Free Alien Heat by Lynn Hightower Page B

float like that, the way it did on the disc there, with the fire fudge. Plus, let’s face it, folks, this is an exotic.”
    â€œExotic?” David asked. The problem with being a homicide cop in an arson investigation was how often one found oneself playing straight man.
    Warden skittered forward, his eye prong twitching. “Is unusual this. Connotes professional behavior.”
    â€œHired torch?” Mel asked.
    Clements nodded. “Could be. We’re going through our arson signatures, see what we come up with. Get this, Silver.” She took a cigarette from her purse and put it in her mouth. The room became silent. Clements rolled her eyes, took the cigarette out of her mouth, and waved it in the air. “I’m not lighting , okay, sweethearts? Just tasting the tobacco a little.”
    David decided that he liked her. She reminded him of Mel.
    â€œWe found trace elements of potassium chlorate in that house where you fell through the floor.”
    David shifted in his seat. He had not been planning on sharing that particular episode.
    â€œNow wait a minute.” Mel scratched his chin. “I thought that fire, the one in the house, caught from the supper club. Like an accident.”
    â€œIt wasn’t an accident that we found Theresa Jenks there,” David said.
    Clements shook her head. “We’re still sifting, but there was enough heat and flame to insure hostile fire.”
    String arched backward on his fringe. “How is this fire hostile? This is emotion?”
    â€œIs human expression,” Warden said. “The constant anthropomorphism. Her meaning is the fire seems to be set for the purpose carefully. So it is insured that building will go down to the cinders.”
    â€œAh.”
    Yolanda Clements sniffed the cigarette. “Listen, while you two translate, I’m a run the rest of the show. It’s going to jump around; we’ve spliced the whole. Got bits from those nasty rooms upstairs.”
    â€œWhere’s vice when we need ’em,” someone said.
    â€œHey, Yo, we get copies of this?”
    The image wavered, and bars of grey static fuzzed the clarity. David squinted.
    â€œThat an Elaki ?” someone asked.
    â€œI had no idea they were so … agile. What’s he doing to that woman?”
    â€œUse your imagination.”
    â€œOh, God. If it wasn’t so neat, I’d throw up.”
    â€œBeats sheep, I guess.”
    David heard a chair scrape the floor, looked over his shoulder, saw Della slip away.
    The scene switched to the kitchen where an Elaki and a boy, both in soiled undershirts and ball caps, peered into a fryer. The Elaki waved a fin over the grease, and the boy laughed and turned the Elaki’s ball cap backward.
    David wondered if either of them had survived.
    The image blurred, another shift in location. David saw the bar again, people laughing, talking, drinking. Something odd about the scene. He realized that the people and Elaki were mixing freely here, sitting together at tables, moving in and out of mixed groups. The numbers were pretty evenly distributed—human and Elaki one-to-one.
    A hallmark of the supper clubs. The only other place David had seen such easy mixing was a restaurant called Pierre’s, and even there, Elaki stuck with Elaki, and people stuck with people.
    David rubbed his chest, touching the scar. Pierre had saved his life when he’d been shot. Kept him breathing, until the ambulance came. Some days David wished Pierre had not gone to the trouble.
    David heard a gasp, an exhalation of breath, someone muttering Holy Mary Mother of God. He looked up at the screen.
    A wall of flame rose up from behind the bar. The room was hazy with smoke, and people and Elaki moved in frantic but oddly aimless motion. The Elaki were at a distinct disadvantage—unable to hold their own against the bone and sinew of people who moved in a thickening mass for the door.
    Warden turned his