Chapter 13
Devin was enjoying the icy pelting of water in her shower. She’d gone to the gym on her way home and working out in Fenton in June was like working out inside a sauna. Since she didn’t have air conditioning, the cold shower was like heaven. Devin had to admit that focusing her workouts for this class was keeping her fighting skills up for work, so she wasn’t losing any ground on her “forced vacation”. As she stood under the frigid rinse a moment more, she smiled as she thought about their planning this afternoon. Shane had pouted the entire time. Deputy Jake Lambert turned out to be tanned with muscles carved out of stone and sandy blonde hair that had been kissed by the sun. Not that Devin had been looking that close, but his green eyes had a ring of orange wrapped around the iris like she had never seen before. On top of all that, he had a 1972 Mustang and a Harley.
Oh, hello, summer fling! Yep, Shane had worked himself up into a right fine little snit by the end of the afternoon. It was a good day.
She glanced at the clock when she stepped out of the shower and saw that it was already after five. She would have to step it up. It wouldn’t do to be late for Henry. Devin wrapped her hair in a towel to help speed up the drying process and did a quick make-up job. She was dressing up for Henry, Dushane-style, so to speak, in white shorts and a coral silk poncho-style top that Carter’s sister had given her, because apparently it was ‘her color’. Devin hadn’t even known what it was when she opened it for her birthday, but this seemed like a perfect opportunity to wear it. The espadrilles had worn a blister on her foot this morning, though, so she was stuck with tennis shoes for comfort. She tossed the towel off and ran some mousse thru her hair with ten minutes to spare. She did the rounds thru the downstairs to make sure everything was locked up and the lights were turned off. The dining room was functioning as her command center for the investigation. She had her notes and files stacked neatly on the table and the beginning of a timeline charted on the wall. When Devin hit the light switch, the dining room went pitch black.
Whoa, those are serious drapes, there’s not even a crack of light. She thought about opening them up in anticipation for tomorrow’s sunlight, but didn’t want to use up any more time.
Devin strolled across the street to Henry’s, carrying a bottle of diet soda so she wouldn’t be subjected to sweet tea and knocked on his front door, which was odd.
Since when does Henry close his front door? With no air conditioning Henry usually kept all his windows and doors open, with just the screen door shut. Did he get AC just for this? She tried the knob, but it was locked.
He must want me to come through the kitchen door on the carport. She grinned at the thought. Henry had been buzzing around the house all day today getting ready for dinner.
As she rounded the corner to the carport, Devin smelled the acrid smell of burnt pork. “Uggh! Henry are you burning my dinner?!” She called out to the house. But when she looked up thru the window into the kitchen, horror washed over her, quickly followed by adrenaline. The entire stovetop was engulfed in flames, and black smoke was filling the kitchen. She could just make out the shadowy outline of Henry’s body on the floor across the room.
Devin yanked her cell phone out of her back pocket and dialed 911 as she tried the kitchen door, which was also locked. The dispatcher barely had time to answer before Devin was rattling out details. “Interior structure fire at 229 Cardwell Street. One male victim inside, incapacitated. Alert rescue workers that a 29-year-old female is entering the premises.”
The dispatcher tried to advise her against entering the house, but she was talking to dead air. Devin had just spotted a chamois from where Henry had washed his truck this morning, so she snapped the phone shut and wrapped the cloth around her fist to smash in the glass pane on the door and unlock it from the inside. Preparing to enter the smoke-filled room, Devin pressed the damp cloth across her mouth and nose, but when she turned the doorknob, it still met resistance from the security chain. Not wanting to lose any more time she slammed her shoulder into the door. Bits of wood and smoke flew into her face as the door gave way. Devin stumbled across the darkness to where she had seen Henry lying and dropped to his side. He was still unconscious and bleeding from a gash on the back of the head, but she was relieved to find a rapid pulse and no obvious broken bones. Devin worked quickly, flipping over his tall frame and catching him underneath the arms to drag him out of harm’s way. As they passed thru the now battered kitchen door, Devin noted that the curtains had now caught the ceiling on fire—the blaze would quickly be out of control.
She hadn’t stopped dragging Henry’s limp form until they were well up into the front yard, at which point the elderly neighbors had begun to pour out of their homes to offer assistance. Mrs. Portman from next door had come flapping across the lawn so rapidly in her house coat and slippers, lofting a fire extinguisher above her head, that Devin thought she might be in danger of having a heart attack. Mr. Portman just looked pleased to finally have a use for the four hundred feet of garden hose he had purchased on sale.
Devin was using the chamois she had breathed thru to press against the wound on Henry’s head, praying that with enough pressure it would hold the bleeding until the ambulance got there. Then she realized, where was Bo? The dog was normally Henry’s shadow. He should’ve been standing over his body raising the alarm, but he was nowhere to be seen. Henry had started to groan ever so slightly.
“Henry! Henry, where’s Bo? Where’s the dog, Henry?” But he was still much too out of it to offer any answer. Without thinking Devin jumped to her feet, handing off her bandaging task to Mrs. Portman in exchange for her fire extinguisher. As she ran back towards the house, she left her tank top on but yanked her new silk top over her head, ripping it in the process.
I never really liked it anyway. Mr. Portman had sprayed the kitchen doorway and window with the hose, so Devin darted thru the mist right into the flames, directing her small fire extinguisher at the source of the fire on the stovetop and attempting to make a path to the hallway. It quickly ran out of foam, so she used her new shirt to cover her nose and mouth and started crawling down the hallway, stopping at every door to call for Bo and listen for answering yelps or scratches.
Finally at the last door, she was rewarded for her efforts with a whining from the other side, but when Devin tried to push the door open, it wouldn’t budge.
You’ve got to be kidding me! The dog locked himself in a room?! But there was no lock on the door, and Devin’s breathing was becoming strained even thru her makeshift mask, and the smoke burned her eyes like acid. Do something fast Dushane or lie down on Henry’s ugly avocado green carpeting and die with the dog. Devin studied the door for a moment. They had rented a house for a brief time in Glen Allen a suburb of Richmond when she was little. It had a door like this. Doors that were so thin and hollow you could hear Mama and Daddy fighting, and Daddy could put his fist clear through. Devin sat up and braced against the opposite wall, drawing both of her knees against her chest and then slamming her feet through the door. The explosion of wood so close to his face it sent Bo yelping for cover, but her familiar voice coaxed the hound dog through the hole. As she shifted him around the jagged wooden edges to avoid injury, Devin saw the chair in the bedroom that was jammed under the doorknob to keep Bo’s door tightly shut.
By the time Devin dragged Bo up the hallway towards an exit, she was breathing in spasms of coughs. She didn’t even resist when a firefighter scooped Bo up from her and another yanked her to her feet and over his shoulder like a rag doll. She did, however, complain a little when he dumped her unceremoniously on the ground next to Henry.
“Hey! I didn’t survive all that just to come out here and break a bone, buddy!” She couldn’t glare at him properly because she was too busy coughing and gasping for breath, which would ruin the effect anyway.
It was quite a surprise when the firefighter yanked off his oxygen mask and hurled his helmet to the ground. Young Deputy Lambert was beat red, whethe
r from exertion or anger, it was hard to tell. Amid all the turmoil, Devin still noted the figure that flung itself out of the blue Ford and began sprinting towards them. Jake Lambert was not going to be ignored though.
“Are you out of your mind? Literally! Are you insane?” He was pacing rapidly back and forth in front of where the paramedics were attending to Devin and Henry and loading them on stretchers, but he stopped at his last question, right in front of Devin, and extended his hands toward either side of her face, punctuating each word as if truly trying to get the focus of a mental patient.
The sprinter arrived and, as expected, it was Shane. “Henry! Devin! Are you ok? What…”
Apparently Jake wasn’t done. “Oh, I’ll tell you what happened. Little Miss Tae Kwan Doe Barbie decides instead of waiting for the trained firemen to come handle this she’s just gonna run into a burning building, Twice! The second time to look for a dog. A dog! She has lost her mind, I’m telling you!”
With his soot-streaked red face, bulging eyes and disarrayed white blond hair, Jake was the one that looked in need of a strait jacket.
Shane was taking more offense to this little tirade than Devin. “You need to check your attitude, Deputy. You’re talking about a decorated officer. She’s saved more lives than you can even fathom.” He stepped forward and jammed three fingers into Jake’s chest, punctuating his words. “If anything, you should be thanking your lucky stars for the opportunity to stand in her presence.”
“Just because she’s lucky doesn’t make her a super cop. If I’d been another two minutes, she would have burned up in there with that mutt.”
“Or she would have just crawled another few feet and made it out on her own! Who said she needed you to be the hero?”
Devin yanked off her oxygen mask and pushed off of her gurney on to her elbow. “Boys! I’m right here! You’re both missing the most important thing here.” Everyone in the little group froze, even the paramedics braced for her reaction. “Henry, you have the ugliest carpet I have ever seen.” With that she slid her mask back on and motioned to be loaded on the ambulance. The driver was howling, Shane was snickering and poor clueless Jake was staring baffled at her feet as they disappeared into the ambulance.
“See! I told you she’s crazy!”
Still snickering, Shane slapped him on the back. “No, son, she just cares more about that ugly carpet than she does your opinion.”
Chapter 14
It came as no surprise to Shane that Devin refused to be admitted to the hospital once she had been checked over. He was surprised, however, that she wanted to question Henry. Not visit, question.
“Devin, don’t you think he’s kind of had a rough day?” Shane was trying to reason with her as her IV was being removed. “Maybe you should let him rest up a bit.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, and my day’s been a real peach.” Her once-white shorts and tank top were now grey with streaks of black, which at least matched her skin and hair, what she hadn’t been able to wash off in the tiny sink in her ER cubicle. She scowled. “Why are you here again?”
He used his sparkly smile. “You need a ride.”
She grumbled under her breathe as the nurse taped her up. “I’m sure someone would take pity on me, or I could walk, or hitchhike.”
“That’s illegal.”
“Then you’re just going to have to wait until I’m done talking to Henry.” She began scribbling an illegible signature across the bottom of her discharge papers. “Everywhere I’ve poked in the case has brought me back to the fact that no alibi was ever documented for Henry, and even though charges were brought and then dismissed, an alibi was never mentioned. Even if he’s not involved, there is something significant about that. Not to mention that the very night I’m to have dinner with Henry, he gets knocked out and his house set on fire, and someone deliberately shuts that dog in the back room to ensure we’d be drawn back in.” Devin finished the last signature with a flourish, tossed down the pen and yanked off her hospital bracelet. “Let’s go.”
“Devin, I really think you’re reaching here. I see your point with the alibi thing, but a whole conspiracy to do Henry in? Come on. He’s an old man. Accidents happen.”
She stopped so abruptly that Shane had to sidestep to miss her, nearly knocking over a rolling computer stand. “I inhaled smoke Shane. Not weed. This didn’t all come to me in some dream. Henry’s wound was to the back of his head, yet he was lying face-down in the doorway to the dining room. What did he hit his head on? Are you telling me that a 65-year-old man in perfect mental health laid a kitchen towel on the stove while frying pork chops and was so alarmed by the fire that he fell backwards and hit his head, and in a daze got up and wandered into the dining room without leaving a blood trail and then turned around and face planted in the kitchen? Does that sound plausible to you, Shane?”
Devin rocked back on her heels and smirked until she caught the wide eyes of a little girl staring at them as she passed by with her mother. They must be quite an odd pair arguing in the middle of a hospital hallway. She looked like she had climbed up a chimney on the way to the beach and his trendy jeans and pressed, button-down looked like he could be on a date. This realization washed over Devin like the tide.
“Where were you when you came to the fire?”
“Uhh, what? Where? I was just hanging out.” His eyes had gone wide when she asked and a light shade of pink was creeping above his collar. Bingo.
“Where were you hanging out? The Lucky Ox? You got to Henry’s awfully quick.”
He slid his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders innocently.
“Naw, The Stone House does great wings during their happy hour on Friday evenings. It’s right on Main, so I trucked on over there pretty quick.”
Devin took in his words and expression for a moment. She didn’t think he was lying, exactly, except maybe by omission. Like it mattered to her anyway if he’d been on a date. It was a free country. She shrugged one shoulder and rolled her eyes as she pushed opened the door to Henry’s room.
“Whatever.”
Devin had known Henry for a week, but he looked years older in just one afternoon. Framed in the hospital bed, he looked gray and fragile, not the vital man that was going to cook her dinner. Then his bright blue eyes opened and his face lit up.
“Hey, good lookin’ what’s cookin’? Cuz it’s not your dinner!”
Devin snorted. “You’ve been waiting for me to come in this whole time just so you could say that, haven’t you?”
He gave her his heartbreaker grin. “For at least an hour, but what’s life if you don’t make at least one pretty lady smile every day?”
She flopped down in the chair next to the bed. “We’ve got to get you out of here before you’re chasing all the nurses around.”
Shane leaned against the wall. “Come on, Devin, let him live a little. Just one nurse?”
She just shook her head and covered her eyes with her hand. “If I weren’t so tired I’d smack you.”
Henry’s brow scrunched over his crystal eyes. “Why aren’t they keeping you? Are they sure you’re ok?”
“Don’t worry about me I’ve been triple checked and given the all clear. I’m fine.” She used her warm, reassuring smile that was reserved for small children and victims who were testifying.
“Actually she threw a bed pan across the ER and threatened to yank out her own IV if they didn’t get her a refusal of treatment waiver.” Shane chirped in.
Devin gave him the full on glare of black death. “Oh, now you want to be Mr. Responsible?” Before Henry could start a barrage of questions, she reached out, took his hand and laid the wide chocolate eyes on him.
“Henry, I’m fine, really. They’ve checked out my lungs, throat, heart and treated any small burns. There is nothing wrong with me, but there is something I need, and you can help me with that.” Henry was nodding vigorously, eyes bright with unshed tears, prepared to give her a kidney, bone marrow, anythin
g at all.
“I need to know where you were the night Laney was murdered.” His mouth fell open with a little popping sound, and he became even paler if that was possible. He tried to pull his hand away, but Devin wouldn’t let him. “I don’t believe you had anything to do with her murder, but there are several missing pieces from that night, and if I can put them all together, I might find a clue we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.”
Henry stared at the end of his bed for a long time. His voice was heavy as if draped with lead when he spoke. “I was at The Summit the whole night. I never left the lake. I was in my car for a while, around eight o’clock with a girl and then I was back in the parking lot around nine o’clock with some of the boys. When I went back under the pavilion Beth was looking for her. That’s all I’m going to say, and that’s all you need to know.” He clamped his jaws down like a pit bull, as if they would try to physically drag the words out of his mouth.
Shane spoke slow and easy from his position against the wall, trying not to spook Henry any further. “Could we have the names of some of the people you were with in the parking lot? Maybe they could broaden our picture. How about the girl you were with?”
A bolt of righteous indignation animated Henry, returning some color to his gray cheeks. “Certainly not. It was a poor decision on both our parts, but certainly hers. I would never sully her reputation that way.”
Shane’s mouth was hanging open. “You were charged with murder! You wouldn’t give yourself an alibi to murder because of a girl’s reputation?!”
Devin cut him off with a look she tossed over her shoulder. “Henry, that was very chivalrous of you, but I’m more interested in the guys you were with around 9:00. Will you tell me any of their names?”
Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) Page 12