by Terry Keys
“Deal. I thought this was some kind of sting or something.”
“Listen, I want you to park about half a block away.”
The man nodded.
I used the time to send Miranda a short text to catch her up and to let her know that I was okay. I did the same with Chief Hill and DeLuca. I hadn’t heard back from her, but I hoped the tip they received had been a good one. My heart ached for Paul. I sure as hell didn’t want him to die like this.
“Pull up here,” I said, pointing to what I hoped would be a good hiding place. We parked on the street, sandwiched between two other parked cars.
We sat there for an hour without seeing any activity in the house. The street itself was quiet too. Two women had passed us, each pushing a stroller. A middle-aged man walking a dog had also strolled by too. But other than that, it had been uneventful.
It was quickly nearing dark, and the only source of light I’d have would be the scattered street lamps that lined the sidewalks.
“You’re up to two hundred bucks now,” the driver said as we waited. “We still good?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah. A deal’s a deal.”
He gave me a thumbs-up and turned back around.
A white male wearing a gray hoodie walked by, hands in his pockets. I could only catch a glimpse of his profile. He passed Wolfe’s house and then stopped in front of the next house on the street, his back to me. He stared down at his cell phone. Probably someone looking for a friend’s house and wondering whether or not he was at the right place. The impending darkness wasn’t helping my recon. I was almost at the point where I’d need to get closer to make heads or tails of anything.
Soon, the man disappeared down the street, and I sat back in my seat.
“Hey, pal, it’s getting late. How much longer you wanting to be out here?” the Uber driver asked me.
“Only a little while longer. I’ll pay you well, don’t worry,” I said.
“An old man is getting hungry too.”
We sat for another uneventful twenty minutes. “Okay, let’s get out of here. Can you take me—”
Just as the words were coming out of my mouth, I noticed an orange streak of light flash behind Marty Wolfe’s house.
“Hey, mister, is that house on fire?” the old man asked me.
“Call 9-1-1!” I yelled as I leapt from the car and bolted for the house.
By the time I reached it, the entire lower level was up in flames. Whoever did this had used some type of accelerant. By now, other neighbors had joined me outside, staring at the house as it burned and probably wondering if the flames would destroy their homes as well.
Wolfe must have paid someone to burn his house to the ground, essentially destroying any evidence I might have found inside. I frantically scanned the crowd for the possible culprit. Then I spotted him about fifty yards away. The man I’d seen earlier in the gray hoodie. He hadn’t been lost after all. He’d been scanning the area to make sure he could do the job without being caught. He’d obviously missed me and the old man.
I eased out of the crowd and buried my head into my phone. I eased his way, hoping he wouldn’t see me as a threat. When I got about forty yards away from him, he took off in a full sprint. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to spook him, but we were off.
“Hey, stop! Don’t run from me! Police!”
It was no use. I wasn’t wearing the proper shoes for a foot race. And my Uber driver was probably madder than hell.
The man had pulled thirty-five yards ahead of me. He left the sidewalk and ran out into the street. Cars moving in both directions swerved to miss him.
I followed him into the street, flashing my badge in a feeble attempt to avoid being run over. I’d closed the distance on him as he tired and lost time dodging vehicles.
“Hey! Stop running!” I yelled once I was within earshot.
He returned to the sidewalk. As I looked up, I saw a decent-sized group of people heading our direction. I hoped his obvious lack of experience in running from the cops would lead me to catching him.
Hoodie reached the oncoming foot traffic and tried to plow his way through. Some of the men moved, but many simply stood their ground and stared at him like he was crazy. Having to dodge the crowd helped me close the gap as people had already moved off to the side for Hoodie. Finally, he was only five feet away from me. I was tired as hell, but I leapt for him with all my might.
My arms grasped the fugitive’s waist but slipped down to his legs. My face slammed into the concrete, but I still held on to his feet. He quickly lost his balance and crashed onto the sidewalk.
“Don’t move!” I yelled, standing over him with my weapon aimed straight at his face. “Put your arms behind your back. Do it slow.”
Thanks to a nearby streetlight, I finally got a good look at his face. Much to my surprise, he was a kid, no more than sixteen or seventeen years old.
“I don’t know shit, man. I swear.”
“We’ll get to that at the station.”
I threw a pair of cuffs on him and sat him up.
“Man, I told you, I don’t know shit.”
“Why’d you run from me?”
The kid said nothing.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Chapter 58
A few local boys escorted the two of us to the station. They put the kid in an interrogation room and gave me the first stab at him.
I walked into the room and the blond, blue-eyed kid stared up at me with tears in his eyes. He’d clearly gotten himself in deeper than he’d anticipated.
“Want anything to drink?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” I said, sitting across from him at the table.
He nodded.
“You want to start by telling me your name?”
“Jake. Listen . . . I told you earlier; I don’t know nothing. I went and did a job.”
“Well, Jake, I believe you know plenty. For starters, who put you up to sending that place up in flames?”
He tapped his hands on his legs but didn’t answer me.
“Jake, you do realize you committed a serious crime today. Comes with a lot of prison time too. Did your buddy tell you that?”
“I got paid to do a job. Man, I swear I don’t know anything.”
“Why do you think someone would have you burn down a perfectly good house, unless they’re trying to hide something?”
“I don’t know. Not my business. Like I said, I got brought in to burn it down, not to ask why they wanted it gone.”
“Fair enough. You ready to do the prison time on your own? I mean, you keep talking about someone asking you to do a job, but I don’t see anyone else here. Only you, Jake, so I guess that means you get to take the fall for whoever you’re trying to protect.”
“This is bullshit, man. I’m not even eighteen. You’re supposed to call my parents. Where are they?”
“Actually, we can try you as an adult since you’re seventeen, so technically we don’t need to involve your parents. But if it’ll make you feel better, we can get your parents up here.”
“Yeah, old man, it would make me feel better.”
I chuckled and smiled at him. “Old man, huh? Well, you got me there, Jake.”
He just rolled his eyes at me.
“So you’re admitting you just let an old man run you down, huh?”
He frowned.
“I remember when I was a young man. No way in hell I would’ve let an old man run me down. But that’s just me.”
“What do you want from me? I want to go home.”
“Home?” I stopped and took a sip of my water. “It’s probably going to be a long while before you go back home, Jake. See, what you did tonight . . . not only did you destroy property, but someone could’ve gotten seriously hurt or killed. But you probably didn’t even stop to think about that, did you? Just wanted your, what, five hundred bucks?”
“Five hundred? Ma
n, he gave me, like, fifty up front and was going to give me fifty more.”
“And to top it off, you didn’t even get adequately compensated. Still don’t want to talk, Jake?”
He said nothing.
I waved for the officers to come in. “I’m done with this guy. Can you take him back to a cell?”
“All right, kid, stand up,” the officer said, dangling a set of cuffs.
“Okay already. I’ll tell you what I know. I just want to go home.”
“Listen, Jake, you really messed up tonight. Even if you talk, I can’t promise that you’re going to walk away from this unscathed. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“But if you tell me what you know and it checks out, I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Another officer brought in a file and handed it to me. I spent a few minutes skimming over it.
“So, Mr. Jake, according to your file you’ve been busted five times for setting stuff on fire. Looks like we got us a real life pyro here. That how these guys found you?”
Jack said nothing.
I slid him a piece of paper. “Okay, you’re up. Let’s just get this over with, can we?”
He sat there for another two or three minutes, mulling over his options. Then finally he sat up in the chair and picked up the pen. “Yeah, I’m a pyro. I set shit on fire. I love fire; it’s so beautiful and free. Online I’m known as Fire Man. I go around burning random shit. Sometimes—”
“You’re parents know about this Fire Man persona?”
“Well, they know I’m not a saint, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Not quite, but I’ll take it. So tell me what happened here? It’s extremely important that I find the guys who hired you.”
“Guy contacted me online. Somebody going by MartWolfy. Name’s so stupid that I ignored him the first time he hit me up. Thought it may be some kind of joke. Then a few hours later he hit me up again.”
“Okay, and what did he say?”
“Said he had a house he wanted me to burn down and that he’d pay me $100 to do it.”
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe this was a bad idea? Or get curious as to why someone would want a house burned down?”
I knew the fact that he was a pyro meant I’d gotten lucky in more ways than one. Most importantly, it explained why he’d stayed to watch the house go up in flames after he started the fire as opposed to getting the hell out of Dodge. He couldn’t; he needed to watch. He had to watch.
“Never mind that last question. Write down the name of the website that you guys made this connection on. Your parents will be here soon. You’re in a lot of trouble here.” I stood, waited til he finished scribbling, and took the paper from him. Jake’s head dropped.
“How’d he get the money to you anyway?”
“Western Union.”
A money order meant that I probably would run into a dead end. Money orders can be generated in a variety of ways from hundreds of stores. My best bet would be to track down Mr. MartWolfy’s laptop, using his online handle to work backward.
“Listen, kid. I’m going to put in a good word for you, but here’s some advice: find a new hobby.”
I knocked on the door to the interrogation room and left Jake behind.
Chapter 59
I had Fingers going in several different directions already, and I figured one of Washington police departments IT guys could locate a laptop with no problems.
“There anything we can help you with?” Officer Grant, a young, athletic, and quite handsome man, asked me.
“Actually there is. Need to track down a laptop. I don’t have much, but if your guy is good, he should be able to find it for me.”
“Well, my guy is a girl, but she’s better than great. Ginge is world class. You’ll see. Follow me, detective.”
“I sure hope so.”
I told him about my IT need and followed him down the hall toward their IT group. He opened a door at the end of the hall, and I followed him down the stairs to a darkened basement.
“You taking me to IT or getting ready to knock me over the head?” I asked.
“Just come on. Ginge works down here. By the way, you married? Ginge can be kind of aggressive. She’s got this thing for black guys. I can’t explain it.”
I smiled. “Well Grant, I’m sort of in a hurry here. It’s not really a social visit, but yes, I am married. And since you are a young, white male, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to explain it,” I said, firing a glare his way.
“It’s cool and all. She’s just really—”
I put a hand in the air. “I get it. Shall we?” I pointed down the staircase.
As we got closer to the bottom of the staircase, I could see the glare from dozens of monitors. Metallica’s “Fade to Black” got louder with each step we took.
“Ginge!” Grant yelled, cupping his mouth with his hands.
We stood in the middle of the room while Ginge banged away at her keyboard, unaware of our presence.
“Ginge!” Grant yelled again.
Slowly, Ginge swiveled the chair around to face us. A young, attractive redhead stared me down.
“Ginger Strong, meet Detective David Porter, HPD.”
We shook hands. She had a killer grip. “HPD? Texas? You’re a long ways from home, cowboy.”
I nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“I’m afraid the pleasure’s all mine,” Ginger said winking.
I turned to Grant. He shrugged, an I-tried-to-warn-you look on his face.
“So Ginger, here’s what I need.” I handed her the piece of paper with the website I was interested in scrawled on it. “There’s a user on that website named MartWolfy. You think you can find out where he logged in from last and, even more importantly, get some laptop information?”
She nibbled seductively on her pen. “Hmm . . . well, I think I should be able to help you out, but it’s going to cost you, Tex.”
“Ginger, I’m in a huge time crunch. You tell Grant here what I owe you, and we’ll get it worked out.”
“Pfft. You’re no fun, now are you?”
Ginger turned the chair back around and started attacking her keyboard. Within a minute, she’d pulled up Marty’s profile and gotten login details.
Still staring at the keyboard, she said, “So your friend logged in two hours ago and sent a message to a Fire Man.”
I leaned in to read the message: “Good job, money sent.”
“Ginger, can you tell me where that computer was located when he logged in? Maybe an address?”
“I sure am giving you a lot for nothing in return, Tex.”
I looked over at Grant who just stood with his arms crossed and shook his head.
“Of course, as usual, ol’ Ginger will make it happen,” she said, glaring at Grant.
Five minutes later, I was holding a printout with an address to a Motel 6 off Highway 301.
“Thank you, Ginger. I’ll get Grant here to square up my bill. I promise,” I said.
Chapter 60
Grant and two other Washington PD SWAT officers loaded up with me, and we headed for the Motel 6. As we drove, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It was a Washington area code.
“Porter here.”
“It’s President Brown. Tell me you’ve got something. The press is going berserk. This is a PR nightmare for the United States, and I have foreign countries sending troops.”
“I’m heading toward the man who can fill in all the blanks as we speak. The faster I can get this guy to talk, the faster we can end this thing.”
“Well, you’d better get him talking fast. And I mean warp speed. If not, these guys get what they wanted all along—World War III.”
I disconnected the call and turned my attention back to finding Marty Wolfe.
“Everything okay, sir?” one of the SWAT guys asked me.
I nodded. “How much longer until we get to this motel?”
“Another five minutes
. We should be able to extract this guy. You can just hang back and sit this one out, Detective.”
I finished strapping my vest on. “You kids need to read a couple of my books. I don’t sit on the sidelines. Not enough action there for me.”
He laughed. “I’m just saying, sir. Could be a few minutes before we could get you an ambulance if you needed one.”
I smiled and pointed to the road. “Drive, Grant. Just drive.”
We parked the black Expedition half a block away.
“Got a short run, old-timer. You ready?”
I’d studied the map and layout, so instead of replying, I took off for the motel.
The parking lot was fairly empty. I only counted five cars. Typical for a dump like this. We’d called ahead and found out that Mr. Marty was in room 103.
I pointed two of the men around the back of the motel and gave them a minute to get into position.
“Bravo team in position.”
“Roger that,” I called into the headset. “Approaching the front door now. Fifty meters out.”
Grant ran with a battering ram in hand. After we reached room 103, I gave a hand signal for Grant to breach.
On the third strike, Grant smashed the battering ram through the motel room door. When the door flew open, I saw Marty Wolfe sprawled out on the bed.
“Police! Don’t do it, Marty,” I warned as he reached for a gun on the nightstand.
“What the hell is this all about?” Marty asked.
I’d already slammed cuffs on his wrists. “You’re going to have plenty of time to talk.”
I picked Marty Wolfe up by his arms and stood him in front of me.
“You’re a real piece of work.”
“Screw you, pig,” he spat.
I’d seen several pics of Marty over the last few hours. How had a young, good-looking guy gotten himself mixed up with El Printo and God’s Warriors?
We walked Wolfe down the street to the Expedition. As I pushed him into the back seat, I heard tires peel out. I looked up to find two sets of headlights bearing down on us. Before I could get to my gun, shots rang out, several slamming into our vehicle.