Fatal Burn

by Lisa Jackson

  That just didn’t seem to fit. His eyes narrowed and for a second he wondered if he was being conned.

  On several occasions, he’d caught her staring at him, watching his every move. He’d even observed her eye pressed against the crack between the door and frame, though he was facing away from her. The spotty, cracked mirror hung over the mantel gave him a view of what was going on behind him as he faced it and he’d been able to watch the door to her room while pretending not to notice her silently watching him. So he’d given her more of a show than was his custom. She probably got off seeing a naked man. Well, fine. He made the best of it. Fear was a great motivator, the perfect psychological weapon.

  She had to be smart enough to realize that his muscles meant that he was tough and he’d made a big show out of walking around with his knife, heating the blade in the coals, and then popping off a few rounds of difficult exercises just to silently prove to her how strong and deadly he was.

  Just in case she got the wrong idea.

  Just in case she had the notion to run.

  Not yet, Brat, he thought. Not ever.

  You don’t know it yet, but you’re doomed.

  Just like your mother.

  “I’m so sorry about Mary Beth,” Shannon said, seeing her brother Robert for the first time since the tragedy that took his wife’s life.

  “Yeah, I know,” he replied and looked away, unable to meet her gaze as they stood in their mother’s tidy kitchen. It smelled of leftover bacon grease and Lysol, just as it had for four decades. The only odor missing was the aroma of her father’s cigars. Though Patrick had been banished to the den near the fire or outside on the porch, the scent of burning tobacco had always lingered in the house, a reminder of who was the patriarch, who ruled the roost.

  Thank God he hadn’t witnessed this.

  Patrick, like his father before him, had been fascinated with fighting fire, with pitting himself against a raging, living, breathing, crackling beast. It had been in the Flannery family’s blood for generations.

  Now, Robert, his wide shoulders sagging, was the last of the Flannery men to actually fight fire. All five brothers had followed in their father and grandfather’s footsteps, but all had either by choice, or stern suggestion, left. Except for Robert.

  How ironic that his wife had died during a blaze.

  “How’re the kids doing?” Shannon asked as conversation lagged.

  “Okay, I guess. Elizabeth has nightmares and RJ doesn’t talk about it, acts like he expects Mary Beth to just magically show up.” Robert’s voice caught and he cleared his throat. “The funeral’s going to be rough.”

  “For all of us,” Shannon agreed. “You might consider a counselor for the kids.”

  “Yeah, Cynthia thinks it would be a good idea.”

  Shannon felt her back stiffen. Though she told herself that she accepted Robert’s relationship—it was his life, after all—it seemed disrespectful and somehow discordant to talk about Cynthia so soon after Mary Beth’s death.

  “Where are they?”

  “With Mary Beth’s sister…Margaret…I’ve got to work out some kind of babysitting arrangement for after school.” He closed his eyes, and as if for the first time it occurred to him how much his wife had actually done for him, for his children. “It’s a fuckin’ nightmare,” he whispered, then, hearing himself, added, “Sorry…It’s still a shock.”

  “I know.” The front doorbell rang and the rest of her brothers came into the house where their mother, thinking the family needed time to reach out to each other before the funeral, had convened them all. Maureen had hors d’oeuvres displayed on the breakfront in the dining room and on their father’s bar, which was still stocked with Irish whiskey and every other make of hard liquor.

  They made small talk, drank and nibbled on tiny crab cakes, fruit skewered with toothpicks, vegetables and hot wings with ranch dip. Little smokies simmered in a Crock-Pot near a stack of corn chips drizzled with cheese. The television was turned on to the baseball game where the Giants were losing to the Mariners. Her brothers were clustered around the flickering images of men with bats and cleats and big wads of chaw in their cheeks.

  To Shannon, the whole scene seemed surreal, as if somehow her mother was trying to make something normal out of the abnormal, trying to find a way of laying Mary Beth and her memory to rest. Before the funeral. Before the Flannery clan would have to face Mary Beth’s family at the service.

  Well, it wasn’t working. Though no one acknowledged the fact, Mary Beth’s presence was more viable, more obvious than if she’d been alive. It was as if she were a ghost, listening in to the banal and inane topics of conversation.

  All in all, the afternoon was trying. Conversation was strained, small talk favored over anything that might bring out tightly guarded emotions. Their mother alternately forced a fake smile or dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Shannon quickly tired of telling her brothers that she was feeling better. Their concerned looks, gentle touches and soft-spoken inquiries only made the situation more uncomfortable. The injuries she’d barely felt this morning seemed somehow more pronounced. Her mother’s reference to the family curse was the worst, as bad as nails on a chalkboard. Shannon refused to comment, to be drawn into the conversation, and when Oliver said something about “thanking the Father for the family’s blessings,” she nearly gagged on a bite of overly salted crab cake. The headache she’d held at bay earlier came galloping back behind her eyes and, rather than get into an argument with any of her siblings or her mother, she retreated upstairs to the bathroom where Maureen kept her extensive selection of pills and remedies.

  Shannon popped two coated aspirin dry, then sat on the edge of the bathtub, letting the breeze that slipped through the partially opened window cool the back of her neck. The house was hot. Stuffy. Beads of sweat prickled her skin and she lifted her hair off her neck in her fist.

  She heard her brothers clamor onto the back porch. Lighters clicked and smoke drifted upward with the hushed conversation. As she had as a child, she blatantly eavesdropped. It was a habit she hadn’t broken, one created by exclusion, because her brothers, though always protective of her, had also kept her away from their inner circle.

  Aaron’s voice was hushed, but she heard him say “birth order.” What the devil were they discussing?

  Someone, it sounded like Shea, muttered something about Neville, but she couldn’t make it out.

  Now she was really curious. She locked the bathroom door quietly, then stepped into the bathtub where she could look beneath the opaque panes to the crack that was open. Past the tattered screen she viewed the tops of two heads, black hair shining in the sunlight. Aaron and Shea, she thought, watching them smoke and converse in quiet tones near the grape arbor that offered a bit of shade from the sweltering sun. Hummingbirds flitted around the bird bath and bees droned in the garden lush with fuchsias, petunias, daisies and lavender.

  So where were Robert and Oliver?

  Under the porch overhang so they weren’t visible to her? With their mother in the house?

  Excluded intentionally?

  Why did she feel that there was something ominous in their gathering? They’d just stepped outside for cigarettes with their drinks and yet…

  Rap. Rap. Rap.

  Knuckles on the door.

  Shannon nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Honey, are you all right?” Maureen asked, rattling the doorknob.

  “Yeah.” She caught her breath, stilled her heart from the shock of nearly being discovered listening at the window. “I was just looking for some ibuprofen or Aleve.”

  “In the medicine cabinet.”

  “I found it.” Silently Shannon slid out of the tub and noticed that, thankfully, she’d left no footprints on the gleaming porcelain.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just a headache, Mother.”

  “I wish you’d go see that doctor again.”

  “
I will. In a few days.”

  Shannon flushed the toilet, then ran water in the sink. A few seconds later she opened the door to find her mother standing near the bureau, staring into the mirror and tucking a few wayward locks into her carefully arranged curls. “You sure you’re all right?” she asked, picking up a can of spray and shellacking her hair into place.

  “Right as rain,” Shannon lied and before her mother could launch into another episode of “Woe is us” and the “Flannery curse,” she said, “I’ve really got to go, Mom. It’s been a long day and I’ve got that new puppy.”

  “Of course.” Maureen was only half-paying attention as she adjusted her scarf. She turned her head left and right to survey her image. As if any of her children would care which way the scarf’s folds overlapped around her neck.

  “See ya later,” Shannon said.

  “At the funeral. If you need a ride…”

  “I should be fine, but I’ll call,” Shannon said, knowing her mother would want all her children around her for support. She’d do it. Somehow Shannon would tune out all the negative talk and sit with her mother, hold her hand, provide a shoulder to cry on and what mattered most: the semblance of family solidarity at the service.

  She nearly ran into Oliver at the bottom of the stairs.

  White-faced, looking shaken he said, “Is Mother upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed worried.

  “Just fiddling with her hair.”

  “I don’t like her being alone.”

  Shannon motioned to the staircase with its polished rail and worn steps. “Then go talk to her.”

  “What about you?”

  “I have to go, Oliver,” she said and saw a dark cloud cross his eyes, a hint of vexation. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Shannon, wait.”

  When she turned to look at him, he was staring at her and there was something in his gaze, something tortured, that gave her pause. “What is it?”

  He glanced up the stairs and deep lines creased his forehead. “They say forgiveness is good for the soul.”

  “Are you talking about me?” she asked. “And who are ‘they’?”

  “I mean—”

  Footsteps interrupted him and a second later Robert walked into the foyer. Oliver was about five steps up, Shannon near the base.

  “You leaving?” Robert asked Shannon.

  “I have to go. Duty and dogs call.” She brushed a kiss across his temple and smelled the scents of smoke and twenty-year-old whiskey clinging to him. “Take care and give my love to the kids.”

  “I will,” he said and hugged her more fiercely than he had in a decade.

  She glanced up at Oliver, who held her gaze, then, troubled and resigned, continued up the stairs.

  She was bothered by Oliver’s attitude, but there wasn’t much she could do. “Oliver,” she said and blew him a kiss. “Later.”

  “Right,” he said, but there was hesitation in his voice.

  “Is something bothering you?” she asked.

  “Everything bothers me, Shannon. Don’t you know that?”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  He glanced at Robert, met his older brother’s gaze. “Nah. I’m fine.”

  “Sure?” she asked, once again feeling left out of her brothers’ secrets.

  “Absolutely,” he said, and then with a smile and a hint of devilment in his gaze, added, “Go with God.”

  She laughed. So he did have a sense of humor after all, could still laugh at himself. “Later,” she said. She told the rest of her siblings good-bye, then took off, driving her truck five miles over the speed limit, as if she expected one of her brothers to chase her down the street and pull her back into the swirl of tragedy that was her family.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she told herself, but checked her rearview mirror anyway. She saw the worry in her own eyes and decided it wasn’t worth it to try and psychoanalyze why her family sometimes made her feel claustrophobic, or why she often had the screaming urge to run away.

  There was just no logic to it.

  Not that there was much logic to any part of her life these days. She tromped a little harder on the accelerator and pushed the thoughts aside.

  “We think we found the van.” Carter’s voice sounded grim. Strained. “The one that Madge Rickert saw while walking her dog, the one that had been parked behind Janssen’s Hardware Store that Earl Miller noticed, the one with the Arizona plates.”

  Travis was sitting on the foot of his bed in the motel room. “Dani?” Travis whispered, throat tight, fear pounding through his brain.

  “Not there, Travis. But her cell phone was.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

  “The van was located in a garage of an abandoned farm in Idaho. The only reason we found it is that a neighbor who rents the acreage to grow wheat parked near the garage and he noticed a bad odor. He had his dog with him and the Lab was going ape shit. The garage door had a new padlock on it and the farmer thought that was funny, so he forced it open, found the van and inside it was a big garbage bag filled with bloody clothes. Men’s clothes. Lots of blood.”

  “Whose blood?” Travis forced himself to ask.

  “Blanche Johnson’s.”

  Travis closed his eyes, counted slowly to twenty, willing his pulse to stop racing.

  “The farmer called Blanche’s phone—the Idaho place is hers—and we took the call. Because the clothes were so covered in blood, we’re speculating that they were what the perp was wearing when he killed Blanche. We’re testing them for evidence, hoping something will tell us who he is.”

  Travis’s hand hurt from clenching the phone so hard. “But you didn’t find Dani?”

  “No. Just her cell phone on the floor of the garage. The Idaho State Police charged it and tracked its owner. Expedited our investigation. We’ve got men and dogs searching the area, but from the tire tracks, we figure he had another vehicle stashed and took off in it.”

  “With Dani?”

  “Probably. We found footprints in the dust. Ones consistent with a woman’s size seven, the same as your daughter’s.”

  Travis squeezed his eyes shut. Please let her be alive. Safe.

  “We have other footprint impressions as well, a man’s size thirteen, and the crime scene investigative team is going over the van and the garage now. The Idaho State Police are working with the FBI and the local Sheriff’s Department. I’m in the loop and I’ll keep you posted.”

  Travis held the phone to his head with one hand, raked his fingers through his hair with the other. “You don’t think the blood on the clothes is my daughter’s?” he asked, forcing out the words.

  “No, I don’t, but, of course we don’t know for certain, but we will soon. The butcher knife we found in the bag looks like one that was missing from Blanche Johnson’s kitchen set, and the link is her place in Idaho. She inherited the place a few years back but hasn’t lived there since she was a child. As far as anyone knows, she rarely visited it. The place is a shambles. She’s been renting it out for the past couple of years to the neighbor.”

  Travis listened, his throat tight, his pulse pounding in his ears as he thought of bloody clothes, a dripping butcher knife and his daughter.

  “I figure whoever killed Blanche wanted us to find the van…He had to have known that someone would eventually stop by, maybe notice the new lock. It’s also someone who knew Blanche owned the place. We’re checking all of her acquaintances, people who knew her way back when. It’ll take some time.”

  “I’m afraid we’re running out.”

  “Hang in there.”

  “He’s here now. Somewhere around Santa Lucia,” Travis said, thinking of the recent fires. “And he’s got Dani. He left her backpack at the last fire.”

  “I know, I’ve been talking to Paterno. Don’t worry, we’ll keep digging on this end. I’ll call you when I know something more,” Carter promised before hanging up.

  Travis s
tared at the phone in his hand. Rage, his constant companion these days, wormed through his brain. He climbed to his feet and walked to the window. It was getting dark and he was restless, had to do something. Anything. He just couldn’t sit around this motel room another second.

  Snagging his keys from the top of the desk, he headed outside to the parking lot where the security lamps were humming and insects hovered near the bulbs. The heat of the day hung heavy in the air, with no breath of a breeze to bring down the temperature. As people walked in and out of El Ranchito, Latin music and conversation drifted into the night.

  Travis paused at his truck and looked across the street. The silver Ford Taurus was missing, the detectives assigned to watch him having been pulled off the case. Or…His gaze swept the surrounding area, half-expecting to see another unmarked vehicle parked in the shadows.

  None was visible and he didn’t really care anyway.

  He eyed the spot where Mary Beth Flannery so recently had rested her hips against her husband’s silver sports car, the key dangling from her finger, the threat of violence in her eyes.

  A few hours later, after leaving with Robert, she’d been killed, her house torched and Dani’s backpack left at the scene of the crime.

  Why?

  What the hell did Dani have to do with Robert Flannery’s wife? Shannon’s sister-in-law?

  Shannon.

  Dani’s mother.

  Travis expelled a slow breath. She’d been on his mind from the moment he’d met her. He’d wanted to hate her. To distrust her. To prove that she’d somehow been involved with the stealing of his child. But that wasn’t the case. Oh, she was involved all right, but at a different level. She, too, was a victim, if what he’d witnessed here in California could be believed.

  Things aren’t what they seem, you know that. Don’t trust her, just use her.

  The muscles in the back of his neck tightened. For a second he saw her as she’d been this afternoon: sunlight touching her green eyes, her slightly sexy smile—a smile that showed off a hint of white teeth—on lips that glistened a soft pink. She was intelligent, determined and confident as she’d worked with the dog. Travis had noticed the way her jeans had pulled over her buttocks as she’d squatted near the rescue dog. He’d been way too conscious of the skin on her lower back as her shirt had lifted to show just a tantalizing hint of flesh.