Once Burned (Task Force Eagle) by Susan Vaughan

wanted to
give them skills to make it easier.”
    “Did you ever see Roni again?”
    Tears welled but didn’t fall. “Once more. When she was
nine. She read two stories to me. She was so proud. But by then she was hunched
over like an old woman and in constant pain. They couldn’t do enough skin
grafts to keep up with her bone growth. She couldn’t walk and breathing was
shallow.” Her voice rasped with emotion. “Finally her heart gave out. I went to
her funeral. She was ten.”
    He swallowed. “I’m so sorry.” Trite, but he couldn’t
think of anything to say that wasn’t.
    “Yeah, me too.” She stood and reached for the plates.
    He started to take them from her but she waved him
off, so he sat and nursed his beer.
    Holding the plates by the tips of her fingers, she
dumped the pizza dregs in the trash. Then she ran water on the plates in the
old-style slate sink, likely original to the farm, like the one in his gram’s
house.
    She’d taken her tragedy and turned it outward to give
to others. After his partner was killed and his leg damaged, he’d been too
self-absorbed to think of anyone else. Past time he did.
    He took his glass to the sink and leaned against the
counter beside her. “I’ve been thinking. Rather than give you my conclusions, I’ll
share the entire file from the fire marshal.”
    When she turned toward him, excitement smoothed her
brow. “Won’t that file have the information we want? Didn’t Tyson grill
everyone back then?”
    “The news clippings you showed me implied his
investigation didn’t go much beyond conducting initial interviews, like the one
with you.”
    “One of the reporters called me back. That’s what he
said. No follow-up. Tyson sure never came back to see me after that one time.
Maybe Gail’s friends didn’t tell him about the other guy. Maybe they didn’t
want to say anything back then. Sometimes kids are scared, afraid they’ll get
in trouble. Her best friends might know about her new lover.”
    “Or they might remember something new about that
night.”
    Lani blinked as if startled. “I remembered something
new just now. Gail’s watch. She kept looking at her watch when she came in
after your argument.”
    The same memory flooded him. “She kept an eye on the
time while she was outside with me. Damn! She was pushing me away so she could
meet this guy in the barn.”
    “They had sex. Then maybe they argued?”
    “Another argument after me? She sure was in the mood.”
He patted her arm.
    The touch of her soft skin soothed the beast prowling
inside him but hiked up his blood pressure. Wanting Lani was complicated but
undeniable. She might slug him, but he started to pull her into his arms.
    She slid away, breathless. “No, Jake. I can’t do this
I need to be focused, in control. I’ll take you up on the case files and work
with you, but that’s all.”
     
    *****
     
    Jake left his Cherokee in Tyson’s driveway, where he
and Lani had parked yesterday. The overcast skies suited the pall over this
destroyed house where the old man had settled into retirement.
    Pulling up his windbreaker collar against the light
rain, he ducked under the now sagging yellow police barrier and ambled toward
the blackened ruins of the attached barn. The smoke and chemical stench had
dissipated some. Not enough.
    Starting with the first tragic fire, that smell had
become a permanent part of his olfactory makeup. His senses had refined with
experience and study so now he could discern individual odors—insulation and
mold and wood and a dozen other elements. But no matter how many burned-out
hulks he experienced, he never could get past the most overpowering smell, the
stench of death.
    He turned as he heard the crunch of tires on gravel as
a vehicle pulled in behind his. Not the deputy sheriff’s cruiser this time, but
Sergeant Paul Robichaud. The arson investigator unfolded his tall, lanky body
from the state sedan. The yellow slicker he shrugged on did little to