situation midway-"
"Which is no excuse."
"I'm not suggesting that it is. But the fire obviously started in that apartment, and there were three adults inside who didn't seem to have made any effort to put it out. Why was Mr. Molitor lying in the middle of the living room floor? If he'd been shot, for instance, I would think I'd be entitled to know that. It certainly wasn't the smoke that killed him. He was down on the floor where the air was good."
"I don't suppose there's any reason not to tell you. We have a reasonably full picture, from the statement of the woman and the statements of the neighbors."
The Molitors had begun fighting in the afternoon-a husband, his wife, and the wife's brother. Fighting and drinking, and drinking and fighting. Among the burned remnants of their apartment were dozens of beer cans and the fragments of two bottles that had contained scotch.
By early evening, the neighbors were getting pretty tired of it. Judging by their observations and the wife's story, about nine the husband, who until then had been just shouting and threatening and hitting the wall with his fists, started hitting his wife. She hit back for a while, then fell, and he kicked her. She screamed for help and one of the neighbors, too frightened to go in or knock, called the police.
Meanwhile, the brother had come to the wife's defense. He attacked the husband, who by now was in a blind rage. The husband pushed the brother, who fell over the wife, and then the husband grabbed a can of lighter fluid, ran wild, spraying it along the living room and kitchen walls, and lighted it. The brother surged up off the floor. The wife, terrified, crawled to what she thought was the front door, but she was dazed from several blows, and now smoke was filling the room, and she actually went into the kitchen.
Meanwhile, the brother had picked up a chair and hit the husband over the head, hard. The husband went down.
At about this point, Figueroa and Bennis were pulling up outside. The brother's hair had caught fire. He panicked and ran out of the apartment, where he was intercepted by Bennis.
Wardron continued: "Officer Figueroa, what you should have done after Officer Bennis left with the baby was to attempt to get Mr. Molitor out. You might not have succeeded, but you should have tried."
"I knew the man on the floor was dead. He was cold."
"Officer Bennis, was he cold?"
Bennis swallowed. Figueroa fixed him with her eyes, but he didn't look at her. For a moment he straightened up, squaring his shoulders, as if he were steeling himself to take action. Then his face sagged.
"He was still warm," he said.
Commander Sazerac asked, "Isn't there a way to tell whether he was dead before the fire got to him? You should be able to test for carbon sucked into the lungs. If he wasn't breathing-"
"Commander Sazerac, we appreciate your help," Wardron said, in a tone that made it clear that he didn't. "Believe it or not, we thought of that."
Sazerac watched sourly. He knew there was something wrong with the way they were getting the picture, but he couldn't put his finger on where the problem was. Figueroa would not have left a living man to burn to death. Sazerac had been a commander much too long to make serious mistakes in judgment about his officers' characters. There was a problem with Figueroa, but it was the opposite. Like a lot of short female officers, she had a tendency to put herself in harm's way unnecessarily and play Jane Wayne. This charge against her was dead wrong.
Wardron added, "The entire building was engulfed when the fire department finally made it. Shortly after that, the top three floors of the structure collapsed into the basement. What was left of Mr. Molitor looked a lot like a blackened pipe cleaner."
Figueroa had been staring at the tabletop.
"Wait!" she said suddenly. She knew that wasn't the way to talk to the brass, and said in a quieter voice, "If you'll give me a minute, to go get something, I think I can explain what happened."
She got up.
Wardron said, "You can explain it right here."
"If I may leave for just a minute, sir, I can demonstrate."
"One minute, then."
Figueroa took two Styrofoam cups from the table that held the coffee urn and was back in less than a minute with two cups of water.
"Would you put the fingers of your left hand in one of these and the fingers of your right hand in the other, Deputy Wardron?"
"No. Explain to me what you think you're trying to do."
"Well maybe Commander Sazerac will, while I explain. We can always repeat it." Sazerac, intrigued, did as she said.
"One cup is hot water and one is cold. On the night of the fire, Officer Bennis had patted snow all over the brother, outdoors, and then ran back into the burning apartment. While he was doing that, I was pulling the woman out of the kitchen. She was hot to the touch and felt like she was starting to blister. When I came back, I felt along the hot wall. The instant Officer Bennis returned from outside, we both touched Mr. Molitor."
Commander Sazerac said, "I begin to see."
"Mr. Molitor was dead, but only ten to twenty minutes dead, so his skin was probably about the temperature of mine today. Commander, will you use both hands to touch my forearm?"
Sazerac did so. He smiled. "Amazing. Your arm feels warm to my right hand and cold to my left." Sazerac turned to Wardron. "The same arm," he said. "And it feels entirely different." He gestured to Wardron. "Want to try it?"
Figueroa and Bennis sat in their squad car. Bennis said, "Reminds me of this case I had once."
Figueroa sighed loudly, but Bennis knew she liked his stories.
"Guy decided to rob a fraternity house late at night, on a night when there had been a late snow. Flat, untouched snow leading up to the door. So he says to himself 'If I walk in backward, they'll think it was somebody from inside who stole the stuff, because there won't be any tracks leading in.' "
"Not a bad plan."
"Which he proceeds to accomplish. Picks up a lot of odds and ends, one or two wallets, a ten-inch TV, a boom box, and leaves. Kids get up in the morning' call the cops, we come in, see the tracks. Well, we'd been onto a guy in the neighborhood we knew'd been doing this kind of stuff. Go pick him up. Now he's got a problem. He wants to ask about tracks in the snow, but he shouldn't know anything about it, see?"
"Yup."
"So he says, real cute, 'You'd think you could tell whether it was an inside or outside job, snow like this and all.' "
"Real subtle."
"Yeah. Well, we said, 'We did and we knew by the tracks it was an outside job.' He says, all astounded 'That's impossible! I faced backward, going and coming!'"
Suze Figueroa giggled. "They get cute, but they never get smart."
"So you see, Figueroa, it's like this case with the fire. The way things are is all a matter of which angle you're looking at it from."
"Right, Bennis. Got it. Want to do a movie after work?"
He checked around to make sure nobody was watching and put his arm over her shoulders. "Let me take you to dinner, Figueroa. We missed Valentine's Day."
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment