What Burns Within (14 page)

He looked down at his ash-covered clothes. “No, I suppose not.”

Ashlyn looked from him to Luke Driscoll but didn’t introduce herself.

“Mr. Driscoll is the volunteer who organizes the church swim nights. They come here once a month, on the third Sunday of the month, but they’ve never had any problems.”

“Constable Hart,” she said, then looked at Tain. “I didn’t get much out of the staff.”

“What about a membership list?”

“Only after I threatened the manager.”

“You what?”

She held up her hand. “Don’t worry. I told him I was following your orders.”

“Ashlyn…”

“Relax. Mr. Radcliff’s staff couldn’t wait to start filing complaints about his perverted ways. He’s not going to say anything to attract more attention to himself. And I got everything we need. A membership list, a staff list, security tapes for the past two weeks and copies of the maintenance logs. No chance for these guys to doctor the records or conveniently misplace anything. What’s next?”

Tain almost smiled. “Are you differing to my leadership?”

“Hell, no,” Ashlyn said, and her cheeks reddened. She glanced at Luke Driscoll. “Sorry.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Have you two been in a fire?”

Ashlyn looked at Tain. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Luke’s face wrinkled with unasked questions, but Tain spoke this time. “We need to talk to all the children in your group.”

For the first time since Tain had started talking to Luke Driscoll, he sensed some tension in the young man. Luke’s shoulders stiffened and his eyes narrowed when Tain told him what they needed. “Don’t we need to have their parents present?”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Ashlyn said. “You or your volunteers can be present. We just need to ask the kids if they saw anything.”

“But you’ve already asked the volunteers with our group.”

“Sometimes kids see things they don’t tell the adults about.”

Luke stared at her for a moment, and Tain noticed she gave him one of her more innocent smiles before he nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll come with you.”

“Finally,” Lori muttered, turning into the driveway.

She pressed a button and watched the garage door pull up, shake, then stop no more than a foot off the ground.

Lori pressed the button again. She heard a groan from the garage, and the door shuddered as it descended back to the pavement.

“Damn thing.” She pressed the button again. Nothing.

She left the car in the driveway and went in the front door. A passing glance at the answering machine was all it took to know there weren’t any messages to deal with. Lori went straight into the kitchen, made a plate of crackers and cheese and cold cuts, poured a glass of wine and went down the hall to the master bathroom.

A quick rinse of the tub was all that was needed before she started the water running. A relaxing evening, a soak in the tub and maybe some sleep before Vish got home would do her good. She reached around her waist and unbuttoned her skirt, kicking it into the corner. She started unbuttoning her blouse as she walked through the doorway to the bedroom, then rummaged through a pile of books on the nightstand, looking for the book on sailing that Vish had been nagging her to read.

It wasn’t on his side of the bed, so she walked around to her side, figuring he must have put it on her nightstand as a hint. Sure enough, there it was, propped precariously on the corner. Vish’s solution to all their problems, problems he thought were so small. They’d sail off into the sunset and it would be like the past four months never happened. Yeah, Vish was a dreamer. She picked it up and started walking back to the bathroom door, wriggling one arm out of her blouse and then the other, letting the shirt fall to the floor.

The minute they climbed onto the bus the chatter stopped, and then a girl called from the back, “When are we going home?”

“Soon. These police officers need to talk to you first, though.” Luke stepped back, gesturing at Tain and Ashlyn.

“What we need…” Tain started.

“Are you really a police officer?”

“You don’t look like a police officer.”

“What’s all over your clothes?”

“You stink.”

“Can I see your badge?”

Tain glanced at Ashlyn, who was twisting her mouth the way she did when she was trying not to laugh. And obviously too busy trying to conceal her amusement to bail him out.

“Uh, you know, that’s a good question. Just because somebody says they’re a police officer, it doesn’t mean they are.” Tain pulled out his ID and passed it to the closest child. Child? What did you call kids ten and eleven years old, anyway? To him, they were all kids. “It’s always good to check when somebody you don’t know wants to talk to you.”

“Okay.” The kid passed on the ID. “So you really are a cop. Why do you stink?”

“Do any of you watch the news?” Tain asked.

There was a murmur of assent.

“Did you see that fire on TV?”

“That building that burned down yesterday?” a freckle-faced boy three rows back said. “Yeah, I saw that.”

“That’s where we were before we came here.”

“Uh, buddy, the fire was yesterday.”

Tain glanced up at the kid who’d spoken. A pre teen punk in the making, slouched back in the last seat, Gameboy in his hand.

“That’s right. It was. We went back today to look for evidence in the building. You can’t really do that when it’s on fire.”

The rest of the kids laughed, and the insolent one looked up, giving Tain half a second of his undivided attention before he scowled and turned back to his game.

“Satisfied?” Tain asked as his ID was passed back to him. A young girl near the front put up her hand.

“Are you her boss?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t you let her talk?”

Ashlyn glanced at Tain and then the girl, a skinny child with a serious face and long, brown braids. “Constable Tain is just anxious to ask if any of you saw anything that might be helpful. It really is very important.”

A few children exchanged glances, but there was silence on the bus, except for the beeps coming from the Gameboy.

“None of you saw anybody hanging around? Anyone who looked suspicious?”

More glances, a few murmurs whispered between friends, but nothing.

“What about on previous swim nights?” Tain asked. “Any of you remember seeing anyone a bit unusual, someone who seemed to be really interested in your group or in Lindsay?”

Still no response. Luke gestured for Tain to move aside, and he stepped forward. “Don’t be afraid to tell them anything. If you know something, it’s important you tell the police. Even if it turns out to be nothing, you won’t be in trouble. It’s just…it might help us find Lindsay.”

“Did you see that?” Ashlyn whispered to Tain.

“What?”

“The murmurs, the red faces? Those boys saw something.”

Luke had finished, and there was silence.

“Look,” Tain said, “we can take care of this now, you can go home and we won’t be bothering you again. Or we can drive back to the church, get your parents, take you down to the station and each of you can wait while we ask your friends one by one if anyone saw anything. We’ve got all night.”

A loud bleep was followed by a curse, and the boy at the back let his hand fall against his leg. “Geez, man. It’s not like it can help you.”

“We don’t know that,” Ashlyn said. “Right now anything, even something that might seem small and insignificant, could be very important.”

“It was a guy. He’s always hanging around the change rooms when we’re in there.”

“What does he look like?” Tain flipped open his note pad.

“Wait a second,” Luke said. “How do you know about this, Marvin? When did you see him?”

“He’s a peeper. He comes into the change room and hides behind the lockers in the far corner.”

“Wha…” Luke started to ask. Ashlyn cut him off.

“You mean the boys’ change room, right?”

Marvin nodded. The other boys, who’d turned around to watch him, slid down in their seats, nodding as well.

“See, I told you it wouldn’t help,” Marvin said, shrugging his left shoulder.

“Describe him for us,” Tain said.

“It’s not like I got a good look. I wasn’t trying to give him a free show.”

The rest of the kids snickered and jeered until Luke told them to settle down.

“Whatever you tell us can help,” Ashlyn said. “We’re going to check him out. Even if he doesn’t have Lindsay, he shouldn’t be spying on you.”

Lindsay groaned as she opened her eyes, but all she could see was darkness. As her senses returned, she realized the humming wasn’t coming from inside her head but from outside, muffled through what ever she was stuck in.

She realized she was no longer being carried in someone’s arms, but that the gentle rocking was from a moving vehicle. For one quick second the experience was no different than waking up late at night after a sleep in the back of her parents’ van when they were on their way home from camping. But she couldn’t see the blur of streetlights and headlights zipping past the windows, and as she tried to lift her hands to her face to push off what ever was blocking her view, she realized they were tied together and that the rope that bound them must be tied to something else because she couldn’t move them very far at all.

She tried to wriggle her feet around, but her knee bumped up against something. Solid, not spongy. Lindsay nudged it again. A tire.

I’m in a trunk. What am I doing in a trunk?

Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think, though she wasn’t sure why she did that. Nothing could distract her anyway, other than the sudden squeal and the bump as she felt her body jerk before the car started moving at a steady pace again.

She remembered slapping Marvin’s hand when he tried to pinch her bum, the way they’d lined up to go into the pool, Marvin pinching the clasp on her necklace and making it come undone so that it fell down her shirt and she had to fish it out of her bra, Joanne telling her not to dawdle, a bit of shoving as they walked down the hall, trying to put the necklace back on, Marvin twirling it around, hanging it over her ear, pinching her shoulder, squeezing the skin at the back of her neck, brushing her hair behind her ear, Joanne hassling her to come on.

All the other girls were almost ready when she got into the change room, and she had to hustle. She’d just pulled her swimsuit on, pulled out her ponytail and reached up to redo her hair when she realized the necklace was missing. It wasn’t around her neck or her ear.