The Burning Season

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Couldn’t find any matching boot soles,” Nick told her. “Or signs that he’s been melting wax anywhere. Of course, he might have done that in the part of the house that burned.”

  “I don’t see anything that merits a more extensive search,” Sara said. “Which is fine with me . . . I don’t think I can stand it in here much longer. The guy’s got cans of beans that look like they go back to the sixties.”

  Nick was about to respond when he heard anxious, angry shouts from outside the house. “Sounds like trouble,” he said.

  “Just what we need.” She put the box of matches back where she had found it. “Let’s have a look.”

  Nick led the way outside, Sara following, Givens close behind her, carrying his shotgun. The sun’s last rays sparkled in the charred tangle of branches beyond the road, like fireflies caught in a net. On the street, some of the same people they had encountered earlier were on the dirt shoulder of the road, surrounding a pair of young people Nick didn’t remember having seen before. A man and a woman, both lean and blond, wearing dirty clothes that didn’t quite fit. Nick knew at once who they must be.

  “That’s those campers,” he said. “The ‘dirty hippies,’ right?”

  “That’s them,” Givens replied. “They always return to the scene of the crime, don’t they?”

  “That’s actually a myth,” Sara said. “Some do, others don’t.”

  “Here you go, officers,” Collin Gardner called when he saw them coming. He was aiming a revolver at the pair. “We found ’em for you!”

  “Put the weapon down, sir,” Nick said. His hand snaked out, drew his own firearm from his belt holster. “Now. Anyone else carrying, please put your weapon on the ground right now.”

  “We have a right to carry arms,” Givens complained.

  “Haven’t we been over that?” Sara asked. “You have a right. But we have a right to secure the situation, and that includes asking you to put your guns away for the moment.”

  Givens sighed and set his shotgun on the ground. “If this thing doesn’t survive having you two around, I’m suing the department.”

  Collin Gardner was less cooperative. His arm trembled, but he kept the revolver leveled at the pair of campers. They stood with their hands raised, sharing anxious glances.

  “Mr. Gardner,” Nick said. “Lower that weapon. I won’t ask you again.”

  “This pair here started that fire,” Gardner said. “I want to make a citizen’s arrest.”

  “We’re standing right here,” Sara pointed out. “If there’s any arresting to be done, we’ll do it. So far, there’s not a shred of evidence implicating these two.”

  “We did nothing,” the young man said. He had a soft voice, with a German accent. “We started no fire.”

  Nick and Sara moved closer to them. Gardner finally lowered his weapon, but kept it in his hand. Nick decided to let that slide. “Let’s break this up,” he said. “All of you, go home. We’ll talk to these folks and if there’s action needed, we’ll take it.”

  “Wish we could count on that,” Givens said. “So far all you’ve done is hassle innocent locals, and make excuses for this pair.”

  “Mr. Givens, we know what we’re doing. You’ve got to have a little faith in our judgment.”

  “You don’t have much in mine.”

  Nick couldn’t argue with that. “Just go home. This is under control.”

  The crowd began to disperse. At the edge of the group, Nick saw Kevin Cox. As before, he was by himself, watching but not participating. Gardner and Givens huddled together for a minute while Givens picked up his shotgun, speaking in low tones and casting angry glances toward the CSIs. When Sara took a step in their direction, they parted and each man went to his own home.

  “Where have you two been?” Nick asked. “Since the fire began?”

  “It came quickly toward us,” the woman said. She spoke English with a more natural flair than her friend, her accent pronounced but less impenetrable. “We ran, up the hill to the house of a friend. He said that we were to evacuate. So we rode with him, down into Las Vegas, and stayed in a motel. Today he said we could return, and he drove us back.”

  “You have anything to back that up?” Nick asked. “Motel receipts? Where’s your friend?”

  The man pointed to a house that had avoided any significant fire damage. “There,” he said. “He lost his cat.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said.

  The woman fished a folded piece of paper from her back pocket. “This is from the motel,” she said. She handed it to Sara, who opened it and read it.

  “It’s a receipt,” she said. “They were at a motel for two nights.”

  “Doesn’t mean they were there the whole time,” Nick pointed out. “Although without their own wheels, it’d be a stretch. You two have a vehicle?”

  “We have been hitchhiking, mostly,” the woman said. “From New York. And using the train, sometimes.”

  “How long are you in the country for?” Sara asked.

  “Six months. We will get to California, to the Pacific Ocean. From Los Angeles, we fly home. In three more weeks.”

  “What do you know about how the fire started?”

  “Nothing,” the woman said. “We were in our tent . . . reading. We smelled smoke, and when we came out, the flames were coming toward us.”

  The young man chuckled. “Something funny about that?” Nick asked him.

  “Tell them the truth,” the man said.

  The woman turned a bright shade of crimson, and she turned her gaze toward the pebbled, ash-flecked ground. “We were making love,” she said.

  “That’s cool,” Nick said. “I’m all in favor of it.”

  “But the rest happened as I said. We smelled the smoke. When we saw the flames, we ran.”

  “All right. Are you going back to your camp?”

  “If it’s safe. What we left behind there is all we have.” She shrugged under the straps of her backpack. “Except what we could carry when we ran away.”

  “Don’t leave the area without telling us,” Nick said. He handed the woman a card. “My number’s on there. We really want to get to the bottom of this.”

  “If we can help you, we will.”

  “Thanks. Be careful out there.”

  The two started toward the path down to their camp. Nick watched them go, and when he glanced toward Sara again, she was studying the ground as intently as the young German woman had just moments earlier. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “This isn’t one of their footprints, I checked,” Sara said, pointing to a spot near her feet. “And most of it’s obscured by other prints, walking over it. But isn’t this the same boot toe that you found down the hill?”

  Nick looked closely, then pulled out the digital camera and checked his photograph. The print on the road shoulder did indeed match—same partial tread, same cuts. “Our arsonist was here,” he said. “Part of that group.”

  “But they were all milling around and when we sent them away, they were all walking on one another’s tracks. We can’t say which one it was.”

  “Maybe we can find that track again, after they went their separate ways.”

  “If we hurry,” Sara said, looking toward the sky. The sun was almost gone; the half-light of twilight would be on them soon, then the dark of night.

  They split up and tried to follow footprints, but most of the people had left the shoulder and headed toward their homes on the paved road. The boot print didn’t reappear.

  “Let’s try that guy Collin Gardner,” Nick suggested. “He’s just as obnoxious as Givens, and he’s awfully anxious to pin the fire on those campers.”

  “I take it you don’t consider them viable suspects?” Sara asked.

  “I haven’t seen any reason to. None of the evidence points toward them.”

  “I agree. Just checking, since you let them go without even asking their names.”

  “If they’re still here tomorrow, they’re innocent,�
�� Nick said. “I think they are, and that they’ll be down in that camp, trying to set it up again and to salvage what they can. You want to find out their names then, feel free. Seemed like a distraction to me.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. “Let’s pay a visit to Collin, then.”

  He lived three houses down from Givens, in one of the few places they’d seen on this road that actually looked like a cabin. It was good-sized, but constructed entirely of what appeared to be local wood and stone. The fire hadn’t touched it.

  There was no doorbell, so Nick pounded on the front door. Gardner opened it almost immediately, as if he’d been waiting. “Yeah?”

  “We were wondering if we could take a look at your boots, Mr. Gardner,” Sara said.

  Gardner didn’t budge. He was wearing black work boots, blue jeans, and a gray T-shirt under an open plaid flannel shirt. “I’m wearing them, see?”

  “We’d like to see the soles, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Excuse me?” Nick asked.

  “You have a warrant?”

  “No, sir. We’re just asking to see the bottoms of your boots.”

  “Come back with a warrant. You can park outside here day and night, if you want to. When you have a warrant, then you can come in and look at my boots.”

  “If that’s how you want it, then—”

  “That’s how I want it.” Gardner stared them down for another few seconds, then closed the door.

  “Man, he’s a peach, isn’t he?”

  “One of a kind,” Sara agreed. “Or at least, we can hope so.”

  23

  BRASS AND VARTANN hurried back to the Orpheus Hotel. Vartann parked at the valet stand, flashed his badge, and told the valets to leave the unmarked where it was. Inside, they rushed through the crowded lobby, diverting around the casino entrance, and took the stairs to the mezzanine floor, on which the Free Citizens seminar had been held.

  There were still people milling about, talking over what they’d heard from the Kirklands. But the diamond-selling table was empty, and Brass didn’t see any of the people he had identified earlier as members of the Kirklands’ posse.

  “Front desk,” he said.

  Vartann nodded, and the two men made their way back down and through the throngs in the lobby. At the desk, Brass shouldered aside a young couple checking in with six suitcases between them. “Sorry,” he said. He showed his badge to the desk clerk, a woman in her mid-twenties, with dark skin and black hair. Her name tag identified her as Naveen, from Karachi.

  “Naveen,” Brass said, “I need to know, right now, what room Troy Kirkland and Steven Kirkland are in. Or rooms, if they’re in separate ones. It’s important police business.”

  “Certainly,” she said. Her eyes widened a bit at the badge, but otherwise she gave no indication that this was anything other than her usual routine. Practiced fingers tap-danced across the keyboard. Finally, the eyes once again flared slightly, and she bit her plump lower lip. “I’m afraid they checked out. Twenty minutes ago.”

  “We need to see your head of security, then,” Vartann said. “Quickly, please.”

  “Just one moment.” She lifted a handset and spoke into it in hushed tones.

  “You know, we were here first,” the male half of the young couple said. “We’re just trying to get our room key.”

  Brass gave the young man a scowl, and grunted a noncommittal “Huh.”

  “We’ll wait,” the woman said.

  “Good idea,” Vartann said.

  Naveen hung up her phone. “Mr. Reese will be right here.”

  Vartann thanked her. He and Brass moved aside so the young couple could continue their check-in process. In less than a minute, a man approached wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt that would both have to have been custom-tailored to fit across a yardstick’s worth of shoulders and around a neck the approximate diameter of a redwood’s trunk. His copper hair was short, his face rosy and blotched. “You’re Reese?” Brass asked.

  “That’s right. Chief of Security. What can I do for you?”

  “Jim Brass, that’s Lou Vartann. We came to arrest a couple of your guests for murder, but it turns out they left twenty minutes ago.”

  “Then they’re not guests, are they?”

  “Don’t get cute, Mr. Reese. I want to see every second of video you’ve got from the time they checked out until they were off the premises.”

  “Okay, that’s no problem. Come with me.”

  He led them through the lobby and out a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. On the other side was a long utility corridor, concrete floored, with walls of concrete block painted a pale green. Their footsteps echoed in the empty hall. Reese stopped at an elevator and pushed the UP button. The door slid open immediately. He ushered the detectives inside. There were no floor selection buttons on the inside, but the doors closed and the elevator gave a little lurch. Moments later, it opened on another floor, and the three men stepped out into a room only slightly more technologically sophisticated than NASA Mission Control. Men and women sat in front of dozens of big video screens, with keyboards before them.

  “This is security central,” Reese explained. “The nerve center of the whole operation.”

  Brass regarded the screens all around them. Some showed static images, mostly shots of the casino and lobby. Others switched every few seconds between different scenes. There were cameras on every elevator, in service corridors, everywhere in the casino, in every cashier’s cage, in the cash vault, and throughout the grounds and parking structures.

  Reese stopped behind a handsome young man with neatly trimmed dark hair. “Josh,” he said. “A couple of guests checked out recently. What were the names?”

  “Steven and Troy Kirkland,” Brass said, spelling the last name.

  “Find exactly when they checked out, then bring up the footage from the front desk.”

  “Yes, sir,” Josh said. He turned to his keyboard, and in less than a minute, the Kirklands appeared on his monitor. They were standing at the desk, clearly checking out. A clerk—not Naveen—handed Steven a receipt, which he folded and tucked into a pocket. Behind them, barely in the shot, stood a burly man holding a strongbox.

  “That’s got to be the diamonds. And the proceeds,” Vartann said.

  “Can we see where they go after this?” Brass asked.

  “Stay on them, Josh,” Reese instructed.

  Josh fiddled with a joystick. Green lines appeared on the Kirkland’s faces for a few seconds. “Got ’em,” Josh said.

  The on-screen image changed as the two men left the counter, the guy with the strongbox a short distance behind. As they walked through the lobby and then the casino, the image kept shifting, hopping from one camera to another but keeping up with their progress. Brass was getting dizzy watching, but he was impressed by the technology just the same. “Facial recognition?” he asked.

  “That’s right, sir,” Josh said. “I told it to locate those faces wherever they appear. Now I’m just along for the ride.”

  It took the Kirklands several minutes to get out of the building. They crossed an elevated ramp into a parking structure, took an elevator, and then got into a brand new, gleaming Mercedes G55 AMG. The man with the strongbox put it into the cargo area and got into the backseat. Troy took the wheel and pulled the luxury SUV from its parking spot. As it drew away, the license plate was briefly visible.

  “Nice wheels,” Brass said. “South Carolina tags. Get that number.”

  Vartann jotted it down on a notebook he kept in his pocket. “Let’s get out a BOLO,” Brass said. Vartann drew his mobile phone from another pocket, but its screen was blank. Reese chuckled. “That’ll work again when you get out of this room,” he said. “But in here it’s completely jammed. They all are.”

  “Really,” Vartann said.

  “We don’t take anything for granted when it comes to the security of our operation and the safety of our guests.”


  “Apparently not,” Brass said. “We need to get the word out about that car, so if we could leave your dead zone . . .”

  “Sure.” Reese punched the elevator button. Once again, the doors opened right away, and the three got in. “Thanks, Josh,” Reese said as the doors came together.

  “No problem, sir!” Josh called back.

  “Polite kid,” Brass said.

  “If they aren’t, they don’t last in my outfit,” Reese said. The elevator glided to a smooth stop and the doors opened. “You should be able to use your phones now.”

  Vartann tried again. This time, his worked, and he called in a Be On the Lookout for the Mercedes. When he finished, Brass said, “One more thing. I want police protection on the head people in all the major groups involved in that protest. BOOM especially, but also the American Anti-Tax Party, the Patriots for Responsible Spending, and whoever else is there. I don’t know if the attack on Watson was an isolated event or the first stage in a power struggle, but I don’t want to find out by having more corpses turn up.”

  “I’m on it,” Vartann said.

  Brass shook Reese’s hand. “Thanks for your help,” he said. “If you could burn that footage to a DVD for me, I’ll have an officer pick it up later.”

  “You got it. Anything else I can do?”

  “Yeah. If you see the Kirklands again, detain them and call me. And if you take your time about calling me and they have to cool their heels in whatever passes for a jail around here, that’s okay, too.”

  24

  GREG DIDN’T LIKE hospitals. He didn’t know anybody who did, except possibly for those whose lives or loved ones had been saved there. Even they, he suspected, would have more of a love/hate relationship with hospitals, glad that one had been available at the crucial time, but sorry that it had been needed in the first place.