by Natalie Ann
There were still firemen on the scene walking the site looking through the rubble for clues. He made his way into what used to be the kitchen. “What have you found?” he asked as several people started to gather around.
“This rock was most likely tossed through the back window. It was wrapped several times in a cotton fabric that had been soaked in gasoline. Looks to have had a tail of fabric on it that was lit before it was tossed. By the time it went through the window, it would have been a big fireball. Whoever did this aimed it well. It hit the curtains and ignited them fast. From there it just spread up the walls.”
His phone went off just then and he looked down at the text from Chief Hillside. It was the video from Cam’s security cameras. He watched it to see what direction the rock had come from, then looked out into Cam’s yard at the trees and bushes separating all the properties.
The motion sensor lights never turned on until the fireball was in motion.
He walked away and in that direction, looking for any clues that might have been left behind.
After walking around on the grass, he stepped behind a bush that was big enough to hide a small body and noticed something red on the ground. Pulling gloves on, he reached down and picked it up. Chewed gum. He brought it to his nose—cherry—and he knew exactly whose it was. Gotcha.
***
“Tiffany, you didn’t need to come.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, shutting the door behind her. “That’s so scary. Twice now you’ve been trapped with fire around you.”
Cam had her mother call Tiffany first thing this morning to tell her what happened and to please cancel everything for the week and let everyone know she’d have a better idea of when she could reschedule by then.
“Talk about bad luck,” Tiffany said. Tiffany didn’t know anything other than Cam’s tires being slashed. She’d never uttered a word about the snake or the rock through her window. Being trapped in the office was probably just a coincidence in Tiffany’s mind.
“Well, if it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have none at all right now.”
“But to have someone set your house on fire. That’s just nuts. Do they know who did it?”
Cam stopped. Last she knew, no one was aware it was arson. She didn’t tell her parents when they came in either. And Gary had told her they were keeping it hush hush.
“What are you talking about?”
Tiffany stopped and then said, “Well, I thought I heard it was set. Maybe I’m wrong. You know me. I’m always messing things up.”
But she wasn’t always messing things up. She was ditsy and silly, but her work was always done and always precise. She was late at times and left early a lot, always on her phone, but she was smart. She remembered things when Cam didn’t think she would. She knew more than she ever let on.
Cam was starting to feel like an idiot for not seeing through Tiffany all along. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” Tiffany asked, looking around the room and moving closer to the drip that Cam was hooked up to for morphine.
“Don’t play with me anymore. I know it’s you. You slashed my tires. You sent a dead snake to the office. Threw the rock through my window, then started the fire in the office. It had to be you.”
Tiffany laughed now, her eyes not so friendly. Not so nice. Rather icy. Evil. Just like David’s had been, but Tiffany had managed to fool everyone.
“The snake was hard for me. I never cared for those slimy things, but chopping the head off when it was alive, eww. It had to be done, though. It was easy enough to just pay cash and have it delivered to the office. No way to trace it back to me.”
Cam knew that Ian had tried, but there was nothing. No fingerprints. No records to trace back to who sent it. “And the fire in the building. You set that on your lunch. Why that day?”
“Because you didn’t have your card. I hadn’t planned on it. It just struck me as an inspiration when I realized it. I had researched a few things on my phone while you were in with your patients. It’s amazing what you can find on the internet now. I just wanted to scare you. Let you know what it was like to feel trapped with no way out. To know what it was like to smell the smoke and taste it. I knew you’d be fine. I knew everyone would.”
“That doesn’t explain to me why you did it. Why me? What have I done to you? And if you want to just scare me, why set my house on fire? You would have killed me.”
“Scaring you wasn’t working, so I had to move on to something else. You want to know what you’ve done?” Tiffany snarled. “You took away the closest person to me in my life. You. It was all your fault. You could have done the right thing, but you didn’t. Instead of helping Johnnie, you sent him away. You sent him to prison. He was seventeen. He was murdered there. You knew it would happen and you did nothing to stop it.”
“Johnnie who?” Cam asked. She knew who Tiffany was talking about, but she was trying to buy time right now. Her hands and feet were wrapped up, there was an IV in her arm, and Tiffany had locked the door from the inside just now. Cam couldn’t get out of bed and move if she wanted to. She’d fall like a heap on the floor.
“My cousin. He was like a brother to me. Do you know how he died in prison? Do you know what happened to him? I wanted you to feel the same as him. I wanted you to know what he felt. What he experienced. You need to pay,” Tiffany said, leaning in closer to the machine right now.
It was the first time Tiffany was completely serious. She wasn’t giggling or raising her voice. Not even really looking at Cam, just studying the medical equipment.
“Don’t do this Tiffany. Johnnie was sick. He needed help.”
“Yep,” Tiffany said, pulling her phone out and scrolling through it, then looking at the morphine pump again. Cam could see she was trying to figure out how to operate it. “Instead of giving him the help he needed, you pretty much wrote his death ticket. Everyone knows what happens to people like him in prison. Ah, there we go. That’s what I’m looking for. Not the way I wanted you to go, but I’ll put you out of your misery just the same. Time for a nap.”
Cam did the only thing she could think to do right now. She opened her mouth to scream, but before anything could come out, the door was busted open and Ian was rushing in, tackling Tiffany to the ground and cuffing her. He was followed by security guards and police officers, and Tiffany was led away, screaming, “You’ll get what’s coming to you. You know you will!”
“I swear to God you’re trying to kill me,” Ian shouted at her.
“Me?” she yelled back. “I’ve been trapped in two burning buildings and my own assistant just tried to murder me...again!”
“Shh,” he said, coming forward and hugging her, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry.”
The pain of him touching the burns on her body was nothing compared to the relief she felt being in his arms. To know he saved her again.
“This is becoming a habit now. What are you going to do with all your free time now that it’s over with?”
“It’s not over. The way I figure it, you still need someone to watch out for you since you’re so stubborn and pigheaded. I’m used to it by now. I’ve found that it’s growing on me.”
She smiled. She had to. Then she took a risk and figured after two near-death experiences, she wasn’t going to wait for another before she said what she knew had to be said. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Ian.”
“Good to know, Doc. I know I’m in love with you.”
***
“How did you know to come at that exact time?” Cam asked him shortly after the doctors all came in and looked her over. Ian was still standing guard, even though he didn’t need to at this point.
“I didn’t. I went back to your house to see what they’d found. The copy of your security tapes came in and I was watching it on my phone and tracing back the direction the rock came in through the window.”
“Rock?” she asked. “From weeks ago?”
“No. From last night. It was a rock covered in
fabric that had been soaked in gasoline. Then it was sent through your window. It came from the back of your yard.”
“They’d told me they suspected arson, but I was given no details.”
“When I was moving around I noticed chewing gum on the ground. Bright red and nasty smelling. Cherry.”
“Tiffany was always chewing gum. Fruity gum.”
“She was. I remembered it from the first time I went to your office. She was snapping it at her desk while I filled out the paperwork. It’s at the lab and I’m sure they’ll pull the DNA off of it and match it to her, though at this point she was caught in the act trying to kill you again.”
“Don’t remind me. But it didn’t answer how you knew to come here. That she was here?”
“I didn’t know. I was coming to talk to you about her to find out more. I stopped at the desk and showed the picture to them that had been sent to me, to make sure she wasn’t allowed near you. One of the nurses said she was in the room with you. I can’t even describe what went through me when I heard that.”
He ran his hand over her hair, then leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. He never thought of himself as a gentle person, but lately, it seemed all he wanted to do was show her that side of him.
“I can’t believe I never realized who she was. I always do a background check on staff and nothing came back.”
“Then how could you know and what was her reasoning?”
“She talked about losing her cousin when she was a kid during her interview. He was close to her. She never said how or why, just he was more like a father to her since her father wasn’t around. She was younger and said her mother brought her to counselors to talk and help her through the loss. And even though she was only applying for an office position, she just remembered how much it helped her and she wanted to be a part of it. I was touched by her story. Similar to the reason I went into the field.”
“That still doesn’t explain it,” he said, not following.
“Johnnie Bergman. He’s the reason I stopped doing child psychology. Right out of college I was working in the mental health unit for a hospital. I didn’t have a choice who was assigned to me.”
“And Johnnie was? What happened?”
“He was fifteen when I first saw him. He had been in and out of the ward on court-appointed assessments as part of his rehab.”
“Rehab for what?”
She took a deep breath. “He liked younger boys. He told us he did. He told us that those boys always loved him and wanted to be with him. He was ten the first time he touched another kid. The boy was a neighbor that was five. Johnnie’s parents tried to get him help, but it seemed nothing was helping.”
“So he was arrested?” At some point charges would have been brought up, Johnnie would have had to pay for his crimes.
“He was. He was placed in a mental health facility and had to file as a sex offender. His parents wanted him placed on drugs to stop his urges, but we couldn’t do that. He was getting therapy.”
“I’m guessing that therapy wasn’t working?”
“It wasn’t. There was no helping him. I learned that the hard way. And it made me sick to sit there and listen to him tell me what he did. He truly believed he’d never done anything wrong. Then one day he raped a four-year-old. At this point, he was seventeen. I’d been seeing him on and off for well over a year, doing the best I could but documenting that I felt there was no hope for him.”
“Did you blame yourself for what happened to that child?”
“I did,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I wanted to help kids like him. Not the accusers. But the victims. I wasn’t in a position to do that and I was doing my job no matter how much it sucked.”
“How did Johnnie die?”
“He was tried as an adult, sentenced to prison.”
“And pedophiles don’t do well in prison.”
“They don’t. He didn’t. Some inmates bribed the guards to look the other way. My guess is it didn’t take a lot of bribery. They’d taken Johnnie into the basement and tortured him. They beat him, they raped him. Wanted him to know what it felt like. Then they set him on fire. It was horrible. When I found out, I was done. As much as I hated what he’d done to get there, what had been done to him was just as bad.”
“So you changed the field you wanted to work in so much? You went on your own so you could pick and choose who you got to help and decided to make sure people like Johnnie went to jail. Even after what happened to him?”
He was surprised that she would do that. That she’d want a part in it, but then knew deep down Cam just wanted to help who she could. And she’d said plenty of times that not everyone could be saved.
“Yeah. I guess Tiffany felt Johnnie had done nothing wrong. Or rather he did, but not enough was done to help him. That he shouldn’t have gone to prison. Her comment of doing the right thing likely meant that he didn’t belong there. He should have been institutionalized. But not everyone who breaks the law is mentally ill. Johnnie was sick. He had a horrible nasty addiction to young boys, but he knew what he was doing. He believed it was okay because those boys went with him willingly, but those boys didn’t know what was going to happen to them. And Johnnie confessed during his trial that he’d convinced the boys it was fine. That he loved them and people in love did things like that.”
Ian was repulsed. “How do you do what you do? How do you listen to stories like that and not come undone at times?”
“How do you do your job and see what you do on a daily basis and get up and do it again the next day? Want to do it again?”
“Because I know deep down what I do makes a difference.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And that river of pain I told you about? You and I, we just dry off and go back in when we’re ready.”
Epilogue
“I’m so glad it’s summer and I can get away with flip-flops for a while,” Cam said, slightly limping into her office with Ian.
She’d been out of work a few weeks, her hands and feet healing. She was sick of sitting around but refused to be pushed around in a wheelchair.
Her house was destroyed and rather than rebuild and live there again where all those horrible events happened, she decided to move on. She’d been staying with Ian because he’d told her he still wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
She was okay with that.
Tiffany was in jail.
The Arrows decided to not move forward and fight David’s charges or his sentencing, and the Buckleys had contacted her and asked if they could see her on a professional basis, trying to find a way to move on.
She’d told them yes. She’d get it set up once she got her office up and going again. This time she was going to vet her staff out a little bit more. Maybe ask around and get a personal reference.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself today?” Ian asked, pulling her chair out for her.
“I’m fine. I’m just going to go through my schedule and make some calls, get things lined up and then go from there. I won’t be here long. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
“I’m off for the day,” he said.
“Why? I don’t need you to watch over me,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“I’m not watching over you. I’ve got a few things to do, but I’ll be back before you’re done, I’m sure.”
“What do you have going on?”
“Don’t you wish you knew,” he said, then left, saying he was locking the door behind him.
She was lost in her work when she heard the beep of the outer door. She knew it was Ian with his own keycard and she was looking forward to seeing him again.
It didn’t matter she’d been living with him the past few weeks, she was still missing him right now.
He walked in carrying lunch, and then set it down. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Of course,” she said, pushing back and looking into the bag, then pulling out the sandwiches. “What’s on y
our mind?”
“They found out who the girl was. Yesterday they did a facial recognition and found a match from a missing person.”
“The girl you shot?” she asked, stopping what she was doing with the food. “Why didn’t you say anything last night?”
“I wanted to think on it. I wanted to see if I could find her family.”
“And?” she asked. He wouldn’t have brought this up if he didn’t need to get it off his chest.
“She had no family to find. Or for me to talk to. There were posters of her from years ago. She went missing when she was thirteen. She’d been living with her grandparents. Her parents were both in jail and still are. They’ll be notified.”
“And the grandparents?”
“They passed away last year. Both of them. Her name was Kathy. Kathy Frank. She was seventeen and had been on the streets for four years. I spoke with a neighbor who said Kathy was wild, abusive. She’d yell and scream, hit her grandparents. When she ran away, they tried to find her, but figured she didn’t want to be found.”
“There was no record of her in the system at all if she was abusive?”
“No. They lived on the wrong side of town and weren’t offered help when it was needed. Kathy turned to drugs and the grandparents tried to help but couldn’t do it. I guess you could say this was one of those situations where you can’t help everyone.”
“You can’t. I’ve come to accept that,” she said. He looked sad, but otherwise not bad. “Do you have some closure to it now? How do you feel?”
“I know who she is, and I don’t feel any different than I did prior.”
“You do, though. It didn’t change the outcome of what happened. You know as well as I do, the life she was leading would have led to her death at some point.”
“But not at my hand.”
“Then at someone else’s hand.”
“That, I do believe. So I guess what I’m saying is, that with everything that’s happened to you, you still managed to help me.”
She smiled. “How’s that?”
“By just being there. By always listening and knowing what I needed to hear.”