Flashover

by T. Alan Codder

  When he stepped out, Fish stood and followed. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure, Fish. What do you need?”

  “I appreciate what you’ve done, what you’re doing, but I’m getting bored with this. I can listen to the same lecture only so many times. I think I’m ready to go back out on the street.”

  “Have you been through the entire course?”

  “Yes. Twice. Parts of it three times.”

  Sean snickered. “Okay. You’re cleared for regular duty tomorrow.”

  Fish smiled. “Thanks, Sean.”

  “I’ve never been in your shoes, so I’m not going to tell you I know how you feel. But I knew a couple of officers involved in shootings when I was with the Boston PD. They were shaken up too. It was tough for a couple of weeks. Once you get out there, if it gets to be too much, don’t be ashamed to come back to the station for little while. There are plenty of files that need to be keyed in. I don’t want to put you in a situation you’re not ready for. Call for backup if you think you need it.”

  “I think I’ll be fine.”

  Sean nodded and slapped Fish on the shoulder then held it firm in support. “Good man. Hang in there. It’ll get better, and easier, as time goes by.”

  “Yeah, I know. I think I’m past the worst.”

  “If you ever need to talk, my door is open, or we can get you some professional help.”

  “No, I think I’m good.” He smiled. “I’m getting tired of Paul riding my ass about milking it just so I can sit in the air conditioning until it cools off.” His smile widened slightly. “It’s not a bad idea, actually.”

  Sean chuckled. “I’m going to do my walkabout today, and it’s a million degrees out there. Why don’t you come with me? That’ll shut him up.”

  Fish appeared to think it over and then nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

  -oOo-

  Sean opened the door to his apartment and stepped back, smiling as Maggie entered, two bags of Japanese takeout in her hands. He took one of the bags and looped his free arm behind her back to pull her into a kiss in one motion.

  Through all the upheaval and turmoil, Maggie had been a god-send. It had been his turn to host, but she’d invited him back to her house the night after the shooting. She’d fixed him dinner, and when he’d begun to nod about eight-thirty, she’d joined him in going to bed early. They hadn’t made love, but holding her close as he drifted into a deep, dreamless, sleep had felt so right and natural, it was almost as if they’d been doing it for years.

  “Two orders of hibachi chicken and two spring rolls.” She paused and smiled. “And just for you…” She reached into her purse and pulled out a red sleeve, waggling it in front of him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Passengers. I knew you wanted to see it.”

  “I could have waited for it to come on streaming.”

  She grinned. “Yeah, well, I wanted to see it too. I restarted my DVD subscription. It’s only one movie at a time, but it gives us more viewing options. This is the first one they shipped. Don’t you feel special? I thought about getting La La Land, but I know how you feel about musicals.”

  He snorted. “You can watch that one when I’m busy doing something else.”

  He talked a big game but if La La Land arrived, he’d watch it. Even a musical was tolerable if he was watching it with Maggie.

  “How was your day?” she asked as they prepared to sit down and eat.

  “I was paid a visit by Mrs. Lexington Hags today.”

  “What did she want?” Maggie asked, her tone telegraphing her feelings about Yolanda.

  “She’s all worked up to see the video, and when I wouldn’t show it to her, she threatened to sue everybody. I told her to knock herself out.”

  “Good. I hope she does. It’ll serve her right to get stomped into a greasy spot in court.”

  He chuckled. Listening to Maggie spit and fume as Yolanda spouted her nonsense made him smile and helped lighten his mood.

  “Fish also told me today he was ready to get back out on the street.”

  “That’s terrific news! Do you think he’s ready? Are you going to put him back out there?”

  “I have no idea. I hope so, and yeah, I’m going to put him on the street tomorrow. If I don’t, that sends the wrong signal. I told him if it got to be too much, to come back to the station. We still have all those case files to key in, but I think he’ll be okay.”

  “I hope so. I like Fish.”

  “Yeah, me too. Everyone does.”

  They ate using chopsticks that he kept at home. They were eating Japanese food but using Chinese chopsticks, the only kind he had. He was an old hand using them, having learned years ago, but Maggie had never used them before he’d shown her how. This was only her second attempt. She was slow, and still struggled, especially with rice, but she was steadily improving.

  “We should eat oriental more often,” she muttered as she picked up the piece of chicken she’d just dropped. “I’d lose some weight because I get tired before I get full.”

  He was taking a drink and her comment made him splutter and cough.

  As he approached the end of his meal, she switched to a fork so she wouldn’t be there all night and hold up the movie.

  As they watched Passengers, they shared a bowl of popcorn, Maggie eating hers with chopsticks to continue working on her dexterity.

  “That was a good movie,” she groaned, sitting up and stretching as the movie ended and the credits began to roll.

  “Yes, it was.”

  They both knew he was a sci-fi nerd and liked pretty much anything if it had space ships, time travel, alien planets or futuristic settings. Passengers gave him that, and a nice human drama and love story too.

  He washed out the popcorn bowl and then they prepared for bed, following their normal routine. He was brushing his teeth when his phone began to ring in the bedroom. He had a special ringtone for work, and as the trumpets, drums and organ from Hawaii Five-0 filled the air, his blood ran cold. The last time he heard the tune it foretold a tragedy. This late at night there was no way this would be good news. He quickly rinsed his mouth and hurried to his phone.

  “What now?” Maggie asked, propping against the bathroom door as she continued to brush her hair.

  “Sean.”

  “Sean, it’s Michelle. Did I wake you?”

  She didn’t sound excited or upset and he began to relax.

  “No. What’s up?”

  “I got a call from the security guard that’s watching the construction site, the one at The Mills, about a half-hour ago. The guy chased off a prowler and he said Barns gave him explicit instructions to report anything that happened.”

  He glanced at his phone for the time. 10:33. At least it wasn’t the middle of the night.

  “Okay…” he said, drawing the word out, wondering why Michelle was calling him so late over something as simple as a prowler call.

  “I wasn’t going to call you, but then decided better safe than sorry, and I wanted to try to catch you before you went to bed. The guy said he leaves at six, and won’t be back for at least a week. I knew this was a hot subject a few weeks ago and I wanted to make sure you knew, in case you wanted to talk to him.”

  He held the phone, saying nothing. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Michelle. I’ll take it from here.”

  “Did I mess up? I sent you a text first, but when you didn’t answer…”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I have to go. It’s a full moon,” she said then was gone.

  Sean grinned. There may not be any scientific basis to it, but it sure seemed like they were busier when there was a full moon.

  “What was all that?” Maggie asked.

  “Prowler at The Mills project.”

  “So?”

  “So, Michelle wanted to make sure I knew so I could talk to him before he leaves if I wanted to. It’s my fault. I have my phone set to ring for only a few numbers after ten, and her phone isn�
��t on the list,” he said, still looking at his phone. “She sent me a text about twenty minutes ago and when I didn’t answer, she followed up.”

  “This couldn’t have waited until you got into work in the morning?”

  “He leaves at six and won’t be back for a few days.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Yeah, I probably should.”

  “Now?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ll get up and leave early in the morning.”

  She relaxed a little and a smile appeared. “Good. I’m in the mood for a good snuggle.”

  Twenty-Six

  Sean pulled up to the gate, flipped on his beacons, and gave his siren a short whoop to get someone’s attention. A moment later a head appeared out of the construction trailer. The man gave a wave then trotted down the steps and hurried to the fence. He waited while the rent-a-cop muscled open the construction gate.

  The man appeared to be in his thirties, with close cropped dark hair, and he obviously took pride in his work. His white shirt was stiffly starched, his dark blue pants had a crease you could shave with, and his shoes were polished to a brilliant shine. On his belt was a large, black, metal flashlight that would work equally well as a source of light or a bludgeon.

  Gate opened, Sean crept through before pulling to a stop behind a blue Chevy pickup and stepped out of his car. He looked east. It was almost five-thirty and the sky was beginning to brighten with the warm glow of the rising sun.

  “How can I help you, officer?”

  “You the one who called about the prowler?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Can we step inside the trailer?”

  “Sure,” the guard said, leading Sean up the steps and into the office.

  “Can I get your name?” Sean asked.

  “Ted. Ted Williams.” Sean looked at him and the man smiled. “I know, I know. I swear, that’s it. Edward Gale Williams.”

  Sean grinned. “Your dad like baseball?”

  Ted shook his head. “Named after my grandfather, and no, he wasn’t that Ted Williams either. The player’s name was short for Theodore, not Edward.”

  “Get asked that a lot, do you?”

  Ted bobbed his head. “Especially by guys in their sixties and seventies.”

  “What can you tell me about last night?”

  Ted shrugged. “Not a lot to tell. I sit in here and take a walk every hour or so, shine the flashlight around, and generally let the greasers and home-boys know someone is watching. Last night, about ten, I was starting my rounds when I saw a guy start running for the fence. I yelled and ran after him. He squeezed through a hole, jumped into a white Chevy extended cab pickup, and blasted away. I’m pretty sure it was a 2012, ‘13, or ‘14, Chevy 2500. I think the truck usually had magnetic stickers on the door but they were missing. I got part of the plate.”

  “No kidding?” Sean asked, impressed with the details Ted had. “Let me have it.”

  “North Carolina plate, SXC 69, something. I couldn’t make out the last two numbers before he was too far away. It might have been twenty-two, fifty-five or maybe eighty-eight. It wasn’t seven or one, that much I’m sure, and I think it was a double number.”

  “That’s pretty good,” said as he wrote the information down.

  Ted smiled. “Thanks. I wanted to be a cop but I’ve been deaf in my left ear since birth.” He shrugged.

  “How sure are you on the truck?”

  “Pretty sure. The truck out there is mine. It’s a 2012 1500, and the guy’s looked like it.”

  “Okay. And the door stickers?”

  “The paint was a different color in a square, like it wasn’t as faded or dirty, or something.”

  Sean chuckled. The guy was good, but this was a little farfetched. “You saw that in the dark?”

  Ted nodded, pulled his flashlight from his belt and turned it on, directing the beam of light on the wall. It was incredibly bright.

  “Okay, you convinced me. What else can you tell me?”

  “Not much. The guy was wearing a hoodie or something. I didn’t get a look at his face, but he’s white, that much I know. He’s young too, or at least not old.”

  “How did you get such a good look at his truck but not the man, and how do you know he’s young and white?”

  “I never got that close to the guy. I tried to cut him off on the angle when he started running for his truck. I could see his hands, and I figure he’s a younger guy because an old guy couldn’t run like that. He was fast as hell. Want to see where he cut the fence?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  Ted led Sean to the corner of the lot, near the street, and shined his light on the fence. The chain-link was cut to about two feet up, making a hole large enough for a man to easily slip through.

  “His truck was at the curb. If I’d been just a little bit faster, I’d have caught him.”

  “You need to be careful of that. What if he’d been armed?”

  Ted shrugged. “I didn’t think of that until after he was gone.”

  “Anything else? Where was he when you first saw him?

  Ted turned the light around and lit up an excavator with a large grapple on the arm. Sean gauged the distance from the excavator to the fence and then did the same with the trailer. If the guy was fast, he could probably outrun someone from the trailer to the hole.

  Sean nodded. “I think that’s all I need. This is good information. With the plate, I might be able to track this guy down.”

  “Think he was here to set more fires?”

  Sean shook his head. “No. I’ve already caught the guy who did that. You know about the fires?”

  “Yeah. My supervisor told me about them and said that I was to report any activity on the lot to the police. So, this guy was probably just a run of the mill scum-bag looking for something to steal?”

  Sean grinned. “Yeah, probably so. When will you be back in case I want to ask more questions?”

  “Monday after next. My wife is having a c-section later today.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Our third. We’re hoping for a girl this time.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Sean returned to his car and drove back to the station. It didn’t take him long to discover there were only two white trucks of the proper make, one a Chevrolet and the other a GMC, in the proper years, with the plate SXC 69 anything. One was registered to Wilfred Harper in Archer Lodge, North Carolina, the other to Juno Demolition out of Charleston, North Carolina.

  He first looked to see where Archer Lodge and Charleston were. If they were located a hundred miles away, it would probably mean Ted had the plate wrong, and that would make suspect the rest of his information. He was surprised to find Charleston was only twenty minutes away, Archer Lodge ten minutes farther than that. Like Brunswick, Charleston and Archer Lodge were part of the satellite of small towns that surrounded Raleigh.

  Neither seemed like a good fit. Harper, according to the registration, was eighty-three years old. That seemed to eliminate him, but Juno Demolition didn’t seem likely either. He next looked on the web for Juno Demolition, but couldn’t find anything except for a few entries on various business pages.

  He waited until nine before picking up his phone and dialing.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Wilfred Harper, please.”

  “Speaking.”

  Sean pulled his lips tight. The man had a slight quiver in his voice and it lacked the power of a younger man.

  “Mr. Harper, this is Sean McGhee, Brunswick Police Department. How are you this morning?”

  “I’m fine, officer,” Wilfred said slowly, his tone questioning.

  “The reason for my call is simple. Last night a white pickup matching your truck was spotted during the commission of a crime. The victim got a partial plate that matches the one on your truck. Has the truck been in your possession at all times the last couple of days?” />
  “You said my truck was spotted?”

  “A truck matching yours, yes sir. Please understand, sir, I’m not accusing you of anything. Did you loan your truck to anyone? Is the vehicle still in your possession?”

  “I haven’t loaned my truck to anyone and I haven’t been anywhere in the last couple of days. Let me make sure it’s still in the garage.”

  Sean heard a clunk of the phone being put down, then a moment later, the sound of a door opening then closing again.

  “Officer? The truck is still here.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Harper. That’s all I needed.”

  It was clear from the sound of Wilfred’s voice it was unlikely he would be able to outrun anyone.

  It’s was possible Ted had interrupted another attempt to sabotage the project, but it was more likely it was nothing more than, as Ted put it, ‘a run of the mill scum-bag looking for something to steal,’ and he’d gotten the plate wrong. Easy enough to do in the dark and on the run. He was at yet another dead end.

  He started to stand but then settled back into his chair as an idea occurred to him. He looked up the number before picking up his phone and dialing Dynamic Properties. He was connected to Barns almost immediately.

  “How can I help you, chief?”

  “I have a quick question. Have you ever heard of a company called Juno Demolition, out of Charleston, North Carolina?”

  “No, can’t say I have, why?”

  “There was a prowler on your site last night. The guard got a partial plate. Assuming he was right, one of the vehicles the guy was driving is registered to Juno Demolition. I’m looking for a connection.”

  “None that I know of. Hang on a minute and let me ask around.”

  Sean sat on hold so long he’d about decided Wallace wasn’t coming back, and was considering hanging up, when the music stopped.

  “Chief? I asked around. A few people around here have heard of them, but we’ve never done business with them.”

  “Okay, that’s all I need to know. Thanks. Oh, one more thing. Do you know a Wilfred Harper?”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Wilfred Harper, in Archer Lodge, North Carolina.”