What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  “Ashlyn—”

  “Did you want to speak to Craig?”

  “You mean he’s there? Good. Fill him in.”

  “I will.”

  She hung up. Craig glanced in the kitchen and then stepped toward her, his smile disappearing as soon as he was out of the repairman’s sight.

  “I thought I told you not to let anyone in while I was out.”

  “He was early.” She glanced at her watch again. “And you were late.”

  Craig nodded at the phone. “Daly?”

  “Seems our repairman’s prints were all over the headboard of Michelle Bohner’s bed.”

  “You think he’s a viable suspect?”

  “He did time for rape when he was nineteen. I think you should talk to her.”

  He nodded. “When he leaves. And you’re coming with me.”

  “Craig, seriously.”

  “I’m on the verge of asking Tain to stay here to night.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She saw the look in his eyes and sighed. “Fine, fine, okay, what ever. I’ll be upstairs getting paperwork done.”

  The man shook his head and snorted. “Look, I don’t want any trouble with anyone. I just want to run my business and be left alone.”

  “I only have a few questions.”

  “It’s never just a few questions. It’s questions, followed by a subpoena, followed by court dates. I mean, that’s what you’re after here, right? Police don’t come around asking about why some guy lost his job months earlier unless they’re looking at charging him.”

  Sims sank into a chair and slid a photo under the man’s nose.

  “Oh, good God.” He winced and pushed it back.

  “Mr. Williams, I know that’s not a pleasant thing to look at. And it isn’t a pleasant thing to have happen. Now, there’s a man who lives not too far from here whose daughter is missing. And that same man now has to hear that his son—” Sims tapped the photo— “has been victimized by a pervert like Alex Wilson. I think a bit of inconvenience to you and me isn’t so much to ask so that this family sees some justice.”

  Williams blew his breath out and leaned back. “Yeah, he worked for me. Good worker too. Always early, always willing to stay late, willing to put in extra shifts on evenings and weekends in the fall for all the church groups and youth groups and choirs and such. Never stole anything, never talked back.” He shook his head, gritting his teeth. “Should have known he was too good to be true.”

  “What happened?”

  “We did a Scout troop one night. Most of the kids had gone, but one boy hadn’t been picked up yet. The Scout leader said he was going to the bathroom and then he was going to phone the parents. Came back and found Alex coaxing the boy to pose for him. Alex denied it, but the Scout leader called me and threatened to talk to the police. I just live upstairs, so I was here in no time, and I took the camera. Told Alex not to sweat it, that the pictures would clear him.”

  “And they didn’t. The boy didn’t press charges?”

  “Well, the Scout leader was negligent. You know how it is. He left the kid alone with a stranger….” Williams shrugged.

  “And it wouldn’t look too good for your business if it came out that you’d been sending a pervert into schools to take photos of children, would it?”

  Williams sighed. “No. And I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep over this since it happened. It isn’t like I feel good about it.”

  “Just not bad enough to pick up the phone and maybe spare some other poor kid from being violated.”

  Williams turned away. “I’ve told you what I know. Now get lost, and let me get back to my business while I still have one.”

  Tain looked up to see Sims approaching.

  “How did it go with the parents?” Sims asked.

  Tain shook his head. “They were illegals, so they didn’t report her missing. All this time, holed up in a Catholic church, insisting nobody’s had access to their kids.”

  “Denial, huh?”

  “Big time. How’d you make out?”

  Sims filled him in and then showed him the warrant. “We’re ready to roll on him whenever. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to go after this other guy first or not.”

  Tain glanced at his watch. “I’ll ask a couple of guys on patrol to track him down. If they can bring him in after a few hours, we should be able to handle both this afternoon.”

  “This is the life of detective work, huh? Nonstop, all hours, what ever the case needs?”

  “My dog is filing to divorce me as his owner.”

  “Good thing you aren’t married then, eh?”

  “Yeah, well, you punch a clock. What’s your excuse?” Tain didn’t wait for an answer. He walked away to find the patrol cops he wanted to ask for a favor.

  Michelle Bohner’s face sagged when she recognized Craig.

  “This isn’t a good time.”

  “Is your husband home?”

  “He’s still away.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “I told you before. Jolene’s with him.”

  “Then why is this a bad time?”

  She swallowed. “Look, it’s just, I’m getting…Look, I’m expecting company.”

  “This won’t take long, Mrs. Bohner,” Ashlyn said. “But it is very important.”

  Michelle Bohner looked from her to Craig, and then her shoulders sagged. She turned on her heel, not bothering to open the screen door for them. “Fine.”

  Craig glanced at Ashlyn. He almost smiled when he saw the look in her eyes.

  Once inside, it was his first real taste of being back on the scene with his old partner. Her eyes took in everything, but not in a really obvious, intrusive way. She just had the ability to scrutinize her surroundings and make mental notes for future reference, ones that often proved essential to piecing together her impressions of a crime. Ashlyn may have been inexperienced on the job when they first worked together, but she’d never been sloppy.

  “I was wondering if you could provide a list of all the people who were in your house, say the week prior to your attack,” Craig said, noting there was no offer of a beverage this time. Michelle Bohner had promptly sat down across from him, leaning forward with her hands clasped together, her backside on the edge of the cushion, as though she expected to jump up suddenly at any moment.

  Ashlyn’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at the display, then at Craig apologetically. She left the room for a moment, leaving Craig and Michelle to sit in silence. Craig almost wished Ashlyn would take the lead with this woman when she came back. Unlike Lori, Ashlyn didn’t feel the need to prove herself by taking control.

  “Look, Mrs. Bohner, I’ve already told you how difficult it can be to get a conviction in cases like this. You phoned the police. You made a statement. You consented to let us search your house for evidence. One of the things we need to do now is eliminate any prints that had a reason to be there so that we make sure we don’t suspect people who had legitimate business in your home.”

  Her eyes stayed focused on a spot on the coffee table, an imaginary stain that she leaned forward and rubbed with the end of her sweater.

  “Nobody should have been in my bedroom.”

  “Nobody at all?”

  She shrugged, still avoiding his gaze. “Just the family. And I had cleaned the house earlier that day, so even then…” She shrugged again.

  “So you didn’t have a reason to have anyone upstairs? No leaky toilet or faulty electrical outlet or something that required you to call in a repairman?”

  Her head snapped up then. “Why do you ask?”

  “Mrs. Bohner, I’m just trying to think of any possible reason that someone might have been upstairs. Little things that might not seem important could make the difference between identifying a viable suspect or accusing the wrong person.”

  She sat with her mouth hanging open, the lower lip trembling visibly, staring first at Craig and then at Ashlyn as she walked back into the room.

&nb
sp; Craig glanced at Ashlyn, willing her to understand that he’d be okay if she wanted to jump in on this. He watched her mouth twist slightly, and then Ashlyn pulled a photo down from a shelf, one of the ones tucked in the back a bit.

  “Is this your husband?” Ashlyn asked, holding the picture up as she moved over to the couch Craig was sitting on. Ashlyn sat down beside him and passed him the photo.

  “Yes.”

  “Which department is he with?”

  Michelle shook her head. “None, not now. Early retirement. Got cancer. All that ash and crap that firefighters breathe in, you know. He was cleaning that garbage out of the engines. Still fighting over the medical.”

  “I hear more and more firefighters are getting compensated for things like this.”

  “And they should,” Michelle said. It was the only thing she’d said with conviction since they’d walked in.

  Ashlyn leaned forward a bit. “Mrs. Bohner, we do have a possible suspect. Having that list Craig asked you for, it isn’t to cause problems for your friends or family. It’s just to make sure we’re looking in the right direction. If the name we’re looking at is on your list, then we’ll know we haven’t found the man who raped you. And if it isn’t, then we’ll bring him in for a chat at the station and hopefully press charges. That should help give you some closure. It isn’t perfect, but it’s the only thing we can offer you.”

  “And then I suppose you’d want me to explain why anyone was up there and prove what they were doing and that it was legitimate business.”

  Ashlyn glanced at Craig, and he looked back at her, shrugging slightly. Just then, the front door opened.

  “Hey, babe, I managed to fit that job in early, so I stopped and got us some…”

  The words stopped as soon as Bob walked into the living room and saw Craig and Ashlyn sitting across from Michelle.

  “Make yourself right at home,” Craig said. This time when he glanced at Ashlyn, he watched her eyes widen and then narrow. She clenched her teeth and looked at Michelle.

  “It would seem you have some explaining to do, Mrs. Bohner.”

  “You can’t do this,” Alex Wilson squawked.

  “We can, and we are,” Tain told him. “Look here. It says we have the right to seize all photographic equipment, films, photo albums, video tapes, DVDs, CDs that might be storing photos, your cell phone—”

  “Oh, and you’re under arrest,” Sims said.

  “On what charge?”

  “We found your pictures on the Internet. Distributing child pornography. Not only something that even BC judges are known to frown on occasionally, but something that will earn you a special place in the hearts of your fellow inmates. They’ve got their own little scale of filth, and this will put you right at the bottom.”

  “Where you belong,” Sims added.

  “You babysit him, Sims. I’ll watch these guys.” Tain turned to find himself nose to nose with Greg.

  “You can’t call my guys and hassle them about your cases,” Greg told him.

  “The hell I can’t. I’m still waiting on prints from the fire scene. The one where Ashlyn almost killed herself to get that evidence. Shit, Greg, we think he’s going to kill another girl this week. That means in a matter of days we’ll have another body on our hands and another fire.”

  “Hey, it’s not like I’m trying to make your life difficult, Tain. It’s just the way things are. We’re swamped. Short staffed, operating under what should be our standard bud get, overworked…What the hell do you want me to do about it?”

  “Look, Greg, I go over your head on something like this, it isn’t personal. The only thing I care about right now is solving this case before we’ve got another dead child to deal with.”

  “Then do me a favor and try not to shut down a porn distribution network between then and now. Couldn’t you have waited a few fucking days for this?”

  They’d been walking through the house, surveying the search when they stepped into a back room, the mother load. Walls of videos, dated and labeled, photo albums, stages for posing kids on…

  “Overworked and operating under bud get,” Greg said, shaking his head as he looked around. “Who the hell is going to cata log all of this?”

  “Jesus,” Tain said, feeling his stomach drop.

  “Somehow, I doubt he’ll be up for it,” Greg muttered.

  Daly groaned. “What?”

  “They’ve been having an affair. She said it goes back to her husband’s days with the fire department.”

  “Then why cry rape?”

  “Seems the neighbor heard a lot of…noise,” Ashlyn said as she passed Craig and Daly their drinks and sat down, her lip curling. “Michelle was afraid her husband would hear about it and start asking questions. Not even dumb enough to think about the fact that she’s got the guy strolling in the front door in broad daylight.”

  “So she lies and says she’s been raped. She wasted police resources and manpower….” Daly shook his head. “What do you want to do about this?” he asked Craig.

  Craig shrugged. “It’s your call. She definitely deserves to be charged for filing a false report. Waste of man hours, money.”

  “So what’s next for you two?”

  “Well, we’ve eliminated the department repairman as a suspect.”

  “Good work, Craig. That’s stellar progress,” Daly said dryly.

  “I get the bed all to myself to night,” Ashlyn added.

  Daly looked like he’d stuck a wedge of lemon in his mouth.

  “What Ashlyn means is that I’m on night shift, so this is the first real opportunity anyone would have to come after her.”

  Daly nodded, his mouth still twisted.

  “I’ve got a list I’m working on,” Ashlyn said. “So far, nothing’s really jumping in the name check with the department.”

  “Well, I hope you can come up with something, and fast. Tain and Sims have gone to arrest Alex Wilson.” Daly glanced at his watch. “Good work on that, Ashlyn. I have to go.”

  After Daly left, Ashlyn asked, “Is it just me, or does he seem unusually tense?”

  “Probably just doesn’t want to think about us sleeping together.”

  “Well, to night he doesn’t have to.”

  “No. Tonight he has even worse things to think about.”

  “So, Alex. It looks like we have a lot to talk about.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  “Well, not that it matters much. Your private video collection speaks volumes.”

  Tain sank down into the chair across from Alex Wilson and leaned back, arms folded across his chest. Sims was leaning against the wall, watching.

  “You’ve got no right…”

  “Oh, but we do, Alex. Remember the search warrant? Signed by a judge. We’ve got hard evidence, linking you to distribution of child porn via the Internet, as well as your own personal collection.”

  “Not to mention the reason you lost your job,” Sims added.

  Alex’s head jerked up then, and when he saw their faces, his shoulders sagged.

  “Williams won’t talk.”

  “He already did,” Tain told him.

  “I knew I should have just walked away. I knew…” Alex’s jaw clenched, and he looked back down at the table.

  “Of all the people to be in the park that day, it just happened to be you. There you were, probably jerking off in the bushes while you watched the little boys at the playground, and out of nowhere this blond, curly-haired boy appears, all alone.”

  “Opportunity like that, you’ve got to jump on it,” Sims said.

  “Couldn’t let him walk away on his own.”

  “You never know what might have happened to him,” Alex mumbled.

  “You mean what might have happened that would have been worse than having you take advantage of him and make photos for perverts with his face on them?”

  “Not the same as those girls,” he responded, the thin voice barely above a whisper.

&nbs
p; “Fuck, no. But bad enough that this little boy’s dad is already worried about his missing daughter, and now he’s got to hear about this.”

  “He gets his hands on you, he’s liable to string you up by your balls,” Sims said.

  Alex turned white. “I…I should probably call a lawyer.”