Danny was not speaking, at least not to Lindsay, because he had been rained out of a date with Augusta Wallace for the last four days. He had been working on Augusta, a beautiful, slim, dark-haired detective, for months before she finally gave in, but the delays were clearly giving her second thoughts. He could tell by her few words, her passing smile in the halls.
Stepping into the murder scene, Danny Messer cursed the rain and turned his full attention to the dead man on the desk with the pencils protruding from his left eye and neck.
'We're still digging out bodies,' the fireman said, leaning back against the red truck.
He wiped his face with the heavy gray glove on his hand and took off his helmet. His last name was Devlin. Stella could see that from the name on his raincoat.
Devlin was young, tall, handsome and weary. That was as clear as the name on his coat. Behind him lay what little remained of Doohan's. It wasn't much, a fragment of the bar, an edge now tilted to create a waterfall of seemingly endless rain. The leg of a chair stuck straight up as if someone had planted it in the rubble to mark the location of a buried body. A frying pan lay upside down on top of a torn scrap of checkered cloth. The cloth lay limp, beaten down by the rain and clinging to jagged bits of plaster and debris. At Stella Bonasera's feet was an unbroken and unopened bottle of Dewar's Scotch.
'Not too much of a fire,' said Devlin. 'Happened quickly. Place collapsed. We're getting a lot of that. Roofs mostly. The rain knocks it down. But in this case it wasn't the rain that knocked it down.'
'What makes you think that?' said Sheldon Hawkes, standing at Stella's side.
'The end posts on the bearing walls,' Devlin said, nodding toward where the walls had been. 'Three of them collapsed at the same time and they didn't just collapse on their own. You can still smell the dynamite, that liquidy sweet smell.'
'I know the smell,' said Stella.
'Official report'll come from an arson investigator,' Devlin said. 'We can call in the dogs to track it, but I'm sure.'
'The dead?' asked Hawkes.
'Left where we found them,' said Devlin. 'That's what you want, that's what you get.'
'It's what we need,' said Stella.
'I'll lead the way,' said Devlin, pushing himself away from the truck. 'We're shorthanded. Half of the crew is on another call. You'd think rain would keep fires from breaking out, not cause them.'
They followed him, walking carefully over a fun-house floor of pieces, bits, chips and jagged metal. Devlin stopped and pointed to a tarp.
'Didn't know whether to leave them in the rain or cover them and maybe preserve evidence,' said Devlin.
'It's a toss-up,' said Stella.
She had thrown back the hood of her raincoat to give herself a better view of the scene and whatever bodies she might find. Her hair tumbled in front of her eyes. She ran her fingers through it to keep it back. She pulled a thick rubber band from her pocket and awkwardly, the arms of her raincoat swishing heavily together, tied her hair back. Devlin smiled in appreciation of Stella's high forehead and Grecian features. Stella was aware of the fireman's appreciation. This wasn't the time or place. Stella knew it. Devlin knew it. They also knew from their jobs that feeling guilty about small natural reactions wasn't worthwhile.
'We pulled ID on all four of the dead men. They all had wallets,' said Devlin.
He took a notebook from an inner pocket and shielded it with his jacket to read the names.
'This one is Frank Zvitch,' said Devlin. 'One next to him is Anthony DeLuca.'
Stella pulled back the nearby tarp to reveal the headless body of DeLuca.
'Back there'- Devlin pointed- 'Malcom Cheswith. Looks like he was the cook.'
Stella raised an eyebrow.
'He's wearing an apron, has a grease burn on his palm. We found him just outside the kitchen.'
Stella nodded.
'There, where the front door used to be.' Devlin pointed to a tarp covering an inflated shape. 'Henry Doohan, owner. Papers in his pocket.'
'He's carrying ownership papers in his pocket?' asked Stella.
'Ownership, licenses, insurance, inspection sheets,' said Devlin.
'Odd,' said Stella.
'Odd,' Devlin agreed. 'Why would he be carrying them?'
Stella wished she could tent all four dead men, but they only had one tent in the trunk, just a small one that could handle one body, not big enough to stand in.
'We'll take it from here, Lieutenant,' she said, removing her camera from the kit she put down.
Devlin nodded and moved away, wiping his face with his gloved hand.
'One more thing,' he said. 'Again, we have to wait for an arson investigator and I may be wrong, but it looks to me like the charges went off before they were supposed to.'
'Could be,' Stella agreed. 'Dry dynamite is relatively safe to handle, but when it gets wet, it's highly unstable and volatile. It doesn't take much to set it off.'
'That's what I was thinking,' Devlin said. 'You're Greek, right?'
'Right.'
'Thought so,' he said with a smile and walked away.
She shook rain from her face and eyes and started to take pictures. She was about to suggest that Hawkes examine the bodies, but when she looked over her shoulder she saw that he was already squatting next to the body of Henry Doohan.
Hawkes, kit on the ground beside him, leaned over the corpse, wiped rain from his eyes and looked at Doohan's bruised and dirty face. He turned the body on its side. He was sure.
Stella had just taken her last photograph when she heard Hawkes call out, 'This one was shot.'
She put the camera away and was about to step toward the kneeling Hawkes when he said, 'I think I hear something.'
He pointed down a few feet from Doohan's body.
Stella backhanded rain from her face and looked in the direction Hawkes indicated. It was time to change gloves, but it wouldn't be easy taking off and putting on wet ones.
A sound. A crack. A deep breath from the earth.
Stella looked toward Hawkes to see if he had heard the sound. But Sheldon Hawkes had disappeared.
'What've we got, Montana?' Danny asked Lindsay after they had photographed the scene. 'Make what's left of my morning interesting.'
He looked toward the front of the room, where the dead teacher lay over his desk.
'Testing me again?' Lindsay asked, crossing her arms.
'Would I do that?' he asked with a grin.
'Whenever you can.'
She smiled.
They were standing in the back of the chemistry lab against a whiteboard with a list of chemicals carefully written on it in black marker. Three slate-topped lab tables were lined up in front of them. On each tabletop were burners, retorts, test tubes and a built-in sink. The room smelled of sulfur and a blend of chemicals not unlike those in the crime scene lab. The difference was that the Wallen School lab looked out of date by a century. But that, both Danny and Lindsay could tell, was an affectation like the hallways. The equipment was new, clean, modern. The cabinets were stocked with hundreds of neatly labeled bottles and jars, and two computers with high-speed Internet connections sat on each lab table.
Beyond these tables lay Alvin Havel, chemistry teacher, soccer coach and winner of Teacher of the Year for the past four years according to the plaques placed tastefully on the wall next to the only door to the room.
