Fatal Burn

  “Let’s start with you,” Santana suggested, his black eyes narrowing on Travis. Suspicion and plain-old distrust were evident in the set of his jaw. “Just who the hell are you and how is it that you happened to be here when the fire broke out?”

  Chapter 8

  Shea stepped on the accelerator. Pushing the speed limit, siren blaring, the lights on the cab of his truck flashing, he drove furiously through the empty city streets to the outskirts of town where his sister lived.

  He couldn’t believe what Melanie Dean, the dispatcher at the 9-1-1 center, had told him. That there was a fire at Shannon’s house, on which both his sister and some man had called in. Melanie said the second call came from a cell phone registered to Travis Settler from Falls Crossing, Oregon. A few minutes later the center had received other calls from people who were driving by or lived close enough to smell the smoke and see the flames.

  He braked to turn off the main road and cracked his window. The acrid smell of smoke, soot and wet, scorched wood hit him full force. It was an odor he’d grown up with.

  One of his uncles had just retired from the San Francisco Fire Department after nearly forty years of service, another uncle had died on the job, fighting a wildfire in Southern California in the eighties. Shea had been with the Santa Lucia Fire Department before jumping ship and taking the fire investigator job with the Santa Lucia Police Department a few years back.

  It was in the Flannery blood.

  All of his brothers had, at one time or another, been associated with the fire department, but now, only Robert remained, upholding the Flannery family tradition of actually fighting fires.

  Through the trees, he saw lights and within seconds he’d rounded a bend and stopped in the clearing that was the parking lot. Ahead, close to the stable, was what remained of a two-storied tack shed now reduced to charred rubble. Illuminated by the headlights of a remaining pumper truck, a few lanterns and heavy-duty flashlights, three blackened walls stood. The roof had collapsed, one wall was gone, all the windows blown. Smoke still rose in thin wisps from the smoldering, soggy mass. Fortunately, it looked like none of the other buildings had been involved. The stable, kennel and garage, even the house, probably had some smoke damage, but all in all, Shannon had lucked out. The shed was the least important of all the outbuildings that now stood with yellow crime scene tape roping off the area. Even the house was declared off-limits.

  Killing the engine and hitting the emergency brake in one motion, Shea swore under his breath, then climbed out of his rig. The night had a bite to it, seeming as tense as his own stretched nerves. The ground was wet from the runoff of the hoses and his boots slogged through gravel, dirt and debris. Several firefighters remained, cleaning up, putting equipment back into the one remaining truck.

  A van from a local news station and two police cars were parked at odd angles, squeezed into the neck of the lane on this side of the tape and leaving enough room between them to allow the big fire trucks to come and go.

  The reporters who remained were already packing up, and Shea scowled when he thought of the headlines that would appear in the Santa Lucia Citizen or the sound bites that would lead into the story on the eleven o’clock news.

  No doubt this fire at Shannon’s house would turn out to be another link to the past, to the time when Shannon Flannery had been on trial for murdering her son of a bitch of a husband. Shea’s jaw hardened when he thought of Ryan Carlyle. The bastard got what he deserved. So let the story die.

  It would kill their mother, Maureen, if she had to relive the scandal all over again.

  “Hell,” he muttered as he walked up to the cops, got the information that Shannon had been taken to Santa Lucia General and that no one knew yet what the cause of the fire was. That much he figured. Finding the source of the blaze was his job—well, his and the investigator for the Santa Lucia Rural Fire Department, which covered not only the city but the surrounding hills as well.

  As Shea worked for the PD he was often at odds with the fire department’s investigator who, in Shea’s opinion, was a supercilious prick, all about advancement, getting press for himself and smiling for the camera. Cameron Norris might have degrees in criminology and business crammed up his ass, but he didn’t know that ass from a hole in the ground when it came to fires. And the dick had never been satisfied that Shannon hadn’t started the fire that had killed her husband.

  The two cops were talking, still guarding the premises and keeping at bay anyone who happened to drive by: neighbors, concerned friends, lookie-loos, reporters and anyone else wandering up to the lane to watch the fire burn who weren’t all that interested in or aware of preserving the scene for the investigation. All they wanted was a chance to be close to the fire. That’s the way it was and always had been; everyone had a fascination with the burning, wild beast that could devour and destroy. It was a living, breathing thing that man needed to survive yet feared as instinctively as death.

  He flashed his badge at the cops, who barely looked up, nodded and went back to their conversation as they waited for the crime-scene team to show up and start collecting evidence.

  One of the firefighters who was locking equipment into the truck spied Shea and peeled away from his job.

  His brother Robert.

  Even in his protective gear, Shea would recognize him anywhere.

  Though all of Patrick’s sons resembled him, Robert was the one who was what all the relatives referred to as “the spitting image,” even down to his quick, straight-backed gait. “What the hell happened?” Shea demanded once Robert was within earshot.

  “Don’t know.” Robert unclasped his strap and pulled off his helmet, then lowered his hood to reveal sweat-dampened hair and a face covered with grime and soot. Slightly shorter than Shea, Robert was blessed with the same wavy black hair, intense blue eyes and knife-edged jaw that every Flannery brother shared. “A call came in about an hour ago.” He let out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “Man, I couldn’t believe it was Shannon’s place. Heard the address and nearly peed my damned turnout pants.”

  “But you didn’t see her?”

  “No. Just heard that she was pretty messed up. Cuddahey caught a glimpse of her.” He glanced back to the fire truck where Kaye Cuddahey was working with a nozzle. Shea knew her. Tall and good-looking, with a sharp tongue, three kids and two ex-husbands who weren’t worth fifty cents added together.

  “Smoke inhalation? Burns?”

  “No. The word is that she was messed up, probably trampled by the horses. Cuddahey said she looked like she’d been beaten with a Louisville Slugger.”

  “Beaten?” Shea repeated, his skin crawling as if scorched by flame. “By whom?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense.” He scratched at his chin. “She’s always real careful around the animals. They trust her.” He trained his gaze on the blackened heap that had been the shed. Why had the building gone up so suddenly? And why would it look like someone had bludgeoned Shannon?

  Shea’s back teeth ground as he ran through the possible scenarios in his head. Horses. It had to have been the frantic horses who, in their crazed panic to run to safety, had knocked her down and galloped over her, their heavy hooves cutting and bruising her, even breaking her bones and nearly killing her. Yeah, that had to be it.

  Or was it something else? his mind nagged.

  Something much more sinister.

  The night got under his skin…the smell of doused fire, the hush of the wind, the feeling that something very wrong was happening.

  He stared at the smoldering ruins and wondered how all of this had happened. His eyes narrowed under the glare of the harsh security lights and remaining lanterns. Everything looked worse in the fake blue light. More forbidding. More malicious.

  A bad taste climbed the back of his throat.

  An old fear took shape in his mind.

  He didn’t like the turn of his thoughts. Ugly thoughts that traveled into d
eadly territories he didn’t want to explore. Ever.

  “Because of the fire,” Robert was saying, “my guess is that the horses probably panicked as she was letting them out. Deep down, they’re wild animals and the fear of fire’s pretty damned primal. She could have slipped. One could have knocked her down. The rest could have trampled her.”

  “Maybe,” Shea allowed, but he wasn’t buying it. At least not all of it. Shannon, like everyone else in the Flannery family, knew about the dangers of fire. She would know how her animals would react. Despite her own fear, she would have been extremely careful.

  Something felt off about all of this.

  Way out of kilter.

  “Where was she found?”

  “In the stable.” Robert nodded toward the building less than fifteen feet from the rubble of the shed. “Near the back door, the big one that leads to the corral.”

  Yellow tape surrounded the long two-storied building. Shea had been in the horse barn a couple of times when she’d taken in a particularly nasty animal that Santana was working with. The stables could house up to a dozen horses with six stalls on either side of a center walkway that opened to the parking lot on one end, a large paddock on the other. Near the back door were several closets for leads and bridles, the tack that was used on a daily basis, as well as feed grain and a locked cabinet of veterinary medicines. Overhead was the loft that, depending upon the time of year, was filled with hay and straw.

  The wall closest to the remains of the shed was blackened, several windows shattered.

  “Lucky she didn’t lose it as well,” Shea thought aloud.

  “Or any of the stock.”

  “Where are the animals?”

  “In a pen out beyond the paddock. Santana rounded up all of the horses and locked them in a corral on the far side of the paddock, the one farthest from the fire. Then he located the dogs and has them kenneled in cages away from the scene, out near the lane, just so nothing gets any more disturbed than it already is before the crime scene team and the arson dicks have a look.”

  “What about Shannon’s dog?” Shea asked as he studied the area that the arson squad would have to evaluate: a sodden, seared mess.

  “Khan? We found him in the house. Unharmed and pissed as hell that he was cooped up when all the action was out here. Now he’s with the other dogs.”

  “Santana’s taking care of him, too?”

  “Yep.” Robert’s eyes held Shea’s for a second and though neither said a word, the unspoken sentiments toward the man who lived and worked with Shannon passed between them. Neither Shea nor Robert trusted Nate Santana as far as they could throw him.

  “Swell guy,” Shea said and the corners of Robert’s mouth tightened in his soot-streaked face. “Where was Santana when all of this happened?”

  “Good question. Maybe up in his studio. He showed up after she managed to get the horses out. But I got the feeling from something Aaron said the other night that he was supposed to be away for a while, that Shannon was alone this week.”

  The bad feeling in Shea’s gut just got a little worse. Gnawed at him. Already things weren’t adding up and the crime scene guys hadn’t even started picking through the ash and debris yet.

  “Look, all I know is that he and another guy were here trying to help Shannon before the EMTs arrived,” Shea said.

  “What other guy?”

  “A guy from out of town. Named Settler, I think. Didn’t catch any more than that.”

  The fire truck behind him rumbled to life. “Beats me. I never saw him, never heard his name. But the captain has it. Look, I’d better get back.” He motioned toward the last fire truck and the hoses being folded by a couple of other firefighters.

  “So who’s at the hospital with Shannon?”

  “Oliver,” Robert said, mentioning their younger brother. “I called him when I figured out it was Shan.”

  Oliver, too, had been a firefighter once, but had given it up and now was only a few weeks away from taking his final vows as a priest, if you could believe that.

  Shea didn’t understand Oliver’s latent calling to serve God, but their mother had been delighted to finally have a priest in the family. Maureen had so little interest in life, had become so filled with a creeping despair in the past few years that Shea thought Oliver should go for it, become a goddamned priest. Take the vows. Swear off sex and sin for the rest of life. Hell, someone should break out of the family’s seemingly unbreakable tradition—or was it obsession?—of fighting fires.

  “After Oliver talks to the docs and sees that Shannon’s okay, then he’ll tell Ma.”

  “That’ll be fun,” Shea said sarcastically. This might be the final blow for their mother. It wasn’t enough that she’d raised hellions like their father, even her daughter couldn’t stay out of trouble. It seemed to be a Flannery family trait, or the curse, as Maureen O’Malley Flannery called it.

  All the Flannerys had been born with wild streaks. All had skeletons locked firmly away in their closets. All had a penchant for trouble—whatever it may be. “Just as long as Shannon’s all right, nothing else really matters,” Shea muttered.

  “If you say so.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Only if someone did happen to beat the crap out of my sister, I think that stupid bastard is gonna pay and pay big time.”

  “The law will handle it,” Shea said.

  “Yeah, right.” Robert snorted, the smile on his blackened face without a trace of humor. “And I think I’m about to be canonized by the pope himself.”

  “Hey, Flannery, how about a hand over here!” Kaye Cuddahey, wearing her most put-upon, I’m-friggin’-tired-of-doing-all-the-work-for-you-lazy-male-asses expression, waved at Robert. She and Luis Santiago were slamming doors shut on the rig as it idled. She looked pissed as hell as she glared at Robert.

  “See ya later,” Robert said and hustled back to the truck.

  A few seconds later the big rig rambled down the lane.

  Shea walked around the scene, eyeing the rubble, trying to imagine the conflagration that had erupted. So far they didn’t have answers, but that would change. Once it was cool enough, he and some of the people from the police crime lab as well as the fire department’s investigator would sort through the piles of ash, glass and charred remains to figure out exactly what had happened. Maybe Shannon could give an explanation, or Santana, or the other guy, the stranger. What had the name been? Settler? Christ, who was he?

  Shea returned to his truck, donned protective covers over his boots, pulled on gloves and hauled his flashlight with him. He stepped over the yellow plastic tape and walked through the open door of the stable.

  With a flip of the switch, the entire length of the building was awash with bright fluorescent light. His stomach curdled as he saw a pool of dark, crusted blood. Instead of going through the building, he carefully picked his way around the back where he stood outside and studied the dark, drying puddle. It too was blotchy and smeared, whatever evidence might have been there probably destroyed as Shannon was tended to and then moved.

  Squatting, he stared down the corridor, trying to imagine what had happened. Where were the bloody hoofprints? If horses had trampled her, they would leave impressions behind. But they were missing. There were other prints however, soles that were the size of a man’s shoe or boot.

  His gut twisted and the feeling that things were going from bad to worse got a whole lot stronger. Through the far door he heard the approach of another vehicle. Headlights appeared.

  The crime scene team had arrived.

  Soon, maybe, they’d have some answers.

  From a sun-bleached bench on the back porch of the cabin, he watched the dawn break and sipped from a bottle of Coca-Cola. It was warm, the weather hot enough that there was no early morning chill, just a searing, dry wind that seeped through the surrounding hills, chasing down the dry arroyos and creeping through the forest.

  Flaming streaks of light were ri
sing over the mountains to the east. Vibrant oranges and golds pushed the edges of night back to the far corners of the earth, reminding him of fire…always fire.

  A jackrabbit hopped through the bracken of this run-down old shack, a place no one had occupied for decades. A crow cawed from the branch of a spindly oak. Overhead the wasps were just coming out of their muddy nests built under the eaves, thin black bodies crawling from narrow holes, warming themselves.

  This was his haven.

  A spot no one knew about.

  Not even those close to him.

  If there were any.

  He took another pull from the bottle.

  The kid was inside. Locked in a room where the only natural illumination came in through a skylight. The windows were nailed shut and covered with plywood, the door locked from his side.

  So far she hadn’t complained.

  Scared little twit. But a pain nonetheless.

  Hard to believe that the frightened wimp of a kid was Shannon Flannery’s blood kin. Her daughter.

  His gaze returned to the slowly lightening sky and he pushed thoughts of the girl out of his mind as he stared at the brilliant colors.

  Reminding him again of the fire.

  Reminding him of her.

  His blood ran hot at the thought of her.

  He’d been close enough to smell her, to sense her fear, to hear her breath escape in a startled “ooph” as he’d struck. Licking his lips, he remembered the feeling of the impact, just powerful enough to break her skin, to crush a few small bones, but not to pulverize her, not to permanently mar her beauty, not to have her in the hospital for weeks.

  Not to kill her.

  Not yet.

  He’d known when he’d started the fire that she would go for the horses. Either after the dogs or before, but he counted on the fact she would save the beasts before waiting for help to come.