The room wasn’t big, ten by ten feet, big enough to hold a good-sized safe. A pile of ash littered with blackened hardware might have once been a cabinet with drawers. I rubbed the ash with a foot, didn’t see anything that might’ve been jewelry.
“I didn’t see any power lines coming in,” I said to get Vince out before he saw too much. “Maybe he was on a generator.”
We trooped outside and around the house. On a pad west of the house I saw Xenon’s helicopter, a hundred fifty feet away, far enough that the fire hadn’t damaged it. Two steel sheds were fifty feet from the main house, still intact and unlocked, paint slightly scorched. The first held shovels, rakes, shears, and other tools I couldn’t imagine Jo-X using. The second had housed a generator big enough to power the house. The generator itself was gone. Stubby bolts that might have held it in place were embedded in a concrete slab floor. A wire as thick as my wrist dangled from a three-hundred-amp power panel. The cable ended in a socket that would connect to the generator. Big air-conditioning condensers were outside the house, so I thought the generator was at least 50kW, maybe more. The floor was scored, as if the generator had been dragged outside, and I saw what looked like blood spots on the concrete slab. The blood, if that’s what it was, was beneath the scrape marks the generator had made. So, blood first, then the generator was removed. If it was blood. Sure looked like it.
I thought about that. If I wanted to put a bullet in him out here, I would monkey with the generator, turn it off or cut off the fuel. Power goes out. When he came out to see what the problem was, putting a bullet in his skinny chest wouldn’t be hard to do, one more in his head to make certain.
Behind the shed was a thousand-gallon tank of diesel that hadn’t gone up with the house. A gauge on the tank indicated that it was less than a quarter full.
I turned away from the shed and looked back at the house.
“Now what?” Lucy said, putting an arm through mine.
“Now I don’t know what.”
“I like it that you’re always so modest.” She stared at the black smelly ruins of the house with me. “Anyway, this was fun. You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
Back at the cars, Vince sidled over and said, “Bigfoot loose in Manhattan subways? That’s pretty good. Okay if I use it?”
“Be my guest. If you write it up, send me a copy. I want to know how it turns out. Do they finally catch him and give him a job with the IRS, or is he running loose with occasional aboveground sightings, like shinnying up the Empire State Building?”
“Those’re good, too, IRS especially.” He got in his car, hung a U-turn in the driveway, then stopped opposite me. “I think he’d still be loose, living on rats and small dogs, terrorizing people. It’d read better that way and I could do follow-up stories. But I like that IRS bit, too. If you ever want a job at the News, I’d say you’ve got the chops for it. Let me know and I’ll put in a word for you.” He gave me a grin and drove away.
Shanna stood with Lucy and me, shading her eyes with a hand as she looked back at the house. Finally she turned away. “I wonder who did this? And why.”
“Same person who killed the Zee, probably,” I said.
She widened her eyes. “Wow, you’re good. Probably make private eye of the month on the street where you live.”
Man, I hate irony. Especially when it comes in short shorts and a straining halter.
Shanna opened her car door, started to get in.
“Back to Caliente?” I asked.
“Where else? This place is . . . gone.”
“Danya didn’t want to check it out with you?”
“Obviously not, but as a private eye you’re on top of things like unreal. Awesome, really.”
“Go, before I’m forced to hurt you.”
“Pussycat. I worry more about the junior high chick you’re hooked up with.” She got in, banged the door shut.
“If you’re smart, you’ll ditch the shoes,” I said to her.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“You’ll never get them clean. Investigators could tell you’ve been up here. If that’s a concern, that is.”
She looked at me for a moment, said, “Thanks,” and took off down the mountain after Vince.
“So, what have we learned here?” I asked Lucy.
“Don’t play with matches, don’t smoke in bed, don’t slosh gasoline around your house, remember to ditch your shoes, and Shanna’s a bitch?”
“All good observations for sure, but besides those.”
“Whoever burned the place down might’ve stolen a big-ass generator.”
“An even more cogent and useful observation. What else?”
“High-capacity halter tops are made of Kevlar, and Shanna’s a bitch and a half?”
I gave her a one-eyed squint. “Kevlar might be useful as a reinforcing agent, but I was referring to other things.”
“Actually, I think it’s totally interesting that Shanna was even here. And the darling little tabloid guy.”
“Totally, huh? You’re so Valley. And given darling Vinny’s propensity and skills, it’s likely he followed her here. But you’re right about Shanna. Last thing I expected was to see her up here.”
“She’s a bitch.”
“You could let
