Page 55 of Devil's Hour
On the ground, their feet slogged through a few inches of black sludge, a mixture of water, ashes, and debris. Royce was grateful for the mask to diminish the stench because it would linger in his nose, and he had better things to smell such as Sawyer’s sexy body wash. Above them, timbers creaked and moaned, sounding like they might crash down on top of them at any minute. It creeped Royce the fuck out.
They passed through the main room with its bar, seating area, and three stages. The once gilded cages which used to be suspended from the ceiling now lay in melted, twisted heaps on the ground. They could no longer be used for dancing women in various stages of undress. The private rooms for lap dances were destroyed, and it was impossible to tell where one started and the other began. The six of them kept trudging through the black water with floating detritus until they reached the rear of the building.
Even to Royce’s untrained eye, he could see the fire had burned hotter in the office at the back of the building. It was indeed McGraw’s office. He should know since Savage had made his bodyguards pin him to a chair while the sleazebag punched him repeatedly in the stomach. Royce had remarked how bold he’d been, hitting a cop, but that only made Savage laugh louder and punch harder.
“I dare you to squeal like apig,” he’d said after landing the last blow. “I have very powerful friends. I’m untouchable.”
Not anymore, Royce thought when he peeked over the ME’s shoulder. The walk-in safe was small but constructed of concrete, so mostly untouched from the fire that blazed hot outside the room. There were shelves with documents and ledgers that had curled at the ends from the heat. Scorch marks on the floor in the doorway, along the walls just inside the opening, and on the ceiling showed where the intense heat and flames penetrated the room.
Even with severely blistered skin, Royce recognized the man lying on the ground. He still accepted the wallet from the ME’s assistant. He flipped it open and memorized Savage McGraw’s address for notification purposes before dropping it inside an evidence bag.
Fawkes pulled down her mask and let it hang around her neck. “The female didn’t have ID on her.”
One of Fawkes’s assistants removed the sheet covering the once beautiful woman, and Royce cringed. He pulled his mask down. “That’s Crystal Akeman. She’s the dancer who supposedly called in sick last night.” The guy re-covered Crystal’s face and looked at Royce with judgment in his eyes.Sanctimonious prick.
“There are no physical signs of struggle on their bodies to indicate someone dragged them into the safe against their will, so unless I find drugs in their system or evidence I missed due to poor lighting, it appears the victims shut themselves inside the room as protection against the fire. Smoke inhalation and carbon dioxide poisoning are your likely cause of death. Neither livor nor rigor mortis have set in, so they haven’t been dead long. I won’t be able to rule out foul play until I perform a full autopsy and run their blood through toxicology.”
“Tamara, I know there aren’t enough hours in the day—”
Dr. Fawkes held up her hand to stop Rigby. “I’ll have preliminary reports to you tomorrow, but keep in mind the toxicology results will take longer.”
“Fair enough,” Rigby said. She turned and looked at us, a pinched expression marring her face. “Blue, I want you and Zeke combing this scene for any piece of evidence you can find. I want to know if anything matches the three previous fires.” Rigby stopped at the center of what used to be McGraw’s office. She pointed to the window. “If the two of them were in this room when the fire started but couldn’t exit through the door not more than fifteen feet away, then I’m guessing our perp threw a Molotov cocktail through that window or lobbed it from the doorway, pinning McGraw and Akeman down. The question is: were their deaths accidental or deliberate?” Rigby paused a second as if to consider her question. “The Purists haven’t claimed responsibility for this yet, but I find the timing suspect. They go after the mayor for cheating on her spouse and then target a strip club, which I’m sure has ruined many marriages.” Royce was sure of it too. “I’ve had enough of the puritanical fuckers. I want everything in the safe bagged and tagged as evidence. Locke, next of kin is the top priority, then I want to see you in my office.”
“Yes, Chief.”
She pivoted and swiftly walked away, sloshing filthy water as she went. Royce and Sawyer turned and followed her, neither of them speaking until they reached Sawyer’s Audi.
“This is some fucked-up shit,” Sawyer said, starting the car.
“What a horrible way to die,” Royce said, looking out the window. He rattled off McGraw’s address, and Sawyer pulled out of the parking lot. McGraw was a sleazy son of a bitch, but that didn’t mean Royce thought he should die. And Crystal? As far as he knew, her biggest crime was getting involved with a married man. She didn’t warrant that fate either—trapped in a room and slowly suffocated as smoke replaced oxygen. No one deserved such an ending.
Thoughts of Marcus surfaced. The same visions haunting his dreams splayed across his brain, choking off his airway as the panic attack had. The way Marcus looked in death was the only way Royce had been able to picture his friend since finding him. He kept waiting for memories of the man he’d adored since boyhood to replace the heartbreaking images, but it hadn’t happened yet. Even though Royce thought Marcus’s death was a painless nap he’d never woken from, many of Royce’s nightmares included Marcus suffering, gasping for air, and begging for help that wouldn’t come, or trying to get out of the car only to find the door immovable. Crystal and McGraw’s last moments probably were that horrible.
“Breathe, dickhead,” Sawyer said, reaching across the console to take his hand. “Breathe for me.” How someone could put so much tenderness in an insult was beyond him, but it made him smile and grip Sawyer’s hand like it was a lifeline.
“Asshole,” he muttered with an equal amount of affection.
By the time they reached McGraw’s house, Royce had pulled himself together. Savage’s wife, Ginny McGraw, was considerably younger than he had been. She looked like a Playboy bunny in her lavender lace and satin nightgown—more lace than satin—with a matching robe and her hair piled on top of her head with long strands framing her face. Notifying the next of kin was never easy, and you never knew the type of reaction you’d get. Ginny screeched, tottered backward while clutching her ample bosom, and might’ve fallen over if Sawyer hadn’t lunged forward to catch her. She sobbed against his chest for a good ten minutes before she calmed down enough to let Royce finish. He’d only gotten as far as “I regret to inform you,” before the howling started. They offered to call someone for her, but she declined.
“Has your husband received threats lately?”
She huffed. “Weekly, but what else would you expect when you own a strip club? You’d think our society would move away from such prudishness, but it feels like we’ve gone backward instead of forward.” They asked more questions, trying to drill down to see if a specific threat stuck out in her mind. “I don’t know his name, but one of the local clergymen has vocalized his outrage the loudest over the years, but he backed way down when he realized his tactics weren’t working.”
“Tactics?”
“Protests outside the club mostly. One time, they started snapping pictures of the men and women leaving the club. I guess they were going to publicly shame them, but Savage called the police and the cops confiscated the phones and cameras.”
Royce figured Marcus wasn’t the only cop who frequented the club and would want to avoid those pictures going public.
Other than that particular man, Ginny couldn’t think of anyone who reacted as extremely to the club. She accepted his card and said she’d call if she thought of anything else helpful.
Once they left her house, Royce called the station and requested the address on record for Crystal Akeman and next of kin information if available, but there wasn’t. After jotting her address down in a notebook Sawyer kept in his glovebox, he googled it to see where it was located. It was a newer apartment complex Royce wasn’t familiar with but easily found the after-hours phone number for the property manager on their website. He couldn’t tell the manager that Crystal was dead, so he planned to say Crystal’s family had requested a wellness check after they couldn’t get ahold of her.
Royce was just about to dial the after-hours number when he got a call from Kelsey. “What are you doing up so early?” Royce asked instead of using a proper greeting.
“Good morning to you too,” she said wryly. “I set an alert to notify me if The Purists updated their website.”
Oh fuck.“And?”