What Echoes Render

by Schultz, Tamsen

  “It burned down about seven months ago,” David said. “It was my first arson investigation here. Insurance fraud.”

  “Could be that’s what she means by it looks different,” Ian posited.

  David shook his head. “It was razed to the ground this summer. There is nothing left. Not even the basements. They were filled and the land was donated to the city for a park when the owner was convicted of the fraud.”

  “So then it’s the Silver Spring,” Caleb said. “What do we know about it and how soon can we get there?”

  Jesse listened to the voices around her but one was filling her head. The sound of Stacey taunting her, telling Jesse that it all should have been hers and that it was all going to slip away.

  “Wait!” she blurted out. Caleb was moving toward the door but stopped. Ian looked up from holstering his gun.

  “She said that she could almost feel Mark. Wouldn’t that mean he would have some kind of history there? How many times was there a charge at the Silver Spring?” she asked, turning to Naomi. Naomi tapped in a few keys, then frowned.

  “Five. But only one when he would have been seeing Stacey. The others were right before he died.”

  “When he was seeing Susan Parmenter,” Jesse supplied.

  “He could have been seeing two women at once,” Ian suggested.

  “Possible,” Naomi spoke. “But judging by what we found on his laptop, I think it was only one at a time.”

  Jesse could feel everyone’s eyes on her, but she held her gaze fixed on the floor. A germ of an idea was taking hold in her mind.

  “She said ‘all this should be mine,’” Jesse stated. She repeated the phrase again out loud. Then over and over in her head. And then she knew.

  She looked at David.

  “She’s at my house.”

  CHAPTER 25

  DAVID’S HEART STUTTERED and he knew she was right. Fury ripped through him. There was nothing Mark Baker hadn’t fucked up in her life. He wished like hell the guy was around to witness all the destruction his appetites had caused. His hand tightened around Jesse’s, she had lost so much already, so much was already at risk. And yes, a house was a house, but on top of everything else, it was one less sanctuary, one more thing of beauty in her life that was now tainted.

  “It would make sense, Ian,” Vivi said, confirming both Jesse’s insight and David’s own belief in Jesse’s assessment.

  “We need eyes on the place,” Ian replied, reaching for his phone.

  “I’ve got a guy. He came in two days ago. I had him watching her at night. He’s at Kit’s and can be there in five minutes,” Caleb added, pulling out his own phone.

  David turned to Caleb. Had the situation been less fraught, he would have been stunned to know that they’d had a night guard last night. As it was, he just absorbed the information and hoped the guy knew what he was doing.

  “Does your guy know the property?” Ian asked. Caleb nodded. “Good, have him come in on the east side by the old barn. Tell him my guy, Deputy Chief Brown will be coming in from the north, the wooded side.”

  He half listened as the two men made plans even as everyone gathered their belongings.

  When Ian hung up, he looked at Vivi. “Any chance you’ll stay here?” he asked her.

  Vivi shook her head.

  David could see Ian didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to waste time arguing. “I’m calling in some local help and I want the paramedics on standby at this address,” he added, handing a slip of paper to one of the deputies they passed on the way out.

  “Ian,” David said. “She’s a firebug.”

  Ian looked supremely unhappy about that reminder. “Roger that,” he said. “We’ll want the fire department on standby. And even though it will take them a while to get down here from Albany, I want the bomb squad, too,” he added as they left the building.

  The only saving grace, to David’s way of thinking, was that at least the past few days had been a bit foggy and drizzly. If Stacey did decide to blow something up, the fire probably wouldn’t spread.

  “This way,” Caleb said, taking hold of Jesse’s arm and pulling her to his truck.

  David reached for her other arm and stopped them. “My truck, Forrester. I have some gear in there if we need it.” He didn’t bother to see if Caleb had agreed or not, he just walked her to his truck, opened the door, and helped her into the back seat. Caleb appeared behind him carrying a duffel bag.

  “Your truck, I drive,” Caleb ordered. David thought about arguing but decided it wasn’t worth it. If Caleb drove, he could focus on Jesse.

  They weren’t on the road two minutes, following behind Ian and his flashing lights, when David began telling her what he had planned.

  “If she’s there, you’re not going in alone. I’m going with you,” he said.

  She gave an adamant shake of her head. “You can’t, David. It’s me she wants. You might make her nervous or she might just kill you. I can’t, I don’t . . .” Her voice faded.

  “You’re right, it isn’t me she wants, but she wants you to suffer. She isn’t going to do anything too quickly because that wouldn’t be satisfying enough. Whether I’m there or not isn’t going to make a difference in her plan. She may try to make you think it will, but I promise you it won’t.”

  “And you know this because?” Her voice was part worried, part sarcastic, but he chalked it up to nerves. And fear.

  “I’ve investigated a lot of arson and arsonists. I may not have studied people exactly like her, but crazy is crazy. And you don’t spend your summer plotting against someone, making plans and executing them, only to throw those plans out the window at the last moment. It just wouldn’t fit her personality.”

  “For what it’s worth, I agree,” Caleb weighed in.

  “But what if she has a gun or something and shoots you or James?” Jesse persisted.

  “Or you,” David added.

  “Don’t speculate,” Caleb ordered. “We’ll know more in about—” his voice cut off as he answered his phone. Since David hadn’t heard it ring, he assumed Caleb had set it to vibrate.

  “Tell me,” Caleb said, then he listened for a moment. “Got it . . . shit. Hold on,” he ordered as he turned to David.

  “Hathaway, there any chance you have something that will register if there is gas present? Assuming we can’t smell it.”

  “Yeah, of course. It’s in my kit. Why?”

  “Good man,” he said and then went back to his call. All David heard him say after that was, “Ten minutes, east side.”

  “Well?” Jesse demanded when Caleb got off the phone.

  Holding up a finger, Caleb pressed a couple of buttons and put Ian and Vivi on speaker.

  “I just talked to my guy,” Caleb informed them all, “and he’s spotted James and the woman in the barn that used to be Mark’s office. James is okay. He’s alive. According to Cantona, my guy, it looks like he might have been slapped around a bit, but he’s holding up.”

  David heard Jesse suck in a breath and he reached back and took her hand in his. Whether to reassure her or himself, he didn’t know.

  “He doesn’t see any firearms, which is good news. But David was right; she’s a firebug. He spotted a canister he thinks has an explosive device on it. He can’t be sure from his angle, but it’s all she seems to be carrying,” Caleb finished his report.

  David tuned out at that point and focused completely on Jesse. Ian and Caleb would make the plans they needed to make. In his mind, the only thing he was going to think about was walking into that building with Jesse and out of it with her and James.

  “You can’t, David,” she pleaded in a whisper. “Think of Miranda.”

  But he already was thinking of Miranda. He wanted to walk out of that building as much he wanted anything in his life. But he also knew that if he didn’t walk into that building with Jesse, he would never be able to live with himself. He wouldn’t want to. And then he’d be no good to anyone, especially Miranda.r />
  “It’s not up for debate. I’ll turn my phone on and slip it into my pocket so Ian and Caleb can hear what’s going on inside. I’ll be able to tell them about the device, Jesse. I’ll be able to feed them information that can help them.”

  “But Caleb can do that, too,” she insisted.

  He glanced at Caleb, who shrugged, seeming to take her sacrifice of him in stride.

  “But Caleb has other skills. Skills I don’t have. If I’m not inside, I’m no good for anything. At least if I’m in there, I can help, which frees Caleb up for other things.” “Other things” being a euphemism, he hoped, for taking this Stacey woman out of commission in whatever way posed the least risk to James and Jesse.

  “Right,” Caleb interrupted, pulling the truck to the side of the road about forty feet from Jesse’s drive. Ian’s lights and sirens had been turned off and he was now parked about fifty feet on the other side of the drive. Neither car would be visible from the barn.

  “I’m out of here,” Caleb said. “David, the sniffer would be good right about now.” As Caleb climbed out, David and Jesse did the same. Jesse moved to the front seat while he rummaged through his kit and handed Caleb the device. With a nod and a quick admonishment to stay safe, Caleb started to jog up the hill. Within a few feet, he was joined by another man with some serious weaponry slung across his back.

  “Any idea who that is?” David asked as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  Jesse shook her head. “None.”

  He went to put the truck in gear, then paused and turned toward her. Sliding a hand into her hair, he pulled her toward him and brushed a quick kiss across her mouth. “I love you, Jesse. Remember that. You’re not alone.”

  She blinked away the moisture in her eyes. “I love you, too.”

  “Do you trust me?” The question was about the here and now. But it was about so much more and they both knew it.

  She nodded.

  He sat back and put the truck in gear. “Then let’s go.”

  ***

  “He can’t be here,” were the first words Stacey Carson uttered to Jesse. The woman was standing behind the open door, using it as a shield. Jesse cast him a look and he silently begged her to trust him. She gave a tiny nod.

  “Too bad, he’s here and he’s not going anywhere,” Jesse said as she pushed her way inside, David at her side.

  “James!” she said. David stopped just inside the door and watched Jesse rush to her son’s side.

  “Mom! She has a bomb! You need to get out of here,” James cried. David had to admire the boy’s spirit, but leaving wasn’t an option. And though he was relieved to see the boy alert and looking defiant—relieved, but not surprised—he didn’t like seeing James with his hands tied behind his back and his body tied to a chair. David could feel the anger coiling inside him, but he forced himself to take a deep breath and do what he was here to do.

  Stacey had quickly stepped away when they’d entered and now had her back against the wall opposite the door, giving her a good vantage point to watch the entire room. She was framed by two large windows on either side of her, but the wall was otherwise empty. In her hands she held a small device, not much bigger than a can of soup, made of what looked like some kind of plastic.

  He noted the device and glanced around the room looking to see if she’d tampered with any electrical plates—like those he’d seen in the pictures of the fire that had killed Mark—and for places she might have hidden a bomb other than the one she held in her hand. Based on what he knew about her from her other fires, she was a single-device kind of arsonist, so he had no reason to think there would be more than the one she held. But he also knew she was crazy.

  The door they’d come through was in one of the corners of the room and from where he stood he could see everything he needed to. The space itself was about twenty feet by forty feet and though it had originally been a barn, it was hard to see any remnants of that past in the updated interior where they now stood. The floors were wood, but wide-planked and with a shine and evenness to them that was too modern to make them original. Two of the walls, the one to his right and the one that Stacey stood in front of, were finished and painted a pale gray with white trim. The other two, the two to his left, were lined with empty built-in shelves and cabinets of a deep ebony color.

  A desk had been pushed into the far corner to his right and boxes, stacked two and three high, covered the top. The room had been cleared of everything else so he assumed those boxes contained Mark Baker’s files, papers, books, and whatever else he’d kept in the office. A few looked to have been opened recently and only hastily shut—a reminder that Jesse had been in here looking for clues as to what her husband had been up to before he died. He cursed silently, thinking of just what they’d all found.

  Noting to himself that with the desk, boxes, and cabinets there were more than enough hiding spots for a second device, he turned his attention to James. And the chair he sat in. Placed a little to the left of the center of the near empty room, it was definitely large enough to have a device attached to the bottom of the seat. David’s jaw tightened.

  “You.” Stacey’s voice drew his attention back to her. “Shut the door and empty your pockets.”

  She waved the device in front of him as a threat. He knew she wasn’t likely to set it off now, but since he’d taped his phone to his stomach under his shirt he had no qualms about closing the door behind him and emptying his pockets, as Ian had expected she’d demand.

  “And you,” she said, turning to Jesse. “Step away from your son and empty your pockets.”

  Jesse took one step away but went no further. “I have no pockets.” She raised her hands and gave Stacey a good look at her fitted dress and cardigan.

  “Move over there,” Stacey demanded, her eyes fixed on Jesse as she waved the canister in David’s direction. While Stacey’s position allowed her to see the whole room fairly easily, she still had to turn away from him to face Jesse. And when her back was to him, he gave Jesse a shake of his head.

  “I don’t think so, I think I’ll stay by my son,” Jesse said.

  “Mom!” James protested. In response, Jesse laid a hand on his shoulder and moved to stand at his back.

  “What do you have there, Stacey?” David asked, drawing her attention back to him. Gesturing with his head to her hand. “Is that another gas canister? It looks like it has a trigger device on it this time. No timers today?”

  She sneered. “That damned timer was the stupidest idea I’ve ever had.”

  David could argue that but didn’t.

  “I should have just stuck around and triggered it when I knew she would be in the store,” Stacey continued. “I took a chance because Mark was always complaining about just how damned predictable she was,” she added with a gesture of disgust in Jesse’s direction.

  “And you failed,” he pointed out. Her eyes narrowed on him.

  “What about Emma?” he asked. He didn’t dare look at Jesse but hoped like hell she was sliding the knife they’d taped to her thigh out from under her skirt.

  “What about her?” Stacey demanded.

  “You abandoned your own daughter,” he pointed out.

  She looked at him like he was a moron and it was in that moment that he realized just how deranged she was.

  “Yeah, so,” she shrugged. “She was supposed to bring Mark back to me but he was already seeing that bitch Susan when I told him I was pregnant.”

  “Then why didn’t you end the pregnancy?” he asked, cringing inside. He wasn’t necessarily adamantly pro-life, but it wasn’t easy being so flip about a human life.

  “Because I knew he wouldn’t be able to turn away from her once she was born. Mark always talked about his sons. I knew when he met her he wouldn’t be able to cut me out anymore.”

  There were so many things wrong with Stacey’s reasoning that David didn’t even begin to try to dissect it all. He just wanted her to keep talking. He just wanted her to stay distracted
enough that Jesse could cut James loose.

  “And when he didn’t take you back, that’s when you tried to kill Jesse, wasn’t it?” he asked, taking a step farther into the room.

  Stacey turned red at his comment and spun back to Jesse. His chest clenched and his heart rate leapt.

  “You bitch,” she raged, pacing toward Jesse. “You were supposed to pick up Mark’s files. I was with him in Boston. I heard him make those plans with you. But noooo, you’re too lazy to help your own husband, you stupid whore. And because of you, he’s dead. I don’t think you understand how much I hate you.”

  Stacey raised the device and both Jesse and James drew back in anticipation of the blast. His heart climbed into his throat.

  “Was it a device like you have now, Stacey?” he asked hurriedly. He was starting to sweat and he knew if Stacey paid enough attention, she would see the panic on his face, hear it in his voice. But he had to get her attention away from Jesse.

  She spun back around to him and he forced himself to take a small breath, willing his own anxiety under control.

  “No, it released gas over time, so when the lights got turned on, the little extra electricity I arranged for would spark it. I turned on the gas in the kitchen when I left, just to be sure,” she paused for a moment and frowned. He realized that her statement confirmed his assessment of what had really happened in Mark Baker’s office that day, but that thought was fleeting.

  He watched Stacey’s eyes refocus on him from wherever her mind had gone, then she shrugged and added, “This is trigger based. So I get to control it.”

  “That’s pretty clever,” David said, thinking he might be going overboard, but doing what he could to keep her attention on him. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jesse give him a small sign. He knew James was free. Now they just had to figure out how to get out of there alive.

  He glanced at the canister in her hand. He had no idea if gas was leaking into the room already or not. He couldn’t smell anything, but as Caleb suggested, it was possible that she was using the odorless kind or something else altogether. He wished he had the sniffer he’d given to Caleb, but he knew, in reality, she never would have let him into the room with it. He just hoped Caleb was able to put it to good use.