she said finally, “I don’t want to argue with you. Believe it or not, I’m not here to cheat our client. My job is to prove that he isn’t trying to defraud us, then we’ll pay. From the look of it, fraud’s out of the question for now.”
He didn’t miss the qualifier. He wanted to respond, but decided against it. Her job was to be distrustful. He let the conversation drop.
“I’ll need to see the files from the other two arsons,” she said finally. “They’re not my clients, obviously, but there might be links.”
“The biggest link is three arsons in such a short time. That’s not a routine problem around here. And ranchers are especially good about avoiding fires. It takes too long to get help.”
“I know.”
He glanced over and saw her staring out the window at the sage and fresh green grasses of spring. If the Buell place had gone up in a few months, they might have been fighting one hell of a brush fire. As it was, it was bad enough.
“Our usual rule,” she said, “is not to insure a dwelling or business more than eight minutes from a fire station. We make exceptions for ranches and farms because, you’re right, they avoid fire. We get the fewest claims from that segment. As you noted, most of these folks are equipped to deal with a small fire on the spot. My company even gives a discount if they have a high capacity water pump and fire hose. You know, like we do for households with fire extinguishers and security systems.”
“That’s good to know. I can tell you one thing for sure, these ranchers out here regard fire as their worst nightmare. They worry about it all the time, especially when we dry out in the late summer. Fighting brush fires and wildfires is a lot of my job. These guys are all over it. I’ve arrived at more range fires than I can count to find every rancher and hired hand in the area already trenching a fire line.”
“I can believe it,” she answered. “I was impressed with the way you handled that fire yesterday, by the way. Good work.”
He didn’t know how to evaluate that. “Thanks.” Then, “Do you watch many fires? I wouldn’t have thought so.”
She made a small sound. A laugh? “Before I got into this business I was a volunteer firefighter.”
Okay, then. He wasn’t dealing with a bean counter who knew next to nothing. That settled him a bit. The woman in the suit had transformed from a threat into a potential ally. She knew both sides of the problem.
A few minutes later she spoke again. “The sheriff said you sent samples to the forensics lab already?”
“I did. I’m sure I didn’t get everything. I need to look some more. It’s only been five days, and there’s a lot I still need to look at. I’m not even sure yet that I’ve found all the ignition points.”
“It’s harder when there isn’t much left.”
“No kidding.” He turned onto the Buell’s road. In the distance he could just make out the black smudge of what was left, an ugly hulk against a beautiful blue sky. Fred Buell was probably out there somewhere taking care of his herd as best he could. There were a lot of young calves at this time of year, still frail enough to develop problems. They probably needed all kinds of care, too, and Fred might even be sorting out the ones he’d sell. Wayne had never run a ranch, though, so he didn’t claim to know much about it. As a kid he’d lived in town, his dad a lineman for the electric co-op. Adulthood had taken him through some college and into working for a fire department in Glenwood Springs. Then he’d come home to be chief here.
“How big is your department?” Charity asked.
“Full-time? Part-time? Volunteers?”
Her laugh surprised him. “That kind of headache, huh? And only three trucks?”
“Only three plus two fire rescue ambulances. We have other heavy equipment garaged on the end of town. Never needed more yet.”
“But what about wildfires?”
He shrugged. “Then we get help from everywhere, up to and including heavy equipment lent to us by ranchers and the state. I’ve got twenty career firefighters. Sixteen part-timers. And a whole boatload of volunteers.”
“Twenty full-timers doesn’t seem like a whole lot.”
“There are smaller volunteer departments. But the full-timers make the core, and usually between them and the part-timers, we can handle the average incident. We spend an awful lot of time on training, though, especially with the volunteers.”
She nodded as if she was familiar with that. “I was impressed yesterday, so don’t take my questions as criticism. I’m just curious.”
“Well, if it’ll settle your mind any...” He paused as they went over a bump in the road and he had to steady the wheel. “There are a few very small outlying towns in the county. I’m talking around a hundred people per. They have their own volunteers. And of course the ranchers stand ready to jump in at a moment’s notice. It’s not as if we have to cover thousands of square miles with just three trucks. But we train everyone.”
“A lot of open land,” she remarked.
“A lot,” he agreed. He supposed it could be startling to someone from back East. Out here you could drive dozens of miles, sometimes hundreds of miles, and see nothing but fences and a ranch road from time to time. And the mountains. They could be seen from everywhere.
At last they jolted to a stop in front of the burned-out lumps of the barn and the house that used to be the Buells’. He hoped that, underinsured or not, Fred and his family could come back from this.
Charity didn’t immediately climb out of the car. She sat staring at the blackened ribs of what had once been structures. “My God,” she said finally.
He didn’t answer. The scene spoke for itself. Without a raging wildfire, you didn’t usually see this kind of destruction. Blackened areas surrounded the remains, but the fire hadn’t spread. Green grasses still waved in the breeze. It almost looked as if the house and barn had been blasted from above.
“How many ignition points did you find?” she asked.
“So far eight.”
She shook her head. “There must be more.”
“Seems like it. Short of a bunker-buster bomb, this shouldn’t have happened.”
She turned her head, looking at him straight on. “You have more than a firebug. Did the Buells have enemies? Because whoever did this was awfully determined. It wasn’t about thrills.”
His chest felt heavy. “No,” he agreed quietly. “It may have been about murder.”
Then he climbed out of the vehicle, unable to say any more. Blue tarps rippled everywhere he’d managed to find ignition sources, protecting them from the elements. But time was short. Even without rain, each passing day destroyed more evidence. Although at this point he couldn’t imagine what evidence was going to get them any closer to the sick mind that had done this.
“No pyromaniac,” she said when she stood by the car.
“No,”
