Читать книгу Burning Love - Debra Cowan - Страница 9

“Body found in blaze at one-sixteen Sorrel Lane.”

The dispatcher’s voice crackled across Terra August’s car radio. As the sole fire investigator for Presley, Oklahoma, she was already on her way to the two-alarm fire in the established Hunter’s Ridge subdivision, jarred out of a deep sleep minutes ago by her pager.

In the past ten years, the Oklahoma City suburb’s population had grown to nearly fifty thousand. The police department had hired enough officers before the growth spurt, but not the fire department. These last few weeks had doubled Terra’s wish for another investigator in her office, but until next year’s budget was approved, she was it.

Her mentor lived on Sorrel Lane, but she didn’t know the house number. Their frequent meetings had never taken place at his home or hers, and usually involved a meal somewhere. Please, don’t let it be Harris’s house.

After flashing her badge for the uniformed officer stationed at the neighborhood’s entrance, she maneuvered her Explorer down a neatly kept residential street. The older brick homes were bathed in a mix of moonlight and shadow. Red and blue lights strobed from a police cruiser at either end of the block. Fire trucks, engines, police cars and two vans bearing the names and logos of the nearby Oklahoma City television stations crowded both sides of the street. The frantic swirl of lights spiked her blood pressure. Less than five hours ago, she and Harris Vaughn had enjoyed a Sunday night dinner and put their heads together about a case that had her stumped.

Fighting to calm a sudden flicker of panic, Terra eased her SUV past three police cruisers, around Station One’s rescue truck and squeezed to the curb just behind an ambulance. The paramedic raised a hand in greeting and shut the door. Terra glimpsed the empty gurney inside. No survivors.

Her heartbeat stuttered, but she uncurled her death grip from the steering wheel and stepped out. The blaze was out, but gray smoke streaked across the midnight-black sky. Water from the firefighters’ hoses ran down the streets, gurgled into grates and glistened on trees, yards, nearby cars. Smoke still hung heavy in the air. Police and fire radios crackled into the night. Yellow crime scene tape squared off the house and yard. Officers stood guard at each of the four corners and probably in the back yard where Terra couldn’t see.

At one time, the single story, traditional redbrick home had been inviting. Now it looked cold and bleak. Dead. Still mostly intact, the brick was streaked with soot, burned black on the west side of the house. The one front window on the west side was blown out; the trio of windows on the east side looked untouched except for the dripping ash and water as the firefighters from Stations One and Four, her old station house, stood amidst snaking hoses and a now soggy lawn. In a neighbor’s yard, a firefighter stood videotaping the scene. Terra would get the tape from him later.

The blaze appeared to have burned only one area of the home before firefighters managed to douse it.

Urgency had her slamming her door and looking around for the police officer who held the log book to check people in and out of the scene.

The familiar sharp odor of burning wood and engine fumes wrapped around her like the wet midnight. This fire was different. It had taken more than a home, more than memories. It had taken a life. And she had to know whose.

Ash swirled through the air, clung to her cheeks. The Oklahoma County Medical Examiner’s wagon eased past her and found a spot farther up the crowded street.

She opened the back door of her Explorer and grabbed her boots. Stumbling out of a dead sleep when her pager buzzed, she had automatically pulled on jeans and a heavy flannel shirt with sleeves she could roll up. She’d sleeked her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail. Hoping like crazy that the victim’s identity would be someone other than the mentor whose company she’d enjoyed earlier in the evening, Terra toed off her tennis shoes and tugged on her rubber, steel-soled boots.

The ambulance pulled out and ambled down the block. Trying to steady her racing pulse, she grabbed her hard hat and slid it on.

Her thick, well-worn gloves were in her pockets. She slung her camera around her neck, picked up her shovel and a tackle box containing her hand tools. Stepping around the back of her truck, she racked her brain for any memory of Harris’s house number. She came up empty, which only sharpened the dread pricking at her.

Her gaze swept the knots of people moving around the scene. Several uniformed officers wound through the crowd of reporters, cameramen and neighbors. At the sidewalk which led to the front door, Terra spotted a cop holding a clipboard. She started toward him, dodging the hood of a police car, stepping over a hydrant hose.

This neighborhood had probably never seen anything more traumatic than a bicycle wreck. Farther up the street, uniformed officers were directing passersby to keep moving and news vans to park at the end of the block.

As they’d finished dinner, Harris had mentioned taking in a movie after running some errands. Terra had grabbed a swim at her gym before heading home to turn in early. She hadn’t been asleep two hours before her pager went off.

Four years as a fire investigator and nine years on the job had taught her to level out her emotions so she could objectively do her job, but tonight she failed. Tonight she was terrified of whose body the firefighters had found.

Her nerves snapped tight as she continued to walk toward the slightly built policeman with the clipboard, standing at the curb in front of the victim’s mailbox. Water dripped from the mature maple trees in the front yard, their yellow and red leaves glimmering red and blue in the flashing lights from one of the police cruisers. Firefighters walked past dragging hoses back to their engines. Perhaps the officer in her sights would know the victim’s identity.

“Hello, Luscious.”

Ugh. Terra knew the smooth, practiced voice, but kept walking. Dane Reynolds was an investigative reporter for one of Oklahoma City’s television stations and seemed to always beat her to the scene. “No time, Reynolds.”

“Just one minute, Angel Face.” The local newsman with spray-stiff hair hurried toward her. “Just one?”

Terra kept moving, drawing up sharply when the reporter suddenly appeared. Flashing too-perfect teeth, Dane Reynolds planted his impressively trim self in front of her. He probably spent hours at the gym, and more time on his hair than she did on hers.

She stepped around him. She wasn’t about to let Reynolds see the cold sweat that clung to her nape. Or get a glimpse of nerves that were raw with uncertainty. Dane Reynolds would jump on that like a rat on a Cheetoh. “I’m working here, Dane.”

“I know.” He fell into easy step beside her as if he’d been invited. “Just wanted to ask if you’d talk to me about this case when you’re finished here?”

“Station Four caught this one. Captain Maguire is around somewhere.”

“But I want to talk to you.” He lightly skimmed his fingers over her shoulder as if brushing away something. “You know you want to.”

What she wanted was to pop him with her shovel. “I already told you—”

“And what about that interview we talked about? Surely you’ve changed your mind by now. The guy’s set three fires and you’re no closer to—”

“How’s that camera working out, Investigator?” A pleasant male voice interrupted firmly.

“It’s great, T.J.” Terra smiled over at T. J. Coontz, Dane’s cameraman, who had played the buffer before. A few months ago, she’d asked the cameraman to recommend a place to buy a good used camera for the advanced photography class she’d enrolled in this semester. The city’s current budget didn’t support further education so Terra had signed up on her own time and money. She would have borrowed a camera from Harris, but she needed to learn how to use a newer model. T.J. had generously offered one of his cameras in order to save Terra some expense. “Thanks for loaning it to me. I’ll get it back to you as soon as the class ends.”

“Keep it as long as you want.”

She eyed his dark suit and tie. “You look nice.”

“I was at my cousin’s wedding when I got the page for the fire.”

Dane shot T.J. a withering look before saying to Terra, “Come on, Luscious. What about that interview?”

“Dane, you’re not helping your case,” T.J. said.

“Good point.” Terra stepped past the men. “Please excuse me.”

She had to make sure it wasn’t Harris inside that torched house.

“How about a drink tomorrow night?”

“Sorry,” she called to Reynolds over her shoulder as she moved up to the cop. The guy couldn’t take a hint. She’d refused every time he’d asked her out in the past two months. Just as she’d refused his requests for an interview.

“What about Thursday?”

Ignoring him, she flashed her badge at the thirty-something officer who stood eye-to-eye with her five-foot-nine frame. “Terra August, Fire Investigator.”

He nodded and held the log out for her to sign her name and record the time.

Her gaze going to the brass nametag he wore, she swallowed around the painful knot in her throat. “Officer Lowe, do we know the victim’s name?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He skimmed a finger up to the top of the page. “Officer Farrell spoke to a neighbor who said a man named Harris Vaughn lived here and the neighbor saw him come home around nine-thirty.”

No! A sharp pain pierced her chest and Terra struggled to absorb the shock, tried to keep her wits about her.

“Hey, you okay?” Lowe peered at her.

“Do they know for sure that it’s him?”

“No, ma’am. Just that this is his residence.”

She shook her head, urgency and dread fusing inside her. What had happened? Electrical fire? Arson? She could already rule out cigarettes. Harris didn’t smoke, never had.

“Ma’am?” The policeman had lifted the tape and now waited expectantly.

Her knees wobbled, but she moved forward, partly out of reflex, partly out of denial. No, it wasn’t Harris. It couldn’t be.

Wait for facts. Harris’s ingrained instruction played through her mind and she hung on to it with single-minded focus as she sidestepped the labyrinth of hoses on the sidewalk. Sooty water splashed over the toes of her thick rubber boots. The cops knew only that this was Harris’s house. No one had identified him, only a male victim.

Out of habit, she reached for the camera around her neck, but rather than stop for her first set of pictures, she moved inside.

The smell of wet ash settled over her like a cloud of fog. Gripping her tackle box, she nodded to the firefighters coming toward her. The somber, whipped look on their faces sharpened the knot in her throat. They’d contained the fire, but lost someone. She knew from her nine years fighting fires that no one would sleep tonight.

In the living room to her right, Terra spotted Don LeBass and Rusty Ferguson from her old station house. Rusty’s eyes were red rimmed and Terra knew it wasn’t strictly due to the blaze he’d battled. The two men were deep in conversation with Captain Maguire.

She absently registered moving across slick tile then soggy carpet past a couple of firefighters, down a long hallway to her left. The wall’s creamy paint was hidden beneath streaks of soot and ash. Wood and glass littered the floor. A clump of men and women stood in the doorway at the end of a hall and Terra knew the body was there. The bedroom door had been blown out from its hinges. Was this room the point-of-origin?

She’d need to check every room for that, ask if anyone had discovered any sign of forced entry, anything that might indicate arson, but all she cared about right now was seeing the body and making sure it wasn’t Harris.

Three firemen stood against the wall just outside the door, nodding soberly as she reached them. She recognized the oldest of them, Jerry French, a twenty-year veteran from Station Four. She stepped into the room, leaning her shovel against the nearest wall.

The bedroom was now a skeleton of burned rafters and support beams, studs peering out from gouged and blackened Sheetrock. She automatically noted those details as her gaze went immediately to the body lying on the bed.

She drew in a deep breath and moved closer so she could see the body. The face was too severely heat-bloated to be recognizable, but her gaze snagged on the victim’s cowboy boots. Water-gray, Australian sharkskin.

No! Her vision grayed. Dizzy and nauseous, she turned and stumbled blindly toward the door. Harris. Harris. Harris.

Her heart clenched painfully. Those boots had cost a pretty penny. Terra and the other Presley firefighters had pooled their money to buy Harris the pair for his retirement, along with an Alaskan fishing trip. The M.E. would have to use dental records for a positive identification of the body, but for Terra the boots were a macabre dog tag.

Trying to breathe without keeling over, she reached for the nearest wall, grabbed only air and pitched forward.

An arm, solid and thick, caught her at the waist. “Easy there.”

The deep masculine voice commanded rather than soothed. Reflexively she clutched at the arm bracing her waist, her stomach rolling. For an instant, she let herself lean into the steel-hard strength, tried to absorb the pain slashing through her. Her entire body throbbed with it. In another few seconds, her vision cleared and she registered dark brown hair, hard blue eyes and a mouth that meant all business.

Cop. She saw the gold badge clipped to the waistband of his faded jeans at the same time she realized he still held her. She felt steadier and managed a thank-you.

He frowned, his lips flattening. “This your first body at a fire scene? Something like this isn’t for a rookie.”

Irritation flickered through the smothering pain. She mumbled thanks only out of politeness and pushed her way out into the hall.

“Cut her a break, man,” Terra heard Jerry French say to the cop. “The victim’s a friend of hers.”

She ducked into an empty bathroom, boots squishing through ashy water and crunching over glass and splintered wood. Wet smoke and the rotten smell of death weakened her knees as she dragged in deep breaths of cold, rancid air. The bloated, unrecognizable mass of Harris’s face floated through her mind. She closed her eyes, leaned her forehead against the wall and focused on breathing. She’d thrown up twice in her adult life; she battled to keep from doing it a third time.

Tugging off one of her gloves, she pushed back her helmet and wiped at the cold sweat on her forehead, her nape. Tears burned her throat and she thumbed off the strays falling down her cheeks. The cop’s disapproval of her pricked, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was what had happened to Harris and she meant to find out.

Despite how difficult this case was, fire investigation was her job, what Harris had trained her to do. What she would do. For him.

Terra waited there until her stomach settled. She had to focus on her job, not Harris. You can’t make it personal. That had been one of the first things he’d taught her. A sob ached in her throat, but she swallowed it. After another minute, she pulled her glove back on, adjusted her helmet more comfortably and returned to the bedroom.

The medical examiner, Ken Mason, handled bodies for Oklahoma County, which included the town of Presley. He now stood beside the bed waving off a young man who approached with a body bag. “Wait until Investigator August is finished.”

Ken, who’d worked with Harris during his last year as the fire investigator, turned to Terra with compassion in his dark eyes. “Take your time.”

She nodded, fighting down another swell of emotion. Her mind still couldn’t accept what her eyes had seen. For a moment, she made herself stare at the body. There was nothing of the shy grin, the trimmed beard shot with gray, the kind brown eyes. All traces of the man she knew—loved—were gone. Except for the boots. Bit by bit, she let in the pain until she felt she could control it. When she began to tremble, she bit her lip and looked away.

Someone, probably Jerry and the guys from Station Four, had set up her portable floodlights while she was gone. Putting herself on autopilot as best she could, Terra decided to record the body first, get it over with. She lifted her camera with shaking hands and snapped pictures from several angles. After each photo, she dictated a brief memo into her microcassette recorder. Tears blurred her vision, but she had a job to do. Harris, of all people, wouldn’t have cut her any slack.

She moved to the right side of the bed. The hallway, guest bathroom and living room only had smoke damage, but fire damage was severe in this room. Especially on the wall beside the bed where destruction was the heaviest.

This could very well be the low point—the place where the fire started—for this room. There could be other origins. She would double-check and verify every room before making notes to that effect. Her initial guess was the bedroom as the point-of-origin, but she would make no conclusions until she finished her investigation.

“Where did you come from?” she murmured to the fire, staring at the charred wood that moved in an upward-spreading vee from the bedside table. “Here? Or another room?”

She forced herself to look a second time at Harris’s body. She wanted to scream, to run, but she didn’t. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and her breathing went shallow, but after a minute, she was able to detach a bit. That’s when she noticed his hands and feet were tied. She froze as the implication sunk in. He wouldn’t have been able to escape.

She jerked her gaze away. Rage swept over her until she shook with it. She stared blankly at the blackened wall and counted to ten as she struggled to level out the tide of emotion battering her. Do your job, she mentally reminded herself. Do your job.

She should take measurements of the body’s position, compare them later to the ones taken by the lab tech who’d already put away his tape measure. And as quickly as possible, she needed to determine what, if any, accelerant had been used before any remaining indication vanished due to the areas ventilated by the firefighters.

She’d always been able to scent kerosene or gasoline at a scene; she smelled neither here. She could call Vicki at the State Fire Marshal’s office and request the use of their German shepherd. Pyro was trained to sniff out accelerants, but Terra didn’t want to wait for the dog to arrive. Besides, her portable “sniffer,” an instrument that detected combustible gases, would confirm the presence and identity of the accelerant. After that, she would take samples if necessary.

Urging herself to get started, Terra turned. For the first time, she noticed her tackle box at the foot of the bed and realized she must’ve dropped it upon first seeing Harris.

Jerry French picked it up and handed it to her. “You okay?”

“Yes, thanks. I just needed a little time.”

He nodded, his smoke-reddened hazel eyes sympathetic. “The guys from Four and One are waiting to begin overhaul. That way, you can move them away from where you think the fire started.”

“Great. That will save a lot of investigation time.”

“The walk-around’s finished. The structure appears sound enough for you to begin.”

“Your guys were first on the scene, right?”

Jerry nodded. “We had some trouble putting out the blaze. It took a small spray pattern to finally do the trick.”

Terra noted that in her tape recorder. If the typical wide or “fog pattern” spray was inefficient in putting out the fire, that was a clue to the type of accelerant used. “Thanks, Jerry. I’ll come out in just a minute to talk to your crew, walk through overhaul with them. Right now, I need to check for accelerants before they evaporate.”

“Gotcha.”

Still off balance and slightly disoriented, she set her tackle box down on the soggy, debris-covered carpet.

Soot streaked Jerry’s weathered, leather face. Concern darkened his eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

She nodded, giving him a small smile. “I can do this.”

“I’ll see you outside.” He squeezed her shoulder and motioned to the two firefighters she’d barely noticed earlier. One woman, one man, both pale and wide-eyed. Probies. Had she ever been that green?

The cop who’d kept her from planting her face in the floor watched her coolly from a few feet away. Uneasy with the knowing steadiness in his eyes, her gaze slid away. She opened her tackle box and took out the small, boxlike “sniffer.” The wooden footboard for the queen-size bed was still intact, but the headboard was a crumbling screen of ash. Charred mattress. Closed, scorched closet door.

Rubbing her temple where a headache had started, Terra walked to the far side of the bed. Bedroom fires were typically caused by three things: frayed lamp circuits, electric blankets or smokers. Harris had never smoked so she dismissed the possibility that he could’ve started the fire that way. Though fires due to frayed lamp circuits and electric blankets were rare, Terra checked anyway. There was no electric blanket on this bed. At the bedside table, she noticed a blackened brass lamp and knelt to check the electrical cord. No frayed lamp circuit here.

Intent on checking the same things on the opposite side, Terra edged around the foot of the bed. An identical bedside table held another brass lamp, now soot-black. This lamp’s electrical cord wasn’t frayed either. The fire hadn’t been caused by faulty electric wiring. Glass fragments sprinkled the sodden carpet. The shattered base of a bulb still screwed into the lamp testified that at least some of the shards belonged to an exploding lightbulb.

“You the fire investigator?”

She remembered the rough velvet voice. Standing up, she had to tilt her head a bit to look him in the eye, something she didn’t have to do with very many men. “Yes.”

“Detective Jack Spencer. I’ll be the primary on this case.”

His gaze scoured her face. What was he looking for? She wasn’t going to faint. In the harsh flood of the portable fluorescent lights, Terra noted fine lines fanning out from Detective Spencer’s eyes. Very blue eyes. Hard blue eyes.

He stuck out his hand.

She shook it and released it quickly. “Terra August.”

“I apologize for my comment earlier. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours.”

She tamped down the slash of pain. Presley was still small enough that all police, including the detectives, worked solo rather than with a partner. Except in fire death cases like this. Procedure between Presley’s police and fire departments stated that when P.F.D. found a dead body in a fire, they worked to contain the blaze, then stopped and called Homicide. “I guess we’ll be working together.”

“Yes. Looks like murder.”

Struggling to keep a rein on the emotions swirling inside her, she pressed her lips together and nodded. “The bound hands and feet of the victim also indicate the fire as a probable arson. But why?”

“That’s what I intend to find out,” Spencer said. “Do you have any ideas?”

“No. I’ll concentrate first on confirming or eliminating arson. Then we’ll have a solid starting place.” She’d have to work with the detective until one of them proved the death was an accident, suicide or murder. If Harris’s death was an accident, Terra would turn over her part of the investigation to the insurance company. Otherwise, she and Jack Spencer were in this together. She could interview and interrogate, but she couldn’t arrest or serve warrants. Spencer could.

He glanced around the sooty, soggy room. “Can’t you already tell if it’s arson?”

“I approach all fires as if they are, but I need proof.”

“Well, something’s fishy. Why else would he have been tied?”

She curled her shaking hands into fists around the instrument she held. Her voice cracked as she asked, “Was he dead before the fire?”

“I don’t know.” Sympathy and an unidentifiable emotion flashed through his blue eyes before he turned toward the M.E. “Mason?”

“You know it’s too soon for me to have anything for you yet, Jack.”

Numb and still reeling, a part of her noted the cop’s clean soap-and-water scent she caught beneath lingering smoke. Someone had tied up Harris, but why? So he couldn’t escape the fire? Or for another reason?

This was too much. She couldn’t process it all right now. She needed to test for accelerants and the firefighters from Stations Four and One were waiting. If she wanted to unravel this puzzle, she had to start somewhere. She turned to scan her instrument across the most burned part of the wall above the nightstand.

Jack Spencer snagged her elbow; she looked sharply at him.

He released her, but his gaze lasered into her. “Since the victim was a friend of yours, I’ll need to interview you before I leave here.”

The victim had a name. Terra bit off the sharp words, resisting the urge to rub the place where he’d touched her. The cop was doing what she should be doing—putting his emotions aside so he could do his job.

His features were just as exacting as his eyes. The stubborn chin, rough-hewn cheekbones and shadow of whiskers did nothing to soften a jaw that looked as if it could take a few blows.

“I’ll also be conducting an investigation,” she said.

“I’ll notify the family, talk to the firefighter who found the body.” He scribbled in the small notebook he held.

“That should give you time to do some things you need to do, then you and I can talk.”

“Harris had only an ex-wife.” Thinking about Cecily Vaughn unsettled Terra’s stomach again. “His parents passed on some years ago.”

“Thanks. That confirms what I learned from his neighbor.” Jack Spencer tucked his notebook into the inside pocket of his lightweight tweed blazer. “Anything else you can tell me? Had he made anyone mad recently?”

She frowned. “He’s retired.”

Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug.

She shook her head. “I had dinner with him tonight. He was fine.”

Spencer’s gaze sharpened. “We can talk more about that when I see you again.”

“All right.” She flipped the switch on her “sniffer” and turned toward the charred wall.

“Should you be working this case? He was your friend, after all.”

Having her doubts voiced only served to tighten her jaw. “I am working it.”

“Look, I apologize for what I said when I first walked in, but seeing him obviously affected you. I don’t want anything to jeopardize this case.”

“Neither do I. And nothing will. What happened earlier was shock. I’m not used to seeing my friends burned to a crisp,” she said sharply.

“I know you’re the only fire investigator we have, but maybe someone else could help you out, give you some space.”

“What I need to do is my job, and I will. Maybe you could do yours.”

His lips flattened. “I’ll be by to talk to you once I finish my preliminary interviews.”

“You know where to find me.”

She wondered if his blue eyes were that hard all the time, then she pushed the thoughts away and focused her attention on piecing together what had happened to her mentor.