One Last Scream (Special Agent Ricki James Book 2)

by C. R. Chandler

  “He was dating a woman who had a boyfriend,” she mused out loud. “Maybe a jealous boyfriend?”

  “Most of them are,” Clay agreed. “But even so, why would this jealous boyfriend wait a whole month after Graham had stopped coming around to kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” Ricki said. “Why would Graham tell his buddy Catman that he intended to tell the family foundation to sell that land, and then turn around and tell his sister he wanted to buy it himself?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay echoed. He glanced down at the box sitting on the seat between them. “Are you going to go through that before you turn it over to the sister?”

  “You bet.” Ricki reached for the keys in her pocket. Holding one between her thumb and index finger, she neatly slid it across the top of the box, easily breaking the brittle packing tape holding the flaps down. “So what have we got?” She paused at the sight of a small glass case holding a baseball inside. She gingerly lifted it out of the box and tilted her head to read the signature scrawled across its side. “Ted Williams.”

  Clay whistled and gave it a quick glance. “Seriously? I know a couple of guys from Boston who would kill for that.”

  “Maybe someone did,” Ricki said, carefully putting the case back into the box. “I’ll go through this later. Maybe that watch is somewhere in here, and when I give it all back to Barbara, she’ll have a better opinion of the park rangers than what Abbott left her with.”

  The next two hours went by in a companionable silence, punctuated by a couple of short bouts of conversation. But neither of them was interested in making small talk, and she was glad they were comfortable enough with each other that not talking wasn’t an issue between them.

  They were five minutes from the outskirts of Brewer, with plans to grab a pizza and beer before heading back to her cabin, when Clay’s phone rang. Somehow, the jarring note told Ricki that the pizza and beer would once again be put on hold.

  Clay picked up the phone, answering it with a “Chief Thomas.” He listened without interrupting, his whole demeanor changing from easy companion into cop in nothing flat.

  “I’m on my way.” His mouth flattened into a hard line. “Bar fight in Edington. And someone brought their gun.”

  Ricki immediately sat up and picked up the box. “Drop me off at the road up there. I can cut through the trees and walk the last mile to my cabin. It will save you some time.”

  He didn’t argue with her as he pulled over to the side of the road, spewing gravel into the grass. Ricki didn’t wait for a full stop to open the door, just hopped out as soon as the SUV had slowed down enough she could make the jump without falling on her ass.

  “Thanks, Ricki. Call you later,” he said as she slammed the door. One second later he was back on the tarmac, his lights flashing as the SUV leaped down the road.

  Shaking her head at the life of a cop, Ricki crossed the highway and trotted down the back road. Half an hour later, still a good hundred yards from the cabin, Corby appeared through the trees, trotting toward her, his tail wagging. She smiled and gave him a firm head rub before covering the remaining distance to her front porch.

  Corby followed her inside and was making a beeline for the couch when she called out a warning. “Oh no you don’t. I intend to claim the couch.” She pointed to the floor near the window. “Pretend you’re a dog and lie down over there.” Corby gave her an offended look, then went to stand by his food bowl. Ricki rolled her eyes as she set the box down on the counter. “Fine. Food first, then we can both lie down.”

  Once her dog was slurping away at his food, Ricki grabbed a bottle of water and a rice cake from her stash and headed for the couch. She’d wait to see if Clay could shake loose before she nuked the pizza.

  She set her badge, phone, and gun on the coffee table, undid the laces on her boots, and then, lying back with a throw pillow cradling her head, flipped on the TV. After surfing through all four of the channels they got, she settled on an old NCIS rerun.

  It felt like she’d barely dropped into sleep when her phone blared out. Prying one eye open, she looked at her watch. 12:15 a.m. Not a good time to get a phone call. Reaching out, she grabbed the phone and pulled it close enough to see Marcie’s name shimmering on the screen. Great. The diner had been closed for a good four hours, so it couldn’t be a work problem. If the waitress had just had a bounce with Ranger Wilkes and was calling to tell her about it, she was going to make sure Marcie and her new boyfriend paid for it.

  Raising the phone to her ear, she barked out, “What?”

  “Ricki? You need to get here right now. Right now, do you hear me?” Marcie’s voice was bordering on hysteria.

  She sat straight up and plopped her feet onto the floor. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

  “At the diner. I’m at the diner. It’s on fire!”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Less than ten minutes later, Ricki skidded the truck to a stop right in front of the Sunny Side Up, giving more than a couple of bystanders a good scare. She left it doubled-parked on the street as she leaped out and immediately found her way blocked by a mountain of a man, who held out a beefy hand attached to a long, thick arm. Trip owned the souvenir shop next door and towered a good six inches over her, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from getting by him.

  “Get out of the way.” She took a quick step to the side, which he had trouble matching.

  “Wait a minute, whoa,” Trip shouted over the din of noise around them. “You can’t leave your truck there, Ricki. I called the fire department. They’ll be here any minute, and they’re gonna want to park their rig right where your truck is standing.”

  Ricki tossed him the key she was still holding in her hand. “Fine. You move it.”

  Trip caught the keys with one hand then stood staring, his mouth hanging open as she ran off.

  “Here. I’m over here.”

  Marcie’s voice raised itself over the crowd gathered near the front of the alleyway. Ricki headed in that direction, pushing through bodies until she spotted Marcie. The older woman ran toward her and latched on to Ricki’s arm.

  “I don’t know what happened. It just sort of shot up out of nowhere.” She wiped a grimy hand across her forehead, leaving a dark streak behind. “Dan’s working the water line.” She pointed to a scraggly row of people manning a few garden hoses and passing along buckets of water. “We were right in front. I was about to open the door so we could go in and have a slice of pie after the bingo game at the VFW, when a giant flame just shot straight up from behind the diner. I thought maybe it was coming from the alley, but Dan checked while I called 9-1-1. He said it looked like the whole kitchen was on fire.”

  “Kitchen,” Ricki repeated, feeling a little dazed. How could the damn kitchen catch on fire? She’d had all the wiring updated before she’d opened the place a little over a year ago. She could hear the sirens in the distance, growing louder with each second, but their screams barely registered as the enormity of this disaster sank in. Her place was burning. By morning it could be nothing more than a pile of ash.

  “I don’t know where Anchorman is,” Marcie fretted. “Everyone else from that bar he hangs out at is here. He wasn’t going to work that late, so he should have been at the bar by now. I sent Sam to check.”

  With her attention immediately diverted to the more ominous problem, Ricki slapped both her hands on top of Marcie’s shoulders. “Late? Anchorman was working late?”

  Underneath her hands she could feel Marcie tremble. “He said he was going to work on the schedules, but only for an hour or so. I left about eight thirty, so he shouldn’t be in there.” She turned her head to look at the building, the orange glow from the flames reflecting off the gathering moisture in her eyes. “He can’t be in there.”

  The sound of sirens grew into a high-pitched wave of noise as the fire truck raced down the main street, followed closely by Clay’s SUV, its blue light bar flashing across the roof of the vehicle. Both police chie
f and firemen came to a screeching halt right where Trip had said they would. As men jumped off the truck and Clay stepped out of his vehicle, Ricki made a straight line for the front door of the diner. She removed an old key ring from her coat pocket and inserted the largest key into the oversized lock. The head of the volunteer firemen, as well as Clay, sprinted toward her.

  “Hey. You can’t go in there.” Dave, the longtime chief of the volunteer fire department, pushed his large helmet farther back on his head.

  “It’s my place, Dave,” Ricki said, twisting the key with her good hand and then reaching for the doorknob. “I need to get in there. Someone might still be inside.”

  Clay came up beside her and immediately locked an arm around her shoulders. “Who, Ricki?” His sharp gaze scanned the crowd. “Where’s Marcie and Anchorman?”

  She pushed against his arm and almost brought a sharp heel down on his instep before she caught herself. “Anchorman is missing.”

  “Well, shit.” Dave put two fingers to his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. “Hey. Two of you, bring some masks over here. We need to do a building search.” As more men came running toward them, Clay physically jockeyed Ricki back several steps. “Let them take a look. They have the right equipment and training.”

  Ricki resisted for another second before giving in. Clay was right. The firemen would do the search a lot faster and more efficiently than she could. They waited together on the sidewalk, with Ricki straining to see anything beyond the front windows except the flickering reflection of fire. Ten minutes later Dave emerged. He removed his face mask. His blond hair was dark from a mixture of soot and smoke.

  “Didn’t find anyone.” He paused and stamped his feet. “Couldn’t get a great look into the kitchen, but I don’t think he’s in there. I would have seen him on the floor.” His gaze met Ricki’s stare. “The whole back is going to be a complete loss, but we’ll try to save the front for you.”

  Numb, Ricki nodded her thanks. The volunteer chief looked as if he wanted to say something more, but after a brief hesitation, he headed over to join the other men gathered near the back alley.

  Clay’s hand tightened around her shoulder. “I need to get started on some crowd control. Are you going to be all right if I leave you here for a few minutes?” He stepped in front of her so he could look into her face. “I mean, you aren’t going to do something stupid like sneak inside, are you?”

  Ricki shook her head. “No. You go.” She didn’t watch him walk away, her gaze centered on the brand-new awning over the front door of her diner, lightly fluttering in the breeze as if everything were perfectly normal. Watching it, her mind went weirdly blank.

  “He’s not there.”

  Ricki slowly turned around to face Sam, her relief cook and Marcie’s brother. His chest was heaving and he was pointing up the street as Marcie came up behind him, wringing her hands. “I checked the bar, and his place next door. His car is there, but he isn’t. He didn’t answer the door and there weren’t any lights on.”

  “Crap.” Ricki looked at her diner and then back up the street where Anchorman lived. He’d rented a place next to his favorite bar, insisting it was environmentally friendly since he didn’t have to even turn on his car in order to get a drink.

  At the time she’d thought it had been a typical Anchorman move, but now she was grateful they didn’t have to go chasing all over the Bay looking for him. The only places Anchorman went at night were his duplex, the diner, the VFW, or the bar. He would have taken his car to go to the VFW, and if he wasn’t trapped somewhere in the diner, which she refused to believe, that left his place and the bar. She glanced at her watch and frowned. “It’s going on one. It could be he made it to the bottom of a Jack Daniel’s bottle and is passed out inside his place for the night.”

  Sam’s chin jutted out, and his normally vague blue gaze took on a fierce look. “No matter how much he drinks, Anchorman doesn’t pass out.”

  Ricki blew out a breath and then chewed on her lower lip. Sam was right. She’d seen the ex-sniper drink enough to put two men under the table and still stay on his feet. And if he were still on his feet, there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed the commotion going on and come around to take a look, no matter how much alcohol was flowing through his system.

  “He’s not in there, is he?” Marcie’s voice trembled as she pointed at the front door of the diner.

  “Dave and his guys took a good look, and they said no.” Ricki carefully scanned the buildings across the street. “He didn’t just disappear into thin air. We need to take a better look.” She stood in front of Marcie and Sam, her hands on her hips, ignoring the chaos swirling around them as she considered the options. Whenever she moved, she could feel the shape of her gun against the small of her back, reminding her who should be taking the risks here. Which meant it would be better if she took the street between here and Anchorman’s place, and had Marcie and Sam go wake up the landlord who lived in the other half of the rental. They needed to get inside and make sure Anchorman wasn’t in there, just in case he’d decided not to answer Marcie’s knock on his door. Which was something Anchorman might do. If it weren’t for all the noise going on outside, she acknowledged silently. Still, it had to be checked out.

  “Anchorman’s landlord lives in the other half of that duplex. I want you both to go back there and get the guy out of bed.” She looked at Marcie. “Sweet-talk him, bribe him, make threats, just do whatever it takes to get you into Anchorman’s place.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Marcie asked.

  She took in the growing crowd around them. “Checking around. Like you said, most of the bar emptied out and came to gawk, so someone might know where he is. If I see the landlord hanging out here, I’ll send him your way.”

  She shooed them away, waiting until the pair had moved through the shifting crowd before following slowly behind. Once they were a good half a block up the street, she started to move past the storefronts. She stopped at the entrance to the first dark alley, separating two brick buildings. Angling her body away from the crowd, she kept to the shadows as she stepped just inside the alley and drew her gun. It was awkward holding it in her left hand, but she slowly adjusted the weight, getting used to the feel. It still felt foreign, but it would do.

  She took out the small penlight that was always tucked into her jacket pocket and put it between her teeth. Its beam only penetrated a few feet into the darkness, but it was better than nothing.

  Moving carefully, Ricki walked around a large dumpster pushed against the wall near the entrance, checking the other side before continuing to make her way through the twenty feet between the opening out to the street and the back wall. She shone her small light into all the empty corners, stirring up nothing except a couple of spiders. Lowering her gun, she walked back toward the entrance, slipping her weapon into one of her jacket pockets and the penlight into the other before emerging from the dark and continuing on down the sidewalk.

  Ricki passed several more buildings before approaching another alleyway. It looked pretty much like the first one, and even though it was longer, it was just as narrow, with a dumpster near the front blocking half the width. She turned her head slowly, shining the penlight back and forth, when a pair of boots appeared. They were lying on the other side of the dumpster and were clearly attached to someone’s feet. Ricki froze, pointing the light past them so it would penetrate the dark as much as it could. She kept moving forward until the small beam bounced off the back wall and revealed nothing else in the alley except stray bits of trash that had escaped the dumpster. Ricki quickly retraced the short distance back to the boots and the man they belonged to.

  Anchorman was lying facedown, his arms and hands splayed out to the side. She dropped to one knee and laid a hand against his back, holding her own breath until she felt the rise and fall of his chest. He was alive, but his breathing was too shallow. She ran the penlight down his body and across the pavement next to him. No blood. At l
east not that she could see. Pulling out her phone, she called Clay, but there was no answer. She wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t hear the thing with all the commotion going on, but that left her to find help herself.

  “Hang in there, Anchorman. I’ll be right back.” She jumped to her feet, shoved her gun into her belt, and ran to the opening, startling a group of men who were walking three abreast down the sidewalk toward the diner. She didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t stop her from reaching out and grabbing the upper arm of the guy closest to her, digging her fingers in when he yelped and tried to back away.

  “Shut up,” she commanded. “I’m a special agent, and there’s an injured man in the alley. I need you to get Chief Thomas. He’s working the fire down the block.” She stuck her face into his and glared. “Have you got that? Chief Thomas. Tell him Agent James has found their man and he’s badly injured. Tell him I’m calling for help.”

  “Okay, lady.” The man stopped struggling and sent a half-pleading, half-panicked look to one of his companions. “Can’t you take care of this?”

  The dark-haired man stepped forward and stared Ricki right in the eye. “I’m a police officer out of Olympia. Do you have some ID?”

  Not wanting to waste any time arguing, she dropped the first man’s arm and pulled out her badge. The officer gave it a quick look and then turned around and gave his friend a shove. “Go get that police chief, and make it quick.”

  Both his buddies took off at a dead run while he pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call 9-1-1. Maybe there’s an ambulance down at that fire.”

  She didn’t bother to tell him that Brewer didn’t have an ambulance. Just TK with his station wagon. She gave him the doctor’s personal cell number, told him to call it and explain the situation, then without any other explanation turned back toward the alley. “If you’ll stay here and keep watch for the chief, I’m going to stay with the victim,” she called out over her shoulder.