“Hold on, Maggie,” he said. His grip hurt my wrist.
I said, “Let go.”
Through the fence I could see flaming oil barrels and construction equipment, the hole in the ground where the gasoline storage tank had been. Jerry Kelsey’s trailer was nothing more than a molten mass, a black smear on the gravel.
I smelled booze on Ralph’s breath. He might have smelled wine on mine. Mike had been beeped at the beginning of our second bottle of champagne. In the middle of the argument.
“We did this, you know,” Ralph said. “We started it.”
“What do I hear?” I asked, cruel sarcasm in there. “Sudden compunction? You never turned around before, saw the human wreckage in your wake?”
“Don’t be mad at me.”
“Have to be mad at somebody.” I was looking around for Mike. Finally, I spotted him talking to the coroner’s people. I pulled against Ralph’s grip, but he held firm, drew me against him. I heard heavy sighing in his chest.
I looked up into his face. I whispered, “It’s only a fire. You’ll be all right. Let me go.”
But he seemed unable to comprehend.
“Was Kelsey in there?” I asked.
From his pocket he took a shoe, a little navy pump, about a size five or six. The toe was blackened, the leather was wet. I took the shoe from him. Casey hadn’t worn anything that small since she was in about the fourth grade; the thought a reflex. My daughter is always my first thought when something scary happens.
“Where did you get this?” I asked him.
“I was standing over there by the gate with a film crew, and it just floated by.” He pointed with his free hand. “Just floated by.”
I broke then and ran to Mike. He caught me, too, but more to hold me away than to keep me. I offered the little shoe to him. I said, “Where is Jennifer Miller?”
Mike looked over at the technician leaning against the coroner’s empty van. “One body?”
“So far,” was her response.
“Male or female?”
“Don’t know,” the woman said. “Firemen saw it inside the trailer, but it’s still too hot to get a better look. No hurry. Victim isn’t going anywhere-charred beyond, from the description. Just hope there’s enough left to x-ray. Have to wait.”
Mike took me aside, walked me back toward his car. “Did you hear her? You have to wait. I need to talk to some people. Can I trust you to stay put for a while?”
I dropped back. “Did you say stay put?”
He sighed. “Just don’t get hurt, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
“Jeez,” he muttered, and jogged off toward the police command post.
Staying on the perimeter, away from the firehoses, I walked back to the news vans, found the one sent out by the network I had been working with. Jack Riley was inside the cab, talking on the phone, watching the fire in air-conditioned comfort. He climbed out when he saw me.
“When did you get here?” I asked.
He shrugged, “Five, ten minutes ago. Lot of fuss isn’t it? I just don’t get the big deal about a fire. I mean, it’s nice and bright-good color-but they’re doing prime-time interrupts for some bulldozers and a watchman? Probably started it himself smoking in bed, or tossed a butt in the wrong place. The petro people are going to dump their load on the oil barrels in a minute, then it will be all over.”
“Jack, don’t you know who the watchman is?”
He toned right down, opened up, ready to rethink things. “Should I know?”
“Jerry Kelsey. One of the detectives in the Conklin case.”
“Oh.” With some enthusiasm. “He’s the corpse?”
“Don’t know. Adds a little fuel to the story, though, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll forgive the ghoulish attempt at humor.” Jack was thinking fast, as usual, putting something together. “You’ve got a handle on the deep background, don’t you? I mean, you knew this guy.”
“I met him. I used a picture that I took right there in front of his trailer in the piece that ran last night.”
“Now we have a story I like. I want you on camera, Maggie.” His new enthusiasm moved us toward the film crew across the street. They were just standing around, gossiping with the weekend news talent.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked him.
“Give me a break.” He gave me a shoulder nudge. “You know what to do. Let’s just do it before we lose the fire.”
Jack had a short verbal scuffle with the talent, who was getting one of his first shots at a prime-time story out of the fire. He was young and smooth-looking, and eager. He suggested that instead of turning everything over to me, he interview me, though he hadn’t a clue what questions to ask. It was his turn, dammit, and he wasn’t going to give it up.
“He’s right, Jack,” I said. “You’re screwing with his resume. This is his fire to report, and I’m an interloper. What if he introduces me, nods his head here and there, and closes? We’d all be happy, right?”
That’s the way we did it. The two of us stood in tight, with the camera three yards in front of us, the fire about sixty yards behind us. Even at that distance, I could feel some of its heat. The entire scene was lit red.
After the intro-he did a good job, said everything I told him to-I gave a brief rundown on Jerry Kelsey, retired cop, and why he lived in the trailer, how I met him in relation to the Conklin case. I was careful to mention Marovich, twice, getting in a dig about his tight race for reelection.
Then I laid what I hoped was the bombshell, peppering it shamelessly with attention-getting buzzwords: “Twice this week, fatal tragedy has struck among those originally involved in the Conklin murder conviction.
“During the early hours of Tuesday morning, young Hanna Rhodes, a witness to the slaying, was cold-bloodedly gunned down in the Southeast Los Angeles neighborhood where she grew up. Locked out of the school yard where she had once played, Hanna Rhodes was felled by two blasts to the chest.” Melodramatic, sure. But the entire scene seemed to call for Grand Guignol.
“Fourteen years ago,” I continued, “it was Hanna Rhodes’s eyewitness testimony that sent Charles Conklin to prison for life. The senior detective assigned to the case, the detective who first heard her account, was Jerry Kelsey.
“Behind us, you see the inferno that has consumed the modest trailer home of Detective Jerry Kelsey. The coroner informs us that firefighters have found an as-yet unidentified corpse among the ashes of Detective Kelsey’s trailer. It is still too hot for them to go in for a closer look, to attempt to identify the deceased.
“On Monday afternoon, a court hearing is scheduled on behalf of Charles Conklin to evaluate the testimony of Hanna Rhodes, to scrutinize the procedures used by Jerry Kelsey to elicit that testimony nearly a decade and a half ago. In light of the double tragedies, how much crucial testimony has been quieted? Quieted forever.”
I backed from the microphone that was being held in front of my face as a signal for the talent do his thing. He was good, stayed with the dramatic tone. As the camera pulled in close to him, I slipped away.
Mike was standing near Jack Riley watching me, grinning sardonically as I walked up to him.
“So?” I said to Jack.
He seemed pleased. “The station is already re-running your special report.”
“When did I get upgraded from sixty-second bit to special report? Does the pay go up, too?”
Mike said, “I thought I told you to stay out of trouble.”
“I thought I told you not to tell me what to do.” I leaned against him. “Did I leave out anything?”
“My name,” Mike said.
“Must have slipped my mind,” I said.
Mike was called away by the coroner. I stayed and had a long talk with Jack before I walked back to the car to make some calls. I wanted to find Jennifer.
I had no home number for Jennifer. No one answered at her office. Not knowing anywhere else to try, I called Baron Marovich’s office and left a message, and then called his campaign headquarters out in the Valley and left another message for Roddy O’Leary. I gave them both Mike’s mobile number. Then I called James Shabazz, to fill him in.