Three Degrees of Death Page 6

  My uniform shirt was draped over the back of a kitchen chair where I’d dropped it when I came in around 6:45 the evening before. After getting back from Springfield, I’d chased down a couple of fruitless leads from helpful citizens who were certain they knew what had happened to Fits Loony, all the time worrying about Grace and our lost kids. Joseph was right. I had known when the deputy walked toward airport security that she was stepping into a world that would change her for better or for worse. She would never again be the same beautifully innocent Amazing Grace from little old Crayton.

  She had called from Atlanta with a breathless excitement that confirmed that the metamorphosis was underway.

  “It was absolutely breathtaking, Tate!” she gushed with such enthusiasm that I had to ease the phone away from my ear. “I was seated by the window. Part of the time we were looking right down on top of big, cottony clouds, and part of the time it was clear. I could see the Mississippi—like a brown ribbon running right up through the middle of the country. And when we were coming down into Atlanta, we could see what the man beside me said was Stone Mountain. Have you ever seen it, Tate?”

  I chuckled but didn’t reply. She wasn’t really expecting an answer, and I was enjoying the rush of excitement.

  “I’m already at the gate for Amsterdam and this plane is going to be huge! I’m in seat G in row 38. How many people would that be? Can you imagine something that big getting in the air?”

  As she paused to take a breath, I did interrupt to assure her the plane would make it off the ground. “Most of this flight will be in the dark,” I explained, “but you’ll fly right over the British Isles as it’s getting light. It sounds like you’re on the window again. You should have a good view of England and the Dutch coast.”

  “Oh, I’ll have to make sure I’m awake.”

  “I suspect the problem will be getting some sleep,” I assured her. “I know you’re really worried about the kids, Grace, but enjoy what you can of the trip. We have everything under control here.”

  “Oh—gotta go!” she said. “I’ll call when I get there.”

  “Remember you’re six hours ahead of us.”

  There was a puzzled pause. “Okay, then. Explain again how that’s going to work.”

  “It means when you get there at 10:30 in the morning, it’s only 4:30 a.m. here. So get to your train and call after you get up to Inverness.”

  “I’ll remember.” She paused for a moment that was long enough to make my heart skip a beat, then said, “Thank you, Tate. Thanks for believing in me enough to let me do this,” and she was gone.

  That meant that when the blast woke me, she was still in the air. Possibly just glimpsing Ireland. If she had learned to use the route tracker, she probably had it on the screen on the back of the seat in front of her, peering back and forth between the map and the mind-boggling display 30,000 feet below. I whispered a silent prayer to the weather gods for clear skies over Great Britain. Then I strapped on my sidearm, a Sig P320 that is the civilian version of the M17 that had been my constant companion when I was with the Corps. Some old habits never die. Rocky’s call, right on schedule, drew me back down from 30,000 feet.

  “Did you hear the blast, Tate?” he asked, figuring I’d already identified the caller. The background was a soundtrack of sirens and commotion.

  “It almost kicked me out of bed. I thought for a minute someone had hit the dam again.”

  “This one’s in town. Cleo Parker’s place. Looks like maybe he and Terri were inside.”

  I was sliding into the Explorer and his announcement stopped me cold. “Oh, no. Rocky. What happened?”

  “Yeah. Blown to bits. Chief Prater’s here—and Darren. He got here first.” Darren Sykes is a night patrol officer for the Crayton Police Department.

  “You say ‘blown to bits.’ How much damage are we talking about?”

  “I mean ‘blown to bits,’” Rocky repeated emphatically. “The sides are flattened. Second floor’s collapsed onto the first. And it’s all burning. Prater’s called Chase, but he told him he’d probably be hauling bodies back to the funeral home instead of the hospital. If Cleo and Terri were in there, they’re gone, Tate.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said, wheeling the Explorer from the end of my drive onto the county road that runs along the ridge. “This is Prater’s to deal with, but we need to do what we can to help.”

  “The fire people are just soaking the trees around and letting the house burn,” Rocky said grimly. “I don’t think anything can be saved.”

  Cleo Parker is an accountant. He and Terri do taxes for half the people in Crayton. The other half go to Springfield to Walmart or H&R Block or muddle through on their own. Cleo’s wife Eva died of breast cancer a couple of years before I came back to town. Terri was Cleo’s brother’s widow and had been working with the firm as long as Parker CPA had been in business. After Eva had been gone a year, Terri moved in with Cleo. They never married—for tax purposes, they said—and though it cost them the business of a few of the more conservative parishioners in town, an equal number of theological liberals abandoned H&R Block to make up for it. Even those who disapproved of their unholy union kept liking them as much as they had before, which was about as much as anyone in town.

  I could see the glow when I turned down off the ridge onto Mill Creek Road that winds into Crayton. The Parker home stands a hundred yards off South Elm behind a white vinyl fence that separates the street from an acre of lawn. As I swung through the gate and up the paved drive, firemen were dousing embers that the heat storm lifted away from what remained of the house, but they were letting the fire burn itself out. Smoke billowed curly black into a sky turned indigo by streetlights a block behind me.

  Chief Prater stood with Darren and Rocky beside his patrol car, their faces grim masks painted a flickering orange by the flames. The chief nodded as I stepped from the Explorer. He had pulled on his uniform pants, but grabbed only a baggy gray sweatshirt as he left the house. His thin white hair looked as if he hadn’t even bothered to run his fingers through it.

  “Hell of a way to start a day, isn’t it, Tate?” he muttered gruffly as I joined the three.

  I answered with a quick nod, keeping my eyes on the blaze. “Were Cleo and Terri in there?”

  “As far as we can tell.” He waved toward one end of the charred remains where two blackened metal mounds supported a pile of smoldering wood. “Both cars were in the garage. Bobby Mills was here when I got here. He said he’d seen Cleo mowing the lawn until almost dark. We’ll know when we can get into that heap of ashes—if there’s anything left to find.”

  “Any idea what caused it?”

  He shrugged. “The way it went up, I’d guess a gas leak. The house didn’t just catch on fire. It blew up. We can only hope the gas got them in their sleep before the explosion.”

  “Quick, either way,” I offered, thinking as I said it that it may have sounded more insensitive than I meant it. “And a tragic loss. Anything I can do to give you a hand with this, Chief?”

  Prater shook his head slowly. “We’ll let it burn out, sift through what’s left to see if we can find bodies, and call in the state fire marshal. I’ve already called Spire Energy.”

  Rocky grabbed my elbow, eased me away from the city police officers, and turned his back on the pair, speaking in a whisper I could barely make out over the hiss and popping of water on hot embers. “Did you notice anything when you came through the gate?”

  My puzzled frown told him I hadn’t. He tilted his head toward where the drive met the road, indicating that I should follow.

  “I’m headed over to the office,” I called to Prater. “Call me if I can help in any way.”

  The chief nodded back over his shoulder. “Sure thing, Tate. Thanks for coming down.”

  I trailed Rocky’s cruiser down the drive and pulled up behind him, just inside the fence. Elm Street was lined on both sides with the cars of the curious. Some had been awakened by
the blast, others by their own police scanners that serve as entertainment for some, a prime source of gossip for others, and as an early warning system for the drug-making element in the county. Rocky climbed from his car and led me out into the crowd of onlookers who closed around us like buzzards on roadkill.

  “Were the Parkers in there, Tate?” They wanted to know. “What caused it? That was one hell of an explosion!”

  “Chief Prater’s in charge of this one,” I begged off. “I don’t think they know much yet. He’ll let people know as soon as he has details.”

  Rocky turned me back toward the white fence. “Check out the gate post,” he said in a stage whisper.

  A vinyl-clad 6” x 6” steel post provided support for a 12-foot wrought iron gate that opened and closed using a numbered key pad or remote activator. The gate had been closed when the first emergency responders arrived and a pin had been removed from the extension arm to allow access to the property. Scrawled vertically on the white surface of the sturdy hinge post with black spray paint were a quartet of numbers. 3, 18, 19, 20.

  11

  Even without the disaster at the Parker home, I had been expecting a full day. My guess was that Grace would get to Inverness, check in with Erin, and call about 10:30 a.m. my time. Able Pendergraft had arranged with Joseph’s attorney, a woman named Penn from the state attorney general’s office, for a Springfield meeting at 1:00 p.m. to hear our side of the Greaves dispute. Assuming that took a couple of hours, I wouldn’t be back in Crayton until 5:00. I was a deputy short and, even worse, was about to complicate the day by telling Chief Prater that I suspected the Parker explosion wasn’t an accident.

  I have an unhealthy habit of trying to think through in advance all the possible scenarios that might play out with each scheduled encounter of the day so I’ll be ready for whatever happens. Marti tells me it leads to way too much unnecessary worry. And she’s right. But I do it anyway. And since the unexpected 2:00 a.m. wakeup, I had come up with a whole new lineup of worrisome possibilities.

  Prater was in his office at 8:00 a.m., trying to talk a reporter from the Springfield News-Leader into waiting until 9:00 for a formal news briefing. The regional paper had more than a casual interest in the fire. Cleo’s two daughters with his wife Eva had also become accountants but decided Crayton wasn’t big enough for the three of them. They had opened an office in Greene County where both had become movers and shakers with the Springfield chamber and with Ozark Public Television. I walked in on an exchange that was starting to overheat between the Chief and the ambitious young reporter. I didn’t recognize the girl.

  “Are there some things about this you aren’t wanting the public to know?” she pressed, planting herself between the Chief and his office door. Prater tried without pushing her aside to ease past, but she side-stepped into the gap.

  “It was purely an accident,” the Chief assured her. “A tragic accident. I’ll provide details on everything I know when we meet with all of the press at 9:00.”

  She looked around the department’s front desk area with mock surprise. “All the press? Oh, you mean me and the ‘Daily’ that only prints twice a week and won’t be running anything until day-after-tomorrow? I think we’ve earned a little special consideration with the coverage we’ve given you down here. And I have a deadline.” I stepped up behind the Chief.

  “You ready for our meeting?” I asked, avoiding eye contact with the reporter. I’d once read that if you happen to meet a mountain lion when walking in the woods, don’t look it in the eyes. It’s a rule I try to apply to reporters I want to avoid.

  He turned, his mouth a straight, irritated line. “I was going to have a few things ready for you, but am having trouble getting to my desk.”

  I shifted my gaze to the girl, deciding this predator had to be confronted. “You’ll have to excuse us, but we have a meeting that was supposed to begin…” I glanced at my watch. “…about five minutes ago.”

  She cocked her head to one side and frowned at the badge and name tag on my shirt. “And you are?”

  “Sheriff Tate. County sheriff. I believe the chief is planning a briefing at 9:00. And you’re a morning paper. So anything he has for you is too late for today’s edition. I’m sure your deadline for tomorrow isn’t until early afternoon.”

  She shifted her line of attack. “What’s your take on the fire, Sheriff? Doesn’t it seem strange to you that all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, this house explodes?”

  “Briefing at 9:00,” I repeated. “From the Chief.”

  Her face soured. “This isn’t the only story I have to work on. I came down here early to get a jump on it so I could get back to Springfield before too late.”

  “And not the Chief’s only business,” I reminded her. “We have some things we need to discuss before he gets ready for your conference. You’re holding him up.”

  “Things related to this case?”

  “I don’t recall him calling this a ‘case.’ I think he called it a tragic accident.” I took her arm and eased her out of Prater’s way. “You’ll hear everything he knows at 9:00. And I’d think you might want to call the gas company before the conference. Ask them what they think about a possible leak.” The two of us slipped past her. I swung the door closed behind me.

  “Thanks, Tate,” Prater grumbled. “I try to be civil with those vultures, but it’s all I can do to keep from telling them all to go to hell. And what does she think this is? A murder investigation or something?”

  I checked to see that the door had closed tightly, then waited for the chief to circle his desk.

  “That’s why I asked to meet this morning,” I said quietly. “I think there’s a chance it might be.”

  Prater threw a quick glance at the closed door. “What the hell you talking about, Tate? We found the bodies inside, and it looks like they were both in bed when the house went up. When we started clearing all the crap off the kitchen stove, there was a burner that hadn’t been turned completely off. The house filled with gas, then blew up.”

  “Has the fire marshal been through yet?” I asked.

  “He’s on his way down now. I don’t expect him before noon.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why the pilot light hadn’t kept the burner lit and the gas burned off, even if it hadn’t been turned completely off?”

  Prater’s brow creased in the middle. “The pilot must have been off. Blown out or something. Then a spark triggered all the gas.”

  “Possibly,” I agreed. “But there’s something else. Did you happen to notice the numbers painted on the fencepost at the front gate? Black spray paint?”

  Prater shook his head. “Didn’t notice and wouldn’t have thought anything of it if I had. What numbers?”

  “Three, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty.”

  “What’s the house number?”

  “Eleven sixty-five.”

  “So—what’s the big deal about a three and these other numbers?”

  “I have no idea. It’s just that numbers just like that were sprayed on the back of Fits Loony’s place when I went up to check out the damage to his squirrel cage. And his little shack was full of gas.”

  “But his shack didn’t explode.”

  “There’s practically nothing in there to create a spark. He’s got one overhead light. That’s it.”

  “What would have caused a spark at 2:00 a.m. in the Parker place?”

  I shrugged. “No idea. But that’s just the point. Something that kicks on in the middle of the night. Some device left on a timer that would generate a spark? You might ask the fire marshal to keep an eye out for something like that. I just don’t see the number thing being coincidental.”

  “But like I said, Fits’ place didn’t explode.”

  “That’s why I think something may have been left to make sure this one did.”

  Prater had been standing and dropped heavily into his chair, shaking his head slowly. “Look, Tate. Why would anybody want to do that? Two of th
e nicest people in town. I met with Cleo’s girls this morning at 6:00. They’re over at the funeral home with Chase right now, talking about a service. They were upset enough about an accident. The last thing they need is for you to let the word out about town that you think this might be a homicide—especially based on a few numbers painted on a gate post. Hell, they might be road survey numbers or something like that.”

  He glared irritably across the desk. “And I’m retiring in three months. I’m trying to get things cleaned up. Not add an investigation when there doesn’t need to be one. And how the hell are you going to follow up on four numbers? Three, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. What the hell is that? A date? A birthday? Numbers on the gate keypad Cleo couldn’t remember?”

  “Could be any of those,” I admitted. “But I wanted you to know I’m going to be trying to find out. I won’t say a thing about it unless I come across something definite.”

  “Suit yourself. But for the sake of those girls and everybody else in town, I hope this doesn’t go anywhere. This is hard enough on people without some damn murder rumor spreading around. And please—not a word to that reporter.”

  “Nothing unless I find this goes somewhere,” I promised, and left him to his news conference.

  Grace called two hours later. I had just started toward Springfield where I’d agreed to meet with Able for lunch before the conference with Joseph and her state attorney. The call came in through the Explorer’s Bluetooth. There was worry in her voice.

  “They can’t tell if the texts are coming from Danny,” she said. “In my reply to him, I told him his brother Miguel was sick, and he may need to come home early. There was an answer when I got here that said he and Miriam were seeing some amazing things and weren’t going to rejoin the group until Edinburgh. But as I feared, it didn’t mention a sick brother. It did say, though, that we wouldn’t be hearing from him again until they meet up with the other students.”