Married to My Ex-Father-in-Law novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: The Levee

Dom drove down the bluff with the headlights off until the bottom, like he'd forgotten them.

I reached over and turned them on.

He didn't notice.

"Dom," I said. "The girl. In my office. She said he'd ask how hot a car burns."

"I know what she said."

"So it might not be..."

"If it's not him," he said, "then somebody else is sitting in that car."

I didn't say anything after that.

The West Bottoms at midnight were old brick warehouses and empty streets.

Then the levee road, and the river black beside it, and every light in Kansas City on the water.

The fire trucks were parked across the gravel at angles.

The Escalade sat in the middle of them, still smoking.

It wasn't black anymore. It was gray, and orange in the seams.

The tires were gone, and it sat on its wheels.

The smell came in through the closed car windows.

Gasoline. Rubber. And something under it I knew from nowhere and knew anyway.

Dom got out before the car stopped rolling.

A patrol officer put a hand up. Dom walked through it.

A man in a KCPD windbreaker caught him at the yellow tape.

Fifties, tired eyes, a coffee in his hand.

"Mr. Scarpa. I'm the detective on this. You can't go closer."

"Is it my son."

"We don't know yet. There's one person in the vehicle, in the driver's seat." He looked at the coffee. "Nobody's going to be able to tell by looking."

"Then how will you tell?"

"The medical examiner will." The detective held up a clear plastic bag in his other hand. "This was on him. Can you look at it for me?"

A heavy gold signet ring, black with soot.

In another bag, a watch with a cracked face.

I'd bought Nicky that watch for our first anniversary. It had taken me eight months of payments.

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