Hot Water (3 page)

Virgil sighed. “Bobby would want you to get on with your life. Your partner took full responsibility for his actions.”

“I know you mean well, bro, but this is important to me. Until I make this right, I can’t move forward. I
will
catch this guy.”

“Then hurry up. I’m tired of you pussyfooting around. I want you back for Saturday football and baseball doubleheaders. I miss tossing a football around in the yard. For Pete’s sake, Wyatt, you missed Thanksgiving and Christmas over this.”

He’d been the quarterback on the high school football team. Virg had been his favorite receiver. They’d made the state playoffs in his senior year. Seemed like a lifetime ago. “I know.”

After ending the call, Wyatt studied a passing billboard advertising a marina in Thunderbolt. One day he’d like to own a boat and have fun. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hung out with his family. Virgil was right. He’d missed Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And for what?

Work?

Chapter 5

Wyatt flipped through the pages in the official Pirate’s Cove file. The fire folder held little information; the police file had a decent sketch and photos of the rubble. James Brown had died of smoke inhalation, and the medical examiner noted a hammer-head sized dent on the back of his skull. Could be from a fall, could be from someone knocking him out.

The fire chief leaned toward arson for three reasons. First, there was no power in the old restaurant, and it hadn’t spontaneously erupted in flames. Second, he’d smelled gasoline. Third, he’d found evidence of candles and dryer sheets in the blaze.

An accelerant would explain a lot. Gasoline and dryer sheets pointed to the arsonist Wyatt was chasing. So far so good.

No fire sketches, no witness statements. Two fire companies had responded to the fire. The chief had pronounced the restaurant a total loss, with no mention of weather conditions or listing of possible suspects.

Not nearly enough facts to suit him.

Wyatt had his work cut out for him.

He glanced across the conference table at Officer Dinterman. She appeared intent on filling out a report. She was everything her apple-crisp voice promised and more. Confident, hardworking. Sexy as hell. A feminine distraction he didn’t need. He needed to catch the arsonist before the bastard claimed another life. Wyatt had trailed this guy across the state, always one step behind.

“I’d like to visit the burn site now,” he said.

She glanced up. “Would you like me to drive?”

“No thanks. We’ll take my truck. I’ve got my gear and sampling stuff.”

“Would you like the fire chief to meet us at Pirate’s Cove?”

From the brief notes in the log, the fire chief would be little help at all, but it was considered professional courtesy to meet the local chief. “Sure. Have Chief Pratt meet us at the restaurant.”

After she made the call, he walked her out to his truck. He buckled his seat belt and caught another pleasing whiff of Dinterman’s citrus scent. “How long have you been on the force?”

“Six years in June,” she said. “How about you? How long have you been an arson investigator?”

“I started as a firefighter ten years ago and transitioned to arson investigation a few years back. Fire gets in your blood and won’t turn you loose.”

She directed him to the address. City houses gave way to pine forests. She shot him an enigmatic look as they rounded a bend in the country road. “I looked you up online. You have quite a history of running into fires.”

He cracked a smile, warming to her friendliness. “The good old days. I let the young guys play hero now. I’d rather study the fire after the fact.”

Moss-swathed trees crowded the road near a cluster of two-story houses, giving Wyatt a timeless sense. Generations had passed under these trees. “You ever thought about being anything other than a cop?”

At first, he thought he’d asked the wrong question. A subtle yet intense series of emotions played across her face before she spoke. “I’m third generation cop. My dad and grandpop were patrol officers, so I literally have cop running through my veins.”

Her hesitation intrigued him. “But you’ve thought about doing something else?”

“Who hasn’t? You have a bad day and you think ‘I don’t need this crap’. But every once in a while you have an awesome day where you help people, and it’s all worthwhile.”

“I hear you.”

A few miles later, she pointed out an old two-story clapboard house to him. “That’s the Busbee place. At one time, it served as our county courthouse. Now it’s waiting on a new owner. The last Busbee died six months ago. You wouldn’t believe the mantelpieces on those fireplaces.”

“You like old homes?”

“I do. What about you—old or new?”

“Old is okay as long as it’s been brought up to code.” He shot her a grin. “Mostly, I’m against fire hazards.”

“Makes sense.” Laurie Ann leaned forward. “The turn is just ahead on the right. Spyglass Road.”

He turned as directed.

“The restaurant is all the way at the end on the left,” she said.

He noted no houses on the road, just pine forest. Convenient. No neighbors to notice activity at the burn site. “Do you know who had access to the site?”

“The new owners are a Jacksonville couple. They planned to renovate it, but as far as I know, nothing had been done yet.”

“When did they buy the place?”

“About two months ago.”

“So realtors might have had access?”

“Marshview Realty handled the sale. I can ask them about access while they had it listed.”

“Anyone else? Maybe a handyman to change the locks?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know the answer to that. But I can find out.”

“I need to know.”

He parked at the end of the road and donned his camera. A fully involved fire all right. No standing timbers. Just ashes and rubble. It was rare for non-arson fires to burn so completely. His hopes rose as they exited the truck.

Not much to examine, but whatever was here, he’d find.

He circled the burn site, making notes and taking pictures as he walked. He preferred to start from the outside and work in to the heart of the fire. He saw crumbling brick pilings which looked like building supports, a few twisted pieces of tin from the roof, pools of melted metal from the rest of the roof, galvanized piping, a couple of soot-covered toilets and sinks, some odd bits of metal, here and there a partially burnt hunk of wood. Given the seventy-five-year vintage of the building, the framing timbers and heart pine floor had fueled the flames.

“Walk me through it, from your recollection,” he said.

She pointed due south, her cop hat riding low over her dark eyes. “One of my domestic violence moms was staying with a friend the next road over. I was following-up with her when the call came through. Because I was nearby, I secured the scene. Southside’s pumper pulled up a few minutes later. They dropped a hose in the creek and sprayed the fire. Investigator Rawson and Deputy Ballard arrived next and relieved me. Folks came from miles around to watch the fire.

“I watched the blaze for a while. The fire chief had a fit when he arrived, because cars blocked the road. He ordered the deputies to clear the area. I left in the general exodus, before anyone knew there was a body inside. They found Brown early the next morning, two days ago.”

He envisioned the scene she painted. From her recital of facts, he gathered she was analytical and organized. She took care with her appearance as well. Her uniform was pressed and tidy, her shoes glossy black, her burnished chestnut hair in a crisp regulation cut framing her chin.

He glanced around. No plugs in sight. No wonder the pumper truck had to draft water from the creek.

“Tell me more about the fire,” he said. “What color was the smoke?”

She laughed, a melodic sound to his ears. “Smoke-colored.”

“I meant was it more white in color or black?”

“Black, I guess.”

Black smoke came from a very hot fire. A blue pickup approached and parked next to his truck. An older gentleman eased from behind the wheel and limped over. “Looks like we’re all here,” Wyatt said.

Dinterman introduced Fire Chief Buford Pratt. A Braves baseball cap covered the chief’s head, but he wore shorts, a T-shirt, and turnout boots. Definitely not standing on ceremony or dressing to impress.

“What can you tell me about our fire, young man?” the chief asked.

Was the man joking? How the heck would he know anything at this point based on the chief’s inadequate report? “I was hoping you might remember more details to help me reconstruct it. Did the blaze start inside or out?”

“Inside’s my guess,” Pratt said, hands in his pockets. “When we got here, flames were shooting out the windows and flaring from the roof.”

Wyatt noted there were no trees adjacent to the former restaurant. The woods were forty feet away from the west side of the building. A tidal creek ran along the east side of the property. A grassy parking lot and the road bounded the other sides. “Good thing the fire didn’t jump. Once it got in those pines, you’d have had quite a wildfire on your hands.”

The chief’s brow furrowed. “My men responded quickly, and they knew what to do. We take fires seriously around here.”

Definitely not joking. Maybe a bit testy. Tough. “Did you conduct a primary search?”

“Didn’t reckon we needed to, not with this place shut down for years. I wouldn’t have sent a search team inside this place anyway. The Beast had too big of a head start on us. It wouldn’t have been safe.”

“How did you locate the body?”

“We came out the next morning to poke around the embers. I found Brown myself under a bit of wall. Not much left of him, God rest his soul. We notified the coroner immediately.”

The coroner’s report listed smoke inhalation as the cause of death. “Show me where the body was.”

Dinterman took the fire chief’s arm as he walked around the charred mess, stopping near a big chipped porcelain sink. “This is where the back door opened into the kitchen,” the chief said. “Seems like Brown could have walked on out of there, but he didn’t.”

With a fracture to his skull, he could have been unconscious or immobilized. “Tell me about the candles.”

“Found them in three different hot spots. At two places not all the drier sheets burned.”

Everything tracked with what he expected to find so far. “Was this place gutted before the fire?”

Chief Pratt snorted. “The MacMillan estate sold off everything that wasn’t nailed down to pay the old man’s funeral expenses. Even the dishes.”

He was used to seeing more items in the ashes. “What about the stove? Did they sell that?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Pratt said. “Laurie Ann, you know?”

“I haven’t been out here since I was a kid,” she said. “I missed the yard sales when Mr. MacMillan closed the restaurant. That was about the time my grandpop went in the nursing home. I wasn’t paying attention, and then I never had reason to come back out here.”

Wyatt made a note to check about the kitchen appliances. “To reiterate, there were no items worth stealing in here, except maybe an industrial stove and some refrigeration units. We have a man with smoke in his lungs and a bump on his head that perished in the fire. We don’t know if the fire started with Brown in the kitchen or elsewhere.”

“That sounds right,” Pratt said.

Wyatt snapped photos of the blackened spoils. He noted the V of heat on two of the restaurant’s wall fragments. “You’re right. This fire had multiple starting places. The arsonist certainly did his homework. What’s the square footage here?”

“Lemme see,” Buford tapped his cheek with a finger. “The eating part was thirty by sixty and the cooking part plus restrooms were about thirty by ten.”

“A little over 2,000 square feet then,” Wyatt said, though he’d measure it to be exact. “And the entire building burnt to the ground. I’ll gather soil and wood samples to confirm use of an accelerant. Like you, I’m betting the arsonist doused this place with gasoline.”

Buford Pratt glanced at his watch. “You have more questions for me? I’ve got a three o’clock appointment.”

Wyatt extended his hand to the chief. “I should be fine. Thank you for making the trip out here.”

The chief shook his hand and nodded at Dinterman. “I’ll leave you young people to it. Take care, Laurie Ann.”

“Bye, Uncle Buford,” Dinterman called out as the chief climbed in his truck and drove off.

“Your uncle?” Wyatt asked.

Her cheeks darkened to a near-crimson shade. “Small town. Uncle Buford lost his wife six months ago at exactly three o’clock, and every day at three he goes to sit with her in the cemetery.”

That sounded like something his mom would do. She never gave up on any family member. Including him. “Are you from a large family?”

She shook her head, her hair reflecting glints of sunlight. “Only child. My mother died when I was three, and my dad never remarried. How about you?”

He didn’t talk about his family on the job, but she’d shared a bit of her history. It might encourage her to open up more if he reciprocated. Having a local liaison was his best chance at getting insider information about this community. “There are six of us, though I haven’t seen my siblings in a while. I’ve been too busy to get home in the last few months.”

“You should make the effort,” she said. “Life is short. You wouldn’t believe the people I come in contact with that would give their right arm to have one more conversation with their loved ones.”

“I’m working on it.” Wyatt turned his attention from the mini-lecture to the ashes. “Has anyone been out here salvaging material from the site?”

“I don’t know for sure, but this is how the place looked yesterday when I came out to refresh my memory. Is something missing?”

“Without knowing more details, I can’t say, but something about this place feels wrong. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but it’ll come to me.”

He sampled the burnt sand and sealed it in his paint cans. He hacked out a chunk of deeply alligatored wood that smelled like gasoline, made notes about what was visible, and snapped photos. He noted the wood paneling and floors had been tongue-in-groove construction. They’d sealed the fire for awhile, allowing it to superheat inside the restaurant.