Cause to Burn Read online

  “I understand, Ms. Stringfellow,” Roberta agreed. “I assure you that I am up for the challenge. It can’t be any worse than cramming for finals at college.”

  My God, how old is this little girl? “Considering there are three charred bodies in the next room, Ms. Witherspoon, I think it would be considerably worse.” The look of horror on Roberta’s face made me feel a twinge of guilt. Perhaps I had gone too far, but I wasn’t going to let up. This girl did not belong here. “On my watch, you will see the complete devastation of a fire, including charred remains of murdered victims. I hope you can stomach it.”

  Truth be told, this was my first time flying solo on a murder case, but I wasn’t about to let Roberta know that. I’m stuck with her. Still, I need to know up front whether this young debutante can handle what could potentially be a serial arsonist’s wet dream.

  “When I was researching for that book, I saw things you couldn’t imagine, Ms. Stringfellow. Things that defied understanding. That’s one of the reasons I wrote the book, and one of the reason’s I’m here in Memphis. I specifically asked to be given access to the arson investigator so that I could expose the true underbelly of what a pyro does and why.”

  I had to admit that Roberta’s reasoning was a sound one and not unlike my own reasoning.

  Scott chimed in with his two cents’ worth. “We may never know why arsonists do what they do, but we will never give up trying to better understand them so they can be stopped before they kill again.”

  Just when I thought I couldn’t stand to hear one more thing come out of Scott’s mouth, he said something sensible and profound.

  What have you got on the victims?” Uncle Joe asked.

  “We will have to do a DNA test to determine who they are, but the house was owned by a retired county clerk officer, Douglas Patterson, and his wife.”

  “And the third body?” he asked.

  “Probably a grandchild,” I reported clinically.

  “Oh, no!” Roberta gasped, her face paling.

  It was obvious that she had not learned to be detached like I had. This would make my job even harder. Damn high-heel wearing reporter.

  ***

  The waitress brought over my beer, and I gratefully took a generous hit, absorbing the cool liquid into my pores. Another hit and I let my mind go over the case for the hundredth time today. I was sure that I had a serial killer on my hands, one who liked to kill with fire. I was loathe to admit that I didn’t have a clue where to start looking.

  I couldn’t get the vision of the crime scene out of my head. I had seen dead bodies before, but never one that was so small and young. Even Uncle Joe teared up when he saw the little girl’s remains, and Roberta had run crying from the room. I had to figure out what kind of sick person could so callously do that to people.

  While I waited on Tina to join me, I pulled out my laptop, logging into the district case files to see if the reports were available yet. Damn it. Forensics hadn’t turned up anything I could use. There were no fingerprints, no DNA left behind, nothing but that damn smiley face.

  This was the second fire started by a smiley face that had killed someone. The first one was in a middle-class neighborhood in a moderate wooden-framed house that was totally destroyed by the fire. The body of a woman was found in her bed. The house was registered to District Court Judge, Blanche Kenbridge, but until the DNA results came in, the victim couldn’t be positively identified. Speculation was that it was an act of revenge, which, of course, was an easy assumption to make, considering her job. Someone obviously didn’t like her judgement.

  Granted, two similar fires by supposedly the same arsonist did not make them a serial arsonist, per se. But I couldn’t afford to wait until he was officially labeled as one.

  The first fire, which happened last fall, was ruled suspicious because of the smiley face, but the investigation had gone nowhere. I’d tried to call the investigator of the first case but he was out of the country on vacation. So, I just keep rereading the case file and looking at photos, but nothing popped.

  “Dad, could you send me a clue?” I mumbled to myself. “I need to catch this guy in the worst way.”

  My father had prepared me for the hardships and provided me with the confidence he knew I would need to succeed as a female firefighter. If my father believed in me that much, how could I not believe in myself? Firefighting was in my blood.

  Tina walked over and kissed me before she sat down. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, picking up the menu. “There was an accident on Union Avenue that had traffic stopped.”

  “Ready to order?” the waitress asked.

  “Let me have the fried catfish, with French fries, extra coleslaw and tartar sauce, and a bottle of ketchup for the fries. And keep the beer coming, please,” I said, handing the unopened menu back to the waitress. I had eaten here enough times to know what I wanted without having to look at it.

  “You got it,” the waitress said, scribbling on her notepad.

  “And I’ll have the barbeque sandwich with ranch dressing, please,” Tina said, closing her menu and handing it to the waitress.

  Muldoon's Bar and Grill on Beale Street, with its electric atmosphere and blues and jazz music, was one of the places Tina and I loved to go to unwind.

  Tonight, Catarina Krüger and I were there to celebrate our one-year anniversary as a monogamous couple. It had been a wonderful year, one that I thought I would never be fortunate enough to have. In an attempt to not rush into a relationship, we both promised to take it slow, but three months into dating, we upped the ante and moved in together. Now, sitting across the table from the most beautiful, intelligent, incredibly sexy blonde in the world, I was ready to go all in and pop the question.

  I had showered at the station, then realized I had forgotten to bring my street clothes from home. So, I had to dress in the work clothes that I kept in my locker at the station; khakis and the dark blue T-shirt with the firefighter emblem over my heart and the letters, FIRE/ARSON INVESTIGATOR printed across my back. I didn't like drawing attention to myself while off duty, so I covered up by wearing a dark brown leather jacket that cut me at my hips. The drawback to wearing leather in this unusually warm weather was it made me sweat. Luckily, we preferred to sit outside and watch people come and go down the busy avenue. The light breeze felt good on my face. November in Memphis was usually in the mid-sixties, but this year, we went from a long hot summer to a very short, cool fall and then back to summer again. It was hard to know how to dress for weather like that.

  The waitress came back with our beers, and I felt for the ring box in my jacket. Now’s as good time as any. “So, I have some exciting news—”

  “Me, too! You’re not going to believe it,” she exclaimed.

  “Tell me your news first,” I offered, pulling my hand back from my pocket.

  Her eyes twinkled, and her nose scrunched up as she grinned with excitement. I had a sudden urge to kiss her.

  “How do you feel about moving to Frankfurt, Germany?”

  My emotions were quicker than my control and my smile vanished as the blood drained from my face. “What? No. Why Germany?”

  “They have an opening for someone with my administrative skills, plus I speak the language. Mostly, it’s because I speak the language. Anyway, my boss put me up for it. He said I would be promoted to vice-president, which would make my career soar, and it would only be for three years.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. Three years? “I… uh… that’s… uh…” The words I couldn’t say were strangled by the words I needed to say.

  “I know, right? I mean, I always dreamed of moving up the ladder into corporate; I just didn’t think it would happen so fast. Of course, it helps having German grandparents. I can’t wait to tell them. They’ll be so excited.”

  “I… uh…” She was so excited that I could almost see fireworks in her eyes. I picked up my glass of beer and held it out in a toast. “That’s really great, Tina, congratulations.” We c
linked glasses, and I gulped down half my beer.

  “Oh, but you had news, too,” she said, sipping from her glass.

  “No, it’s nothing.” My eyes darted back and forth, looking for something I could tell her that didn’t involve a marriage proposal. “I was assigned to my first serial killer case.”

  “That’s wonderful, in a scary kind of way,” she replied. “I know you’ll catch him. You’re that good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, finishing off my beer and trying to wash away the lump in my throat.

  “So, do you think you’ll catch the guy before we have to move in three months?”

  The one thing I admired most about her was her self-assuredness. That is, until just now. I did not see that coming. She’d never mentioned that she was trying for a promotion. What are we going to do now? “Baby, I can’t go. I’ve just been assigned this very important case, which is what I’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

  “But, honey, couldn’t you do the same thing in Frankfurt?”

  I leaned back and gazed at her thoughtfully. She was sincere, but she wasn’t thinking it through. My options were to pull out the ring and beg her not to go, wait three years for her to come back, or, my least favorite option, move to Germany with her and… do what? “No. I’d have to wait until I become a citizen, then I would have to start out as a rookie again.”

  “So, I guess you wouldn’t want to do that… right?” she asked quietly.

  “Would you?”

  Tears formed in the corner of her eyes as they began to swirl with understanding. “No, I wouldn’t.” She took a sip of her drink and gazed down the street. “Three years isn’t that long,” she murmured, and then glanced back at me. “Will you wait for me?”

  My first thought was to say, “Of course,” because I wasn’t really interested in finding anyone else. But I couldn’t promise something I wasn’t sure she would keep. “You’re the one leaving. Will you be able to wait?”

  She hesitated for a minute as she thought about it, and I had my answer.

  “I tell you what,” I said. “If neither of us are involved when you come back, we’ll pick up where we left off.” Please don’t agree. Please.

  “Okay, that sounds like a good idea. It takes the pressure off of us, doesn’t it?” Her brow was wrinkled and her eyes were liquid, but I wasn’t sure if it was remorse or relief.

  “Yeah, I guess it does,” I replied apathetically. I was confused, heartbroken, and angry. I didn’t know which emotion to grab onto. I leaned against the table and felt the ring box in my jacket pocket press against my breast. I grabbed onto anger. I was angry.

  We sat quietly for a few minutes, neither of us looking at the other. I felt cold, as if the warmth had been sucked out of me, and I folded my arms across my chest. A band began warming up across from our table. It wasn’t long before the loud thump of the bass drum mixing with a trombone filled the night air with jazz.

  “I think I’ll go,” she shouted to be heard over the music. She wiped her mouth, tossed the napkin in her plate, and picked up her purse.

  I nodded stoically, not sure what else to say. What could I say? I would never deny her the opportunity to follow her dreams, but now I couldn’t follow mine. Not if I wanted to have my career, too. She stood up and kissed me on the forehead, then walked away with my heart. That was fine. I didn’t need it anymore, or ever again. I pushed my untouched food to the side, waved the waitress over, and ordered a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Chapter Two

  Roberta Witherspoon

  “Honey, come sit down beside me for a minute.”

  “Okay, Mom… Why are you crying, Mom?”

  I was fourteen when my mother sat me down and told me that my stepdad, Fire Chief Jeremiah Phillips, had been trapped and killed while fighting a fire in a house being renovated. It was hard to believe that was twelve years ago.

  “But he was going to adopt me…”

  I loved my stepdad more than my real dead-beat dad. Jerry was an honest, hardworking man who loved his firefighting brothers like family and proudly wore the uniform for over twenty years. He was married to my mom for four years before he asked my permission to adopt me. He said he wanted to be my dad legally, and wanted me to be his daughter. He also made sure I understood that it wasn’t a condition of his love. Even if I said no, he would still love me. I wanted a hyphenated name like my mom, Gloria Witherspoon-Phillips. But more than that, I wanted a dad who loved me. He was killed before the paperwork went through.

  I’d learned a couple of years ago that Jerry had to pay my biological, drug-addict father five hundred dollars before he would sign the papers giving up his parental rights. It upset me at the time, but not as much as I’d thought it would. Even though my stepdad hadn’t lived long enough to legally become my dad, at least my biological father was no longer legally my father.

  As a teenager, my friends and I would hang out on Beale Street, feeling so sophisticated with our Big Ass Beer in our hands. A couple of our group would pester their older siblings until they gave in and bought the drinks that were then shared among the rest of us. Beale was the only place in Tennessee where it was legal to flaunt your drinks in public. My high school friends and I all ended up going to different colleges, so I made new friends at Vanderbilt University. But on the weekends and holidays, we all found our way back to Beale Street. Once we turned legal age, we soaked in the jazz, flirted with the guys, and drank whiskey shots until we stumbled out of the bar. It was during one of those drunken parties that I came out to my friends. They laughed at me for thinking it even needed to be announced. They bought a round of drinks, toasted my coming out, and embarrassed the shit out of me by asking every female customer in the bar if she would be interested in me. Gee, I miss my friends.

  When I was a reporter for the Memphis Times, my job was the police beat. Hard-hitting exposés, feel good stories, and intriguing investigations. I won a few awards and one of my articles was even picked up by the New York Weekly Reporter. They hired me as a freelance writer. I moved to New York and freelanced for a few years, living the life of Riley, as they say, making friends, partying too hard, and falling in love every five minutes. I was quickly losing control. Then my best friend, Emily Russell, who always said that I should write a book, died of an overdose. That put the fear of God back in me. I sequestered myself in my crappy little apartment and began writing what I knew, which wasn’t much. Emily had thought that my notes from the police beat would make a good book, so that’s what I wrote about. I named the heroine Emily.

  Now I’m back home where I belong, writing a book to honor my stepdad… my dad. No one has recognized me, yet. I’m not surprised because I haven’t been around since his funeral. Plus, this is a different firehouse, and a different group of firefighters, except for Fire Chief Tripp. He wasn’t the fire chief then, but Mom said he was a good friend of my stepdad’s. I remember he brought food to the house a few days after the funeral. He was a nice man. He still is. He agreed not to mention my stepdad because I’d prefer not to be known as the hero’s daughter. Makes it easier to chat with people without preconceived expectations.

  I had rushed back to my hotel room and cleaned up, changing into a sleeveless chiffon green blouse with a V‒neck and white collar, with a white pair of jeans and washed red loafers. My mother was pretty put out with me for not coming home first. I tried to explain to her that after tonight, I would be living at the fire station. She wasn’t happy with that idea either. Germantown, where I grew up and my mother still lived, was only twenty-five minutes away, but it wasn’t practical to commute to a fire alarm. Not if I wanted to be part of the action. I had another book signing gig at the Germantown Community Library at the end of July, and I promised Mom we could spend some time together then. My mother, always having to get in one more dig, reminded me that I missed the charity horse show, an event Germantown is famous for, and something I never missed, until I went off to college. As a young girl, I dreamed of having the winning
jump horse, but had to settle for being the reigning queen of the show when I was sixteen. An honor, of course, but not what I really wanted.

  Waiting for the book signing to begin, I gazed out the window and thought about Jordyn. I wondered what I was in for, considering that Jordyn hated me already. Damn it, don’t mention college again, you idiot, you were sounding like a schoolgirl. Jordyn was hardcore; she didn’t want to be bothered by schoolgirls. Apparently, she didn’t want to be bothered by anyone. “I’ve got to develop a hard shell, too, if I’m going to survive her,” I mumbled to myself as I sipped my cappuccino.

  When I researched my first book, I was not fortunate enough to be embedded with a unit, as I was now. The horrible things I told Jordyn that I had witnessed weren’t actually at the crime scene. Not after the first dead body, where the victim had been shot in the head. I threw up on the spot and was banned from going out in the field after that. So the horrible things I’d witnessed were actually through my interviews with the police. At least I was smart enough not to tell Jordyn that. The woman already had the upper hand and if I wanted to be on the front line, I knew I had to act as tough as she did.

  It was a shame, too, because Jordyn was intellectually and sensually gorgeous. She vibrated confidence with her short brown hair, piercing blue eyes, and tan complexion. It was her gruffness that made her look stiff and harsh. What a waste. Putting her abruptness aside, I was impressed with her focus and thoroughness. We’d spent the afternoon interviewing the neighbors and first responders, anyone who was on the scene or lived in the neighborhood. The questions were very similar to the ones asked by the police that I shadowed in New York, and the results were almost exactly the same… there were none. I could feel Jordyn’s frustration growing. I had tried to help by asking a few questions myself. That turned out to be disastrous. The questions were good ones, but I had encroached on Jordyn’s domain without an invitation, and she privately chastised me for it. At least she was professional enough not to chew me out in front of others.