from when she has the skis flat on the deck and is standing right beside them.”

“So the arsonist had to be already outside and pretty much on her skis when the cops heard the noise.”

“Yep.”

“Hmm,” Kuchinski said.

“Who's that fella with a goose-down parka pulled on over his three-button suit who looks like he's thinking about heading this way?”

“Stan Keegan, the duly elected district attorney for Sylvanus County. He's not a bad guy. But him still being in office duds this time of night means he was sitting at his desk waiting for a report on the follow-up search when he heard about the fireworks display out here. So don't believe him when he tells you the cops were acting on their own.”

“There's one more thing before he gets here,” Rep said. “In the minute or two that I was in the club room, I noticed something about the cabinets that seemed odd—but I can't put my finger on what it was.”

“Maybe I'll manage a look myself before the night is over.”

“Here he comes. I wonder if he's going to chew me out.”

“You'll know in about four seconds.”

“Are you Reppert Pennyworth?” Keegan asked as he reached the two men.

“I am.”

“Well I'd like to shake your hand. I don't know what the hell you thought you were doing when you just happened to show up here around the time some hardworking law enforcement officers were conducting a lawful search on their own initiative, but getting help for the wounded officer before you worried about anything else was the right thing to do.”

“Thank you.”

“Walt,” Keegan said then, “don't forget the receipts when you send the county a bill for any damage to that truck of yours. Now if you've got a minute I'd like to talk about how you're so hot to go to trial all of a sudden.”

“I've got all the time in the world for you, Stan,” Kuchinski said, moving toward the house. He held up a finger to keep Keegan's attention and turned back to Rep. “Thanks for your help, buddy. Next time I'm expecting a knife fight in a dark alley I'll remember to have a trademark lawyer watch my back. They tell me the Escalade is drivable, so you and Melissa can head on back if you want to.”

“Good idea. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“So let's talk,” Kuchinski said then to Keegan as he resumed his progress up the driveway.

“Don't get too close to the house. It's a crime scene, you know.”

“It's been a crime scene since December and that didn't stop your boys from dropping by without an appointment. Anyway, I'm not gonna discuss important legal stuff while I'm standing around out here in the cold.”

Shrugging, Keegan began hiking up the driveway next to Kuchinski.

“Here's the thing about that motion, Walt. If I take Lena to trial and lose—well, those things happen. But if I stipulate to bail and she runs off with a possible murder charge hanging over her, I could show up on
The O'Reilly Factor
, running away from that punk of his who does ambush interviews. That could have a negative impact on my job security.”

“She's a seventy-two year old woman whose only living relative is a plebe at the Naval Academy. Where's she supposed to run?”

“I don't know. Cuba? North Korea?”

“
Cuba?
She's a
Democrat
, not a Communist. There's a difference.”

“There is?” Keegan nodded at a cop standing at the front door as he and Kuchinsk stepped into Lena's living room. “That was a joke, by the way.”

“Stan, you've been prosecuting criminal cases for twenty-some-odd years. How many times have you seen a premeditated spousal murder using a blunt instrument without facial mutilation?”

“You're right, that's rare. It's like some frenzy gets hold of them. But maybe that's what the scalping was all about.”

“The scalping was either the point of the murder or an attempt to frame Indians for the crime. Either way, it wasn't a frenzied, primal impulse.”

“So what's your point? That Lena couldn't be the killer? Because your hook is too short for that long a reach.”

“My point is that no one is really sold yet on Lena being the murderer, including you and the cops in Milwaukee. I can't let her sit in jail while you fellas think things over. Let's just chill things until you've got your act together enough to accuse someone of the real crime here.”

“We seem to have reached the famous club room,” Keegan said. “What are you looking for?”

“I'm not sure yet. I'm hoping that I'll know it when I see it.”

They sloshed into water still standing on the floor. Everything he saw that wasn't charred or singed was sodden and water-ruined. Kuchinski waded around the room, examining hulks that had once been televisions and computers, and dripping wrecks that were all that was left of furniture and cabinetry.

“At least give me a hint,” Keegan said as he smoothed remnants of brown hair that the parka's hood had ruffled..

“I'm looking for whatever made the noise that Lena heard last December—and that your cops heard earlier tonight.”

“Fool's errand,” Keegan said. “If the arsonist didn't take care of it, the arson did.”

Kuchinski looked steadily at the drawers and storage cabinet beneath the shelving built into the south wall. He shared Rep's frustration. His mental radar was pinging but he couldn't find the dot.

“You got the American Jurisprudence Book Award in Constitutional Law at UW,” he said to Keegan, “and I didn't even make law review at Marquette. So you must be smarter than me. There's something wrong with this picture, but I can't put my finger on it. What is it?”

Keegan looked around.

“The doors on that cabinet underneath the drawer are open. I don't know why that seems odd, but it does.”

Kuchinski focused on the gaping cabinet. An internal shelf had slipped off its brackets at one end and now sat at about a thirty-five degree angle with what looked like a decade's worth of the hard-bound Wisconsin political directories called
Blue Books
bunched at the fallen end.

And just like that, he had it.

“Look at the books,” he said.

“What about them?”

“They're bone dry, that's what.”

“So what?”

“So it wasn't a high-pressure stream of water from a fire hose that knocked that shelf down, that's what.”

***

“Ah,” Melissa said about twenty miles south of Appleburg on Highway 41, “
there's
the magic word.”

Rep stirred from a damp and uncomfortable half-sleep and peered through the Taurus' windshield. The only words he could see were in garish pink on black, giving the name and a summary of the wares offered at a squat store built with bright pink cinder blocks.

“Which word? ‘Naughty' or ‘Nice' or ‘Adult' or ‘Playthings'?”

“‘Vacancy.'” Melissa pointed at the sign for something called the Sawlog Motel, about a hundred yards beyond the smut shop. “It just winked on, about five seconds after an SUV peeled out of the parking lot and onto the highway.”

“Probably a couple of teenagers who have to get back before curfew. That looks like the kind of place that has vending machines selling condoms in the men's rooms.”

“As long as it has clean sheets, indoor plumbing, and hot water in the showers. You are
not
going to spend two more hours riding back to Milwaukee with your frozen body in wet clothes. We're going to get you a hot shower and a good night's sleep and then finish the trip in the morning.”

Rep felt he should object, if only for form's sake.

“I can make it.”

“I wasn't introducing a topic for debate, dear. My mind is made up.”

He gratefully acquiesced.

Half an hour or so after they had checked in, a freshly showered Rep lay in bed over a towel while Melissa sponged with a hot, damp face cloth at a combination of lacerations that looked like welted rope burns and deep, purple bruises on his right forearm and right ribcage, where he had held the hose.

“This is wonderful,” he murmured.

“I have to admit, I do feel rather saintly at the moment,” she said distractedly as she concentrated on her ministrations. “When I get over the spasm of saintliness, however, I may be a little cross with you.”

“Why?”

“You know very well why.”

“Because instead of being a bashful and reluctant hero I was actually having the time of my life when I caused all this fuss and inconvenience?”

“Exactly. To be fair, though, if you hadn't gone off on your juvenile frolic you wouldn't have found out that the skier was a woman, and so you couldn't have passed that helpful information on to Walt.”

“There's some more possibly helpful information about her that I haven't passed on to Walt yet, because I'm not sure about it. All I have to go on is my recollection of what her voice sounds like.”

Melissa stopped in mid-dab.

“You think you might have heard the voice before?”

“Yes.”

“One of the Laurels?”

“Let's just say I'm really glad she didn't have a knife handy when she skied by me.”

Melissa pressed the damp, steaming cloth against a particularly nasty scrape and held it in place. Rep winced but held his tongue. If he said, “That hurts,” she would reply, “Of course it hurts.” He didn't think that such an exchange would help much at the moment.

“So how are you going to get sure enough about your suspicion to decide whether to share it with Walt?” Melissa asked.

“The only idea I've come up with so far is to talk to Laurel Wolf again. Face to face.”

“I don't like that idea very much.”

“Neither do I. I'm hoping I'll come up with something better if I sleep on it.”

“Why don't you just tell Walt you thought that maybe it sounded like her voice but it's no better than fifty-fifty and you could certainly be wrong?”

“That's a last resort. As soon as I raise the issue, Walt has to go after her. Until Lena is cleared, he needs alternative suspects. And if Walt is going after her, that means I have to tell the police as well.”

“Which would be a rotten thing to do if she's actually spending tonight in Milwaukee peacefully playing with Photoshop or wiggling her hips under Gary Carlsen,” Melissa said.

“Yes it would. I have a feeling I'm about to be scolded again for copping mock-heroic attitudes.”

“Not at all, dear. As we've talked this through, I've realized that you aren't actually in any real danger.”

“That's comforting, but why?”

“Because if Wolf isn't the arsonist she'll have no reason to harm you. And if she is, you'll never talk to her because she'll be long gone by tomorrow morning.”