Page 28 of The Birthday Girl
Under the department’s Major Case protocol, the Special Investigations Division responded with Arson and Homicide. Vega, the on-call SID detective for that sector, slid out of his comfy bed, grabbed his coat, and drove to the scene.
Three ladder trucks were retracting their hoses as Vega pulled up to what remained of the motel. The fire had transformed the single-story structure into a charred skeleton, its blackened beams jutting up from the ruins like tombstones in a scorched cemetery.
Vega’s eyes watered as he stepped from the car.
The air was smoldering in smoke so thick he could taste melted plastic each time he inhaled.
The fumes ambushed Vega's lungs, folding him in the middle.
Each cough scraped his throat raw, until tears blurred the ruins around him and he had to wipe his mouth with a grimy sleeve.
Pushing through anyway, he lifted the yellow tape and bent at the waist, his shield catching the sweep of a patrolman's light as he moved closer to the carnage.
Cold water seeped through the worn seams of his boots as he stepped into a crater of rainwater and ash, but he kept going until he was inside the charred reception office.
“Jesus,” Vega grumbled, squinting through the haze at the blackened beams overhead, where tiny scorch marks branded the walls despite the thousands of gallons of water pumped through the building.
Dean Harlan, the fire marshal, stood a few feet away with his clipboard tucked under one arm, conferring with a forensics tech whose blue booties squeaked against the wet floor. When he spotted Vega, his expression softened with recognition.
“Vega, glad you made it,” Harlan said, extending a hand. “We’ve got a mess here.”
Vega clasped his hand firmly. “Always is. Lay it on me.”
The tech glanced between them, then rattled off the first report. “Male found in the tub, second floor, room 18. Not burned, but punched up, mostly.”
Harlan’s eyes flickered to Vega. “That’s you,” he said, and pointed his pen up the stairs.
Vega nodded, taking the clipboard Harlan thrust at him. He scanned the preliminary notes—no visible burns, cause of death pending, probable blunt force trauma. “Who found him?” Vega asked, already guessing it hadn’t been a housekeeper pulling an early shift.
“A couple of firefighters from Ladder Six. Called it in after they cleared the smoke.” Harlan’s voice had the cadence of someone who’d been up all night, and not for the first time. “They said the room was locked from the inside. Windows shut, safety bar latched.”
“So, what, our vic bolts himself in and someone comes through the door anyway?” Vega handed back the clipboard, eyes narrowing. “No sign of forced entry?”
“Not that we can see. But the door’s pretty much toast, so—” Harlan shrugged. “Could’ve been kicked in, hard to tell.”
Vega took the stairs two at a time, boots squishing with each step.
The wall along the landing was streaked with greasy handprints.
They could’ve come from firefighters or survivors; it was hard to tell.
Above, the door to room 18 was half missing, the frame splintered where firefighters had forced it open.
Vega stepped inside and bristled at the carnage. ”
Room 18 had been hollowed out by the blaze.
Nothing remained but the skeleton of wall studs and drooping clumps of gray insulation.
The bathroom door had been wrenched from its hinges and lay at an angle across the floor.
In the tub beyond, a man's body lay perfectly preserved from the flames, except for his head.
The skull had imploded, leaving the rest of the corpse in an uncanny state of preservation.
Vega's pen froze above his notepad as he loomed over the body, unable to translate the carnage into clinical police shorthand. The shattered skull held his gaze hostage until Harlan's shadow stretched across the doorway behind him.
“Detective Vega?” he called his name, pulling his attention away from the corpse.
Harlan had stripped his turnout coat to his waist, the yellow reflective bands now charcoal-smeared from hours at the scene. His helmet hung loose from one hand, and rivulets of sweat had carved tracks through the soot coating his temples.
“What is it, Harlan?” Vega pivoted away from the corpse, his stomach knotting at the grim look on Harlan's face. "Let me guess, you found something worse."
"More bodies," Harlan said, the words falling from his mouth like stones, his eyelids so heavy they seemed held open only by the horror of what he'd seen.
“How many?”
Harlan sighed as he shook his head. “Three. A woman and two kids. Room 11. We pulled a preliminary ID. The manager accessed the booking system from home before he came down here. The room was registered to a Shanice Miller. She also listed two children with her.”
Vega's knees buckled. His coffee-sour stomach heaved once, then again.
He gripped the doorframe, leaving sweaty fingerprints on the charred wood.
The room tilted sideways. Shanice. Her little boy, with his Spider-Man backpack.
Her daughter, who'd hidden behind her mother's legs when Vega had promised them protection. They were gone.
He swallowed hard against the rising bile, tasting pennies on his tongue as he forced himself to remain upright. His shield felt suddenly heavy against his chest, the metal cold through his shirt.
“And you’re sure?” he asked, though his voice cracked around the question.
“Can't be certain until the lab work comes back,” Harlan said, his voice hollow, “but the night clerk ID'd her. Said she came in with both kids just after midnight.”
Vega crushed his notebook, metal coil biting into flesh as pages crumpled beneath his grip, and Shanice's voice echoed in his skull, tight with panic.
“They left another package on my doorstep. Please, just—just get here now.”
He had told her to run, to get the kids somewhere safe, and now their bodies lay charred in the ruins.
His warning—worthless.
Their trust in him—betrayed.
His promise of protection—a death sentence.
An image of the little boy's pajamas melted to his spine, slammed into Vega's mind, doubling him over.
His fingers cramped around the notebook until his knuckles cracked, and with a strangled sound that wasn't quite human, he tore his grip open, stuffed the mangled pages into his coat, and sucked in air that scorched his lungs like he was breathing the inferno that had consumed them.
“This is fucked up,” Vega replied hoarsely, barely able to keep his emotions in check.
“I agree,” Harlan said, his voice heavy. “What kind of monster sets a fire knowing kids are inside?”
Vega’s head snapped toward him. “What makes you think they were alive when it started?”
Harlan exhaled, rubbing the soot at his temple.
“They died in motion, Vega.” Harlan's voice dropped to a whisper.
“Mother in one bed. Kids were in the other.
The little boy—" Harlan's voice caught. “His body was hanging halfway off the mattress, fingers extended like he was trying to grab his mother's hand. The girl was curled behind him. They all died trying to close the distance between each other. That doesn’t happen if they were gone before the fire.”
Vega’s chest tightened, bile rising with the smoke still clinging to the back of his throat as he continued to listen to Harlan speak.
“The arson team flagged pour patterns everywhere. Whoever did this poured accelerant across both beds and ringed the room. There was no way out. They never stood a chance,” Harlan said, his voice gravelly from smoke inhalation.
“Given how destructive it was and how fast it spread, I’m assuming they used gasoline. ”
Vega nodded without looking at Harlan, because for the very first time since he’d become a detective in SID, he didn’t trust himself to speak. His mouth was dry and useless, and it took real physical effort to keep his hands from trembling.
Vega did what he’d been trained to do. Stood for a few silent beats, eyes down, body perfectly still, letting the panic shudder through his heart until it passed. If he opened his mouth now, he’d curse, or scream, or maybe beg Harlan to lie and tell him it wasn’t Shanice and her kids.
So Vega returned to the restroom and focused on the facts.
He forced himself to study the crushed notebook in his hand, to scan the pool of blood that had run from beneath the bathroom door and turned the floorboards slick.
He catalogued the details: the chemical stink of gas, the glass from the window fused into lumps along the sill, and the spray of brain matter that still clung in pinkish flecks to the tiles above the tub.
He took in the grisly evidence with the same mechanical detachment he’d used to block out nightmares in his rookie years. Only this time, it didn’t work. The horror clung to him, burrowing in. He needed to get out.
Vega stepped around the other officers, not bothering to cover the body, and made for the corridor. It took every ounce of discipline to descend those stairs without showing the limp in his soul.
At the landing, a firefighter nodded at him, but Vega couldn’t bring himself to return it.
He ducked the tape, stepped into the parking lot, and let the cold, acrid air hit him full in the face.
His hands were shaking, but he forced himself to light a cigarette to steady them, even though he’d quit years ago.
As he smoked, Vega tried to count the number of cases he’d closed in the last decade.
How many times had he stood at a scene like this and felt nothing but a cold, professional pride in his work?
He’d thought he was immune. He’d thought the job couldn’t touch him anymore.
But this one was different. This one would leave a scar.