Hell Fire

Fire and Blood

“Any chance this could be a coincidence?” Shannon wanted to know.

“None,” I said flatly.

We’d managed to save one person last night, but we hadn’t been there for Dale Graham. If the wicked twelve wanted to make me feel guilty, they’d succeeded. But I knew this wasn’t our fault. Bad things had been happening in Kilmer since before I was born. I was just determined to get to the bottom of it.

I stood looking at the smoking ruin of his house on Rabbit Road and wanted to throw up. Nobody suggested I try to read it to find out what happened here. Too much heat remained trapped in the burnt timbers to make it feasible, even if I felt like trying that particular trick again so soon. I didn’t.

Volunteer firemen poked through the wreckage, looking for human remains. They seemed inappropriately cheerful, as if they did this all the time. Then again, in Kilmer, they probably did.

“Look at the grass and trees around the house,” Jesse murmured.

I shifted focus, along with the other two. It hit us all at the same time, but Chance articulated it. “A third of the trees on his property caught fire, and all the green grass burnt up.” “So Miss Minnie was right?” Shannon asked.

I felt a headache coming on. “Sort of. Just not on a global scale.”

“That means we need to take her seriously,” Jesse said. “However crazy that sounds.”

“An earthquake might not be literal.” Chance seemed distant but thoughtful.

Most of me felt glad he had eased off—that he was focused more on solving our problems. I wasn’t ready for reconciliation, not when his power was on temporary hiatus and our long-term problems hadn’t been resolved. When we left Kilmer for good, his luck would return—and I would become a victim of the need for cosmic balance again. I didn’t look forward to it.

“But what causes tremors?” Shannon fidgeted, obviously not sure why we were hanging around the fire scene. I guessed she wanted to be away from here before Sheriff Robinson showed up and decided to hold us indefinitely for being troublemaking pains in his sizable ass.

I thought about that, remembering the crappy places I’d lived over the years, and said at the same time as Jesse, “A train.”

Chance nodded, excitement sparking like gold flecks in his eyes. “Shannon, are there any houses built close to the train tracks in town? Close enough that they’d shake when the train goes by?”

“Yep,” she said. “There used to be a station, a long time ago, but it closed down in—lemme think . . .” She broke off, pondering for a full minute. “In 1911. Now there’s just a cargo line that goes by twice a week.”

“Do you know the way?” Jesse asked.

She nodded. “I used to hang out with a kid who lived out there, but my mom made me stop because he wasn’t a desirable acquaintance.” I could tell from her tone that she was quoting her mother verbatim. “It’s the worst part of Kilmer.”

Saldana tossed her the keys. “Here you go.” At her stunned expression, he asked, “You do know how to drive?”

She was speechless, staring at him for a long minute before she managed to say, “Well, yeah. My dad taught me. I have a license too, but I don’t have a car, and the last few months, I’ve been grounded for one reason or another.”

He smiled at her. “Then you need the practice, and it’ll be easier if you just take us there. That okay with you?”

Her smile could’ve blinded the lot of us. “Sure. Get in.” Jesse Saldana would make a great dad, I decided, as I headed toward the workers raking the wreckage. He wasn’t quite old enough to be parenting Shannon, but he had the older-brother role polished to a fine sheen.

“I’ll be right back,” I said over my shoulder.

I picked my way toward the wreckage of Dale’s house. Ash sifted from the broken beams, and smoke still curled from the foundation. There were five men raking the place down; none of them looked pleased at my approach.

“What do you think happened?” I asked the lead volunteer.

Sooty-faced and weary, he shrugged. “My guess? He fell asleep with a lit cigarette. It would’ve spread faster if he was drinking.”

That was the official story they spread about my mama, too. Miz Ruth had said as much a few days back. That seemed an unlikely coincidence.

“Have you recovered his body?” Maybe it was macabre, but I had to know.

The volunteer shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll keep looking.”

First happy news I’d had all day. “Thanks. Good luck.”

Maybe Dale Graham hadn’t been home when they torched his house. I could hope, right? And maybe he had his journal with him, wherever he was. Playing dead might be the smartest thing he could do.

I pulled Butch out of my handbag and put him down. “Remember the hippie we ate pie with at the diner?”

He yapped once.

“Sniff around and see if you can find him.”

It was probably a long shot. The acrid smoke would likely overwhelm any subtler smells, but Butch appeared keen to try. He put his nose to the ground and sniffed all around the wreckage in a large perimeter, and then trotted toward the road. He barked and then lifted a leg on the mailbox.

I didn’t know what to make of that. “He got his mail yesterday?”

Butch gave the affirmative yap. I wasn’t sure how that helped us, but I bent to scratch behind his ears and told him, “Good dog.”

Then I scooped him up, sprinted for the Forester, and climbed in back, where I found Jesse. With his bad arm, he might’ve wanted help with the driving and was too much of a man to say so. The idea made me smile.

“What?” Jesse asked.

“How’s the injury?”

He glanced at the bandage wrapped around his biceps. “I’ll be fine; just a graze. It looks worse than it is.”

“I was worried about you.”

“Yeah? Well, the feeling’s mutual.” Jesse took my hand, and I took comfort in that tiny spark. He raised it gently to his lips; the heat sent shivers all through me.

Shannon pulled off the gravel drive and onto the county road smoothly. She looked small behind the wheel of the SUV, but she didn’t seem nervous. Chance asked her something, and she spared him a glance to answer. I couldn’t make out their words for the rush of the road beneath the tires and the soft crackle of blurry music on the radio. I’d never feel the same about AM/FM stations after meeting her. I wondered idly if she could tune in to the dead in a vehicle too.

For a few moments, I let myself enjoy the heat of his hand in mine, and then I pulled back. Touching him was a distraction I didn’t need.

“Couple things we need to talk about,” Jesse said quietly. “Sheriff Robinson? I got no sense of guilt off him last night. Even when you made your parting shot, all I felt from him was fear . . . bone-deep terror, in fact. Much worse than the night we sprung Chance from jail.”

“So he knows something’s wrong, but he’s not part of it,” I surmised. “Why do you think he threw away those missing persons forms?”

Saldana shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want proof of his dereliction of duty, but he didn’t want to go poking around out in the woods, either. I’m not infallible.” By his bleak expression, I could tell he was thinking of his dead partner. “But I don’t think I’m wrong this time.”

Frankly, if fear of the forest motivated the sheriff, I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to lead a search party out there, either. Too bad, because that was exactly what I needed to do. The only way to gather evidence was to go out there ourselves; I didn’t expect to like what we found.

“Good to know. If push comes to shove, Robinson might back us if he wants to get some of his spine back.”

Jesse nodded. “Possible.”

I watched the scenery for a while, green-brown trees passing in a blur. The filtered air felt damp and cool, as if it blew in from the distant sea. Then it occurred to me that I had no idea how the shooter had managed to peg him.

“How’d you get hit, anyway?” I’d thought he had good cover behind the hedge.

For a moment, Jesse studied his hands, seeming unwilling to answer. He said at last, “I stood up to distract the shooter when you went back onto the porch and through the window like a crazy person.”

My breath left me. “You got shot for me?”

He scowled. “I would’ve done the same for Chance or Shannon.”

“I know,” I said, smiling.

That was the kind of man he was. He took his vows to protect and serve very seriously. Living with him might be just as difficult as being with Chance, but for different reasons. When I’d told him that some women had a hard time handling the constant danger their men were exposed to, I hadn’t been exaggerating to make him feel better. The divorce statistics spoke for themselves.

Shannon parked the SUV. “We’re here.”

I clambered out of the Forester and decided she was right. This was the worst part of Kilmer, a section I’d never seen before. It was literally on the other side of the tracks, and the houses built closest must have shaken like blazes when the train came through. Like, say, in an earthquake?

Once more, I deposited Butch on the ground. “You were with me when I went into the gas station, right?”

He yapped in confirmation.

“You remember what the guy smelled like?”

The Chihuahua tilted his head in thoughtful consideration, and it was cute as hell. After a moment, he barked once.

“Can I trust you to sniff around for him?”

Butch yapped twice, but I swear it was sarcastic.

I laughed. “Okay, sorry. I shouldn’t have even asked. Let me know if you find anything.”

He trotted off without deigning to reply.

It would help if we knew what we were looking for. As it was, we strolled through the run-down clapboard houses, admiring the patchy lawns, filthy gutters, and interesting piles of junk. Though I wasn’t inclined to agree with Sandra Cheney on principle, I could almost sympathize with her desire to keep Shannon from hanging around here. The whole neighborhood stank of despair and decay.

“So we had the fire,” Chance said, thinking aloud. “The burnt trees and grass. We found the ‘earthquake’ site. What are we missing?”

“Blood,” I murmured immediately.

“There was blood when I got shot,” Jesse muttered.

Shannon added, “Hail.”

Jesse thought for a moment, and we paused to give him a chance. “Miss Minnie said she saw the four horsemen coming and going.”

“People don’t ride horses through town,” Shannon objected. “Even in Kilmer, it can’t have been dudes on horse-back.”

“So what did she see?” I asked.

Unfortunately, nobody could come up with an answer. We continued in a meandering path around the two streets that made up this country ghetto. I kicked at a clump of pig-weed straggling up at the edge of the road.

“When does the next train come by?” Chance asked Shannon.

“Tuesday and Saturday, just before six a.m.”

I suspected she’d know that only if she’d spent the night with her scruffy “friend” at some point, but that wasn’t our business. Time had gotten away from me, so I mentally tabulated how long we’d been there.

“It’s Thursday?” I asked aloud, none too sure of my calculations.

Jesse agreed with a nod. “So no trains today.”

As we completed the loop and wound up back by the Forester, Chance gave us something else to think about. “We should be looking near the tracks. Right here, in fact.”

I agreed with that. Unless we were totally off target, one of these ramshackle tract houses held something we needed to know. Talk about an exercise in frustration. Only Miss Minnie’s rambling had guided us here, and maybe we were crazy for putting any stock in it at all. It was unlikely that Curtis Farrell had lived anywhere near here.

We paced up and down the street four times before Shannon said, “That one has a red front door. I mean, it’s painted—badly, too.”

I saw what she meant. It looked as though someone had slung a paint can to cover up some ugly graffiti. From some angles, it also looked like splattered blood.

Chance saw it too. “Red as blood,” he noted as we approached the broken cement driveway.

Butch came around the corner of the house, wagging his tail fiercely. He yapped at me to tell me he’d found the house. I stared in astonishment.

“Here? The gas station guy’s been here?”

The dog barked in confirmation, and I gave him a rub. He leaped into my arms, and I stowed him away safely in my bag.

We proceeded with caution. After all, it was early; we were strangers, and most people around here had never heard of gun control. Nothing stirred behind the curtains. While the others made their way toward the house, I paused at the mailbox, hoping to find out who lived here.

Jackpot. I found a couple of utility bills for Curtis Farrell. I hadn’t dared hope we would be this lucky. It would have been simpler to locate him in the directory, assuming he was listed, but this confluence of events suggested Miss Minnie knew something, layered beneath bits of old Bible verse. I wished we could talk to her again, but I was afraid of what more questions would do to her. I didn’t want to hurt anyone while I was here. Well, nobody who was innocent , anyway.

But how brilliant. We needed to search his house, and here we were.

When I caught up to the others, I found them studying the front door. Jesse was asking, “Can you make out what it says underneath the paint?”

Chance leaned in for a better look. “Mar . . . and some numbers. Eight-three-six, I think.”

“March?” I offered. “Is it a date, you think? Or a time?”

The others shrugged.

Shannon stepped to the side and peered through the window between the gap in the ragged sheers. “I don’t think anyone’s here. Are we going in?”

Since the guy was dead, it didn’t seem likely anybody was home, unless Curtis had a roommate.

I cleared my throat. “I’m taking Jesse around back. Chance, if the door happens to pop open while we’re gone, give us a holler.” I thought that was better than making Jesse watch him pick the lock. Even if he was suspended and well outside his jurisdiction, I figured he probably didn’t want to see active lawbreaking.

Rummaging in his pockets, Chance didn’t acknowledge me as Jesse and I rounded the house. Shannon stayed with him to watch him work.

“So your ex is a house-breaker too,” Jesse said, sounding amused. “As I’ve said before, you have the most interesting friends, Corine.”

I thought about Chuch, the ex-arms dealer, married to Eva, the forger, and grinned. “Yeah. They sure come in handy, don’t they?”

He smiled back, bitter chocolate eyes roving my face in an appreciative manner. “I don’t think I should comment.”

“That’s probably wise.”

We circled the house and found a bunch of disgusting garbage cans that should have been set out weeks ago. If I were truly devoted, I would have suggested going through them for clues, but you couldn’t have paid me enough to touch one.

Instead of calling to us, Chance opened the back door and waved us in. “The front was open,” he said mildly.

Jesse raised a brow. “Fancy that.”

“Small town,” I said. “People just don’t see the need to lock up.”

I climbed two steps and crossed the sagging porch, stepping into Farrell’s house. We’d gotten there before the police, assuming the sheriff would even bother. The place looked like a cyclone had hit it, though; clothes everywhere and dirty dishes piled in the sink. Added to the trash in the back, it seemed as if Curtis hadn’t been home in a while—at least, I couldn’t imagine a human being living like that.

“Have a look around.” Jesse took charge as if this were his crime scene. “I’ll take the kitchen. Corine, you search the bathroom. Chance, take the bedroom, and Shannon, check out the living room, please. I guarantee we don’t have to worry about leaving DNA on the scene, but don’t touch anything with your bare hands. They probably have a fingerprint kit even out here in Hooterville.”

Shannon snickered, but she took his advice and pulled the sleeves of her hoodie down past her hands as she headed for the living room. Once in the bathroom, I did the same with my sweater. Ew. I really had to search in there? It smelled like something had died, and green fuzzy stuff grew in the grout between the tiles. Man, I thought Jesse liked me better than that.

From within my handbag, Butch whined. The smell was getting to him too. “There’s no help for it,” I told the dog. “We have to be brave.”

I heard a thunk from the bedroom and peered out. Using a broom handle, Chance poked gingerly at the piles of clothing spread across the floor. He flashed me a wry smile. “I think Shannon got the best deal in this division of labor.”

“Well, she’s young. He didn’t want to traumatize her—oh dear God.” I caught my breath at the sight of a dead rat in the cupboard beneath the sink.

It was going to be a long day.