Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel)

by CC Abbott

  He felt the color drain from his face, the heat drain from his extremities. Though only seconds passed, he thought it had been forever when he finally blinked twice, handed the camera to Abner, and slowly walked away.

  "We found a body," Boone said as soon as Cedar answered her cell.

  "Come again?" she said. Her voice was almost drowned out by the noise of other students in the lab. "Wait, let me stick my head out in the hallway. Say that again."

  Boone found that his enthusiasm had ebbed. "Abner and I found a body at the Nagswood property. I was right. There was someone alive inside the house."

  "That's awful! I mean, it's cool that you're right and everything, but that's awful! Someone's….somebody's…"

  Dead.

  "I know," he said. His voice dropped lower. "Look, I have to call 911 to alert the sheriff. I'll talk to you later. Okay?"

  "Okay," she said. The sound of her voice echoed in the metal locker. "Text me. I'll be in class."

  Boone ended the call. Cedar was right. It wasn't cool to find a dead person. It was awful. It was even worse if the person is your best friend dying in the belly of an aircraft carrier, and you were on the fire crew that was able to save him.

  He dialed 911 and waited for the operator to pick up.

  The cops came en masse to Nagswood. The routine fire that had been nothing more than the burning of the leftovers of a life suddenly became interesting to half the Bragg County Sheriff’s department. Boone heard the sirens minutes before he saw their roll lights. Out in the country, sound traveled fast and far.

  The first officer to arrive was Pete Mercer. He parked on the west side of the property, apart from the other cars. His front tires sank several inches into the soft soil. Luckily for him, Boone observed, the rear tires stayed on solid ground.

  Abner, Boone, and the others waited near the foundation. They had left the evidence, meaning the woman, where they had found it. Boone was leaning on the hooligan tool. Pickett and the others were smoking cigarettes and trying to get a signal on their phones. Clearly, they didn’t have service with the only carrier who covered that area of the county.

  “Stand where you are,” Deputy Mercer ordered them as he stepped out of his prowler. The Taser, Boone noted, was clipped to his gun belt. His radio was flipped over his left shoulder, dangling by its twisted cord.

  Mercer moved easily, Boone realized now that the truck wasn’t separating them. He was taller than Boone remembered, too, with cropped hair, a boxed chin, and shoulders that tapered to his waist. A swimmer’s build, Boone thought, as the deputy radioed his location in to dispatch.

  “Which one of you called 911?” Mercer asked.

  “Does it matter?” Pickett pointed at a long leaf pine across the property then introduced himself and his colleagues, explaining their purpose in being there, a purpose that clearly didn’t include Boone. “Dr. Zickafoose is the one who discovered the corpse.”

  “I’d rather use the term individual, if you don’t mind,” Abner said. “Abner Doubleday Zickafoose, Ph.D. My grandson, Daniel Boone Childress.”

  Boone nodded. The deputy glared. He remembered their meeting from the other day. Boone wasn’t surprised. He looked like a guy who held grudges.

  “Where’s the corpse?” Mercer said. He pulled a pair of wraparounds out of a pocket and put them on. The effect, Boone had to admit, made him look a lot more intimidating. Too bad he needed sunglasses to scare people.

  “This way.” Pickett led him to the edge of the foundation closest to the spot. He hung there, obviously unwilling to jump back into the debris.

  “Don’t you need a warrant to do a search?” Boone said.

  Mercer ignored Boone’s question. He jumped onto a rafter, then crossed over the ruins of the woman’s bedroom. He had excellent balance and hopped nimbly from one spot to the next until he stood atop the mound of plaster.

  “We came in through the front, initially,” Pickett said.

  Mercer wrinkled his nose. “And destroyed valuable evidence in the process, too.”

  “Which is what he’s doing,” Boone said out of the side of his mouth to his grandfather. “The more they investigate, the less evidence there will be.”

  Abner patted the breast pocket of his angler’s vest. It was where he stored his digital camera. “Pictures in, pictures out. My mantra.”

  Boone nodded. Abner’s habit of taking photographs of every step of an investigation allowed him to revisit a crime scene as many times as he wanted, no matter how many feet had stomped the evidence into oblivion.

  Mercer peered down from the plaster mound. He squatted for a better look, leaning over the woman’s malformed body. “This is it? I can’t see a body here, just a—Whoa! Whoa!”

  The deputy’s weight cracked the plaster. The mound crumbled, dumping him onto the bedsprings. Mercer landed hard. His feet scrambled for purchase in the rubble, coating his gray uniform in soot.

  “Can I get a hand?” he said to Pickett, who stood on the lip of the foundation. Neither he nor the other men stirred.

  Abner dropped his head in disgust. He took the hooligan from Boone and offered the hook end to Mercer. “Take hold of this, deputy. Watch out for the tip, it’ll cut you.”

  With a quick yank, Mercer was on the grass and on his feet. He was smacking the dust from his uniform when three more prowlers pulled in, parking behind Abner’s Rover.

  Sheriff Hoyt was among them.

  “He didn’t even say thanks,” Boone said as Abner returned the hooligan.

  “They never do,” Abner said. “Take that poker back to my truck. This joint’s about to start hopping, and we don’t want anybody getting hurt on the business end. And cover it in plastic so the blade doesn’t cut my seats.”

  Boone went the long way around the house on purpose. He needed a few minutes to get his thoughts together before the questioning started, and he was feeling a mix of emotions that he needed to sort out in his mind before they came out in his words. When they found the remains, he felt an instant rush of satisfaction—he had redeemed himself. He expected to feel many other things, like satisfaction and justification. An overwhelming sadness was not one of them.

  He opened the back of the Rover and slid the bare end of hooligan between the rear seats. He covered the head the way Abner had asked, which seemed like overkill. The tool had never cut anything in his truck. But Abner was meticulous, and Boone had learned a long time ago to follow his rules. If he had listened to Abner about his research project, for example, he wouldn’t have had to start data collection over three separate times.

  By the time Boone rejoined Abner, two deputies were carrying a body bag to the site. Another pair was stringing yellow crime scene tape around the perimeter, and Deputy Mercer stood next to the sheriff, still half-covered in dust, taking notes as Hoyt questioned Abner. They moved on to Pickett's men next. Boone watched them intently for a few minutes as they gave nervous answers, with Pickett gesturing toward the house and then pointing at Abner.

  “They want to make sure the cops knew I was the one that disturbed the crime scene,” Abner said.

  Boone snorted. “If not for you, this wouldn’t be a crime scene.”

  “You’re the one who heard the woman. It would’ve been real easy to convince yourself that all you heard was wood whistling or air popping, especially when your own folks seem more interested in proving you wrong.”

  “Well,” Boone said because there wasn’t much else he could say. “Thanks.”

  “I call ‘em like I see ‘em. I don’t especially like what I’m seeing here, though. Does the sheriff look like a man investigating a potential murder case to you?”

  “Murder?” Boone said, his voice dropping. “Is that what you think?”

  “I think lots of things. It’s called an open mind.”

  Boone tugged on an ear. “I’ll be glad to help in any way I can. If you need me, you know, to help investigate.”

  “Didn’t you just get out of the hospital?”<
br />
  “I’m tough, and I have meds.”

  “There’s one problem you haven’t thought of,” Abner said. “Your mama. She thinks you’re at home instead of picking through a burned out house. This is a small town, word travels fast.”

  “I’ll tell her…” Boone said, formulating a likely scenario.

  “The truth. It’s not always the easiest thing to admit, but it’s the easiest to remember.”

  Across the lawn, Pickett and his colleagues hook Hoyt’s hand goodbye. They walked quickly past Boone without a word of acknowledgement. They were in their cars and gone before Hoyt returned to ask Abner if he had overlooked any details.

  “That’s about all there is to it,” Abner said patiently, as if he were explaining the mechanics of osteoarthritic lipping to a college student. “I used the floor plan and my experience with this type of house to locate the two bedrooms. The individual wasn’t at the first location, so I traced fly movement to the second. And there she was.”

  “She?” the sheriff said.

  Abner explained how he had identified the sex. “I’ll be glad to do a more through examination for you when the coroner is through with her. I could assist, if you like. Is Leroy Sweeney still your man? We've worked a couple cases together.”

  Hoyt shook his head. “Leroy’s dead and buried two years at least.”

  “Dead?” Abner said, sounding shocked. “You sure?”

  “I was a pall bearer.” Hoyt waited long enough to let the news sink in. “And I’m going to have to pass on your offer, considering past history with this department. We’ll be contacting Dr. Windsor-Smith down at the university. She’s a crackerjack young forensic expert.”

  Boone broke into the conversation. "Are you going to arrest Eugene Loach?"

  "Eugene Loach?" Hoyt drew back his chin. "What for? He didn't start this fire."

  "Maybe he didn't," Boone said. "But he did refuse to render aid to a victim, and that victim died in the fire. That makes him a killer in my book."

  "You ain't old enough to have a book, son."

  "This stinks, Hoyt."

  Hoyt turned to walk away. "Then don't breathe through your nose."

  Boone jumped in front of him. "Why won't anybody listen to me? We had to find the body ourselves before anyone even believed there was a victim. Now you're telling me that you're not investigating the most obvious suspect?"

  "All I'm telling you is to get out of my way." Hoyt pulled his leather belt higher on his gut. "Be glad you're a vet, Boone. Else your ass would be sitting in my prowler, handcuffed to an O-ring. Now excuse me, I got to go play with the grownups for a while."

  Hoyt waited until Boone stepped aside and then called for a deputy. Boone watched him put on a pair of sunglasses and pull out a cellphone. What a pompous, officious, over-bearing, patronizing—

  "Jackass," Abner said.

  "I'm not letting it go," Boone said. He swallowed, and his throat felt like he had gargled sand. He was going to find out who set the fire, and no expert, including the sheriff, Lamar, or that officious deputy, was going to stop him.

  A rural ambulance sounded its siren behind them. Boone watched as it rolled up the driveway and then bounced over the ground. Its wheels sank in a soft area for a moment. The driver gunned the engine and after a couple of seconds of slinging sand, it was free. The EMTs jumped out of the back and carried a gurney toward the house. One of the deputies with the body bag waved them over.

  Boone turned his attention back to his grandfather. Abner looked like he had been slapped. Boone hooked him by the arm and walked them both toward Hoyt.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Boone said, after calling Hoyt’s name. “He found the body, and you don’t want his help anymore?”

  “Deputy,” Hoyt said to Mercer, who was still at his shoulder taking notes, “escort Boone and Dr. Zickafoose to their vehicle."

  “What if I decide not to leave?” Boone said.

  Mercer stowed his notebook and began walking toward him, arms wide, as if he were a human lariat about to wrangle them.

  “Son,” Hoyt said, “after thirty-two years on the job, I got no sense of humor left, so I do not kid around. Go on, before I have to call your mama.”

  Boone ground his teeth until he felt the tendons working in his jaw. Why would a firefighter refuse to offer aid? There had to be an explanation for it, but his mind was too scattered to sort it all out.

  “Keep walking,” Mercer said. He was on their heels the whole way.

  Boone turned around. “There’s no speed limit for walking.”

  Mercer reached for the Taser on his belt. His face fell, though, as his hand groped the empty holster. Over in the debris, the Taser lay on the box springs, covered in plaster dust and soot.

  Poetic justice, Boone thought. He took Abner by the arm again. “Come one, Doc. They don’t want us here.”

  But Boone knew they would later. Nobody was better at human identification than Abner Zickafoose, and Boone knew that there was no way he was turning his back on the woman in the house, no matter who she turned out to be.

  When she came home early and found Boone in the barn instead of resting in bed, Mom sounded like a cat that had been dropped down a well. She stood between him and the shelves that held his research project, which consisted of over three dozen mason jars containing the flesh of dead animals. The mouth of each jar was covered with wire mesh of varying size.

  "What are you doing out of bed?” Mom yelled.

  “Charting the effects of certain insect larvae on decaying flesh.”

  “Where’s Cedar? I can't believe you've conducting this research in my barn. You know how I feel about desecrating the dead."

  "I got bored, and Cedar can’t be here for a couple hours,” Boone said. “And they're dead animals, not people."

  "And I'm a veterinarian, so it's just as bad to me. Killing animals for research is unethical and unacceptable."

  "You put down horses."

  "It's part of my job, and I’m not going to justify it to you. Understand?"

  He did, but that didn't stop him from wanting to argue semantics. In truth, he needed something to calm his nerves after he and Abner got back from the Nagswood site. Charting data helped him rein in his random thoughts, to reshape them in his head the way that a magnet realigns atoms.

  "It's road kill, Mom. The only thing I hurt was the turkey buzzards' choice of snacks."

  With the increase of traffic around the new developments, there were plenty of animals to be found along the highway. It wasn't like he wanted the poor animals to be dead.

  "You're a terrible child."

  "Cedar says that you're transferring your negative feelings for Dad onto to Abner. She read about in Psychology Today last week."

  "Cedar is a lovely young woman."

  "Yes, she is.”

  "Who should stick to her studies instead of psycho analyzing a middle-aged woman’s relationships with their unreliable, single-minded, inconsiderate elderly parents. I also suggest better reading material. Cosmo, for example. They have nice quizzes."

  "Essay or multiple choice?"

  "Ha, ha." She peered over Boone's shoulder as he dumped a sample on a metal tray. With a probe, he counted the number of blow fly larvae present.

  "Ugh,” she said. “In the 80's, we used the word gnarly to described things that disgusting."

  “Disgusting, as in big hair heavy metal bands?"

  "Very funny."

  Boone carefully returned the bugs and the tissues to the jar. "This is important information, Mom. One day, police will be able to use my data to accurately determine the date of death of an individual."

  "You sound like your grandfather."

  "And that’s a bad thing?" Abner said, stepping from the field and into the barn. His hair was helter-skelter, his collar bent up on one side. His pants, which were already wrinkled, looked like that they had been twisted up like rope. "I happen to like his grandfather."

  "Dad,"
Mom said, after she caught her breath. "I didn't know you were there."

  "Would it have changed what you said about me?"

  "Not one bit. You know how I feel about your research and your disregard for simple human dignity. You treat people like pieces of meat."

  Oh, no, Boone thought, here they go. Mom's dislike of Abner's profession was no family secret. She wasn't shy about it to begin with and lately, she had begun to see herself as something of a crusader, now that she had the extra income and status that owning the largest veterinarian office in Stanford. That included being quoted several times in magazine articles, especially one that Parade magazine once did, about her belief that forensic anthropology was at best a ghoulish hobby.

  But Abner surprised Boone. He pulled his hair back in a ponytail and stroked his beard a couple of times as he scanned the specimens. "Boone, did you tell your mama what you and me did this morning?"

  Boone let the clipboard slip between his fingers. "This morning?"

  "Mary Harriett," Abner said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking blanched, like a man who would rather eat the contents of the jars than to confess, "there's something I've got to tell you."

  He spilled the whole story. The trip to the Nagswood house. The discovery of the body. While he was explaining without going into the truly gory details, Mom turned to Boone with tears misting in her eyes and hugged him.

  Since she was almost a foot shorter, he had to bend down, and that strained his ribs. He grunted, and she patted his back in sympathy, which made him grunt again.

  "Sprained neck, Mom."

  "Tough."

  "One more hug, and I'm going to need traction."

  Abner went on to add the story of the sheriff and Mercer chasing them away. What Abner left out was the fact that after they got back to the house, he had Boone scrape the end of the hooligan tool clean and put the particles he gathered into plastic evidence bags. The bags were now labeled and stored in the glove compartment of the Range Rover.

  "My god," Mom said when Abner was finished. She sat down on one of the straw bales. She pressed the knuckle of her index finger under her nose. Boone had seen her do this many times. It was to keep from fainting. "That poor woman. Does anyone know who she is?"