Perfect Justice bk-4

by William Bernhardt

Ben pounded his fists together. They needed to do something, and quick. He just didn’t know what.

  “Didn’t I see a well on my way in here?” Belinda asked. Her face was illuminated by the flickering flames.

  “Yes!” the Colonel said. “Just north of the barn. And there are buckets inside the barn door.”

  “Ben and I will start the water brigade. You two make sure no one is trapped inside.”

  Colonel Nguyen nodded. Without further discussion Ben followed Belinda back to the barn.

  They found the well without any trouble. The light of the blaze made the area almost as bright as day. Inside the barn, they found several dozen wooden buckets stacked against the wall.

  The water in the well was easy to reach. Ben filled a bucket. Straining every muscle, he hoisted it out of the well and carried it back to the Truong home, sloshing and spilling all the way.

  He threw the remaining water into the spreading flames. The fire consumed the water as if it were air. At this rate, it would burn forever.

  Ben ran back to the well. By this time several Coi Than Tien citizens had emerged from their homes. Most of them had moved directly toward the well. Belinda put two strong men at the wellhead to fill the buckets. She organized everyone else in a line stretching from the well to the fire. One by one they passed the water-filled buckets down the line.

  Water still sloshed out along the way, but not as much as when Ben had carried his bucket solo. Each bucketful had only minimal impact on the blaze, but a minimal impact was still an impact. Belinda’s brigade delivered the water quickly and consistently. At least the fire wasn’t getting any worse. It was just possible they might get it under control.

  Ben started back toward the fire and saw Colonel Nguyen staggering from the flames. He was walking erratically and coughing. As he cleared the smoke Ben saw Nguyen was carrying a woman over his shoulder.

  Ben ran out to help him. Together they gently lowered the woman to the ground.

  Ben took one look at the unconscious woman, then quickly turned away. She was alive, but burned horribly.

  “Are you all right?” Ben asked Colonel Nguyen.

  Nguyen coughed loud and harshly. Seconds passed as he was unable to stop coughing. Ben feared he had severe smoke inhalation—or worse. Finally Nguyen drank in a deep gulp of air.

  “Went around back,” Nguyen said. “Climbed up to the nearest window, looked inside.” He started coughing again.

  “Take it easy,” Ben said. “Breathe slow and regular.”

  “Wall collapsed. Fell on top of me. Burning.”

  Ben saw that the left side of his clothes were singed.

  “Heard a scream from inside,” Nguyen continued. His eyelids drooped. He was struggling to retain consciousness. “Had to get her out—” The raspy choking swallowed his voice.

  “Don’t try to talk,” Ben said. “Just rest.”

  The Colonel nodded.

  Ben brought Colonel Nguyen some water and put a wet cloth on the woman’s forehead. She was still unconscious. Ben felt certain her burns needed medical attention. He called for help; a man from the brigade line stepped forward and huddled over the woman’s body.

  A piercing scream riveted Ben’s attention. A woman near the end of the brigade line had dropped her bucket and clutched her face.

  “What is it?” Ben asked.

  Her face was distorted by the shadows cast by the blaze. Ben couldn’t understand what she said. But she pointed toward the burning house.

  Inside the dense smoke, Ben saw a dark silhouette hugging the ground. It moved.

  Ben heard a horrible gasping and choking noise. Then it was gone.

  Someone else was trapped in there.

  Ben looked around for help. The brigade line was back in action, but it was stretched to its maximum capacity. They couldn’t afford to lose another body. It was him or no one.

  He started toward the smoke.

  The woman shouted, “Wait!”

  Ben turned and the woman threw a bucketful of water, drenching him. He removed his windbreaker, then inhaled and exhaled rapidly, filling his lungs. He held the jacket over his eyes and mouth and plunged into the dense gray cloud.

  Ben felt the smoke burning his eyes. He had to resist the temptation to breathe. If he took smoke into his lungs, he was history.

  He made his way to the body lying on the ground just outside the front door of the house. The heat was searing; he felt as if he had stepped into the sun.

  It was a woman, a young one. Ben rolled her over onto her back. It was difficult to see her face clearly in the smoke, but to his surprise, he found she was not Vietnamese. A slim figure, white face, dark hair. For a brief horrifying moment he thought it was Belinda.

  No. As the smoke cleared he saw she was shorter, more angular, and had an entirely different hairstyle. But whoever she was, she was in trouble. The fire consumed the house not five feet away from them.

  Ben wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into the air. She was a small woman, but the sudden weight bore down on his ribs, still tender from their recent pounding. The residual air burst out of his lungs. Ben clamped his lips shut and ordered himself not to breathe.

  After what seemed an eternity, he emerged from the cloud of smoke. He laid the woman on the ground and gasped for air. It flooded into his lungs, making him woozy and nauseated all at once.

  Ben braced himself against the ground. As soon as he felt relatively stable, he examined the woman. He was no medic, but she wasn’t burned and she appeared to be breathing regularly. He didn’t know why she had fallen unconscious. She had probably taken in too much smoke or fainted from the heat.

  Her eyelids began to flutter.

  “Are you all right?” Ben asked.

  The woman blinked rapidly. Then, suddenly she sat up straight, eyes widened desperately, and screamed.

  The cry was loud and bloodcurdling. Ben had never heard any sound so horrible in his entire life. The woman reached out toward the flames, shouting words he could not understand. Eventually her breath gave out and her screams were washed away by uncontrolled sobbing.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben held her by the shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

  The woman shook her head back and forth, crying and moaning. Tears streamed from her eyes.

  “Ben!”

  Ben looked back over his shoulder. It was Belinda. She was running past the burning house, searching for him.

  Ben ran to her. The instant she saw him, she opened her arms and hugged him.

  “My God,” she said. “Someone told me you ran into the fire.”

  “I did. But I’m all right.”

  “Thank God.” She clutched him so tightly Ben wondered if she would ever let go. He hoped she didn’t.

  He gazed over her shoulder at the Truong home. The fire was finally dying out. Only a few flames on the north side remained, and they would soon be gone. Belinda’s brigade had saved the day. The woman he now held in his arms had taken charge of a desperate crisis situation and saved both homes and lives.

  He squeezed her all the tighter. She was incredible. With the lingering wisps of smoke swirling around them, their lips pressed tightly together.

  “Why did you go into the fire?” Belinda asked, after they parted.

  “There was a woman trapped in the smoke, trying to get out.”

  The woman in the brigade line who had first alerted Ben to the situation interrupted. “You’re wrong. She wasn’t trying to get out. She was trying to get in.”

  Ben stared at her. “What?”

  “I saw it. She came out of nowhere, took one look at the burning house, screamed, and ran into the flames. I thought she was crazy.”

  “Where is this woman?” Belinda asked. “I want to talk to her.”

  “She’s right—” Ben turned toward the area where he had left her. “She was right here.”

  He ran back to the now empty place, then looked in all directions, but found nothing.

  “Sh
e’s gone!”

  PART TWO

  THE SILENT SENTINELS

  31.

  IN THE ORANGE GLOW cast by the sun rising over the Ouachitas, Ben and Mike surveyed the damage to Coi Than Tien. The Truong home was gone; nothing remained but charred wood and rubble. Substantial portions of the homes on both sides were also burned. The entire settlement reeked of smoke.

  After Sheriff Collier finally arrived, he took Colonel Nguyen and Maria Truong, the woman Nguyen had pulled from the burning home, to a clinic in town, along with several others suffering from smoke inhalation. They never found the woman Ben had rescued. She had disappeared without a trace; no one seemed to know who she was or where she had gone.

  As Ben and Mike approached the charred ruins Sheriff Collier was standing outside, scribbling in a notepad.

  “ ’Morning, Kincaid,” Collier said, without looking up. “Glad to see you again when you’re not behind bars.”

  Not as glad as I am, Ben thought. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Lot of wasted firewood,” Collier muttered. “Few personal possessions. Not much else.”

  “Have you determined what started the fire?”

  “What am I, a fortune-teller?” the sheriff said irritably.

  Ben glanced at Mike, then decided he’d better take the lead in this conversation. If Mike started lecturing the sheriff about arson, Collier would probably go off the deep end.

  “Did you find any evidence of an incendiary device? Perhaps some fire-resistant casing? Maybe something as simple as a book of matches for a fuse.”

  Sheriff Collier eyed him suspiciously. “What makes you so sure a book of matches started the fire?”

  “I’m not. I’m hypothesizing.”

  “Look, mister, these shacks are firetraps. No two ways about it. Probably one of these folks was smoking one of those funny pipes in bed, or trying to light a Chinese lantern, and the place caught fire.”

  “No way,” Ben said firmly. “I was here when it happened. This was no gradual fire. We heard a loud noise, and then, a second later, the house erupted into flames. I saw a black pickup speeding away. Someone intentionally torched the house. We need to determine how they did it.”

  “I’ll be damned if I’m going to root around in that trash heap,” Collier said. “What’s your interest in this, anyway? What’s the connection between this fire and your boy’s case?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben answered. “But I can’t help but think there is one.”

  Sheriff Collier closed his notepad and started toward his silver pickup. “If you’re looking for some convoluted story to get your client off the hook, you might as well forget it. We’re simple folk here in Silver Springs. We don’t get ourselves caught up in a lot of nonsense.”

  “If it’s all nonsense,” Ben said, “you won’t mind if we look through the ruins ourselves?”

  Collier frowned. It was obvious he did mind, but didn’t think he was in a position to offer any objection. “Suit yourself, but if you find any evidence, I expect to hear about it.”

  “Believe me, you will.” The sheriff drove away.

  “Good work, kemo sabe,” Mike said. “You played him like a violin.”

  “Yeah, right.” He entered the ruins of the Truong home. “Aren’t you an arson expert?”

  “Well, I worked arson cases for two years, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Good enough. You’re in charge. How shall we proceed?”

  Mike pointed toward the north end of the house. “You take that end; I’ll take this end.”

  Ben started on the outside perimeter and slowly moved inward. He was glad he bought some gloves; these charred embers were still hot. He pulled out some tattered clothes and a few bits of plastic that might have once been records or tools or someone’s favorite toy. How awful to have your home consumed by fire, he thought. To have everything you hold most dear go up in smoke.

  “I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” Ben admitted. “You’re the expert, Mike. Clue me in.”

  “Well, the first item on an arson investigator’s wish list is evidence of a criminal design. Proof that the fire was not an accident.”

  “Are we looking for liquids … solids … ?”

  “Both. Or neither. A liquid inflammatory agent is probably most likely here. They’re cheap and easy to come by. Alcohol. Kerosene. Ether. Gasoline.”

  “What would a solid inflammatory agent be?”

  “Well, there are dozens, but one I’ve seen in good supply around this town is coal dust. Mix it with air and ignite it and that’ll start a fire in nothing flat. Some grains will do the job, too.”

  “What about chemicals?”

  “Harder to come by, but not impossible, even in Silver Springs.”

  “ASP probably keeps a stockpile in their ammunition dump.”

  “Probably so. Sodium and potassium are both common chemicals, and both ignite upon contact with water. ASP could claim they keep them for, oh, excavation purposes, and then use them to make a heck of a good bomb.”

  “Any news on that blood sample you sent in for testing?”

  “I Fed Ex’d it to Tulsa and asked the lab to give it Priority One treatment. Even so, it’ll be several days before we get the results.”

  “Okay.” Ben paused. “You’re a real friend in need, Mike. I appreciate your help.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “This is way beyond the call of friendship—”

  “When I said, don’t mention it, I meant, don’t mention it!”

  “Okay, okay.” Ben resumed his search. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to suggest you might have a sensitive side.”

  “I don’t. By the way, did I tell you I saw your sister last week?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yeah. Julia and I had a long talk. Well, longer than a minute, anyway.”

  “For you two, that’s an eternity.”

  “She has a baby now. By her second husband.”

  “So I hear.”

  “But she’s divorcing him. The husband, I mean.”

  “Seems to be a habit with Julia.”

  “Yeah. I told her you were on vacation. She was glad you were getting away for a while.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Then I told her you went camping. And she just started laughing hysterically.”

  Ben concentrated on his examination of the debris. “Julia always did have an odd sense of humor.”

  “Yeah. She was real nice to me, though.”

  “Well, hot dog. Maybe you two will patch it up yet.”

  “Oh, don’t be stupid. I don’t give a flip about her anymore.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why you get all moony-eyed and morose every time her name comes up. Even after she divorced you.”

  “You should talk. You’ve been all screwed up about Ellen for years! That’s—” He stopped himself in midsentence.

  A deadly silence descended upon them.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, Ben. I shouldn’t have brought that up—”

  “Just forget it,” Ben said, not looking at him.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Ben didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Half an hour later Ben shouted, “Hey, I think I found something!”

  Mike ran over to examine Ben’s discovery. It was a broken glass Coke bottle, blackened and charred, but still recognizable.

  Mike took the bottle shard and held it up to the light.

  “Is that what started the fire?” Ben asked. “Or just leftovers from the Truongs’ lunch?”

  “Dollars to doughnuts, this bottle delivered a liquid inflammatory agent.” He held the bottle to his eye and peered inside. “I can’t believe you found it so soon.”

  “It’s a gift,” Ben said modestly. “You should treat me with more respect.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.” He handed the bottle back to Ben. “Notice the charring on the inside. If the fire had started from a pipe, or any other external
agent, the outside of the bottle would be blackened, but not the interior. That tells me the fire started right in there. It was probably filled with gasoline. A Molotov cocktail. It’s easy enough to make. Now we look for the wick or fuse, if it still exists. Probably an oily rag, or perhaps wadded paper. If we can find that, we’ll have a case of arson.”

  Ben resumed the search.

  The combination of the morning sun and the heat rising from the charred ruins made the search increasingly unpleasant. Time after time Ben wiped sweat off his brow and out of his eyes.

  After a while he lost track of the time. Providence appeared to be balancing the scales. Since he had found the bottle almost immediately, it was going to take him forever to find the fuse. The black soot rubbed off on his clothes and face; soon he was covered.

  Ben began to wonder if this was even possible. He couldn’t identify most of the debris he sorted through. He could be holding the fuse in his hand and never know it.

  “What if the fuse was made of paper? Wouldn’t it have been consumed in the fire?”

  “Possibly,” Mike answered. “Even then, though, we should be able to find—”

  Midsentence, Mike’s voice simply disappeared. There was no interruption. He just wasn’t talking anymore, as if the air had suddenly been sucked out of his throat.

  “Mike?”

  Ben glanced back over his shoulder. Mike was still there, but his face was pale. “What’s wrong? Did you find the fuse?”

  “I found—” Mike pressed the back of his hand against his lips. “Not the fuse,” he whispered. “A body.”

  “Oh—God. No.” Ben was torn between wanting to ask and not wanting to know. “A … body?”

  Mike nodded. He looked as if he might be sick at any moment. “What’s left of it. Skeleton, mostly.”

  Ben eased to his feet. So they didn’t get everyone out after all. What a hideous way to die. “A man? Woman?”

  Ben was astonished to see tears spring from Mike’s eyes. He shook his head slowly back and forth.

  “A baby.”

  32.

  BELINDA WAS INTRODUCING JONES to the computer setup in the Hatewatch office. “Now, I think this gizmo is the disk drive. …”