What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  After making an exhaustive list of every site she’d searched Ashlyn tilted her neck from side to side, rubbing at the little kinks that had settled in, and tried something different.

  She whistled and redid the search, localizing it to British Columbia, reducing the results by over a thousand.

  “Well, that’s a start…”

  After a few hours of taking notes about the relationship between sex and fire she clicked on an archived new article and leaned back, her eyes popping open as she pro cessed the details of the incident.

  Then she ripped out a fresh page of paper, made a list of notes and wrote down the reporter’s name.

  New guy makes the meals, new guy does all the cleaning, new guy has to kick ass in bench pressing and an assortment of other physical tests…. Craig hated to admit it but he hadn’t been at the gym enough lately. Some of those muscles burned.

  After he’d finished showering and changed, he walked into the sleeping area with his duffle bag. “So? Do I pass or what?”

  One of the guys pointed him to a locker. “All yours.”

  He pulled the door open and started unpacking a few things Quinlan had told him he’d need to keep at the hall.

  And a few things Quinlan hadn’t mentioned, like Ashlyn’s picture.

  They’d had to drive around to half a dozen different places and get cozy for the camera. He’d also found a picture of them from last fall, Ashlyn with shorter hair, which helped make it look like they’d been a couple for a long time. He pinned up a picture of Ashlyn alone and someone offered an appreciative whistle.

  “Hey, haven’t I seen her around?” somebody asked.

  Another guy snapped his fingers. “Isn’t she that cop? Working on those arsons?”

  “Who cares? She can hang out around here anytime.”

  “What’s this?” a new voice asked. “We letting anyone have a locker ’round here now?”

  “Rotation C, meet the new boy.”

  “New boy got a name?”

  “Craig Nolan.” He turned to survey the next shift starting to filter in.

  One of the men looked at him and then past him at the locker. He marched over, his eyes narrowing.

  “What the hell are you doing with her picture? She’s a cop, not a pin up girl.”

  Craig held up one of the photos of them together. “You got a problem with me having pictures of my girlfriend?”

  One of the men from Craig’s shift walked toward his locker, patting the new man Craig was speaking with on the shoulder.

  “Adrian has a thing for the ladies.”

  Adrian scowled. “Shut up, Brett.”

  “Well, geez, you’ve been the self-appointed guardian of her virtue ever since she started working on the arson cases. You and that partner of hers.”

  “I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t all a bunch of pigs.”

  “Face it, you didn’t know she was seeing someone and you just wanted to get into her pants.”

  Adrian lunged at Brett, and Craig stepped in, holding him back.

  “Back off,” Craig told him.

  Adrian held his hands up and backed away, his face red, eyes blazing. Once Craig was reasonably sure it was safe to turn around, he pointed a finger at Brett.

  “Don’t you ever talk about her like that in front of me again.”

  He slammed his locker door shut and walked away.

  The street was proving as busy today as it had yesterday.

  He finally managed to find a spot, right across from her house, and pulled over.

  She was hanging around at the corner today, swinging around a lamppost as the boys tried to jump the curb with their skateboards.

  She needed to be rescued.

  He practically jumped out of his skin when he heard the tap-tap-tap on the passenger window and turned to see a woman in a uniform standing there, a ticket book in her hands.

  His hands shook as he leaned across the seat and rolled down the window.

  “You’re being issued a parking ticket.”

  “Why? What’s the problem?”

  “This is a permit-only zone. Your vehicle isn’t displaying the proper permit.”

  “But I’m in it, so I can move it, no problem. No big deal.”

  “Once the ticket is written, it has to be issued.”

  “You could see I was sitting in the car.”

  She glared at him, tapping her pen against the paper. “What I can see is you’re parked in a restricted permit zone, watching a group of kids who live in this neighborhood. Next you’ll be giving me some song and dance about being a PI, hired by one parent to check up on the kid because the other parent has custody or some crap like that, but frankly, I don’t give a shit. My job is to make sure the people who park in these spots are the ones who’ve got a permit. You don’t. End of story.”

  The woman ripped the ticket off and tossed it on the seat. “Now move on, before I feel the need to call you in.”

  His fingers slipped on the keys twice, and he rubbed his hands on his pants. Then he started the car and drove away.

  “Sorry to…” Tain stopped as soon as he saw Daly’s face. Daly offered a slight nod toward a chair and Tain sat down, waiting.

  “Your list of substitute teachers. All the ones who worked with one child we left clear, two of the girls marked in yellow, three in blue. Same thing,” Zoe continued, tossing another pile of papers an inch thick down in front of him, “with the bus drivers.”

  “And these are the school and group photographers.” Eric slid a file across the table.

  There was silence for a moment, and Tain could see Daly looking down, his face hard.

  “Should I assume nobody connects to all four?” Tain asked.

  “Why should they? Our guy isn’t involved with all four girls.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Taylor Brennen,” Zoe snapped. “You thought you’d hold back on the fact that Nick Brennen isn’t her real father, that there’s someone out there with a pretty compelling motive for grabbing that girl.”

  “Just a second. For starters, we don’t know that John-John is her father. From a legal standpoint, Nick Brennen is her dad. I talked to John-John myself. He seemed genuinely surprised that anyone was asserting that he was Taylor’s dad.”

  “That’s not the tune he’s singing now, though, is it?”

  Tain lifted a hand and then let it fall to the table. “Then why’s he going over to Connie’s place flipping out if he grabbed her?”

  “The point is you withheld vital information to this investigation because you wanted to stay in control of it. Here you give us your bullshit about working as a team and not being after the credit when you’re sitting on relevant information that affects how this case is handled.”

  “I’m not sitting on anything. If you want to talk about credit, fine, let’s talk about who fucked this case up from day one and let it get out of hand, to the point where four girls have gone missing.”

  “Three.”

  “Four, at least.”

  Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean? You think there are other parents out there not looking for their missing kids? You’d say anything right now to try to justify keeping this case and you know it.”

  “Okay, that’s enough. Both of you, sit back down,” Daly said. “This isn’t helping anybody.”

  “I’m not happy about this.” Rob Quinlan looked at Tain. “We’re being kept in the dark.”

  “Look, this case has snowballed, and there are other investigations that are affected by it. I can’t just throw open the files for anyone now,” Daly said.

  “Are you saying we’re being officially shut out, after doing all this legwork?” Zoe spat the words.

  “I’m saying that if you have a problem with how it’s being handled, you have to go to Inspector Hawkins.”

  Tain noticed Rob’s shoulders sag, just the tiniest bit. It was about time Hawkins did something useful.

  “
I appreciate everything your team has brought to the table. Right now, I can’t disclose anything else about the status of the investigation,” Daly said.

  To Tain, Eric looked indifferent, Zoe’s face was burning, her eyes bulging, and Rob Quinlan looked like he was choking on hot sauce. He stomped out of the room, Zoe waiting only a second before she got up and marched after him.

  “Sorry about all of this,” Tain said to Eric as he stood up.

  “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t want to work with her either.”

  Once Eric had left, Daly walked to the door. Without looking at Tain, he paused only to say, “My office. Now.”

  When Ashlyn got to the store she asked for the salesgirl who’d helped Craig the day before.

  The man leaned across the counter and winked at her. “Nothing she can do for you that I can’t.” He frowned, looking her up and down. “Unless…”

  Ashlyn wondered when guys started being so fucking obvious, or if this case was really just making her hypersensitive. She tried to suppress her disgust. “I’m here to pick up some boots my boyfriend ordered. Craig Nolan.”

  “Oh, hi. We got those in.” The salesgirl came out of the back room with a stack of boxes balanced precariously in her arms. She walked past the counter to a display area. The man’s eyes followed her movements, focused on her backside and the swishing of the short skirt she was wearing.

  “Fire, police or paramedic?”

  “Excuse me?” Ashlyn stared at him.

  “Your boyfriend. Which is he?”

  She almost had to correct herself. “Fire.”

  “You look the type.”

  Ashlyn felt her eyes narrow, in spite of her best efforts to remain relaxed and nonjudgmental. “What kind of type is that?”

  “Here we go,” the salesgirl said, ignoring the conversation between Ashlyn and the salesman. “Now, I know Craig paid for these yesterday, but I still have to get you to sign this.” She removed an invoice record, made out in the names of Craig and Ashlyn Nolan, with Craig’s address at the top.

  “My last name isn’t Nolan.”

  “So there’s hope for me yet,” the salesman said, winking at her again. “Just sign his name for him.”

  Ashlyn did and grabbed the stack of boxes, pausing as she turned and saw the salesman holding the front door open for her. Despite the surprisingly cool breeze she stepped out into, she felt her cheeks burn with the certainty that this guy was mind-fucking her as she walked away.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Vish demanded when she walked into the house.

  “At work,” Lori responded, glaring at him.

  “You should know you shouldn’t be out wandering around alone.”

  “I wasn’t wandering around alone. I was just driving home from work.”

  “Whatever. I thought you were staying here.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, stop treating me like a baby! You’re acting as though walking out the front door will make me a target for every pervert around.”

  “It doesn’t take walking out the front door and you should damn well know that. What the hell are you doing back at work already, anyway?”

  Lori stiffened and started to march past him. He moved in front of her.

  “I’m not having this conversation with you. You’re being completely unreasonable about this.”

  “Me? I’m trying to protect you, to make sure you’re okay, that you work through this properly. How can going back to that job and dealing with psychopaths and freaks all day help you?”

  “See, I knew you wouldn’t understand. Just get out of my—”

  She glared at him as he grabbed her arms, enraged, ignoring the pleading in his eyes.

  “This isn’t helping you.”

  “You’re damn right about that! It isn’t. All you’re doing is making me stressed and agitated. I may as well have stayed at work.”

  “You can’t be serious. You’re going to use me as an excuse? You’re going to try to convince yourself that I’m driving you away? Lori, look at yourself. You look like shit. You’re tossing and turning half the night. You need help.”

  “So what, you’re going to solve all my problems? By trying to persuade me to stay here all day and be a happy homemaker?”

  “If that’s what it takes for you to feel normal again, then yes.”

  “Normal? You want me to feel normal? How the fuck do you think I’m supposed to ever feel normal again? This guy comes in here and…and…and now you want me to leave my career because you don’t think it’s suitable and that’s supposed to help me feel normal?”

  She yanked herself out of his grip and turned around, grabbed her coat and keys, and slammed the front door behind her.

  “Where were you?” Craig asked as soon as Ashlyn returned to the house.

  “Forging your signature at a shoe store.”

  He gave her a wry smile and grabbed the boxes as she slipped off her sandals. “Very funny.”

  “Seriously. I had to sign some paper saying I picked these up.”

  “Don’t want customers trying to get a second order free.” Craig set them on the small table in the corner of the kitchen. “Thanks for doing that.”

  “And thanks for cooking,” she said, surveying the array of pots simmering on the stove. “My trip to the store was a bit more interesting today.” She leaned against the counter and grabbed a carrot from the tray of vegetables he was dicing. From previous experience she knew he was actually a good cook, but he seldom bothered when he was alone. Unless he had company, Craig tended to live on takeout.

  “That girl give you more insight into male anatomy?”

  She laughed. “Hardly. Her co-worker was there and he’s a real womanizer. Ass man too.”

  Craig frowned at her. “Nice.”

  “No different than some of the guys we worked with last year.”

  “Probably not much different than any number of guys you walk past on a given day. Especially working those arson cases.”

  She chewed slowly as her eyes pinched together. “You know something that I don’t?”

  “You’re quite popular.”

  “I don’t think I want to know what that means.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked her as she started to walk into the hallway.

  “Upstairs to change. These short skirts are driving me crazy.”

  “Maybe you can sue the department for harassment, making you wear those.”

  “I’m going after hazard pay for the high heels,” she called back.

  Craig lifted the cutting board and scraped the vegetables into the pan just as the doorbell rang. He started to run to answer it and then stopped, turned the burner down, and walked to the door.

  For a moment they stood looking at each other. Craig tried half a dozen different lines in his head and couldn’t think of what to say. She solved the problem for him.

  “Can I come in?”

  He opened the door wider and stepped back. “I’m just making dinner.”

  “Smells good.”

  Lori followed him down the hall into the kitchen, where the contents of the pan were sizzling.

  “How did you find out where I live?”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  Craig glanced at her. “Not exactly reassuring.”

  “I meant for someone in the department.”

  “Right. What brings you by?”

  “No ‘can I get you a drink?’ or ‘want to stay for dinner?’ or ‘how have you been?’ formalities from you, huh?”

  He flushed as he looked up, but she offered him a bitter smile.

  “At least you’re consistent. You don’t baby me.” She stiffened. “Sorry. I’m intruding.”

  Craig followed her gaze to the hallway, where Ashlyn had paused.

  “No, not at all.” Ashlyn walked into the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink? Tea, juice, lemonade?”

  Craig noticed the pinch of Lori’s eyes, followed by the slightest widening, as thou
gh she’d just made a connection.

  “You work for the department, don’t you?”

  “Um-hmm. Iced tea?”

  “Sure.”