The Gift of Illusion: A Thriller (5 page)

“An eleven-year-old girl.”

“Really?” said Simmons, genuinely surprised.
He tossed the folder into the back seat. “A little girl? That’s
horrible.”

"That's what I said."

“Did anyone else get hurt or killed?”

“No, just the girl as far as I know.”

“How did the fire start?”

“Don’t know. That’s what we’re supposed to
find out. Stevens thinks the parents may have had something to do
with it. Or so he led on.”

“Why would someone do that to their
child?”

“I don’t know. But it seems to happen more
and more."

Isaac turned left on Fairway Boulevard. Both
detectives sat quietly for a moment and watched a fire truck scream
by with sirens blazing on the opposite side of the road.

How ironic.

“Have you talked to the parents yet?”

“No,” said Isaac. “But they were notified
that we would like to speak with them.”

“Are they staying at the house?”

“They’re not allowed. I believe they’re
staying at a motel not too far from here. Later we’ll stroll on
down there and say hello.”

Isaac pulled the black Charger up to the
Ackerman house on the side of Maria Avenue behind a row of police
cars. Hordes of local television news vans were parked on the
opposite side of the street. “I guess they found a story,” he said,
glancing over at the reporters.

A few of the reporters bustled toward the
car clutching microphones and followed by cameramen.

“What should we say?” Simmons asked.

“Nothing. Don’t say a word to any idiot with
a camera.”

The two detectives sprung from the car and
headed toward the front door of the Ackerman house. The black,
burly cameras followed closely on their heels.

“Detectives, do you have any information on
how the fire was started?” A female reporter asked. She was a
fairly attractive brunette, maybe in her mid-thirties, dressed in
one of those bright colored, sharply trimmed women’s suits that
have become all too trendy these days.

Neither of the detectives responded and
continued up the cement walkway.

“Do you know if any negligence on the part
of the girl’s parents had anything to do with her death?” A
different reporter asked, this one a man.

What do you think we’re here to find
out?

Isaac opened the door and allowed Simmons to
go in ahead of him, then turned toward the crowd of reporters
gathered in the front lawn.

“There will be no comment at this time,” he
said, trying to project his voice over the crowd. “Now back up. I
don’t want to see anyone without a badge within fifteen feet of the
house.”

He turned to go inside when the pretty
brunette spoke again.

“How long will it be before an autopsy is
performed on the young girl’s body?”

Autopsy?
Sorry, but not even the most
prestigious pathologist could perform an autopsy under these
circumstances.

Isaac turned back around and stared the
brunette reporter right in her bright, anxious eyes. “I said no
comment at this time. How hard is that to understand?”

From the first step inside the house, Isaac
could smell a strange odor unlike anything he had ever smelled
before, and he’d been witness to many awkward scents over the years
with the Elmwood P.D. The scent was fresh, almost sweet, and it
crawled all over his skin.

A half dozen policemen roamed about the
house, going upstairs, back down, and then back up again like
working ants revolving in a steady circle. Simmons chatted with one
of the blue and white uniformed officers in the kitchen. Isaac
headed over, but before he could take two steps from the front
door, another policeman snuck up from behind him.

“Sir,” said the officer. “I’m assuming
you’re Detective Winters.”

Isaac turned around and faced the policeman;
a young kid, maybe twenty-five, probably new to the force. He had a
big black cowboy hat on his head.

“We’ve been waiting for you. Would you like
me to lead you upstairs?”

Isaac glanced up the staircase and saw the
open doorway with the yellow police ribbon around it. “No, I think
I can find my way.”

He walked past the officer then turned back
at the foot of the stairs.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

“Deputy Christopher Howers.”

Isaac nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

The officer nodded back.

“Simmons, come."

Isaac peeled back the yellow police tape and
stepped underneath. Simmons followed behind. The sweet scent Isaac
had first smelled when he entered the house had grown tenfold. He
could feel it tickling at the back of his throat, making him want
to sneeze, or cough up his lungs, whichever would make the tingling
sensation go away quickest.

He stood in the doorway of the room and
peered over at what used to be a little girl and her bed. The scene
looked far worse than the pictures could have ever shown. As he
inched closer to the bed, he noticed the foot, hanging lonesome,
about to fall into the black hole in the mattress. When he looked
into the hole, he saw the other foot, the left one, smothered
amongst the black ash.

“There’s number two.”

Isaac walked around the side of the bed and
began examining the surrounding objects in the room. Simmons
couldn’t take his eyes off the ash and the lonesome feet. His eyes
told the tale of a man who knew he was way out of his league. In
his short time as a detective, he had never come across anything
even remotely as horrifying as this. The worst he had seen was a
man killed from multiple gunshot wounds in the chest, nothing in
comparison to this dread.

“Honestly,” Simmons said, not letting his
eyes drift from the bed of ash. “Have you ever seen anything like
this before?”

Isaac looked over. “Well." He paused to let
his mind wander off, searching through hell’s database. “No,” he
finally said, shaking his head. “Not like this.” He turned toward
the open window and looked outside at the house next door. “I
wonder,” he said, running his hand across the windowsill. “I wonder
if this window was open all night. And if not, when was it opened,
and who opened it?”

“You think somebody could have come in
through the window?” Simmons asked.

Isaac thought to himself, random, jumbled
thoughts that led nowhere, and finally said: “We need to talk to
the neighbors.”

He turned from the window and leaned down
next to the bed. If he sneezed now the ashes would scatter all over
the room, and his face. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled
out a latex glove. Then he snapped the glove on his hand and
touched a small pile of the ash with his index finger. The black
ash collapsed smoothly from within and ran down the sides of the
hill. He picked up some of the ash and ran it through his
fingers.

“The ash is really fine.”

“Huh.”

Isaac picked up another hand full and
repeated the process. “You see how easily it breaks apart.”

Simmons nodded.

“The particles are very fine and compact.
Not like your average fire where the ash tends to be clumpy.”

“What does that mean?”

Isaac stood up. “Just means this isn’t your
average fire. But I guess we already knew that, right?” He pressed
his hand against the wall next to the open window, a grimy soot
slide between his fingers. He removed a line of the grease with his
index finger. “Care to write your name in it?”

The detectives circled the room looking
closely for anything else that looked unusual. They both turned
back to the bed, if by instinct.

“I don’t see how a fire could burn so
steadily in one place for a long enough time to char through bones.
How could any fire do this kind of damage in such little time?”

“You don’t believe it’s possible?” Simmons
asked.

“With a little help, anything’s
possible.”

“The parents?”

“Maybe. But we won’t know until we talk to
them.”

Isaac ran his hand across the top of the
dresser, and then searched the floor around it.

“Wait a minute.”

“What is it?”

Isaac peered down the crack behind the
dresser, scanning the two-inch floor space separating the back of
the dresser from the wall. Nothing but a little ash lay there,
probably scattered by the wind from the open window. “Something’s
missing.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled open each of the
four drawers and rummaged through them. “Can you do me a
favor?”

“Sure.”

“Go out to the car and bring me the photos.
I need to see something.”

Simmons carefully butted through the mass of
media, ignoring any questions on his way to the car. He opened the
passenger door and snatched the manila folder lying on the back
seat.

Upstairs, Isaac stood at the side of the
small bed, examined the fine gray ash below, and tried hard to
shake the intoxicating perfume from his senses.

A small portion of the ash (not more than
two or three spoonfuls) was already in the hands of forensics for
analysis and would be placed under a number of tests, the most
effective test being Gas Chromatography, which could detect even
small amounts of accelerants present in the ash. First the sample
would be heated in a glass vial to vaporize any accelerants. A
special syringe is then used to extract a small sum of air from the
vial. The air is then injected into the gas chromatograph, and by
comparing that graph to the graph of known substances, such as
gasoline, paraffin, or fuel oil, the examiner could determine which
accelerant may be attributed to the fire. These sorts of tests
could go a long way in discovering whether the fire was accidental
or intentional, thus making Isaac’s job of finger pointing a little
easier.

As Simmons charged back up the stairs with
the manila folder, Isaac’s cell rang. He removed it from his belt
and glanced down at the incoming number. It was Chief Stevens.

Simmons ducked under the police tape and
stormed into the room with folder in hand. “I got the photos,” he
said, holding the folder out in front of him.

Isaac had his phone up to his ear,
listening.

Simmons opened up the folder and looked
through the photos again, searching for any minor differences in
the room. He found none. Everything looked the same as in the
photographs.

“We’ll head right over,” said Isaac, and
hung up the phone.

He snatched the manila folder from Simmons
and flipped through the photos until he came to the one he had been
searching for. In this particular photograph, most of the horror
was not apparent, but what it did show was a clear view of the
windowsill and the dresser.

Simmons stepped closer as Isaac pointed to a
small object lying on top of the dresser.

“What in the hell is that?”

Simmons narrowed his eyes. “It looks like
some kind of small figurine.”

Isaac turned and pointed at the dresser.
“How come it’s not here now?”

Simmons was amazed that Isaac could remember
something that small was missing from the room, so small he had
overlooked it just moments before.

“Maybe somebody moved it.”

“Moved it?”

Simmons said nothing.

“Well, it’s probably not important anyway.
We’ve got to go. There’s been an incident.”

Simmons raised his eyebrows. “An
incident?”

“Yeah, with the parents,” said Isaac,
placing the photographs back into the folder. “At the motel.”

3

A couple of fire trucks were in the parking
lot of the Goodnight Motel on the corner of Harbor and Fairway when
the detectives arrived. The motel was only a single story and had
sixty rooms in total. One of the cheapest lodgings in town, and it
showed. Parts of the roof looked to be falling inward, gutters hung
loosely at the lip, and the piss yellow paint had blotches of green
fungus growing up the wall along the walkway. Unless you were
incredibly impoverished, dealing drugs, doing drugs, or banging a
hooker behind your wife’s back, you’d be better off staying away
from the Goodnight Motel.

Isaac pulled into the lot and parked the
Charger near the motel offi . . . well, I guess you could call it
an office. The office consisted of a small booth enclosed by a
double layer of glass and two filthy green plastic chairs sitting
outside the door. A sticky note was taped to the front glass with
words scribbled on it in black marker: Knock hard,
if
asleep.
What a nice place to throw your feet up, read a dirty
magazine, and check in the drunken scumbags.

Isaac walked over to one of the firemen
standing just outside room number 38. With Isaac’s permission,
Simmons headed into the musky room.

“By the time we got here there was no fire
left to put out,” said the fireman.

Isaac watched Simmons carefully walk into
the room like he was afraid of stepping in an ant bed. “So, how bad
is it?”

The fireman shook his head. “Pretty
bad.”

He didn’t look proud to say it either.

“I figured. Any idea on what may have
started the fire?”

“Haven’t a clue. We didn’t find any gasoline
or matches. And neither the man nor his wife smoke.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what Mr. Ackerman told
us.”

“Mr. Ackerman? And where is he now?”

“He left.”

“What do you mean he left?” It wasn’t so
much a question as it was a statement.

"He said he had to go and get his
daughter."

"No. His daughter's dead. Did you happen to
notice what kind of car he was driving?"

"I believe it was a blue Escort."

"Thank you."

When Isaac entered the hotel room, he was
quickly reminded of the sweet, fresh smell from back at the
Ackerman house. The smell was even stronger here, given the small
size of the motel room. Simmons hovered over the silhouette of ash
spread out under the floor to ceiling window. The charred body of
Carol Ackerman was almost identical to that of her daughter’s,
except for in this case the legs were only burned down to the
calves, instead of the feet. The air conditioning unit on the floor
next to the window looked like it had started to melt at some point
during the fire. The black knobs that used to adjust the
temperature of the room had melted completely and formed one large
black plastic pancake. Isaac placed his hand over the vent and felt
a light amount of cold air blow out.