working the streets, there were one or two hookers who lived at the place, out-service types, not streetwalkers. They tended to keep low and stay out of trouble and we pretty much left them alone, having a lot worse to deal with than call girls.
I saw a firefighter buddy of mine, Captain Rawly Drummond, standing beside a truck and shedding his air tank and yellow flame-retardant coat. He shook off his gloves and wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Hey, Rawly.”
He turned, showed a smile beneath a red handlebar mustache that would have looked at home on a gold- rush prospector.
“Yo, Carson. You here to see how real civil-service types work?”
“I was looking for a doughnut joint, took a wrong turn. How’s it going?”
“Tough at first, but we’re getting it knocked back. Lotta combustibles in that building.”
“I caught some radio traffic. People in there?”
The mustache turned down. “Don’t have a resident count, but it seems most people got out. An old guy panicked, dove from a window. Another two minutes and we could have had a ladder to him. They took him to the hospital, but it was over.”
“Any idea what caused the fire?”
“I had two guys made it, back toward the heart of the burn, the start point. They thought they caught a whiff of gasoline, even with the masks.”
“Arson.”
“Some materials put off a smell of gas when they burn, so maybe not. Still, that place was cooking when we arrived, heavy involvement on two floors, starting on a third. Asphalt from the roof was a burning river.”
The danger to surrounding structures had passed and Rawly was out of the fight, another engine company working over the active flames at the far end of the building. We shot the breeze a couple minutes, telling fishing lies combined with enough truths to keep each other off balance.
“Captain!” a guy yelled from the corner of the building. “Got a body.”
“Oh, shit,” Rawly said. He ran toward the guy and I followed. We rounded the corner. A ladder truck was beside the building. Between the truck and the structure was a body on a collapsible stretcher, two young firefighters staring at the form. Judging by their eyes, it was their first dead body. The guy who’d called Rawly over had the name JEFFERS printed on his helmet.
A slender guy with some years on him, Jeffers nodded toward the younger guys. “Wills and Hancock found the body, hauled it out.”
One of the firefighters said, “Maybe we should have left it. It was just that…”
The kid couldn’t finish. I stared down. The corpse was charred beyond recognition, a wet briquette in semi- human shape.
Jeffers saw my badge. “You’re a cop? Maybe there’s a reason you’re here.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Roll it over,” Jeffers said.
Faces averted, the young guys turned the corpse from supine to prone. I saw two black twigs, arms, stretching behind the dark mass.
And on what had once been wrists, handcuffs.
Rawly hunkered beside the corpse and thumbed ash from the cuffs. Underneath, they were stainless steel, a bit darkened, but still bright. The lock mechanism was sturdy, the link forged. Good cuffs, pro quality.
Rawly frowned. “I think the arson probability just jumped a notch, Carson. I’ll call Forensics.”
Jeffers said, “There ain’t much left of the room it was in. The body was on the third floor, but started out on the fourth. It was in a huge bed judging by the frame. It all fell through when the fire ate away the floor joists.”
“Think this’ll be one of yours, Carson?” Rawly asked.
“Someone else’ll get the case. My dance card’s full.”
“Wanna take a look inside anyway? I can’t say the area will stay secure. Too many feet stomping around.”
The fire was pretty much knocked back on our side of the building, a few rooms at the other end still spewing black smoke as firefighters aimed thick ribbons of water through the windows.
I looked at Jeffers. Said, “Lead on.” We climbed the ladder to the third floor, crept in the window past jagged teeth of glass. I pushed back my borrowed helmet and looked up and saw sky, the floor above and the roof gone.
“Stay close to the edge of the room,” Jeffers said. “The floor’s bad in the middle.”
I found myself in a brick-walled box of ruination. There were bits of furniture, mostly the metal parts. I saw the melted remains of a television and computer. Near the room’s center lay the twisted box springs and mattress springs of a large bed, larger than king size, it seemed, most of the fabric burned away in the center of the springs, blackened fabric at the edges.
“The body was in the middle of the bed?” I asked.
“Dead center.” He grimaced at his words, said, “Sorry.”
I studied the floor, a mess of charred flooring from above, wires, and shattered glass. I kicked at the glass. It was everywhere in the ash. I took a couple steps forward, the charred flooring crunching like ice.
“No farther,” Jeffers said, grabbing my arm.
I backpedaled. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” I reached down and brushed aside detritus, lifted a piece of the ubiquitous broken glass. I blew off ash, saw my face in my hand.
“It’s a mirror,” I said.
Jeffers knelt and brushed at the floor.
“A lot of mirror. Must have been a biggie.” He inched across the floor to the bed.
“The springs are full of mirror, big pieces.” Jeffers stared up at a nonexistent room. “What’s that make you think, detective?”
I studied the wreckage. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw mirror fragments everywhere.
“A mirror above the bed. Or on the wall. Or both.”
“I think that answer would earn you an A+,” Jeffers said. “Seen enough?”
CHAPTER 17
I walked into the detectives’ room just as Harry was hanging up the phone. He looked at me, nostrils flaring.
“I smell smoke.”
“There was a fire at the apartment building at Corcoran and Hopple. I stopped to look.”
Harry nodded. “It was on the news. Sounded pretty big.”
“They’ve got it tamed. Two dead I know about. Some poor old guy got spooked and flew out the window. I was there when another body came out. The arms were behind the body’s back. Handcuffed in place.”
“Uh-oh. His wrists or her wrists?”
“Couldn’t tell; female by the size. It looked like the body came from a room full of mirrors.”
“It was that four-story yellow-brick apartment at Corcoran and Hopple, east side?”
I nodded.
“Used to be a few out-service gals in that building, maybe some inside work, specialty stuff. Bondage, sadomaso. Role-play weirdness. Maybe one of the specialists lost control, had to cover some tracks fast.”
“They’re covered. Any trace evidence in that room is now floating somewhere in the troposphere.”
Harry shrugged. “Someone else’s case, thank God. Listen, I just got a call from Lincoln Haley at WTSJ. He found some pages from Taneesha Franklin. Our name appears on something.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
When we walked through the door, Lincoln Haley was talking to the receptionist. He gestured us to follow to his office. I heard James Brown over the ubiquitous speakers, wailing Baby, baby, baby in a voice like a scalded
