Fireproof

by Alex Kava

  Maggie hadn’t told anyone about her headaches. She knew it wasn’t in the ER report. Sometimes when a person loses one sense the others become more alert. Was that what had happened with Kernan?

  “How did you know?”

  This time it was his turn to smile.

  “You just told me,” he said.

  She felt the blood rush to her face. It was the oldest trick in the book and she had fallen for it.

  “Now we’re even,” Kernan said. “Perhaps we can start over. I may have lost the better part of my sight, O’Dell, Margaret, but do not underestimate me. Never underestimate your opponent, no matter what you perceive to be his disability.”

  “Perhaps this would go much better if you didn’t perceive me as an opponent.” She said it out of anger, but it was exactly how she felt. Wasn’t that what this session was supposed to be about? How and what she was feeling.

  She steeled herself for one of his silly, cutting word plays. Instead, he said nothing and stared at a spot over her head, his watery blue eyes magnified behind the thick lenses. He pursed his lips then blew out air, sending his lips vibrating and making a sputtering sound.

  Finally his eyes came close to where they might meet hers and he said, “Fair enough.”

  CHAPTER 50

  Sam understood exactly why Jeffery had suggested Old Ebbitt’s when he offered to treat them to dinner. The restaurant was a favorite of politicos and the District’s movers and shakers. Every time they walked through, it would take three times as long to get to their table because Jeffery had to stop and chat, shake a hand or two, or wave to anyone who recognized him. He even insisted on having a table instead of the high-backed booths that Sam loved. She wanted the quiet and privacy. Jeffery wanted to be at a table where he could be seen and be on display. But first he wanted to stop next door for a drink.

  Sam understood all this. She knew Jeffery too well. She could predict and anticipate his actions. What she didn’t understand was why he had invited Wes Harper to come along with them. She didn’t like the guy. There was something about him that creeped her out.

  “He’s an interesting guy,” Jeffery had admonished her. When she rolled her eyes, he added, “You could do worse.”

  Of course Jeffery hadn’t noticed the lurid body swipes Harper’s eyes had been giving Sam. Jeffery rarely noticed anything that didn’t involve him. And Harper was sly enough to know that. He had been lavishing Jeffery with compliments, laying it on thick. And Jeffery appeared mesmerized by all of Harper’s talk about fire.

  Sam had agreed to have one drink, then she wanted to go home. She made it plain she wouldn’t be joining them for dinner next door, telling the men that she had spent too little time with her son this week. The comment, meant to dissuade Harper, only seemed to encourage him.

  “Divorced?” he asked, not just in a hopeful tone. Instead, he made the word sound sexy, but in a naughty way. There was something about the way he stared at her with gray eyes that reminded her too much of a wolf. It made her skin crawl. Maybe he’d missed her mention of a young son. Usually that had the same effect as throwing cold water on men.

  They ordered drinks and, thankfully, Jeffery steered the conversation back to the fires. He and Harper talked as though they were experts comparing notes.

  “These have been intense, white hot,” Jeffery said. “Most chemical reactions are.”

  “Who said they were started by chemical reactions?” Sam asked. She couldn’t recall the real experts saying a thing about chemicals.

  “Someone mentioned it.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, like he couldn’t be bothered with such trivial details at the moment. To Harper he continued, “Accelerants don’t matter. You can pour all the gasoline you want but you still need a spark. A chemical reaction provides a spontaneous ignition. It’s ingenious, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Harper sipped his Grey Goose vodka.

  Jeffery lifted his index finger from his chin and gave a signal that always managed to get instant attention. He could get a cab with a subtle gesture, too. It was one of the things Sam admired about him—that air of confidence that grabbed attention with a nod or a flip of a finger. A waiter arrived and Jeffery pointed to all three glasses for seconds, though Sam hadn’t yet taken a sip of her Bud Light.

  “I’ve either put out or tried to light just about any kind of fire you can think of,” Harper said.

  “So you like to light them as well?” Jeffery asked. “A firefighter?”

  He grinned at their reactions. “My momma is very glad to know I decided to make a career of putting them out instead of starting them. But I learned a great deal from lighting fires. For instance, you know you can tell what’s burning by the color of the flame.”

  “That right?”

  Harper took a generous sip of the vodka while nodding and taking his time to respond. “Reddish yellow is usually wood or cloth. Yellow white is kerosene or gasoline. They burn at different temps. I still think there’s nothing prettier on a cold night than bright yellow and red flames dancing in the sky.”

  The waiter delivered the drinks and Harper slung back the remainder in his old glass before he surrendered it. He pulled the fresh drink from the center of the table and set it protectively in front of him.

  “It’s interesting what fire does to a body, too.”

  He was looking directly at Sam now. She knew what this was—he wanted to see if he could make her squeamish. There was a whole class of assholes who liked to make women squirm over grotesque subjects, usually sexual, sometimes just violent. Harper looked like the type who combined the two.

  When neither she nor Jeffery responded, Harper took it as license to continue. “The arms and legs are the first to go. They’re like kindling, thin and surrounded by oxygen. Easy to ignite and quick to burn.”

  She refused to let him see her flinch. Besides, she’d heard worse. Been through worse. She held his stare and tried to ignore the grin beginning slowly at the corner of his mouth.

  “Skin blackens pretty quickly. Fat sizzles.” He hissed out the “z’s,” his voice a bit lower now. He was clearly enjoying himself. “Usually within minutes the skin splits open. That’s when the body starts to clench in on itself and the legs start to spread apart and the knees—”

  “Yes, yes, we all know about the boxer stance,” Jeffery said, waving his hand at Harper, indicating that anything beyond this would be boring. Sam held back a sigh of relief. Now if Jeffery could just get Harper’s eyes off her.

  “Pugilistic posture,” Jeffery added. “The fire dries out the muscles and the tendons shrink.”

  “That’s right. Where did you learn so much about fires?” Harper asked.

  Jeffery sat back and Sam could see he was pleased with the question. Pleased with drawing the attention back to himself. And for once Sam was glad to have him back in control of the conversation.

  “I wasn’t always a newscaster. I did have another life before this. And I do copious research for my features.”

  Sam restrained a smile. How many real people actually used the word “copious”?

  “I interview a variety of people,” Jeffery continued. “I did a documentary—perhaps you’ve seen it—Life Behind Bars. Fascinating stories. Simply amazing what some of these criminals have to say. Of course, you have to wonder whether or not some of their stories are anywhere near the truth.”

  He laughed his best fake laugh and Sam held back from reminding him that whether or not the stories were accurate didn’t always stop him from using the tall tales and sometimes sensationalizing them. With the exception of Otis P. Dodd. She still didn’t understand why Jeffery had been so quick to dismiss the man.

  “So you interviewed some fire starters? A chem guy, huh?”

  “Yes. Big-time arsonist. Not as big as this current guy will be. This case certainly gives you a new respect for your ordinary under-the-sink solutions or swimming pool cleaners.”

  Both men laughed while Sam sipp
ed her beer. The only arsonist on the list had been Otis P. Dodd, and Jeffery hadn’t asked him a single question about his arson adventures. But then she remembered that Jeffery had received detailed letters from Otis P. long before they met with him.

  A man appeared at their table.

  “Wes, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Sam almost didn’t recognize Patrick Murphy. In jeans, a black turtleneck, and a leather jacket, he looked like he’d stepped off the cover of GQ. Even as he addressed Harper, his eyes found and settled on Sam’s as though he were really asking what she was doing here.

  Jeffery obviously didn’t recognize Patrick at all. His first response was to be perturbed, and he played the role well. He pushed back his chair with an impatient sigh. He didn’t like sharing the limelight.

  “You know what, guys?” Sam announced. “I’ve got to go. Jeffery, thanks for the drink. You boys enjoy dinner.”

  She slid her bag onto her shoulder before Harper or Jeffery noticed.

  “Yes, hug that boy of yours,” Jeffery said, looking around for the waiter.

  Just when Harper looked like he might protest Sam’s leaving, the waiter brought more drinks, giving him what looked to be a difficult choice.

  “I’ll walk you out,” Patrick said quietly, setting her pulse up a notch and making her wonder if staying may have been safer.

  As she stood and tried to ignore Patrick’s eyes, she glanced up at one of the televisions over the bar. Something, or rather someone, on the screen caught her eye. Peter Sanders, a network news reporter and someone Jeffery considered his competition, was doing a live broadcast from the middle of some dark wooded area.

  The sound was turned down but there were closed captions running along the bottom of the screen, and as Sam started reading them she felt her stomach slide to her knees.

  Jeffery glanced up to see what had captured her attention. He did a double take and then he got quiet and stared at the screen.

  They watched while Peter Sanders directed his camera technician. The picture focused in on a culvert under an old dirt road and the three people hunched over—two men and one woman—with the white letters “CSI” on their jackets. Floodlights had been set up, casting shadows. Sam didn’t need to see beyond them. She didn’t need to see anything more. She couldn’t take her eyes off the swatch of orange peeking out from under the leaves and mud.

  “That son of a bitch,” Jeffery said under his breath as he stared up at the television. “He was actually telling the truth.”

  CHAPTER 51

  “What was that about?” Patrick asked Sam as they stepped outside onto the sidewalk.

  “The prison documentary Jeffery and I have been working on. Yesterday one of the guys told us he knew where there was a body.”

  Her eyes left his, wandered away. He could tell this was unsettling for her, but she wasn’t willing to share that part. He knew Sam Ramirez was the type of woman who didn’t reveal her feelings or her vulnerabilities.

  “He said it was a young woman. That the killer left her in a culvert. He said the guy didn’t take off her orange socks.”

  “How did he know so much? Was he there?”

  “He claims the guy told him after a couple of whiskeys in a bar one night.”

  “Wow. Interviewing murderers. Your job is more dangerous than mine.”

  She finally smiled.

  He walked alongside her as she led the way to her parked car.

  “I just wanted to tell you I appreciate what you did at the fire site.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You backed me out of what could have been an embarrassing interview.”

  “I think you would have handled yourself just fine.”

  “For a minute back there I thought you were with Wes.”

  “So what if I was?”

  He heard a slight bit of irritation in her voice, and he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Wes Harper hadn’t decided he wanted Sam more than he wanted the expensive vodka. Patrick tried to remember if he had told Harper anything he’d regret, anything Harper would tell Jeffery Cole.

  They hadn’t partnered up by choice. Braxton Protection Agency assigned teammates. Patrick didn’t trust Wes Harper from day one. Turned out his instincts had been correct. Last job, Harper couldn’t wait to rat him out.

  Finally he looked back at Sam, standing in front of him, tapping her foot, waiting for a reply.

  “Sometimes he’s not a very nice guy.”

  “Really? Seems like an odd thing to say about your partner.”

  “We’re not partners by choice,” he said, but he didn’t want to go into the long explanation. He looked back over his shoulder again. “I’m supposed to meet Maggie. Should I warn her that Cole is here?”

  “Don’t worry. If he doesn’t have a camera on him”—and she tapped her shoulder bag—“he’s pretty harmless.” She seemed to reconsider that, then added, “But you might want to keep her from seeing the second part of his profile later tonight.”

  “Why did he decide to target Maggie?”

  Sam shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”

  He was sorry he’d asked because now she glanced down the street like she couldn’t wait to escape from him. Maybe she was keeping someone waiting.

  “I know you must have someplace to go, but would you like to join us? Get a quick bite? Didn’t look like you got anything to eat.”

  “Thanks, but I need to get home to my son.”

  “Oh sure. Ignacio.” He tried not to sound relieved that it wasn’t a date she was running off to.

  “You remember my son’s name?”

  “I remember a lot of things if given a chance.” He said it and immediately wanted to kick himself.

  He had never been good at flirting. The remark, however, registered a slow smile from Sam as she glanced away and shook her head. But she made no attempt to walk away.

  “Maybe another time, Murphy.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Tonight’s motel had a large flat-screen television. He made sure of it before he checked in, looking inside a window after he saw the maids leave. He didn’t mind that this one was an extra twenty bucks a night. Money wasn’t a concern as much as privacy and, now, a big flat-screen television.

  He was tired after a full day of work. He’d stayed out most of the night, blowing off steam, driving in the sleet, and finding the right place to lie in wait for just the right target. He was so good it wasn’t much of a challenge anymore. He constantly had to add something to the mix, change things up. Last night’s kill had calmed him, but it wasn’t as satisfying as the doubles he had pulled off just days ago.

  It didn’t matter. He was finished with this job. He wanted to go home. He would get back on the road after one final task.

  He hauled in his treasure trove from last night, everything fitting nicely in a small black garbage bag. It had leaked in his vehicle. He had to throw out the brand-new liner. He had chosen a Dumpster behind a truck-stop diner that was already ripe and foul smelling. No one would notice his addition. For now he’d set the sticky bag in the bathtub. He’d get to it later.

  He took out his burger and fries and arranged them on the greasy paper bag they’d come in. He made himself comfortable on the middle of the bed, where he could lounge, eat, and watch part two of Margaret O’Dell’s life.

  He had been looking forward to seeing Cole’s next piece, though he didn’t like the man interjecting so much of his own opinion. Cole pretended it was journalism, but he’d do better by sticking only to the facts. Still, it was extremely enjoyable.

  He’d gotten delayed in traffic on the interstate, so by the time he found the channel Cole was already asking Kathleen O’Dell about her daughter’s childhood.

  He saw the resemblance. The same auburn hair and brown eyes. He was hoping there would be more photos. Maybe some of Margaret as a child. A teenager.

  “Her father called her Magpie,” Kathleen O’Dell was telling Cole. “He died
when she was twelve. Sometimes I think she loved him so much that when he died she didn’t have any more love to give.”

  He didn’t hear what Cole asked next. All he heard was “magpie” and his mind went into a tailspin. His own mother had all kinds of superstitions that she tried to instill in him and his brother. He remembered her story about the magpie. It was the only bird that refused to enter Noah’s ark and preferred instead to perch on the roof. It was bad luck to see one when you set off on a journey. And if you dared to kill one, misfortune would strike you down. It was best to treat a magpie with respect.

  From the first time he saw Margaret O’Dell, he felt there was something special about her and now he knew.

  By the time his mind came back to the television the interview was over. Someone else had replaced Jeffery Cole. His burger was cold and his fries were hard. He lay on the bed and began flipping channels, trying to clear his mind. He breezed over a news alert on one channel and then backtracked out of curiosity.

  He didn’t recognize the setting at first. He saw the State Patrol jackets and dark woods and suspected a dead body had been found. He was relieved that it didn’t look anything like the rest area he had been to last night. But there was something familiar about the winding road. Then he saw the culvert and he knew they had found one of his after all.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands on his knees, and he tried to steady himself. That’s when he noticed there was blood splattered along with river mud on his work boots. He’d spent the day working with blood on his boots.

  Damn! He was getting reckless.

  Of course, anyone else would see only the mud. He yanked the boots off. He’d have to clean them.

  He padded in his socks to the bathroom to look into the black garbage bag he’d left in the tub. A ring of blood pooled around the bottom, a pretty crimson against the white porcelain. He tugged open the plastic. The smell was no longer rancid to him. Instead, it reminded him of raw meat in various stages of spoiling.