by Rachel Lee
Eventually, Jeff and Randy would graduate to inside seats and younger men would stand here. But even hanging on here was better than being a volunteer, those who responded only when needed.
Soon the summer would dry out the grasslands and firefighting would sometimes become a full-time job for them all. Randy liked those times best, not only working to beat back the flames but because firefighters came from everywhere to help out. When they weren’t actually facing the flames it was like a big party. A tired party, but still.
And those were the times he felt best about himself. People treated them all like heroes. He guessed they were, actually. Today they’d saved a woman and a baby.
He hadn’t known about the baby. No one had. “Say, Jeff?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think no one knew there was a baby in there until Old Man Kroner shouted it out? Was it, like, a secret, or something?”
“I dunno,” Jeff answered, leaning as the truck turned into the station. “I thought everyone around here knew everything about everyone.”
“Yeah. Kinda weird.”
“Well, it looked like it was just born. Maybe the grapevine didn’t reach us yet.”
“Maybe.” Randy pondered that as the truck slowed to a halt. One of the advantages of being in such a small town was you knew who might be in a dwelling when you responded. People didn’t get easily overlooked. Which made the Buell arson even weirder. Someone who’d burn a house full of people was scary.
It was troubling, something Randy hoped would be solved—and soon.
* * *
Charity walked into the firehouse through a side door just as the final truck rolled up and joined two others in the bay. A young woman with red hair, wearing a comfortable dark blue station uniform, sat at the desk. Those uniforms were designed not to impede movement, as they were worn under the turnout suits, and designed not to ignite easily. Over her breast, a shield was embroidered, her last name below it.
The woman sat facing a wide plate-glass window that looked into the truck bay, surrounded by consoles and equipment. Her eyes widened as she took in Charity’s apparel.
Definitely going to have to change into native garb, Charity decided. Soon. “Hi, I’m Charity Atkins, arson investigator for the Buell fire. The chief has an appointment with me and he told me to wait here for him.” She wondered if she imagined the flash of instant dislike on the woman’s face, then brushed it aside. A lot of people, including officials, didn’t like arson investigators. Or maybe it was the suit.
The woman stood and offered her hand. “Donna Willem, fire inspector and admin, former smoke eater. Have a seat. Help yourself to coffee.”
Charity looked at the dregs in the pot and decided to do without. She took the simple metal chair and summoned a smile for Donna. “Thanks. Why former?”
Donna patted her hip. “I took a fall during a barn fire. Can’t climb ladders anymore, and frankly carrying the equipment got painful, too.” She sat. “We’re not so busy that I don’t get bored.” She held up an e-reader. “But I do read lots of good books.”
Charity laughed. “There are advantages to most things. I volunteered with a fire department for a while.”
“Yeah?” Interest sparked in Donna’s gaze. “Why’d you quit?”
“It was a temporary thing from the start. Sort of job training so I’d be a better arson investigator.”
“Ah.” Donna studied her as if she didn’t much care for Charity. It had to be the expensive suit. “Arson infuriates me.”
“Me, too. Do you see much of it?”
“Kids sometimes get careless. But in the past year or so...” She shrugged. “Sometimes things come in bunches. Chief says three fires have been arson, including the last one at the Buell Ranch. Say, can you tell me something?”
Charity tensed. Her investigations had to remain private. “If I can.”
“Edna Buell’s a friend of mine. I’m worried about her and her family. Does your insurance cover arson? I’ve always wondered.”
Well, that was easy. “Unless the arsonist is the owner of the property or his agent, yes.”
“Good.” Donna swiveled her chair a bit as if trying to loosen up some back muscles. “Must be difficult to figure out sometimes.”
“It’s always difficult.” Even more difficult when you had some guy with loads of money breathing down your neck and you suspected he’d gotten tired of owning that building. Or couldn’t pay the taxes or upkeep. Some guy who could afford to pay some slime to start the fire. But you had to prove it.
“You gonna be here long?”
Charity shrugged. “Only as long as it takes me to clear the Buells. A few days, I hope.”
“Bet you work with cops, too?” Donna asked.
“When it’s needed.”
“Must be an interesting job.”
Charity nodded, watching through the plate-glass window as the next important tasks were carried out. No rest for the weary. Equipment had to be cleaned, checked out and stowed. Then the truck would get babied. No relaxation for these men for hours yet to come. By the time they hit the showers, they’d be dead on their feet, probably.
Fighting a fire took a lot out of person, she’d learned. Not just the weight of all their equipment, but the heat inside the protective gear, the inevitable adrenaline rush, a lot of hard labor... Fatiguing. This hadn’t been a terrible fire—they’d only battled it for an hour or so—but they were guzzling water from bottles as if they’d spent a week in the Sahara.
A door to one side of Donna opened and Chief Wayne Camden stepped in. He was swigging from a water bottle, too, and his hair was damp. He must have just showered, because the soot was gone.
He wore the simple blue uniform of this department, with black work boots on his feet. Apparently he didn’t always follow the custom of white shirt for higher-ranking members. For the first time she noted that he was tall, lean and muscular. Staying in shape was important in this job for a variety of reasons, and he apparently knew it. His hair looked almost black, maybe because it was still wet, but his eyes were a silvery gray that reflected some of the blue in his uniform.
“Ms. Atkins,” he said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Charity rose, smiling. “For good reason, I think. You took quite a risk going for that baby.”
He shrugged it off. Of course he’d taken a risk. That was what firefighters did. She felt almost stupid for even saying it. “Come into my office. It’s not the neatest place in the world, but it works.”
She saw what he meant as he ushered her through the narrow door. Files were stacked everywhere, as if the filing cabinets had run out of space. They were neat stacks, but still stacks.
“It’s all on the computer,” he said, gesturing to the machine on his desk. “Eventually the paper goes to the archives.”
“How many years does that take?”
He glanced at her as he motioned her to take a seat, then sank into his own chair on the other side of the desk. Battered leather, it had clearly seen better days, and it creaked beneath his weight. “Seven years,” he answered, then laughed. “You’d be surprised how often the paper is needed.”
“Probably not,” she said, returning his smile. “Bureaucracies.”
“At every level.” He leaned back and the chair creaked some more. “So you want to examine the Buell place.”
She nodded, wishing his gaze was less steady. Something about it made her aware that he was a man. She didn’t want it, didn’t need it, and she wouldn’t be here long anyway. The sting of her last breakup was still fresh. She needed to focus on the task at hand, not this man. “You said it was arson.”
“It most definitely was. You ever walk into a building a day after a fire?”
“Quite often.”
“Then, you kn
ow. You can sometimes smell the accelerant. I always thought that was odd, that it can leave behind an odor when it should all burn up. The aromatics should be gone.”
“Aren’t they usually?”
“True. But the stench of kerosene and gasoline cling for a long time. If you use too much and some of it doesn’t burn...” He shrugged one broad shoulder. “Of course there are some you can’t smell.”
She wondered why he was schooling her. She was the arson specialist. She might have gotten annoyed at being patronized, but somehow he didn’t give her that feeling. It was more as though he was trying to shift mental gears and get into the groove on the Buell fire. He drank more water and offered her a bottle from the small fridge beside his desk. She accepted it gratefully. Flying always left her parched.
Suddenly he zoomed in on her and on the subject at hand. He leaned forward, as if he had finally fully switched mental zones. “It was arson, all right. I don’t think the Buells did it, and you can’t smell accelerant in the house—just in the barn. More important, it went up too hot and fast. Who the hell around here would know a different way to start a fire?”
He had her full attention now, too. And now she understood why he’d mentioned aromatics, the things you could smell. He hadn’t been schooling her. He’d been working up to something.
“Do you think the Buells did it?” he asked her.
“I haven’t seen the site.”
He shook his head almost irritably. “Don’t fence with me. You’re the insurance carrier, you know their coverage. Do they stand to gain from this?”
“It’s always possible,” she said truthfully. “Even the minimally insured have been known to set fires in order to get aid. But really, I have to see the extent of the damage and evaluate some other things before I can say.” And if that made him feel protective of people he knew, too bad.
“Black bones pointing to the sky and some dead livestock,” he said shortly. “There isn’t a whole lot left except the herds out in pasture. Amazingly, we didn’t get a grass fire. It was hot, it was too fast and the Buells were damned smart to have alarms. Now Fred Buell is out there every day trying to tend his cattle from the back of a truck with the help of neighbors. He didn’t gain a thing that I can see except a whole pack of new problems.”
She nodded, willing to accept his judgment for now. Her own would come later.
He stood up and went to stare out his own plate-glass window at the men who were finishing the cleanup. “We got us a firebug, Ms. Atkins. Bad and mean. I want him.”
“Your inspector mentioned this was the third arson in a year.”
“Close to. Less than a year, to be specific. The first two were definitely gasoline, but this one is different. If they’re the same perp, then we have a huge problem. He’s getting smarter.” He turned and looked at her. “And more dangerous. The first two didn’t go up like a bomb. We had time to get out there, and the ranchers are pretty good with a hose themselves. This time...” He shook his head, a dark frown on his face. “Are you gonna help me?”
She started. She hadn’t expected this. She had come to assess one situation, not hunt for an arsonist. But something in her quickened, and she felt a touch of his fury.
“I hate arsonists,” she said finally. “Passionately. I’ll do what I can, what my job allows.”
After a moment he said, “Fair enough. You’re an expert. I’m not really. I can recognize arson, can usually tell where the fire started and what caused it. But this is different. I need some expertise around here. I sent for a state investigator, but they’re shorthanded. I’ve covered the points of ignition I could find, but with every passing minute, evidence is disappearing.”
She completely understood and shared his concern. While she had no stake in any of this, she did indeed want to help figure out what had happened and who had done it before this creep managed to kill someone. Still, given her job, there were definite limits on what she could do. She also liked that Wayne Camden cared this much. She’d known some who didn’t.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll go out first thing in the morning. Where are you staying?”
“There’s a motel...”
He shook his head sharply. “You won’t catch any diseases there, but you’ll be right across the street from the truck stop. It’ll be noisy and it’s probably not what you’re used to.”
“I’ll survive,” she answered, but just from the way he’d objected to the idea, she already felt her skin starting to crawl.
He returned to his desk and picked up his phone, dialing a number from memory. “Hank? Wayne. Listen, I got an arson investigator in town for a few days. You wanna do me a favor? She needs a place to stay, and I don’t mean the La-Z-Rest. Yeah, okay.”
When he hung up he said. “Solved. A friend of mine has a furnished house for rent. You can use it, no charge.”
Astonishment filled her. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he used to be a fireman, too. Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”
* * *
She followed his red SUV down narrow tree-lined streets for a few blocks until he pulled up in front of a small house. A man was waiting for them outside, the perfect image of a cowboy except he canted a little, suggesting he had some kind of back trouble.
He smiled and held out his hand. “Hank Jackson.”
“Charity Atkins. It’s so kind of you to do this.”
He shook his head. “Teeny little thing. The place is empty. Empty houses aren’t happy houses. It’s fully furnished, though. Some groceries and you’ll be all set. Let me show you.”
“Tell her about Maude’s,” Wayne Camden said. “I need to get back to the station. Paperwork awaits.” He paused and looked at Charity. “I live just one street over, not that I get home often. Hank here can help you with just about anything, okay?”
“Thanks so much.”
“No problem. Not for me anyway. Should I pick you up around eight in the morning?”
Converted to Eastern Time, she realized, that would be her equivalent of ten. “Or I can come by the station after I get some breakfast.”
“Okay, I’ll see you there.”
He strode to his car, leaving her with Hank Jackson, a man with a weathered face and eyes that crinkled when he smiled.
“So you were a firefighter, too?” she asked.
“A long time ago. Now I’m just a cowboy. Come on in. Make yourself at home.”
* * *
Elsewhere, an arsonist pondered the arrival of the insurance investigator. How much did she know? How much could she figure out? Was she like the state investigator?
That was worrisome. The delay in getting the state guy down here created time between the fire and the investigation, and time made evidence go away, killing it with sun, wind and rain. Longer was better.
If the woman was a threat, the arsonist needed to know. Certainly, the fires had to stop for now. Frustrating, but necessary. There was no way to explain that the fires were meant to be helpful. Watching the investigator became paramount. If she became a threat, she would have to be removed somehow.
But that Buell fire had been something else, far more than the arsonist had expected. So fast, so all-consuming, way beyond the plan. Watching it erupt had been a thing of pure beauty and pure terror. The arsonist had been afraid of it, even at a distance. Way beyond control, not supposed to happen that way. The kind of fire that would draw major attention from every direction. A mistake.
Looking through binoculars, the arsonist had made sure the family escaped, and only then could enjoy the show. Sheets of flame reaching heavenward, whirling in fiery tornadoes, the sparks creating fireworks as the house and barn had collapsed. The biggest fire, short of a wildfire, ever. Two buildings, barn and house. That hadn’t been intentional, but the show... Well, maybe that
made it worth it.
A perfectly created work of art. And all of it for a good cause.
But that arson investigator could prove to be a huge headache. Something drastic might need to be done.
With memories of that gorgeous fire still dancing, the arsonist decided the investigator needed to be driven away. Somehow. With any luck, it wouldn’t take much.
But if she nosed around too much, killing her was a possibility.
Chapter 2
By morning, Charity felt she had begun to land. Yesterday had been long, with a red-eye flight out of Atlanta to Denver so she could catch the puddle jumper to Conard City in time for her meeting with the chief.
She was used to it, did it often enough, but by the time she could finally hold still, she was ready to crash. She hadn’t even considered getting dinner. A shower and a comfy bed met her needs.
It was dark when she awoke, still on Atlanta time. She turned on all the lamps and light poured through the house, revealing it to be pleasant, and dashed with color here and there as if someone had tried to brighten it. Better than most motel rooms any day, and Charity felt grateful to Wayne and Hank. She’d only be here a short while, but she’d at least be comfortable when she wasn’t working.
Today, however, looked like the day to start wearing her real work clothes: jeans, shirt, boots and jacket. No place for the fancy suits while wandering around the fire scene.
She found coffee of an indeterminate age and a coffeepot. She made some and tasted the staleness, the oils just on the brink of going bad. She guzzled half the pot anyway, then realized that morning was beginning to arrive. Already she felt halfway into her workday. Funny how much difference a two-hour clock change could make.
Now that she felt fully rested and awake from the caffeine, Wayne Camden popped into her thoughts. Attractive man. Very. Then she struck that off her mental list. No time, no desire. One-night stands weren’t her thing, and these days she was burned out on relationships. It amazed her how often men could become controlling, resenting her work hours, her frequent trips out of town. Her job was part of the package and she was up-front about it. Yet still, sooner or later, the guy would get unhappy. Danged if she could figure it out.