Barn Burner (Jubilant Falls series Book 1)

by Debra Gaskill

  “Who’s the incident commander here?” Addison’s pen poised above her note pad.

  Bethel Township Chief Rodney Jones took a walkie-talkie away from his mouth long enough to look at her. He knew what she wanted before she asked.

  “We arrived at 01:45 hours to find the structure fully engulfed. Don’t know the cause yet.”

  Addison scribbled as Jones continued to talk.

  “We have four trucks and one tanker on scene. Mutual aid from Miami Township and Jubilant fire companies was requested at 01:55 hours when we— Bethel—determined we could not fight this alone. The structure is old and filled with new hay and old straw, so it’s going up like match sticks.”

  “Any injuries?”

  “We believe that all the livestock is out of the barn, but we can’t be sure.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Chief Jones blanched.

  “We can’t find Larry Jensen. We don’t know if he’s in there or not.”

  “Oh God.”

  “You can’t say that, Addie. You can’t put that in the paper. I bowl with Larry Jenson every Thursday night except when he’s bringing in his crops. Him and me coached pee-wee football together for the first time last fall.” Jones looked at her with fear in his eyes.

  Flames were licking around the barn’s eaves and threatening to burst through the roof of the barn as a gentle breeze wafted ashes into Addison’s eyes. A piercing beep sounded from tanks on a firefighter’s back as he ran from behind the barn, out of oxygen. The fireman ripped his helmet and mask from his smoke-blackened face and sank to his knees gasping. His helmet rolled across the ground and stopped at Addison’s feet. A photo of a family—the firefighter, his wife and a little girl in a frilly red dress—was tucked into the crown of the helmet.

  Addison scribbled faster. Beside her, she heard Pat’s shutter click repeatedly like the trigger on an automatic weapon.

  “Get that man some oxygen!” someone said.

  An EMS technician ran up with a tank of fresh oxygen and covered the firefighter’s mouth and nose, then scooped up the helmet, glaring at Pat and Addison.

  Large pieces of ash, some with edges still burning bright orange sailed away from the farmhouse, landing with a small hiss in the water tank.

  Suddenly, flames burst through the roof and the barn—what was left of it—began to sway.

  “Everybody—back away! We got a collapse! We got a collapse!” Jones barked into the walkie-talkie. Men and equipment moved back seemingly in an instant.

  “Lar-r-r-e-e-e-e!” Denise screamed.

  Suddenly, the figure of a man carrying something under each arm burst through the barn door. It was Larry Jensen, a newborn Angus calf under each arm. His face and arms were red and blistered and his brown Carhartt overalls were burned in several places. He dropped the calves, and collapsed on the ground.

  The calves scampered away as firefighters dragged him to safety within a few feet of where Addison and Pat were standing.

  "Where's my Dad? Where's my Dad?" she heard Larry Jensen gasp.

  "He's on the porch—he's OK," an EMT quickly began to cut the burned Carhartts from Jensen's legs.

  "You gotta go back in there," Larry grabbed the man's shirt as he gasped out the words.

  "You just worry about you. We're going to get you to the hospital here in a minute —"

  "No! You don't understand! I saw it as I was running back out. There's a body in there—there's a dead man in my barn."

  Chapter Ten

  The sun was beginning to peek across the horizon as Addison and Chief Jones watched wisps of smoke rise above what used to be the Jensen barn. The air was heavy with dew and the combined smells of ash, wet burned wood and loss.

  As they watched, Plummer County sheriff’s deputies circled the burned frame of the barn with yellow tape. After the collapse, the fire was quickly put out, but fallen burned beams still obscured what could be the body that Larry Jensen thought he saw. It had been a few hours before the scene was cool enough for investigators to get inside and examine the crime scene.

  Jones turned away to speak into the radio clipped to his shoulder. A few seconds later, he turned back to her.

  “I had dispatch notify the sheriff’s detectives. They’ll send somebody out and if Larry did see something, they’ll make the call to the coroner’s office.”

  Dazed, Addison nodded her head. In the last three days, Lyndzee Thorn was snatched, somebody was playing serious financial shenanigans at the college, county barns were burning down—and now the second blaze in a week could yield a dead body.

  “I swear to God, Rodney, I’ve lived in Plummer County all my life and I’ve never seen this much action.”

  “We’re right in the middle of some kinda heartland crime spree, ain’t we?” Jones laughed ruefully. His smile disappeared quickly. “Well, at least Larry Jensen is OK.”

  Addison nodded. Jensen had been taken to Plummer County Community Hospital where he was listed in good condition, suffering mostly from minor burns and smoke inhalation. Denise, the boys and Lars Jensen packed up some clothes and went to Denise’s mother’s house in town until they could come to terms with what happened here on the farm.

  Addison had a few hours before she had to be back at the newsroom and write up the story. Pat had already left to go develop his film. She made a mental note to talk to publisher Watterson Whitelaw about getting Pat some digital equipment. Technology was moving on and they were the last newspaper in their part of the state to still use Kodachrome.

  She would wait long enough to find out if what Larry Jensen saw really was a body or simply an eerie image sparked by the flames. There wouldn’t be time to wait for identification; besides, the police would want to notify next of kin before they released the name to her.

  Craving a smoke, Addison left Chief Jones and walked back to her car, still parked on the roadside. As she fished through her purse for her cigarettes, she noticed her cell phone lying on the seat: “2 MISSED CALLS” glowed in green letters on the phone’s face.

  “Huh.” Addison picked up the cell phone and, touching a few buttons, accessed the incoming call log. It was Duncan—probably just calling to check in, she thought. Larry Jensen was a friend and Duncan could have seen the flames from their house. I don’t have time to check the voice mail. I’ll just call him back after deadline and see what he wants.

  Addison was leaning against her Taurus’s fender, finishing her cigarette when Detective Mike Birger pulled up in an unmarked Crown Victoria. Birger was one of three detectives with the county sheriff’s office, a short squat man with thinning blonde hair and a boyish face that made him look more like a junior high physical education teacher than a gun-toting detective.

  Behind Birger was the crime scene van with two technicians, a young white man and a black woman in her mid-30s. Birger and the two technicians, who were carrying large plastic tool boxes with their forensic equipment and 35-mm cameras, nodded curtly at Addison as they stepped from their vehicles and went to work in the remains of the Jensen barn.

  Addison waited until Birger and the technicians spoke to Chief Jones, then squashed her cigarette with her foot and went back across the street to the fire scene. She watched as the three began their meticulous work. Cognizant of Addison’s presence, each worked silently in separate areas of the barn’s ruins, searching with flashlights despite the oncoming day, turning over or photographing debris, looking for the fire’s cause.

  After about an hour, the black technician came to a pile of charred lumber, overturned a few planks, then signaled to Birger. They spoke quietly, pointing, nodding, and poking around in the piles of burned timbers.

  Snapping off his latex gloves, Birger stepped back toward Addison and Jones.

  “What have you got?” she asked, her pen poised above her notebook.

  He held up a finger in her direction and addressed the fire chief first. “Rodney, give Doc Bovir a call. We got one fatality.”

  Jo
nes nodded and stepped away. Rashid Bovir was Plummer County’s coroner, one of a growing number of Pakistani physicians who were moving into the area. Bovir had large, prominent, beaver-like teeth, which led to the beat cops giving him the nickname “Bucky.” The more crass among them mispronounced Bovir’s name as “Beaver” to complete the insult.

  “Mike?” Addison asked again.

  Birger sighed. “It’s a man’s body, that’s all I know. Of course, we’ll ship the body off to the crime lab in Collitstown for a cause of death, get some ID on who he is.”

  “How long until you get me an identification?”

  Birger shrugged, but Addison didn’t see it, too busy writing as she talked.

  “What?”

  “It may be a little while, depending on if there’s some identification on the body or not, how soon it takes to notify next of kin.”

  “OK. Any preliminary cause of death you can give me for today’s paper?”

  “The body is certainly badly burned and that could be a cause of death by itself. Whether there is any additional cause of death, I’m not in a position to say now.”

  “Thanks, Mike.” Addison capped her pen. “Hey, anything new on Lyndzee Thorn?”

  “FBI is here, I guess. They’ve checked into the Holiday Inn and will meet with Chief McGinnis sometime this morning.”

  “Still haven’t found her, huh?”

  Birger shook his head. “Gary McGinnis is going to collapse if he doesn’t get some sleep soon. That whole thing is weirder than weird, too.”

  “Birger!” The black technician strode forward, a clear plastic bag in her latex-gloved palm. “This fell out of our victim’s left hand. I didn’t see it until I moved some timbers and the body shifted.”

  Addison stared at the contents of the bag: a small charred child’s shoe; its sole melted and black ash covering the toe. On one side was an orange Winnie the Pooh character.

  Just like the shoes Lyndzee Thorn was wearing when she disappeared.

  ***

  Back in the newsroom, Addison banged out the fire story, omitting the shoe found in the victim’s hand. It could be something, it could be nothing, she thought, and there wasn’t time before deadline to make any fair or useful connection. There were millions of kids’ shoes out there with Disney characters on them. It could be some twisted bastard’s way to get more attention for his barn-burning proclivities, Addison thought. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.

  A few quick phone calls confirmed Larry Jensen’s condition and that the family was staying at Denise’s folks, information she included in the story.

  She’d just have to do a follow up on the shoe thing tomorrow, along with a story about the FBI arriving to search for Lyndzee. And somewhere in there, talk to Watterson Whitelaw about getting Pat a digital camera.

  “Jesus Christ, if Porter did manage to cover all this stuff, it’s no wonder his marriage fell apart!” Addison said to herself.

  With a sharp tap of a function key on her computer keyboard, Addison sent her story to Dennis Herrick to be edited. It was just 8:30; most of the staff arrived about an hour ago. The newsroom was largely silent except for the soft clicking of computer keyboards as Marcus, Elizabeth and Millie worked on their stories for the day. From the darkroom across the hall, Addison could hear the sound of a computer scanner as Pat Robinette worked on scanning last night’s fire shots into the computer system.

  Dennis looked up from his computer. “Ready for a budget meeting?” he asked, picking up a clipboard and pen.

  “I’m ready for a full goddamn night’s sleep, if you want the truth,” she answered, flopping down into a chair opposite him.

  Dennis laughed and handed her the clipboard. “Regret firing Porter yet?”

  “No—he’d just be figuring out Lyndzee Thorn about now and probably wouldn’t have showed up to that damned fire Pat and I were at last night.”

  “Speaking of that, look at this shot Pat’s got in the computer.” Dennis faced the monitor again and, working his mouse, brought up a file labeled ‘Today’s Photos.’ A few more clicks and he had it open: it was the fireman’s yellow helmet in the foreground, the family picture showing in the crown, laying on the ground as yellow-orange flames from the barn danced in the background.

  “Shit. I forgot to call about that firefighter and add that to the story.”

  “We got time. Here are some of the others he took.” Dennis clicked on several more photo files: a shot of a firefighter running as the barn collapsed behind him, a shot of Denise comforting Lars on the porch, a shot of EMTs tending to Larry as the Angus calves ran away, another Bethel Township firefighter in yellow turn-out gear holding a spraying hose to the simmering ruins as the sun was coming up. “He makes it hard to choose.”

  “And that’s why we love him,” Addison said dryly. “As great a shot as that first one is, I think if we run the helmet shot as our dominant art, people are going to think that a firefighter died in that fire—and that’s not correct. Give me the one where the guy is running as the dominant art and a picture of the family in two. If you need it on the jump page, use the helmet shot there.”

  Dennis nodded. “OK. We’ve also got your story on the suspects that you filed yesterday. Marcus has a story on last night’s council—a new developer wants to come in and build a bunch of houses east of town. Elizabeth has something on the Jubilant Falls High School graduation.”

  “Photos?”

  “Just the valedictorian at the podium.”

  “Works for me. Run it one column. Anything on the wire?”

  The wire contained the usual jumble of national politics, product recalls and state headlines. They agreed on two stories for page one—the rest could go inside. In that dead period between the time school ended and summer recreation leagues began, sports had nothing local. Wire copy about baseball games, stock car races and lists scores in small agate type filled two pages that sports writers Ken Houser and Nick Waters had completed the night before.

  “I’m going to check in with the search teams looking for Lyndzee, see if I can get anything on the FBI agents who are supposedly here,” Addison said as she stood and stretched. “I left another thing out of my story—but this was on purpose. The victim had a little girl’s shoe in his hand that looked like the ones Lyndzee reportedly had on when she went missing. I didn’t include it because I couldn’t get proof, but if this barn fire can be tied into Lyndzee Thorn, that’s just too weird even for me. I’ll also have a follow-up on the fire for tomorrow.”

  Dennis nodded. “And you were going to sleep when?”

  “Tuesday. Next Tuesday.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Another missed call shown on the face of Addison’s cell phone, which lay at the bottom of her purse. Tucked into the foot well of her office desk, she never saw it.

  There had been enough time to call to check on the firefighter, to add his condition to her story—he’d been treated and released—and look over Marcus’s council story before she put a call into Bucky Bovir just after deadline. Publisher J. Watterson Whitelaw even gave permission to start researching digital cameras as she’d stopped into his office on the way back out the door.

  Another phone call and she found out Chief Marvin McGinnis, his younger brother Gary and Sheriff Ernst Boderman were all meeting down at police headquarters with the FBI agents at 10:30—maybe they’d be willing to talk to her afterwards. She decided to walk the two blocks from the paper to police headquarters.

  The mobile command post had been removed from Pop Tillman’s carryout parking lot following the first forty-eight hours of Lyndzee’s disappearance. Operations had moved to a conference room in the back of police headquarters.

  As she walked, Addison thought about how the case would move from here, now that the feds were on board. The search for Lyndzee was clearly entering another phase, more organized and focused, although no less intense than those first twenty-four hours. Nobody was willing to change the search from one of
rescue—with Lyndzee Thorn still presumed alive—or one of recovery, where Addison’s headline would be “Body of Missing Girl Found.”

  Would they want to look at Seaford again? Police may have cleared him in their initial questioning, but there were too many coincidences to discount him in Addison’s mind. His crumbling marriage, the missing money, and the threats that he’d made to Jaylynn about taking the little girl from her seemed to be too many factors to just question him once, accept his answers and release him.

  Addison had covered too many stories to know that it was family members more often than strangers who committed crimes involving children. Seaford could also turn his college-president personae on and off like a switch, much like she’d seen at the press conference. Glib, attractive and smooth, she thought he was playing the lead role in his own holy show rather than being sincere. It may have worked with alumni donors and students, but it wouldn’t fly when he was in the institutional gray interrogation room across the table from two FBI agents.

  Yet there was still the possibility this was a stranger abduction. Addison turned things over again in her mind as she walked.

  What about those threats made by Talley Lundgren, those cryptic comments about making Seaford accountable for his sins? Was that just the ramblings of a deranged homeless man or was Talley really connected to this whole thing? And what about the Kernenberger fire? Did Talley start that? Did he have anything to do with the Jensen fire?

  The other two suspects, Roy Castlewheel and Harmon Ripsmatta, were scumbags, both with extensive records. The police were obligated to look into them as suspects, particularly Ripsmatta, since he was a sexual predator to start with.

  Could it be another sexual predator? Plummer County didn’t have a lot of them, but there were a few, Addison thought. Maybe it wasn’t any of those three men seen on the videotape. Nothing said someone couldn’t have come from the next county to snatch Lyndzee.