He had no choice but to drive away in the sedan he’d recently purchased for the express purpose of getting rid of an identifiable vehicle. “A wasted thirty-five hundred dollars, asshole.” Covertly he shot the finger at the driver of the maroon sedan.

He nosed his way into the line of cars leaving the funeral and was glad to see that the maroon sedan had to wait for another opening in the stream, which didn’t come until six more cars had passed. When Raley reached the exit, he turned onto the thoroughfare, going in the direction opposite from the motor court where he and Britt were registered. He drove as fast as he dared without risking getting stopped for speeding.

Nevertheless, the maroon sedan caught up with him at the second traffic light. It remained in his rearview mirror for the next few blocks, keeping several cars between them but matching Raley’s speed and shifting lanes whenever he did.

It took him five miles in heavy traffic to finally shake the other vehicle, but he couldn’t be certain that Butch didn’t have someone else bird-dogging him. He continued to weave through traffic on the boulevards, got on and off the expressway several times, and doubled back on his route so many times he didn’t think he could possibly have been followed.

That was what he told Britt now, and wished his voice held more conviction. “I think I evaded them, but I can’t be sure.”

“We won’t know until someone comes barging through the door, guns blazing.”

“I’ve got a gun, too.”

That didn’t seem to console her all that much. “You’re not always here, Raley. And now that they’ve seen the new car, they know what we’re driving.”

“I drove into a parking garage at the hospital and switched license plates with a minivan, then I got a felt marker and made an eight out of a three. And I chose this car because there are a lot of boxy gray sedans similar to it. So it’ll be hard for them to track us.”

“They’ve done okay so far.”

She was right, so he didn’t insult her with a lame contradiction. “You could still turn yourself in.”

“Not until I’m better equipped, ready to fight fire with fire. So to speak.” Reaching behind her, she took several copied documents off the bed, where she had obviously been reading them during his absence.

“You took pains to hide all this stuff. Why?”

“I wanted to be sure a copy of the original records existed. I was afraid that, after I left the department, they would be doctored or accidentally-on-purpose misplaced, never to be found.”

“When you were stonewalled by Jay, what specifically were you investigating?”

“The seven victims.”

“According to these reports, one was a file clerk.”

“Her body was found in a stairwell. She was trapped there when the ceiling collapsed. Cause of death, she was crushed, but she probably would have died of smoke inhalation anyway.”

“The jailer.”

“Was rescued but died two days later of burns and smoke inhalation. It wasn’t a merciful death,” Raley said grimly.

“Five prisoners died in the holding cell.”

“Four died in the holding cell. But there was a fifth detainee who also died.”

She glanced down at the sheets of paper in her hand. “You’ve circled a name in red.”

“Cleveland Jones.”

CHAPTER 19

CLEVELAND JONES WAS IN A SMALL, ENCLOSED OFFICE WITH no window, not even in the door. It was being used that day as an interrogation room,” Raley said.

“Why that day?”

“Curious, isn’t it? Especially when there were two other bona fide interrogation rooms. Anyway, it’s believed that he set the fire.”

“By igniting the contents of a wastebasket. You said it wasn’t that simple.”

“It wasn’t. As a seasoned inspector, Brunner knew that, too. Ordinarily, the trash can fire would have burned itself out in a matter of minutes, when all the combustibles were consumed. But this trash can was placed near an intake air vent. The grille was missing and no telling for how long.”

“I only saw the building as a pile of charred rubble,” she said. “But I understand that it was old. The department was mere months away from moving into new headquarters.”

“That’s right. The building was overcrowded, outdated, and in need of extensive repair. The insulation was old. There were holes in the ductwork. Old wood beams formed the infrastructure, and many were rotted. The wiring was faulty. It had a sprinkler system, but it was an antique, insufficient and unreliable on its best day. The day of the fire, it failed completely.

“But no one wanted to spend money on extensive repairs when the department would soon be vacating the place for the new facility. Repairs that were absolutely necessary were done hastily and sloppily. Band-Aids put on a massive hemorrhage. Unfortunately, all this was discovered during our inspection after the fire, not before. Even dust is flammable, and it had been accumulating in the structure since the turn of the last century. It was a disaster waiting to happen.”

“When the small trash can flame was sucked into the wall through the intake vent…”

Raley made a motion with his hands, indicating ignition. “It had a draft pulling it upward. It had more than enough flammable material and virtually nothing to impede its path through the walls. From the first spark, it was deadly.”

“Seven people,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

“Six.”

She gave him a sharp look. “What?”

“Six. Cleveland Jones didn’t die in the fire. He was dead before it started.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “How do you know?”

“Did you come across Jones’s autopsy report?”

“I did, yes. It’s here somewhere.” She shuffled through the documents scattered across the bed until she found that report and handed it to him. “It says his body was found on the floor of that locked room, curled inward, hands under the chin.”

“Which is typical. As a burning body dehydrates, the muscles contract and pull it into a fetal-like position. That doesn’t mean the victim burned to death. Cleveland Jones didn’t. His cause of death was blunt trauma to the head.”

He flipped over a few pages of the autopsy report to a page on which there was a diagram of a human male body. He pointed to the head, where the coroner had made markings. “Skull fractures. Both significant.”

Britt read out loud what the coroner had written. “Fatal.” She looked up at Raley. “A falling beam? Collapsing ceiling?”

He shook his head. “If that was the case, the fire would have been raging for some time. Jones’s lungs would have shown significant soot and smoke inhalation. There would have been a high level of carbon monoxide.” He held up the report. “That’s not what the ME found. As soon as he made these determinations, he called Brunner and told him that one of the victims was dead before the fire started. Brunner asked me to inform detectives that they had a possible homicide. I was to work with them on the investigation. That’s what I was doing when Jay called to invite me to his party.”

She exhaled deeply, readily seeing the import of that.

“As soon as I started asking questions about Jones and his arrest, I began to get the runaround. Jay claimed not to remember the details of Jones’s arrest. It wasn’t his case, he said, but he promised to find out what he could.

“Keep in mind that the PD was in chaos. Construction on the new building was still months away from completion, so they were working out of temporary headquarters. Jay’s procrastination made sense. Now, I see it as avoidance. He didn’t want me to know anything about Cleveland Jones, other than that he was the firebug. And that’s another thing. Jones had committed a wide range of crimes, but arson wasn’t one of them. I learned that from his rap sheet, which I had to obtain from the state.”

Tiredly, he rolled his shoulders. He was tempted to save some of this until tomorrow, but he knew Britt wouldn’t let him stop until she had the whole story, so he continued. “After repeated calls, Jay finally sent me a message through a PD secretary, telling me that Jones’s blows to the head had been sustained prior to his arrest. The arresting officers-never identified-didn’t realize how serious the injuries were until Jones began behaving irrationally while under interrogation.