Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(74)

The office. Whoever the arsonist was, he, she, it, definitely had something against the office.

“Is that where Conrad was shot?” I ask D.D., pointing at the photo.

“Yes.”

“You think the wife did it?”

She frowned, worried her lower lip. “I’m not sure. Maybe. Between you and me, detective to CI?”

This is a new conversation for us. I nod eagerly.

“There’s an eight-minute gap. Reports of shots fired, then an eight-minute gap before more shots are fired. The police showed up for round two and discovered Evie holding the gun. She hardly protested when they arrested her, but was that shock from discovering her husband dead, or from pulling the trigger?”

“Clearly, she had the gun.”

“According to her, she shot the laptop. Twelve times, to be precise.”

“Why would she destroy the computer?”

“Wouldn’t I love to know.”

“She’s not saying?”

“Not as long as she keeps hanging out with her lawyer. Damn defense attorneys.”

“You think she was covering something up.”

D.D. glances over. “I think you and I will be chatting with her sooner versus later on that subject.”

“I get to meet her?”

“I think you have to. It may be the only way to get the truth out of her. Now, you tell me: If she shot up the computer, who burned the house?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why burn the house?”

“To cover tracks … destroy evidence, like you said.”

“Evidence above and beyond the computer, which was already destroyed?”

“Did the arsonist know that?”

D.D. actually smiles at me. “Now you’re thinking like a real detective. Okay, so you’re looking at the report on burn patterns, right? Most concentrated area of damage was the office?”

“Yes.”

“As of this morning, we know the office held two things: one, the computer; but, two, a metal lockbox filled with Conrad’s fake IDs.”

“You think that’s what the arsonist was trying to destroy.” I pause. “Why not just steal them?”

“Again, good question. My theory, the person couldn’t find them. Remember, an entire forensic team swept through that house Tuesday night after the shooting without ever stumbling across the lockbox. In hindsight, I’m wondering if Conrad had a fake bottom in one of his desk drawers or filing cabinets. Those IDs mattered to him. Keeping that secret mattered to him.”

“But someone else had to know,” I counter immediately. “Otherwise, why burn down that house in an attempt to destroy them?”

Once again, D.D. smiles. “Flora, you just might be good at this. Someone else did have to know. And that person …”

“Might be another connection to Jacob Ness.”

“Last page of the report,” she orders now.

“It’s a picture. Some skinny kid.”

“Read.”

“Rocket Langley. Twenty-year-old African American male. Really? Because he looks like he’s fourteen. Okay, he’s a person of interest in several fires in abandoned buildings, the warehouse district of Boston,” I summarize. I skim farther down. All three fires involved gasoline as the accelerant, and the second was started by a cheap camp stove, which had a soup can filled with kerosene and a cotton wick.

“Arsonists are like serial killers,” D.D. explains as she finally eases her car onto Storrow. “They have signatures, preferred methodology. Once they find their identity as firebugs, they don’t deviate. Investigator Di Lucca put the elements of the Carters’ house fire through the arson database and Rocket’s name was what it immediately spit out.”

“So we’re going to arrest him?”

“Based on what? Being a ‘person of interest’ in an arson database? Without a history of prior arrests, an eyewitness report, or physical evidence that directly ties Rocket to the Carters’ home, we have no grounds for an arrest. I could, of course, drag the kid down to HQ for questioning, but Di Lucca has already tried that. Rocket clams up tight, which is probably why he’s never been charged with a crime. Just because he loves fire doesn’t mean he’s stupid.

“I’m going with a different strategy. I’m going to drop you off in his neighborhood. Where you’re going to track him down and talk to him. Shady character to shady character.”

“I’m a shady character?”

“We both know you don’t like to color inside the lines.”

I consider the matter. “I’m going to have to kick his ass, aren’t I?”

“See, you sound happier already.”

—

D.D. DROPS ME off a few blocks from Rocket’s last known address. It’s dark this early in December, and let’s just say Rocket’s neighborhood is a long way from the dazzling Christmas lights covering the Boston Commons. These row houses appear hunkered down in the winter gloom, half the windows boarded up, the rest covered in security bars. A lot of the poor neighborhoods in Boston have been bought up and renovated in the past few years. Rocket’s isn’t one of them.

D.D.’s right: This is my kind of place.