Bill stroked his chin, considering her question. “A lot of factors would affect that. Right now I can’t even guess. Why do you want to know?”
“I’m wondering about the anonymous phone call that reported the fire,” Mercy explained. “It was called in from a gas station pay phone five miles away. Did a passerby report it or did the arsonist set the fire and wait to see that it’d caught sufficiently before he called it in? Then did he come back and wait for the officers to arrive? I’m just thinking out loud here, but he could have just watched it burn, never caring whether anyone showed up or not.”
“Firebugs like to watch the reaction of the responders,” Bill stated. “I’ve met enough of them over the years. They can seem like perfectly ordinary folks, but start them talking about fires and they get a weird look in their eye . . . like they just popped a happy pill.”
“Did you go to the other arsons that happened in Eagle’s Nest recently?” Mercy asked.
“I briefly visited the burned-up shed.” Bill shook his head and clucked his tongue in sympathy. “I felt bad for that couple, but they’re young and they’ll soon rebuild what they lost. Wish they had some insurance, though. I saw the pictures of the burned Oldsmobile and the dumpster fire. My first thought was kids, but you never know.” He turned and looked back at the smoking pile. “This was different,” he said softly. “I suspect we’ll find that setting the fire was only part of his intention.”
TWO
Truman found Tilda Brass fascinating. He and Special Agent Jeff Garrison sat in the woman’s living room, waiting to ask her about the fire, since it’d occurred on her property. The eighty-year-old woman had answered the door dressed in men’s faded jeans and a denim shirt pinned closed with a half dozen safety pins. Her rubber boots looked far too big to be a woman’s size, but she wore them gracefully. She had long gray hair, and her manner was that of a society belle—quite at odds with her clothing and boots.
Operating on two hours of sleep, Truman had felt his early-morning adrenaline rush fade away hours ago. The EMTs had applied something that numbed the burns on the back of his neck and then bandaged them, warning him of infection and ordering him to see his doctor as soon as possible. Truman didn’t have time. He took some Advil and pushed on. A doctor’s visit could wait.
Now he was simply putting one foot in front of the other, running on sheer determination to get to the bottom of his arson mystery.
Murder.
What’d started as pesky arsons had suddenly blown up into the murder of two law enforcement officers.
Deschutes County Deputy Damon Sanderson had been twenty-six and married for two years. His wife had collapsed at the news of his death. His three-month-old daughter would know her father only through pictures.
Deschutes County Deputy Ralph Long had been fifty-one and divorced, with three grown children and four grandchildren. Truman had once bought him a beer at the bowling alley after his team lost to Ralph’s.
When the call went out last night that officers had been shot at the location of the fire, every on-duty officer in a thirty-mile radius headed toward the scene. Granted, this was a rural community, so two Oregon State Police troopers, three other county deputies, and two of Truman’s officers who got out of bed composed “every on-duty officer.” They established a perimeter as the fire department soaked the crumbling building and surrounding brush with the water from its trucks, and then they attended to the murdered men.
There was no sign of the shooter.
By the time the sun came up, Truman had been interviewed by the county sheriff and by Jeff Garrison, the supervisory senior resident agent for the Bend FBI office. Frustration had boiled under his skin all night. He’d been a hundred feet from the murders and hadn’t seen a thing to help the investigators find the shooter.
Truman numbly accepted a cup of hot coffee that Tilda had insisted on brewing. He took a sip and it burned its way down his esophagus in a satisfying way, momentarily distracting him from the burn on his neck. His pain relief was running out.
He’d heard about Tilda from the police station’s previous manager, Ina Smythe, but he’d never met or seen the woman. Ina said Tilda didn’t come into town as much as she used to but made good use of her phone to keep up with the local goings-on. Truman inferred that Ina and Tilda were part of the same gossip tree.
“You didn’t know about the fire until one of the county deputies stopped by?” Jeff asked the woman.
“That’s correct,” Tilda said as she took a sip of coffee from her elegant tiny cup. Each of their cups had a different image of a flower, and the rims appeared to have once been painted with gold . . . or gold-colored paint. Truman could have finished the contents of his tiny cup in three swallows, but he took another minuscule sip, mindful of the temperature.
“I heard the sirens,” she added. “But I ignored them. That barn isn’t anywhere near the house. I had no idea that’s where they were headed.”
“Did you use the barn for anything?” Jeff asked.
“Nope. It hasn’t been used in years. We bought the property nearly twenty years ago. My departed husband”—she silently crossed herself—“used to store some things in there, but it never held livestock. It wasn’t convenient, since it was such a far trek from the house. Now I just pay to have the brush cleared away from all my outbuildings in case of wildfires.” She solemnly shook her head. “I never dreamed someone would deliberately set one of them on fire.”
“Do you know if there was a propane tank stored in the barn?” asked Jeff.
Tilda thought for a moment. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there was, but I can’t say for certain.”
“Did you recently see any strangers on any of your property who shouldn’t have been there?”
“Of course not. Charlie keeps away any intruders. One footstep on the property and if his bark doesn’t send them running, then one look at his teeth will.”
Truman glanced around for a dog. “Dogs are excellent alert systems. Has anyone come to the door in the past week? Perhaps tried to sell you something?”
“No, I haven’t had anyone try to sell me something in ages. I used to have a regular Avon lady stop by, but she died several years ago. Oh! There was a man who stopped by to ask if I’d seen his dog not too long ago. He said it’d run away when his son left the door open.”
“Your dog didn’t scare him off?” Jeff asked.
Tilda gave him an odd look. “I haven’t owned a dog in years. My last dog was Charlie. That’s him right there.” She dipped her head at her fireplace.