The Burnt House (3 page)

The request was met with a long, long pause. “Probably,” she whispered.

“They can be sent directly to me or you can bring them in person. You are welcome to come in to the station house at any time or any hour and talk to one of us. There will always be someone here who’ll be familiar with your situation. I’m going to give you my cell number. Feel free to call it at any time.”

“Thank you,” she said without emotion.

Decker rattled off several sets of numbers. Whether the woman was writing any of it down was anyone’s guess. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“Who am I talking to again?”

“Lieutenant Peter Decker.”

“You’re a lieutenant?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your captain couldn’t have given me a call?”

“He’d be happy to call you, Mrs. Greenberg.”

“But he didn’t. You did.”

“Yes. If you want to set up an appointment with Captain Strapp—”

“Why should I want to set up an appointment if the man doesn’t have the decency to call me?” She was sobbing. “When do you want the X-rays?”

“How about if I come to your house and we’ll go to the dentist together?”

The woman didn’t answer. All Decker heard was weeping. Then she said, “All right. Do you know where I live?”

“No, but I can take down an address.”

“I don’t live so close to my daughter. She wanted her privacy. I’m all the way in the city.”

“I have a car, I can drive. What’s the address?”

She gave him the street address. “When can you come?”

“How about tomorrow morning around eleven?”

“Eleven would be all right. What do you look like?”

“I’m very tall and have red hair.”
That’s turning gray very quickly
. “I’ll show you ID at your door. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I know you’re trying to be nice. It’s just…”

She was crying again. Decker could have said, “I know…” Decker could have said, “I understand.” But he didn’t know and he didn’t understand.

Thank God.

I
T WAS A
hard time for the West San Fernando Valley. Even the news that the crash had likely been caused by mechanical failure didn’t stave off the increase in emergency calls, of reported heart attacks, asthma attacks, and fainting spells.

The week of the crash, Decker had worked on casino time, never seeing the light of day, never knowing what time it was. He never made it to Rina’s parents’ for Friday-night dinner, nor did he make it over the hill for Shabbat Saturday lunch. There was just too much to do. He did manage to cram in a phone call to his married daughter. Cindy was a grand-theft-auto detective over the hill in Hollywood, and had been doing double duty because so many of the uniformed officers had been diverted to the crash area.

But all things must pass, and eventually the terrible incident that had grabbed headlines in the local papers for two weeks running became old news. Coverage faded and fell to page three, then to page five, then to the back of the front section. Eventually it was relegated to local news until it became yesterday’s news. With the coroner’s investigators
working nonstop on the body recoveries, and the NTSB working nonstop on plane and fuselage recovery, the police were permitted to go back to doing police work.

No one would have definitive answers for many months. Maybe it would even be years before the total puzzle was put back together. The nature of the beast required time and patience. Rina had told him that immediately after the crash, people in the area had seemed to move a bit slower, taking more time to smile and say hello. Traffic had been sparser and much more polite. And despite the initial looting and break-ins that had happened directly after the crash, overall monthly crime had actually taken a drop.

A temporary aberration it seemed, because the statisticians reported that the following month, life and crime in the San Fernando Valley had returned to their precrash status.

FORTY-SIX DAYS AFTER
the crash, as Decker was looking over the upcoming court cases of his detectives, his extension rang. It was Marissa Kornblatt, one of the three department secretaries who manned the front desk for the squad room. Over the intercom, her voice sounded tentative.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant. I have someone on the line who is demanding to speak to the head honcho.”

“Head honcho?”

“His words, Lieutenant, not mine. His name is Farley Lodestone, and as far as I could make out, he’s ranting about his missing daughter.”

“How old is his daughter?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Twenty-eight?”

“I told him our standard policy is thirty-six hours before we file a report, but then he said he’s been waiting over a month and he has had enough.”

The man sounded like a nutcase. Decker said, “Why don’t you patch the call to Matt Thurgood and have him take a missing-persons report—”

“Lieutenant, Mr. Lodestone is screaming that it’s a homicide. I don’t think he’s going to be happy with an MP report…sir.”

“I’ll take it.” Decker punched the blinking light. “Lieutenant Decker.”

“Lieutenant?” The voice was surprised. “Finally! Now we’re getting somewhere! You know how many phone calls I’ve made over the last few days?”

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Farley Lodestone is the name and you certainly can help me, Lieutenant Deckman. My stepdaughter’s missing. Me and her mom haven’t heard from her in forty-six days. We thought about it and thought about it and came to the same conclusion. That sumbitch husband of hers finally went out and did it.”

“Did it?”

“You know what I mean, Deckman. The sumbitch finally
killed
her!”

Decker looked at the phone monitor and took down the calling number. It appeared to be a cell phone and was from an out-of-the-city area code. “Mr. Lodestone, why don’t you come in to the station house and we can talk about this? Things that are this serious shouldn’t be discussed over the phone.”

There was a long pause. “You think so?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I could see you in about an hour. How does that sound?”

“Too quick! It’ll take time for me and the missus to get over there.”

“Where are you calling from, Mr. Lodestone?”

“Fresno.”

One hundred and eighty-six miles away as the crow flies. “And you’re calling this station house because your stepdaughter lives in this area?”

“Two-three-one-one-six Octavia Avenue. That’s where you’ll find the sumbitch.”

“And who is this sumbitch?”

“Ivan Dresden. He’s a broker for Merrill Lynch in Porter Ranch. My stepdaughter’s name is Roseanne. Roseanne Dresden.”

Decker tucked the receiver under his chin as he wrote it down. As he saw Roseanne’s name in print, he realized he wasn’t reading it for the first time. “Her name is familiar. Would there be any reason that I might know her?”

“Well, you mighta probably read her name in the papers saying she was on that WestAir flight that crashed down on the apartment building.”

That was it! Decker’s mind was racing, trying to understand the purpose of the call. “Mr. Lodestone, are you saying that your stepdaughter wasn’t on that WestAir flight?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But the papers reported her as one of the victims.”

“Young man, I’m sure someone somewhere musta told you that you should never believe what you read in the papers.”

THEY MATERIALIZED AT
the station house at ten minutes to five in the afternoon. Farley and Shareen Lodestone were dressed in their Sunday finest, the man in a decently fitting gray suit with a white shirt and a tie, and Shareen in a flowered dress and low heels. She had taken the time to put on rouge and lipstick. Blond and blue-eyed, with good skin, at one time the woman had been attractive, but grief had deepened her eyes and depressed their light, giving her face a beetle brow.

Farley was thin and of average height with a mop of white hair. Yet Decker had seen enough of these guys to know that they were deceptively strong and wiry. He knew that beneath that jacket and shirt were some stringy arms with good grip strength. The man looked more mad than upset, but that was often a man’s way of coping with heartache.

Decker got them both cups of coffee and settled them into two seats opposite his desk. After closing the door, he sat down and took out a notepad, although he suspected that what they were going to tell him was a case of extreme denial. He said, “Before we get started, Mr. and
Mrs. Lodestone, I want to express my condolences. I am very sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah, I am, too,” Lodestone grunted out. “So if you want to help, you’ll put that sumbitch behind bars.”

“I always had a queasy feeling about him,” Shareen added.

“Him…meaning your son-in-law?”

“That’s right,” Shareen said. “Ivan Dresden.”

Decker wrote down the name. “And you suspect…what?”

“That Ivan killed her.”

“Didn’t I already tell you that?” Lodestone butted in.

“Yes, you did.” Decker paused. “Before you came in, I called up WestAir. They verified that Roseanne had been on the flight.”

“Yeah, verified in what way?” Lodestone said. “They haven’t found her body.”

“They haven’t finished all the recovery, Mr. Lodestone.”

“They finished most of it,” Shareen added. “They got thirty-eight so far.”

“Then maybe we should wait until they have all forty-seven.”

“They aren’t gonna find forty-seven bodies, Lieutenant,” Farley said. “Besides, it don’t matter if they do find everyone on the passenger list because WestAir didn’t issue her a ticket.”

That threw Decker momentarily off guard. “They didn’t?”

“No, they didn’t!” Farley said triumphantly. “So how the hell did they know she was on the flight?”

Decker didn’t answer. He wrote down
no ticket?
while stalling for time.

Shareen rescued him. “Let me start from the beginning, Lieutenant. Roseanne was a flight attendant for WestAir. After the crash, when we couldn’t get hold of Roseanne, we called up the airlines. But WestAir told us she wasn’t working on flight 1324. Then the company called us up a couple of days later and backtracked. No, she wasn’t working 1324, but she was on the plane, hopping a ride to San Jose to work the route up there for a couple of nights…which is why they claimed they didn’t issue her a ticket.”

“Wait a minute.” Decker started to take notes in earnest. “I thought every passenger who flew on an airline had to be issued a ticket.”

“That’s what I thought,” Shareen said. “But I was wrong. This was told to me by one of Roseanne’s friends, so I hope I’m getting this right.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. Here we go. I think if you work for the airlines and you’re flying to work at a destination, you don’t have to be issued a ticket even if you’re not working the flight.”

Decker nodded. “So it was possible for her to be on the flight and for the airlines not to have a record of it. But then they’d have a record of the assignment, wouldn’t they?”

“They should have a record,” Shareen said. “But they’re not telling me yes, they have one, or no, they don’t have one.”

“Right now they’re not saying nothing without their lawyer,” Lodestone said.

Shareen said, “Roseanne used to work San Jose. So I figure that maybe WestAir was shorthanded in San Jose. So I called up San Jose, and asked if Roseanne was scheduled to work some routes up there. First they tell me no, then they tell me yes, then they tell me that if I want to talk to them again, they’ll put me in contact with their attorneys.”

“Same old, same old,” Lodestone said.

Shareen patted her husband’s knee. “Their hemming and hawing was making us very suspicious.”

Decker nodded. It did sound funny on the surface, but the airline was probably in disarray.

“I talked to Ivan,” Shareen said. “I just didn’t like what he told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That at the last minute, Roseanne changed her plans to work in San Jose. He told me emphatically that she was on the plane and he was upset enough without me making up stories about her not being on the plane. Then he said, in the long run, we were hurting not helping and that he and several other people had lawsuits pending, so we should kindly shut up.”

“He told you to shut up?”

“Not in those exact words, but that’s what he said between the lines. Then he told me I was in denial.” The old woman’s eyes watered. “I’m not in denial, Lieutenant. I know in my heart of hearts that Roseanne is dead. I just don’t think it was the crash that killed her.”

“You said Roseanne had worked San Jose before,” Decker said. “Could she have gone up to San Jose to visit someone?”

“Who, sir?” Lodestone said. “She’s married.”

“I was thinking about a friend.”

Shareen said, “If she was hitching a ride to visit someone, then WestAir would have had to issue her a ticket. The only way she could have boarded the plane without a ticket is if she was working the flight—which WestAir admitted to me that she wasn’t.”

“But then they backtracked,” Decker said.

“They’re lying,” Lodestone insisted. “They haven’t found her body! You know why they haven’t found her body? ’Cause it isn’t there. If that isn’t proof enough of something’s wrong, then I don’t know what is.”

“Mr. Lodestone, I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but neither the coroner’s office nor the NTSB has claimed to recover all the bodies. And even with those that they have recovered, it takes time to do positive identification.”

“Lieutenant, I talked to the sumbitch and asked him point blank why they haven’t dug up her body. You know what the sumbitch told me?”

“No, Mr. Lodestone, what did he tell you?”

“That they just didn’t dig deep enough. Can you believe that?”

Maybe it was true. Piles of debris still hampered much of the recovery operations. Still, it was a strange remark. Decker nodded sympathetically.

“Does that sound like a grieving husband to you?” Lodestone asked him.

It didn’t, but Decker had stopped trying to pigeonhole grief long ago.

Shareen said, “The only reason that Roseanne’s name is on the list is because Ivan Dresden called the newspapers and told them to put her down on the list.”

Decker didn’t like the sound of that. “Are you certain about that?”

Shareen backed down. “Well, that’s what I think.”

Lodestone said, “When he found out about the plane crash, he finally found a way to kill her and hide it. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he blew up the plane on purpose.”

Decker had heard people say outlandish things when upset, so his accusations fell on deaf ears. None of the vehemence surprised him, although the intricacy of the fabrication that they had created to explain their daughter’s death was beyond the pale. “Has Ivan Dresden ever threatened your daughter before?”

“He was having an affair.” Shareen had neatly sidestepped the question. “She was going to divorce him.”

“The condo’s in her name,” Lodestone told him. “I helped her buy it. He was gonna lose everything if the divorce went through.”

“And what did he do for a living again?” Decker asked. “Something with finance?”

“Broker for Merrill Lynch. That’s a fancy title for a salesman.”

“And what do you do, Mr. Lodestone?”

“Hardware…three stores and every single one of ’em is profitable.” A smile bisected his face. “Used to bother Mr. High and Mighty that I make more money with my nails and screws than he does with his fancy stocks and bonds.”

Shareen said, “No one has seen or heard from Roseanne since the crash, Lieutenant.”

That’s because she has disintegrated into dust. There was denial and there was this kind of denial, people so horrified and filled with rage that they actively hunted for an object to absorb their venom. Their anger was so encompassing that it blocked out not only the anguish, but also reason.

Decker said, “And you’re
sure
that she wasn’t on the airplane?”

“I called up a few of her friends,” Shareen responded. “No one remembers anything about Roseanne working San Jose.”

“Can you tell me the names of the friends you talked to, Mrs. Lodestone?”