The doorbell chimed as I pushed the button. I looked around the inside of the porch where several sets of ice skates were neatly arranged. From the number, colors and sizes I guessed they had three kids: two girls under ten and a teenage boy.
I was still gazing at the skates-wondering whether my entire family would ever go skating together again-when the door opened and a slim woman with freckles and warm brown eyes looked at me inquiringly. I figured she was in her mid-thirties. She was dressed in lazy-day sweats and wore her straightened mousy-blond hair in a loose ponytail.
She scrutinized me for a couple of seconds before asking, “Can I help you?”
“I hope you can. I need to find your husband. It’s important.”
“He’s at the basketball court.” She gestured. “Three blocks east.”
I must have looked skeptical.
She shook her head. “I know. In this weather. It’s nuts. But he shoots hoops every day, no exception. Says it keeps him sharp, so I’m not going to argue with him. Because in his line of work, if you’re not sharp, you’re dead.”
I nodded in recognition, which she immediately read. “You a cop?”
“FBI.”
“I hope he can help you.” She turned to go back inside but turned back again. “Wait a second…”
She reappeared a minute later with a large thermos flask and a couple of mugs. “I made him some soup. You can share it with him.”
I took them from her, thanked her, and left.
The basketball court was an unfussy concrete square boxed in by a twelve-foot wall of chicken wire. It backed up against a thicket of bare trees. Although some of the court was still under three inches of snow, the area inside the three-point line had been cleared. Dressed in baggy sweats, a tall African-American guy was playing one-on-one with an imaginary opponent, his breath misting in the freezing air.
He danced clear of the phantom defense, bounced the ball and released a shot. The ball dropped through the hoop without touching the rim.
I flashed my badge, hoping that my assured technique would preclude closer analysis of my ID. “Nat Lendowski, FBI. Just need five minutes of your time.”
“On a Sunday? Would you have pulled me out of church?”
“I don’t know.”
He gestured to the court. “Well, this is my church. Come by Third Avenue tomorrow, I’ll be happy to help.”
I held up the thermos flask. “Your wife said I should bring this.”
Taking a step toward me, he studied me for a moment, then shook his head and smiled. “OK, tell you what. If Janette wants you here, that’s good enough for me.”
He gestured to a wooden bench on a patch of snow-covered grass beside the court. The snow had been cleared from the bench; a thick winter coat slung over the back.
I passed the flask to its owner. “You investigated a fire. A condo at 113th and Adam Clayton.”
He handed me a mug of steaming soup then poured one for himself. “Sure. Journalist by the name of Kyle Rossetti. Poor guy burnt to death. What’s your interest?”
“We think he was working on a piece about Maxiplenty.”
“The crime Internet thing?”
“That’s the one. We have the founder in custody, but he’s lawyered up and locked down.” I took another sip of the soup. “It’s good.”
“Yeah, who needs more, right? A wife you still want to live with, kids you can be proud of, a job to come home from and food in your stomach.”
I nodded, agreeing with everything he said, but still knowing I’d never be able to enjoy any of that till I dealt with my white whales.
Both of them.
The next part was a gamble. I knew it would sound plausible-and I suspected Walsh had better things to do than check it out for himself.
“We know Rossetti wrote about Maxiplenty. We’re thinking maybe he uncovered more than he published. And maybe that made him a target.”
Walsh screwed the top back on the flask. “Everything burned. Files, laptop, everything. Unless he had cloud backups or documents stashed away in a safety deposit box, you’re not going to find anything.”
“You’re sure it was an accident?”
“Absolutely. No evidence of foul play.” He read my expression, cause he then said, “You seem disappointed.”
Which I was. I didn’t see the point in hiding it. “Kind of. It sends me back to square one.”
He thought about it for a second. “Look, everything about the case is consistent with an accidental death: Melted insulation and carbon build up from arcing inside the light switch-that’s a spark crossing the air from one piece of metal to another. It was only a matter of time before it got hot enough to start a fire. Stacks of books and papers close by. Flat battery in the smoke alarm. We think he was probably asleep on the sofa when it started. Maybe he got up and tried to deal with it, but his clothes caught fire. Guys from Engine Fifty-eight found him on the floor, maybe he tried to roll himself out.”
I mulled over his words, then asked, “Say you wanted to burn someone to death, make it look like an accident. How would you go about it?”
He nodded, his eyes lingering on the distance. In his line of work, this was the case far more than it should be. “Off the record?”
“Sure.”
He shrugged. “First, you’d need an apartment building which didn’t have an AFCI-an arc fault circuit interrupter-in place of the standard circuit breaker.”
“And Rossetti’s building didn’t have that?”
“No. We advocate everyone uses them, but there’s no law to enforce their use. It’s also easier with people who think they’re too busy to stay on top of their smoke alarm.”
I shook my head. Strike two.
“Then all you’d need to do is swap a switch somewhere in the house for one you’ve already messed with. Would take no more than a couple of minutes. Then, to be one hundred percent sure the fire takes hold, you’d use an ignition agent. Someone who knows what they’re doing would know which one-maybe ethanol-where to place it and how much to use. Too little and the fire may not catch. Too much and you leave an ILR-ignitable liquid residue-then we’d know it was arson.”
At the level at which Corrigan operated, I figured all of this was perfectly possible to accomplish-and all without leaving a trace. Another thought hit me.
“Did you see the tox report?” I asked. “Anything in his body that could have slowed him down? Something to make him unaware of the fire till it was too late?”
“No. Nothing. Not even alcohol. If there was something, that didn’t leave a trace either.”
I had nothing more to ask. “Thanks for your time.”
Walsh stood. “Good luck and sorry I couldn’t be more help. I’m gonna head home. Promised the kids we’d make a snowman.”
He took my empty mug and added it to his own on top of the flask, stooped to pick up his basketball and left me sitting on the bench, feeling more and more certain that Rossetti was murdered-wondering how many more people Corrigan had killed in “accidents.”
As I stood, my burner rang. It was Gigi.
“Rossetti’s editor died two days after him.” Before I could ask, she added, “Heart attack.”
The two words just speared right through me and nailed me to the ground, right in that spot, as Nick’s face-not breathing, but lifeless, still belted into his seat, as I pictured he was when the car was finally at rest-came storming back into my consciousness.
37
Chelsea, New York City
Gigi rolled her eyes. “Come on. Not every premature death is part of a conspiracy.”
We were back in her loft, seated around the kitchen block-Gigi, he-who-must-not-be-named, and me. Gigi’s fingers were dancing flittingly across her keyboard as she talked, while Kurt’s were scrolling through pages on an Android tablet.