Lucy was six feet from him. She took two quick strides and jabbed a finger into his scrawny chest, which happened to be covered by a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on it. The rat had been to Disneyworld sometime in his youth, and the joy of the place had made a lasting impression.
“Miss Landry to you, bucko,” Lucy said. “Don’t make me pull this gun.”
His eyes shifted again, this time to the .38 at her hip, which might not have registered before with two great halter tops to check out. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
But not to be outdone, he went around his Cruze, opened the passenger door, and reached beneath the front seat, pulled out a black automatic—a .45 Glock 21 in a Blackhawk tactical holster. He came toward us, strapping it on.
“Whoa,” Lucy said. “Nice piece, Rat.”
Vince stared at her. “Rat?”
“Cool it, Luce,” I said. I looked around. “Everyone feel safer now that we can hold off a small invading army?”
“I do,” said the Rat. He looked an inch taller with that gun on his hip.
“I don’t,” said Shanna.
“Me either,” Lucy said, giving Vince the eye. “You ever fire that thing?”
“Couple of times, yeah. You ever fire that little popgun?”
“Okay, great,” I said. I looked at the house. “What’s inside? Shall we go have a look?”
It was a standard burn-out—the cloying ash and chemical odor you get when household goods and the surrounding house goes up. There wasn’t much left of this one. It had burned itself out without anyone so much as pissing on the flames. The roof beams were gone and afternoon sunlight slanted through, illuminating black ashy lumps. Stringers of blackened electrical wire hung in loops in what little wall remained. A fire marshal might’ve been able to locate the source of ignition, but I had the feeling it would turn out to be lawn mower propellant—gasoline. And a single match, or a flick of a Zippo. Who might’ve done it and why were questions without answers.
So, what could be learned in this mess? Damned little, was my guess. DNA and fingerprints would probably be gone. If the place had been robbed, an inventory of the ash might reveal that, but that would require a list of what had been in the house. I wondered if Jo-X had such a list or where it might be, especially given that this place was a national secret and didn’t exist.
We were only a step or two inside. “I wonder who built this place,” I said. “And who the contractor thought he was building it for.”
Lucy wrinkled her nose. “We’re not really gonna go through it, are we?”
“Have to.”
She looked down at her feet. “Well, I can’t walk around in here in sandals.” She held out a hand. “Key.”
I gave her the key to the Mustang. She went out and popped the trunk, got out her new tennis shoes and put them on.
Back in the house, she looked around. “What’re we looking for, anyway?”
“Missing stuff, charred bodies, the usual.”
“Bodies, that’s wonderful. But missing stuff? How would we know if anything’s missing?”
I turned to Shanna. “You were here, what? A week or two ago? Do you remember any of it, like furniture?”
“Furniture thieves,” Vince said. “That’s good. They do this a lot. Grab a couch, then burn the place down.”
Shanna laughed, which probably made his day.
I said to her, “Anything at all?”
“This is just the entryway. Was. Over there, that’s the living room.” She stepped gingerly through the ashy crud. “The main one, anyway. Guest room I was in had a big sitting room.”
We followed her through the devastation to what had been an open room with huge windows, even more open now with the latest in designer skylights and stumpy walls.
“What was in here?” I asked.
“It all looks so different, burned up like this. I’m not sure what was where.”
“Close your eyes. Try to visualize how it was.” I didn’t know what good that would do, but it couldn’t hurt to try. It felt very Zen, like I was a freakin’ hypnotist-investigator.
Shanna closed her eyes and stood still for nearly a minute. Then she turned in a circle. “There was a sofa about here,” she said. “I guess this is it.” She nudged a pile of soot with a foot. “And another one over there. And a couple of like La-Z-Boys. An entertainment center was against that wall, and a huge TV. I remember that.”
All piles of charred lumps. Hopeless. A forensics team might be able to make something of this, I thought. At least figure out what had been what, if it mattered.
“There was a room down a sort of short hallway that he kept locked,” Shanna said. “When I roofied him, I still couldn’t open it. I couldn’t find the keys.”
“You roofied him?” Vince said.
“Put that in your rag and I’ll track you down and blow off both your kneecaps with your own gun,” I told him.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, looking thoughtful.
Shanna led us down what used to be a hallway, now a channel between charcoal nubs where wall studs had burned almost to the floor. Finally she stopped. “It was in there, I think.”
Except for an outside wall, the room hadn’t been destroyed as completely as the rest of the house. A wall had been torn out and was lying in pieces on the ground outside. Interior walls were still standing, and I saw why. They were clad in sheet metal, maybe an eighth of an inch thick. The metal was buckled but still upright. The door was open, possibly sprung by the intense heat. Everything inside the room had either burned or melted. Not much remained except the room itself, but the metal sheeting was a clue as to its purpose. If I had to guess, I would say it had held valuables, things he kept
