I switched back to my interview with Orton, trying to remember the last thing he said. Oh, yeah, he smelled gas. “Where were you when you smelled the gas?”
“I was in the van—in the front passenger side. I could smell the gas and everything was black. Then I saw a flame, like a lighter, then a bigger flame. One of the black guys was on the driver’s side. The back window was open and one of them lit something on fire and tossed it through the window. I got my door opened just as the whole van blew up.”
“You were in the front passenger side?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how I got out. The blast must have thrown me.”
“And then you called 911?”
“I was on fire . . . rolling in the snow. I couldn’t see, but I managed to dial 911.”
“When did you shut the door?”
“What door?”
“The van door. When I arrived at the scene this morning, the front passenger door was closed.”
“I don’t know. It must have blown open and then . . . you know . . . it bounced back shut.”
“That’s probably what happened,” I said. “Now, you said that it was dark when you woke up. You said that it was pitch black and you didn’t see anything until someone lit a match?”
“That’s right.”
“So you didn’t see any headlights? Running lights? Nothing?”
“Lights?”
“I’m assuming those three guys didn’t walk back to town. It makes sense they’d have a car follow them—to give ’em a ride back to the city.”
“I suppose.”
“And if they drove a car out there to use as a getaway car, well, if it was me, and it was twenty below, I’d leave the car running. I’m just wondering why you didn’t see any running lights in the darkness.”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t worrying about running lights at the time. I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether they had a getaway car. I was just trying to survive. Why are you being a dick? They strangled my girlfriend. They tried to kill me and all you can do is focus on why I didn’t see running lights?”
“They strangled your girlfriend?”
Orton’s lips closed, squeezing together, trembling. His left hand, the one free of bandages, balled up into a fist. He’d fucked up.
When his lips relaxed, he said, “Detective, I need some rest. I’m in a great deal of pain. I need you to leave now.”
I stood. “That’s fine,” I said. “I have a few more questions, but they can wait.”
CHAPTER 15
Rusty’s Bar had been a neighborhood fixture since before the neighborhood had electricity. It had burned down three times—only one of those times had arson been proven—and it had changed its name at least eight times over the near century and a half of its existence. What hadn’t changed was the clientele. Rusty’s never tried to be more that it was. Trends came and went: flappers, zoot suits, rebels, hippies, yuppies, and now Gen Xers and millennials. Through it all, Rusty’s served cold beer and poured its drinks with honest measure—except, of course, during Prohibition. In those years, root beer topped the menu unless you had the clout to go down to the basement where they served Canadian whiskey.
Rusty’s was one of those long, narrow saloons with tin ceilings and pock-marked hardwood floors. The plumbing and duct work crisscrossed in the open spaces above the lights, and no seat in the house sported a cushion of any kind. Nothing fancy, with its long row of taps lining the cherry-wood bar, Rusty’s could feel a bit sticky on the elbows at times, but again, it never pretended to be anything else.
I found Niki in one of only three booths. The old Hamm’s clock on the wall had just ticked on five o’clock, and already Rusty’s was half full. She had a bottle of Grain Belt waiting for me. I tapped the neck of my bottle against the neck of hers and took a long pull.
“Did Fireball confess?” she asked.
“No. He did the blame-it-on-the-gangs thing,” I said. “His explanation is all over the place. Tried to make it out as a car-jacking gone bad, as if that POS minivan was a hot commodity at the chop shops.”
“You gave him a day to come up with a story, and that’s the best he could do?”
“I know. I am deeply disappointed in our deputy chief of staff.”
“You want to see something that’ll make you even more disappointed in him?”
Niki lifted a laptop from the bench beside her and placed it on the table between us. She had the surveillance footage from the Holiday station cued up and ready to go. She hit the mouse pad and turned the screen toward me.
The camera angle was downward facing, framing a bay between two sets of gas pumps. The bay was empty for a few seconds before a white minivan pulled up to one of the pumps. I could see the front of the vehicle, and there was no one in the passenger seat. Already Fireball’s story was wrong.
Orton got out and walked around to the passenger side, slid a credit card through the slot, plugged the nozzle into the gas tank, and started pumping. Then he went back to the driver’s side, got in, and waited.
“So where’s Pippa?” I asked.
“Wait for it.”
After a few minutes, I saw a window get lowered—back seat passenger side. Orton exited the minivan and walked back around to the pump. He looked over the hood of the car toward the store and the clerk. Then he pulled the nozzle from the gas tank and stuck it through the open window. I could not see into the back seat, but I had no doubt that Pippa Stafford lay dead beneath the spray of gasoline.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, shaking my head. “He doused her with gas right there at the station.”
“Can you imagine the drive from there to the turnaround on First Street—in a car filled with gasoline? He had to be choking the whole way.”
“And the whole way, his clothes were absorbing the gas fumes. How did he not see the problem?”
Orton held the nozzle through the window for about thirty seconds, his arm jerking as if spraying as much of the interior as he could reach, before returning the nozzle to the pump. Then he pushed a couple buttons on the pump, waited, and pulled his receipt, slipping it into his wallet as he walked back to the driver’s seat.
“I don’t see any gang members, do you?” I said.
“Not in this angle.”
Niki popped open the tray and handed me the CD.
I rotated the disc in my hand, the lights sparkling off the readable surface. “I can’t wait to talk to Fireball about this,” I said. “See if he can explain where the black gangbangers disappeared to.”
“Do we tell Briggs? He’s going to be pestering us again tomorrow. We can’t dodge him forever.”
“I want to have a chat with Orton in the morning. That should button this case up. Get the confession so there’re no loose ends. Then we can hand it to Briggs all tied in a ribbon. He won’t be able to do much with it after that.”
“Have you figured out his interest in this case yet?”
“Not yet. I was thinking of talking to Commander Walker about it tomorrow.”
“Is that wise?”
“Walker and I go way back. He trained me when I first came to Homicide. He’s not like Briggs. In fact, the only reason that Briggs made lieutenant is because Chief Murphy pushed it. If Walker had his druthers, Briggs would never have become his second-in-command.”