Chasing Fire (38 page)
Authors: Nora Roberts
Tags: #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #Women fire fighters, #Suspense, #General
“We’re not asked to lift more than we can carry. So we’ll lift this. Do you want some coffee, or tea, or anything?”
“Don’t you worry about that, Mrs. Brakeman.” Quinniock took a seat in the living room on a chair covered with blue and red flowers. “I know this is hard.”
“We can’t even bury her yet. They said you need to keep her awhile more, so we can’t give our daughter a Christian burial.”
“We’ll release her to you as soon as we can. Mrs. Brakeman, the last time we spoke, you said Dolly got a job in Florence, as a cook.”
“That’s right.” She twisted her fingers together in her lap, a working woman’s hands wearing a plain gold band. “She felt like she didn’t want to take a job in Missoula after what went on at the base. I think she was embarrassed. She was embarrassed, Leo,” Irene snapped as he started to object. “Or she should have been.”
“They never treated her decent there.”
“You know that’s not true.” She spoke more quietly now, briefly touched a hand to his. “You can’t take her word as gospel now that she’s gone when you know Dolly didn’t tell the real truth half the time or more. They gave her a chance there,” she said to Quinniock when Leo lapsed into brooding silence. “And Reverend Latterly and I vouched for her. She shamed herself, and us. She got work down there in Florence,” Irene continued after she’d firmed quivering lips. “She was a good cook, our girl. It was something she liked, even when she was just a little thing. She could be a good worker when she put her mind to it. The hours were hard, especially with the baby, but the pay was good, and she said she could go places.”
“You didn’t remember the name of the restaurant when we spoke before,” DiCicco prompted.
“I guess she never mentioned it.” Irene pressed her lips together again. “I was angry with her about what she did to Rowan Tripp, and embarrassed my own self. It’s hard knowing Dolly and I were at odds when she died. It’s hard knowing that.”
“I have to tell you, both of you, that Agent DiCicco and I have contacted or gone to every restaurant, diner, coffee shop between here and Florence, and Dolly didn’t work in any of them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She wasn’t working in a restaurant,” DiCicco said briskly. “She didn’t get a job, didn’t leave here the night she died to go to work.”
“Hell she didn’t,” Leo protested.
“On the night she died, and on the afternoon prior, the evening prior to that, Dolly spent several hours in a room at the Big Sky Motel, off Highway Twelve.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Leo, hush.” Irene gripped her hands together tighter.
“Several witnesses identified her photograph,” Quinniock continued. “I’m sorry. She didn’t spend those hours alone. She met a man there, the same man each time. We have a witness who’ll be working with our police artist to reconstruct his face.”
With tears trickling down her face, Irene nodded. “I was afraid of it. I knew in my heart she was lying, but I was so upset with her. I didn’t care. Just go on then, I thought. Go on and do what you want, and I’ll have this baby to tend. Then, after . . . after it happened, I took that out of my mind. I told myself I’d been harsh and judgmental, a cold mother.
“I knew she was lying,” she said, turning to her husband. “I knew all the signs. But I couldn’t let myself believe it when she was dead. I just couldn’t have that inside me.”
“Do you have any idea who she was involved with?”
“I swear to you I don’t. But I think maybe it’d been going on awhile now. I know the signs. The way she’d whisper on the phone, or how she’d say she just needed to go out for a drive and clear her head, or had to run some errands so could I watch Shiloh? And she’d come home again with that look in her eye.”
She let out a shuddering breath. “She never meant to change.” Dissolving, Irene turned to press her face to Leo’s shoulder. “Maybe she just couldn’t.”
“Why do we have to know this?” Leo demanded. “Why do you have to tell us this? You don’t leave us anything.”
“I’m sorry, but Dolly was with this man the night she died. We need to identify him and question him.”
“He killed her. This man she gave herself to, this man she lied to us about.”
“We need to question him,” Quinniock repeated. “If you have any idea who she was meeting, we need to know.”
“She lied to us. We don’t know anything. We don’t have anything. Just leave us alone.”
“There’s something else, Mr. Brakeman, we need to discuss.” DiCicco took the ball. “At approximately nine thirty tonight, Rowan Tripp and Gulliver Curry were fired on while walking on the base.”
“That’s nothing to do with us.”
“On the contrary, a Remington 700 special edition rifle was found hidden in the woods flanking the base. It has your name engraved in a plaque on the stock.”
“You’re accusing me of trying to kill that woman? You come into my home, tell me my daughter was a liar and a whore and say I’m a killer?”
“It’s your gun, Mr. Brakeman, and you recently threatened Ms. Tripp.”
“My daughter was
murdered
, and she . . . My rifle’s in the gun safe. I haven’t had it out in weeks.”
murdered
, and she . . . My rifle’s in the gun safe. I haven’t had it out in weeks.”
“If that’s the case, we’d like you to show us.” DiCicco got to her feet.
“I’ll show you, then I want you out of my house.”
He lunged up, stomped his way back to the kitchen to yank open a door that led to a basement.
Or a man cave, DiCicco thought as she followed. Dead animal heads hung on the paneled wall in a wildlife menagerie that loomed over the oversized recliner and lumpy sofa. The table that fronted the sofa showed scars from years of boot heels and faced an enormous flat-screen television.
The room boasted an ancient refrigerator she imagined held manly drinks, a worktable for loading shot into shells, a utility shelf that held boxes of clay pigeons, shooting vests, hunting caps—and, oddly, she thought, several framed family photos, including a large one of a pretty baby girl with one of those elasticized pink bows circling her bald head.
A football lamp, a computer and piles of paperwork sat on a gray metal desk shoved in a corner. Above it hung a picture of Leo and several other men beside what she thought was a 747 aircraft, reminding her he worked at the airport as a mechanic.
And against the side wall stood a big, orange-doored gun safe.
Pumping off waves of heat and resentment, Leo marched to the safe, spun the dial for the combination, wrenched it open.
DiCicco had no problems with guns; in fact she believed in them. But the small arsenal inside the safe had her eyes widening. Rifles, shotguns, handguns—bolt action, semiauto, revolvers, under and overs, scopes. All showing the gloss of the well-cleaned, well-oiled, well-tended weapon.
But her scan didn’t turn up the weapon in question, and her hand edged toward her own as Leo Brakeman’s breathing went short and quick.
“You have an excellent collection of firearms, Mr. Brakeman, but you seem to be missing a Remington 700.”
“Somebody stole it.”
Her hand closed over the butt of her weapon when he whirled around, his face red, his fists clenched.
“Somebody broke in here and stole it.”
“There’s no record of you reporting a break-in.” Quinniock stepped up.
“Because I didn’t
know
. Somebody’s doing this to us. You have to find out who’s doing this to us.”
know
. Somebody’s doing this to us. You have to find out who’s doing this to us.”
“Mr. Brakeman, you’re going to have to come with us now.” She didn’t want to draw on the man, hoped she wouldn’t have to, but DiCicco readied to do so.
“You’re not taking me out of my home.”
“Leo.” Quinniock spoke calmly. “Don’t make it worse now. You come quietly, and we’ll go in and talk about this. Or I’m going to have to cuff you and take you in forcibly.”
“Leo.” Irene simply collapsed onto a step. “My God, Leo.”
“I didn’t do anything. Irene, as God is my witness. I’ve never lied to you in my life, Reenie. I didn’t do anything.”
“Then let’s go in and talk this out.” Quinniock moved a step closer, laid a hand on Leo’s quivering shoulder. “Let’s try to get to the bottom of it.”
“Somebody’s doing this to us. I never shot at anybody out at the base, or anywhere else.” He jerked away from Quinniock’s hand. “I’ll walk out on my own.”
“All right, Leo. That would be best.”
Stiff-legged, he walked toward the steps. He stopped, reached for his wife’s hands. “Irene, on my life, I didn’t shoot at anybody. I need you to believe me.”
“I believe you.” But she dropped her gaze when she said it.
“You need to lock up now. You be sure to lock up the house. I’ll be home as soon as we straighten this out.”
ROWAN GOT THE WORD
when she slipped into the cookhouse kitchen the next morning.
when she slipped into the cookhouse kitchen the next morning.
Lynn set down the hot bin of pancakes she carried, then wrapped Rowan in a hug. “I’m glad you’re all right. I’m glad everybody’s all right.”
“Me too.”
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say.” Shaking her head, she picked up the bin again. “I have to get these on the buffet.”
At the stove, Marg scooped bacon from the grill, set it aside to drain before shifting over to pour a glass of juice. She held it out to Rowan. “Drink what’s good for you,” she ordered, then turned back to pull a batch of fresh biscuits from the oven. “They picked up Leo Brakeman last night.”
Rowan drank the juice. “Do you know what he’s saying?”
“I don’t know a lot, but I know they talked to him for a long time last night, and they’re holding him. I know he’s saying he didn’t do it. I’m feeling like Lynn. I don’t know what to think.”
“I think it was stupid to leave the rifle. Then again, the cops would do their CSI thing since they found at least one of the bullets. Then again, with his skill, at that range, he could’ve put all three of them into me.”
“Don’t say that.”
At the crack of Marg’s voice, Rowan walked over, rubbed a hand down Marg’s back. “He didn’t, so I can come in here and drink a juice combo of carrots, apples, pears and parsnips.”
“You missed the beets.”
“So that’s what that was. They’re better in juice than on a plate.”
Marg moved aside to take a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. “Go on in and eat your breakfast. I’ve got hungry mouths to feed.”
“I wanted to ask you. I wanted to ask both of you,” she said when Lynn came back with another empty tub. “Was Dolly seeing someone? Did she say anything about being involved?”
“She knew better than to start that business up around me,” Marg began, “when she kept saying how she was next thing to a grieving widow, and finding her comfort in God and her baby. But I doubt she stepped outside on a break to giggle on her cell phone because she’d called Dial-A-Joke.”
“She didn’t tell me anything, not directly,” Lynn put in. “But she said, a couple of times, how lucky I was to have a daddy for my kids, and how she knew her baby needed one, too. She said she spent a lot of time praying on it, and had faith God would provide.”
Lynn shifted, obviously uncomfortable. “I don’t like talking about her this way, but the thing is, she was a little sly when she said it, you know? And I thought, well, she’s already got her eye on a candidate. It wasn’t very nice of me, but it’s what I thought.”
“Did you tell the cops?”
“They just asked if she had a boyfriend, and like that. I told them I didn’t know of anybody. I wouldn’t have felt right telling them I thought she was looking for one. Do you think I should have?”
“You told them what you knew. I think I’m going to go get in my run, work up an appetite.” She saw Lynn bite her lip. “The cops have the rifle, and they have Brakeman. I can’t spend my life indoors. I’ll be back with an appetite.”
She walked outside. The shudder that went through her as she glanced toward the trees only stiffened her spine. She couldn’t live her life worried she had a target on her back. She put on the sunglasses—the ones Cards found where Gull had tackled her—and started the walk toward the track.
She could run on the road, she considered, but she was on the jump list, first load. The clouds over the mountains confirmed the forecast from the morning briefing.
Cumulus overtimus
, she thought, knowing the buildup could hurl lightning. She’d likely jump fire today, and get plenty of that overtime.
Cumulus overtimus
, she thought, knowing the buildup could hurl lightning. She’d likely jump fire today, and get plenty of that overtime.
Better to stay on base in case.
“Hey.” Gull caught up with her at a light jog. “We running?”
“I thought you had things to do.”
“I said I wanted coffee, maybe some calories. And that was mostly to give you time to talk to Marg and Lynn. A straight three miles?”
“I . . .” Behind him, she saw Matt, Cards and Trigger come out of the cookhouse and head in her direction. Her eyes narrowed. “Did Lynn go in and tell the dining hall I was heading to the track?”
“What do you think?”
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