Burning Girl: a Det. Riisa Jones Mystery
​
This 62,000-word, hardboiled novella features Det. Riisa Jones, a 30-year-old detective for the Gallion, Rhode Island P.D.
Recently promoted to the detective division, Riisa wants to prove herself. When a young girl’s body is found burning in a dumpster, she and veteran detective Kazimir Worozowski are assigned the case. Kaz is days from retirement, however, and has little interest in solving the case; worse, he belittles her efforts. She weathers his insults, forges ahead with the clues provided and discovers the dead girl’s identity because of a detail revealed at the autopsy. Following this lead, she learns that Regina “Ginnie” Polanco had worked as a manicurist at a beauty salon. The owner appears uncooperative and Riisa discovers she has an interesting past: her first salon had burned down and she collected a sizeable insurance payout that enabled her to build her current establishment.
As Riisa continues to investigate, she learns from one of the owner’s manicurists that two other women in the owner’s circle also have “interesting” pasts. One is a notorious local figure, a mother, who threw wild parties involving teenagers and was subsequently arrested; in fact, Riisa herself did the investigation. The other is a middle-class woman whose husband died under mysterious circumstances. Linda Parnell has two troubled sons: Frank, the older one, is a steroid-addicted, violent bodybuilder who physically abuses his girlfriend. The other is a high-schooler, Carl, Jr., who gives everyone the impression he’s merely a harmless, unintelligent loner.
Yet, here, too, Riisa discovers interesting contradictions: he possesses a high IQ—yet seems to be failing at school; he’s bullies—yet he and his gang of free runners are implicated by a vice cop colleague as responsible for stealing goods from the railroad yard at night. Carl’s sexual fixation with his mother is revealed through inner access, and the reader discovers he’s even more disturbed than his older brother.
As Riisa gets deeper into the twisted dynamics of this family, she suspects Frank Parnell killed Ginnie Polanco because of something she must have learned about the beauty shop owner’s scheme to bilk the insurance company and had been blackmailing her. Riisa tries to use Frank’s girlfriend against him. But she isn’t the only one hunting the killer of Ginnie Polanco. Ginnie’s brother and cousin are MS-13 gang members from Boston, and they’re hanging around Gallion looking for the killer. They learn from Carl’s classmate that his brother Frank had acted suspiciously when the dead girl was brought up by Carl (Carl is hoping to implicate Frank to the police for his own reasons).
Riisa finally learns it’s the younger brother who’s the real criminal mastermind of this disturbed family, and in attempting to arrest him, he escapes, fleeing across rooftops. Confronted, he chooses suicide rather than face prison for multiple murders or the revenge of the two MS-13 killers. Her failure to realize it in time produces a cascading effect of murders. In the epilogue, as an act of compassion, Riisa visits the dead girl’s family in Guatemala.