Dangerous Season

by Lyn Cote

  “Why was he here so early? He doesn’t open till eight o’clock.” Keir released Audra to Florence’s care again and dropped down to the dewy grass at his stepfather’s side. Tom’s face showed reddened, blackened skin, blisters and black soot. The remnants of his shirt, soaked with water, were charred in front and stuck to his chest. “Tom, it’s me, Keir.” He could barely force out the words. Who had done this to Tom? His throat clogged with fear and love. “Can you talk?”

  His stepfather twisted slightly, moaning, but said nothing.

  “Tom,” Keir gasped, taking one of Tom’s hands in his. Don’t die, Tom. God, help him.

  “I wish the ambulance would get here,” Shirley fretted.

  “What am I thinking? He’s going into shock,” Keir said suddenly and then looked up at the people standing around them. “Someone, Wilma, get me some blankets! Quick!”

  “I should have thought of that!” Wilma ran toward her back door, her bedroom slippers slapping.

  Fear for Tom clenched Keir in its fist.

  “Can anyone tell me what happened?” Keir asked, casting glances around at the somber faces. “How did this happen?”

  Audra slid to the ground beside him and rested against his shoulder. Florence stood by, still looking horrified and flabbergasted, wringing her hands.

  “Keir,” Audra whispered and then shivered violently.

  “Keir, you better check Audra for burns and for shock. Wilma sprayed her down, too. And there was more than one explosion. She may have a concussion,” Shirley urged. “When I got there, she was already in the middle of it, trying to drag Tom out.” Shirley began weeping. “She was on her way to work.” She looked skyward and shouted, “Where is that ambulance?”

  Keir pulled Audra close, tamping down his impatience. He wanted to get Audra and Tom to the clinic in Ashford, question the fire chief and the two eyewitnesses—all in the same instant. Instead, he tightened his grip on the slender woman who was still quivering against him. “Audra, speak to me.” He pushed her hair back from her face. Dawn brightened around them. Keir caught the smell of Audra’s singed hair.

  “Keir,” Audra whispered and rested her face in the crook of his neck.

  He tucked her closer. She was damp and chilled to his touch. He rubbed her back, trying to warm her. Then Wilma burst down her back steps, clutching blankets. Keir wrapped one of plaid wool around Audra and kept her tight against him. While Shirley with help rolled Tom onto another and wrapped him up in a matching cocoon. Noise from the firefighters continued. There were three more bangs. Keir stared up at black smoke, filling the alley, straining skyward, blocking the dawn.

  Another police car sped up the alley and rocked to a halt. Trish, his deputy, scrambled out and ran toward him. “Who’s hurt?” she called out over the din from the fire crew.

  “My stepfather,” Keir shouted in reply. He pressed a hand to his own forehead, throbbing as if it were about to explode. Another fire. Tom and Audra injured. Why can’t I figure this out, God? Stop the arson?

  Keir held Audra against him, watching from a distance as the firefighters battled on. They finally managed to get the fire under control. The fire chief located Keir in the crowd and halted in front of him. “This is one tough fire. So much grease, gasoline, etc. on site. We’re going to be here a few more hours before it’s completely out.”

  A distinctive siren in the distance interrupted him. EMTs from Ashford had arrived at last. The ambulance pulled up a safe distance from the smoldering fire. Keir motioned them over. He lifted and carried Audra forward toward them. “We have two injured here. This woman, Audra Blair, and the man on the ground, Tom Robson.”

  The EMTs swarmed around Tom first and then Audra. The ambulance and the fire trucks were backlit by the pink dawn. One EMT hurried along beside Keir as he carried Audra toward the ambulance. The other two lifted Tom onto a rigid stretcher. “How serious is he?” Keir asked over his shoulder. “He’s my stepdad.”

  “He’s in shock. He’s suffered first-, second-and third-degree burns on his chest, face and hands. If you have to stay with the fire, is there any other family that can come with him?”

  Keir looked at Shirley.

  “I can’t go, Keir. I’ve got Evie to take care of. Only Chad’s with her right now. Can’t you go with both of them?”

  Keir was torn. “I should stay and start investigating as soon as the firefighters put out the blaze.” But Trish was more than capable of securing the crime scene. Plus he couldn’t do anything here until the firefighters were finished and things cooled. That wouldn’t be for hours. Tom and Audra needed him.

  “Trish, take charge here!” Keir followed the EMTs. “After the firefighters are done, lock this crime scene up tight and post someone to guard it. I’m going to follow the ambulance.”

  “Okay!” Trish jogged toward the fire chief.

  Keir hurried to his Jeep. Now that the ambulance was taking Audra and Tom for treatment, his mind could turn to the crime. Audra had said, “I heard it go off.” Shirley had heard something explode. He’d heard some small explosions himself. So that meant this was not just a case of a machine shop filled with greasy tools catching on fire. Definitely another arson, perhaps a booby trap like the first.

  And this time people had been hurt and not just any people. They were two of the most important people in the world to Keir. Someone is going to pay for this. And soon. Then another thought stopped him. With this fire, was someone trying to get at him by attacking Tom?

  SEVEN

  That evening, Keir strode up the quiet corridor of the small hospital in Ashford. Shirley walked beside him with a paper shopping bag in hand. “I still can’t believe this happened,” she murmured.

  He reached out and squeezed Shirley’s arm just as they arrived at Tom’s room.

  Tom was sitting up in bed. When he saw them, he switched off the TV. “Shirley! Son!” He opened his bandaged arms, making the IV tubes hooked to his left arm sway. Shirley hurried forward and kissed Tom.

  Keir stood back and surveyed his stepdad. Tom’s reddened face was alternately covered with bandages or a salve and his chest was bandaged like his arms. Keir had a hard time drawing breath. Why can’t I find any evidence to arrest this arsonist?

  “Keir,” Tom said, his voice low and grating.

  Keir walked to the other side of the bed and gently took his stepdad’s hand. “You look like you’ve been through a war.”

  “Yeah, and our side lost.” Tom managed a one-sided grin. “Keir, I know you feel like this is all your fault,” Tom scolded, “but it’s not. It’s the fault of whoever is setting these fires. Not you.”

  Tom’s kind words stung Keir’s eyes like saltwater. He blinked it away.

  Tom went on before Keir could reply, “Did you find any useful clues at my place?”

  “Our arsonist is getting better,” Keir admitted.

  “Why don’t you go get Audra and tell her what’ve you found,” Shirley suggested, “and what’s happened since she left Winfield this morning? I can fill Tom in on everything you told me.” She turned to Tom. “I know you’ll say it isn’t necessary, but I’m spending the night here in this chair.”

  “Shirley, I…I’d be grateful.”

  Keir heard and then witnessed Tom’s love for Shirley from the glow in his eyes. Keir knew his late mother would only have been happy to see Tom in love again. They’d loved each other so much. The memory of them together filled him like an inflating balloon. He swallowed, suppressing it.

  “Then I’ll leave you two for a few minutes.” Keir gently pressed Tom’s hand and waved goodbye. He walked farther down the corridor and stopped at the room number he’d been given for Audra. He’d last seen her in the frantic E.R.

  Now she was sitting in the chair beside her bed, still wearing her hospital gown and robe. The ugly shapeless gown didn’t detract from her loveliness. But she looked downhearted and her hands were bandaged. He held out the bag of fresh clothing that Shirley had packed. “Hi
.” Then as he thought of Audra beating out the fire on Tom’s shirt with her bare hands, his throat closed up on him.

  She stood and accepted the bag, their hands touching. “I’ll just be a moment.” Her voice was low and rough from the smoke just like Tom’s.

  Keir kept contact with her hand a fraction of a second longer than he should have. Then he stepped back into the hallway to give her privacy. He heard the rings of the white curtain scraping as Audra pulled it around her. He tried not to think of the woman so near and yet so beyond him. Why did things keep drawing them together? Just so he’d notice how her sunlit hair drifted around her shoulders in the lake breeze? How her blue eyes lit up whenever her daughter smiled?

  Soon Audra joined him. “Is Shirley with Tom?”

  He tried to reel in his marked reaction to her, conceal any evidence of it. “Yes.”

  “Is Evie with them?”

  “No, Evie is spending the night with your mother and sister.”

  Audra halted and stared up at him. “With my mother?”

  Keir nodded. “Let’s go.” As he led her along to Tom’s room, he couldn’t stop his gaze from drifting to her. When they reached the room, she entered and hugged Shirley. Tom reached out and took Audra’s bandaged hand with obvious care. Audra hesitated and then took a step forward. “Audra, thank you. The doctor told me I’d have been much worse off if you hadn’t—”

  Audra burst into tears and rushed from the room. Shirley started to go after her and then halted. “Keir, please will you take care of Audra? Lois is going to pick me up here early in the morning so we can help Audra with her morning baking. Don’t worry about me and Tom.” When Keir delayed following Audra, Shirley pushed him toward the door.

  With her head bowed and her hands tucked under her arms, Audra waited just outside the door. Then Keir was with her again, his masculine strength beckoning her. “I’m…sorry for going off like that.” She didn’t look up, hiding her teary eyes. She felt crumpled like dough without enough leavening to rise. “It just brought it all back. I was so frightened.”

  “No problem.” He took her elbow. “Let’s get out of here. Hospitals depress me.”

  The power underlying Keir’s gentle grip heartened Audra. Suddenly she was able to inhale fully again. As the oxygen filled her lungs, she nodded, letting him steer her out of the maze of hospital corridors and checking-out procedure. Finally, he was helping her into his Jeep.

  The summer evening was well advanced. A golden twilight was fading and ribbons of purple layered the darkening sky. The sky reflected her mood. Fluorescent gold weighed down by heavy purple with more darkness coming. How am I going to be able to work in the morning? Her aching hands longed to rest in Keir’s.

  He joined her and turned on the Jeep. The radio had been left on. The voice of the local radio announcer came on. “…fourth fire in Winfield. Local business owners and residents are worried about this string of unexplained arsons. Sheriff Keir Harding was unavailable for—” Keir switched it off.

  Audra had only thought of the fires in a personal way, but the announcer must be speaking the truth. These fires could hurt the tourist trade. But she didn’t say anything about this. Keir’s tight-lipped, rigid profile told her how he was feeling about the crimes. Helplessly, she rested her hands in her lap and pursed her lips.

  When they reached the highway out of town, he turned to her. “How are you feeling? Your hands?”

  She leaned her head back on the headrest, trying not to imagine resting it on Keir’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I gave way like that. It’s just…” Maybe she shouldn’t bring up the fires. But that’s what was on both their minds, wasn’t it?

  “Just what?”

  She let out a sigh. “It occurred to me today that all the fires except for the first have affected someone close to me. It made me feel…responsible.” She gathered up her courage. Saying this out loud, Lord, is so difficult. “Do you…do you think someone is really out to…get to me through them?”

  “No, I don’t. I mean wouldn’t it be easier just to set your place on fire and be done with it?”

  “Maybe the fire-setter wants to make me lose sleep first. Make me miserable.”

  “You might be correct,” Keir said in his official-sounding, give-nothing-away voice. “But who would have a grudge against you?”

  Audra thought immediately of the irate phone calls. But why would he want to get back at her? Surely the shoe was on the other foot in this case. In any case, bringing up the phone calls to Keir was impossible. Weakness swept over her. She felt herself folding up like a wildflower at dusk. “No one comes to mind,” she muttered.

  “Are you sure? You took a long time answering.” Keir cast a suspicious glance her way.

  “I’m sure,” she replied, eyes forward. “But maybe I’ve upset someone without realizing it. And they enjoy worrying, plaguing me. Like a cat playing with a bird before it eats it.”

  “That happens in psychological thrillers,” Keir replied with a shake of his head, “but in real life, we find that when we finally arrest the perpetrator, most crimes are pretty straightforward. Profit and revenge are the most common motives.”

  Audra sighed painfully. Her throat and lungs still caught and hitched a bit from inhaling smoke. She glanced at her watch. She had some minutes to wait before taking her next pain pill though her bandaged hands already throbbed. In the shadows, her unruly gaze shifted to the sheriff’s profile again.

  “I’m not surprised that you might begin to feel this was personal,” Keir said. “The same idea crossed my mind. I mean Tom is my stepdad.”

  “But the other fires don’t have anything to do with you—not even the one at Shirley’s.” She dragged her eyes from Keir and looked down at her hands.

  “It would be if the person responsible knows how close Tom and Shirley are.”

  Cars passed them, wheels whining. “Then that implicates most everyone in town.”

  Keir nodded gravely.

  Concentrate on the fire, not on the sheriff. “Did you get any new evidence at Tom’s?”

  “Whoever did this rigged a trip wire at the back gate that set off a pretty powerful blast. The trip wire ignited a very short fuse connected to gasoline in a large metal gas drum Tom had in the shop. I found its remains scattered over the yard. The arsonist also filled and capped several more containers, some large, some small with more gasoline and kerosene so that after the fire got started, there would be subsequent explosions—”

  “Like the one that nearly knocked me out.” And made my hands temporarily useless.

  “Yes, anyway our criminal is becoming more skillful and therefore, more dangerous. I keep wondering who would know all this stuff about incendiary explosives and fires. There doesn’t seem to be anyone even remotely connected with the fires who would have a background in this kind of crime.”

  “Brent and I were talking about that just the other night. He said with easy access to the Internet, anybody could get this information. I mean I have a computer at my business and Shirley and Tom both have PCs with Internet access.” She shrugged. “Anybody with a computer could get all the instructions to set a booby trap.”

  Keir snorted. “Thank you very much, Information Highway.”

  “Who do you think did it?” Then she bit her lip. Should she have asked this of a sheriff? She’d forgotten for a moment that Keir was the sheriff—he’d become just Keir, her friend.

  More than your friend, her conscience pointed out. She ignored it. This was too important. “Or can’t you tell me who you suspect?”

  Keir lifted one shoulder. “I know of one person who hates Tom—Doyle Keski.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips. “And…maybe I shouldn’t discuss that with you, but Chad worries me…” Her voice faltered.

  “Tom told me the night before last that he’d docked Chad’s pay because he’d taken an afternoon off without permission.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “I don’t think that would trigger something
as drastic as blowing up Tom’s shop, do you?”

  “I don’t know. With his history, Chad is TNT with a very short fuse just asking to be lit. I’ve seen it before with kids that have been subjected to violence. They have a very short fuse and usually act out the violence they’ve suffered.”

  “Do you really think Chad would do it?” she objected, even though she was the one who brought up his name. “He likes working with Tom. And in spite of the resentful things he says, I think Chad likes being with Tom. I mean Chad couldn’t miss the stark difference between Doyle and Tom.”

  “That might have been what triggered this.”

  She questioned him with a glance.

  “Chad isn’t thinking very clearly. He’s only fourteen and his feelings about his dad are all mixed-up. He might feel that setting these fires so ingeniously would impress his dad. And the trip wire was set at the back gate, not the back door where he broke the wire. Tom was still nearer the alley than the door. If it had been triggered at the door, Tom could have been burned much, much worse than he was, or killed.”

  Audra hadn’t even noticed this. But it made sense. That someone had stopped short of causing serious injury. The burden she’d carried lightened a bit. “I really care about Chad. He’s been sweet to Evie and at first, so appreciative of Shirley taking him as her foster son.”

  “I think the reappearance of Doyle in town has ratcheted up Chad’s anxiety. He loves and wants to be close to Doyle and at the same time, hates his dad and wants to be protected from him. That’s a volatile mixture of strong emotions.” Keir paused and then muttered, “And I should know.”

  Drawn nearer to him, Audra identified first the deep vein of sympathy in Keir’s tone. She echoed it silently. It was common knowledge that when Keir was around Evie’s age, his parents divorced and then his mom had married Tom. When Keir had been around Chad’s age, his mom had died of cancer. After the funeral, Keir had tried to move in with his dad, who was another Doyle Keski, and had been sent back to Tom. After that rejection, a rebellious Keir had spent all of his high school years in trouble with teachers and the law.