Firebreak: A Mystery

by Tricia Fields

  “The country singer?”

  “That’s the one. They left town after stopping in at the Hell-Bent to pick up Billy’s guitar. They claim they left at about six and got to Austin at about one, when they got a drink at a bar and then checked into a hotel a little after two.”

  “Easy enough to check, right?”

  “They checked into the hotel at about two thirty in the morning. But they used cash at the bar.”

  “We all oughta use cash. All this electronic tracking will be this country’s demise. Mark my words.”

  “Meanwhile, the fire chief, Doug Free, asked Otto and me to check out the west side of the county. He’d heard some outbuildings were damaged. We drove out to check structures and make sure no one was injured or in need of help. We drove down Prentice Canyon Road, which was the west edge of the fire.”

  “The firebreak?”

  Josie nodded. “Doug thought it had been the perfect firebreak. By nightfall the wind had died down. By the time the fire hit that north-south road, it had lost fuel. That area of the county is mostly barren desert and clumps of scrub. Strategically, it was a great move on the chief’s part.”

  “Don’t the Nixes live on the other side of the road?” Dell asked.

  “Exactly. No structures were lost on that side of the road except their house.” Josie paused. “It’s true, there aren’t many structures out there to burn, but from the flyover, it became clear a fire was intentionally set at the house.”

  “They set it for the insurance?” Dell asked.

  “Nope. It’s a rental. The body we found on the Nixes’ couch was burned before the fire ever crossed that part of the county.”

  “Meaning someone set the fire at their house on purpose. To make the murder look like an accident.”

  Josie smiled. “You get better and better at this. I should hire you as a consultant.”

  “What do you pay?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Figures. So who put the body on the couch?”

  “That’s the question. Sounds like there’s some jealousy among the local bands. A small group of people competing for the stage and the record deals.”

  “What’s a body on the Nixes’ couch have to do with that?”

  “You want to end someone’s career, what better way to do it,” she said.

  Dell narrowed his eyes like he wasn’t buying the explanation.

  “Remember that trial last year in El Paso?” she asked. “Some guy hated his divorce attorney so bad that he set him up for murder. He convinced his ex-wife, whom he also hated, to meet him at some office building. It was actually a vacant office. He killed his ex and planted evidence to make it look like the attorney was having an affair with her and killed her. The guy almost got away with it.”

  “All right. I get it. Hatred is a hell of a motivator. Wouldn’t the Nixes make more sense though?”

  “They’re our primary suspects. But I can’t imagine why you’d choose your own house to murder someone. The man was dead before he was burnt up in the fire. So if they were going to go to the trouble of arranging a body on their couch, why not drive him over to the east side of the fire where things were really cooking? Dump the body. They wouldn’t have lost their home either.”

  “They probably thought no one would believe they’d torch their own home. Makes them look less suspicious. Besides,” Dell said, “I don’t know too many people who could stuff a dead body in their car and dump it along a roadside.”

  “You don’t hang out with the right people.”

  * * *

  At midnight, Billy Nix quietly rolled out of bed and stood without moving over his wife’s body. He listened to her rhythmic breathing and watched the white sheet rise and fall. Her jaw was slack against the pillow, her face pale and delicate in the dim light cast from the streetlamp outside their motel window. She’d always been a heavy sleeper. Back when they still talked about having kids he teased her about sleeping through the delivery. Now, as he checked on her before sneaking out of the hotel in the middle of the night, the thought of having kids seemed a lifetime away. It wasn’t that she’d be angry that he left, but he didn’t want to disturb her. Even as he stood staring at her, repeating those words inside his head, he knew it was a lie. He didn’t want to explain to her why he couldn’t sleep.

  Billy pulled his jeans and shirt and boots off the chair next to the desk and dressed quietly in the bathroom. He went back into the room and felt around on the desk for the pen and motel stationery and took them into the bathroom. He wrote her a quick note saying, “Couldn’t sleep. Went for walk. Love you—Billy.” He left the note on the bedside table and quietly unlocked the door and opened it. He stood outside the room and took a long slow breath, trying to clear the noise from his head. He felt his shirt pocket for the pack and lighter. He tapped the pack of Marlboros, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it, watching the red ember flare as he inhaled the smoke, listening to the paper and tobacco sizzle, glad for the familiar sound, for something reliable. He hadn’t slept in days but he couldn’t shut down his thoughts long enough to relax. He thought he might walk down to Mickey’s, just a few blocks away. He knew the bartender. He could hang out for an hour or two and figure out what the hell had gone wrong with his life to make him a suspect in a murder investigation.

  * * *

  Brenda stood at the window watching Billy just five feet from the door, smoking a cigarette, thinking about God only knew what. He’d snuck out of the motel room to stand in front of the window with nothing but a sheer separating him from her view. Part of her wanted to smile at his innocence; another part of her wanted to kill him for his stupidity. Was he really that guileless or was he just not very bright? It was a question Brenda continued to wonder even after twelve years of marriage. If a man was going to sneak out of a motel room, wouldn’t he slip down a side street and get on with his business?

  She watched him raise his arm, draw on the cigarette, throw it onto the ground, and twist his boot to extinguish it. And then he walked off, most likely in search of a bar, but she really had no idea anymore. Their life had turned into secrets and veiled conversations whose meanings seemed to be more in what was not said than the embarrassed words they spoke. She watched his handsome backside as he, so utterly confident in his long-legged swagger, walked down the street and disappeared.

  She drew the curtains closed to block out the streetlight and turned on the bedside lamp by Billy’s side of the bed. She picked up his cell phone and turned it on. She checked for text messages out of habit, but she was certain there wouldn’t be any. His hands were too big and cumbersome to use the keypad. She checked for voicemails and found none. Finally, she scrolled through his received and missed calls, recognizing every one of the numbers, her disappointment now complete. Like so many times before, she cleared the screen and shut off his phone, setting it back down and grabbing from her purse the Xanax that would finally allow her to sleep.

  FIFTEEN

  By the time Otto arrived, at eight o’clock, Josie had delivered two chocolate doughnuts from the gas station to the middle of his desk, made coffee, and run Ferris Sinclair through NCIC to discover his address was indeed in Presidio. Otto smiled when he got to his desk and saw his treat.

  Josie was on the phone with Junior Daggy, a local real estate agent who knew almost every parcel of land in far west Texas and enough gossip to put most informants to shame.

  “His name’s Ferris Sinclair,” Josie said, and read Junior his address.

  “Oh, sure. That’s the old Winferd station house. The railroad conductor had a stop-off house there. Somebody bought it years ago, fixed it up, and then sold it. Real cute place. Nice tall ceilings.”

  Josie cut him off. “You think Ferris owns it?”

  He whistled into the phone. “Oh, yeah. He paid a pretty penny for that little gem.”

  “Do you know Ferris?”

  “I know who he is. That’s about it.”

  Josie thanked Junior for the in
formation and shared it with Otto. While he ate his pastry Josie called the Presidio County Sheriff’s Office and asked for Deputy Susan Spears. Presidio was a small town located thirty miles southeast of Artemis. Josie had known Susan for years and knew she had a good handle on the locals. Now in her late fifties, she was called Grandma by half the kids in Presidio. She had a big heart for cast-off kids. She had started an intramural sports league that allowed all kids equal playing time about ten years ago and it had grown so large that she had people visit from all over Texas who wanted to start similar programs.

  “You heard of a guy named Ferris Sinclair?” Josie asked her.

  “Looks like a weasel?”

  Josie laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him. I hear he lives in the Winferd station house.”

  “That’s him. Yep, I know him.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s made several complaints. Someone’s always harassing him. I swear to you, he called one night because people were calling him names. I was like, come on, this ain’t grade school. You’re a grown man. If you don’t like these people quit hanging around the bar. Pick a different place to drink your beer.”

  “Why were they calling him names?”

  “Probably because of his smart mouth. He said some guys were calling him gay and hassling him. He wanted me to charge them with a hate crime.”

  “Anything come of it?”

  “No. He wanted me to understand he wasn’t gay. He was emphatic about that. But they thought he was gay, said hateful things, and so they should be charged with a hate crime.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I know. There’s plenty of hate crime out there to deal with. This just wasn’t it.”

  “Can you give me a physical description?”

  “Late twenties. Tall. I think some of the women think he’s a looker. He’s got these pinched features, narrow face, thin body. He just reminds me of a weasel. I can take about anybody but a whiner, and that’s Ferris. I wanted to tell him to grow a pair.”

  “He ever get in any trouble himself?”

  “Nope. He causing trouble in Artemis?”

  “I’m not sure. I hear he hangs around Billy Nix, with Billy and the Outlaws?”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. He seems to want people to notice him.”

  “Would you do me a favor this morning?”

  “Sure. Name it.”

  “Would you drive by his house and see if he’s there? If he is, I’ll drive over and talk to him. The only phone number I can find for him goes immediately to voicemail when I call.”

  “You bet. I’ll give you a call back before lunch.”

  Josie hung up and told Otto about her conversation with Susan. “I’ll follow up on Ferris as soon as I hear back from her.”

  Otto nodded and pointed toward the conference table. “You see the note Marta left you?”

  Sitting on top of the Nixes’ laptop was a note that said, “Still need to check the e-mail. I didn’t get that far. Too busy. Took a car full of drunks to jail. What a night.”

  After logging in to the Nixes’ computer, Josie scrolled through e-mails and discovered it was almost all to and from Brenda and dealt primarily with band business. There were several old e-mails from a woman named Patty who seemed to be her sister or family of some kind, filling Brenda in on her father’s liver cancer. Brenda’s responses were curt, obviously wanting the facts, not the emotions.

  Almost two hours later Josie had skimmed through every e-mail in the system and found nothing of consequence. She did, however, figure Brenda earned her money as manager for the band. She spent an enormous amount of time cultivating contacts, setting up shows, and pitching different executives at several big houses for interviews and demos. Josie also discovered that the rumors were true: the Gennett deal looked as if it might come through, and not just for Billy but for the whole band.

  Josie opened Internet Explorer and found that the search history had been cleared just two weeks ago, which led her to believe that either Brenda or Billy was hiding something from the other. It obviously wasn’t a public computer, so why go to the trouble? Josie checked the sites that the Nixes had left opened in tabs: an online music store, a blog for country bands, a forum for guitar players where Billy was a member but had never posted anything, and a Budweiser site that explained the rules for a “Battle of the Bands” playoff in Los Angeles next month.

  Next, she checked out searches that had been performed on Google. The first site to catch her attention was searched less than twenty-four hours before the Nixes had evacuated: mayoclinic.org. She clicked on the link in the recently searched history and was taken to a page titled DISEASES AND CONDITIONS: HIV/AIDS. Another twelve Google searches led to similar sites; three searches led to links that dealt specifically with symptoms. Josie turned her chair to Otto. “Come check this out.”

  Josie clicked through the links in the order that they had been searched. She learned that someone started with a vague search about HIV, then progressed specifically to symptoms, testing, and life expectancy. The searches were conducted between the hours of 10:45 p.m. and 11:57 p.m., on Saturday, the night before the evacuation.

  Otto rolled his chair back from Josie’s desk. “One of the Nixes has a healthy curiosity about a disease, or maybe Billy’s worried he has HIV?”

  “Might give Billy a motive for murder,” she said. “He found out somebody gave him HIV and decided to get even.”

  Otto frowned. “Strange coincidence that Susan said Ferris wanted her to press charges against the guys that called him gay at the bar.”

  “Hmm. Maybe Billy and Ferris had a secret affair going on and one of them passed along HIV to the other one.”

  Otto narrowed his eyes at her like he was trying to follow her logic. “I don’t know. Hard-core country singer, married, having an affair with a guy Susan described as looking like a weasel?”

  Josie shrugged. “Just because you’re hard-core country doesn’t mean you can’t be gay.”

  Otto gave her skeptical look.

  Josie studied Otto for a moment. “The relationship and HIV diagnosis might give Brenda a motive too.”

  “How so?”

  “If you found out your wife was HIV positive, you’d probably want to kill the person who gave it to her too,” she said. “Hypothetically speaking.”

  Otto cocked his head and smirked. “Hard to imagine Delores with HIV.”

  “Okay, you get my point.”

  “I do,” he said. “The interview with Ferris Sinclair should be a doozy.”

  * * *

  Susan called Josie back on her cell phone just before lunch. “I drove by Ferris’s house. I don’t think he’s been there in a couple days. I found mail in his box postmarked back to Monday.”

  “Thanks, Susan. I appreciate you looking. One more question. You ever hear any gossip about Ferris being HIV positive?”

  “Oh, that’s not good. From the bar-scene gossip around town, I hear he’s pretty promiscuous. I haven’t heard anything about HIV though. Want me to check around?”

  “I’d appreciate it. He may be a homicide victim in a fire that took place at the Nixes’ home during the evacuation. The fire that came through Sunday night. That’s premature on my part, but let me know if you hear anything.”

  “Wow. Homicide. Burned in the fire? Or killed by other means?”

  “Both. The victim was killed first, then intentionally burned. Ferris is a pretty big leap though.”

  “I’ll ask around and get back with you.”

  As Josie hung up the phone Lou buzzed her from downstairs. “Pete Beckett is here to see you.”

  Otto raised his eyebrows. “Who’s Pete?”

  Her face grew red. “He’s my friend from high school. The smoke jumper.”

  “Why the funny look?” he asked.

  Josie played it off as nothing. “That’s the problem with cops. You’re too suspicious. I’ll be right back.”

  She went downstairs an
d saw Pete waiting by the front desk of the PD, chatting with Lou.

  “Hey, Josie! I wanted to stop in before we take off.”

  Josie smiled and pointed outside, not wanting to have a personal conversation in front of Lou. They walked outside and Josie saw the two vans that the smoke jumpers had traveled in parked in front of the courthouse across the street.

  Pete’s face was animated, his big brown eyes wide. “We just got a call to head back to Montana. Just wanted to stop and say bye.”

  “I owe you one, Pete. The skydiving was amazing. I think you have a winner with the jump therapy.”

  He grinned. “See? Old Pete’s not as crazy as everybody thought all those years.”

  “You’re as sane as anyone I know. You be safe out there,” she said.

  Josie reached out and they hugged for a long moment. He finally pulled away and ran for the van. She watched as they pulled out and the driver blasted the horn in a final good-bye.

  * * *

  When Josie reached the top of the stairs she heard Otto talking on the phone. By the time she entered the office he was hanging up, his forehead creased with worry lines.

  “Susan just called back,” Otto said. “She was talking about Ferris to one of the other young deputies in the office who knew Ferris from hanging out at the bars. She told him that there was a victim burned in the fire and that we were concerned that it might be Ferris. Susan mentioned getting a warrant for the apartment and so on. Anyway, the deputy starts telling Susan about Ferris. He said Ferris was always telling stories about his life, most of which the guy figured were lies. Ferris told the deputy he was in the army right after high school and the deputy told Ferris he wasn’t tough enough for the army. Ferris opened up his mouth and showed his teeth. Said the U.S. Army capped five of his back teeth with silver crowns. The deputy remembers him saying, who else but Uncle Sam would screw up somebody’s mouth like this? The deputy brought it up thinking it might help ID the body.”