The 5th Witch Read Online Free PDF Page A

smoke billowing up from seven blocks away. He pulled his grimy black Pontiac Torrent to the curb behind the fire chief’s truck and climbed out. A pink-faced female officer approached him with her hand raised and called out, “You can’t park there, sir! Move on, please!”
    He showed her his badge.
    “Oh,” she said. “Detective Fisher. I’ve heard of you.”
    “Nothing good, I hope.”
    She blushed even pinker, and lifted the police tape for him to duck underneath. Santa Monica Boulevard was crowded with fire trucks, squad cars, ambulances, and TV vans. A police helicopter was clattering overhead, so low that Dan could hardly hear himself think.
    Ernie Munoz was waiting for him beside the charred wreckage of the Crown Victoria. The blackened bodies of the three Narcotics detectives were still sitting inside it, with Cusack’s head protruding from the passenger’s window. Their arms were held up like monkeys begging for a treat, and they were grinning from the heat.

    “Christ,” said Dan. “What the hell went down here?”
    Ernie patted his shiny bald head, then the folds of fat around his neck with his bunched-up handkerchief. “So far,” he said, “we don’t have the least idea.” Ernie was short and big-bellied, with bulging eyes and a heavy black mustache, and a liking for glossy green mohair suits. Dan always called him El Gordo, the Fat Man.
    “Like I told you on the phone, the eyewitnesses are pretty confused. But they all agree on two things. One, there was a woman standing close to the car, waving. Two, the guys appeared to catch fire first, before the vehicle.”
    “So what are you trying to say? This was, like, spontaneous human combustion?”
    “Well, no,” said Ernie. “But nobody saw a firebomb or a can of gasoline or nothing like that. Although one witness said that the woman was holding something that was smoking.”
    “So where is this woman? Have you talked to her?”
    “She’s still inside the restaurant with the Zombie. I was waiting for you to show up before I interviewed her. You know—you and the Zombie having so much history and all.”
    “She’s still inside? What, eating ? After three guys got cremated right outside?”
    Ernie shrugged. “I don’t know about eating. But I told them to wait, and they said they weren’t in any kind of hurry.”
    Kevin Baleno, the fire investigator, came waddling over in a bright yellow Tyvek suit.
    “Any ideas?” Dan asked.
    Kevin Baleno shook his head. “We’ll have to get the bodies back to the lab. There’s no odor of accelerants, and the pattern of burning is very unusual. In fact Idon’t think I ever saw a vehicle fire quite like this before. It looks like the eyewitnesses could have been right and the detectives burst into flame before their vehicle did.”
    “Is that possible?”
    Kevin Baleno shrugged. “If it happened, Detective, it must be possible.”
    “What about Speedy?”
    “Don’t know yet. They took him away a couple of minutes ago. No visible injuries. My first guess is that he suffered a heart seizure. You’ll have to ask the ME.”
    “Okay,” said Dan. “Keep me in the loop, will you? I’m just going inside to have a word with my old friend Jean-Christophe. El Gordo, you coming?”
    He and Ernie went into the Palm. Under the rows of globe ceiling lights, the dark wood-paneled restaurant was almost empty. Most of the usual lunchtime crowd must have left after the blaze outside, but there was still an air of subdued hysteria, and the white-aproned waiters were hurrying from one side of the restaurant to the other, whispering to one another.
    Three Lithuanian movie producers had remained, crowded into their brass-railed booth in the center of the room, with beers and four-pound lobsters; as well as a party of five overdressed women who looked and sounded like department store executives from some city in the Midwest.
    Jean-Christophe Artisson was still there, too, and so was the emaciated girl with the