Judgement By Fire

by O'Connell, Glenys

  Jon began to protest, insisting Lauren be checked again by a doctor before being subjected to the trauma of a questioning session. Lauren silenced him with a gentle hand on his solid forearm.

  “Offer me a coffee, Chief, and you can ask me anything you like,” she told the police Chief with an attempt at her old humor.

  The Chief nodded at one of the other officers nearby and the man went off in search of coffee. At least, Lauren hoped that was what he was doing. Her head ached and her stomach was still giving ominous little cramps. Every part of her body hurt, and as she ran a hand over her throbbing head, she gasped a little with dismay as she felt the tender flesh and rough, ridged area of stitches there.

  “You received a number of cuts from flying glass and debris, but that was the worst, the one that probably knocked you out. It’s just a few stitches, and the doc says it won’t mar your beauty,” Jon said, his effort at lightness betrayed by the angry tightness of his mouth as his eyes swept over her face.

  Trying to keep that lightness going, perhaps in that way she could cope right then, Lauren managed a lopsided grin at him, reached up so that her fingers could skim the rapidly healing cut over Jon’s own temple, and quipped, “Well, now we’re a matching set…”

  He smiled back, the Chief harrumphed again, a uniformed officer pushed a mug of hot, reviving coffee into her one unbandaged hand. Ohmer began his questions.

  “What were you doing near the information booth?”

  “I was, well, the truth is, I was looking for Jon…Mr. Rush.”

  “Why?”

  Taken aback by the unfriendly tone, she told herself it was just that Ohmer hated anything untoward happening on his patch and got really stroppy when something did. She tried to answer honestly, her eyes holding Jon’s midnight blue ones as she did so. She wanted him to be the first to understand the message she was offering.

  Even so, her cheeks flamed a little as she told the men, “I wanted to apologize. We’d had a fight, and I’d said some things I didn’t mean.”

  Looking at the three men arranged around her, Jon impassive, the young uniformed cop looking embarrassed, Chief Ohmer hard-edged and skeptical, Lauren’s face grew hot and she buried her face in the coffee mug. Her ears were still ringing from the effects of the blast, but she was running on adrenaline now and everything had a sharp-edged clarity including her own discomfort at having to openly relate something so personal. Swallowing the bitter-tasting coffee, she grimaced but held on to the mug and smiled at the young officer, giving herself time to gather her thoughts.

  “Chief, what happened at the information center?” she asked.

  “That’s what we’re hoping you can help us with.”

  “There were so many people around, and then…I could smell smoke, saw flames through the window. Everything just seemed to explode.”

  Chief Ohmer looked at Lauren hard. His next words stunned her. “At this juncture, we have reason to believe that the Avalon Hospitality mobile information unit was deliberately sabotaged. The Fire Marshall’s verbal report suggests that some sort of small incendiary device—probably that favorite of amateur terrorists, the Molotov Cocktail - gasoline in a bottle with a blazing rag attached—was thrown through a back window of the unit. Before that happened, someone must have gained entry to the trailer because the gas taps attached to a portable tank serving the kitchen area were left turned on. There was a lot of vinyl in the interior and the flames took hold rapidly. As soon as the fire reached the propane tank, the whole thing went up.”

  With shattering force, the memory came back to her, overriding everything else. The sound of breaking glass, the tall figure striding from behind the information booth, herself calling and waving to the tall blond man who she had thought was Jon. Her eyes flew to Jon’s face widening in horror. Her heart warned her not to make the same mistake again by jumping to conclusions. Whoever she had seen leaving the information trailer minutes before the blast, it hadn’t been Jon. She knew that now, knew as surely as she knew her own face that while the two figures had looked similar, there had been a difference in form and carriage.

  If not Jon, then who? Who could be so like him and so familiar to her?

  Something tugged at the edge of her memory and her mind reached out to grab it just as Chief Ohmer interrupted with an impatient, “Well?” and the thought escaped back into the dark recesses.

  “Perhaps I could explain this part of it…” Jon’s voice was low and Lauren shot him a thankful glance, knowing he was trying to spare her.

  However, Chief Ohmer interrupted his voice harsh. “I want to hear Miss Stephens’ version of these events.”

  Jon’s mouth clamped shut on whatever retort he’d thought of making.

  “After the trouble at my studio,” Lauren began, her voice so low that all three men had to lean forward to hear her, the uniformed officer scribbling notes on a pad, “Jon…Mr. Rush…kindly offered to let me stay at his home for the night. Everyone seemed to think it was better that I should be away from West River…” Lauren looked at Chief Ohmer and was relieved to see him nod slightly in agreement.

  “The next morning I was supposed to travel out to West River with Mr. Dillon, the security chief at Rush Co., who was coming out here anyway and would give me a ride. I didn’t have a vehicle…my car was still at Haverford Castle,” Lauren felt herself stammering, and her cheeks flamed again.

  She was stalling for time, trying to order her thoughts and conscious of a reluctance to expose some things to open scrutiny. But one glance at Chief Ohmer’s face and she knew she was fooling nobody; she’d have to tell everything.

  “Anyway, as we were about to leave, Mr. Dillon got a call saying there was an emergency and he was needed back in Toronto.”

  “Which was?”

  “That was company business,” Lauren spluttered, glancing swiftly at Jon.

  “That was the problem we have already discussed, Chief,” Jon interrupted.

  “I want to know if Miss Stephens knew what the problem was,” Ohmer insisted.

  Lauren sighed. “Well, I understood that an employee of the company had been involved in a hit and run accident.” She looked around at the three pairs of eyes fixed on her, sighed again. “It seems there has been an ongoing problem at Rush Co. and Mr. Dillon seemed to believe that this lady had some information that might be helpful in identifying the cause of those problems.”

  Lauren glanced at Jon, wondering how he felt at this company business being aired. His face was inscrutable, his eyes a deep midnight blue in dark-ringed sockets.

  “I borrowed one of Mr. Rush’s personal vehicles and drove myself out here. About ten miles from home, a big Jeep with the Rush Co. insignia pushed me off the road. When I got back to my studio, still very shaken and in pain from injuries to my wrist and shoulder, I found Mr. Rush there with a vehicle with a damaged wing. I—I jumped to the conclusion, which I now realize is wrong, that he’d been driving the Jeep that had hit me.” Lauren offered an apologetic glance at Jon before taking a deep breath and going on.

  “So, Mr. Rush and myself, we had a difference of opinion. I’m afraid I didn’t really give him time to explain. Later, when I’d had my wrist bandaged and some time to think, I realized I was in the wrong and came after him. Paul Howard had told me Jon...Mr. Rush was going to visit the mobile information unit that was being set up, so I headed into the village to see if I could catch him either there or at the council offices.”

  “I parked near the mobile unit, and as I got out of my car I saw someone I thought was Jon.”

  “And where was this person?” Ohmer interjected.

  “He…he came out from behind the mobile unit and started to walk away from me down Balaclava Street. I thought it was Jon and started shouting and waving, hoping to catch his attention. I couldn’t get across the road—you know how busy it is on Saturdays. Then I managed to cross the street, and I called his name again. I thought he’d heard me, because he slowed down for a moment, but then
seemed to walk more quickly away. At that point, I realized it wasn’t Jon at all.” Lauren finished in a rush, so happy to have made the point that she didn’t realize she’d betrayed her feelings with the familiar use of Jon’s first name.

  “Then what?” Ohmer’s tone was harsh and impatient, and Lauren was beginning to feel a nibbling of fear.

  Mike Ohmer had usually been charming and affable with her. Now his attitude towards her seemed definitely hostile, far more so than she would have expected in the circumstances.

  She saw Jon dart a brief, angry glance at the other man, then she straightened her spine and looked the Chief directly in the eye.

  “Chief Ohmer, I’ve been through a really trying time. I’ve had my studio ransacked, I’ve been run off the road, I’ve been blown off my feet, and I’d really appreciate it if you could turn down the impatience just a bit. Tell me what you want to know, I’ll answer any questions you have, and then I want to go home.”

  The Chief’s eyebrows went up, and she noticed the young officer hid a smirk. Sometimes the best defense is attack.

  “Okay, Lauren, okay. I’ll tell you what the problem is,” Chief Ohmer had recovered himself quickly, and despite the use of her first name, he didn’t sound a whole lot more friendly. She shivered and Jon laid a soothing hand on her arm.

  “It seems that everything goes back to this campaign to stop the plans to turn Haverford Castle into a rich folks’ spa. Now you’re a member of that ABC committee, an active member. No surprise in that—you’ve a lot to lose if this scheme goes ahead—a nice, comfortable, affordable studio must be important to an artist and it would be a blow to lose that just as your career is starting to take off. You were also a leading light in the incident that caused a near riot at the protest near the Castle. You know the one—it was all over the papers!”

  Lauren squirmed at the memory of those misleading photographs. Before she could protest, the Chief carried on relentlessly. “Your studio gets trashed—with a very obvious calling card left behind suggesting that Mr. Rush here is responsible. Yet he was miles away. Now, I’ve heard his version of this incident when you were pushed off the road—you thought it was him, yet again he was miles away, talking to one of your own good buddies at the time. What I’m saying is maybe you didn’t reckon on his having such good alibis. Maybe you thought you could discredit him and score points for your side. Maybe you engineered these incidents yourself!”

  Lauren couldn’t help herself—she laughed outright, a short, nervous outburst of alien sound that caused heads to turn in the crowded medical clinic. She found herself gripping the hard edge of the examining table she sat on, sitting bolt upright and staring in disbelief at the police chief.

  When she was finally able to speak again, even though she was sure everyone in the room would be able to hear the anxious thudding of her heart, she managed to project some suggestion of calmness.

  “Chief, is what you’re saying that you think I’m in some way responsible for the things that have been going on? For trashing my own studio, for running myself off the road, for getting blown across the road, cut and bruised and nearly run over?”

  “That’s ridiculous…” Jon interjected angrily, but Lauren held up a restraining hand.

  She was calm now, because the whole situation had become so ridiculous. Anger was edging fear out of her mind.

  “Well, you must admit, it looks pretty damning, Lauren. You yourself were involved in an incident in which Mr. Rush here was assaulted, and which brought a lot of bad publicity for the ABC committee and yourself. Did that make it personal? You went to Toronto and had a very public fight with the head of Rush Co., and when you get home, you apparently find your studio ransacked and Mr. Rush’s business card displayed prominently. No one’s word but your own for what had happened—and conveniently, all but one of the paintings for your upcoming exhibition shipped off to Toronto a couple of days previously.

  “Then there’s this unsubstantiated incident when a Rush Co. vehicle apparently runs you off the road. You were Johnny-on-the-spot when something that was probably a Molotov cocktail is thrown through the window of Rush Co.’s new offices, which you must admit seems tailor made to send a pretty strong message to Rush Co. that they aren’t wanted. And you’re again trying to pin the blame on the company president.

  “You’re telling me that you saw a man who you thought was Jon Rush leaving that building minutes before the whole thing was blown sky-high. I’ve a number of injured people here so you must forgive me for getting pretty snarky about this whole thing, because it’s escalating from a minor, possibly,” Lauren winced as he emphasized the word. “possibly accidental assault at a protest meeting that turned into a riot, to a terrorist-style attack.

  “And you, Miss Stephens, are sitting pretty right in the middle of everything.”

  Lauren gasped, shocked at the harshness of his words. Before she could say anything, Ohmer continued, “And for the record, at the time you say he was lighting the device that blew up his own information office, Mr. Rush here was in my office. We were there discussing all these events and trying to figure out a whole lot of things including how we could keep you safe.

  “But I guess the real question here is, just who are we keeping you safe from?”

  Chapter Twelve

  After a full two hours of further questions and discussion, Chief Ohmer finally conceded that there was little real evidence to mark Lauren or the other members of the ABC committee as the perpetrators of the frightening events which had taken place in sleepy West River over the past week or so. Jon had backed Lauren’s argument that the whole chain of events seemed inextricably linked to events taking place at Rush Co. over the past few months.

  “Think about it - do you really think I’m dumb enough to trash my own studio in order to blacken Rush Co.’s name? I had too much to lose. Besides, I couldn’t be in two places at once – wrecking my home in West River and running down that poor woman in Toronto,” Lauren had insisted wearily. “Now, you and everyone else seem to be convinced that this poor woman was run down—if the eyewitness evidence is to be believed—because she knew something about some goings on at the company. Her missing briefcase seems to back that up. According to the witness, someone driving a large, dark colored vehicle like a Jeep ran her down quite deliberately. A dark-colored Rush Co. Jeep ran me off the road. Doesn’t that make me more of a victim than a criminal?

  “What really scares me, though, is while you’re concentrating your efforts trying to prove I’m behind all this, there’s some madman out there who’s maybe getting ready to strike again.”

  Both Chief Ohmer and Jon Rush had looked uncomfortable at those words, and shortly afterwards, Ohmer agreed that she could leave.

  “But keep yourself available in case we need to ask you more questions, Lauren,” he told her, his voice more friendly but still firm. “One last thing—we’ll be keeping an eye over you at the studio. I’ll have a car out there just in case anything else starts up.”

  “Is that to protect me or to gather evidence in case I go berserk again?” Lauren inquired with false sweetness, her temper frayed and hanging on by a thread.

  The three men laughed. Jon took her elbow to steady her as they walked from the medical clinic. Once outside, Lauren sagged against him, relieved the unexpected ordeal of a police interrogation was over. All she wanted now was to breathe deeply of his heady, male scent, and to rest in the safe harbor of his arms.

  And for a moment, that’s all there was. Jon’s arms tightened around her and he bent his head to drop a light, comforting kiss on the top of her hair. Lauren snuggled deeply into him, embracing him under the covering warmth of his open parka. The night was chill but vividly clear; the spring sky awash with stars in the early evening. The injured had been gathered up and taken home, the sightseers had left; the street was empty except for the police and fire department vehicles, and two ambulances parked near the medical center.

  Tape fluttered around t
he empty lot where the wreck of the information unit stood gaunt against the sky, and a van with the Ontario Fire Marshall’s office insignia was parked on the grass alongside it. Debris from the fire littered the area but little was visible in the darkness to bear witness to the horrific events of the day, except for the raw tang of burnt metal, wood, and plastic which still hovered over the street like a ghostly wraith.

  In this moment, time stood still and all her problems drained away as Lauren clung to Jon and breathed deeply of his essence, filling her mind with him, reveling in the hard strength of his supporting body.

  So it was a shock when, without warning, he sighed deeply and pushed her away from him. Although he still maintained the protective support on her arm, his body, mind and heart seemed to pull away into a distance, leaving Lauren bereft and alone in the empty street.

  “Jon…?” she faltered, not knowing what words would heal the break between them.

  “It’s pretty awful, isn’t it? To be interrogated by someone who makes it obvious he doesn’t believe you, to be questioned by someone who has already jumped to conclusions that aren’t very flattering, especially when you’re innocent.” Jon’s voice was raw with pain.

  Lauren understood. Jon was talking about the way she had interrogated him, mistrusted him and been quite willing to jump to conclusions about him without giving him a hearing. She swallowed the guilt that welled up in her throat and fought back the tears that threatened to flood her cheeks. The essential difference between the way she’d treated Jon and the way Chief Ohmer had treated her was that she had wanted to believe Jon was in the wrong. That way she need take no chances on being hurt or rejected. She could slam the doors of her heart shut against him as finally and as tightly as prison doors closing behind the guilty. The lump in her throat grew to immense proportions, choking her, stopping her from speaking. After all, what could she say?