Jack and Djinn (The Houri Legends, #1)(37)

“Not from me. He didn’t care about her. She was just * for him. He loved me. He told me that all the time.”

Carson’s face crinkled in disgust, at both Rachel’s language and her ideas. “So you have no idea who would want to kill Ben?”

Rachel looked at Carson in surprise. “I kind of thought it was an accident, or something? You mean someone…murdered him?”

“We have our suspicions,” Carson said.

“But—” Rachel began, but fell silent. “I bet it was Miriam. She was pissed off when she found out about me. Stupid bitch.”

Carson felt only contempt for Rachel, but he forced himself to remain blank-faced and professional. “So, did you know that Ben put Miriam in the hospital? He beat her nearly to death.”

To her credit, Rachel cringed a little. “No, I didn’t know that. I mean, I know Ben has a temper, but he’s never hit me. He’s gotten angry, and maybe screamed at me a few times, but…god, that’s terrible.” She seemed genuinely shocked.





*





As he drove back to the office, Carson had the feeling he’d just followed up on a lead that went nowhere. As much as he personally disliked Rachel, he didn’t get the sense that she had had anything to do with Ben’s death.

Carson sat at his desk late into the evening, facts and theories doing their endless tumble in his head.

Wade’s death could still be the result of jealousy on Miriam’s part. Maybe she found out that Ben had another girlfriend. That, combined with his penchant for abusing her, might equal a breakdown bad enough that she would kill him. But crimes of jealousy usually took the form of gunshots or stab wounds or poison, not murder by arson. A woman would have had to be pretty damn pissed off, not mention clever, to douse a man like Ben with fire propellant and torch him. Besides, if Miriam had poured accelerant on him, there would be other evidence at the crime scene, but there wasn’t a thing to go on.

None of this made any sense.





*





The next day Carson got a break that came in the form of an abandoned vehicle report. A motorcycle licensed to Jack Byrne was found abandoned on the side of Eleven Mile Road near Crooks, scratched and dented as if it had been in a crash. A canvass of the houses in the immediate area produced one witness, Betsy Willis, a seventy-four-year-old widow living alone in the second-floor apartment across the street from where the motorcycle was found.

“Oh, my, that was quite a show!” Betsy exclaimed with unabashed excitement. “I was watching my shows—this was quite late, you know. I can’t sleep much these days. And anyways, I saw this…oh, how would you describe it…it was like a glow, like something was on fire outside. So I went to look and see what it was, because if it was a fire I would have to find Mister Wiggles, my cat. He’s old, too, you know, and he doesn’t move around so good anymore.” Pausing for breath, she continued, “Well, I’m sure you don’t want to know about Mister Wiggles. I went to the window, this one right here, and would you believe what I saw? It was a girl, Detective. I swear I’m telling you the truth. I may be old, but I know what I saw. It was a girl, and she was on fire. Or no, that came later. When I first saw her, she was just…glowing. Her skin, I mean. And, my goodness, it was so bright, it lit up the whole street. It was raining something fierce that night, and I was worried about her. But she wasn’t walking on the sidewalk, she was just strolling down the middle of the road, and cars were going around her, honking their horns and such.

“Of course, no one stopped to see if the poor girl was all right, and you know I would have gone out there, but at my age, I would have caught pneumonia, wouldn’t you know? That’s just my luck. Well, as I was watching, a motorcycle comes zipping down the street and almost hits her, but he swerved at the last second, and that wasn’t the smartest thing to do, what with the pouring rain. His back tire went out from under him, and he lost control, and I was sure he was going to die, and I think he would have, if it wasn’t for that girl.

“Now, this is where things get exciting, Detective, and I’m sure you won’t believe me, but I saw what I saw, and it’s all God’s truth, so help me. She must have known the boy on the motorcycle, because she ran up to him and took him in her arms, and I could see her shaking her head. I think she loved that boy, that’s my feeling, but you wouldn’t be interested in that. He was hurt badly, and I wouldn’t have believed what happened next if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. She bent over him, and the glowing of her skin got brighter, so bright I had to look away, like…oh, like she had the sun inside her, as odd as that sounds. And wouldn’t you know, that strange glow moved from her into him and spread out, and I think it must have healed him. And then a fancy red sports car comes squealing to a stop and this big guy with dark hair gets out and starts yelling.

“Oh, it made me so angry to watch how he treated that poor girl. My Frank, God rest his soul, would have gone out there and given that boy a piece of his mind, I’ll tell you, but Frank has been gone these past ten years. Well. He grabbed that girl by the arm and yanked her away so that boy who was hurt hit his head on the street, and the girl, oh, she didn’t like that one bit, I’ll tell you. She was acting like she’d had just about enough of that guy with the fancy car, that’s what it looked like to me, at any rate. She shoved him away, and they were arguing. She must have said something that made the boy with the dark hair upset, because he started after her like he was going to hit her, and then, if you’ll believe it, the girl burst into flames. I swear, Detective, I swear on my very soul. She just went poof, and her whole body was on fire. But she wasn’t burning, like someone had put a match to her, it was like…oh, goodness, like the fire was part of her, if that makes any sense.