Burned Too Hot: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 2)

by Ann Voss Peterson

  The last thing Lake Loyal needed was another tragedy, especially something like this. Val wished more than anything that she could have prevented it.

  “Where’s Carla Tiedemann?” Val asked the fire chief.

  “On the way to the hospital with her husband. Had to be sedated.”

  Val didn’t have children of her own, but if her niece was in a burning house, she would have to be sedated, too. Hell, she would probably have to be put down.

  “That shrink went with her.”

  “Shrink?”

  “The one who runs those first responder support groups. JoAnn Pender. Guess the Tiedemanns are patients of hers.”

  At least Carla had someone to lean on, and a psychologist wasn’t a bad choice. Val would send an officer to the hospital as well.

  “Hot damn,” Fruehauf said. “Here they come.”

  Val spun back to the house just in time to see the door open and two firefighters emerge, assisting a third. Holding her breath, she watched them make their way to the Reedsburg EMS. The names emblazoned across the backs of their turnout coats caught the light, reflective like the stripes on arms, legs, and torsos.

  She focused on one name.

  Lund.

  The firefighters handed off their injured colleague and shed helmets and facemasks. Lund’s eyes found Val. Red lights pulsed off his face. Sweat dampened his dark hair and trickled down one side of his forehead. He looked depleted, raw, and Val had to look away to keep from going to him.

  “David Lund was on one of the search teams?” she asked the fire chief.

  “Second floor. He pulled Tiedemann out.”

  Saved the father but not the son. No wonder she could see his pain from here.

  When Lund reached them, his first words were for Fruehauf. “Chief, I’ve got to go back in.”

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Fruehauf thrust out his barrel chest. “You saw what just happened. The whole roof is coming down. You rush back in, and you’re forcing the rest of us to save you.”

  Another crash sounded from the house.

  Lund stared at the structure, arms limp at his sides.

  Val sucked in a breath of smoky air, her chest tight. “Is there a chance the toddler got out on his own?”

  Lund shook his head. “The child gate was latched.”

  “Child gate?”

  “At the top of the stairs. No way a kid that small could open it himself.”

  “We’ll search the forest anyway,” Val managed to say. “And canvass the neighborhood.”

  “Thanks.”

  Val wanted to touch him, to hold him, to give him some kind of comfort, not that it would do any good. After all, she knew Lund, knew how failing to save his ex-wife haunted him, knew how responsible he felt, and knew how much pride he took in serving the citizens of his town, many of them life-long friends. And now he’d failed to rescue a child from a burning house…

  But it could be worse.

  Because Lund didn’t know who that little boy really was. And eventually Val would have to tell him.

  Six weeks before…

  THE STATE OF WISCONSIN

  VS.

  HESS, Dixon G.

  PROCEEDINGS

  THE COURT: Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you shall give in this matter shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

  CHIEF VALERIE RYKER: I do.

  ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY STENGEL: Will you state your name and current job title for the record?

  CHIEF RYKER: Valerie Ann Ryker. Police Chief of the Village of Lake Loyal and surrounding district.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: How long have you held this position?

  CHIEF RYKER: I’ve been police chief for four years.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: I would like to direct your attention to a year ago, in early December. During that time there were several homicides in your jurisdiction, were there not?

  CHIEF RYKER: There were.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: If it would please the court, I would like to enter into evidence the incident reports in the deaths of Tamara Wade, Monica Forbes, Derrick Shaw, Jeffrey Schneider, and Rebecca Schoenborn so I may review them with the witness.

  THE COURT: Go ahead. Let the record show the reports have been entered into evidence.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Now Police Chief Ryker, in a moment I’ll ask you details about each individual case, but first did you arrest anyone for the deaths of these five individuals?

  CHIEF RYKER: I did.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: How many arrests did you make?

  CHIEF RYKER: Just one.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: You arrested one person for the homicides of these five individuals?

  CHIEF RYKER: Yes.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Is that person here in the courtroom today?

  CHIEF RYKER: He is.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Would you please point him out?

  CHIEF RYKER: That’s him. Dixon Hess.

  A.D.A. STENGEL: Let the record show the witness has indicated the defendant.

  Chapter

  Two

  Val

  Val paced the driveway near the command center, tugging her coat collar tighter to ward off the wind. By the time the fire was out and Val and Chief Fruehauf had given short statements to the local television news stations, the investigation was fully underway and dawn was starting to pink the eastern sky.

  Val hadn’t been involved in many fire investigations during her career, but with the recent rash of arson-set nuisance burns, she was fast becoming an expert. Fire investigations had much in common with any other investigation, with one very important difference. They unfolded backward.

  When investigating most crimes, the first order of business was to assess the physical evidence. Document the scene, collect trace, and map out what might have taken place. After that work was done, Val could more effectively question witnesses and dig her way to the truth.

  In a fire investigation, she and her officers had started the initial witness interviews while firefighters were still extinguishing the flames. They’d talked to onlookers, neighbors, and first responders, collecting observations about the location of the fire, appearance of flame and smoke, and contents of the house. What was present at the scene? What was notably missing? Were doors unlocked? Windows open? And since both flame and efforts to extinguish it destroyed evidence, eyewitness testimony and media footage were vital in putting the pieces together.

  The Lake Loyal police department had only a handful of officers, not nearly enough to question the neighbors and comb through the forest for any sign of the little boy while maintaining the perimeter of the scene. So Val had called in help from the county sheriff’s department, and the fire marshal’s office, a division of the state’s Department of Criminal Investigation.

  There was only one thing missing. Her right hand man, Sergeant Pete Olson.

  “Oneida? Can you try again?”

  The dispatcher and general mother bear of the police department actually growled over the phone. “And say what? We really, really, really need you to get your sweet ass out to the fire so the chief can get hers to the hospital to talk to the victims? Pretty please? He’s not answering. It’s his day off. He’s either going to check his voice mail or he’s not.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Can you repeat that? I want to make sure I have it recorded.”

  “Give me a break. I tell you that at least once a day.”

  “And it’s not nearly enough.”

  Val couldn’t help cracking a smile. “You’re right again. Oneida, you’re a goddess.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  Val ended the call and started to pace, almost sloshing smack into a puddle of muddy water nearly the size of Lake Loyal itself. In the past, she would have pegged Pete Olson as one of the most reliable people in the whole town, on par with Oneida. The man had no eccentricities, sense of humor, nor personality to speak of. If that wasn’t enough, he’d grown up in town, could
spout off nearly every citizen’s family history, and lived and breathed the Lake Loyal PD.

  All that had changed a year and a half ago. When Chief Jeff Schneider died, something in Olson had shifted. He seemed unfocused, made mistakes on the job, and obviously got little sleep at home. But he’d never failed to be there when called, day off or no day off.

  At least not until now.

  As if conjured by her thoughts, a police SUV wound past the barricade and parked at the bottom of the hill. A uniformed officer met the vehicle, a stocky bulldog of a cop named Jimmy Weiss, and when the driver’s door opened, the towering Norwegian she’d just been pacing over climbed out.

  They circumvented a gathering of concerned neighbors at the bottom of the driveway. Olson a foot taller than the muscled Weiss, the odd couple trudged up the hill.

  “I came as soon as I got Oneida’s message,” Olson said.

  “You couldn’t call?”

  “I figured it would be more useful just to get here.”

  Val needed to talk to her sergeant, find out where his head was, but first things first. She eyed the group of about a dozen people gathering in front of the house. Most wearing robes or hastily thrown on workout gear or jeans, they appeared alarmed and a bit rumpled. Concerned neighbors roused from their beds in the middle of the night by tragedy.

  “Weiss?”

  “Yeah, chief?”

  “You finished talking to that crowd on the sidewalk?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Every one of ’em. No one noticed anything out of the ordinary tonight or the past few days.”

  “Did you take photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good job.” More than one arsonist had been caught after he’d shown up at fire after fire, often helping firefighters in their efforts. “Can you run over to the hospital? Stay with Carla and Scott Tiedemann until I can get there? I don’t want them to be alone.”

  “Sure thing, Chief.” Weiss hoofed his way back down the drive, heading for his car.

  “He was first one at the scene?” Olson asked.

  “Yes.” Val said. Looking up at her towering sergeant, she gave him a quick overview of the facts they’d determined so far. When she got to the part about failing to find the little boy, the usually poker-faced Olson flinched.

  Olson had kids of his own, his youngest about the same age as the Tiedemann toddler. This had to be extra tough. Val tried not to think too hard about what Carla Tiedemann must be going through.

  How people ever chose to become parents, to lay themselves open like that, Val would never understand. When Val’s sister died, her twelve-year-old daughter Grace had no one, so Val had assumed custody. It was the best thing she’d ever done. But if taking that leap had truly been a choice, Val wasn’t sure she could have found the courage.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” Olson said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I didn’t keep an eye on my phone. I won’t let anything interfere with the job. You know that. It won’t happen again.”

  Val focused her full attention on her sergeant. She couldn’t tell if the flush to his cheeks was the product of embarrassment or just a trick of the fire engines’ flashing red lights. “Don’t worry about it. You had the night off. You got here as soon as you could.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a small department.”

  Val couldn’t argue. This case was only beginning, and she already felt exhausted and the vision in her right eye blurred. Too bad she couldn’t chalk it up to a simple disruption of beauty rest.

  She’d been flare-up free for months—even through the trial—the medication, diet, and exercise regimen seemingly as miraculous as her doctor had promised. But regardless of her health, every single morning she woke with an almost crippling fear the symptoms of multiple sclerosis would return, that she would again face losing control of her body, piece by piece, muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve. And two days ago some of her symptoms had.

  “I’ve got to get to the hospital and talk to Scott and Carla Tiedemann. I need you to handle the fire investigation. And sergeant? I’m going to need you to bring your A game.”

  His blue eyes met hers. “You can count on me, Chief.”

  “I know I can, Pete.”

  He looked to the ground.

  Something was going on with him, all right. But if there was anything she knew about her stoic giant of a sergeant, it was that he wouldn’t open up until he was good and ready… if ever.

  Leaving the fire investigation in Olson’s hands until the fire marshal arrived, Val headed for her car and the trip to the hospital. Half way there, her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out. “Ryker.”

  “Chief, I—”

  “Olson’s here,” she said, interrupting Oneida for a change. First time for everything.

  “Good. But I’m not calling about Pete.” Oneida was busy and bossy and larger than life, but this time her tone sounded subdued. If there was anything the dispatcher was not, it was subdued.

  “You have bad news for me, don’t you?”

  “Wanna sit down?”

  Val’s mind scrolled through possibilities, coming up with too many options to choose one. “Just tell me.”

  “The hospital called. Scott Tiedemann didn’t make it.”

  Lund

  Clay stuck to Lund’s boots, layer after layer, making the art of walking difficult and clumsy. Scraping off as much as he could, he finished his trek around the house’s perimeter.

  The fire had been suppressed, and other than the occasional fizzing sound, the interior was quiet. Half the roof was gone on the home’s north end, having succumbed to flame, and the second story had collapsed. Lund couldn’t get a good look inside until the sun had finished its climb over the horizon, but he knew he’d find the rooms he and Blaski had crawled through looking for the child were now a pile of burned rubble heaped on the building’s main floor.

  He spotted Val standing off by herself, half-hidden behind a clump of sumac, and headed down the hill to give her an update. As he approached, he could see she was glaring at the cell phone in her hand as if it had just ruined her night.

  “Val?”

  She stuffed the phone into her pocket, tension lines digging around the corners of her mouth.

  A bad feeling tightened his gut. “You heard from the hospital, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tiedemann didn’t make it?”

  She paused then took a step toward him. “Don’t blame yourself. You got him out of the house. There was nothing more you could do.”

  Rationally he knew that was true, that in trying to save people in trouble, there was always a chance he would fail. But that never made it easier. “The search for the boy?”

  “Nothing so far.”

  They’d both known it was a long shot. The boy was probably still inside the blackened ruin of the house, his body curled in some nook Lund had missed. “Thanks for not trying to reassure me that we’ll find him safe and sound.”

  “You don’t know how much I wish I could.” She looked away, and although the movement was a natural one, there was something in the way she did it that caught Lund’s notice.

  For a minute, maybe two, neither spoke nor moved. They simply breathed, each exhale fogging the air between them. A lot had changed in the past months, but one thing hadn’t. The connection he and Val shared. It surprised him every time, even when he thought he was ready for it. This time, he wasn’t ready at all. “Val, I—”

  She met his eyes, shook her head.

  He plunged ahead anyway. “I’ve missed you.”

  She dropped her gaze and studied the ground. “I’ve missed you, too. But I… I need to tell you something.”

  Whatever it was, it was bad. How it could be worse than what had already unfolded tonight, Lund didn’t want to imagine. But whatever was bothering her, he needed to know. That was the only way he could fix it.

  He stood square, bracing himself, mud oozing around his boots. “Go ahead.
”

  “I’m not sure how to say this. The Tiedemanns, they asked for my protection.”

  Lund narrowed his eyes. After her lead up, he’d expected her to admit something personal, maybe something about the two of them. But this didn’t seem personal at all. Until tonight, he didn’t know a thing about this family. Not their names, not their address, and not that they had a toddler son who liked to play with Legos and carried his stuffed animal with him when he climbed out of his crib at night. “I don’t understand.”

  She frowned. “They were afraid, and I did everything in my power to keep them safe.”

  Lund shook his head. She wasn’t making sense. “Afraid? Of what? “

  Val didn’t answer.

  Just twenty feet up the slope of the hill, men scurried around the yard, rolling hoses, packing up equipment. Lund should be assisting, yet it all seemed so far away. “You’re going to have to help me here, Val.”

  “The Tiedemanns first called about a year ago,” Val finally said. “When the adoption was going through.”

  “The boy was adopted?” Lund’s mind buzzed. The adoption. The fear. The request for protection.

  “I wanted to tell you before, when they first contacted me, but it was strictly—”

  The Tiedemanns first called about a year ago… when the adoption was going through.

  Lund felt dizzy, as if the heat and dehydration from his trips into the burning house were catching up to him. What he suspected… it was true. Of course it was true, but he needed to hear Val confirm it.

  “He’s Kelly Ann’s?” Lund asked. “The Tiedemann boy is Kelly Ann’s baby?”

  Val gave a slow nod. “And the son of Dixon Hess.”

  Chapter

  Three

  Grace

  Grace Ryker wasn’t sure why she peeked out the window of her room just as the sun was starting to brighten the sky’s eastern edge. She hadn’t heard any strange sounds. And it hadn’t been a sense of danger or anything. Or a bad dream. She hadn’t been dreaming at all.

  But when she’d split the wooden blinds covering her bedroom window and peered down at the driveway below, she gasped out loud.