Final Scream (23 page)

The woman was lying. And she was good at it. Damn good
.

Detective T. John Wilson had put in too many years with the Sheriff’s Department not to smell a liar. He’d seen the best the county had to offer—two-bit con men, thugs, snitches and killers—and he recognized a rat when he was facing one.

This beautiful woman—this beautiful
rich
woman—was hiding something. Something important. Lying through her gorgeous, white teeth.

The smell of stale smoke hung heavy in the interrogation room. Pale green walls had turned a grimy shade of gray since the last paint job before all the budget cuts, but T. John felt comfortable here. At home in the beat-up old chair. He reached into his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes, remembered he’d quit smoking two months before and reluctantly settled for a piece of Dentyne that he unwrapped slowly, wadded and shoved onto his tongue. The gum wasn’t the same as a good drag on a Camel straight, but it would have to do. For now. Until he gave up his continual battle with his addiction to nicotine and took up the habit again.

“Let’s go over it one more time,” he suggested as he leaned backward in his chair and crossed a booted leg over his knee. His partner, Steve Gonzales, was propped up against the door frame by one shoulder, his arms folded over his skinny chest, his dark eyes glued to the woman who was at the center of this mess—murder, arson and probably much, much more. Casually, T. John picked up the file and began leafing through it until he came to her statement, the one she’d made without an attorney present just a few hours before. “Your name is—?”

Her amber eyes blazed in outrage, but he didn’t feel one iota of guilt for putting her through it all again. After all, she’d do it to him if the situation was reversed, and she wouldn’t give an inch—just set her teeth in and hang on. Reporters never let up. Always on the case of the law or the D.A.; it felt good to get a little of his own back.

“My name is Cassidy McKenzie. But you already know who I am.”

“Cassidy
Buchanan
McKenzie.”

She didn’t bother responding. He shook his head, dropped the file and sighed. Tapping the tips of his fingers together, he glanced at the soundproof tiles in the ceiling, as if wishing God Himself was lurking in the joists and would intervene. “You know, I was hoping you were going to be straight with me.”

“I am! Going over it again isn’t going to change anything. You know what happened—”

“I don’t know shit, lady, so cut the crap!” His boots hit the floor with a thud. “Look, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I’ve seen better liars than you and busted them, like that.” He snapped his fingers so loudly the sound seemed to ricochet around the cinder-block walls. “Whether you realize it or not, you’re in deep trouble here; deeper than you want to be. Now, let’s get down to it, okay? No more bullshit. I hate bullshit. Don’t you, Gonzales?”

“Hate it,” Gonzales replied, barely moving his lips.

Wilson grabbed the file again. He felt as if he were losing control. He didn’t like it when he lost charge of any situation. Especially one in which he thought his career was on the line. If he solved this case, hell, he’d be able to run for sheriff himself and oust Floyd Dodds, who needed to retire anyway. Floyd was becoming a real pain in the ass. But if T. John didn’t solve the case…oh, hell,
that
wasn’t even a possibility. T. John believed in thinking positively. Even more, he believed in himself.

He glanced at the clock mounted over the door. The seconds just kept ticking by. Through the window, the last rays of sunlight settled into the room, causing shadows to creep along the walls despite the harsh light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs. They’d been at this for three hours and everyone was growing tired. Especially the woman. She was pale, her skin stretched tight over high cheekbones and sunken gold eyes. Her hair was a fiery red brown that was pulled off her face by a leather thong. Tiny lines of worry pinched the corners of what might have been a pouty, sexy mouth.

He tried again. “Your name is Cassidy Buchanan McKenzie, you’re a reporter with the
Times
and you know a helluva lot more than you’re telling me about the fire at your daddy’s sawmill.”

She had the decency to blanch. Her mouth opened and closed again as she sat stiffly, her denim jacket wrapped around her slim body, her makeup long faded.

“Now that we’ve got that straight, you might want to tell me what you know about it. One man’s near-dead at Northwest General in CCU, the other in a private room unable to talk. The doctors don’t think the guy in Critical Care is gonna make it.”

Her lips quivered for a second. “I heard,” she whispered. She blinked, but didn’t break down. He hadn’t supposed she would. She was a Buchanan, for Christ’s sake. They were known to be tougher than rawhide.

“This isn’t the first fire to occur on your daddy’s property, is it? It seems to me there was another fire in another mill years back.” He climbed to his feet and began to pace, his gum popping in noisy tandem to the heels of his boots clicking against the yellowed linoleum floor. “And if I remember right, after the last one, you up and left town. Said you’d never come back. Guess you changed your mind—oh, hell, everyone has that right, don’t they?” He flashed a good-old-boy smile. His best.

She didn’t even flinch.

“But now listen to this. It’s what bothers me. You gave up a job most men and women would kill for, came back home married to one of the McKenzie boys and guess what? Lo and behold, we have another hot-damn fire the likes of which we haven’t seen in—what—nearly seventeen years! One guy nearly killed in the explosion, the other guy hanging by a thread.” He threw up his hands. “Go figure.”

Gonzales shoved himself away from the door, exited for a few minutes and returned with cups of coffee.

Wilson turned his chair backward and straddled it. Leaning forward, he glowered at her. She held his gaze. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened and who was there. Fortunately your husband was carrying a wallet, otherwise we wouldn’t have recognized him. He’s a mess. His face is swollen and cut, his hair singed, his jaw broken and one leg’s in a cast. But they managed to save the injured eye, and if he works at it, he may even walk again.” He watched as the woman shuddered. So she did care about her husband…if only just a little. “The other guy we don’t know. No ID. His face is busted up pretty bad, too. Swollen and black and blue. He lost a few teeth and his hands are burned. Hair nearly singed clean off. We’re havin’ a helluva time figuring out who he is and thought you might be able to help us.” Leaning back in his chair again, he picked up his cup of coffee.

“What—what about fingerprints?”

“That’s the hell of it. John Doe’s hands are burned; no prints. At least not yet. With all those broken teeth and messed-up jaw, dental impressions are gonna take some time…” Wilson narrowed his eyes on the woman, and he scratched thoughtfully against the stubble of two days’ growth of beard. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think the bastard burned his hands on purpose; you know, to throw us off.”

She grimaced. “You think he started the fire?”

“It’s possible.” Wilson picked up his mug, took a long swallow and scowled.

“I told you I don’t know who he is.”

“He was meetin’ your husband at the mill.”

She hesitated. “So you said, but I…I don’t keep up with my husband’s business. I have no idea whom he met or why.”

T. John’s eyebrows quirked. “You got one of them marriages—you know, he does his own thing, you do yours?”

“We were thinking about separating,” she admitted with a trace of remorse.

“Is that so?” Wilson swallowed a smile. He’d finally hit pay dirt. Now he had a motive—or the start of one. And that’s all he needed. “The fire chief thinks the fire was caused by arson.”

“I know.”

“The incendiary device, well, hell, it could be the spittin’ image of the one used seventeen years ago when the old gristmill was torched. You remember that, don’t you?” She winced a little, her lips losing some color. “Yeah, I guess you couldn’t very well forget.”

She looked away, and her hands trembled around the thin Styrofoam. Of course she remembered the fire. Everyone in Prosperity did. The Buchanan family—all of them—had suffered a horrible, tragic loss, one from which most of them had never recovered. The old man—Cassidy’s father—had never been the same; lost control of his life, his company and his willful daughter.

“Maybe you’d like to come to the hospital, see the damage for yourself. But I’m warning you, it’s not a pretty sight.”

She leveled steady whiskey-colored eyes at him, and he was reminded again that she was a reporter as well as a Buchanan. “I’ve been demanding to see my husband ever since he was injured. The doctors told me I couldn’t see him until the sheriff agreed—that there was some question about him being a suspect.”

“Well, hell, let’s go!” Wilson said, but as she started to climb to her feet, he changed his mind. “Just a couple more things to clear up first.” Her spine stiffened, and she slowly settled back in the worn plastic chair. She was a cool one; he’d give her that. But she was still lying. Hiding something. T. John reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Within the clear plastic was a charred chain with a burned St. Christopher’s medal attached to it. The image of the saint was barely recognizable, twisted and blackened from the heat and flames.

Cassidy’s mouth rounded, but she didn’t gasp. Instead she stared at the bag as T. John dropped it onto the battered old table in front of her. Her hands gripped her cup more tightly, and she drew in a quick little breath. “Where’d you get this?”

“Funny thing. The John Doe was holding it in his fist, wouldn’t let it go, even with as much pain as he was in. We had to pry it from his fingers, and when we did, guess what he said?” Wilson asked.

She glanced from one detective to the other. “What?”

“We think he yelled your name, but it’s just a guess because his voice wasn’t working right. He was screaming his lungs out, but not making a sound.”

Cassidy swallowed though she hadn’t taken a sip of coffee. Her eyes seemed to glisten ever so slightly. He was definitely making headway. Maybe with the right amount of pressure she’d crack. “I guess maybe he thought he needed to see you…or maybe he did see you there, at the mill that night.”

T. John’s dark gaze fixed on the woman.

She licked her lips nervously and avoided his gaze. “I already told you I wasn’t anywhere near the place.”

“That’s right, you were alone in the house. No alibi.” Wilson turned to his partner, and picked up the plastic bag. “Has this been printed?”

Gonzales nodded slightly.

“Funny,” Wilson said, staring at the woman as he pulled out the darkened silver chain. “Wonder why a guy who was being half-burned to death, would hang on to this damned thing—you know, like it was real important?”

She didn’t answer as Wilson let the plastic bag fall softly back to the table and allowed the St. Christopher’s medal to swing, like a watch in a hypnotist’s hands, in front of her nose. “Wonder what it means?” he asked, and he saw the tiny spark of fury in those round eyes again. But she didn’t say a word as he dropped the blackened links onto the table and they slithered together.

She stared at the charred metal for a minute, frowning, her throat working. “Are we finished? Can I go now?”

Wilson was pissed. This woman knew something and she was holding back, and here he was sitting on the biggest murder and arson case in his nine years with the department—his ticket to ousting Floyd Dodds. “You’re not changing your story?”

“No.”

“Even though you don’t have an alibi?”

“I was home.”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

“Packing? You
were
planning to leave your husband.”

“I was working on the computer at home. There are time logs, you can see for yourself—”

“That
someone
was there. Or that someone took enough computer courses and knows how to get into the guts of the machine—the memory—and change the entry times. Let me tell you, you’re pushing your luck.” He snapped up the chain and dropped it into the plastic bag. “You know, whatever you’ve done, it will go easier on you if you ’fess up. And if you’re protecting someone…hell, there’s no reason for you to take the rap for something you didn’t do.”

Her eyes shifted away.

“You’re not…protecting your husband, are you? Nah, that’s silly. You were gonna split anyway.”

“Am I being charged?” she demanded. Two spots of color caressed her high cheekbones and beneath her jacket she straightened her thin body, a body that must’ve dropped five pounds in the twenty-four hours since the fire.

“Well, not yet, but it’s still early.”

She didn’t smile. “As I said, I’d like to see my husband.”

Wilson sent his partner a look. “You know, I think, Mrs. McKenzie—you don’t mind if I call you that since you’re still legally married—I think that’s a damned good idea. Maybe you should see the other guy, too; there’s a chance you can tell me who he is, though in the shape he’s in I doubt if his own mother would recognize him.”

Gonzales shifted against the door. “Dodds won’t like it—not without him there.”

“Let me handle the sheriff.”

“It’s your funeral, man.”

“I’ll give old Floyd a call. Make it official, okay?” Wilson stretched out of his chair. “’Sides, he don’t like much that I do.”

Gonzales still wasn’t convinced. “The doctors gave strict orders that the patients weren’t to be disturbed.”

“Hell, I know that!” Wilson reached for his hat. “But how can they be disturbed? One guy’s so far gone he’s nearly in a coma and the other…well, he’s probably not long for the world. This here’s the wife of one of the men, for God’s sake. She needs to see her man. And maybe she can help us out. Come on, Mrs. McKenzie, you wouldn’t mind, would you?”

Cassidy tried to control her ragged emotions though a thousand questions ran in long endless paths through her mind. She hadn’t slept in nearly two days, and when she had managed to doze, horrifying nightmares of the inferno at the sawmill blended into another terrifying fire, that hellish hot beast that had destroyed so much of her life and her family seventeen years ago. A shudder ripped through her body and her knees nearly gave way as she remembered…oh, God, how she remembered. The black sky, the red blaze, the white-hot sparks that shot into the heavens as if Satan himself were mocking and spitting at God. And the devastation and deaths…
please help me
.