The Hunting Season

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  “Has Chaney done a single useful thing on this investigation yet?”

  Daniel’s temper flickered. “I suggested the meeting so that we can try to figure out what we can do that we haven’t already done. He may have a fresh perspective.”

  “What are the odds?” she muttered, but then said, “Sure. Eleven is good for me.”

  “You might show up with a better attitude,” Daniel suggested.

  She was quiet long enough he’d have thought she had cut him off except that he could hear her breathing.

  “You’re right,” she said at last. “Chaney rubs me the wrong way, but I can be professional.”

  The shower went off. Picturing Lindsay stepping out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, he fought to stay focused. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  Truthfully, that was a relief. His guess was that Boyd and Melinda had gotten personally involved but it hadn’t worked out. He’d felt obliged to offer to be a sounding board, but he didn’t actually want to know what happened between them.

  “Check your email. There was another murder last night,” he said. At her exclamation, he gave her the basics, then said goodbye just as Lindsay appeared in the kitchen, looking shy.

  Daniel rose to his feet and greeted her with a kiss that he managed to keep gentle. Much as he’d like to go back to bed with her, he didn’t have time. Catching this piece of scum had to be his priority.

  Lindsay scrambled eggs while he toasted and buttered blueberry bagels. They sat down with their plates and looked at each other.

  “When will he stop?” she asked.

  Daniel had to shake his head. “I doubt he will. He’s killing with scarcely a pause between victims. That’s unusual. That he’s acting so hastily makes it more likely he’ll screw up, but it also has us stumbling behind without time to thoroughly investigate each individual murder the way we normally would.”

  Poking at her eggs with her fork, Lindsay frowned. “I know you suspect my coworkers, but given that they were working full time, could any of them really pull off this kind of crime spree?”

  “It’s barely possible,” he said. But not likely. He’d been eliminating one after another while cross-referencing their schedules with the likely times of the murders. Increasingly, he agreed with Melinda that they should be looking at ex-employees, not current ones, who had somehow figured out how to get into the database. He’d verified that no ex-employee still had access. That didn’t mean they couldn’t have an in: either a current employee who sympathized or just liked to complain about all the scumbags who’d gotten off.

  Alternatively, a now-retired employee whose rage had been building might have kept a list, dating back years. Who Deserves to Die. That was a realistic possibility…except that the killer had started with two men who had barely gotten into the system. Those identities could only have come by word of mouth.

  He was a little surprised at how high the turnover had been in the office. The list of former employees who’d quit or retired in the last three years was keeping him busy. He needed to locate each, find out what they were doing now, run background checks, get some idea of personality and levels of anger. He hadn’t attempted to go any further back, because there was one thing Daniel could be sure about: the murderer knew Lindsay.

  He surfaced from his brooding when she rose from her chair and said she’d clean. “You’re busy, I’m not,” she said.

  Daniel hid his wince. In her shoes, he’d have been pacing like a tiger testing the bars of his cage, unable to resign himself to inaction. Lindsay hadn’t complained recently, but she had to be bored as well as frustrated. She might need a vacation, but home confinement hardly qualified.

  Since he needed to get going, he found the protection schedule he’d worked up on his laptop. Theoretically, Phil Chavez, a forty-year-old sergeant on the patrol side, ought to be here any minute. His wife was out of town, leaving him free to spend his day off with Lindsay. He’d encountered her on the job in the past.

  Daniel was already reaching for his phone when it rang. Chavez’s name came up.

  Instead of apologizing because he was running late, the sergeant growled, “I can’t make it. I tripped over my own damn slipper and fell. Threw out my back. I can hardly crawl. I had to call Cecelia and ask her to come home.”

  Daniel told him not to worry, made sure the wife would be home in time to get him to the doctor, and wished him well. He told Lindsay that Chavez couldn’t make it and why before he went back to the schedule to see who he could substitute.

  Frowning at the monitor, he said, “Maybe you should just come with me. The police station is a fortress.” That wasn’t literally true, but close enough; it was built with brick, and getting in past the lobby took electronic gymnastics.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I think we’ve gone overboard. Why can’t I stay home? Is he really going to break into my house in broad daylight?”

  “Most of your neighbors will be at work,” he pointed out. “That leaves you isolated.”

  Those blue eyes fastened beseechingly on him. “I swear, cross my heart, I’ll lock up, keep my phone close, call 9-1-1 if I hear anything out of the ordinary. I’m not totally defenseless, you know.”

  He had to remind himself that in her job, she walked into ugly situations as often as any first responder. That took guts and an ability to ease tensions.

  “Do you have a gun?” he asked.

  She blinked. “No! But if I hear the back window break, I’ll dash out the front and run.”

  Resigning himself, he said sternly, “While calling 9-1-1 and me.”

  Lindsay rolled her eyes. “Yes, Detective.”

  He kissed her, said, “Be smart,” and left, taking half a dozen looks in his rearview mirror before he lost sight of her small rambler.

  SILENCE SETTLED WITH Daniel gone. Lindsay talked herself out of her ridiculous state of unease. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t spent much of her life alone. Anyway, she heard a neighbor’s garage door rising and then descending, traffic on the street in front. People going about their usual business.

  Too bad she couldn’t.

  What she could do was linger over another cup of coffee and the morning newspaper, do some laundry, then read a good book that wasn’t true crime or a mystery. At least she didn’t have to make forced conversation with near-strangers who had felt compelled to take a shift protecting her.

  During those years in foster care, she’d hated knowing how dependent she was on other people—and the necessity of being grateful to them. She hadn’t even realized as her stress level rose the past week that it was in part because she’d been thrown back to those old emotions.

  Evenings with Daniel here had been…different. Her feelings for him were complicated. He’d passed the point of being a near-stranger, that was for sure, or last night wouldn’t have happened. Even so, she wasn’t assuming that having sex with her meant that much to him.

  With an effort, she kept her attention on her book until lunchtime. Not all that hungry, she still made a salad and ate most of it. The afternoon opened ahead like a stretch of the Sahara. What did she usually do on her days off? she asked herself desperately.

  She did errands. Grocery shopped, stopped by the pharmacy and the library—in fact, she had several books that were now overdue. All activities forbidden to her.

  Lindsay glanced at her closed laptop. Really, she’d worked. Work was her life.

  Had been.

  Something had shifted in her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to her former life.

  She could make lists. She was good at that. Pros and cons of staying with CPS. Potential alternate jobs. Some goals. What did she want out of life?

  Right now, a nap sounded really good. Unfortunately, Daniel had been right; in some ways, she was isolated. She had a suspicion napping wouldn’t fall
under his “be smart” directive.

  Okay, she’d finish her book, then maybe do some baking. She didn’t have any better ideas, short of painting the kitchen, but that would require her to go out and buy paint.

  Settled cozily on the sofa, she opened the book again. Twice in the next hour she caught herself starting to nod off. No surprise—she hadn’t gotten very much sleep last night, after all.

  After pouring herself a glass of iced tea, Lindsay went back to reading and to fighting off the sleepiness.

  The next thing she knew, she jerked, and realized she’d lost the battle, but something had tugged her awake. What…? Her nostrils flared. Was that smoke she smelled? And…did her eyes burn a little?

  The sudden, earsplitting screech brought her to her feet. Her heart thudded. Fire alarm. Oh, God, it was smoke stinging her nostrils. And…gasoline?

  She took a tentative step toward the hall and reared back when she saw flames licking up one wall. She had to get out of the house. Now.

  Except, would somebody be waiting for her out there?

  Chapter Eleven

  Lindsay snatched up her purse and her laptop, looked around hopelessly at everything she couldn’t take the time to try to save and raced for the front door. Her hand on the doorknob, she hesitated.

  With the fire consuming the back of the house, the arsonist would expect her to exit out the front. Heart racing in fear, she edged over to the picture window and cracked the blinds. Nobody was visible in the slice of the porch and lawn she could see…but that didn’t mean somebody wasn’t there. Waiting for her.

  She turned as thick, oily smoke billowed into the living room. It smelled terrible. Taking a deep breath, she willed herself to hold it as she desperately scanned the house for options. Her gaze locked on the dining room window. She could get that one open.

  Of course she had to pull up the blinds before she could wrench the sash upward. She didn’t see anybody waiting outside here, either, but belatedly realized that the old wood-framed window didn’t exactly glide upward. A man hidden just out of sight would hear it.

  She was out of time.

  The air escaped her lungs in a rush. In exchange, she sucked in smoky air. In seconds she began to cough. Eyes watering, she shoved the screen outward. Hungry for fresh air, she tossed her purse and laptop onto the lawn, then swung a leg over the sill and lowered herself gingerly to one side of the thorny old rose bush. Falling to her knees, she couldn’t stop coughing.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye brought her head up—but she heard multiple sirens, too.

  Lights flashing and siren screaming, Daniel drove like a madman. He wouldn’t get there soon enough, but he had to try. Firefighters and a patrol officer would have been dispatched and were sure to beat him to Lindsay’s house. He hoped like hell they would. The idea of her terrified as she tried to hide behind a neighbor’s garden shed or crouch in shrubbery scared him so much his foot pushed down hard on the gas pedal even though the light ahead of him had just turned yellow.

  The column of black smoke rose to the sky like a beacon. Midsummer like this, even the grass and foliage would be bone-dry. This time of year, the fire department would be on high alert, but the color of this smoke was a dead giveaway. Gasoline or another accelerant had been used to start the fire.

  Arson, and not just the kind of small blaze a troubled kid might start in a wastebasket.

  EXACTLY FOUR MINUTES LATER, Daniel turned onto Lindsay’s block, where a red fire truck initially blocked his view of her house. Arcs of water crisscrossed to meet the flames as firefighters dragged hoses around the small rambler. Half of them were turned on the walls and roofs of neighboring houses, an acknowledgement that her place was a goner.

  He parked behind a squad car and jogged forward, searching frantically for Lindsay in the small crowd that had gathered. Though he desperately needed to find her, at his first full sight of her house he had to stare for a moment. Despite the water combating the fire, voracious flames still shot upward. It was hard to hear anything but the crackling of those angry flames and the splintering sounds as walls and trusses gave way.

  Sickened, he resumed his search for her. She’d just lost everything. What Daniel cared about right now was that help had arrived in time to save her. If so…where was she? He’d made plain that she was the priority over the fire. He couldn’t believe—

  At that moment, he spotted the ambulance. Relief felt like a blow to the chest. He stopped dead where he was on the sidewalk, unaware of the action around him, focused utterly on her. Lindsay sat in the open back, her stricken gaze fixed on the destruction of her home. She couldn’t have had time to rescue much of anything before she got out. For a fleeting moment, Daniel tried to imagine how he’d feel, knowing everything he owned was gone: photos and keepsakes from his parents and past relationships, the dining room table he’d spent hours restoring and the oak floors in his home that he’d sanded and stained himself. His favorite riding boots, his leather jacket, the ceramic bowl from a local artisan he used for mixing pancakes.

  Once in a new home, Lindsay might spend years reaching for something that had burned to ashes long ago. In her case, she didn’t seem to have any family. Anything she’d had to remind her of her parents or grandparents was gone unless she’d stored it in a safe deposit box at the bank. At last he started walking again. She looked worse the closer he got. It had to be shock that had bleached her so pale. A black smear ran from one cheekbone down over her chin. A thick bandage wrapped an upper arm. She held her hands, closed into fists, pressed against her belly. No tear tracks on her cheeks, though. Would she let herself cry later?

  As he watched, she began to cough harshly.

  Ten feet away, he said her name. He doubted she could hear him, but her head turned and she saw him. She quit hacking and didn’t so much as blink. He didn’t think he did, either, as he closed the distance.

  Either she launched herself into his arms or he snatched her up, he didn’t know, only that he held her tight. He lost awareness of their surroundings, the hose snaking inches from his feet, raised voices, even the heat.

  “Damn, Lindsay,” he murmured, his mouth by her ear. “You’re all right. I’ve been so afraid—” He broke off, as much because his throat closed as because he didn’t want to admit that he’d never been scared for another person the way he had been for her.

  “I didn’t hear a thing,” she mumbled. “Somebody set this, didn’t they?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said grimly.

  “The first thing I knew, there was the smoke and then my alarm. I was reading and…” She sounded ashamed. “I think I’d nodded off. I didn’t get very much sleep last night. Um. I guess you know that.”

  He was to blame for her lack of sleep. He didn’t want to think about how he’d have felt if she’d died in this fire.

  “How’d you get out?” he asked.

  “The dining room window.”

  “Did you see anybody?”

  She went utterly still, as though she’d quit breathing. Then, so quietly he could barely hear her, she said, “I think somebody was right around the corner of the house. I saw movement, but then sirens blasted close enough, it must have scared him away.”

  His grip tightened. “I’m sorry about this. So damn sorry. If I’d had somebody here today—”

  “He might have set the fire anyway.”

  She was right, but he still doubted it was coincidence that the fire was set the first time she’d been left alone since the phone call.

  He felt her draw a deep breath, after which she started hacking again. An EMT he recognized helped her back to her seat in the ambulance and covered her face with an oxygen mask.

  Daniel promised to come back as soon as he talked to several people.

  The fire chief grimaced when Daniel tracked him down. “I’ll be surprised if the accelerant isn’t good, old-fa
shioned gasoline. Smell kind of hits you as soon as you get here.”

  “I noticed,” Daniel said. “Damn, I wish we could get our hands on this guy.”

  “Detective McIntosh just got here. She seems to think this fire is connected to one of your investigations.”

  “There’s no doubt. Especially…” He hesitated, not wanting to put any ideas in Chief Randolph’s head. “You notice anything unusual?”

  “One of the firefighters mentioned something odd. It’s around back, near the point of origin.”

  Daniel followed him, the two circling onto the street and around the house on the corner to avoid the activity. Fortunately, neither backyard was fenced in. Both stopped when the roof of her house collapsed with a deep groan, but the water seemed finally to be knocking back the fire, albeit too late. Soaking the neighboring houses looked like it had saved them from dangerous sparks.

  This wasn’t a wastebasket, Daniel saw immediately. Instead, a full-size metal barrel, blackened by the fire, had been placed in the middle of her lawn. The barrel was full of water now because of the hoses, but charred bits of something unidentifiable bobbed on the surface.

  “My firefighter says there was a fire in it when he first came around back.” Watching Daniel, Randolph lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t look surprised.”

  “I’m not.” Although, damn, he didn’t like the escalation implied by a large metal barrel versus wastebaskets. “I’d appreciate it if you and anyone else who saw this keep it to yourselves.”

  “No problem.” The chief’s gaze touched on the barrel, then swept the still smoldering ruins of Lindsay’s small rambler. “Your guy really likes fires.”

  “So it seems.”

  “A BARREL?” LINDSAY REPEATED. “Metal?” It was hours later; she’d finally been turned loose from the ER and was beside Daniel in his truck, on the way to his house. He had been telling her what little he’d learned thus far. “Where did he get one?”