“Um, okay.” Dane lost his train of thought. He was beginning to think being an asshole was a prerequisite of both men and women working in the field. Roselita kept walking. Dane followed.
“Great, let’s get to work. We’ve wasted enough time already, and losing Dahmer is a huge setback for all of us.”
“It figures you two would be buddies,” Dane mumbled.
Roselita slowed her step and then came to a complete stop. She dug both hands into the pockets of her tailored pants and stared down at her expensive Italian leather flats for a moment before pivoting slowly to face Dane. “He’s not my buddy, Agent Kirby. He’s my partner—my real partner, going on four years now. He’s saved my life more times than I can count and he’s like family to me. He’s also one of the finest detectives I’ve ever worked with, so seeing him get kicked in the balls like this and replaced with someone who isn’t even cleared to work with Florida law enforcement, without any kind of explanation as to why, is slightly insulting to both of us.”
Dane stopped walking as well, and for the first time that afternoon, he felt like he deserved the scolding he’d just received. Roselita was right. Dane would feel the same way if the situation had been reversed. He nodded his head. “Fair enough, Agent Velasquez. I can understand that. No disrespect intended.”
“None taken. Now let’s just get to it. Like I said already, we’re just wasting time out here.”
“Okay, show me what you’ve got, so I can figure out why I’m here.” Dane looked over at the wet blanket on the curb. He caught a whiff of it, and it smelled like a house fire. Roselita stepped up onto the breezeway, grabbed a couple pairs of blue nitrile gloves from one of the forensic techs, and handed one set to Dane. He put them on, then used his elbow to ease open the door to room 1108.
“After you, partner.”
Dane stepped inside, and Roselita followed. “Agent Kirby, meet Arnold Blackwell.”
CHAPTER SIX
The wave of stink hit Dane so hard it nearly bowled him over. He immediately recognized the familiar scent of smoke, burnt meat, and singed hair, but the musty copper smell underneath, like an old forgotten jar of pennies, combined with urine and human feces, caused him to dry heave as soon as he entered the room. An unaffected Special Agent Velasquez stepped over the charred, lifeless body on the floor, careful to avoid the congealed and caking pools of blood and vomit as she yawned. She looked at her watch while she waited for Dane to acclimate.
The moment Dane saw Blackwell’s burned body, his assumption as to why August had called him in on the investigation was confirmed—murder by fire—but he still didn’t understand why they didn’t call in one of their own. He scanned the rest of the room before he took another step. He’d seen his share of death over the years. He knew what death felt like up close—to hold it in his hands—to be surrounded by it—covered in it, but even he’d never seen anything like this. And up until that moment, he’d thought he’d seen it all. Normally the victims of a fire died of asphyxiation long before the flame itself ever touched them, but that wasn’t the case here. His initial assessment had been wrong. Less than a minute after he’d entered room 1108 it became obvious that smoke and fire weren’t responsible for this horror show. The body on the floor had been gutted before it had been burned—sliced open from groin to sternum. Everything that made a person work—the gears of the human machine—was spilled out in a pile next to the charred corpse. The smaller bits—the pieces of him that weren’t still connected to him in some way—were strewn about and scattered all over the carpet. Blood was everywhere. It covered everything in huge arch-shaped patterns that seeped down the walls and dripped from the ceiling. The bed had been sprayed dark red. Even the small lampshade on the telescoping light fixture above the nightstand had been speckled with it. Everything in the room had been tainted in some way by the insides of the hollowed-out man on the floor. The fire that eventually ate away his hair and skin had only been a quick flashover.
Dane covered his nose and mouth and leaned down to look into the dead man’s eyes. They were open by default because his eyelids had burned away, but the white marbles resting in his sockets were bright and glossy. Dane reached down to touch the man’s jaw. It was completely broken loose from the rest of his skull. Only the ruined skin of his jowls kept it in place. Dane barely had to touch it for it to fall and gape wide open. Now the dead man looked like he was screaming. Dane imagined that’s exactly what he looked like before he died. He wondered if screams alone could cause enough force to break a man’s jaw like that. He bent down a little further in order to see down the man’s throat. It appeared intact. His tongue was still fleshy and pink, like a wad of bubble gum stuffed behind his yellowed teeth, and Dane couldn’t see any swelling or constriction in his throat. That meant he wasn’t breathing when the fire was lit. He’d been burned postmortem—dead before the first match was struck. Dane assumed the man who did this to him only used the fire to cover his tracks.
The man who did this? Dane repeated in his mind, and shook his head. No—a man didn’t do this. No man could ever do this to another person—not to another human being. Whoever—whatever did this—wasn’t any man at all.
Dane fought to keep looking. He’d seen this type of disembowelment done before, but to whitetail deer or wild boar after a hunt. He’d seen all kinds of animals strung up to trees and cut open like this to be bled out before being taken home and processed. Hell, back home, fathers taught their sons to disconnect from the horror of actually doing the killing, and considered it a rite of passage. But even then, the cuts were made with a practical purpose, and they almost always followed a quick and clean death. There was nothing quick or clean about what had happened in this room, and Dane was convinced by the expression of agony still on the ruined and peeling face of Arnold Blackwell that he had been alive to feel most of what had been done to him. Dane didn’t try to hide his own expression of shock and disgust as he straightened himself out. He finally had to look away. A fresh wave of stomach acid began to churn in the back of his throat and he gagged on it again.
“You gonna be okay?” Roselita asked, more out of obligation than concern.
“Jesus Christ, Velasquez.” Dane struggled to find a place to give his eyes a rest, his head in a constant swivel. “What the hell happened in here?”
“That’s what we were in the process of trying to find out when we were told to stand down and wait for you.”
Dane spoke through his hand. “What do you know so far?”
Roselita pulled out a small notebook from a pocket in her jacket and read aloud. Her voice was monotone. Her irritation was obvious. Dane knew she’d rather be working the scene and not playing catch-up for the new guy. “His name is Arnold Matthew Blackwell. Twenty-eight years old, according to his ID. We found his wallet on the counter over there in the bathroom.” Roselita pulled the ID from the pocket-sized notebook and held it out for Dane.
“So you recovered his wallet?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
Dane ignored the snarky remark and took the ID with his free hand. It was a Georgia issue. That answered another question about why he was there. He flipped it over and examined both sides. “Just a state ID? No license?”