What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  Ashlyn’s nose wrinkled. “I’m having trouble picturing you with kids, Tain.”

  “If I can raise a dog, I can raise a kid.”

  She laughed. “Kids do more than go fetch.”

  “So does my dog.”

  “True. Your dog finds dead bodies in the woods.”

  “See? Raising him to follow the family career path.”

  “Yeah, but as I recall, your dog has a personality.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You know what I still don’t understand?” Sims said. “How did they connect?”

  “They were all Catholic,” Tain responded. “I talked to the parents at the hospital. Seems our man made customized religious charms or pendants for all these girls over the past few months.”

  “What about Maria’s family?” Ashlyn asked.

  “They had him come to the church to take an order. That’s how he saw her.” Tain looked over as Daly and a group of senior officers entered the room. “Here we go.”

  Ashlyn stood, her eyes fixed on Daly’s face. He gave her a tiny nod.

  Once they’d dealt with the compliments from their superiors and a press conference, Daly intersected Ashlyn. “Come to my office.”

  She followed wordlessly, sinking down in her chair.

  He went to his locked drawer, removed her gun and passed it to her.

  “No suspension, huh?”

  Daly shook his head.

  “What did that cost you?”

  “Nothing. On this case, under the circumstances? You didn’t even use deadly force. Every single officer at the scene backed you up, and a girl made a statement.”

  Her eyes widened. “They’ve got one talking already?”

  “Angie. Taylor hasn’t said a word, and Maria hasn’t stopped screaming. From what the doctors said, he almost killed her.”

  Ashlyn felt her lip curl. “He was spouting that religious garbage right to the end, you know?”

  “Guess he never heard of ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill.’”

  “Well, if someone had to die today, I can live with it being him.”

  “Go home. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better after a few days off.”

  “After we close the rape case.”

  Daly shook his head. “I’m pulling you out. It’s too much right now.”

  “Right now, almost everything I own is at Craig’s. I’m either sleeping there, or supervising a move.”

  He looked at her for a moment, face blank so she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Craig doesn’t have a shift to night anyway, so you shouldn’t be in any danger.”

  She stood up, reached for the door and then paused. “Any word on Lindsay?”

  “Critical condition. Every hour she holds on increases her chances.” Daly nodded toward the hallway. “You’d better go before Craig sends out a search party.”

  Craig listened to the message again, trying to place the name, and then it clicked.

  He dialed the number and glanced at his watch, consoling himself with the idea that any average family would be up by now.

  A voice yawned a greeting into the phone.

  “May I speak to Ryan Lewis please?”

  “Hang on.” The phone clunked against a hard surface, and then a voice yelled for Ryan to come to the phone.

  Another voice answered after a moment, the voice Craig vaguely remembered.

  “This is Constable Craig Nolan. You called and left a message for me.”

  “Hey, yeah, sorry to call at home. I was away camping until yesterday, and that’s when I heard something. You haven’t…have you already caught the guy?”

  Craig rubbed his forehead. “No, not yet.”

  “Well, this might not be anything.”

  “That’s okay. Whatever you heard, I’ll check it out.”

  “Okay, well.”

  Craig could hear him moving, sounds in the background getting quieter and louder simultaneously, as though he was moving away from a blender in the kitchen and toward a stereo. Then the music stopped, just as Craig placed the album as The Rising, which left him to wonder where his copy had gotten to.

  “You know how I told you about the house on the corner?”

  “I hope you didn’t go over there, snooping around.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. But the people who live there, they have a nephew about my age, Tommy. He stays with them sometimes when his mom has to work. When I got back from camping he was there, so he came over and we got talking.

  “He was telling me about this guy he saw in the alley the other night. Says this guy was there…” He paused. “You know.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You know. Jerking off. In the lane right behind that woman’s house.”

  “Did he get a good look at him?”

  Ryan rattled off a description, generic as it was.

  “What night was this?”

  “Sunday night.”

  “He see anything else, like a car?”

  “That’s the thing. There was a car parked down at the end of the alley, blocking it. Really pissed off Tommy’s family because they couldn’t get in. Tommy wrote down the make and model and license plate number and said they should call someone, have it ticketed or towed.”

  “Let me guess. They didn’t want to, because of their strained relationship with the local authorities.”

  He could hear the smile in Ryan’s voice. “Something like that.”

  Craig wrote down the information. “This is all great. Really helpful, Ryan.”

  “Enough to get me a tour of your precinct?”

  “Enough to get you a tour.”

  “Cool. But that’s not all.”

  “You have more?”

  “Tommy’s family was going on and on about how they’d seen that same car about a week earlier. He went back and asked when I was so interested.”

  “Are you telling me it was in the lane the night Nitara Sandhu was murdered?”

  “According to them, it was. So what’s that worth to you?”

  “Name your price.”

  “Well, a shooting lesson at the range would be cool.”

  Craig was just coming back down the stairs when Ashlyn walked in the door.

  He stopped short. “How did it go?”

  She held up her gun. “Cleared. Where are you going?”

  “I have a suspect.”

  “You do? Let’s go.”

  “Ashlyn, you should stay, get some rest.” He looked at her for a moment, then threw up his hands. “Fine. You know what? I’ll call Daly, see what he wants to do.”

  Within ten minutes, he’d joined her in the living room.

  “We’re waiting?”

  Craig nodded. “Daly’s sending someone to the place where he works to see what he’s up to. Should be able to bring him out without too much trouble.”

  “How’d you catch on to him?”

  As soon as Craig filled her in, the phone rang again. Ashlyn reached to the end of the small couch and grabbed the phone before Craig could, ignoring his frown.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” Daly told her.

  “Try me.”

  “It’s his day off.”

  “Have we got a home address?” she asked, putting the question as much to Craig as to Daly.

  Craig nodded. “But we might need a warrant.”

  Daly’s voice was talking in her other ear. “I’ll run the warrant through. I want you two here to pick it up. I’ve got a couple officers here who can go out with you.”

  “Feeling awfully generous, Daly.”

  “You put a lot of hard work in on these cases, and I know you want to get this guy. Plus, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “We’re on our way.”

  As soon as Lori saw Craig and Ashlyn enter the building, she felt her stomach flip.

  Ashlyn had been there all night on the other case. Now she was here with Craig? Lori stared at them as they walked down the hall, becoming smaller, her pen
tapping against the files in front of her, and then she smacked her forehead. So that was why she was at Craig’s. Working the rape case too.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Dennis’s cell.

  “How come I haven’t heard from you?”

  “There’s nothing to hear.”

  “Then why are Craig and Ashlyn marching into Daly’s office along with a group of officers who look like they’re about to storm a building?”

  The silence was followed by a sigh. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  As soon as she put the phone down, Lori got up. If Hawkins was thinking about backing down, she still had a card or two she could play.

  “What the hell was that about anyway?” Ashlyn asked after they’d left Daly’s office.

  Craig shook his head. “Hawkins has been unpredictable ever since Lori was raped. He threatened to take the case away from Daly.”

  “Is that why Daly’s chewing on aspirin like candy?”

  “Can’t be easy babysitting us.”

  He tried to sound flippant, but fell short. The line of his mouth, the look in his eyes…Craig worried about his dad but always buried it deep.

  When she didn’t respond he asked, “You ready for this?”

  Ashlyn put a full clip into her gun. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Robert Kearns, this is the police.” Craig called again. He banged on the door with his fist, harder this time.

  Silence.

  Within seconds the door was shaking on one hinge, and they were scouring the house. It took only a moment before the officers who’d gone into the basement called the all clear. He wasn’t there.

  Ashlyn looked out the kitchen window. “Garage,” she called. She ran out the back door, through the yard, Craig following.

  Kearns was standing near the back, his hands in the air. Ashlyn guessed the garage was about thirty-five feet long, an extended area at the back equipped with tools and saw horses, lumber leaning against the walls. She could see the two officers they’d sent around standing in the lane, looking through the two-car door opening, guns drawn but holding back. Then she saw who they were deferring to.

  “Shit.”

  Craig moved inside the garage nice and slow, approaching the suspect. “It’s okay, Lori. We’ve got him. Isn’t that right, Rob?”

  Rob Kearns swallowed and nodded.

  Lori stepped forward, her jaw clenched. “Say it,” she hissed.

  Craig glanced at Rob, turning his gun in Lori’s direction.

  “I need to hear him say it.”

  “Lori, this isn’t going to make things any better.” He kept moving slowly, to shield Rob Kearns.

  “Say it,” she screamed.

  Ashlyn had stepped inside the garage, just by the door. Craig signaled her with his free hand to stay where she was.

  Lori lifted the gun a bit higher, pointing it at Craig. “Call them off.”

  He glanced at the officers behind her, who moved around the side of the garage, into the yard.

  “I want to hear him say it.” Her voice was thick and low. “I want to know why.”

  “Lori, put the gun down. There’ll be plenty of time to talk about what he did at the station.”

  She started to laugh. “You think I’m going to fall for that? Jesus, Craig, what do you take me for? A fool? There’s no evidence. We’ve got nothing to tie him to any of this. If he doesn’t confess, he’ll walk.”

  He fought to keep his voice calm, to speak patiently and with confidence. “That’s not true, Lori. How do you think I found him? An eyewitness places him at the scene of one of the rapes.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Lori, put the gun down.” He stepped closer to her, completely shielding the rape suspect from his former partner.

  As soon as Ashlyn heard the shot, she saw Rob jump aside. Craig fell. Ashlyn turned toward Lori, telling her to put the gun down.

  Lori was turning her gun at the man who’d raped her.

  Ashlyn squeezed the trigger and watched Lori stagger back, bulging eyes staring straight at Ashlyn for a moment as the gun clattered against the concrete and Lori fell.

  One of the other officers, who’d moved around to the side of the garage, rushed forward, kicking the gun away from Lori. Ashlyn turned and saw the suspect on the ground beside Craig, a pool of blood oozing from his body. She’d been too slow to stop Lori from getting a second shot off, she realized as she knelt on the ground beside Craig.

  “Call an ambulance,” she yelled at the other officers outside.

  It felt like forever, holding Craig’s hand, telling him to hold on, until the paramedics arrived. They tried, unsuccessfully, to pry her away. Nothing they did seemed to stop the blood. She knew she was losing the battle to keep the panic out of her voice. “Jesus, can’t you do something?”

  “Ma’am, you need to stay here,” a voice told her. She felt hands tugging on her and shrugged them off.

  “I’m not leaving him. Craig—” She squeezed his hand. “Hold on. I’m right here. I—”

  “Ma’am, really, you have to stay here.”

  This time she felt strong arms grip her from behind, around the waist, pulling her back. She twisted and tried to resist, but she felt Craig’s hand slipping from her grasp.

  Tain had felt his chest tighten when he’d heard there were officers down. Craig and Ashlyn’s arrest had gone horribly wrong, but nobody was saying more. “Couldn’t they tell you who’d been shot?”

  Daly’s face was white. “Two officers down. That’s all I know.”

  “They had a team, right?”

  Daly nodded, and then he stopped cold.

  When Tain reached the doorway, he felt like he’d taken a bucket of ice water in the face. There’d been the odd moment he’d seen Ashlyn wipe a tear away, but he’d never seen her like this.

  Her beige shirt was soaked red, and the skin on her arms was shades darker than normal, the blood stains there already dry.

  She looked up then and saw them, her face a pasty white.

  “Ashlyn, what happened?”

  “They won’t tell me anything, Daly. They won’t even tell me if he’s alive.”

  Tain and Daly moved into the room, and Ashlyn put her arms around Daly’s neck, her body shaking.

  “I’ll go see what they can tell me,” Tain murmured. Nobody needed to ask. He’d seen the impact of unspoken truth hit home in Daly’s eyes the minute he saw Ashlyn.

  Craig had been shot.

  Daly shook his head as he undid Ashlyn’s grip on him.

  “I’ll go. They might not tell you anything, either.”

  Tain watched Daly turn away, draw himself up and walk out of the room.

  “Come on, sit down.” Tain took Ashlyn by the arm and got her settled, removing his coat and putting it around her shoulders.

  “Constable Ashlyn Hart?” a voice asked from the doorway.

  She looked up, and Tain felt the pressure in her hand as she squeezed his arm.

  The man held up his ID. “We need to ask you some questions.”

  “Go on.” Tain nodded. “We’ll wait here for you.”

  Ashlyn squeezed his hand and stood up again, her legs wobbling as she took a deep breath and then followed them out of the room.

  As soon as they had left, Daly returned.

  “They took her for questioning already. What the hell’s up with that?”

  Daly sank down into a chair, not the one Ashlyn had been sitting on, which was smeared with viscous red streaks. “They won’t tell anyone anything. Straight, uncensored interviews, all their ducks in a row before we know more.”

  “Political posturing while our friend might be dying in there? This is bullshit.”

  Daly shook his head. “I can tell you this. The three people shot were the suspect, Craig and Lori Price.”

  Tain’s elbows propped on his knees, his face in his hands. “What the hell was she doing there?”