Page 18 of Through the Fire
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Climbing back into the pickup, Kit slammed the door a little too firmly, waking up Justice. He lifted his head from where it’d been resting on the center console and thumped his tail against the door. The dog was riding on the passenger seat next to her, since the area behind the front seats was filled with stacked cages. The truck was a loaner from the sheriff’s department’s animal control unit. Justice liked it, since he had a better view out the front windshield and had discovered a stash of dog treats in the passenger-door pocket. Kit was less enthusiastic, since the cab smelled like a musty mixture of wet dog, animal urine, and—oddly enough—skunk.
Blowing out a breath, she struggled to regain her sense of humor as she turned the radio to a nonemergency channel and rattled off Hugh’s unit number into the mic.
“Go ahead, greenie.”
She rolled her eyes, glad that her PT officer couldn’t see her. “I’ve finished canvassing the area. What do you need me to work on next?”
“Any luck?”
It didn’t really surprise her that Hugh took radio etiquette as casually as he seemed to treat everything else. “Negative. Only one house had someone in residence, a ninety-three-year-old Mrs. Velma Jones, and she didn’t see or hear anything. She had, however, lost the keys to her Lincoln and wanted help locating them. I helped her look, but we didn’t find them.”
“Probably for the best,” Hugh said. “Mrs. Jones isn’t supposed to be driving. If the car’s still there, one of her kids probably took the keys for the safety of everyone in Monroe.”
That had been Kit’s guess, too. “The Lincoln is safely tucked in her garage.” Rolling her shoulders to release some leftover stiffness, she heard her spine pop. It had been a rough few hours. With Hugh’s warning niggling at the back of her mind every time Kit knocked on a door, she’d been tense since the chief had sent her out in the borrowed, smelly truck with an MPD ID on a lanyard hanging around her neck. She was antsy to join the other cops and see what leads they were following. “Anything on your end?”
There was a slight pause that Kit wasn’t sure how to interpret before Hugh spoke again. “Not really. Have you checked the houses all the way to Dry Creek Road?”
Kit frowned as she examined the GPS map on the laptop screen attached to the dash. Dry Creek Road was about four blocks to the north. There was no way that any of the residents who lived in that area could’ve gotten a glimpse of what had happened at the burned house. Reminding herself that she’d just started working there, she kept it simple. “No, I haven’t.”
“Go ahead and do that. Maybe someone saw a strange car in the area.”
Kit swallowed her protest that it would be a waste of time, since she had a feeling that arguing would be futile. “Has anyone interviewed the complainant yet?”
There was another pause. “Wes? No, I don’t think so. Why?”
She gave the mic a bewildered look, happy again that he couldn’t see her expression. “In case he saw something. Isn’t it pretty standard to interview the complainant?” Although she’d known there were differing styles of policing, this seemed like an obvious requirement.
“No need.” Apparently it isn’t so obvious, Kit thought as he continued, sounding a bit too blasé about the entire thing. “If he’d seen anything more than the smoke, he would’ve shared it. Let me know if you find anything on your canvass.”
It was Kit’s turn to be silent for a moment as she worked things through in her head. Sure, this was a new department with different rules and ways of doing things, but good policing was good policing. She’d been a cop long enough to know how to investigate a serious crime, and there was no way she was going to skip over such a crucial step, even if it wasn’t likely to lead to much. She didn’t want to argue about it with her supervisor over the radio, however, so she kept her thoughts to herself, answering with a simple “copy” before she replaced the mic.
Justice shifted, and she looked over at him. “What should we do on our lunch break, Justice?” Cocking his head, he made a low woof sound. “What was that? Interview the complainant in a possible murder-and-arson case? Why, that’s an excellent idea.” A simple internet search of the closest forest service fire-lookout tower gave her an address, which she typed into the laptop’s GPS program. When Justice shifted, drawing Kit’s attention away from the computer screen, she smiled at him. “First day, and we’re already rebels.”
He thumped his tail against the seat in solidarity.
Following the directions, Kit took the main street west. As she left town and the road turned into a state highway, she divided her attention between driving, the directions, and the scenery. It still startled her how beautiful it was, with a layer of snow softening the vertical cliff’s rough edges. It had a more severe and rugged look than when she’d visited in late summer, but it was wonderful just the same.
As she wove through the switchbacks, she made a mental note of each person’s driveway or mailbox along the way. The sooner she knew her way around, the sooner everything would be easier. A couple of cars passed her on the highway, but once she turned at the GPS’s urging, the traffic immediately thinned dramatically…to just Kit’s smelly county truck.
The emptiness started to make her twitchy, and she glanced over at Justice’s welcome shape next to her. The road she was on narrowed, the banks of snow on either side getting bigger and more intimidating with each second. Her trip into town that morning had been a piece of cake compared to the narrow, twisting lane she was driving on now. The GPS showed that she had a turn coming up, but she couldn’t see any street signs. Slowing to a crawl, she spotted tire tracks in the snow turning to the right.
“Is this it?” she muttered, almost coming to a complete stop as she looked at the map on the screen, then the ruts in the unplowed snow. “Guess so.” Justice, who’d sat up at the sound of her voice, looked out the window as Kit made a sharp turn onto what the map promised was a road.
The rear wheels of the pickup slid and spun as she turned, and her fingers clutched the steering wheel too tightly. Kit knew how to drive in snow, but that was in the Midwest, where everything was fairly flat and a too-tight turn wouldn’t throw her off the mountainside.
She laughed at herself, but the sound came out stiff and harsh. “They actually plow roads in Wisconsin, too.” Justice glanced at her and then returned to watching out the window. Kit focused on staying in the ruts another vehicle had made. If she had to call for help after getting stuck in a drift while using her lunch break to drive somewhere that Hugh had strongly suggested not to go, the other cops were never going to let her live it down.
The trail narrowed as it entered the trees, and Kit’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. The heavy evergreen branches filtered the sunlight, dimming it and turning it into an eerie green. Between the curvy road and the thick forestation, she couldn’t see what was coming, so she slowed the truck to a crawl. At least one vehicle had gone this way earlier, which meant that there could be an oncoming car right around the next turn. With the trees lining the narrow trail, there’d be no room to get out of the way.
Except for the scritching sound of the pine branches brushing the sides of the truck and the soft hum of the engine, everything was quiet. She glanced at the radio display, making sure it was turned on and that she was scanning all the channels. Everything was as it should be. There just wasn’t much radio traffic. The absence of the normal chatter made her feel very much alone.
Jumping to his feet, Justice gave a loud, baying bark, and the sudden sound made Kit jerk the wheel slightly. She quickly corrected, lining up the truck’s tires with the existing tracks before bringing the vehicle to a stop.
“What’s up, Justice?” she asked, leaning over to peer out his window. She couldn’t see any sign of what had caught his attention from that angle, so she shifted into Park and got out. The silence seemed even thicker outside the truck. Pressing away the uneasy feeling, she circled the front of the truck, scanning the area for the cause of Justice’s alert.
As she reached the passenger side, she spotted a flash of red on the snow. She stepped closer to examine the spots. They were a vivid scarlet against the pristine white, and she tensed.
