Chapter One The world was gray, and Jenna Blake did not want to go to work.
The night before, Jenna's roommate, Yoshiko Kitsuta, had spent the night down the hall in Hunter LaChance's room. Even though the thought of boy-shy Yoshiko sleeping over at her boyfriend's would have been all but astonishing six months ago, Jenna did not find it all that remarkable now. On the one hand, she hoped that she had not done anything to make Yoshiko think Hunter could not sleep over in their room. But on the other hand, it was absolute bliss for her to have the room to herself on this cold, drizzly March Saturday morning.
Jenna snuggled under the covers and pretended even to herself that she was still asleep. It worked for a while. Icy raindrops pattered lightly against the window, which was open just a crack to let in the cold air. The combination of the chilly air and the scorched heat from the radiator, as well as the down comforter that covered her to the tip of her nose, was almost irresistible.
If only she could have stopped her mind from issuing pesky little thoughts, like the one about how she had promised Dr. Slikowski, her boss, that she would go in to work that day to catch up. He was the county medical examiner, operating out of Somerset Medical Center -- which was conveniently attached to Somerset University, where Jenna went to school. She was a "diener," or pathology assistant, but had sort of become Robin to his Batman, in a way. Jenna liked that. It gave her purpose.
Today, however, she was feeling rather without purpose. Or wishing she was, at any rate. She had no greater ambition than to burrow deeper into her bed and watch cartoons. The thought of the autopsy transcriptions, filing, and other paperwork that awaited her was less than inspiring.
Still, eventually Jenna managed to climb out of bed. She wore thick socks and a knee-length nightshirt with angels on the front, and she shivered as the cold air from the window hit her. Reluctantly, she closed it, then put a pot of water on the hot plate to make herself cocoa. On TV, she surfed a few stations, scowled at the Three Stooges, and finally decided on a rerun of Animaniacs because she had loved the series so much as a kid.
It was after ten o'clock. Jenna had promised Dr. Slikowski, whom everyone called "Slick" behind his back, that she would be in at twelve-thirty. Briefly, she debated whether or not she should start reading Twelfth Night, which they would be discussing the following week in her Shakespeare class.
"That's not gonna happen," she said to herself, her voice still raspy from sleep.
With a smile, she fixed her cup of cocoa and sat down in front of the television set to chuckle along with the madcap antics of Wakko, Yakko, and Dot. When the show was over, Jenna reluctantly rose and went down the third-floor hallway to the girls' bathroom to shower. She left the television on, and it was company for her as she pulled on a dark green cotton turtleneck, a beige V-necked sweater, and blue jeans. Normally she would not have worn jeans to work, but it was the weekend, after all.
After she had dried her hair and put on eyeliner -- the sum total of her makeup most days -- Jenna glanced at the clock again and saw that it was not quite eleven-thirty. With a little time left to kill, she went to the small refrigerator and took out half a tuna fish sub she had ordered from Espresso's the night before. As she ate, she sat on the floor and read. It was an old book by Shirley Jackson called We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and it gave her the creeps. The overcast, damp day allowed the book to affect her even more deeply.
When it was time to leave for work, Jenna closed the book and slipped into her black leather jacket. As she left Sparrow Hall, heading across the residential quad, the whole campus seemed to have taken on a surreal quality, as if nothing was entirely there and tangible. It wasn't Somerset University, but the college's ghost that surrounded her.
You're losing it, Blake, she told herself, amused but also unnerved. Jenna was a constant reader. She tended to get carried off into the worlds she was reading about in novels, but the effect was not usually this dramatic. With a smile, she shook it off and walked across Carpenter Street to the Medical Center.
Jenna was surprised to see the lights on in the office as she walked down the hall, pulling her key card from her pocket. Slick had not said anything about coming in to work over the weekend, and neither had the pathology resident, Al Dyson, with whom Jenna had become quite friendly. It occurred to her that there might have been an autopsy that required immediate attention because of a police investigation. Though she would have enjoyed spending her afternoon alone, Jenna found that she was pleased by the idea of company now.
As she slipped her key card into the lock, she recognized the strains of jazz by Joshua Redman coming from inside the office and knew it must be Dr. Slikowski. Jazz was his refuge from the world.
The lock beeped, and she pushed into the office.
"Surprise!"
Jenna jumped and dropped her key card to the floor. Her eyes wide, she started laughing and shaking her head.
"My birthday isn't until tomorrow," she protested.
"A whole twenty-four hours away?" Dr. Slikowski asked. He rolled his wheelchair back and glanced at the others gathered around. "All right everyone, better pack it up. Come back tomorrow, about the same time."
"No, no, that's okay. Today's good," Jenna reassured him.
She was both stunned and heartened by the effort he had gone to. Dyson was there, of course, but so were Hunter and Yoshiko. Slick's girlfriend, Natalie Kerchak, leaned against the door to the M.E.'s inner office, sipping from a glass of punch. When Jenna caught her eye, Natalie smiled and offered a tiny wave. In the corner by Jenna's cubicle stood Danny Mariano and Audrey Gaines, Somerset police detectives Jenna and Slick had worked with many times, and with whom she had become friends.
"This is incredible," she told Slick. "Thank you."
"Happy birthday," he said in a low voice. "You make me feel old."
Dyson laughed. "That's because you are old, Walter, at least compared to her. What are you now, Jenna, twelve?"
"She's nineteen. And if she makes anyone feel old, it's me."
Stunned, Jenna turned to see her mother standing in the doorway behind her.
"Sorry I'm late," April Blake said. Then she shook her head and came toward her. "My little girl."
"Hey!" Jenna protested.
April rolled her eyes. "We're still having dinner tonight, by the way. But when Walter told me about this, I couldn't resist."
Jenna gave her mother a hug, truly pleased to see her. But as she pulled away, she noticed her mother was watching her curiously.
"What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. What could be wrong? Well, except that we're both getting older." April reached out to touch her daughter's face, chuckling to herself.
The odd look on her mother's face was gone, and Jenna wondered if it had been there at all, or if she had just imagined it. Dyson came over and gave her a hug, and she nudged him for not having spilled the beans about the party to her the day before. He only winked and then struck up a conversation with her mother. Slick was talking to Natalie, Danny, and Audrey across the room, and that left Jenna free to go over and give Hunter and Yoshiko big hugs.
"You guys!" she said. "I can't believe you didn't tell me about this."
"It's called a surprise for a reason, Jenna," Hunter reminded her.
"Besides," Yoshiko said, grinning, "we figured you could use some cheering up."
Jenna frowned. "What's that mean?" she asked. With a quick glance around, she studied the faces of her friends and coworkers and her mother. Nobody was looking at her.
"Nothing," Yoshiko said. "Just, y'know, after you broke up with Damon and everything else, you've been kind of...quiet. A little withdrawn. Dr. Dyson asked if they should do something for your birthday, and I thought it was a great idea."
Jenna wanted to argue. She was not the only one who had withdrawn. With the racial tensions that had erupted earlier in the semester on campus, things had not been easy for Yoshiko and Hunter any more than they had been for Jenna and her ex, Damon Harris. But Yoshiko and Hunter's relationship had survived.
"I'm fine. Really. I'm good, you guys. It's so sweet of Slick and Dyson to do this, and of everyone to come, but I hope it's just to celebrate my birthday, and not because everyone's thinking 'poor Jenna's got the blues' or something. 'Cause I'm good."
She shrugged.
Yoshiko gave her a doubtful look. "You sure?"
"Completely," Jenna told her. "And we're good." She glanced at Hunter, then reached out and poked him. "We're good, right?"
"We're better than good," he said, smiling widely.
Jenna returned the smile, then gave Yoshiko a quick hug. "Let's not get all weepy, though, okay? This is supposed to be a celebration of me, and I have a responsibility not to bring it down."
Her friends laughed, and Jenna was glad. She did have the blues, but she was working through them and planned to do that on her own. Though she loved them both, Hunter and Yoshiko had each other, and she did not feel as though either one of them would really be able to relate.
Smiling, Jenna excused herself to go speak to the others.
"Happy birthday, Jenna," Natalie said sweetly.
Jenna thanked her as the detectives echoed the woman's sentiments. Audrey eyed her for a moment.
"Hmm...you don't look any older," the detective said.
"I know, I'm still a kid, right?" Jenna replied, feigning exasperation.
"No," Audrey told her quite seriously. "I wouldn't say that at all."
Jenna beamed, but glanced away out of awkwardness. For whatever reason, Audrey's opinion mattered to Jenna. It meant a lot to know that this woman, who had previously defined her partially by her age, accepted her as an adult."Thanks."
Audrey offered a barely perceptible nod in return before joining in a conversation with Slick and Natalie. Jenna found herself suddenly alone with Danny Mariano. He was a ruggedly handsome, athletic guy with a tiny scar on his left eyebrow and dark blue eyes that looked purple in a certain light. Jenna was more than a little fond of Danny, but at thirty-two he was still a dozen years her senior and had made it abundantly clear that no matter how much he might care for her, there couldn't be anything more to it than that.
Which was okay, actually. Jenna might wish in her secret heart that things could be different, but Danny was a wonderful guy to know under any circumstances. And there was that old saying about being careful what you wish for.
"Happy birthday," he said softly.
To Jenna's surprise, he stepped in close and gave her a quick, little hug.
"People keep saying that," she replied. "I'm starting to get the idea that maybe this is a party, and nobody told me."
"There's cake," Danny revealed.
"Ah. Dead giveaway. Definitely a party."
He smiled sweetly and rubbed idly at the stubble on one cheek, and Jenna was tempted to tell him that he needed to shave. She didn't bother. It was very possible he and Audrey had been working all night and were on their way home to bed, rather than the opposite. Either way, she thought it was pretty cool that they had made the effort to come.
"Your mom seems nice," he told her.
"She is," Jenna agreed. "The best. Spoiled me rotten. Taught me how to be an independent woman."
Even as she said it, Jenna felt her smile falter. At the moment, the idea of being an independent woman still had a bit of a sting to it.
Danny frowned. "You okay?"
"There's another question people keep asking me." Jenna sighed, then met his concerned gaze. "I'm fine. Very. Do I have some kind of a sign on my forehead?"
Danny chuckled. "No. You just look like you're a million miles away. Like you're only half here and the other half is -- "
"A million miles away?" Jenna suggested.
With a laugh, Danny shook his head. "That's just what I was going to say. Seriously, though, if you ever want to talk, I'll always listen."
"You know what? I'd really like that," she replied. "I am fine, truly. But it would be nice to get off campus and clear my head."
"We're in the middle of a case, but how about lunch on Monday? Somewhere other than here. Your choice."
"I'm in."
They shared a silent moment before Slick rolled up beside Jenna in his wheelchair.
"Sorry to interrupt," he said, "but it's time to cut the cake. As Detective Mariano may have told you, we have work to do this afternoon."
Jenna glanced at Danny. "The case you're working on?" she asked.
Danny nodded.
"It's a grisly one," Slick warned.
Jenna sighed. "Aren't they always?"
The Somerset Police Department was housed in an aging brick municipal building just outside Kettle Square. Danny and Audrey had gone directly to the Medical Center from their homes that morning and so were in separate cars. When Danny pulled into the parking lot, Audrey was already hustling across the pavement toward the front door, trying to escape the cold drizzle that had been falling all morning. She had almost fully recovered from the stab wound in the chest she'd gotten recently in the line of duty, but he noticed that she still favored her left side.
The brick building was too familiar a sight, as far as Danny was concerned. The burning death of Alan Nash the night before had kept them on the job until after one o'clock in the morning. Danny did not know about Audrey, but he had not fallen asleep until well after three. He hated being back here so soon. But they had to follow up on the Nash case before something got in the way.
He pulled his Buick into a space that was too narrow, and squeezed out, trying not to chip the paint on the car next to his. Then he jogged across the lot, annoyed by the rain. Inside, Danny shook off the water and the cold, and then started up the stairs to the detective squad room. When he entered, Audrey was already in conversation with Lieutenant Gonci. Nobody else was around.
"Morning, Danny," the older man said.
"Lieutenant."
"I was just telling Audrey that, at your suggestion, I sent Ross and Cardiff out to pick up the last of the witnesses from last night for questioning."
Danny glanced at Audrey. "The solo guy?"
Audrey nodded. "Yeah. Not that I've never had dinner alone, but he was a ways away from home to be there by himself."
The lieutenant studied her. "His statement from the scene seemed a little jumbled. See if he can give us a better idea of the circumstances. We've got a mystery here. Maybe it's not homicide, but it's ugly as hell and I need to make sense of it."
Danny frowned. "I hope we can. I'm not thrilled with the idea of spontaneous combustion."
"Neither am I," Gonci said grumpily. "While we are not officially ruling out the possibility, the Somerset Police Department is dubious as to the existence of spontaneous human combustion. That's right from the chief. What about your other witnesses? Anything there?"
"Three of them were dining together, no connection to Nash as far as we can tell. We're looking hard at the girlfriend, though. Maitre d' said he saw them having an argument out front right before it happened. On the other hand, unless she was able to douse him in gasoline and set him alight without anyone noticing, I don't know how she could have done it."
Before anyone could reply, Ross and Cardiff, accompanied by Victor Frost, came into the squad room, shaking off their raincoats. The detectives were part of the old-boy network, though only Cardiff was actually old enough to qualify. He was fiftysomething, rumpled and a little overweight, and he had been smoking more since a layer of kevlar had kept a bullet from taking his life five or six weeks earlier. His partner was thinner, younger, but just as grumpy.
In comparison, Frost, the witness, looked like a shiny new penny. Despite the rain outside, he wore a stylish brown leather coat, dark, crisp blue jeans, and white Reebok sneakers, all of which looked brand new. His short blond hair was perfectly combed, as if he had somehow managed to walk between raindrops, and his square eyeglasses screamed hipness a little too loudly.
"Our friend," Danny muttered to Audrey. "Like a brand-new toy just out of the package. It's a little creepy."
While Ross guided the witness to the interview room, Cardiff sidled over to them, putting on his best curmudgeon face. He shot Lieutenant Gonci a reluctantly respectful look, then turned to the others.
"You got any more errands you need run, Mariano? Gaines? Anything? 'Cause, y'know, me and Dwight, we got nothing better to do today than your legwork."
With a quizzical expression, Danny glanced at Audrey, who met his gaze. Almost in unison, they shrugged.
"No, Mike. We're good," Danny told him.
"But thanks for asking," Audrey added, with as much sincerity as she could muster.
The gruff old cop muttered angrily under his breath and walked away. When Danny turned to Lieutenant Gonci, he thought he caught the ghost of a smile on his superior's face, but then it was gone.
"You want to observe, Lieutenant?"
Gonci shook his head. "You two go ahead. Give me your impressions when you're through."
Audrey sat across the table from Frost in the interview room. She leaned forward, scrutinizing him, but the guy just sat there as though at any second he might yawn and start to clean his nails.
"Is this going to take long?" Frost asked, sounding bored.
Danny didn't blame him. The whole process was boring. The three other witnesses had been together as a group at the restaurant when Alan Nash had burned. A guy named Bart Randeau; his wife, Anne; and her sister, Lizabeth Orton. They had been there celebrating Mr. Randeau's birthday.
"Not too long," Danny told him. On a whim, he asked Frost if he knew the Randeaus or Lizabeth Orton.
"I thought the dead guy was named Ash," Frost replied with a frown. "Last night, when I gave a statement, I thought -- "
"The deceased was Alan Nash. That's right. Did you know him?" Audrey prodded.
"No. Who's this Randeau, then?"
"You don't know any of those people?" Danny studied him.
Frost shrugged. "Nope. What else do you want to know?"
"What I'd like to know, Victor, is why you were at that restaurant last night," Danny said.
Another shrug. "Guy can't have dinner alone?"
"But you didn't order dinner, did you?" Audrey asked. "You were at the bar."
"I had a long workday yesterday," Frost told her. "I thought I'd relax. Have a drink. Wind down before I ate."
Audrey leaned back a little in her chair, drawing the man's attention. "The bartender remembered you pretty well, Mr. Frost. She says you were there for more than an hour. That you drank only ginger ale."
"All right, you caught me," Frost replied. He shrugged. "I thought I might meet someone in the bar. It's been known to happen."
Danny shook his head in disbelief. "Okay, wait, let me see if I'm following you. I'm not all that bright, y'know? You live in Cambridge, where there are hundreds of nice restaurants and bars where single people go to meet each other. But to try to make a meaningful romantic connection, you go to the next city over to a run-down Italian restaurant with a tiny bar playing Frank Sinatra while the Celtics game is on the TV?"
The man stopped fidgeting and shot a hard look at Danny. For a moment, he was very focused. "Are you mocking me, Detective Mariano? Because if you are -- "
"No, not at all. Just trying to understand something that I'm apparently not smart enough to grasp."
"Apparently," Frost replied coldly. "I don't want to be with the kind of woman I could meet at one of those meat markets you're talking about. I always feel like I'll have a better chance of finding an interesting person who isn't already on the hunt by going to out-of-the-way places. Twisted logic it may be, but it's all mine."
Audrey tapped a pen on the table and Frost stared at it.
"Had you ever been to that particular restaurant before?" she asked.
The man frowned. "No." He crossed his arms and sighed.
"And you never had occasion to meet the deceased, Alan Nash?" Audrey asked.
"For the third time, no. Never met him. Never knew him. Never saw him before. Now may I leave? I feel bad the guy's dead. It was a pretty horrible thing. I agreed to come down here because I figured it was the right thing to do, tell you what I saw. Which was basically nothing. One minute he's with his date or whatever, the next he's the human torch."
"I guess it's just your bad luck that you happened to be there when the guy spontaneously combusted and burned to death," Danny said archly.
"You can say that again," Frost mumbled. "May I go?"
Danny and Audrey exchanged a look, and a silent communication passed between them, honed over the years that they had been partners. Audrey's expression told Danny that she had nothing else. Danny tilted his head slightly to one side and raised one eyebrow. Your call, he was telling her.
"Yeah, you can go. We may want to ask some more questions later," Audrey told him.
Frost grumbled. "Color me stunned," he said.
Danny and Audrey watched him as he slipped his coat on and went toward the door.
"What do you think?" he asked Audrey when Frost had gone.
"He's a creep," Audrey replied.
Danny smiled. "Yeah, but what do you think?"
"He didn't see anything that'll help us. Eccentric, yeah, but he doesn't seem any more connected than the Randeaus to the victim. We should do a background check on all of them just to be thorough, but I'm thinking if Nash's death wasn't some kind of bizarre phenomenon -- if we find out there's some explanation to the burning that indicates somebody did it to him -- it'll be the girlfriend. Nothing else makes sense."
"Nothing about this makes sense," Danny replied.
The smell of charred flesh was the worst part.
Jenna had gotten used to the stench of formaldehyde. In her time working as a diener for Slick, she had seen the grisliest of murder and accident victims, had removed and dissected organs, and had even sutured closed the massive incision required for an autopsy. As such, though she felt absolute revulsion at the state of Alan Nash's corpse and though she recoiled when Dr. Slikowski cut into the charred remains and there was a crackling sound from the burned skin, Jenna was all right. She had learned to distance herself from such things. But the smell.
"Oh God," Jenna whispered, cupping a gloved hand over the mask that covered her face.
Beside her, Dyson nodded. "The odor's awful. But the fan is up as high as it goes."
"I'll be all right," Jenna told him. She was determined not to let it get to her, but her legs felt like they almost buckled.
Slick expertly navigated his wheelchair around the autopsy table, as usual. Narrating the autopsy into the tape recorder that was always present, he pulled back to give Dyson room to use the bone saw to remove a portion of the ribs and sternum. Then Slick returned to the table. He worked the controls that lowered it to give him better access and began to examine the cadaver's newly exposed organs.
The medical examiner frowned.
"Al, show me the section of bone we just removed," he said.
Dyson lifted the rib cage and displayed it for Slick. Over the top of his mask, Jenna saw the M.E.'s eyes widen behind his glasses.
"What is it?" she asked.
Slick glanced at her. She knew he did not like to offer any opinion at all until the autopsy was completed, until all the data had been collected.
This time was no different.
Slick didn't reply, and they went about the process as usual. Jenna, to her own horror, grew used to the acrid stench of burned flesh. She noticed that Slick took several samples of the dead man's burned skin and of the muscle layer directly beneath.
When they were through and Dyson was wheeling the body back to the morgue, Slick pulled off his mask and gloves. Jenna removed hers as well and then hung both of their lab coats in a locker.
Impatiently, she turned to him. "Well?"
He smiled. "Wait for Dr. Dyson. He should hear this, too."
"Then let's wait in the hall. It still stinks in here," Jenna told him, waving her hand in front of her face.
They went out together and waited outside the door to the morgue. A few minutes later Dyson emerged. He seemed startled to find the two of them looking at him so intensely.
"I take it you have a theory?" he asked, studying Slick's expression.
Slick nodded. "So much for spontaneous combustion."
"I didn't think you believed in it anyway," Dyson replied.
"Neither did I," Jenna added.
"I've never seen a case," the M.E. explained. "But given the apparently legitimate sources of a number of reports, I'm willing to keep an open mind on the subject. On the other hand, all reported cases that I found in my research earlier this morning indicate that the source of the fire is internal. The bodies of the supposed victims were burned worse inside than out, or burned relatively uniformly."
"And that isn't the case here," Jenna said, understanding at last. "The muscles were barely touched by the flames, and even the skin was only badly charred on the outside."
"True. In fact, Mr. Nash died of cardiac failure. Likely brought on by the trauma of being burned."
"But wait a minute," Dyson put in, frowning. "If the burns were all external..."
"Then the source of the fire was external. Which means it was either a freak accident of some kind, or else a murder," Slick finished.
"But there were witnesses. There was no source for the flame. It just...happened," Jenna protested. "How can that be?"
Slick smiled. "That's the question of the day, isn't it?"
Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Golden
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
