Chapter Two
Sam was the first of her team to arrive on the scene of the smoldering fire that had demolished half a mansion in one of the District’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
“What’ve we got?” Sam asked the fire marshal when he met her at the tapeline.
“Two bodies found on the first floor of the house, both bound with zip ties at the hands and feet.”
And that, right there, made their deaths her problem. “Do we know who they are?”
He consulted his notes. “The ME will need to make positive IDs, but the house is owned by Jameson and Cleo Beauclair. I haven’t had time to dig any deeper on who they are.”
“Are we certain they were the only people in the house?” Sam asked.
“Not yet. When we arrived shortly after four a.m., the west side of the house, where the bodies were found, was fully engulfed. That was our immediate focus. We’ve got firefighters searching the rest of what was once a ten-thousand-square-foot home.”
“Any sign of accelerants?”
“Nothing so far, but we’re an hour into the investigation stage. Early days.”
“Has the ME been here?”
“Not yet.”
“Could I take a look inside?”
“It’s still hot in there, but I can show you the highlights—or the lowlights, such as they are.”
Sam followed him up the sidewalk to what had once been the front door. Inside the smoldering ruins of the house, she could make out the basic structure from the burned-out husk that remained. The putrid scents of smoke and death hung heavily in the air.
“That’s them there,” the fire marshal said, pointing to a space on the floor by a blackened stone fireplace where two charred bodies lay next to one another.
Sam swallowed the bile that surged to her throat.
Nothing was worse, at least not in her line of work, than fire victims. Though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she moved in for a closer look, took photos of the bodies and the scene around them, then turned to face the fire marshal.
“Anything else you think I ought to see?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
He walked away to continue his investigation while Sam went outside, carrying the horrifying images with her as she took greedy breaths of fresh air. As she reached the curb, the medical examiner’s truck arrived. She waited for a word with Dr. Lindsey McNamara.
The tall, pretty medical examiner gathered her long red hair into a ponytail as she walked over to Sam.
“Fire victims,” Sam said, shuddering.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Hands and feet bound with zip ties.”
“Here we go again,” Lindsey said with a sigh. “Looks like it was quite a house.”
“Ten thousand square feet, according to the fire marshal.”
“I’ll get you an ID and report as soon as I can.”
“Appreciate it.” Sam opened her phone and placed a call to Malone. “I’m at the scene of the fire in Chevy Chase.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Two DOA, bound at the hands and feet, leading me to believe this was a home invasion gone bad. I need Crime Scene here ASAP.”
“I’ll call Haggerty and get them over there.”
“I want them to comb through anything and everything that wasn’t touched by the fire, and they need to do it soon before the scene is further compromised. We’ve got firefighters all over the place.”
“Got it. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to talk to the neighbors and find out what I can about the people who lived here while I wait for Lindsey to confirm their identity.”
“Keep me posted.”
Sam slapped the phone closed and headed for her car to begin the task of figuring out who Jameson and Cleo Beauclair had been and who might’ve bound them before setting their house on fire.
If the bodies were even those of the Beauclairs.
Cases like this were often confounding from the start, but they would operate on the info they had available and go from there.
Her partner, Detective Freddie Cruz, arrived as Sam reached her car, which she’d parked a block from the scene.
“I guess it was too much to hope our homicide-free streak would last until after the wedding,” he said.
“Too much indeed. We’ve got two deceased on the first floor of the west side of the home, hands and feet bound.”
“Do we know who they are?”
“We know who owns the house, but we’re not a hundred percent sure the owners are our victims.” She passed along the names the fire marshal had given her. “Let’s knock on some doors and then go back to HQ to see what Lindsey can tell us.”
“I’m with you, LT.”
“Any word from Gonzo?”
“Not that I’ve heard yet.”
“He can catch up.”
Pain was like water. It flooded every available space until there was only pain and nothing else.
It became all consuming, and someone in that kind of agony would literally do anything to make it stop, even meet a known criminal to buy the one thing that could offer relief that only lasted a few hours. The pain always won. Always.
The transaction happened so quickly and seamlessly it was over before it started. To a casual observer, it would look like two men who hadn’t seen each other in a while meeting on the street and exchanging an affectionate greeting that included the clasping of hands.
Gonzo walked away with what he needed to get through another couple of days.
He got in his car, immediately took a pill and chased it with coffee left from yesterday.
Then he zipped the rest of the pills into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Resting his head back against the seat, he waited and gritted his teeth against the unrelenting torture that made it impossible to do anything but hurt.
In the last few weeks, he’d started to notice it was taking longer for the pills to work.
He needed something stronger. The doctor he’d gone to when he twisted his back taking down a suspect at the beginning of the summer had cut him off after the third refill, so he’d resorted to back channels to fulfill his needs.
His phone buzzed with a text from Cruz.
Leaving the scene and heading back to HQ. Two DOA in Chevy Chase fire, hands and feet bound.
Ugh, fire victims were the worst. If he waited a little longer, he wouldn’t have to view the charred bodies in the morgue. They’d need dental records to ID them anyway, so there wouldn’t be any info for a while. He had time to close his eyes for a few minutes, and then he’d be good to go.
After getting nowhere with neighbors, who didn’t answer their doors, Sam and Freddie returned to HQ, entering through the morgue entrance. Before they stepped into Lindsey’s lab, Sam stopped him with a hand to his arm. “This is gonna be bad. Take a minute if you need it.”
“I’m as ready as I ever am to go in there.”
“Step back if it’s too much for you. No judgment.”
With his face set into a grim expression, he nodded and took a deep breath to calm himself.
No matter how many years one spent on the job, some things never got easier, and viewing dead bodies, especially those from a fire, was right at the top of the nightmarish list of things that could never be forgotten.
Her stomach turned at the thought of it, but someone had to do it.
The moment the two people in the morgue had been killed in her city, they’d become hers, and she would do her very best for them.
With justice in mind, Sam took a step forward, triggering the automatic doors that led to the morgue where Dr. Lindsey McNamara had the bodies on side-by-side tables.
Sam tried not to look too closely. “What’ve you got, Doc?” Lindsey’s brows knitted with concentration as she stood over the deceased. They were in good hands with her on the job.
“Nothing yet. If you could find their dentist, that would help.”
“We’ll get on that.” Sam glanced at Freddie and gestured for him to go get started on tracking down the dental records.
They had an email they could send that would alert every dentist in the capital area that they were seeking records.
Hopefully, one of them would recognize the Beauclairs’ names and get back to them quickly.
A positive identification was the first step in a case like this.
Freddie bolted from the cold, antiseptic-smelling room to send the message.
“They were bound with zip ties that melted into their skin.” Lindsey pointed to the waxy remains of the zip ties while Sam choked back a gag. “Both were wearing wedding rings. One is male, the other female.”
Sam didn’t ask how she could tell that. “Anything else I should know?”
“Nothing yet, but I’m just getting started.”
“Okay. Check in with me when you’re done.”
“You know I will.” She looked up at Sam. “So the guys will be gone for three weeks, huh?” Her fiancé, Terry O’Connor, was Nick’s chief of staff.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t bear the thought of three weeks without him,” Lindsey said with a moan.
In any other profession, it might’ve been odd to engage in girl talk over the charred remains of two people who’d been alive twenty-four hours ago.
In their profession, it was just another day.
“What kind of simpering female does that make me?”
“The kind who loves her guy.”
“I do love him,” she said with a sigh. “He hasn’t even left yet, and I already miss him. Maybe we can do a girls’ night out or something to break up the time.”
“I, um, sort of agreed to go on the trip last night, if I can get the time off.”
“No way! Ugh, I’m so jealous. I’d love to go.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m saving my vacation for the wedding and honeymoon. We set a date finally.”
“Oh, that’s big news. When?”
“Next August at his parents’ farm in Leesburg.”
“That’ll be amazing.”
“I can’t wait. I asked Shelby to help me plan it. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course it is.” Sam and Nick’s assistant, Shelby Faircloth, had been one of the District’s most sought-after wedding planners before she took the job with them after planning their wedding.
She still owned her wedding business but had stepped out of the day-to-day management. “She’s the best of the best.”
“That’s why I wanted her. Your wedding was the nicest I’ve ever attended.”