The Protector
Page 9
“The way he stood, moved, reminded you of Ash. What else?”
“His clothes. Jack, the impression I got was a confident, comfortable, reflective man.” She shook her head. “It feels so incredibly disloyal to think this.”
“Cassie—it wasn’t Ash. He would not have started a fire and let you walk into it. It’s impossible.”
“But what if he did?” she whispered.
“Then he’s become a different man than the one we’ve known for years.”
“I can’t get the impression out of my mind. I looked through the arson books for someone who looked like Ash. I’m so ashamed of that. I was wishing I could find someone who looked like him.”
“Figuring out who you saw will be Cole’s job to solve. Trust him. The description gives him a lot to work with.”
“Would you talk to him for me?”
He was going to be talking to Cole all right, pushing his friend hard because this arsonist had just made this very personal. It was one thing to go after him, but when Cassie got hurt— Whoever was setting these fires, whatever his motivation, he had hurt a friend. “I’ll talk to him,” Jack reassured. It was something else practical he could do for her. He rubbed the tape in place. “This should hold for the night. Soak your hand in the morning.”
“I will.”
He didn’t immediately release her hand. “Cassie—” He paused, trying to find the right words. “I hate to leave you alone tonight. Is there someone I can call for you?”
“Amy is across the hall. Go, Jack. I’ll be fine and you’ve got work to do.” She lifted her good hand to touch her hair. “Besides, I need to wash my hair.”
“Get some sleep first.”
“That would be more logical.”
The right answer to that was a smile. “Those pain pills are going to knock you the rest of the way out. Come lock the door after me.”
She leveraged herself from the chair and walked with him to the door.
“Are you moving?”
She nudged one of the boxes. “My extra inventory of books that are on their way to the bookstore.”
She had eight boxes of books in her hallway. “I’ll haul them over to the store for you.”
“I’d appreciate that. Call me later with what Cole has found?”
“Around noon,” Jack promised. He took out his keys as he stepped across the threshold. “Cassie?”
She paused in closing the door.
“Check the batteries in your smoke alarm tomorrow.”
It took a moment, but then her smile reached her eyes. “I will. Good night, Jack.”
He headed downstairs.
Where did he go next? The fire cleanup would have Cole’s attention for the next few hours as he located and secured the evidence. He needed to talk to Cole. This news was going to go over like a lead balloon.
Jack started his car, thought for a moment, and instead drove to Quincy Street. The first fire had happened a week after Ash disappeared. It was too troubling a fact to ignore. Forget what he had said to Cassie. His gut reaction was intense.
Ash setting fires…it was a reach. But Jack could remember the hallway conversations at the hospital. There had been a lot of anger at the cost cutting being made that Ash felt had been a factor in Cassie’s getting hurt. The nursing home annual inspection was delayed because the number of inspectors had been cut back. When the drastic cost cutting resulting in fire department consolidations had come down, Ash had been vocal and horrified at what was happening.
He had been so focused on helping Cassie—Jack couldn’t see Ash abruptly turning off that emotion and going on a long and sudden vacation. The department consolidations…what if he felt he had no choice but to act? There had to be a reason he disappeared.
Was Ash back?
Dawn was brightening the sky when Rachel shut her car door and started walking, having been forced to park three blocks away from the fire scene.
Engine 81 and Truck 81 were on the scene to deal with cleanup. There were two police squad cars and three news vans. Spectators watching the firemen work were gathered in clusters on the sidewalk across the street. Four of those spectators had brought out lawn chairs to sit and watch the scene in comfort.
The entire scene was sad.
Cole was here somewhere. Finding him was going to be a challenge. Rachel picked her way across a snake’s nest of hose lines. Since she came in an official capacity wearing her Red Cross jacket, she was waved across the police lines.
The firefighters were still cooling off what had once been the garage. The water flowing away from the house had cut rivers in the yard. The mud was thick under the men’s boots.
She looked for Jack as he had also left her a message but didn’t see his distinctive helmet. Jack had painted a yellow smiley face on the back of his helmet and another on the back on his fire coat. He said it was to make it easier when he had to deal with scared kids at a wreck, but Rachel knew the truth. It was Jack’s attitude about life. He didn’t waste his time worrying about something he couldn’t change.
Cole strode through the front door carrying a power saw. He saw her coming up the drive and nodded. She stopped and let him join her.
“Thanks for coming.”
She tried to read his face, but the man didn’t give much away. “You said it was important.” She had been surprised by the request but was not about to show it. She frequently was asked to make assessments about how victims and witnesses were dealing with a trauma, how law enforcement could best get answers about what had happened. But from what she could see of the scene, they didn’t appear to need that kind of help here.
“I need your opinion on something.” Cole set down the power saw beside the black plastic sheeting at the curbside. Opening the cab door of Engine 81, he reached in back and retrieved a fire coat.
Rachel spotted Gage’s partner Jeffrey in an animated conversation with the fire captain. She hoped Gage wasn’t here. Hanging up on him hadn’t been wise. It would guarantee several pointed questions when he saw her next.
“Rachel.”
She took the coat from Cole.
“This stays confidential.”
She was annoyed by the reminder. She was bound by professional ethics as well as moral ones. “I’m not going to tell Gage.”
“His yappy terrier of a sidekick has been pestering us.”
She had to bite her tongue; the description fit Jeffrey perfectly. “You have never liked reporters.”
“That’s a given.”
She struggled into the coat and looked with distaste at the fire hat he held out.
“Quit thinking fashion, woman. No one around here is going to be taking your picture.”
“I’m entitled to a little vanity for how my hair looks this early in the morning.” To think she had actually lingered in front of the closet this morning debating over what to wear when she met him.
She understood practicality. Her shirt was heavy khaki and the jeans broken in, the shoes near boots. The accessories were anything but practical. The scarf was expensive, the belt braided, the bracelet wide and bold. Cole didn’t even notice and now she was annoyed she’d made the effort. “Is Jack around?”
She was surprised at the look of irritation on his face. “Talking to the man who reported the fire.” He changed the subject before she could ask what Jack had done now. “When we get in the house, I want you to step where I step.”
“There’s not someone dead in there, is there?”
“I wouldn’t let you near the scene if we had a victim. No one was home.”
“This was an arson?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation or qualification. “Show me.”
Rather than lead the way to the house, Cole pushed his hands into his pockets, took out a roll of lifesavers, and with his thumb offered her the cherry one at the end. “The other night, did you ever find the lost Gage?”
“Yes.”
“I wondered. How’s he doing?”
“You were late getting home.”
She raised one eyebrow.
“I called,” Cole said simply.
He didn’t elaborate and Rachel wasn’t comfortable asking. He had a piercing gaze and his brown eyes were warm as they watched her. But she did feel a need to at least offer something. “I shared a piece of pie with Gage and then swung by to see Kate for an hour. Why are you stalling showing me what you asked me here to see?”
“It’s disturbing, Rachel.”
“I’ve walked into a fast-food restaurant where a man sprayed an assault rifle and left eight people dead. Disturbing is relative.”
“This is disturbing.”
“Cole.”
“Just be prepared. If I didn’t need you to see it, I wouldn’t ask. If this means what I suspect it does, you and I are going to need to talk.”
This wasn’t going to be good. She followed Cole up the drive to the house, skirting around worktables made of plywood braced on sawhorses, past sheets of plastic marked with bright yellow criminal evidence tape.
Inside the house the smell of smoke was overpowering. Her eyes immediately started to water. “It was toxic?”
Cole glanced back at her and gave a sympathetic smile. “Onions. A bag of onions in the kitchen pantry burned.”
She separated the smells and realized he was right. She wanted to get away from this as soon as possible. “Please tell me we are going upstairs.”
“We are. Stay close.”
Heavy plastic had been rolled out down the upstairs hallway.
Rachel was surprised at the amount of structural damage. Normally a fire consumed the contents of rooms, the personal items that made fire such a tragedy for people, but left the house itself only scarred. This fire had gutted walls. There were openings torn in the ceiling to get to the attic.
Rachel looked in the rooms as they walked down the hall, getting a sense of the occupants. The bathroom had a melted mermaid shower curtain. “The family had children?”
“A daughter.”
Cole stopped at the third doorway. “The fire started in this room.” He clicked on his torch flashlight and gingerly skirted the door, hanging half off its hinges, to enter the room. Rachel followed him.
“What do you make of this?” Cole illuminated the message. He’d wiped down the wall to reveal it. Drywall and plaster had fallen away but the letters were huge and the single word was readable. It glowed in a fluorescent red.
Murderer.
She pulled her emotions back, fighting the swamp of reaction that shallowed her breathing. “This is the master bedroom?”
“Yes.”
The huge letters were an assault to her senses. She followed the flow of the spray paint, feeling the sensation the man who held the paint can had also felt. Arm straight, fully extended, even reaching, as he walked along the wall. “He moved the furniture before he wrote this.”
“Good observation.”
The letters tightened and grew smaller, the paint much heavier at the final Rs. It was adrenaline and excitement at the first part of the word and tightly wound anger at the end. The word was huge, the wall a billboard into the arsonist’s mind. “How many fires?” she asked, dreading the answer.
“This is number six. Impressions, Rachel.”
“He’s justifying his actions. He’s not just angry, it’s become part of who he is. He’s working his nerve up to also kill.”
She looked over at Cole when he didn’t say anything. The intense control the man was exerting over his darkening anger had her taking a step away. “Cole?”
“Rae, I think Jack is in his sights.”
Ten
Cassie woke up sweating and sick to her stomach. It was a sensation and a reaction she had unfortunately felt before. She rolled over and carefully put her weight on her elbows, lifting herself up enough so she could hang her head. It had been months since she had to deal with a morning like this. On the worst mornings she had been sick while in bed, in too much pain to risk moving.
When she thought the nausea was at least checked, Cassie slid herself off the edge of the bed and made it to the bathroom. She had changed the fixtures on the sink to long handles so she could turn on the water without having to grip and turn a knob.
She pushed the cold water on full force and lowered her hand into the basin without bothering to remove the gauze. The agonizing pain sharpened and chilled, then eased.
She drew in a shaky breath.
She didn’t have the strength to pick up something with her right hand. Her left hand had swollen overnight to the point it was useless. She looked at the phone on the wall beside the light switch. It had been installed as her safety blanket.
The certain knowledge that Jesus was with her wasn’t much comfort as she contemplated the odds that in a few minutes she would be sitting on the tile floor in her nightgown, shivering and whimpering and fighting the why-me pity party.
Lord, I hate being alone.
She didn’t want to have to call for help. As horrible as this was, the pain was only about a six on her ten-point pain scale. But when she hadn’t felt pain above a level of four in several months, it was agonizing.
She laid her head down on her arm as the water continued to lap over her hand. She would just stay here with her head down for a while. If she didn’t try to move for the next hour, it would be just fine.
You asked me to go back into another fire. It’s haunting me. Please don’t let me be sick. I’ll cry. I’ve cried enough these last couple years.
The doorbell rang.
She raised her head too fast and got caught by the dizziness.
Lord, You have a sense of humor in Your timing.
Arranging something like this was just like God—send her help and be polite enough about it to let the doorbell ring ten minutes after she was out of bed instead of while she was still hiding under the covers.
Cassie forced herself to straighten and reach for the robe on the back of the door, whimpering as she lifted her arm higher than it wanted to rise. If help was here, she couldn’t ignore the fact she needed it.
She made her way to the front door and looked through the security view hole.
Rachel O’Malley. Cassie had not even had her on the list of possibilities. She was wearing a Red Cross jacket. There was no sign of Jack.
“Just a minute.” Cassie worked to release the locks, then eased open the door. “Hi, Rachel.”
“Jack called me.”
“He didn’t need to do that.”
“Jack did.”
Cassie blinked, then smiled. “Yes, I suppose he did.” Ever the protector, Jack had looked more than a little frustrated last night at the idea he was leaving her home alone. Recruiting his sister fit something he would do.
Rachel nodded to the towel and the wet gauze. “It looks like you could use some help.”
“I could and thanks.” Cassie had learned long ago to set aside her independent streak that made accepting help difficult. She stepped back to give Rachel room in the crowded hall. “Would you do me a favor and start the coffee while I finish getting dressed? I’m dying for a cup.”
“Glad to.” Rachel locked the door behind her.
Cassie turned back toward her bedroom, already feeling better just knowing someone was around with two good hands. “You saw Jack?”
“Yes. I just left the site of the house fire,” Rachel called as she headed to the kitchen. “Both Cole and Jack were there.”
Cassie sorted through her closet for something to wear as she listened to Rachel move around the kitchen. She really liked Jack’s sister. They met for the first time at a rescue. A trench
had collapsed on some utility workers, and Jack had been one of the men working through the night to get the pinned men free. Rachel had been invaluable that night. She’d arranged for sandwiches and coffee to be brought in for both the crews and reporters. She had spent hours talking with the wives of the guys trapped, listening, reassuring.
Cassie had spent most of that night looking at the smiley face painted on back of Jack’s fire coat, serving as his eyes for how the ground was shifting as he worked deep inside the trench being shored up. It had put Cassie in a position to be able to relay comments from one of the trapped men to his wife and back. She’d also served as a relay for a very long conversation between Jack and Rachel over baseball games, recent movies, and Jack’s habit of leaving stupid jokes on her answering machine. It had been very clear by the end of that conversation that Jack and Rachel were very good friends. She’d envied them that closeness.
Cassie finally chose sweats and a loose blouse she could button and slowly dressed. She needed an ice pack for her left hand; it throbbed in time with her heartbeat.
She headed to the kitchen and found Rachel crouched down looking through the refrigerator.
“You’ve got eggs and cheese. Would you like an omelette?”
Cassie nudged a chair at the table out with her foot. “Fix me toast and yourself an omelette. I want company for the breakfast I’ll pretend to have.”
Rachel cast her a sympathetic glance. “Would crackers help the queasiness?”
“Please. There may be a box in the pantry.” Cassie spread out the towel she carried and reached for the burn cream left out from last night. “Did you ever play Kick the Can when you were a kid?”
Rachel opened a tube of crackers and brought them over. “Sure. Why?”
“Ever miss the can and kick concrete by mistake?”
“Oh m y, yes. Feels like that?”
“A lot like it. The kind of hurt that just circles and keeps coming back in waves.” Cassie studied the blister on the inside of her thumb. “I’m so glad the house was empty.”
“Jack rescued the teddy bear you were gripping when they found you. He asked me to see what could be done to get it cleaned up before it was returned to Tina.”