Fatal Burn by Lisa Jackson
So far the system hadn’t told him much. He’d done a similar thing on the computer, hoping that some fancy program would help him locate the kid, or the killer or some damn thing. So far, nada.
“So what do we know?” he thought aloud, sipping from the cup. “We’ve been figuring that the guy has to have the kid nearby, so he can get back and forth to the crime scenes, but that might not be true. Dani Settler might not be alive. The tape he left in Shannon Flannery’s truck could have been made at the time of the abduction or any time thereafter. It doesn’t prove she’s still alive, just that he abducted her and she was alive when the tape was made. We know he didn’t leave her in Idaho at the farm, so we assume he brought her to California, but that’s still just an assumption.”
“But he has to live nearby,” Rossi ventured. “And know the victims pretty well. He’s figured out their schedules, knows where they live, or where they go, like in Oliver’s case. He anticipates where they’ll be and finds a way to get inside.”
“In each case, there’s a fire involved. So it’s someone who has a fascination with fire.”
“We’re checking the database for all known arsonists who aren’t locked up, looking at those who have recently been released. Haven’t come up with anyone yet.”
“It’s a long shot anyway, this is more personal. As for anyone fascinated with fire, you’ve got the whole damned Flannery family,” Paterno said. “Shamus, the grandfather, when the department was all volunteer, then Patrick, his son, and later all of Patrick’s boys signed up.”
“Until they dropped out.”
Paterno nodded. “Now we’re down to Robert. He’s the only one still in the department. How about that?” He raised an eyebrow as he leaned back in his chair. “The Flannerys—They’re not exactly retiring as heroes. The old man, Patrick, he didn’t retire unblemished. He was pretty much forced into it.”
“Why?”
“From what I gather, he used to bend the rules. Had a problem with booze and made some bad calls. Funny thing is, this happens just about the time the whole department starts to disintegrate. The old man’s forced out and his sons start leaving like rats off a sinking ship.” Paterno held up a finger. “Shea takes a position with the police department.” Another finger joined the first. “Aaron, he gets the boot for ‘insubordination,’ whatever that means, Neville quits on the spot and a few weeks later disappears and Oliver finds God.” Fingers three and four joined the first two. “Four brothers and the old man, out, just like that.”
He drank a long, hot swallow, his eyes squinting at the map. “And that’s just the Flannerys. Then there’s the Carlyles. Ryan ends up burnt to a crisp and the evidence points to murder. Afterward, Liam quits the SLFD to take a job with an insurance company. Gives up all his benefits and starts over at a helluva lot less pay. I might even understand it if he was a family man and wanted a more nine-to-five life with a safer job, but he’s got no kids and was divorced from wife number two at that time.” Paterno fished through his notes, until he found those on the Carlyles. “Since that forest fire, Liam moved on to wife number three, but that’s already rocky. They’re split.”
He frowned to himself. “So that’s what happens to the fire department. They’re practically decimated, have to recruit new blood.”
His eyes lingered on the notes about the Carlyles, another group of loners. “The other brother, Kevin, with an IQ in the stratosphere, is content with a government job, has never been married and is possibly gay, though he’s never officially come out of the closet. The sister, Margaret, is a religious fanatic who goes to mass every damned day and then there was Mary Beth. Dead. Another victim.”
“Maybe Liam got tired of putting his life on the line. After all, his cousin died in a fire.”
“But not while trying to put out the blaze, not in the line of duty,” Paterno pointed out. “Besides, most of the firefighters I know love the job, they’re dedicated, it’s in their blood.” He looked up at Rossi. “They don’t quit.”
Paterno didn’t like the way the whole thing played out. Standing and stretching, he walked over to his map and scowled. There were just so many things that didn’t fit. “You know, Rossi, I still don’t get why the DA tried to pin the case on Shannon Flannery. I wasn’t here at the time, but I’ve looked over the file. The case was thin as melting ice.”
Rossi shook his head. “I was new to the force at the time, had just moved from San Jose. The DA, Berringer, was looking for a win, the department was having public relations problems and the Stealth Torcher business was making the whole community nervous. Of course the press couldn’t leave it alone, and there was a lot of pressure to solve the case and put it away. Make the public feel safe again.
“Berringer, he really wanted to put it to rest and I think he believed that somehow Shannon Flannery had done the job. He was obsessed with it, had a real hard-on to break her. She didn’t have an alibi, but had a big-time motive: Carlyle beat her. Bad enough that she lost a baby. She’d had a restraining order against him, which he broke and, even though he had a girlfriend, he was fighting the divorce. His whole life was in the toilet. She was going to go after him for battery, but before that case could come to court, he was killed and Berringer was hell-bent to prosecute.”
“Still, not enough to press charges.”
“Then there was an anonymous tip that Shannon’s car had been seen out by the old logging road that night, not far from the murder and the fire. An elderly woman had concurred. There was the suggestion that Shannon couldn’t have pulled this off herself, that she either hired someone to help her or her brothers did it. Their only alibis were each other and she maintained her innocence to the end. I think Berringer thought she would crack, confess, and they would plea bargain, but it never happened, and the anonymous caller never called back. Another witness, a woman who thought she’d seen the car out there, turned out to be legally blind, couldn’t tell a white van from a yellow station wagon in broad daylight. Not too credible on the stand.
“Yep, it was a thin case, should never have gone to trial and cost Berringer his career.”
Paterno had heard the scuttlebutt, of course, once he’d started digging but it helped to have Rossi lay it all out again. Made things clearer. What it came down to was that Berringer was an idiot.
His phone rang and he braced himself. Reporters had been calling all morning and no matter how many times he referred them to the department’s public relations officer, they didn’t give up. Then again, it could be the lab, or someone with information on a case, a fellow officer. He drained his coffee, crushed the cup, tossed it into his wastebasket and grabbed the receiver. “Paterno.”
“Shane Carter,” the guy said.
Paterno recognized the voice of the sheriff from Oregon. “How are ya?”
“Been better. Look, I thought I’d give you a heads up. The FBI will be calling as well.”
“Great.” Just what Paterno needed. The Feds. Most of them knew their shit, were okay, but the guy from the local field office was a prick. No two ways about it. “What do you have?”
“It turns out that Blanche Johnson had two ex-husbands, one’s dead, the other we haven’t located yet. A few boyfriends, scattered around the Northwest, some we’re still trying to track down. No other family aside from a couple of kids, both boys. The older one ran away when he was a teenager, the other, we think, she gave up as a small child, maybe a baby, possibly a toddler, when she was in Idaho. We’re running that down now but it’s taking a little time as the adoption records were sealed back then. That kid would be about in his middle thirties now.”
“Keep me posted,” Paterno said as he hung up. He couldn’t see how Blanche Johnson having a couple of kids could come into play, but he filed the information away. The way this case was going, who knew.
He glanced at the map again. To all of the pushpins. “I think you’re right, Rossi, our guy has got to be nearby and if the kid is alive, she’s not far, either.” He pointed to
He stepped back from the map, trying to get a fuller view, hoping that he’d see something revealing, a pattern, like if he strung a string to each of the red pins on the map he’d see the beginnings of a five-sided star emerge, or that someone lived in the very center of all the fires or some other obvious clue. But no.
Nothing struck him.
No bolt of lightning.
But it would. He was getting closer. He could feel it. He looked down at his notes and frowned, staring at all the little stars he’d drawn. “Hey, Rossi,” he said, “why don’t you draw a star for me.”
“What?” The younger detective looked at him as if he’d lost it.
“Humor me,” Paterno said, staring at the drawings by the killer. “Draw me a star…in fact, make it two.”
Travis poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the table where the drawings that Paterno had left still lay. His hair was still wet. What the hell did they mean?
His cell phone jangled and he picked it up. It was Carter, but there was still no news about Dani. A field officer from the FBI would keep him posted. Paterno had been called and Carter had given him the same news he now gave Travis: Blanche Johnson had two ex-husbands, a handful of boyfriends and a couple of kids. Carter promised more information later in the day.
They hung up. Travis absorbed this information, wondering how it fit in. Through the window he spied Nate Santana walking toward the house with Shannon, and his gut twisted. They took off their boots and entered the house, familiar with each other, as if they’d done it a million times before. He felt more than a twinge of jealousy. He remembered how Santana had touched her on the night of the fire, how he’d taken control, how it had seemed that he and Shannon were lovers, which she swore wasn’t the case.
But now Shannon’s face was hard and set. She cast a glance at Travis and he knew instantly something was wrong. More bad news. “What is it?” he asked, climbing to his feet.
“Nate has something to get off his chest,” she said.
Travis gazed at Santana. The man hesitated, then nodded curtly. “It might affect you as well,” Santana admitted.
“So tell us,” Shannon prodded. “What the hell’s been going on?”
“I was involved with another woman,” he said. “You got that right.” Travis felt a build up of tension in the air. Where the hell was this going? “The only problem is that she’s dead.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Shannon asked. “Who’s dead? Mary Beth?”
“No!” Santana clenched his fists and walked to the window, looked outside. “Dolores Galvez.”
“Who?” Travis asked, but the name was ringing distant bells.
“Dolores died in a fire nearly three-and-a-half years ago,” Nate stated flatly, his emotions on a tight leash. “She was the only victim in the series of fires attributed to the Stealth Torcher.”
Shannon visibly paled. She grabbed the back of a chair for support. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring at Santana. “You mean…Ryan killed her?”
He shook his head. Turned and faced them both. His jaw was set, his lips razor-thin, and the fury burning in his eyes ran deep. “I don’t think so,” he said, his fingers curling over the windowsill until his knuckles showed white. “Ryan Carlyle wasn’t the arsonist who took her life, Shannon. He wasn’t the Stealth Torcher.”
Chapter 29
“What do you mean? Why don’t you think Ryan was the Stealth Torcher?” Shannon asked, stunned, as she stared at the man she’d thought she’d known for nearly two years. At her feet Khan whined for attention, but for once, Shannon ignored him. The house felt suddenly stuffy. She brushed past Nate to the window, cracked it open, hearing a crow cawing from the roof of the stables as if laughing. “How would you know that he wasn’t?”
Nate leaned against the counter, his hips pressed against the lower cupboard. “I don’t know, not a hundred percent yet, but I’m working on it.”
“Working on it?” she repeated. Things started clicking in her head. She remembered meeting Nate at a horse auction, how they’d struck up a conversation, how they’d seemed to have so much in common, how in subsequent meetings he’d mentioned that he was looking for a place, hoping to become a partner in a business involving training animals, how she’d mentioned that she was looking for someone to work with the horses…She felt suddenly sick inside when she realized she’d been played for a fool. She felt totally and utterly betrayed. “You set me up,” she whispered as the ugly truth dawned. This man whom she’d defended to the teeth was suddenly a stranger to her.
Travis scraped back his chair. “What the hell’s going on?”
Nate held up a hand. “Let me explain.”
“Then get to it.” Travis was on his feet and the kitchen seemed suddenly small. Claustrophobic.
“Let’s go outside, I can’t breathe in here,” Shannon said. She opened the back door. Khan bolted outside and she followed, her head thundering with lies, the deceptions, all the half-truths she’d heard for so many years. From people she’d trusted. People she’d believed in.
She slipped into her boots and stood on the porch, hearing the shuffle of feet as the men, both coiled like rattlers ready to strike, followed her. “Okay,” she said once Nate was standing under the overhang of the porch. Behind him she saw the shed, black and burned, and wondered what, if any, part he had in its destruction. “So…go on.”
Nate rested a hip on the top rail surrounding the porch. “The long and the short of it is that I met Dolores in a restaurant where she was a waitress. We started dating and things heated up. Quickly. We were getting serious and fast, but she wanted to keep it quiet, hadn’t broken it to her family because she’d had a pretty bad track record. One divorce, two broken engagements. Her family didn’t exactly trust her judgment when it came to men, and now, looking back, I can’t say as I blame them. At the time it made me crazy.” He let out a mirthless laugh. “It was ironic in a way. I’d always been a man who didn’t want to be tied down, thought marriage was a death sentence, liked doing my own thing, you know, being free and easy, but then I met Dolores and a dozen red flags should have popped up in my head.” His jaw tensed, slid to the side. “They did, every last one of ’em, but I ignored them. Thought she was ‘the one,’ if there is such a thing.”
Shannon couldn’t believe her ears and yet the lines of strain on Nate’s face convinced her he was telling the truth.
“So one night, we’re supposed to meet at this old, abandoned restaurant. She picked the place, I don’t know why. But I got tied up. I was running late from my job, traffic was hell, she didn’t have a cell.” His fingers curled hard over the rail. He closed his eyes as if envisioning the entire scene. “I got there half an hour late and the place was ablaze. She was already dead.”
“And you never stepped forward?” Shannon was incredulous.
“I didn’t trust the cops. Period. Telling them we were lovers wouldn’t have brought her back. It just would have caused trouble. I would have had to meet her family, explain why we’d decided to meet there, which to this day I don’t know. I think it was random, she’d worked there years before, thought it would be safe. Jesus…”
“I can’t believe this,” Shannon said. She glanced up at the garage where Nate lived. “I trusted you with my life,” she whispered. “We’ve lived twenty yards from each other, worked together and never once did you say a word!”
Travis asked in a deadly voice, “So what happened?”
“Like I said, when I arrived at the restaurant it was already fully engulfed. Firefighters were hosing it down. I was frantic and pushed through the crowd. I heard a reporter interviewing people. The gist of the conversation was that the fire was set by the Stealth Torcher. And then I saw the body bag and
“Or to have the balls to come forward,” Travis stated flatly.
“I was an ex-con. Sure I’ve been exonerated, but I just bet the charge is still on some police computer next to my name. I figured the best way to help out was to nail the son of a bitch who set the fires. To find the damned Stealth Torcher.”
“On your own?” Shannon felt so betrayed she could scarcely speak.
Travis said, “You thought you could catch this guy when the professionals couldn’t? A police department with trained investigators and expensive equipment and specialists? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying they hadn’t done such a great job of it.”
“What made you think you could do better?”
“I didn’t know if I’d do it better, but I sure as hell planned to try. I grew up learning how to hunt and track, spent time as a mountain guide. To help pay for college, I spent my summers fighting forest fires. During the winter, while going to school, I was a member of the volunteer fire department. I figured that’s qualification enough.”
“And your murder charge? That wasn’t a lie?” Shannon asked.
His eyes drilled into hers. “Unfortunately, no. The time in jail? Yeah, that happened too. Just the way I told you.”
“But you bumped into me on purpose after my own trial, after it came out that the police thought my husband was the Stealth Torcher.”
He nodded. Looked at the boards of the porch as Khan, hunting squirrels, sniffed around the side of the house and woodpile.
“You set the whole damned thing up and lied to me,” she said angrily. Travis put his hand on her arm, but she jerked away, tired of men manipulating her.