Fire Setters: A Shane Investigations: A gripping crime thriller filled with heart-melting romance and mystery

by Debra Erfert

  Her car was even the same red color, just no siren or overhead lights. With her headlights on bright, she took off after the emergency units. Never mind that they were traveling at sixty down a forty-mile-an-hour street, her car could keep up as long as she was willing to blur the line a bit.

  Unfortunately, a few blocks away from the fire and just as she as she saw heavy smoke pouring into the air, the police officer with his lights on directly behind her didn’t appreciate her enthusiasm. He whooped his siren at her, and she slowed down and pulled over to the side of the neighborhood street.

  “Blast it,” Candice mumbled as she opened the glove box and took out the little wallet with the insurance information and registration. She pushed the button on the armrest and the window disappeared into the door, as she clumsily slid out her driver’s license from behind her PI license.

  “Candice Shane,” a familiar woman’s voice said with a hit of humor. “Where’s the fire?”

  Candice groaned as she looked up into Anna Eddington’s smiling face. She pointed out the windshield at the column of dark smoke billowing up into the sky. “Over there, as if you didn’t notice it.”

  Anna laughed. “I noticed. What happened to your fingers?”

  Candice lifted her hand up. “My apartment was torched the other night.”

  “With you inside it?” Anna leaned over and rested her hands on the window frame, staring intently at Candice.

  She nodded. “My smoke alarms woke me, and I was able to get out, but—” Candice sighed— “I lost everything except for the contents of my backpack.”

  “Your ever-present backpack of equipment. I remember. Do you have any leads?”

  “I do. Today, I’m my own client.”

  “Why are you so interested in this fire?” Anna asked, keeping her eyes on the heavy smoke.

  “Well, curiosity, mostly. But there have been a rash of kids starting fires and I wanted to take a few discreet pictures of anyone lurking around, watching.”

  “You think this is connected. Good enough for me.” Anna straightened. “Follow me!”

  Candice didn’t have the chance to tell her if she did or not, but if she was going to get a personal escort to the fire, why argue about it? She waited as Anna’s patrol car roared around her before she took off. They were about a block away, and the black smoke began to turn white. The firefighters were pouring water on the flames. They were quick. Candice parked a block away. She didn’t want her car to get any nasty smoke smell in the convertible top.

  While Candice strode closer to the fire, she took her camera out of her backpack, but she was also looking at all the neighbors standing on their lawns, watching the flames that encompassed a fifty-foot palm tree’s fronds, like a giant candle. Beside the tree, a large metal storage shed in the backyard of a home was fully engulfed, burning hot. She started taking pictures–not of the fire, but of the people standing around, watching the fire and firefighters working. She also snapped a picture of kids down the alley.

  “I thought kids were supposed to be in school today,” Anna said.

  “I thought so, too.” Candice agreed. “I think one of those boys might’ve started this fire. I haven’t seen any other children coming out to watch.” She slipped the strap over her head. “I want to talk with them.”

  Those kids stayed long enough to see what the fire looked like, just what Joshua said they’d do if they’d started it. Of course, it was exactly what they’d do if they hadn’t started it. But Candice had a key way in mind of finding out if one or the other of the boys had struck the match, or “flicked the Bic” and torched the shed for Zane as a test. If they didn’t know him, then she’d at least find out if either of them had a lighter on them. She had money in her pocket and would offer to buy it from them. She found them huddled around the corner of a block wall, talking with each other.

  Anna was coming up behind her. She hushed the officer with a motion of her fingers to her lips, and then stopped her by holding her hand, palm out. Anna instantly understood the sign language and froze where she stood while Candice slipped around the corner and caught the boys off guard.

  “Hi,” Candice said. “Nice fire, isn’t it? I just wanted to let you know Zane said you passed the test.”

  She watched the one boy’s eyebrows scrunch together, but the other boy gave her a proud smile. Her heart skipped a beat in regret. He looked as old as Lito, although he was thinner by a good ten pounds, with his hair long around his shoulders that looked like it hadn’t been washed since last weekend. His clothes were worn and ill fitted.

  Candice spoke only to the poor kid whose life was touched by a terrible, soulless boy. “He said that I needed to take a picture of you holding the lighter you used as proof of your success. Do you still have it?”

  “Yep,” he said as he pulled the disposable lighter from his jeans pocket.

  “Can you tell me how you started it?” Candice casually asked him as she fumbled with her camera.

  The boy nodded. “I found a rag by the door that smelled funny, and I stuffed the end of it into a can of lighter fluid, the stuff you start a barbeque with, and then I set it down next to the lawn mower and lit the rag. It caught on fire fast.”

  “He said you’d get extra points if you got burned,” Candice said, aiming her camera at the smiling boy.

  “Is that what happened to you?” he asked, looking at her fingers.

  “As a matter of fact,” Candice said, “yes, Zane is responsible for my burn.” Then she took his picture a moment before Anna stepped around the corner and gently took the boy by the arm.

  “Hey,” he yelled. “You can’t do this.”

  “Yes, she can,” Candice told him. “Believe me, she’s saving you from a lot of heartache.” The other boy ran quickly down the street.

  “You didn’t say you were a cop,” the boy said, struggling against Anna’s grip.

  “I’m not,” she told him as she recalled the last picture on her camera. It looked perfect—and sickening at the same time. “I’m a private investigator. Are you taking him in, Office Eddington?”

  “I am,” Anna said, “until I have the paperwork done, and then I’ll release him to his parents.”

  Candice stared at the crying boy, shaking her head. With a softer voice, one that the boy might not be able to hear, she asked Anna, “See if you can get anything about Zane out of him, his last name, where he is or how you can get in touch with him.”

  “Aren’t you coming in with us?”

  Candice had work to do, mapping the addresses in the articles she had in her backpack, and Alex was probably waiting for her to get home. Even then, if Zane was as shrewd as she thought, the kid wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him any more than Joshua did. “Alex is worried about me being out alone.”

  “Like you can’t take care of yourself?” Anna chuckled.

  “I can, as long as I can see danger coming, but I couldn’t see the bullets coming in through my kitchen window Tuesday night when I was shot, or the fire starting in my apartment last night before it had me surrounded. I need to get this Zane character and put him behind bars before he kills me.”

  “What?” the kid asked weakly.

  Candice landed a stare on the boy hard enough it should’ve hurt. “Your friend is bad news. And he wants you to be as bad as he is.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I don’t want you to be. You can be better than him.”

  Candice lifted her camera and spoke to Anna. “I’ll print these and bring them over with Alex, and then I’ll write my supplement for you. Is that okay?” And then she remembered. “Oh! I lost my printer in the fire.”

  “You can print them at the station,” Anna told her. “As long as you have your cord.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. I’ll call Alex and have him meet me there.”

  ~*~

  Anna led the boy into the station’s report room by the elbow, and Candice followed closely behind them. The kid looked smaller than he did w
hen he was put into the backseat of her cruiser. Or maybe he was just hanging his head lower and his shoulders were a bit more rounded after his ride with Anna. There might’ve been some intense, most likely one-sided, conversation between the two on the ride to the station that Candice would’ve loved to have overheard.

  “Candice,” Alex called to her the moment she stepped inside the report room. He practically ran to her, and probably would have kissed her if the room didn’t have two other officers making out reports. As it was, he gave her an embrace that momentarily took her breath away. “Are you okay?” he asked in a stern way she could tell he was ticked off with her.

  “I’m fine, Alex.”

  “Candice—” he released her enough to gaze into her eyes— “we don’t know Zane wasn’t there watching the kid do his thing. If he was there, he probably saw you, too.”

  Crumb. She hadn’t thought about that. “I took pictures of the crowd. If he was there, then I might’ve captured his face. We can get the boy to identify him.”

  “Maybe not,” Anna said, taking a seat behind a computer. “He’s being very tight-lipped about who Zane is.” She gazed up at Alex. “Says he doesn’t know who he is and never saw him before today. I don’t know if I believe him.”

  Candice sighed a little too loudly. “I do. Did he say why he wasn’t in school today?”

  Anna nodded. “His school has parent-teacher conferences all day, so they got to stay home.”

  Candice found her camera’s CPU transfer cord in the side pocket of her backpack and passed it to Alex, who then took her camera and moved to the next computer. The boy sat in a chair on the other side of Anna and watched everything with wide, wet eyes, and a distinctive frown. He looked scared, and she couldn’t blame him. Being detained wasn’t pleasant, especially after he just got through burning down a shed full of somebody’s stuff and then admitting to it in front of a cop and a private investigator. Anna had taken the lighter from him before she put him in the back of her cruiser, but she had also found two more disposable lighters in his pockets. Candice told her that was predicable for fire setters.

  Alex’s computer recognized Candice’s camera. After he opened their picture program, they began to upload. As a habit, she’d change out the memory card for a clean one after her last case.

  “Do you see any other kids watching the fire besides these two?” Candice asked, leaning closer to the screen. “An older teenager, maybe a boy the age of a freshman in college? Zane’s name isn’t on the rolls in the high school district. He may have graduated.”

  Alex scanned through the few pictures. “It doesn’t look like it.” He sat back. “He did get the kid to start the fire . . .”

  Candice tried to figure out what he was thinking. “Maybe Zane stays away from the fire scenes and waits until he reads about it in the newspaper before he approaches the fire-setter again, so he doesn’t get caught.”

  “You might be right,” Alex agreed. “It would be safer.”

  Candice leaned against the desk and cradled her hand to her chest.

  Alex studied her. The concern in his eyes was obvious to her. “Is your hand hurting?”

  “It’s more like . . . stinging.”

  “Bad enough for a pain pill?”

  “No. At least not until bedtime.”

  “Are you okay to write a supplement?” Anna asked, setting a clipboard on the desk in front of Candice with a blank supplement form beneath the clip.

  “That I can do with just one hand.” Candice sat in the chair next to Alex and used the pen he handed her. As she filled out the personal information, Anna saved and printed out the pictures of the lookie-loos at the fire scene.

  “Did you get the boy’s name?” Candice asked.

  Anna let her hands drop to her lap. “Yes, his name is Timothy Garret, and he’s eleven.”

  Candice watched the boy. He wouldn’t lift his eyes toward her.

  “He’s small for eleven,” Alex whispered.

  Keeping her voice just as low as Alex’s, Candice said, “I wonder if that made him more of a target for Zane. Did he say where they met?”

  “Yes,” Anna said quietly. “He was coming home from the skate park a few days ago where he’d been hanging out with some friends, and he said Zane asked him if he’d start a fire for him. He said if he’d do it, then he’d pay him for a job later.”

  That seemed absurd. “How did Zane know he’d do it?” Candice asked. “I mean, most kids would look at him like he was crazy for even asking. How did he know this particular kid would even be willing to listen to his question?” She shook her head, confused. “Did he have a sign written on his forehead that said ‘I like to start fires,’ or was he lighting a fire on his way home from the park?”

  “Those are good questions,” he said in agreement.

  Candice tapped the pen on the paper. “Alex, what did you find out in ballistics?” she asked as she continued to write the supplement.

  “The guys are working on it right now. I’ll check back with them later.”

  “Okay, that’s okay. I saw my apartment fire on the news this morning,” Candice said, getting back to her writing. “I don’t want to go over there myself, but I have a portable fire safe that has all my important papers inside it. I’m sure it made it through the fire.” She gazed up from the report and captured his eyes. “Do you think you could go and sift through things and find it? My insurance papers are in it, too.”

  “As soon as I take you home,” Alex said.

  “I have my car, remember?”

  “Yes, I know, but I can follow you to make sure nobody else is following you.”

  “And I know how to make sure nobody is following me, too. Gil taught me how. Especially a white dually truck,” Candice said. “And I doubt that his truck could outrun my Beamer, and I would lead him right back to the police department parking lot while I called dispatch.” Candice put down the pen and cupped the side of his face in her good hand. “Okay?”

  Alex’s frown softened. “I’ll get your fire safe for you, even though I know what I’m going to smell like after I’m done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you have to go straight home,” he added.

  “Hey, that’s good with me. I have nearly twenty more arson reports to map out. They’ll keep me and Joshua busy for a while.”

  Chapter 20

  IT TOOK TWENTY minutes to finish the supplement to Anna’s report before Alex walked her out to her car. He wanted to watch Candice drive away. He said at least he could see if anybody had waited for her to come out and leave. It was his way of taking care of her.

  Of course, he didn’t see her drive around the block and watch him go to his truck and drive away. She made sure he wasn’t followed, either. Gil had been tailed on more than a couple of occasions, and she’d been his driver one of those times. Candice had to admit he made it fun dodging the car behind them. He never got flustered as he directed her where to go and how to maneuver around traffic. She learned a lot from that man, and she seriously thought about calling Gil. Maybe he knew Zane.

  Candice decided to take a more winding route home through several neighborhoods on her way home. It was easier to spot anybody tailing her. The freeway would be more difficult to see who was following behind her if she didn’t want to hit the cars in front of her. While she didn’t see any dually trucks behind her, Candice did find a new house being built on a street with much older homes. They were very nice houses, some two stories, some ranch style. They could be classified as semi-custom because they weren’t all the same cookie-cutter style.

  She wondered why this one house in the middle of the block was being built from scratch when she remembered that one of the reports that she ‘borrowed’ from Patrick’s computer was about a rental house being destroyed somewhere around this area. Candice had a question for the contractor, so she pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine.

  As she approached the workers, she noticed their make-up. Most
of the men were Hispanic, and they stared at her with uncertainty. Candice supposed she could’ve looked like some city official coming to check on their credentials, or even their citizenship. She might’ve been a cop looking for a criminal in their midst, which was a high probability. And then she thought Zane might be working instead of being in college, if he’d graduated or maybe dropped out altogether. Candice saw no harm in asking simple questions.

  The first man who met her as she walked onto the property had a determined look on his face. He seemed to be in charge of the crew. His clothes were the typical denim on denim the guys seemed to prefer, with the high-laced steel-toed work boots. Candice grew up around guys like that with Grandfather’s business. The man smiled while his eyes swept her from her size nine boots to the top of her curly head.

  “Hi, there. What can I do for you, miss?” he said, coming to a stop a little too close for her comfort. Candice took a half-step back, but that made him smile wider.

  “Hi! Are you the foreman?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m Bill Baxter.”

  “Can you tell me why you’re building a new structure here?” Candice feigned ignorance, partly because she wasn’t positive if this actually was one from her reports. He looked a little worried with the way she asked her question.

  “Are you a reporter or something?” Baxter asked.

  “Oh, no. I was just driving through the neighborhood and saw the new house going up. I can’t imagine that the lot had been empty since the subdivision was built,” Candice said as she made a point of studying the progress they’d made. Concrete foundation was laid and the rough plumbing installed. The power supply box stood upright outside the garage and would be supported by wooden bracing until the stucco was completed.

  “There was a fire about a year ago that took the house down to its foundation. The owners collected on their insurance and then decided to sell the property.” Baxter turned and waved his arm toward the two-by-six studs. “This is called a drop-in house. You can probably notice them around town here and there when a house had been destroyed and a new one goes up in its place.”