Burn You Twice

by Burton, Mary

  “Dad, you’re not being fair,” Kyle said as he stomped around the house.

  “Life isn’t fair, pal.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Get your gear.”

  “Fine.” Heavy, dramatic footsteps faded away.

  “You owe it to yourself and Joan to talk, Gideon.”

  “There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, Ann.”

  “Not as much as you think.”

  Kyle appeared, and the two drove the short distance to their home. As he walked through the front door of the one-story rancher, Gideon shrugged off his coat, grateful to shut out the world for a few hours. He had become accustomed to the quiet in the backcountry, when all he and Kyle had had to worry about was finding a good fishing spot or splitting logs. Now, he was discovering that balancing the job and single parenthood was trickier than he’d ever thought. He had hoped the time spent at the fishing cabin would reset their relationship, but father and son seemed to be falling back into their old patterns. The kid complained, and Gideon grumbled back, sounding more and more like his old man every day.

  “Do I have to go to bed?” Kyle kicked off his boots, leaving them discarded on the floor.

  Gideon glared at the shoes. “Put ’em back proper.”

  Kyle stopped short of rolling his eyes, which he knew now earned him a confiscated phone, but he came damn close as he released a pained sigh and straightened his boots.

  “And hang the coat up on the peg.”

  Kyle yanked off his coat as if it had offended him and hung it up.

  The attitude needed work, but Gideon was not in a mood for a fight tonight. “How about you pop some popcorn in the microwave, and we’ll watch a little preseason football.”

  “For real?”

  “You can get by on one less hour of sleep, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He took his son’s positive tone as a sign of hope. “Good. Get the kind that has the butter and salt on it, not the healthy stuff Ann gave us.”

  Nodding, Kyle headed off into the kitchen. The tap turned on, followed by the splash of what sounded like washing hands. A miracle. As he tugged off his sidearm and placed it in a lockbox in the entryway table drawer, he heard the microwave door open and then close with a hard bang. The boy was heavy-handed in just about everything, and Gideon knew every appliance in this house would be worn out by the time Kyle left for college.

  Gideon removed his boots, placed them beside his son’s, and rolled his head from side to side. He came into the living room and switched on the television as Kyle removed a bowl from the cabinet. The replay featured the Washington Redskins versus the Philadelphia Eagles game. A couple of East Coast teams. Too bad the Denver Broncos weren’t playing.

  The boy settled near him and offered him the bowl. Gideon scooped up a large handful of popcorn and ate it and then another. Hungrier than he imagined, Gideon realized he had been going nonstop for more than twenty-four hours.

  As he watched the game, his thoughts drifted away from downs, penalties, and scores to Joan. She had given him a quick synopsis of what had happened in Philadelphia, but he wanted the entire story.

  As the boy watched the game with keen interest, he reached for his phone. Over the last ten years, he had been tempted to look her up again, and had done so, but after a while, he’d stopped. There had been plenty of good reasons not to. But she had come back. Not to him, maybe, but to Missoula.

  With one eye on the game and the other on the phone, he typed in Detective Joan Mason, Philadelphia. The third search result led with the headline COP PUT ON PAID SUSPENSION. The article was dated September 4.

  Kyle’s eyes were drifting shut. A few more minutes and the kid would be out like a light. He read through the article detailing the case of Avery Newport, who had been charged with burning down her home. Her roommate had died in the fire. Joan’s name did appear in an article about police bias, which quoted unnamed sources who detailed the College Fire and the earlier one in her family’s apartment. Unnamed sources told the reporter about the letters to Elijah. Who would have known about their connection? Knowing Joan, that left Elijah and someone in the prison system. Newport’s attorney must have been worried about Joan’s investigation. Otherwise, why bother with the hit job?

  Going back further in the articles, he scrolled through the few mentions of her citations and awards. She was a high-profile cop.

  And now Joan was in his jurisdiction. Looking for what? The justice unattainable in Philadelphia? Closure? Redemption? It certainly was not for him.

  He laid his phone facedown on the couch and glanced toward his son. Kyle had fallen asleep, the remote in his hand. If things had gone differently between Joan and him, there would be no Kyle.

  Life had given him two paths, and he was sorry he could not have taken both.

  The arsonist squatted by the ring of stones glistening in the moonlight. The night sky was crystal clear, and the stars twinkled above. In the center of the stones, a tripod of sticks leaned lazily against each other. Beneath the small spire was a gathering of dry leaves and shaved bark.

  He struck the match in his hand, savoring the brief scent of flint, and then watched the fire blaze bright and tall at the end of the match. The flame swayed in a hypnotic dance. The play of colors seductively spoke to him and whispered promises no woman ever had. He grew hard.

  The flame burned down, scorching the tips of his fingers. He held tight to the match, absorbing the pain until the flame had died. He dropped it on the makeshift pyramid of wood, struck another match, and then tossed it on the kindling.

  A small flame appeared, and the fibrous strands crackled and glowed. He blew on the smoldering tinder, which greedily accepted his nourishing breath. The flames nibbled at the kindling and then gorged on larger pieces of wood.

  His creation grew stronger and hotter by the moment. Gently, he laid a larger piece of wood on the fire as he looked toward the brittle brush blanketing the forest bed beyond the circle of rocks. It would not take much to release his creation into the wild. Given the steady wind and the dry undergrowth, it would dance up and down the mountainside, destroying all in its path within hours.

  He sat back on a large stump and poked the fire with a stick from his pile. The embers crackled and floated around like fireflies.

  As tempting as it was to let his mistress destroy it all, he had to be careful. With Joan Mason back in town, caution was essential. He had important work to do, and he refused to let her stop him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Missoula, Montana

  Monday, September 7, 2020

  8:50 a.m.

  Despite the extra sleep, Joan was still exhausted and overcaffeinated when she arrived at the medical examiner’s office at the state crime lab on Palmer Street. The air’s crispy coolness had her hunkering down deeper into Ann’s coat, which smelled faintly of cinnamon and rose perfume. Look up the word perfect in the dictionary, and Ann’s smiling face was sure to be right by the definition. Ann’s flawlessness contrasted with Joan’s chaos-strewn life and was plunging her deeper into her dark mood.

  She crossed the parking lot to the front double doors. Normally, she would have reached for her Philadelphia detective’s shield and hung it from her neck, but she hesitated, knowing now was not the time to draw attention to her outsider status. She opted to wait.

  Gideon’s car pulled up and parked. He strode toward her with long, fast strides. “Do you have warm gloves?”

  She resisted the urge to rub her hands. “It’s still summer back east.”

  “Montana doesn’t give a shit about back east. Borrow a pair from Ann.” Gideon opened the door and waited for her to pass. He nodded to the short woman with a round face at the reception desk. “Marge, how did you end up pulling duty today?”

  “Cursed, I suppose,” Marge said, deadpan. “You?”

  His grin was easy and quick. “Same. I’d like you to meet Detective Joan Mason. She’s consulting with me on this case
.”

  Marge regarded Joan with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “Nice to meet you, Detective Mason.”

  “Please call me Joan.”

  “Joan, where are you from?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “That’s a long way.”

  “I’m here on vacation. I’m friends with Ann Bailey.”

  Marge’s expression softened. “Well, you should have said so. How do you know Ann?”

  “We went to college together.”

  Marge’s head tilted a fraction. “You were her roommate during the College Fire.”

  First Becca and now Marge were proof the past was always near. “That’s right.”

  Gideon patted his hand on Marge’s desk. “We came to meet the doc.”

  “Dr. Christopher didn’t look thrilled this morning when he came through here. Said something about fishing.”

  “He’ll get over it,” Gideon said. “Thanks, Marge.”

  They strode down a center hallway and through another set of double doors. He pushed them open, and they were greeted by a man in his late thirties. Tall and lean, he had the bearing of a wrangler, especially the thick mustache that looked straight out of central casting. A white lab coat covered a plaid shirt and worn jeans.

  Gideon extended his hand, and they shook. “Thanks for coming in today. Dr. Peter Christopher, I’d like you to meet Detective Joan Mason.”

  “Heard there was another cop on the scene yesterday,” Dr. Christopher said.

  “Just happened to be in town,” Joan said.

  “I’ve not had a body so badly burned in a long while, so whatever expertise you got is welcome, Detective.”

  “Thank you,” Joan said.

  “You two slip on gowns,” Dr. Christopher said. “I’ll meet you in the suite in a few minutes.”

  “Will do, Doc,” Gideon said.

  Gideon fished gowns out of a closet and handed a set to Joan, along with gloves and booties for her shoes. She slid on the paper gown, trying not to think about the last time she had dressed in front of him as she secured the ties at her waist and yanked on the gloves and booties.

  She followed Gideon into the exam room as she had followed hundreds of other detectives into suites larger and more sophisticated than this one. Regardless of the room’s size, however, they all had a way of shrinking down to the one gurney and the one sheet-draped body.

  Dr. Christopher reached for the edge of the sheet, and Joan braced as he carefully pulled it back. Laid bare before them were the charred, blackened remains of this unidentified human. Most people who died in fires were killed by smoke inhalation, but what the fumes did not destroy, the fire did.

  “Do you know if the victim is male or female?” she asked.

  Annoyance seemed to ripple through Gideon. She had promised not to insert herself into the investigation, but if he was that great of a detective, he would have figured out by now that she played it a little loose with the truth.

  “Female,” Dr. Christopher said as he moved to the head of the table. “I would say midtwenties.”

  “Cause of death?” Joan asked.

  “That’s an interesting question,” Dr. Christopher said.

  “How so?” Gideon asked.

  Dr. Christopher pointed a gloved finger to the victim’s blackened neck. “If you look very closely, you’ll see what appears to be a ligature mark around her neck. The implement cut into her skin, so whoever was trying to strangle her was not playing around.”

  Joan leaned closer to the remains, reeking of smoke and chemicals. “It takes strength to make that kind of mark.” Avery Newport’s roommate had been filled with a cold medicine to make her groggy. “Women as a group tend to favor killing methods that do not involve direct contact. Poison. A gun or knife in a moment of passion or fury. Strangulation is personal and sexual in many ways. Generally, it’s done by men.”

  Gideon shifted his stance. “But I saw her move. I’m sure of that.”

  “There was a significant amount of smoke and heat trauma in her lungs. Both factors led to her death,” Dr. Christopher said.

  “Clearly, our boy didn’t get the job done,” she said. “The question is: Was he sloppy, or did he want her alive, knowing the fire would kill her?”

  “Do you think she surprised him while he was torching the place?” Gideon asked.

  Pleased his curiosity had elbowed past his annoyance, she said, “Depends on the ligature he used. Did he have it in his pocket, or did he grab an electrical cord that was handy?”

  “The ligature was thin,” Dr. Christopher said.

  “Easy to carry in a pocket. Effective. Painful,” Joan said. “He disabled her and then set the blaze.”

  “She was trying to get out,” Gideon said.

  “She was tough. A fighter,” Joan said with respect. “Any ideas who she might have been? Is this Lana Long?”

  “I called all the women who worked at the beauty shop, and none has seen or heard from Ms. Long since her last shift at the salon,” Gideon said.

  “These remains fit the general size and description on Ms. Long’s driver’s license,” Dr. Christopher said. “I’ve extracted DNA from her teeth and have sent it off to the lab, but I’ll still need a sample of her DNA to compare it to.”

  “She had a packed bag at her apartment. There might be hair or skin samples. Anything else you can tell me about her?” Gideon asked.

  “I took X-rays. There’s an old break to her left wrist, and though I can’t say for certain until I complete the autopsy, she may have been pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?” Joan pictured the woman clawing her way across the floor toward safety. Normally, it would have been a five-second walk. But to a semiconscious woman choking on smoke and heat, it would have taken much more time.

  “I believe I saw the outline of a fetus on the X-ray,” Dr. Christopher said.

  “An unwanted pregnancy would be a motive for a man to murder a woman,” Joan said. “How pregnant was she?”

  “Again, a guess,” Dr. Christopher said. “Three or four months.”

  “Elijah would have been incarcerated when this woman became pregnant,” Gideon said.

  “Did he have conjugal visits?” she challenged.

  “I’ll speak to the warden,” Gideon said. “What about personal items? Did you find anything on her body?”

  Nodding, Dr. Christopher moved to a stainless-steel tray holding metal remnants from a pair of jeans and a melted phone. “The jeans are generic. The phone must have been in her back pocket. It’s melted.”

  “Identifying the body might lead to a phone account, and the phone company can give you texts and call numbers,” she said.

  “If you can confirm the pregnancy and especially the fetus’s DNA, call me,” Gideon said. “The majority of women who are murdered are killed by someone they know or who professes to love them.”

  “I’ll see if I can fast-track the DNA test,” Dr. Christopher said.

  As they pushed through the exam-room doors and stripped off their gowns, Joan’s mind churned with facts and frustration. Regardless of the choices this woman had made, she did not deserve to die, and neither did her child. “The forensic team is at the fire scene now?”

  “Yes.” Gideon wadded up his paper gown and tossed it in the bin on top of hers.

  “I want to see if they’ve discovered anything.”

  “They don’t work for you.”

  “You going to claim jurisdictional protocol?”

  “No. I care more about solving this case than soothing my ego. But a detective on paid suspension would give a defense attorney a field day in court.”

  His calm logic was irritating. But also correct. “I’ll fly under the radar.”

  He reached for his hat and traced the brim with his fingertips. “Same rules apply, not that you’ve followed them yet.”

  “You won’t know I’m here,” she said innocently.

  He muttered a curse and headed to his SUV. In her vehicle, s
he followed him back into the center of town, and each parked across from the beauty salon.

  As she stepped out, she spotted a tall man with broad shoulders. His back was to her, but she recognized him easily enough.

  Clarke Mead. He was Ann’s estranged husband and the fire chief. In his midthirties, he had dark, close-cropped hair with a matching mustache. He had always rocked that Magnum, P.I. vibe, and the extra years now only enhanced the look. Gideon and Clarke had been friends since middle school. Both their families owned ranches, but the Meads had sold years ago. Gideon and Clarke had played ball together, drank beer behind the high school bleachers at football games, and gone to UM together. Two peas in a pod. Both had loved the town enough to stay and serve their community. They would protect it no matter the cost.

  Hearing Gideon’s footsteps behind her, she did not wait for him but strode toward Clarke. When his head turned, dark eyes narrowed as surprise and questions hiked thick eyebrows. “Joan Mason?”

  She thrust out her hand, oddly glad to see the big lug. “As you live and breathe.”

  He wrapped lean fingers around hers, hesitated briefly before he pretended not to notice her scars. “Damn, I thought you were never coming back.”

  “I didn’t, either. I suppose you can figure out why?” she said.

  “I got a good idea why,” Clarke said as he looked back at the burned pile of debris. “You been by to see Elijah?”

  “I have.”

  “And?” Clarke kept his focus on Joan as Gideon walked up.

  “Cool as a cucumber,” Gideon interjected. “Couldn’t have been more charming.”

  “He’s a slick bastard,” Clarke said. “Don’t be fooled by it.”

  “Have you seen him at all since the fire?” Joan asked.

  “Sure. I visited him about nine years ago. Curious, I suppose. Maybe hoping that on some level he was suffering. Of course, he wasn’t. He seemed perfectly at peace.”

  Elijah had never mentioned Clarke’s visit in any of his letters. It was a subtle reminder that there was a lot Elijah was not telling.