Fire And Lies: The El & Em Detective Series Read online

  FIRE & LIES

  PAMELA COWAN

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  OTHER TITLES

  AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please refer all questions to the publisher, Windtree Press.

  Copyright © 2020 Pamela Cowan

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1952447211 (Print)

  ISBN-13: 978-1952447204 (eBook)

  818 SW 3rd Avenue, #221-2218

  Portland, OR 97204-2405

  855-649-0821

  First Edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  DEDICATION

  To Jim

  My husband. My best friend.

  My pandemic buddy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  I would like to thank my sister, and the inspiration for this novel, Barbara Duncan. Like El and Em we share a childhood, a dash of sibling rivalry, and a love for good puzzles. My daughter, Jeanne Bainbridge-Chavez, a devilishly-cruel editor, who turns craft into art. My neighbor and friend, Mark Runnels, retired ADA, not only for his insight into the inner workings of a DA’s office, but for his wonderfully twisted take on crime and criminals. Finally, thank you to my friend, author J.M. McCracken, president of the Northwest Independent Writers Association, for the time and support you unfailingly provide.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sunday, September 9

  The sharp smell of gun solvent filled the air, a scent out of place in the tidy home with its traditional furnishings and dated bric-a-brac. Dodge, who had inherited the house from his recently deceased mother, would never have been allowed to clean his guns inside while she was alive.

  Humming softly, he paused to say, to no one in particular, “I love the smell of gun oil in the morning.”

  After he unloaded each gun, he lined them up on the dining room table. Picking up the cleaning rod, he took a square patch of cotton rag and dipped it in Hoppe’s solution. Then he poked a corner of the fabric through the rod’s eye and tugged it halfway through.

  The dining room table was covered with an old red and white checkered tablecloth lined with a thin layer of felt. He used it plastic side down and the gray felt was dotted with dark specks and trails of oil from years of use.

  All five of his guns were on the table awaiting their turn. There were two rifles, a .270 Winchester, and a .30-.06 Springfield he used for deer hunting, as well as three of his favorite handguns, Glock 19s. They were matte black and all business. He’d once owned four, but things happen.

  He picked one up and forced the cleaning rod through the barrel. It came out clean. Hadn’t fired that one in a while. The second was the same, but when he ran it through the third, the clean white patch came out gray with carbon.

  Tugging the dirty patch free, he dumped it into his makeshift rag bin, a tin turkey pan he’d bought for cheap at the dollar store, and decided to disassemble the weapon and do a thorough cleaning.

  There was a pleasant calm that settled over him when he cleaned his guns. He imagined it must be how an ancestor might have felt sitting at the fire, a leather strap across his thigh, while he notched flint into arrows. He could almost imagine the flickering of the flames and the smell of smoke.

  Even if he hadn’t fired them, bugs, dust, and humidity couldn’t be ignored. It was his custom to clean each of his guns on Sunday morning. “Regular as church,” his mother always said, and then she’d laugh like the batshit crazy thing she was.

  Once the gun was clean, he grabbed a tube of lubricant and put the smallest drop on the rails. It was a new product. Smelled of sage. He got some on his fingers and rubbed them together. Liked the slippery feeling. Suddenly he was struck by an idea.

  Taking the tube of lubricant with him, he went to his bedroom. The girl was tied to the headboard by her wrists and to the footboard by one ankle. There was just enough slack for her to move, but not enough so she could untie herself and sneak out.

  “Got a surprise for you,” he told her as he kicked off his boots and dropped his jeans. He squeezed a few drops of the expensive lube into his palm, then rubbed it up and down the length of his penis. “You’re gonna like this.”

  She was shaking and her eyes tracked his every movement as he walked toward the bed, but his overnight guest didn’t say a word or make a single sound. Fast learner, he thought, smarter than her mother at least.

  Not that he expected smarts from any of the pale men or women who lived in Jansen’s Mill. The Mill was nothing more than two rows of single-wide mobile homes on a rutted dirt road. Loggers had lived in the temporary quarters for a short time but had abandoned the place in the seventies. Two miles from the highway, in the middle of an old clear cut, it sat just outside the reservation. From the highway, the place looked like piles of discarded, rusting junk. Up close it stunk of failed septic systems, rotting garbage, and despair.

  There were times Dodge and his friends talked about burning the whole thing to the ground, just to improve the air quality. They didn’t mind poor folks as a general rule, but these people were beyond poor. Jansen’s Mill was the last step before homelessness for a lot of miserable drunks and drug addicts.

  Unfortunately, Dodge’s business, which was moving methamphetamine, heroin, and whatever else he could get his hands on, counted on the people who lived there. They were not just his best customers, but also willing mules and unwilling, but easy to use, scapegoats.

  He looked down at the girl. She had long straight brown hair still sweat plastered to her head from their last session, big brown eyes, and an average face with just a sprinkle of acne along her jaw. She wasn’t his type: too thin, too white. On the other hand, that white skin was tight and smooth as only young skin can be. He figured she had to be thirteen, fourteen tops.

  Kicking his jeans free, he climbed onto the bed and reached for that silky skin.

  Afterward, Dodge was so spent he figured he might as well let her go. He got up and got dressed first though. Didn’t pay to turn your back or be vulnerable around these pale girls. They could turn on you quick, use their teeth, or anything else they could get their hands on. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

  He stomped his feet into his boots, then went to the girl. There were signs of loving on her skin, red splotches on her pale skin and
a huge hickey on her thigh.

  Her eyes were shut tight and that was fine for what he had to do next. He drew back his fist and threw a quick right. Not too hard. He didn’t want to break any bones in her face. He just wanted to give her a nice black eye, one that would last a bit. She shrieked and moved away as far as the ropes would allow, staring at him as wide-eyed as a startled colt.

  “Stay still,” he said curtly. “I’m trying to untie you, damn it.” He worked the knots free and unwound the rope from around her wrists. “When I snap my fingers, you’ll get up and get your clothes off that chair there,” he said, nodding at the rocker in the corner of the room. “Then you’ll get dressed. Once you’re dressed you’ll walk to the front door and head home. As soon as you get home, I want you to tell your mother something. Do you hear me?”

  The girl nodded.

  He moved to the foot of the bed and tugged the slip-knot free, then unwound the rope he’d wound around her ankle. She didn’t move.

  “You tell her that she’s going to remember not to short me next time. I don’t mind the trade she made this time, but you’re the only kid she’s got, so she’s out of things to barter. From now on, I want cold cash.”

  For a moment Dodge let himself feel sorry for the kid. Had she been a child of his people, her mother would have cut off his dick before she let him touch her. These pale women would sell anything. More proof that their souls were broken. Maybe his mother hadn’t been all that crazy.

  “I’m sorry I had to hit you,” he told her. “It’s not that you weren’t worth the money, it’s just that your mom’s a stupid sort of woman, so she’s gonna need a lot of reminding. Now, every time she sees your face, she’s gonna remember.”

  The girl had turned away and was looking down, her long hair acting as a drape to hide behind. He put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face so he could examine the eye better. Hate to have to hit her again, but no, it was already starting to swell, the eyelid drooping so that in an hour she’d only be able to see out of the other one. There was a teardrop-shaped bruise forming near her nose too. It was going to be a beauty.

  He stepped back and snapped his fingers.

  As he watched her slip through the house and out the door, her narrow hip bumping into the doorframe in her stumbling haste, he almost regretted turning her loose. Almost. Women were a distraction and he had things to do.

  After she left, Dodge cranked up his favorite country radio station. He was tapping his foot to George Strait’s, “All My Exes Live in Texas,” as he set down the last rifle and leaned back to admire his work. All his guns were still arranged along the table because he liked the look of them. He’d get around to putting them away after lunch. Or maybe he wouldn’t put them away. This was his house, after all.

  He was headed to the kitchen, to heat up a can of chili and dig a bottle of Keystone out of the fridge, when he heard the low but discernible creak of loose boards. Someone was walking across the front porch. The radio must have drowned out the sound of them coming up the driveway.

  There was a trio of sharp taps as someone rapped on the door with their knuckles. Had to be a neighbor or a friend. Salesmen and peddlers of religion never trekked out this far. Maybe Jelly, his second in command, was dropping by. Jelly didn’t like phones. They had that in common.

  “Goddamnit, every time I’m busy,” he cursed under his breath. But it was just a routine gripe. He didn’t really mind the interruption. The prospect of company was not completely unwelcome.

  He opened the door.

  The bore of a 12-gauge shotgun is around two-thirds of an inch or about the size of a quarter. To Dodge, it was as wide and dark as the hell he was surely headed for. So focused was he on seeing and identifying the threat that all his other senses were muted. He neither heard nor, to his great luck, felt the blast of the gun, or the steel pellets that tore through his face and out through the back of his skull.

  He was already dead as his body staggered back and fell against the heavy dining room table. From there, he slid to the floor, and came to rest flat on his back, arms spread wide, palms up. His forefinger twitched as if he were dreaming that he held one of his guns and was firing.

  For a short time, blood poured from his head, pumped from his body at one hundred and fifty adrenaline-charged beats per minute, then it slowed as his heart gave one last squeeze and stopped. He became as still as only death can be.

  Blood spread in a widening pool, soaking into the crevices between the old, well-polished floorboards.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday, September 7

  Burned stuff stinks, and a lot of stuff had burned inside the warehouse. Emma could make out the harsh stench of melted insulation, charred wood, something chemical and probably toxic. She wondered if she should be wearing one of those masks, the kind firemen wear. But that was probably not necessary.

  A cool autumn breeze was blowing through the place, all the way through. After all, there was nothing to stop it. The big garage door at the front had been shoved up and now hung at an odd angle. It didn’t look like it would be coming back down any time soon. The rear wall was gone, and the row of windows that lined both sides had been blown out, either because of the heat of the force of water gushing through fire hoses. The floor was still damp in spots, but that might have been from rain getting in. After all, it had been over two weeks since the fire.

  Standing at the center of the cavernous space, Emma turned slowly, trying to take it all in. She thought the warehouse must have been nearly empty when it burned. To the right of the front door, if you were facing the building, about a dozen scorched metal barrels—the ones her twisted mind always thought of as big enough to hide a body in—lay on their sides. Scattered among them were smaller metal containers, some round, some rectangular, all with their labels burned away.

  On the other side of the warehouse, leaning precariously away from the wall, was the skeletal metal frame of a large shelving unit. The only remains of the wooden shelves were triangles of charred wood in some of the corners, and the sodden lumps of ash that wind and water had swept to the edges of the room.

  Emma turned her attention toward the cans and the tell-tale trio of V-shaped marks on the wall above them. Fire burns up in a V-shaped pattern. The apex of the V is usually the point of origin. Multiple seasons of “Rescue Me” and other crime-based dramas had taught her that much. Still, despite her broad television-based education, she wasn’t feeling very confident.

  Her boots crunched through thin shards of glass from shattered fluorescent bulbs that had fallen from the ceiling. Each step sent up puffs of acrid ash that drifted lazily in her wake. She stood and stared at the row of dark V shapes as if waiting for them to speak. They didn’t say a word.

  Her friend and newest client, Gwen, had called yesterday afternoon.

  “There was a fire at a warehouse on Market Street a couple weeks ago. We hold the policy on it and will have to pay off, unless it was set on purpose, which is what I suspect. Problem is, Devon and I are in Hawaii. We won’t be back for another few days, so I can’t go check it out in person.”

  “Don’t you have investigators for that?” Emma asked.

  “Yes, and the state police sent an investigator. Neither of whom found evidence of arson, but I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “How can you “feel” anything? Aren’t you a couple thousand miles away on a beach with your boyfriend?”

  Emma could sense the smile in her friend’s voice. “Okay, you’re right. It’s not a feeling so much as I remember the guy who bought the policy. He came into the office when I was there, and he was scruffy as hell. I remember thinking at the time that he wasn’t the kind of person I’d expect to buy insurance, especially on a warehouse that hadn’t been used in years.”

  “So why’d you sell him the policy?”

  “He said he was going to clean the place up and rent it out. He had a deal with a heavy equipment company that needed a place to wor
k on their machinery. It sounded reasonable at the time. You know, protect the renter’s stuff, protect himself from the renter.”

  “I don’t know,” said Emma. This kind of thing is not really my kind of thing.”

  “You are a private investigator aren’t you? Go investigate.”

  She was a private investigator, but her specialties were finding and following. Her tools were a computer with a good internet connection, a camera with a zoom lens, and the ability to fit in wherever she was. She tried to explain that to Gwen.

  “I’m not an arson investigator. I’m not sure I’d even know what to look for. If the actual investigators are saying it’s not arson . . . “

  “They’re not saying it’s not arson. It’s more they’re saying fire of unknown origin. I hate unknowns, don’t you?”

  “Of course, but again, this is not . . .”

  “I know. Not your thing. I get that. But you have a way of knowing things, a gut feeling, Uncle Dan called it. You found Jason for him and he hasn’t forgotten it.”

  Gwen’s Uncle, had hired Emma to find a grown son he hadn’t, until recently, known existed.

  After following a twisting path, most of which took place across the Internet, Emma had found his son working as a pilot in California.

  Dan, ex-Navy and a former airplane mechanic and Jason, his new found son, were still exploring the strange coincidences in their lives and flying around the country just for the hell of it.

  The woman who had been Dan’s childhood sweetheart, and the mother of Jason, had hated the idea of forcing Dan to marry her. Instead, she’d kept her pregnancy secret and moved away to live with her older sister. She’d had the baby and raised him, eventually marrying and later divorcing Jason’s step-father.

  Years later, when she thought she was dying of cancer, she decided it wasn’t a secret she wanted to take to the grave. She’d found Dan and told him that he had a son.

  Now, her cancer in remission, she often flew with the two of them. Emma thought the three of them might end up being a family after all.