Burned Too Hot: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 2)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “Her accomplice.”

  A chill ran over Val’s skin. She’d been afraid that was the valuable information Cook was talking about. Pender was working with someone else. And that meant the psychologist’s accomplice was still out there.

  “The Milk Jug Firebug?” Olson asked.

  Pender scoffed at him. “Bix Johnson was the Milk Jug Firebug. He set fire to all those decrepit outbuildings and empty houses. The Merlyne plant. The Meinholz farm. But there was one fire he didn’t set.”

  Val thought of all the times Johnson had insisted there were two different people setting fires. In the end, Bix had been so broken, he’d been willing to take any life around him in the quest to take his own, but that hadn’t always been the case. “The Tiedemann fire. Bix Johnson didn’t set that.”

  “Very good, Chief.” Pender gave her a smug smile. “But I know who did.”

  “You set it?” Olson asked.

  “Not me.” Pender bunched the sheets in her fists. “I didn’t set any fires. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. No one except Dixon Hess.”

  Val decided not to mention all the other jail inmates Pender’s wrecking ball had sent to the hospital, all the deputies hurt in the melee. “So it was your accomplice who set the Tiedemann fire?”

  “Of course, it was.”

  “And your accomplice kidnapped Ethan Tiedemann?”

  Pender just smiled.

  “And my niece? Your accomplice kidnapped her, too?”

  “What?”

  “Wait a second here,” Pender’s attorney broke in. “My client obviously knew nothing about that. This other person promised to help her subdue Dixon Hess and nothing more. My client is not responsible for anything this other person did that she wasn’t aware of.”

  “You weren’t aware that Ketamine was used on Scott Tiedemann before the fire? You weren’t aware that my niece was kidnapped using Ketamine?”

  “I never had the Ketamine!” Pender yelled.

  Cook placed his hand on her shoulder, then turned back to Val. “You established that earlier, Chief. Psychologists have no more access to that stuff than you or me.”

  An uneasy feeling niggled at the back of Val’s neck. She reached a hand up, massaging the muscles. “So your accomplice was providing the Ketamine. What about the crane?”

  Pender released the balled-up sheets and stared down at the oxygen tube snaking across her lap.

  “I talked to a man named Worlitz today,” Olson said. “Steve Worlitz. Know him?”

  Pender shook her head.

  Her attorney shot her a nervous glance.

  Val nodded for Olson to continue. Judging from the way he was playing this out, he would make a first-class prosecutor, once he was finished with law school.

  “Seems Steve Worlitz works for Atlas Construction,” Olson said. “You know, the company that parks its equipment right across the street from the county jail? Mr. Worlitz identified your picture. Swears you paid him two hundred bucks to teach you how to operate one of those midsize cranes.”

  “He’s lying,” Pender said.

  Now it was Val’s turn to smile. “I doubt that.”

  “This meeting is over,” Cook said, focused on his client. “Not another word.”

  Val pushed on, taking over where Olson left off. “So it was your job to smash the jail wall, and your accomplice was supposed to drug Hess. But that still seems unlikely. How did you know where and when to hit the building? Why would Hess let either of you close enough to stick him with a needle full of Ketamine?” Val realized the answer to her latter question before the words left her lips.

  Grace.

  Ethan.

  But the plan didn’t work. Grace escaped the car. She hid Ethan in the break room and locked the door. And while Val was shooting Pender, the psychologist’s accomplice was trying to get into that room. Trying until Lund interrupted and was beaten with the ASP for his efforts.

  “Out,” Cook ordered. “This interview is over.”

  Val stood, Olson following.

  Cook held the door open, poised to slam it closed as soon as they crossed the threshold. “If you want a name, have the district attorney call me.”

  “Not necessary,” Val said. “I already know who it is.”

  They made it half way down the hall before Olson spoke. “So who is it?”

  “Whoever has Pender’s car.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “She had to drive to the jail, right? And you have the report. There was no mention of her car in the vicinity. So someone drove it out of there, and it wasn’t Pender.”

  Val pulled out her phone and called Oneida, watching Olson pace the hall. “I need you to put out an APB for JoAnn Pender’s vehicle.”

  “Sure thing,” Oneida said. “I have some good news for you.”

  “I could use some.”

  “Jimmy Weiss just radioed in. He found Carla at Rossum Park.”

  “Good. Ethan is on his way to Madison. She can catch up with him.”

  When Val got off the phone, her mind was humming, buzzing, and performing circus tricks. “So someone provided the Ketamine. Someone torched the Tiedemann place and kidnapped Ethan. Someone kidnapped Grace. And that someone drove the kids to the jail to lure Hess out.”

  “Not the jail.”

  “The morgue.” Harlan. The old coot was still in and out of consciousness, and Val hadn’t been able to talk to him yet. But Harlan’s injuries were similar to Lund’s most recent. A fact that suggested he’d also been beaten with an ASP. “Pink fingernails,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Whoever attacked Lund had pink fingernails.” That niggle again. Annoying. Persistent. “Who was Harlan dating?”

  To Olson, it probably seemed like the farthest thing from a relevant question, but he shrugged and answered anyway. “Gossip was he was seeing the volunteer from the bookmobile.”

  Val eyed Pete. “Gossip? You know the gossip?”

  “It’s a hobby.”

  “The bookmobile…”

  “They deliver books to the jail.”

  “The library’s jail outreach program.” Val stared at the floor. Why hadn’t she seen the answer before?

  Who worked in the library?

  Who worked in a veterinarian’s office, a place that would have a supply of Ketamine?

  Who knew the security code for her own house?

  Val pulled out her phone and called Oneida. “Is Jimmy still at Rossum Park?”

  “It’s only been a minute since—”

  “Is he still there?”

  “Yes.”

  Val looked outside the window. It was almost dusk. “Call him.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Oneida came back after a few seconds. “He’s not responding.”

  Val’s throat went dry. She started for the elevator, moving as fast as her weak leg would allow. “Send every car you can to meet us at Rossum Park. And tell them to be armed and ready.”

  Chapter

  Thirty-Five

  Carla

  “Tell me, Carla. Are you afraid of me?”

  His hand spanned her throat, thumb under one ear, fingers under the other. He pushed her back against the driver’s seat headrest, his face inches away. In his right hand, right under her throat, he held the knife she’d bought as a gift.

  She focused on his eyes. Ice blue. Hard. The intelligence behind them electric enough she could feel it skitter over her skin, raising the hairs on her arms. Flecks of blood mixed with the razor stubble on his chin, the occasional gray whisker sparkling in the dashboard’s gleam.

  “Are you?” he repeated the question.

  “Yes,” she managed to squeak out. “I’m afraid.”

  “You should be. Do you know what happened to the last woman who tried to keep my son from me?”

  “I’m not.” It was a horrible misunderstanding. Carla had meant to bring him his son, but that didn’t work out. She’d heard him yellin
g about ice cream in that room, but the door had been locked, and before she’d found a way to break inside, the firefighter had interrupted.

  She hadn’t thought much of it then. She was Ethan’s legal mother. The police would bring him to her. So she’d come here, to their special place, the place she’d written to him in her letters. It wasn’t her fault the police had shown up before she was ready. It wasn’t her fault the officer had started asking her questions. “Please, Dixon,” she said. “I was trying to get him back. I thought we—”

  Pressure from his hand cut off her words. She struggled, trying to breathe. Then he looked her straight in the eye, and she stopped struggling.

  “You made the cop suspicious, Carla. He might not have been able to prove it right then, but he knew you were lying. Scrambling for some kind of a story to feed him.”

  She shook her head, tears blurring her vision and streaming from the corners of her eyes.

  When Carla had picked Dixon up at the roadside after seeing him escape from the police chief, she’d thought he’d be grateful. She thought he’d let her explain. But as soon as they’d left Dr. Pender’s car in the Walmart parking lot and stolen another, and reached the safety of Rossum Park to figure out what to do next, he had turned on her as if he’d completely forgotten how she’d always been there for him. As if she was the enemy. “Please. I don’t know what I said or did. If I was acting suspicious, I didn’t mean to.”

  He lightened his grip.

  She scooped in a breath, then another. “I didn’t want any of it to happen this way. Things… got out of control. They went wrong.”

  He raised one brow. “Mistakes were made?”

  “Yes, yes, exactly.”

  “Do you know the problem with that sentence, Carla? Mistakes were made?”

  She shook her head, afraid whatever she said would be the wrong thing.

  He let out a heavy sigh, as if she’d just disappointed him terribly. “The sentence doesn’t assign responsibility. It’s passive. Sure, mistakes were made. But who made them?”

  “I did,” she said.

  “What? I didn’t hear you.”

  “I did. I did. I told you, before we were interrupted by the cop, I can explain.”

  He let go of her throat, and slowly trailed his fingers down her skin, over her collarbone, and to the buttons on her blouse. He slipped a button free.

  Then another.

  And another.

  And one more.

  She was wearing a bra, all pink lace in anticipation of finally being with him, after all this time, after all this work. But in all the fantasies she’d had of him taking off her clothes, she’d never thought it would be like this.

  She’d never dreamed she would be so terrified.

  He brought the knife to her chest, and for a moment, she thought he might drive it between her ribs and into her heart. Instead he slipped the bloody blade between the pink lace cups and sliced upward.

  The fabric gave way. The cups separated. Then he used the flat side of the blade to push each aside, baring her breasts.

  He circled one nipple with the blade, then moved to the other. When he was finished, she could no longer control her shaking.

  “So explain,” he said.

  At first, Carla couldn’t get the words out. She could hardly breathe at all. Then she focused on her hands, on all she’d done to be with him, on how she’d felt they had to be together from the first time she laid eyes on him, and she found her voice. “The psychologist, JoAnn Pender. I pretended I was helping her. I said I was afraid of you, afraid for Ethan.”

  “You were going to help her kill me.”

  “Yes. Drug you. Kidnap you. Yes.” Her mouth was dry, so dry. But he hadn’t hurt her. He was listening. And if she told him everything, he could see how much she’d done for him, how much she cared. “She had a plan, a way to get you out of jail before the sentencing. But I wasn’t going to go along with it. Not in the end.”

  “How were you going to stop her?”

  “She needed me to get the Ketamine.”

  “Ketamine?”

  “She knew she couldn’t beat you, not without drugging you first. So she asked me to get Ketamine. I work for a veterinarian. But I was never going to use it on you. Not on you.”

  “You were going to use it on her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if that didn’t work?”

  “I had guns. In the trunk of the car.”

  His eyes had been starting to get softer. She’d swear it. But they were hard again now. “And they are now in police hands.”

  “Not all.” She pulled her Lady Smith out of the glove box and Scott’s HK45 from under the seat. “And we can get more. I know where.”

  “So you were going to shoot the psychologist? After she got me out?”

  Carla nodded. “Or use the Ketamine. Or hit her with the ASP. Whatever it took. It’s just like I wrote to you in the library books.”

  She’d written so many things, and he’d written back. Without ever having talked, they’d figured out a system. As if they were on the same wavelength. As if they were meant to be together.

  Carla would pick out a couple of books, write messages to him in the margins, then hold them up outside his window, so he could see the cover and knew what ones to choose from the collection she delivered to the jail. At first she’d written tidbits about his son. What Ethan was doing, eating, saying. And he’d asked her questions. That had developed into sharing their feelings for one another. And finally, their special communication system had given her the chance to locate the best spot and time for Pender to use the wrecking ball on the building and let Hess know how Carla would set him free.

  The only time she’d gotten close to being caught was when the coroner had taken notice. She’d flirted with the old man a little, made him think she visited the morgue to see him, and he’d never questioned her behavior again. Not until she’d knocked him out with the ASP.

  “I want to be with you, Dixon,” Carla said. “Nothing was going to get in the way of that. No one.”

  “How about my son? Did he get in the way?”

  “I love Ethan because he’s yours. I adopted him for you.”

  “You adopted him to get to me. There’s a difference.”

  Carla couldn’t really disagree. She could see how right they would be from the very first. “I love you. I’ve never known a more extraordinary man.” It was true, and her eyes misted as she said the words. She felt extraordinary just being around him.

  A muscle twitched along his strong jaw. “I want what’s mine.”

  “And we’ll get him, sweetheart. I promise.”

  “Not just him. I want the girl, Grace. I want to make Chief Valerie hurt. I want her to understand.”

  “I’ll help you. I’ll do anything. I have a place we can stay where they’ll never find us. I have been getting all the things you said.”

  He studied his knife, running his thumb across the sharp edge.

  Carla felt breathless. “I can help you. Really. Together we can do everything you want. I can be everything you want.” She leaned forward, bringing her nipples closer to his hands, wishing he’d touch her, wanting him to kiss her, trying to make him believe as much as she did.

  “Drive.” He shoved her back against the seat, dismissing her, as if now that she wasn’t shaking with fear, he didn’t find her attractive any more. “And if you really come through with all you’ve promised, maybe I’ll believe all these things you say. We’ll see.”

  Carla shifted the car into gear. She’d come through for Dixon. She would. He’d see. And together they would be unstoppable.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Six

  Val

  Pete behind the wheel, Val on the radio and holding on for dear life, they circled Lake Loyal, lights flashing and sirens blaring, heading for Rossum Park.

  “Jimmy’s car still hasn’t moved?” Val asked Oneida.

  “Our tracking system shows it i
n the same spot. He’s not answering my calls.”

  Pete swerved into the park’s entrance and skidded to a stop next to Jimmy’s black-and-white. The two of them were out as soon as the gear shift hit park. But of course, Olson reached the swing set first.

  Trying to catch up, Val hobbled over the pea gravel trail, watching as Pete took in the body propped on a swing, then crouched down and buried his face in his hands.

  Tied in place, Jimmy swayed back and forth in the stiff March wind. His throat had been cut, blood spilling down the front of his uniform, making it shiny black in the dim light.

  But she didn’t see the rest until she drew closer.

  Cuts marred every visible surface of his body.

  Cigarette burns seared straight through closed lids and into his eyeballs.

  And when the deputy coroner filling in for Harlan later stripped off his uniform, carved on Jimmy’s chest was one word.

  Justice.

  Epilogue

  Lund

  So this was what preparing for war felt like.

  The closest Lund had been to the military was playing baseball, and that wasn’t very damn close. But he’d been in tough situations before, waaaayyy over his head, and he knew it when he saw it.

  “Can’t we all just move into your brewery, buy a shitload of weapons, and wait for him to be caught?”

  Val leaned on a stall wall, probably exhausted after she, Grace and he had spent the afternoon loading the tons of gear that horses apparently needed when they traveled. “And who’s going to catch him? The police?”

  She had a point.

  “You really think Grace will be safer somewhere else?”

  “I don’t want to go,” Grace said.

  Val gave her a look then focused an even more pointed one on Lund. “Jack Daniels has dealt with lots of guys like Hess, and by dealt, I mean killed. In a situation like this, there’s nowhere I’d rather Grace be.”

  “Nowhere?” Grace said, flailing her hands in the air in the center of the stall aisle. “Even here?”

  Val directed another look Lund’s way, then returned to Grace. “Listen sweetie, Hess’s version of justice entails taking away everything I love. How long before he realizes I love the horses.”