Cattle must have grazed out here once upon a time, or why bother fencing, but this now looked like the pronghorn country it had once been.
She guessed she was five miles outside the Elk Springs city limits, east of town where the land got bleak and flat mighty quick. Just a few miles west, ranches started studding the landscape, including her brother-in-law’s, the Triple B. But here no houses were visible, and only three vehicles had gone by in the past twenty minutes. Plus, the arsonist could have seen anyone coming far enough away to disappear in a cloud of dust before the passerby arrived.
Some teenage boys out here target shooting had used a cell phone to report the fire. Interesting they’d seen flames. Either the fire setter had just left, or they’d lit this baby themselves.
A voice crackled from the receiver. “Marshal Patton, the plates belong to a blue 1997 Chevrolet Lumina, registered to—”
“Whoa,” Abby interrupted. She repeated the plate number. “You’re sure about the vehicle?”
“Yes, ma’am. The registered owner is Shirley Barnard, address 22301 Butte Road, Elk Springs.”
Shock silenced Abby long enough for the dispatcher to say, “Do you need a repeat?”
“No! I...” She shook her head. “No. Thank you.”
The prickle of some kind of primitive fear crept up her spine.
A fire set in a pickup that could have been Daddy’s decorated with stolen plates belonging to her sister Renee’s mother-in-law. And one of Daddy’s daughters was an arson investigator.
Coincidence, Abby tried to tell herself again, but disquiet stirred the hair at her nape. She suddenly felt as if somebody was watching her.
She gazed around one more time, but the sagebrush wasn’t dense enough to hide a man and the road stretched bare and shimmery in the noonday sun.
Abby shivered despite the heat. Pulling on latex gloves, she walked back to the pickup. Reaching through the broken window, she gingerly lifted the latch and shouldered open the door.
The interior was filthy and dripping with gasoline and retardant. The upholstery appeared to have been slit with a knife and then ripped open; most of the fabric was on the floor. Blackened from the fire, stuffing cascaded after the seat covering, exposing springs.
The smell was bad. Really bad. Instinctively Abby began breathing through her mouth. Gasoline, charred plastic and fabric and some sharp overtone that made her think of burning urine. What was that stench?
Oh, no.
She lifted the guts of the upholstery and turned it. Burned bits crumbled. She didn’t notice, was too absorbed in the dark stain on the woven material. When she let it go, the latex fingers of her gloves were pink.
Blood, and plenty of it. Could have been dried before the gasoline and then the foam used to put out the fire had liquefied it again.
Abby stepped back, scanning the road and the dry landscape again, reassured by the emptiness and by the weight of the revolver at her hip.
She proceeded methodically then, examining every inch of the cab. Glove compartment was empty but for dirt, an old paperclip, a 1985 penny. More of the same—and nothing else—under the seats; the floors looked as if they hadn’t been vacuumed since the year the penny had been minted. No stickers on the door or windshield showing when oil changes or tune-ups had been done. She bagged and tagged what little she found, in case it became evidence in a homicide, but she was betting whoever had set the fire hadn’t touched any of this. He’d been damned sure nothing incriminating was left, however.
She looked beneath the hood, even scooted on her back under the chassis just to check for the unexpected.
Then she returned to her car and called the Butte County Sheriffs Department, Investigations Unit. Too bad Meg was on maternity leave, Abby thought as she waited to be connected. Married two years now, Meg and Scott had decided to give Will and little Emily a brother or sister. Not that Will would care—he’d be off to college soon.
Abby’s call was eventually relayed to Detective Ben Shea. Abby knew her sister had worked with Shea and thought highly of him.
“Patton?” he said in a deep, easy voice. “This Abby?”
“Yes.” She watched in the rearview mirror as a dust cloud materialized into a camper coming down the road toward her. “Meg’s told you I’m with the arson investigation squad, right?” If two investigators could be called a ‘squad’—Butte County wasn’t New York City yet, thank God. They were kept busy enough, but in these parts most arson fires could be nailed on teenagers or business owners.
“Sure. What’s up?”
The camper passed, several people—kids among them—craning their necks to see why an official vehicle sat beside the road. She relaxed again. “I’m on Barton Road, approximately five miles east of the city limits. I have a pickup truck with stolen plates. The seat was ripped up, soaked with gasoline and set on fire. The perp forgot to roll down the windows, so the fire didn’t go far. Appears the seat is soaked with blood. I thought you folks might be interested.”
“Yes, indeedy,” he said. “Do you mind sitting tight? If you want, I’ll call for a tow, but I’d like to see the vehicle before we take it into the yard. Just in case,” he echoed her earlier thought, “this amounts to anything.”
“No problem,” she assured him. “I’ll wander around here a little, see if maybe he got careless and tossed a cigarette butt or something.”
While she waited she wondered why she hadn’t told him the pickup was a ringer for her father’s, or that the plates belonged to Renee’s mother-in-law. That part she’d have to tell him, of course, but would he think she was shying at shadows if she admitted to wondering that there might be some message for her in this whole business?
Maybe. She’d see what she thought after meeting him. Despite the fact that he worked off and on with Meg, somehow Abby never had come face-to-face with Shea. She supposed it was natural that he and Meg hadn’t socialized. From what her sister had said, he was closer to Abby’s age than Meg’s. And unmarried without children. Outside of work, they probably didn’t have much in common.
She walked a hundred yards up the road, then back on the other side, doing the same thing going west. The dry gravel and dirt didn’t hold tracks well. She’d parked on the opposite side of the road from the pickup, but the fire truck had pulled in ahead of it and could have obliterated other tracks.
Abby slid down the bank and climbed over the fence, snagging her trouser leg on the barbed wire and swearing. She wanted to go back up to the road and sit in her air-conditioned car. She could feel wet patches under her arms, trickles of sweat making their way down her spine to her panties. She could hardly wait to plunge into the YMCA pool after work and swim her laps.
Scouring the ground for footprints or anything that didn’t belong, she searched in steadily widening semicircles from the pickup. Nothing but reddish dirt, rabbit holes, largish round droppings—maybe deer?—and gray-green sagebrush.
One other car passed, slowing briefly. She was too far away to see faces. The next vehicle, a Bronco with the sheriff’s department emblem on the door, pulled to a stop on the shoulder behind her car. Abby trudged back, stepped carefully over the barbed wire and
