What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  “I’ll do it, Daly. I want to.”

  Daly put up his hand. “Out. All of you. I need to think.”

  Two hours later Craig walked into his father’s office without knocking and shut the door.

  Daly stood, hands on the window sill, staring outside. He straightened and turned.

  “Craig Nolan, I expect you to knock like any other officer in this building.”

  “I’m not any other officer. I’m your son.”

  Daly’s face darkened. “Oh, this is rich. You’re usually the one telling me not to treat you differently, not to do you any favors.”

  “And I don’t want you to treat me any differently than you would anyone else. That’s the goddamn point!”

  Daly pointed a finger at him. “Watch your mouth.”

  Craig grabbed the back of a chair, squeezing the padding with his fingers, letting the anger course through his arms, hoping some of it would evaporate instead of finding its way into a response. He looked up at his father. “There’s only one thing for you to consider: if this was anyone else, would you try it?”

  They stood staring at each other. Craig knew the answer to his question. They’d been grasping at straws for so long, on the arsons, the abductions and the rapes, and there was a good chance having a man inside the fire department could help them make headway on at least one of the cases, if not all of them. It was the right thing to do.

  It wasn’t the job holding Daly back, and Craig knew it. It had more to do with fear and regret for the mistakes Daly had made himself as a much younger man.

  Mistakes Craig was a constant reminder of.

  “I’m not a kid. This is my job. If it was anyone else—”

  Daly raised a hand to stop him, then shrugged. “Go get Tain and Ashlyn,” he said quietly.

  When they returned to Daly’s office Daly ignored Craig and walked up to Ashlyn, put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Ashlyn nodded. “Positive.”

  “If anything happens to you—”

  “SSBB,” Tain said. “I’ll park outside the house myself and monitor her when she’s alone if I have to. Neither of us—” he pointed to Craig—“is going to let her get hurt.”

  Craig knew that look. Daly’s logic was fighting against his feelings as he weighed the pros and cons. Finally, he reached for his phone.

  “I still have to get this cleared. Meanwhile, you—” he pointed at Ashlyn—“go see Nicky Brennen.”

  Ashlyn knelt down by the car mat on the floor, where the boy was playing. “Hi, Nicky. Remember me?”

  He glanced up and offered her a shy smile and a quick nod.

  “What are you building?” She sat down on the carpet near him.

  “It’s a special garage for fixing the old cars.”

  “Do the old cars break down a lot?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. In the old days they didn’t make junk.”

  Ashlyn smiled. “Is that what your dad says?”

  Nicky nodded. He’d been leaning forward, partially lying on the floor, but now he sat up and looked at her. “You’re looking for my sister.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you haven’t found her.”

  Ashlyn shook her head. “I’m afraid not. We’ve been looking everywhere we can think of.” He nodded, his big eyes wide. “Could we talk about that day again?”

  Nicky tapped two pieces from his building kit together. “Will it help you find Taylor?” he asked eventually, back to moving cars and toys.

  “It might. It could be very helpful for us.” He looked up from his toys and gave her a quick nod. “What do you remember about the man who found you at the park?”

  Nicky shrugged.

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “He called me a special little boy.”

  “Do you remember what he was wearing?”

  “Jeans. And a T-shirt.”

  “The whole time you were with him?”

  Nicky’s tousled curls bobbed as he nodded.

  “He didn’t have a jacket?”

  His blond locks shook this time.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  Nicky shook his head again. “Just called someone and said he’d found what he was looking for.”

  Ashlyn felt her eyes pinch. “I thought he called the police.”

  “He did. After.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She tucked her hair back behind her ears. “Did he touch you?”

  “He held my hand.”

  “Was that when he took you to his car?”

  Nicky nodded.

  “Anything else? Pat you on the head…” Ashlyn shrugged.

  “No. But…” Nicky fiddled with the K’NEX now, clipping pieces together absently, but quietly.

  “It’s okay. You can tell me.”

  Nicky’s nose wrinkled. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  Ashlyn put her finger to her lips. “I won’t tell. Promise. But it might help me find out what happened to Taylor.”

  Nicky pursed his lips for a second and then leaned towards her, whispering, “He took my picture.”

  She played dumb. “You mean he took a picture you had in your pocket?”

  The blond curls shook again. “No. He had a camera.”

  “Oh. Did he just take one picture?”

  More shaking.

  “Can you tell me where you were when he took your picture?”

  Hawkins tossed his hands up as if to say, What do you want from me? “Look, Daly, she’s at a desk. It’s the best I can do.”

  “Not for her, Dennis. She shouldn’t be here. Have you seen her? She’s lost weight already, and she’s got dark circles under her eyes.”

  “So she looks like shit. What do you expect?”

  “How about enough common sense from her bosses to keep her at home and make sure she gets counseling. It’s not like she’s a cashier at Safeway. She was on the case hunting this guy. I don’t want her coming anywhere near it.”

  “You always underestimated her.”

  “No, Dennis. You overestimated what she was ready for. She’s capable of being a fine officer, but she’s not ready to work without a net. Lori needs supervision. Now more than ever.”

  “You’ve gone just about as far outside the boundaries of rank as I’m willing to let you, Daly. Okay, she made some mistakes, maybe could have handled things a bit better. But we both know Craig was prepared to cut her loose the first time she did something on her own initiative.”

  “I don’t think you’re being fair.”

  “Really? Craig hasn’t got the best track record when it comes to partners.” Dennis turned and gestured to the info boards set up in the office. “What’s this about?”

  “Progress on the arson, abduction and rape cases.”

  Hawkins turned a chalky white. “Are you trying to tell me they’re linked?”

  Daly stood up, running down the particulars, watching Dennis’s face get longer with each new detail.

  Craig groaned when he saw his desk and almost turned on his heel, but his annoyance propelled him forward. As though she knew he was approaching and what he was thinking, Lori spun around.

  “You can’t go through this.” Craig took the file from her hands.

  “Are you saying you won’t tell me where things are at?”

  “Lori, you know I can’t talk to you about this investigation.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She stood up and looked him in the eyes. “Every other…everyone else has the courtesy of being informed. You telling me I don’t deserve that?”

  “Don’t twist my words. You know this isn’t about what you deserve to know. And you know damn well you’re going after more info here than we ever give the victims.”

  She blinked. “Craig, I really need to know if you’re making any progress.”

  “Some.” He pushed past her and gathered all the files and relevant information into a box. “And that
’s all I’m prepared to say.”

  “I’m back at work. Officially approved, you know.”

  “But you’re not back on this case.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have to treat me like shit. Common courtesy to a fellow officer.”

  “Lori, this isn’t about you being my colleague or my former partner on this case. Anyone comes waltzing through here and wants to know the latest, I’m going to tell them to read it in the Sun. You know that.”

  “You were always such a hard ass, you know? Worst fucking partner I ever had.”

  Craig shrugged, turned on his heel and walked away, thinking it cut both ways.

  “So what kinds of cars do you see going by your house?”

  Nicky showed her how PT Cruisers and Sunfires and other average cars would go by. “Then there’s the school buses.” He pulled one off his shelf and drove it past his house.

  “What time does the school bus go by?”

  “Early in the morning and then again in the afternoon.”

  “What about other vehicles? Are there any cars you see in the afternoon a lot?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes fire trucks go by, and I like to run to the window and wave in case it’s Dad.”

  “That’s nice,” Ashlyn said, smiling. “Are these the cars you see here, at Dad’s?”

  He nodded.

  She propped her chin up on her hand, resting her elbow on her knee. “Can you show me what cars you saw when you were still staying with your mom?”

  It was a similar scene, but then he went to his shelf, fingering one car for a moment.

  “What’s special about that car?” she asked him.

  “Well, it used to come by our house a lot. It’s a Corvette. I always watched it go by,” Nicky said, still fiddling with the car.

  “Why don’t you show me?”

  He took it off the shelf and brought it to the mat, making it drive down the road very slowly.

  Ashlyn mocked a puzzled expression. “Can’t that car drive very fast?”

  “Oh, it can. It’s a fast car. But he never drove it fast. Always really, really slow while he looked out the window at the houses.”

  “I bet you didn’t mind, because it’s a nice car.”

  Nicky shook his head. “I liked watching it.”

  “When did it stop driving by your house?”

  “After Taylor went away,” he said quietly. “Before Dad said I could stay here all the time.”

  “You know what, Nicky? You’ve been such a big help. I brought you something.” She handed him a bag, and he pulled out the model truck, his face lighting up like the sky above Washington on July Fourth.

  He ran down the hall to show his dad, and she followed him. While Nick senior expressed proper enthusiasm and managed to persuade Nicky to go back to his room to play, Ashlyn felt Tain’s eyes searching her face.

  Their gazes met, and she had a pretty firm belief that he knew exactly what she was thinking. Now they had to tell Nick Brennen—on leave from the department, fighting his wife in court for permanent full custody of their children, waiting to hear if his daughter would be found alive or if she was never coming home—that his son had been exposed to a possible pedophile.

  Nick showed them out, and she waited until they were halfway back to the car.

  “What kind of car does Alex Wilson drive?” Ashlyn asked.

  “Red Honda Civic hatchback.”

  “Not exactly a car that stands out around here.”

  “Nope. Why?”

  She told Tain what she’d learned and relayed what Nicky had said about the Corvette. “The way we’ve seen it, all of these girls were known before they were taken. It could be this guy was watching her for a while, looking for an opportunity. Julie went missing in her neighborhood, Isabella from right behind her house. Taylor always seemed odd, disappearing from the fairgrounds.”

  “But not if he was watching for a while, saw his chance when she got separated from her brother and went for it.”

  “All that stuff about the second phone call, the photos…That’s really sick.”

  Tain nodded, his mouth twisting with distaste. “I’ll ask Daly if he can have Sims look into it.”

  “I can do it. What do you think I’m going to do all day? Clean house and cook Craig dinner?”

  A smile flickered across Tain’s lips. “More like tell him to cook his own damn dinner when he walks in the door.” He put his hand on her arm, looking down on her. “You don’t have to do this. I know I put you on the spot.”

  Ashlyn shook her head. “No, Tain, you put the job ahead of the people involved, which is what you’ve got to do. It’s a great idea. That doesn’t change because it means I’m going to be the one playing the part. I’m up for it.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you should never doubt that you did the right thing by putting this forward and suggesting me. Don’t think of it like losing your partner. You can call me whenever, we can still hash over the case, and I’ll do the paperwork.”

  He smiled as he stepped back, his hand falling away. “That almost makes up for hitting the streets on my own.”

  Daly looked at the box Craig was carrying. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking all of this stuff home.”

  “You could make copies for Ashlyn to work from.”

  “It’s not that. I found Lori snooping through my desk.”

  Craig shut the hatch to the back of his Rodeo, locked it and looked at Daly, who was resting a hand on the spare tire on the back of the old sport-utility vehicle.

  “I told him she wasn’t ready to come back.”

  “For all the good it did. What’s the deal with this anyway? Lori have some kind of clout with Hawkins?”

  Daly shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “But he signed off on the plan.”

  “On one condition. We have to bring Paul Quinlan in on it, keep him informed.” Daly looked up and met his gaze, and he shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about it. They don’t want the department to look like it’s dropped the ball on any of the ongoing, pertinent investigations. Hawkins wants us to reassure Quinlan that we’re taking the arsons seriously. Besides, we need someone to facilitate your new career on the department. Quinlan can do that.”

  “This means exposing our link about the rape cases.”

  “Which affects the fire department as well. They’ve got men on leave, one burying his wife, one hoping his daughter will be found alive. Hawkins felt that someone on the department needed to maintain confidence in us.”

  “Like we’re not doing all we can…”

  Daly’s fingers drummed the tire, and then he let out a deep breath. “I could call in a few favors to bring in a profiler, but if I do, Hawkins could make it his mission to see you transferred out.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “He’s made it clear I’m not to step any further outside the boundaries.”

  “Look, Dad, we have a chance to maybe make some progress with this. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I’d hold back a card or two before exposing your hand. If we can work this thing to closure without a profiler, then you still have cards to play. And if we have to do an end-run around Hawkins, we’d better make sure we’re covered so he comes through it looking like the mastermind behind the whole thing.”

  “Funny, I never thought of Dennis as one to play the political game on every big decision, particularly when he’s been so uptight about making progress after Lori’s rape.”

  “There’s something odd there. If it was anyone else…” Craig shrugged.

  Daly turned to walk away. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  Daly had phoned Ashlyn to tell her he wanted to see her in his office when she returned to the station. When she arrived he updated her. “We’ve already had silent alarms set up around all the windows and doors. There was a rental available behind Craig’s, one that bordered the alley. We’ve signed up for it and got a team
moving in. They have all the monitoring equipment on site and a clear view of the yard from an upstairs bedroom.”