Playing with Fire

by Rachel Lee

  “What are you thinking?” he asked as they climbed into the car and headed for the Buell ranch. The first signs of dawn might just be barely visible to the east. But only barely.

  “I was just thinking about how helpful you’ve been. A lot of fire and law officials I work with resent me. I guess they see me as an interloper. A bean counter who might just get in the way. It’s not always easy.”

  “I’m surprised anyone would react that way. You didn’t come here to hamper anything, merely to collect the facts.”

  “You’d think. But apparently someone already thinks differently about what I’m here to do.” She shook her head a little. “I don’t get it, either. I can’t pin the arson on anyone. That’s the job of the fire people and the law. At best I can raise suspicions. The sharing goes both ways, although I’ll be the first to admit more of it comes my way.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly helped me. I’m glad you found those holes, and the scenario you developed explains a lot that had me scratching my head. That’s a good thing.”

  “It may be a good scenario, but it doesn’t explain enough. Like who and when. Is the sheriff going to keep an eye out?”

  “For practice sites? He said he would, but on the qt. You should have heard him groan.”

  She laughed quietly. “I can imagine. I’m starting to appreciate the size of his jurisdiction.”

  “Well, at least some of the mountains fall to the Forest Service, but not all. He might ask ERT to keep an eye out.”

  “ERT?”

  “Our emergency response team. Years ago it started with one medevac helicopter, a pilot, a mechanic and a nurse. Now it’s a whole lot bigger. More helicopters, a few small planes, more medical personnel and a lot of volunteer rescue searchers.”

  “How’d you manage to avoid growing an arsenal?”

  “When the defense department started handing out free goodies, our sheriffs were more interested in building up our search and rescue capabilities than an armory.”

  She thought that said a whole lot about this community. “Other than arson, does anything bad happen here?”

  “All the time. I think I mentioned the serial killer we had this past winter. Over the years, we’ve had our share of bad guys, big and small. Even a drug operation being run by one of our prominent ranchers. So yeah, it all gets to us one way or another.”

  “But you still focus primarily on people helping people?”

  “We try to. There are a lot of rugged individualists around here, but the odd thing is, even rugged individualists sometimes need neighbors, or a rush flight to medical facilities. Nobody really goes it alone.”

  She liked that philosophy. Sooner or later everyone needed help of some kind. It was true, she thought as she looked out the window at the passing dark countryside. You might have to be pretty self-reliant out here most of the time, but every so often...every so often you’d need neighbors to hold a potluck and a barn raising.

  Or a helicopter to swoop in and pick up someone who was injured or sick.

  “Living in a big city, I guess I take that for granted,” she said. “Help is always three digits away.”

  “It is here, too. It just takes longer.”

  She twisted to look at him. The light from the dashboard painted his face with a soft glow. Handsome, but more important a good man. He’d accepted her ugly little secrets and put them away somewhere inside him. He wasn’t pressing her, or dismissing her in any way. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he had done either. Voicing her hurts out loud sometimes made her feel very small and petty.

  So what if she’d been dissed by people who didn’t care to hear her thoughts or feelings? Why had she taken that so much to heart? Why had she let it cripple her? Why hadn’t she done exactly what he’d suggested? If they didn’t want to listen, then move on to someone who cared enough to listen.

  Instead, she’d crammed herself into an emotional box that she almost never opened, not even to herself. As if she was afraid of the things that roiled there. As if they were monsters that needed to be contained.

  What if they were?

  This time it was almost as if he sensed the direction of her thoughts. “You can talk to me,” he said. “I’m not afraid of your feelings.”

  Afraid of her feelings? What an odd way to phrase it. But maybe that was what had happened those other times. What if her feelings had been perceived as threatening? Then, that made them wrong, didn’t it?

  But what about the boyfriend who had just said he was sick of hearing about her feelings? He hadn’t felt threatened, just tired of it.

  “Charity?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “I can tell that all the way over here.” The car jolted a little as they rode over a rough spot on the road. “Share?”

  “I’m thinking that maybe I’m whiny.”

  “I’m thinking that maybe you’re sensitive. Not all of us are born with armor-plated feelings. We can be hurt. Quite easily, too. A couple of words can leave a scar as real as any knife.”

  She shifted again, easing a stiffness that wanted to creep into her shoulders. “I was always told that old saw about sticks and stones.”

  “I’m not buying it.”

  Surprisingly, a small giggle escaped her. “How’d I know that?”

  “Maybe because you know it’s true. You can break a leg and heal from it good as new. Heck, you can even crack your skull and survive it all right. But a few well-aimed words? They can’t be erased. And if they hit just right, the scar remains forever.”

  “Possibly. Did it happen to you?”

  He laughed quietly. “I think I was a freshman in high school. Something of an instigator for pranks and things. Anyway, a teacher told me I had a chip on my shoulder. I still remember my reaction as if it happened yesterday. I didn’t see myself that way at all. I was having fun, not trying to start fights but, man, did that hit me hard. I spent days, maybe weeks wondering if she was right. It was as if my head got knocked around a hundred and eighty degrees. True or not, it affected my behavior and I’ve never forgotten it. Maybe the teacher did me a favor.”

  “Or maybe she was wrong.”

  “I’ll never know, will I? I can’t see myself through anyone else’s eyes. But it sure made me reevaluate myself.”

  How he knew where they were, she couldn’t imagine. They were out so far that all she saw was an occasional sign designating the county road number. But he knew where to turn, and as they did she saw the gray light of dawn limning the mountains to the east. Now they were on the ranch road, bouncing quite a bit and moving slowly.

  “We’ll be a little early, in terms of the sun,” he remarked. Then he added, “I only heard that criticism once, but it stuck with me. I can only imagine how I’d feel if I’d heard it from more people than that teacher. I’d probably be absolutely convinced there was something wrong with me.”

  She drew a deep breath, liking him more than ever, and admitted, “There’s something wrong with me now, that’s for certain. Even if there wasn’t before, there is now.”

  “You’ve tried to shut down?”

  “Exactly.”

  They jolted along for another minute before he spoke. “Well, I’m only a fireman, not a psychologist. But I happen to like you a whole lot, and other than trying to find a chink in your armor so I can get to know you, I don’t have any complaints. You’re safe with me, Charity. That much I can promise.”

  Oddly enough she believed him. What did that mean? She ought to know by now how unsafe it was to trust anyone, but here she was, trusting Wayne Camden. She hoped she didn’t learn another painful lesson.

  At last they reached the site. The morning had just begun to take on a rosy glow; the sun still hadn’t quite crept above the mountains. Despite the hulking black skeletons in front of her, she saw
past them.

  “This is beautiful country,” she remarked as they pulled up closer to the ruins.

  “It is,” he agreed. “Come back this summer and I’ll take you camping in the mountains. You might freeze if we tried that now.”

  “Good point. I haven’t acclimated yet.” As they climbed out, she was reminded how true that was. The wind that never ceased out here nipped at her ears and tried to find its way into the collar of her jacket.

  The greening spring grasses silenced their footsteps as they headed over toward the barn. The peaks of the western mountains were already brightening with daylight. It was odd, she thought as she stood there waiting, to watch the light creep down the mountains toward them, as if it would arrive from the west.

  Then everything changed as the sun poked above the eastern horizon and bathed the world with warm light. Almost moment by moment she could see the contrast increasing as day conquered the world.

  Wayne didn’t say anything, simply standing beside her as she soaked it in, as if he understood her appreciation. As if he shared it.

  But then it was time to start work.

  This place was as unique as any she had ever lived. She kept looking out and around as they walked over the ash and charcoal of the barn remnants, seeing a wild, open kind of beauty unlike some of the supposedly exotic places she had lived. She was beginning to understand why people loved this place.

  “What are we looking for?” she asked.

  “I’m pretty sure kerosene or gasoline was the accelerant. I believe the lab tests will confirm it. I guess I’m just hoping something got overlooked.”

  “You want a clue?” She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Look around, Wayne.”

  He flashed her a grin. “Hope springs eternal. You know how weird it is the way some things don’t burn? I can hope, at least until we walk away and the bulldozers arrive.”

  A couple of supporting posts on the south side of the barn hadn’t burned through, indicating that they had probably been farthest from the fire. A nail poked out of one, about the height for hanging something. Here and there she caught traces of larger pieces of blackened wood and something that looked like roof tiles. From the burn marks she could see the outline of stalls, maybe some small rooms near one end. A piece of leather tack looked surprisingly untouched. But overall it looked like the inside of a fire pit that had burned itself out.

  She scuffed a little at the ground, stirring up the ashes and dead coals, wondering what might be buried beneath. Once the roof collapsed, it might have snuffed out some of the fire beneath it, although that had probably happened too late.

  Metal tubes of unknown purpose were scattered around, blackened like everything else but still whole. She tried “softening” her focus, hoping that she’d be more likely to discover something that wasn’t just more of the same black.

  Wayne was poking around near the floor with a telescoping rod, stirring things around. Probably a pointless task, she thought. While he was right that the weirdest things somehow survived a fire, how likely was it that they’d find a clue?

  “Don’t come over here,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I found at least one calf. You don’t want to see if you don’t have to.”

  She didn’t want to. The dead animals weren’t covered by the property insurance, so she had absolutely no need to check into any claim about whether or how many head Buell had lost.

  Finally she walked upwind, escaping the acrid smell and other unpleasant odors. She recognized some of them, but she didn’t need to swim in them. Burned flesh, burned hair, other things.

  She turned to stare over all the destruction, the house, the barn. It still didn’t make sense. Would it ever? A family in the house, animals in the barn. An extremely murderous arsonist. And even if the barn had been a “consolation” fire when the arsonist thought the house might not burn, why make it impossible for the animals to escape?

  The house. She stared at it, more troubled than ever. A family of five sleeping inside, saved only by recently installed smoke detectors. Even if the arsonist had miscalculated the extremity of a flashover in the attic, it was still risky from start to finish. Murder was a much bigger deal than arson, criminally speaking, and any time human lives were involved you moved into the territory of attempted murder.

  Of course, after yesterday, there was no reason to think they weren’t dealing with someone perfectly capable of murder.

  The question that kept gnawing at her was who would be next? Because someone like this wouldn’t just stop. They had to be stopped.

  Eventually Wayne joined her. “Nothing,” he said.

  “That’s the thing about arson. The evidence usually burns up. Gotta look anyway.”

  He nodded, his eyes narrowed as he scanned the scene. “This is just too damn clean. You can tell accelerant was used at three different places in the barn, all along one side, but that’s it. The dust caught, the hay caught and zoom. Buell would have aired the place out over the day, but toward evening he’d have been pitching hay and feed into the stalls for the animals, making more dust. He said there was hay in the loft. Then you close up for the night, and that dust might have settled except the cattle were probably restless. Maybe because someone they didn’t know was moving around outside or inside. Or maybe because kerosene had already been spilled. Restless, they stir up the dust, lots of it.”

  “And the air becomes essentially flammable.”

  “Then you have all that old dry wood, and whatever else in there that might burn easily.” He sighed. “So, all right. The dust might have flashed, singed some hair, but it might not have started a big fire except for accelerant. But once that dust flashed, the accelerant catches, the hay catches and that’s all she wrote.”

  “Or the accelerant ignites the hay, the dust flashes extremely hot and the fire spreads fast.”

  “Either way,” he agreed. “But too damn hot to leave evidence behind.”

  A distant rumble drew her attention. She looked toward it and saw heavy equipment making its way up the ranch road. “Time’s up,” she remarked.

  He strode toward the remains of the barn again, then stood there with his hands on his narrow hips, studying the scene as if it would speak to him. As if some message were writ there.

  All of a sudden, he straightened. “Charity?”

  She trotted over to him.

  “Do you see it?” he asked, pointing.

  “See what?

  “Can’t you see the pattern? Some of those stall doors were open.”

  * * *

  Wayne held off the dozers and the trenchers for about an hour as he and Charity strung a tape measure and started mapping the remains of the barn. The ranchers who had brought the equipment stood around impatiently, then finally started helping by holding the tape, calling measurements out, while Wayne sketched. Charity did her best to take GPS readings of every important location on Wayne’s satellite phone.

  When he was done mapping it, he took a bunch of photos. With the light still at an angle from the rising sun, the demarcations of all the interior doors and walls seemed to stand out.

  At last he appeared satisfied and told the workers he was done. From there he marched back to the house and stood looking at it, but this time he didn’t seem to see anything unusual. He paused once again to look at the small holes just above the foundation, but didn’t remark on anything.

  “We can come back to this,” he said as he and Charity walked toward his SUV.

  “Wanna tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “Not here.”

  Chapter 10

  Wayne didn’t say another thing all the way back to the station. Once there, he parked in his place at the rear of the bay, took his clipboard from Charity’s lap and tucked the map of the barn remains
down under the very bottom.

  “Let’s walk over to the diner and grab some real coffee. Edna Buell should be here in about twenty minutes.”

  Still curious, but almost able to feel the way his mind roiled, she didn’t ask him again about why the barn was troubling him now. What those open stall doors might mean.

  He paused long enough to let Donna and the crew know where he was going. When orders flew his way, he laughed and suggested he was going to need more than two sets of hands to carry that much latte. Donna and Jeff immediately offered to join them. Wayne waved away offers of money.

  Donna limped a little as she walked and fell in beside Charity. “Last night must have been terrifying for you. I was out there this morning so I can write my report. I can’t understand why someone would try to do that.”

  “Me, either,” Charity answered. “But maybe someone misunderstands my role here.”

  “Maybe so.”

  Jeff, striding along beside Wayne, looked over his shoulder. “So are you going to join us for drills on Monday? The guys were serious, you know.”

  Charity gave a little negative shake of her head. “You guys just want to show off and remind me how much I’ve forgotten.”

  “Naw,” said Jeff cheerfully. “Well, maybe partly. A fresh audience is always good. Chief here stands around barking when he’s not in the burn room with us. It’d be nice to have someone applaud.”

  Donna spoke. “How can you be sure she’d applaud? She’s done this before. Maybe you’ll all look like a bunch of hicks.”

  The tone was teasing, but Charity couldn’t let it pass. “I saw the crew in action twice since I got here. What I saw was a very professional team.”

  “See?” Jeff said to Donna.

  “And all because I bark so much,” Wayne joked. “Maybe I should bellow more. And where’s Randy today? I thought you guys always shared shifts.”