Skies of Ash Read Online Free PDF Page A

like the O. J. Simpson case. I wanted a spot that had become available after a squad dick’s retirement, and I had applied with Lieutenant Rodriguez’s very reluctant blessing.
    “They told me I was
this close
to being selected.” I pinched my finger and thumb together. “But see: Southwest needs good detectives like me in the division, and Rodriguez really didn’t want me to go. But I was
this close
, Dix,” I said, pinching my fingers together again.
    A smile crept to the edges of Dixie’s lips. “It ain’t horseshoes, boo. You lost.” She pulled from her bag an expandable folder already thick with papers and photographs. “So Christopher Chatman’s parents, Henry and Ava, purchased this place back in the fifties for ninety thousand dollars. Twenty years later, they bought their first hundred-thousand-dollar policy from MG Standard. About thirteen years ago, Christopher Chatman and his wife moved in.
    “In 2009, the house was burglarized while the Chatmans were out. Homie stole five computers, three cameras, and the Blu-ray disc player. We paid the fifty-thousand-dollar claim. Then, last year, the Chatmans raised their policy from four hundred thousand to five hundred and fifty thousand. Since then, they’ve been remodeling, and up until early this morning, the house had five bedrooms, two full baths, a half bath, formal dining room, home office, den, laundry, and the studio apartment out back.”
    “So why are you here?” I asked the ex-cop.
    “ ‘MG Standard: we live to improve life.’ And I’m here cuz my ass was on call.” Her gaze wandered to a black Jaguar sedan pulling into the driveway of the weird-shrubbed house.
    A man with skin the color of French-roasted coffee climbed from behind the Jag’s steering wheel. He wore a blue pinstripe suit and a steel-blue dress shirt, no tie. A silver watch flashed from beneath the shirt’s left cuff.
    “Who’s Oscar de la Renta?” I asked.
    “Girl, that’s Ben Oliver,” she said, gaze trained on the man now striding up the house’s walkway. “Ummmhmmm.”
    “Stop purring, Dix,” I said, even though the same feline rumbling vibrated in my belly.
    “You gon’ have your work cut out for you. Mr. Oliver is a big-time insurance attorney. We been on opposite sides of the table many times. He’s the one who called us on behalf of Mr. Chatman, and he’s also Chatman’s best friend.”
    Ben Oliver glanced over to Dixie and me as though we were crushed pylons. Then, his eyes shifted to his friend’s house. A frown flashed across his face—the same pissy-sexy look Abercrombie & Fitch had been hustling since the eighties.
    “He’s an asshole,” Dixie said, “but he’s a fine-assed asshole. He got that pimp juice, Lou. Watch ya back and your panties.” And then she laughed.
Huh-huh-huh.

5
    EVEN AS THE NOONDAY SUN WORKED ACROSS A SKY CROWDED WITH SOFT, KILLER clouds of smoke, no one rushed through the on-site investigation. And no one rushed through the slow extraction of three bodies.
    The press hunkered at the yellow tape as LAPD spokeswoman Val Xiomara offered our official statement—
three fatalities, no suspect, no comment, a tragedy
. Print reporters, their heads down, scribbled furiously onto pads or tapped words into tablets. The talking bobbleheads with don’t-get-too-close-to-an-open-flame hair held mics to their plumped lips and flicked sound bites to viewers at home like birdseed.
    Early this morning, firefighters were called…
    …pronounced dead at the scene…
    …investigate the origins of the blaze…
    Silence came to Don Mateo Drive as one blue body bag, followed by another and then another, was gurney-rolled to the coroner’s vans by men in LACCO Windbreakers.
    My muscles tightened as I watched that somber recessional.
    Cameras clicked. Neighbors gasped and sobbed into their hands. A woman in the crowd whispered a prayer for the dead. “May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed…”
    And then the vans