“Sure his PC will be there?”
“You think Peak and Glick tried to go through his browser history?”
“Point, dog-breath. What about his phone?”
I turned to Rebecca. “What about his phone? Can we take a look at it?”
She shook her head. “Flip phone. Called all smart phones new-fangled and wanted to know why he needed to tweet every crap he took. I cleaned up his word-choice, of course.”
“No phone,” I said to Lacy, grinning at Rebecca’s comment.
“Got it. Send me an address and meet me there?”
I twisted the receiver away from my mouth. “Can you meet Lacy at your uncle’s place after we eat and let her in?”
She pulled out her phone and checked the time again. “Uh, I’ve got one errand to run, then I can be there. How does four sound?”
“Rebecca will meet you there at four. I’ll text you the address in a minute.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“Not off the top of my head. If I do think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Still blows my mind that little Lacy Richter is working for you guys,” she said as I tucked my phone back away.
I smiled. Lacy and her grandmother were some of the few humans who actually knew what we were. There were certainly more than her, but it wasn’t exactly common knowledge around town. “She’s a good kid,” I said.
“God, she’s probably—what? Twenty years old by now?”
“Twenty-one in just a few months.”
“Oh, my God, I feel so old! Lacy was a student in one of my first classes. I can’t believe I’ve been back in town that long.”
I grinned down at her. “If it makes you feel any better, I think the same thing. About me, I mean.”
She laughed as she returned my look, bit her lower lip a little, and looked away. “Well, it’s not like I’m getting old. Not really. But it does seem like time is just flying by.”
“Time does that,” I said. “The more you focus on just living life from one day to the next, the more it seems to slip by. Had a friend in the service who used to say it was like a roll of toilet paper.”
Rebecca laughed. “Toilet paper?”
“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle. “You know, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes?”
She laughed again. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
And then there we were, out in front of Dixie’s. Dixie’s was our go-to place for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Not that it was Michelin-rated food, or anything, but the burgers were the best in town, and everything on the menu was cheap. Down the street from us was the Curious Turtle, as well as the little post office place where you could rent a PO box. I think Lacy’s boyfriend Terry still worked down there.
We stepped inside the diner and found a table. This time of day, the lunch rush was long over, and the dinner rush hadn’t started yet.
One of the waitresses nodded at us, a little smirk on her lips, as we took a seat. “Be right with y’all.”
I set the warehouse fire’s file aside, picked up the menu, and began to scan it as I tried to decide what I wanted. It wasn’t lost on me, though, as I went from burger to steak to pork chops to meatloaf, that I was currently having lunch with one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met. The kicker, though? She was the girl-next-door type, a teacher.
In my experience, women like that didn’t like a guy like me. They wanted them home at night, not out in harm’s way, facing fires or gunmen or God only knew what. Could anyone blame them, though? The world was dangerous enough without willingly putting yourself in harm’s way every day of your life.
The waitress brought us water, and we both ordered coffee, no sugar, no cream.
“You know,” I said as the waitress turned to grab our orders, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who drank her coffee black.”
“Guess you have now,” she said, smiling as she glanced up at me over the menu. “It was how my father taught me to drink it, that’s all, and Uncle Zeke has always drank his the same way. Why ruin tradition? What about you?”
“I didn’t even drink coffee before I went into the service. My parents were more tea drinkers. My dad actually drank green tea every morning, if you can believe it. Real health nut, said it was good for the prostate or something.”
She laughed.
“But it just tastes, I don’t know, funny. Couldn’t ever do it. So, when I became a PJ, I started drinking it to get moving in the morning.”
She cocked her head in confusion. “PJ?”
“Sorry. PJs are Pararescuers in the Air Force. We’d jump into hostile zones and recover pilots who went down, destroy the remains of the aircraft or helo.”
“You jumped out of planes for a living?” she asked, her eyes as big as coffee cups.
I laughed. “Believe me, it’s not as scary as it sounds. They give you a parachute and everything.”
Our waitress came back with our coffee and took our orders, then bustled back behind the counter. The whole time, though, she was giving me a little knowing smirk.
I watched over the top of my coffee cup as Rebecca dashed a tiny bit of table salt into the ebony liquid, the slightly acidic taste of the bitter drink washing over my tongue.
“Salt?”
“Cuts the bitterness. Uncle Zeke drinks Folgers, and it tastes like dirt with how much grounds he pours in.”
I’d never heard of such a thing. I took the salt and shook it once into my cup. “Just a dash?”
She nodded, smiling. “Just a dash.”
I took a sip of my doctored coffee, smiling a little. The bitterness was almost completely gone. I mean, it wasn’t suddenly a world-class brew or anything, but it was miles away from the burnt-tasting cup of mud it had previously been. “Thanks for the tip,” I said, raising the cup in a little cheers.
She returned the gesture. “Welcome.”
“Now,” I said, “I guess we should get down to business.”
“Right, what else do we need to look at?”
“All the incidentals and who we need to speak to. See if there’s anything they might have missed.”
Then we began.
Alarms had gone off in the storage area, but no one had heard it. A passerby smelled the smoke, saw it coming out of the alley, and realized what was going on. They called 911, got the volunteers back down from the mountains, which took a good thirty minutes according to Deputy Glick. Then two of the guys, Chief Beckett and Derrick Newhouse, showed up at the fire. No suspicious vehicles or civilians were spotted, and Chief Beckett was the one to first spot signs of arson. The open window, the burnt remains of the time-delayed device. Nothing overly fishy stood out to me.
Rebecca shook her head as I finished up.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Sorry, this whole thing just blows my mind. Beckett and Newhouse were the ones on the scene, Uncle Zeke’s in jail. It’s just so unexpected, that’s all.”
“What’s so wild about the fire department showing up to the fire? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”
“Well, Beckett and Uncle Zeke were old poker buddies a while back, till Chief Beckett and him had a falling out and Beckett stopped showing up altogether.”
“Wait, they had a falling out?” That was news to me. “Over what? Money?”
She just shrugged. “It happened when I was still in high school, living with Uncle Zeke. They used to have a Saturday night poker game, and Beckett just stopped showing up sometime later. Never seemed like any kind of bad blood, or anything, just Beckett never really came around anymore after that.”
I nodded, wrote down Beckett’s name, and underlined it.
She leaned forward and followed the tip of my pen with her eyes. “Come on, you don’t think Beckett could’ve done anything, do you? A fire chief setting fires?”
“No,” I agreed, “but this is as much about asking questions the prosecution can’t answer as it is about clarifying the evidence
we already have. We need people with motives to try and set your uncle up. Now, what about Newhouse?”
“Well, Newhouse and I are friends. We’d known each other, kind of, back when we both went to ERHS. After he got back into town, we started hanging out every now and then.”
My mouth went dry and my pulse began to quicken at the word “friends.” Derrick Newhouse wasn’t a bad looking guy, but he was a firefighter, which meant he was in good shape and spent his life helping other people. Worst of all, he wasn’t a bad person, either. I’d gotten to know him over the last several months since he’d come back into town and joined the firehouse. But, for whatever reason, even the thought of Rebecca and him together was more than my wolf-brain could handle.
“But we’re just friends,” she said. “It’s not like I’m sleeping with the guy or something.”
I bit the inside of my mouth. What the hell was happening to me? I’d never had this kind of thing happen when any other woman mentioned a guy’s name before. I turned my eyes back to the file, but grudgingly didn’t write Derrick’s name. “So, not a suspect or anything.”
“What? God, no! Derrick wouldn’t have anything to blame Uncle Zeke over.”
I let out what I hoped was an imperceptible breath of relief. Derrick having dated her in the past would’ve invoked the silent code of firemen. Don’t date another fireman’s ex, don’t date their widows. And definitely don’t try and steal their girl.
“What else, then? What do we have?”
“The Florentino family.”
“Right. We had a little meeting at the office before we left, and Richard is looking into the Florentino family connection. His fiancée hasn’t said anything to him about it, but maybe Zeke’s mystery mobster hasn’t gone by the gallery yet. Business owners might not be talking to each other out of fear of what happened to Zeke happening to them, which is why it’s not common knowledge on the street. A fire like that, even if it’s not set by the Florentinos, might have sent a message to the other people in town.”
Our waitress returned to our table, two plates of food in hand, just as I finished speaking. I closed up the file and put it aside again, making space in front of me for my food.
“How in the hell can you eat that much food?” Rebecca asked as she gazed in awe at my plate.
I just grinned and cut into my steak. “I’m still a growing boy. Besides, this is nothing. You should see my co-worker Frank’s diet. He eats like a bear.”
“Now what?” she asked as she cut her burger in half.
“Now,” I said, “I go to the firehouse to talk to Chief Beckett and get the logs from that night. And you go to your Uncle Zeke’s to let Lacy in.”
“This job of yours is so glamorous,” she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Believe me,” I said, “the last thing you want is for this case to get glamorous. Glamour is when things start to get tricky.”
Chapter Six – Rebecca
Lacy was already waiting for me, phone in hand, when I pulled up at my Uncle Zeke’s little clapboard house out on the north side of Enchanted Rock.
“Whoa,” I said as I got out of my car.
“Whoa what, Ms. Stokes?” she asked as she straightened up from where she’d been leaning against the front driver’s side fender of her little blue Subaru.
“You’re on time for once! Early even! I don’t think you managed that more than twice while you were in my class.”
She fixed me with a look, one scarlet red swath of bangs hanging across an eye. “Ha ha, Very funny.”
I grinned back at her. Lacy had started off as one of my worst students, but had finally turned herself around. Despite all the intervention in the world, from teachers to counselors to even the vice principal, nothing seemed to sink in. Then, one semester, it all just seemed to magically click. For whatever reason, after that amazing moment, she turned in her homework on time, studied for tests, and even showed up to class every day. I still couldn’t get her to show up on time, of course. But three out of four was more than I’d ever hoped for with my problem students. In most cases, I was just desperate for them to graduate.
If I could have bottled whatever happened to her and put it into the hands of every one of my students, I would have. Watching her turn things around had been one of the only things that brought me back for the second year of classes.
“How’ve you been?” I asked, stopping in front of her as I looked her up and down. “You look good. Sense of style hasn’t changed one bit.”
She had on ripped black jeans, old black Converses, and a Misfits t-shirt. And, of course, Lacy Richter’s staple: the hoodie. She blushed a little as she gave me a tentative, bashful smile. “I’ve been good. Really good.”
“I’m glad, Lacy.” I held my arms open to her. “Can I at least get a hug?”
We hugged each other tight and broke apart. “So this is your uncle’s place, huh?”
“Not really my uncle, but close enough.” I quickly went through the background of Zeke really being my godfather, glossing over some of the parts. No need to reveal all of my childhood to a former student. I didn’t want to exactly feed the rumor mill. Not that I thought Lacy would do something like that, but I’d learned to not take any chances. “You ready to get started?”
“Sure thing,” she said, falling in behind me as I headed up to the house. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Uncle Zeke’s little yellow clapboard house wasn’t a beautiful home, not by any means, but it had at least been my home for a good chunk of time I was growing up. In a childhood that seemed to be held together by duct tape and staples, always threatening to come apart around the edges and go spilling all over the floor, Zeke’s home had been an oasis of hot meals, a soft bed, and running water.
We stepped up to the porch and I unlocked the front door. The smell of stale air, like a modern day Egyptian tomb, hit us as we stepped inside. “Leave the door open,” I said, making a face. “Might as well let the place air out a little bit while we’re here.”
Lacy stepped up next to me, looked around the little living room, at its stacks of tools, the pile of tool boxes and plastic storage containers against the far wall, and the old, beat up couch Uncle Zeke refused to spend any money to replace.
Of course, Uncle Zeke had rearranged his entire life when I came to stay with him. Not that I didn’t help with the rearrangement, of course. He’d always been a little bit of a pack rat, but I managed to keep the house clean in spite of his proclivities towards accumulation. So he never quite made it to hoarder status, at least not while I was living with him. And, even after I’d moved out, I watched him. Not quite like a hawk, but still very carefully. I let some of it slide, since it wasn’t exactly my home. But not all of it.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said. “Uncle Zeke likes to collect things.”
She just shrugged. “You should see my boyfriend’s place. Where’s his computer at?”
“Down the hall and to the left. He’s got a little office back there.”
She headed off down the hall, and I followed after her as I checked my phone. I still had plenty of time before I had to meet Derrick for drinks tonight down at the Elk. He’d been a really great shoulder to cry on since all this had happened with Uncle Zeke, and leaving him nursing a beer by himself wouldn’t have been cool.
“Last door on the left.”
“This one?” she asked, gesturing to the dark room.
“Yep.”
She stepped inside, flipped on the light, and whistled low. Uncle Zeke’s office was a mess. Not because of hoarding, but more because he did all his paperwork here and never bothered to straighten anything out. Piles and stacks and more piles of paper, folders, brochures, and invoices littered the office around the big, old school CRT monitor.
“That bad?”
“What?”
“The mess? Is it really that bad?”
She laughed. “No, I was laughing at the
monitor,” she said as she walked around and plopped down in the desk chair. “Haven’t seen one of these in a long while.”
I just nodded and let her get to work. After a minute or so of her disconnecting cables, I realized I really had no idea what she was doing. “Hey, Lacy? What exactly are you taking Uncle Zeke’s computer for, anyways?”
“Kind of like creating a copy of it,” she said as she dug around and pulled out a cable, “but not. There are a couple different ways to go about it, but only one that really works for it to be admissible in court, and that’s a forensic image. Basically, it takes a special device back at the office that pulls all the info from your uncle’s hard drive, then marks it with a hashtag number that guarantees it’s the real deal if anyone ever questions what we found.”
“And that helps us how?”
“Proves we didn’t mess with it, first off. You want to show proof in court that anything we ever found on his PC hasn’t been tampered with, either something we modified or changed or added.”
“So, it’s kind of like taking a picture?”
“Exactly. An image. A spot in time on the hard drive, and everything it contained. Then, we can look through that, and track all of our changes. Anyone else comes along, even up to the DOJ–”
“DOJ?”
“Sorry, Department of Justice. You should see the look on Terry’s face when I start talking about this stuff. Glosses over more than yours. Mainly with all the department names.”
I grinned. “You really enjoy this work, don’t you?”
“Ever since I was a little girl,” she said. “Just never thought I’d get to use it, is all.”
“How did you get into it, anyways?”
She pulled my uncle’s PC tower out from beneath the desk and went to heave it up on the desktop. “I was at the office one day after school. I think I’d gotten suspended for skipping class or something. Which, by the way, is a pretty stupid punishment. You guys should really rethink that.”
Laughing, I waved my hand for her continue.
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