Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(69)

Angelo Richie



A uniform opened the door. “Lieutenant. They’re back through that archway to the left.”

She could smell the smoke, the blood, the acrid stink of burning—plaster, wood, flesh.

The archway had been white. Gray smeared it now, under blood splattered like red rain. She stepped up, studied the carnage. What was left of four people scattered over the floor. What had been flesh, blood, bone, muscle, lay in pieces, charred and black. Paintings, some nearly obliterated, others in scorched tatters scattered with them.

Fire damage crisped sections of the walls, the floors, the ceiling. Fire-suppressant foam still dripped. Ash had filtered into piles, some soggy with foam.

A piece of what she identified as a metal ladder impaled one of the victims.

Sealed up, faces cop-blank, her detectives recorded the scene, marked body parts.

Careful of her steps, Detective Carmichael crossed to Eve. “Has to be your guys.”

“Yeah.” She took her field kit as Peabody stepped up beside her, began to seal up. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“Art opening tonight for Angelo Richie. They were loading in this area. The other owners were here—one, Joe Kotler was in the back office working, the other was in the front area with one of the assistants. We have them all in the back, but according to the two out front, Denby came in. He told them to stay where they were. His partner—that’s Ilene Aceti—says she was so stunned by his tone, how he looked, she just stood there for a minute. Then she told the assistant—Noelle Daub—to hold on, started to go see what the hell. And boom. Just like that. She was close enough it lifted her off her feet, tossed her in the air. She’s got a broken arm—already treated by the MTs. The assistant fell—just bumps and bruises there.”

She paused to take a water bottle out of her pocket, drink. “Aceti, broken arm and all, got up, rushed toward this area. Active fire at that point. She yelled for the assistant to get out, tag nine-one-one, and ran toward the back as Kotler came rushing out. The sprinkler didn’t engage, or the alarm. He grabbed a tank of suppressant, managed to put out the fire before it spread beyond this area.”

“No sprinkler, no alarm?”

“Nope.” Santiago walked over. “We haven’t checked that yet. We’d just finished another call, about six blocks from here. Unattended death, looks like natural causes,” he added. “So we responded to this one. Smoke hadn’t cleared when we got here. Pretty good bet this was yours.”

“We contacted Salazar—since she had the other, too. She and a team are on the way.”

“Good.”

“Since the fire was out, we asked the smoke-eaters to hold off until we finished. You know what they can do to a scene.”

“Yeah. Do we have the names of the other DBs?”

“The artist, Angelo Richie, two assistants, Trenton Bean and Loden Modele, and an intern, the nephew of Kotler, Dustin Greggor. Kid was nineteen, and Kotler’s pretty messed up over it.”

“Five people,” Eve stated. “And two injuries.”

“I’d say lucky if I believed in luck,” Carmichael commented. “Aceti’s assistant said they expected a couple hundred at the opening tonight. If these fuckers wanted to screw with the gallery for whatever motive, that would have screwed a lot harder.”

Eve scanned what remained of the paintings. “I think they got what they aimed for. Peabody, contact EDD. I need some geek to—Never mind,” she said as Roarke came in. “We’ve got an on-site geek.”

She walked to him, might have objected when he gripped her hands but for the fierce look in his eyes.

“What? And what are you doing here?”

“I had business downtown, was heading this way when the alert sounded. It wasn’t hard to deduce, and you add the missing painting. I saw your car out front just minutes after the alert.”

He let out a quiet breath. “I didn’t know if you’d been here when the bomb went off.”

He released her hands to skim one of his over her hair, then flicked a finger down the dent in her chin. “You might have been here,” he murmured.

“I wasn’t.” Understanding, she gave his hands a firm squeeze. “Five people were—including the guy in the vest. Family man, one of the owners.”

“And his family?”

“I’ve got uniforms, Baxter and Trueheart, on that.”

He looked through the archway, said nothing for several seconds. “There’s no water damage. The sprinkler didn’t engage?”

“It didn’t. Neither did the fire alarm.”

“As I’m here, would you like me to check on that for you?”

“That’d be handy. They had an art opening scheduled for tonight—a pretty big one. Artist—the same one who did the missing figure study—was Angelo Richie.”

“Richie? That’s a pity. He had talent.” Roarke brushed a hand down her arm as if just needing the contact. “We have one of his paintings—Woman in Moonlight—in a guest room.”

“We do?”

“We do, yes. I spotted it on a trip to Italy a year or so ago.”

“He and what was probably a bunch of his paintings, or what’s left of him and them, were in there.”