“It’s Mitry,” Des barked into the phone. “Go.” She listened to the calm, detached voice on the other end of the phone, her face revealing nothing. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said, when it fell silent. Then she went dashing outside in Mitch’s robe for the clean uniform that was in her cruiser.
Mitch padded downstairs after her, fuzzy-headed. He felt as if they’d slept for less than ten minutes. Quirt was meowing fiercely to be let out. Mitch complied, and was putting the coffee on when Des came back with her uniform inside a dry cleaner’s bag. “Trouble?” he asked her.
“Got me a major-league hot one,” she responded, starting toward the bathroom to change. “A car’s exploded on Route 156 up by Winston Farms. I’ve got dead cows, bales of hay on fire. A real mess.” She paused in the bathroom doorway, a troubled expression on her face. “Plus there’s the remains of a victim inside the car. We can’t be positive yet, but…”
“Who is it, Des?”
She took a deep breath and said, “Mitch, it’s Takai Frye’s Porsche.”
“Oh my God…”
CHAPTER 6
It was the smell that got to her.
Des could smell the grilled meat from a half mile away. And what she found when she got to that rural crossroads at Winston Farms was uncommonly grisly. An explosion had flipped the red Porsche directly onto its back over by the feed troughs, where it ignited the poor animals and the bales of feed into a gas-powered fireball that she later learned could be seen twenty miles away in New London.
She was the first officer on the scene. Members of Dorset’s volunteer fire department, with support from volunteer crews from East Haddam and Moodus, were still hosing down the smoldering wreckage with foam. As she got out of her cruiser in the dawn’s gray light, Des could make out bits of charred, twisted auto debris scattered for hundreds of feet around. A dozen or more cows were dead, their body parts mingling with those of the Porsche. It had to be one of the ugliest crime scenes Des had ever seen. But it was the smell of that meat that bothered her more than anything else.
It would be a while before she’d find herself cutting into a steak again.
It was a calm, crisp morning. Glistening frost blanketed the fields, and steam rose off the man-made pond out behind the Winston’s feed trough, where a collection of family members stood in saucer-eyed disbelief. A few horrified neighbors were out watching from across the road as well.
The volunteer firefighters seemed pretty shaken themselves. They were competently trained, but they were still civilians. Many of them were barely out of high school. They’d never seen anything like this.
Des’s contractor, Tim Keefe, was the man in charge. Dorset’s assistant fire chief was a husky, red-faced fellow with a walrus mustache. He was barely thirty, but very steady and mature. In the big city, a lot of men Tim’s age still seemed like boys to her. Here in Dorset, they were middle-aged family men.
“Morning, trooper,” he said to her grimly as he stood there in his firefighter’s gear, clutching a license plate in one hand.
She motioned toward the car. “Is the victim still…?
“What’s left of Takai is still in there,” he affirmed hoarsely. “Poor woman. No one deserves to die like that. I found this across the road.” He held it out to her-it was a personalized plate that read: MYTOY. “It’s hers, all right. I’d know it anywhere. Only new turbo in town. Damned car probably cost her more than my whole house did. We, uh, didn’t attempt to move her yet. Didn’t know what we were dealing with-whether it was a crime scene or whatever.”
“You did right, Tim. What I need you to do now is keep everyone away from this scene until the Emergency Services team gets here. They have to check for undetonated explosives before we attempt to do a thing, okay?”
“Sure thing. I’ll pass it along.”
Des immediately got on her radio and reached out to the Westbrook barracks for Emergency Services, the Bomb Squad and Major Crimes. She also ran a check on the MYTOY license plate. It was Takai’s, all right.
Then she slogged her way through the foam and crouched down for a firsthand look inside the Porsche, her stomach muscles tightening involuntarily. The internal temperature of a vehicle in a gas explosion was generally between eighteen hundred and two thousand degrees. A human being didn’t stay pretty for long in that kind of heat. Takai Frye certainly hadn’t. Not that what was in there even looked like a person now. Her body was nothing more than charred remains. It appeared to be intact, although some of the thinner bones, such as her hands, had turned to ash.
Des stared at it, thinking: I will need crime scene photos. I will need to draw this.
A pair of uniformed troopers pulled up now, the sirens on their cruisers blaring. They immediately got to work cordoning off the area and closing the road to all non-emergency vehicles.
Des strode out into the road to look for skid marks, Tim Keefe tagging along beside her. He seemed to have something more he wanted to tell her. She didn’t see any skids-Takai hadn’t swerved, hadn’t hit her brakes. Whatever happened, it happened without warning. “Was it the farmer who phoned it in?” she asked him.
“No, that was me, actually,” he replied, removing his big yellow firefighter’s hat. He was losing his hair on top, and with his hat off he looked a lot older. “I live just up the road. I was up early, with the new baby and all. Soon as I heard the explosions I jumped in my truck and came flying down here.”
“How many explosions did you hear, Tim?”
“Three. Two real quick ones, followed by a much louder one. I’m guessing the last one was the gas tank. As far as those first two, I never actually heard a car bomb go off. So I wouldn’t know how it would sound…”
“How did these sound?”
“Like shots, to be honest.”
Des raised her eyebrows at him. “A shotgun?”
He nodded. “That was my first thought. The sound sure carried like shotgun fire. It’s duck-hunting season now, so I’ve been hearing it a lot-especially early in the morning.” Tim trailed off, rubbing his high dome of forehead with the palm of his hand. “Except if it was a shotgun, man, it was a real boomer. The mother of all shotguns.”
“Did you know Takai?”
“Everyone knew Takai,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I wonder why she was heading out so early.”
“Heading home is more like it,” he suggested, leaving the rest unsaid. “The Fryes live right down Old Ferry Road from here. She’d have made a sharp left here at the crossroads, then taken Old Ferry to Lord’s Cove.” Tim hesitated, clearing his throat. “This may not be the time or the place, but I’ve been meaning to call you about your roof.”
She winced inwardly. “Now what…?”
“Well, when they stripped the shingles off yesterday, they discovered that those old skylights were leaking. Whoever installed them didn’t properly flash or caulk ’em…” Always, it was a previous workman’s fault, she was discovering. “So there’s water damage underneath. Your studs and sheathing are rotted out. That’s all got to be replaced before the new roof goes on.”
“How long will it take, Tim?”
“Another day or two. But there’s no getting around it, I’m afraid. Your roof’s not something you want to fool around with.”
“Agreed, but let me ask you something straight up, Tim. Am I going to be in before Christmas?”
“Heck, yeah,” he said reassuringly. “It’s all coming together now.”
Which was precisely what he’d told her two weeks ago. But Des didn’t bother to point this fact out to him. She merely thanked him for the update.
Maybe Bella was on to something. Maybe she was a wuss.
The Emergency Services cube vans began arriving now, accompanied by a half dozen more cruisers. As resident trooper, Des’s role was to fill them in and provide backup, if requested. The ES lieutenant, Roger Brunson,
