What Burns Within (11 page)

Tain let Ashlyn follow Paul, lingering back so that he didn’t feel rushed. He let his eyes take in every detail of the charring, the pools of water gathered on the floor in a few places, the drip drip of a leak from a weak spot in a ceiling keeping time with his steps.

“You okay?”

He looked up to see Ashlyn, half a flight above him, looking down over the railing. “Have you been in a burned-out building before?”

“How d’you think I’ve been working these arson cases? Playing rummy at the station?”

There was no doubt in his mind most of the firefighters would be happy for her to hang out there, but he didn’t say that. “It’s a bit creepy.”

“First time I went home and checked every smoke detector in my place. It’s amazing how destructive fire is. A few days ago this was a serviceable building. In a matter of weeks it will be just a pile of rubble at the dump.”

They reached the landing to the fourth floor. “Good thing the room you want is this way.” Quinlan pointed to the far side of the hall. “That hallway doesn’t look safe.”

“How can he tell?” Tain whispered to Ashlyn.

“Experience,” was the brusque reply from the man ahead of her.

Ashlyn looked over her shoulder at Tain, rolled her eyes and gave him a quick grin, which he took as her way of telling him to keep his mouth shut so he wouldn’t look stupid.

The next thing he knew Ashlyn was holding his outstretched hand, telling him not to let go.

“If it’s bad enough for me to fall through, don’t you think you should get out while you still can?” He snuck a glance down. It didn’t look far to the floor below him.

Quinlan grabbed his other hand. “The fire didn’t do this.”

“I don’t weigh that much.”

“You weigh enough,” Ashlyn said. Tain felt his arm slip as he slid back, more of his body falling through the hole. Her grip tightened. Her face was taut, cheeks flushed.

“It isn’t far. Let go. Worst thing that happens is I twist my ankle.”

Quinlan grunted. “Or you go right through those floor boards. See there and there.” He nodded. “The floor is thicker there than it is there.”

Tain watched Ashlyn look at the floor and then Quinlan. Then they started shifting their weight to one side.

“On three,” Quinlan said. “One, two, three. Pull.”

Tain felt his body jerk forward, until his waist was over the remaining floor. He started pulling his legs up behind him.

Quinlan stood up. “Back to the stairs, now.”

“But—”

“Someone was using parts of this floor for firewood, or God knows what, before this building caught fire. There’s no way to tell if it’s safe, and I’m not taking any chances with the lives of two RCMP officers. I need you to catch an arsonist.”

“Lucky for us we’re of use to you,” Ashlyn responded dryly.

“Or unlucky, as the case may be,” Tain muttered. They followed Quinlan back down the stairs.

“It was a long shot to think we’d get something useful from the room anyway, Tain.”

He blew his breath out. “I don’t like to think of facing her parents with even one thing left that could’ve been done.”

“You’re no good to that girl’s parents dead,” Quinlan told him as they walked outside. “They need you in one piece to catch the person who killed their daughter.”

They stopped at Quinlan’s vehicle, passed back the equipment he’d lent them and walked to their car.

“What a waste.” Tain took the keys from Ashlyn.

“Oh, I don’t know. I do like to lift weights regularly, and it’s been a while.”

“I could tell.”

She shook her head. “You’re filthy. You need to go home and change.”

“We should go to bed.”

She extended her hand. “Give me the keys.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re in no shape to drive if you think I’d go for a proposition like that,” she said as she snatched them from him.

“I meant—”

“Ashlyn,” Quinlan called. They turned to see him yank open the door to his vehicle and toss his cell on the passenger seat. “There’s another arson. It sounds like it fits the profile, and they found an angel on the door.”

Tain glanced at her. “Angel?”

“We’re not exactly letting that out. Don’t need the press labeling these the angel arsons.”

He grabbed the keys back, sprinting toward the driver’s side.

“We’ll follow you,” Ashlyn called to Paul as she opened the car door.

Craig entered Daly’s office and sat down.

“Where’s your partner?” Daly asked.

Craig shook his head. “Beats me. She disappeared about forty minutes ago.”

“She didn’t tell you where she was—”

Lori rushed in then and muttered an apology. When Daly nodded she sat down beside Craig. He saw her brush a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

“What do you have so far?”

“Not much, sir,” Lori said.

Daly arched an eyebrow. “What about known offenders in the area, unsolved rapes that might give us a history on this guy, a pattern to connect the victims?”

Craig responded. “We’re working our way through the known offenders, but so far, none of them have the profile for it, unless they’ve taken a big jump forward since their last attacks. As you know, we have no DNA, no witnesses have come forward, and so far, we can’t find a link between the victims.”

“At this point, the only thing they seem to have had in common, besides being women, is being at home alone at the time of the rape,” Lori said.

“Except for Stephanie Bonnis, if you count the baby.”

“Then we’ll pick this up in the morning and see what else we can do to work it,” Daly said. “No arguments, Craig. You never even went home last night.”

“There are still a few things I can check on,” Lori said. “I want—”

“I want both of you in here, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning, ready to go on this. I mean it. Go home and get a solid eight hours of sleep. We’ll pick this up in the morning.”

Lori keyed her password into her cell phone and listened to the new message. “Hi, honey, it’s Vish. Look, I know you promised you’d get away to night and we were planning to go down to the marina and have dinner, but this time it’s my work getting in the way. There’s a four-alarm fire, and we’ve been called in. I don’t know when I’ll get home, so don’t wait up. Just think about three weeks sailing up to Queen Charlotte Island, maybe even going as far as Juneau. I’m really sorry, hon. I’ll make it up to you.”

Lori sighed as she switched the phone off and tossed it onto the seat beside her as she drove. Not like she could complain. Every night this week it had been her coming home to reheat dinner.

She smiled as she thought back to earlier in the day, the brief time she’d been able to sneak away from Craig and the case and have a few moments of pleasure, but the memory faded quickly.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s not getting any greener!” she yelled at the car in front of her, slamming her fist against the horn. It earned her the response of a raised finger.

For once she wanted to make it home when it was still considered the dinner hour.

She tapped her thumb against the steering wheel and thought about sneaking back into the office, looking through the files. Daly would be gone, and Craig had done more than enough brown-nosing for one career.

Ahead of her tires squealed and there was a thud, followed by the sound of a car alarm going off. Horns honked in stereo, and she craned her neck, trying to see what had happened in the intersection ahead.

Then the distinctive deep honk of emergency vehicles blared out above the sirens, and she glanced in her rear-view mirror, seeing the lights get closer.

Dammit
. She inched her car as far off the road as she could to let them pass, reaching for the radio.

Off early for nothing
. She sighed, wondering what she did when she wasn’t working anyway.

Craig was halfway to his old apartment when he realized what he was doing. He swore and turned the car around.

When he’d returned to Coquitlam after his temporary transfer he’d found himself climbing the walls, unable to get used to being half a dozen floors up, surrounded by concrete and air.

Not to mention facing the colorless rooms and faint scent of second-hand BC bud coming from some other tenant’s apartment that was giving him headaches.

Finally, he’d pulled open a real estate magazine and started making calls. Which was when his dad had turned up and interrogated him, until he admitted he wanted to get his own place.

His dad had insisted that he take the rental property. After all, as Dad had said, it was meant for Craig.

Craig had argued without saying what he really thought. It wasn’t meant for him—it was meant for an idea. That someday Steve and Alison Daly would have children, and this would be one of the things they’d pass on to their kids.

The plan hadn’t been to find out that Steve already had a child. One who was only sixteen years younger than Steve was, a product of a youthful indiscretion and a constant reminder to Steve’s wife that another woman had given him what she couldn’t.

In the end Craig had lost. Daly only got the upper hand on the job, but when Alison got involved there was no way to keep arguing without sounding like an ungrateful child.

The house was at the end of a quiet street, and he had room to park three vehicles in front, as well as a garage in the back, though he only needed one spot for his seasoned Rodeo.

A thick line of trees provided a buffer zone between the edge of his property and a walking path that curved back toward the main road. Off the living room there was one thing Craig was still finding it hard to get used to having: patio doors opened up to a deck and a fenced yard.

Already stores were displaying signs advertising special deals on summer merchandise. It might not be a bad time to look at patio furniture.

He could get a dog, like Tain’s dog, Chinook. That was a nice dog. Craig had always wanted a dog.

Thinking about Tain for even a split second was enough for a torrent of memories to surface in his mind. Ashlyn. The girls. The tension. It had been a bad case from day one.

He’d thought he was over it, able to stop blaming himself. That he’d been able to put the past behind him and that he could move on without the constant compulsion to nail his hands to the cross again and again but just thinking about it had made him think about heading to the bar.

Craig resisted, went to his house and unlocked the front door. The mail waiting on the other side of the door was nothing more than bills demanding payment and flyers aimed at prying what ever cash was left from his salary out of his wallet. He tossed the stack of papers on the kitchen counter and opened the fridge.