The Sandler Inquiry.

by Noel Hynd.

Chapter 1

Who'd want to burn him out? Destroy his records? His office?

His livelihood?

Thomas Daniels considered the hundreds of enemies his father must have made. He wondered whom he knew who liked to play with fire.

"This was a good professional torching" said Corrigan, a lieutenant from the New York City Fire Department.

"High-intensity, quick-spreading fire. Would have taken the whole building if the custodian here hadn't found it." Corrigan pointed to the filing room. The air was gray with the vestiges of smoke, and the law offices were permeated with the sweet smell of ashes and water.

Thomas Daniels's eyes smarted. He was looking at the charred remnants of the old wooden files.

"No one was here when it started," Corrigan continued. "That's the usual. A good arsonist uses a fuse."

"An electricity fuse?" asked Jacobus, the janitor, in slightly accented English.

Corrigan shook his head no.

"A timing fuse. A candle, a wire, a clock, even a cigarette sometimes.

Anything that will burn down slowly and not ignite whatever chemical, papers, or rags are being used until the torch man is gone" He glanced around. It was a few minutes past four A.M. "If the fire had done the whole building we'd never have known where the flash point was. Here we know where the blaze started. So we'll go through the debris in the filing room, inch by inch. We'll find a fuse mechanism in there. Bank on it. I'll show you something else Corrigan led Jacobus and Daniels through the two adjoining rooms. He pointed to places and showed them how the flames appeared to have traveled in a path from the flash point.

"See?" he said.

"Tracks. Tracks made by trailers that our firebug left. If we hadn't broke in on the fire early, we wouldn't have these, neither."

The trailers, Corrigan explained, had been some highly flammable substance-chemically treated rags, paper, or plastic-which had been left by the arsonist to be triggered by the fuse. When the fuse had burned down, the traders had been sparked. And a rapidly spreading blaze had shot in every direction. The intense flames consuming the traders had left the tracks.

Thomas Daniels, though working up a dislike for Lieut. Corrigan, knew he was listening to an expert. But the questions which kept recurring to Thomas were ones Corrigan couldn't answer.

Who? And why? A premeditated fire made no sense.

"A pyromaniac?"

The lieutenant seemed amused.

"No. Too neat a trick for a pyro.

Pyros are sloppy. They leave so much evidence you'd think they was trying to get caught." Corrigan shook his head.

"Nope. This was set by somebody who wanted all the tracks covered but wanted the whole area destroyed. Usually that points to one thing."

"What's that?" asked Thomas Daniels.

"Something else was involved. Another crime. Sometimes you dig in the rubble of a fire like this and come up with a grilled cadaver. Get it?

No stiff here, though. That means something else.

Burglary, maybe. Anything of value kept in the office?"

Thomas shook his head.

"No art? jewels? TVs, typewriters? Nothin' like that?"

"Nothing' Corrigan shrugged and used a thick forearm to wipe grime and sweat from his forehead.

"Then there's something else that the detectives are going to suggest"

"What's that?"

"Insurance. A failed business somebody wanted torched to cash in on a policy."

Thomas visibly bristled.

Corrigan pursed his lips.

"Not necessarily you. Maybe the guy upstairs. Or downstairs. The fire spreads and you all go up in the same puff, making it that much harder to figure who lit the fuse' ' Corrigan turned to the janitor.

"By the way howd you find the fire so fast? Doing your nighttime rounds?"

Jacobus considered it, thinking back over the events of the early morning.

"I vas mopping," he finally declared, trying to sound as American as possible, "and I smelled smoke" Sha.s.sad and Hearn stepped from the unmarked car and held their shields aloft to Officer Renfrow and a second uniformed patrolman. Renfrow recognized them anyway. The flash of red lights from the blue-and-white New York City police cars was reflected off the wet sidewalk and windows.

"Looks like he resisted' Renfrow suggested.

The homicide detectives looked down. The body was covered by a police blanket.

"That's a heavy finance charge for not coughing up a wallet,"

Sha.s.sad said. He looked at the trail of blood on the sidewalk, leading from the body and running along several yards of pavement to the doorway of number 246. The blood on East Seventy-third Street was already partially diluted by the rain.

"Want a look?" Renfrow asked.

"Why the h.e.l.l not?"

Sha.s.sad reached down himself and pulled back the blanket. It was heavy and soggy from the rain. He gagged slightly, though he'd seen hundreds of equally repulsive scenes.

"Jesus' ' The dead man's face was chalk white. Below the neck, on the right side, was an obscene gaping wound, a huge b.l.o.o.d.y hole carved into the flesh just below the jawbone. A blade, perhaps of butcher-knife dimensions, had slashed upward into the victim's throat, tearing and ripping everything in its path and cutting into the mouth. The front of the man's suit, coat, and shirt was scarlet of varying shades.

Sha.s.sad mumbled,

"Can't a guy even step out of the house after dark?"

"No identification said Renfrow.

"Just some change and keys' ' Hearn looked up as Sha.s.sad put the blanket back in place, affording the dead some privacy. "No wallet?"

he asked.