Brotherhood of District 23 Complete Series

by Amy Briggs

  Kevin snapped pictures of what we found, as well as of the view from the spot, while I put gloves on to gather the butts for evidence. We wouldn’t be able to get fingerprints on anything here; a public garage would be a waste to get the crime lab out for, but it was possible to get DNA off of cigarette butts. I collected them into an evidence bag and sealed them once Kevin got all the pictures we needed.

  “Do we need to go through the building across the street, you think?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so. Brian emailed us the pictures that were taken immediately after the fire, so I don’t think there would be anything more we need. I mean, you and I both know the biggest problem with a fire investigation is that so much of the evidence is destroyed. Plus, my understanding is the fire marshal was out here, and we can go talk to him and see what he has to say about it later. We won’t find anything he didn’t already see, in my opinion.” I thought about who would start fires, and it was common knowledge, or rumor, that in a series of arsons, firefighters were often the prime suspects. That thought had nagged at me since the moment we became involved in the investigation. Kevin knew I was more or less friends with several of the folks in the fire department. We hadn’t discussed what we both knew yet, but I knew it was coming eventually.

  “Yea, I agree. Let’s move on to the garage fire and see if we can find a link.” He motioned for us to leave. The garage was only about a fifteen-minute drive, and when we pulled up, the owner, Mike, was out front taking pictures himself.

  I got out of the car first and walked over to him. “Mike, I’m so sorry.”

  “Hey there, Detective. Thanks. It is a real sonofabitch. I mean, that’s what insurance is for, but I’m real careful with the chemicals here, so I don’t understand how this happened. I’m guessing that’s what you’re doing here today?”

  “It sure is,” Kevin chimed in as he came to my side.

  “Mike, this is my partner, Detective Connor. We are investigating all the fires that happened yesterday as possible arsons. Do you know anyone who would do this to your business? Have any enemies or anything? Anyone who would hold a grudge against you?” He nodded to Kevin, then turned back to me.

  “I don’t. Honestly, my customers and my partners I work with are all on the up and up. You know what kind of a business I run here. Fair prices, quality service, and we treat your babies like we would treat our own. I don’t have any gripes with anyone. All my customers are paid up too.” He hung his head and sighed. He was a large man, well over six feet tall, a full, thick head of dark hair and light blue eyes I always noticed when I came into the shop. He wasn’t particularly good looking, but he was kind and welcoming, and damn good at fixing cars. He had taken over the business from his father about five years prior, after his dad had been fixing up cars, specializing in classics for as long as I could remember. He looked tired; I was sure he’d been up all night trying to figure out what to do next.

  “Well, we’re going to look around a bit and take some pictures of our own. I see you’re taking pictures too. Did you find anything unusual here?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am, I sure didn’t. At least not yet. I’m taking pictures for the insurance, because I’m going to need to file some claims for the vehicles that were stored here and destroyed, as well as for regular insurance, even though they’re sending someone out too. I’m waiting to go inside to take the rest of them for my records. The police and firefighters yesterday asked me not to until the Fire Marshal had come out, and he hasn’t been here yet. I’m expecting him any moment though, actually. I guess he had himself a busy day as well, from what I hear.”

  “Yea, you can say that again.” Kevin started to walk around the building, just observing and taking pictures of the building itself and the grounds as we had on the last scene. I immediately started to look around the area, hoping I’d find another location that appeared good for observing, which I’d hoped the smoker had been doing during this fire too. As I walked around, I didn’t see anything as obvious as at the last scene that would be a good lookout spot, but I knew the guy had been watching. He’d had to be. Criminals have egos, and they like to see the damage they cause in most cases, so I kept searching around, while Kevin and Mike both took pictures of the structure, knowing I would find a clue eventually.

  As I meandered around the premises, the Fire Marshal arrived. I decided to keep doing my thing. It was obvious I was a cop from the badge hanging around my neck. Kevin could deal with him for now. The Marshal was new to the county. I didn’t know him, and I was on a mission. As I got further away from the scene, I continued to scan for what would be the best vantage point if I wanted to watch, since there were no obvious or large structures like the parking garage to hang around in. I decided the only place our perpetrator could have been was way across the intersection by the strip mall, which had a small convenience store, a coffee shop, and a dry cleaner. The area in general wasn’t super populated, so there weren’t a lot of other places to hang out, except at residential porches, which I just didn’t think our guy would do.

  In front of the stores, the sidewalk looked like it had been swept, but as I walked around to the side of the building to an open lot, I found it: another pile of cigarette butts. Same brand, still new-looking. This was our guy. My heart started to race from adrenaline as I pulled my cellphone out to take a picture. I looked at the screen and saw I had a text message from Matt, which made me smile. I really needed to stop that. I opened the message, which had been sent a couple of hours ago. He must have woken up this afternoon and sent it.

  You’re sexy as fuck. That is all. Be safe.

  I actually laughed out loud and shook my head. I didn’t have a good response to that at the moment, so I closed the message and pulled up my camera to get some shots of my sweet evidence find. Normally, I would have called Kevin over with the nice camera, but I could see him across the way talking to the Fire Marshal, so I figured I’d just handle it myself and bag up the evidence. I got the butts into the brown paper bag, sealing it with red evidence tape, and made my way back to the scene, stopping at our car first to put the bag in there. In light of knowing that firefighters were always suspects, I had no intention of sharing my find with the Fire Marshal. I decided we could run concurrent, separate investigations and see where we landed later on.

  After I stopped at our car, I went back to the garage and walked inside, to where everyone had relocated. The chemical smell of the burned-out building on the inside actually took me by surprise it was so pungent. I walked over to where Mike, Kevin, and the Fire Marshal, whose name I couldn’t remember, were all standing near a cabinet market HAZMAT.

  “Hey, guys. Find anything of interest in here?” I asked, nearly choking on the fumes from the place.

  They all turned around. The Fire Marshal thankfully reintroduced himself to me. “Hi, Detective, I’m Bill. Bill Wilson, the new Orange County Fire Marshal. I believe we met once before?”

  Smiling, I replied, “Yes sir, we did one time a few months ago. I’m Isabel Cruise. So what do we have here? Is this HAZMAT cabinet where the fire started?” It didn’t look like that cabinet had caught fire at all, so while it probably sounded like a stupid question, I still wanted to hear his response.

  “Actually, it is not. Which is what we were all just questioning. It seems this was definitely some kind of malicious fire. I’ll just call that right now in my professional opinion, but the HAZMAT cabinet is not where it started. I was just about to ask Mike here to step out while I conducted my investigation to determine the cause. You detectives are, of course, welcome to stay.” Looking over at Mike, he said, “I’m sorry, Mike. I know this is hard for you, but I have to do my job, and you’ll have to step out so I can do that. I’ll turn your property and building back over to you as soon as I’m done.”

  “I understand, sir. I’m actually going to head back over to my house and make some phone calls. The insurance adjuster is going to need to come out, and I’ve got plenty of customers
to call as well. Detectives, thanks for your help as well.” Mike turned around to leave, and I turned my attention back to Fire Marshal Bill and Kevin.

  “So, what do you think, Bill?” I asked, folding my arms and looking around the burned-up garage.

  “Well, what I think is, someone wanted it to look like the cabinet full of chemicals here is the cause of the fire, but the problem is, the fire they set wasn’t anywhere near this cabinet, never even made it over here. Follow me.” He picked up a little box that resembled a fishing tackle box, and we followed him across the bay floor. The garage was quite large and had three full-size bays for cars, two of which were occupied. The car furthest from where we were standing was completely burned out, while the car next to it was not, though it was certainly destroyed. It was a beautiful classic Camaro similar to mine; I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of upset over it, since I loved my car so much. The third bay, which was where we had been standing, was empty except for some tools and other random things.

  Stopping at the passenger side of the car furthest away, Bill set his tackle box down and turned to us. “Someone actually started the fire on this side of the building, assuming these cars would catch each other on fire, and then catch that cabinet on fire.” I rose an eyebrow, thinking that was a bit of a stretch in assumption, as I didn’t see any evidence leading to that conclusion.

  “Ok, so how do you prove that, Bill? Because what I see is one car caught fire, however that may be, and the owner is lucky the fire didn’t spread to the other side, where the majority of the chemicals are. It’s lucky the entire building didn’t burn down, yes, but how do you figure they expected it to reach over there?” I was extremely skeptical of his assumptions without real proof.

  He laughed at me. He laughed out loud at me. Scrunching my face up and crossing my arms again defensively, I glared at him. Kevin took a step closer to me, knowing I had a short fuse for being laughed at in these situations.

  “This, my dear detective, is why we as investigators need to work together. Take a look at this,” he pointed to the burned-out back seat of the vehicle. “This is the origin of the fire right here. You can tell by the deep hole that goes all the way to the floor from the fire. The rest of the car became fully involved fairly quickly, because it is a classic car filled with combustible materials. Now, look at the Camaro here next to it. Most of this damage is heat damage, but guess what?”

  “What?” Kevin asked. He stepped in to keep me from getting bitchy, which was definitely going to happen.

  “I bet if we open the trunk of this car, we’ll find fuel of some kind.” My skepticism was on overload at that point.

  “Let’s do it,” I said sarcastically. Low and behold, upon opening the trunk, there was a very small gas can in the trunk. “So, what do you make of this, Bill? I’m still not understanding where this is going.” I was running out of patience with him.

  “Ok, I’ll cut to the chase here, Detectives. There’s no point in a tiny gas can like this. It was definitely planted here, so that once the fire caught, it would be destroyed with the car, likely what happened in the first car, where it was in the back seat. Now, I didn’t point this out when Mike was in here, because I need to write up my report first; that’s just how the bureaucracy of investigations works, as you know.” We both nodded, knowing full well we’d have a mountain of our own paperwork to do too. “I noticed the floor was wet, but it had a kind of slick sheen to it. One would typically presume that’s just water and oil from the fire department putting out a fire in a greasy garage.”

  “Yes, that’s what I would assume,” Kevin replied.

  “Well, I happen to know that this particular garage had applied for a permit to use some nontraditional materials when they upgraded their facility a few years ago when Mike took over from his father.”

  “Ok, keep going,” I said.

  “The majority of this building is noncombustible. The paint on the floor is actually fire retardant paint. No one would know that, except someone who reviewed previous fire inspections. Mike received insurance breaks for upgrading his building to hold up in the event of a disaster like this. So what the perpetrator didn’t know is that the building wouldn’t have burned to the ground unless it had been on fire for days. But everything along the walls over here is completely saturated in some sort of accelerant, likely gasoline, as that seems to be this particular arsonist’s accelerant of choice.” Looking pleased with himself, he continued, “So, basically, it appears that it was made for the fire to start in car number one, carry over to car number two, and then catch the walls and such on fire on its way to the HAZMAT cabinet, which would have taken the rest of the building over if it were made with traditional materials. I’ll have to run a few lab tests, of course, to document and confirm everything, but I’ve been investigating fires for over twenty years, and I’m quite certain that’s how it went down.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned, Fire Marshal Bill. You do know your stuff. I had no idea they even made paint that resisted fire. Looks like Mike got luckier than he could have, and it paid off for him in this case.” I relaxed my stance, totally impressed by what the Fire Marshal concluded. “I’m going to have our crime lab come out and take some samples as well. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go call them now.” Feeling like we got some great evidence at this scene, I called the lab guys to come out and do their thing.

  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. While the garage was a large space, in the interest of securing the crime scene, the bay doors were closed and the fumes were killing me. Even though we didn’t have motive or suspects, we had some evidence and were collecting some clues that would hopefully lead us to some closure.

  It was going to be a long day; we still had one more scene to visit, the apartment building from the night before. Now that we had something besides the cause of fire, which we already knew, we could look for another pile of butts and any other evidence, then get them all to the lab for processing. With any luck, this guy might be in the system.

  “So where did you go this morning?” Jax asked me after we were both awake from our coma-like naps most of the day.

  “This morning? Oh, I had a couple of errands to run before coming home to crash.” I was definitely trying to cover my tracks and felt guilty as hell for lying.

  “Errands? At seven in the morning after the worst shift ever?” He raised an eyebrow at me and smirked over his coffee cup. “So what’s her name?”

  “Name?” I laughed. I was absolutely dodging this line of questioning, and I wasn’t going to be honest if I did answer.

  “Oh my God, you’re really not going to tell me, are you?” He looked surprised, like he expected me to confess what I’d been up to.

  “Nope, not happening.” I just smirked.

  “She must be important then. Interesting, Cavanaugh, very interesting.” He took his coffee cup with him into the den and flipped on the television. “Are you going to be around later or you having dinner with mom and the lovebirds?” he called from the other room, while I was still in the kitchen.

  “Dinner with mom. You know you’re invited to come. She asks about you all the time.”

  “Please tell her I appreciate it, and maybe next time, but I think I may go out for a bit tonight. Or I might just fall asleep with the remote in one hand and my dick in the other,” he laughed at his own joke.

  “I’ll be sure to let her know what you’re up to then,” I teased back. He loved my mom, but he didn’t love the sit-down dinners, really. Everyone loved my mom; she was that mom who was like the den mother for everyone. Her cooking was amazing too, and she insisted we try to come over for dinner as a group whenever we could. The only problem with these family dinners since Brian and Jo got together was everyone’s insistence I find a nice girl to date I essentially could bring to these dinners. The girls I dated were not the kind of girls you brought to your conservative Irish mother’s house for family dinner.

  I’d take a girl like Isabel ther
e though. I knew my mom would love her; she loved a strong woman, because she was one herself. Besides the fact she helped raise Jo sort of, it was one of the things about Jo she loved. She was another strong woman. Raising us on her own after our deadbeat dad left, she did it all. My thoughts drifted to Isabel and what she might be doing at work to find out who was setting those fires. I had texted her when I got up, but she hadn’t responded. Then, of course, my thoughts drifted to that morning and those fucking tiny white shorts she’d had on. She really had the nicest ass and the tightest little body. I couldn’t keep my hands off of her if I tried, and once again, she’d let me demand things of her. That was indeed a hell of a way to say good morning. I found my thoughts always went back to her the last few days, and if I was being entirely honest, it wasn’t just about the amazing sex we had.

  I liked her. Oh shit, I really do like her. This was not the realization I was hoping for about my life that afternoon. I never caught feelings, and I had definitely caught some here. I was thinking about her all the time. I wondered what she was doing. I was planning when I could see her again in my head. Fucking feelings. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. That wasn’t what we were about at all; and she was so closed off emotionally. Hell, we both were. I groaned quietly to myself and went upstairs to shower before heading to my mom’s for dinner. I decided I was going to have to put this whole sentiment on the back burner or something while I got my head right.

  I went off to shower like I was having a temper tantrum with myself, almost as bad as the night she bailed on me in the alley. I definitely needed to get my fucking mind off of that whole situation, but every thought led back to her. I started to wonder what, if anything, she found out today about the fires. Knowing she wouldn’t tell me, I wasn’t going to ask, but maybe Brian would know something. I made a note to ask him at dinner. In the shower, my stomach started to growl, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since sometime the previous day. I got excited to get to my mom’s.