Becoming Quinn

by Brett Battles

  With each step, he quietly set his foot down, heel to toe. Just a few more feet and he’d see the entire area behind the tank.

  Relax, he told himself, as he felt his heart start to race.

  In the four months he’d been on the job, he’d responded to domestic disturbances, gas station robberies, traffic accidents, and one suicide, but this was the first time he was in a situation where he might come face to face with a perp on his own.

  He could feel his palms start to sweat.

  Two more steps. One.

  He held his breath as he took the final step, ready to shout, “Don’t move!”

  But there was no one there.

  He flipped his flashlight back on, and held it against his pistol as he swept the beam across the desert.

  Nothing. He was alone.

  A nervous laugh escaped his lips. He’d almost let himself get psyched up. He couldn’t let that happen again, not if he wanted to stay a cop for long. Thank God he hadn’t asked Haywood for help. He’d have looked like a fool, and any trace amount of respect the senior cop might have had for him would have disappeared.

  Jake closed his eyes for a moment, letting his body calm down. When he opened them again, he noticed something strange about the dirt next to the tank.

  He knelt down, and moved his light across the affected area. It looked almost as if someone had kicked up the dirt, erasing marks that had been there. The main area of disturbance was about three feet by three feet, with a smaller patch of rearranged dirt just beyond it.

  Jake knew, like with the footprints around the barn, that he couldn’t be sure the disturbance had been made in the last few hours, but he couldn’t help feeling that they were. He stood up and moved to the smaller disturbance. That’s when he noticed something else that was odd. Starting about a foot away, and circling around the tank, more dirt had been moved. But instead of a roughly square patch, this was almost like a line.

  He followed it with his light, then revised his initial thoughts. It wasn’t almost like a line. It was a line, one that stretched all the way back to the barn.

  Jake walked beside it, having no idea why it was there. Then, about forty feet from the barn, he stopped. Whoever had been kicking the sand had missed a spot. He knelt down. It was a shallow depression in the earth, a round trough, less than an inch long. Like…

  Like a wire or a cable might make.

  He looked back toward the tank, following the line the disturbance made, then turned his head and followed it all the way to the barn. Could the mark have been made by whatever had been used to start the fire? He frowned, knowing that didn’t make a lot of sense. Why use something so elaborate on an abandoned barn that a person could walk right up to without being seen?

  Jake pulled out the disposable camera he kept on his belt, and took a picture of the mark. He then took a few pictures of the surrounding disturbance. Maybe it was nothing, but better to be safe.

  Just as he was putting his camera away, Haywood came around the other end of the structure.

  “Find anyone?” he asked.

  Jake was about to tell him about the depression, but hesitated. Haywood would probably look at it and think that Jake was making something out of nothing. But before Jake could actually decide what to do, sirens cut through the sound of the fire.

  Both cops turned toward the road. Three fire trucks were racing in their direction, and right behind them were the lights of two patrol cars.

  • • •

  Once everyone arrived, Jake and another rookie, Berit Davies, were tasked with keeping civilians off the property. It was amazing that even at night in a sparsely populated part of town, people had gathered to gawk at the fire.

  “So how long do we have to be on the force before we’re not automatically put on crowd control?” Berit asked as they drove one of the patrol cars down the dirt road to the property entrance.

  Jake smiled. Berit was probably his closest friend on the force. They were both sort of outsiders—Berit a woman in a crumbling man’s world, and Jake a transplant from Minnesota, of all places.

  “Come on,” he said. “You love crowd duty. Isn’t that what you told me last time?”

  “Oh, yeah. My favorite thing in the world,” she said as she pulled the car to a stop.

  There were at least a dozen people hanging around the opening in the fence. Nearly half of them were actually standing inside the property line.

  “All right,” Jake announced as soon as he got out. “Everyone’s going to have to get on the other side of the fence.”

  Several of those standing on the property began moving toward the gate. Two men, though, held their ground. Berit headed right for them.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Not sure you heard the other officer, but you’ll have to step back on the other side of the fence, please.”

  “Come on,” one of the men said. “We’re not in anyone’s way. We just want to watch the fire.”

  “And you can do that, sir,” Berit said. “But from the other side of the fence.”

  “We want to watch from here,” the other one said.

  Jake glanced at the rest of the crowd to make sure they were all safely off the property, then headed over to back up Berit.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “That’s not possible. You and your friend will have to move.”

  “Really, honey?” the second one asked. “What harm are we doing?”

  Jake wanted to step in, and knew that probably any other officer would, but he also knew it wasn’t what Berit would want. So he stopped several feet behind her.

  In a controlled voice, she said, “Sir, I’m not your honey, and you’re not staying. So either you walk through that opening and get on the other side of that fence, or we arrest you for trespassing. Up to you.”

  The first man put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  The second man held his place for a moment, scowling at Berit, but then he turned and the two of them walked away.

  Jake moved up next to her. “Impressive,” he whispered. “For a woman.”

  “And damn near impossible for a man,” she said.

  “True,” he agreed.

  Together they walked over to the gate. For the next several minutes they were peppered with questions from the growing crowd, most of which they answered with “I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer to that.”

  Though there had been no indication the fire was a crime, they knew they had to treat it as such until they were notified otherwise. So, per training, they noted the faces in the crowd, looking for anyone unusually interested in what was going on. But if there was an arsonist in this crowd, Jake was having no success picking out him or her.

  It took less than an hour for the firemen to get the blaze extinguished. By then, most of the structure was gone.

  “Oliver. Davies,” the voice of Sergeant Niccum said over the radio.

  Berit touched the mic on her shoulder. “Yes, sir?”

  Jake then did the same. “I’m here, sir.”

  “Be advised, we have a nine-oh-one H.”

  Both Jake and Berit tensed. A dead body.

  “Yes, sir,” Jake said. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, asked, “May I ask where?”

  “No, you may not,” the sergeant rebuked him, then signed off.

  “Smooth,” Berit said to Jake.

  “Yeah, I’ve been practicing,” he replied, trying to play it down.

  He knew he shouldn’t have asked the question, but he and Haywood had been first on scene. He would have thought that gave him the right to know what was going on, but apparently not.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find out soon enough,” Berit said, no doubt sensing what was going through his mind.

  If only he’d been thinking that way before he’d asked the question, but sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. It was his damn curiosity. A trait he was sure would help him when he became a detective.

  If, that was, it didn’t sink his car
eer before then.

  5

  By the time Jake arrived home, it was nearly 3 a.m. Sleep took a little while to come, and when it did, it was fitful at best. By 8 a.m., he’d had enough and dragged himself into the shower.

  The problem was he couldn’t get the fire out of his mind. By the time he’d been released from the scene, investigators had established that the body found inside the barn, while severely burned, had a bullet wound through the neck. There might have been other wounds, too, but the condition of the body made it impossible to check on site.

  Was this the guy who had called 911? No one else had mentioned the possibility, but Jake had to believe others were thinking it. No matter what, the fire was obviously meant to cover up the murder.

  And what about that depression he’d seen in the sand? Did that have something to do with any of this?

  Jake let the water run over his head as he tried to think it through, but everything he came up with was pure speculation, each scenario wilder than the last. Somewhere between the shampoo and the body wash, he decided to return to the barn for another look. He wasn’t due in until four that afternoon so he still had most of the day ahead of him.

  He threw on some jeans and a dark T-shirt, grabbed a clean uniform and his belt and gun in case he didn’t have time to come back to his apartment before his shift began, then headed out to the car. The uniform and belt he put in the trunk, but the gun he slid under the front seat. Almost as an afterthought, he returned to the trunk, retrieved his police badge, and shoved it into his pocket.

  Though it was only May, the day was already a hot one. But this being Phoenix, that was not unusual. Jake never complained about the heat. He’d grown up about as far north as a person could get without being Canadian. His hometown of Warroad was right at the western base of the little hump at the top of Minnesota. Even with a population of just a few thousand, it was the biggest town for miles. In the winter, Warroad would get as cold as Phoenix got hot. The cold, Jake had no problems complaining about. He and temperatures below fifty degrees had never seen eye to eye. Arizona, on the other hand, suited him just fine.

  He drove his second-hand Honda Civic out to the site of the previous night’s fire. As he neared, he could see several vehicles parked down near the remains of the structure. Detectives and ID techs, no doubt, and maybe a fire marshal or two.

  There was a cop stationed at the gate, another rookie named Eli Dunbar. Jake turned onto the dirt road, then stopped and rolled down his window.

  “Hey, Snowbird,” Dunbar said, using the nickname Jake had obtained at the academy. “What are you doing here?”

  “Morning, Eli,” Jake said, forcing on a smile. He wasn’t a big fan of Dunbar’s. “Haywood and I were first on scene last night. I was told to swing by after I got up.” Not exactly true, but close. He was told to check in with the detectives heading up the investigation before he started his shift. It was never said where, but the implication had been at Jake’s substation—where the detectives would be working out of for the next couple of days—not the crime scene.

  “That was you, huh? You the ones who found the body, too?”

  Jake shook his head. “No, we didn’t even know it was there. They found it after they put the fire out.”

  Dunbar looked back at the barn for a second. “If you ask me, I’ll bet you it has something to do with drugs. A deal gone bad, a turf war or something like that. You just wait and see. He’ll be Mexican for sure.”

  Jake wasn’t about to start trading theories with him, so he just said, “You might be right.”

  “You better believe I am.”

  Jake gave him a nod. “I’d better run,” he said, slipping the car back into gear.

  Dunbar pointed down the road. “Park near the other cars. And careful where you step. It’s still a crime scene.”

  “Thanks,” Jake told him, then started driving away. What he really wanted to say was, “No kidding, asshole. I know it’s a crime scene,” but you couldn’t win with a guy like Dunbar. No matter what you said, or how right you were, they’d think you were the asshole.

  Jake parked next to a van he knew belonged to one of the identity techs, then got out. There were nearly a dozen people at the barn, split almost evenly between those on the perimeter and those inside the wreckage.

  He knew the body had been taken to the morgue the night before, so the attention now would be on processing the scene for any evidence left behind. A couple of the people on the outside seemed to be examining a tire print, while another was shooting photographs of it.

  Standing off to the side were two men in suits. Though Jake had never seen them before, they had the unmistakable look of detectives. They probably weren’t the primaries on the case—that would have fallen to the guys who’d shown up right after the body was discovered. No, these two would be doing babysitting duty, on hand in case anything came up, but likely to move on to something else the minute they drove away.

  One of them was glancing in Jake’s direction, so Jake headed over, knowing it was better to take the initiative and introduce himself than hope they’d just ignore him.

  “Can I help you?” the detective asked as Jake neared.

  “I’m Officer Oliver,” Jake said. “I was first on scene last night.”

  The detective looked at him, clearly waiting for more.

  Jake had known he was going to have to explain why he was there, so he had come up with a story on the drive over. Now that he was about to voice it, it seemed ridiculous, but it was too late to come up with anything else.

  “We, uh, did a wide perimeter search when we first got here,” he said. “You know, in case there was anyone who escaped the fire but might need help.”

  The second detective raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  Jake smiled sheepishly. “This is actually kind of embarrassing.”

  Neither of the detectives said anything.

  “I think I, uh, might have lost a pen my girlfriend gave me.”

  “A pen,” the first detective said, his face blank.

  “It’s a nice pen. One of those expensive kinds, know what I mean? I got a call when I was walking around.” Jake waved at the desert beyond the barn. “When I pulled out my phone, I think my pen might have come out, too. I didn’t notice it was gone until I got home.”

  “So you think your pen is out here somewhere?” the second detective said.

  “Yeah. I told you it was embarrassing.”

  “You were right.”

  “Would you mind if I looked for it?” Jake asked.

  “Officer Oliver, I assume you’ve learned how important it is not to contaminate a crime scene?”

  “We didn’t know it was a crime scene at the time.”

  Both detectives stared at him. “The building was on fire. There was a pretty good chance something was wrong, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir. It was a mistake. I’m sorry. I should just forget about it.” Jake started to turn away.

  “Hold on,” the first detective said, stopping him. The man then raised his voice. “Pat!”

  A man standing inside the wreckage looked up. “What?”

  “This guy lost something out in the desert around the barn. Okay if he looks for it?”

  The man, Pat, glanced at Jake. “Who is he?”

  “One of ours. Was here last night.”

  Pat shrugged. “We finished up out there, so shouldn’t be a problem. Just stay at least twenty feet from the building.”

  The first detective looked at Jake. “You’re in luck. Go have your look, but don’t be long.”

  “Thank you,” Jake said, sighing inwardly with relief.

  He started with the tank to the left of the building, and immediately saw that the line of disturbed earth leading to the barn had been trampled over by the fire crews. He looked for the trough the rope or cable had created, but it was gone, too. This was evidence he alone now had, evidence he should probably turn over to the detectives. Not the two idiots
out front, though. The ones in charge.

  He circled around the tank and could immediately tell the firefighters hadn’t come back this way. The disturbed earth was untouched. With the aid of the morning sunlight, it seemed pretty clear whoever kicked it up had done so in a hurry. Jake scanned the surrounding area, looking for anything he might have missed in the darkness, but nothing stood out.

  He moved on, walking in a wide arc that would take him behind the barn. Unfortunately, now that the structure wasn’t much more than a pile of charred wood, he was visible to the detectives pretty much wherever he went. To keep up the illusion of the lost pen, he focused his gaze more on the ground than on the crime scene.

  The few glimpses he did take of the barn told him nothing new.

  He paralleled the back of the building, then turned along the other side, and immediately spotted something he hadn’t noticed previously. A tree. It was another thirty feet farther into the desert on the left. Its blackened trunk and leafless branches looked brittle. It was actually more a reminder of a tree than a tree itself, doing time until one of the strong winds that blew through the valley on occasion finally brought it to the ground.

  This was the side of the barn Haywood had checked out, so it was understandable why Jake hadn’t seen it before. He walked toward it, wanting to do a thorough job, so that when he drove off he’d know there had been nothing more to find. Hopefully, that would appease his mind, and his obsession with the fire would wane.

  From over at the barn, he could hear a few of the other detectives talking about the upcoming basketball season. The Phoenix Suns had never won the NBA title, but they made the playoffs almost every year. In Jake’s opinion, that made it more torturous for fans than if the team never made the playoffs at all. Jake liked basketball, but he couldn’t bring himself to give in to the futility of being a Suns fan just yet. A few more years on the force and he was sure to be cheering and groaning with the rest of them.

  As he neared the tree he noticed several sets of footprints, many on top of each other. He picked out a set that probably belonged to Haywood. The shape was very much like the ones made by Jake’s uniform shoes.