Flashover (A Sean McGhee Mystery Book 2) Read online

  Even after she’d broken the news to him, and moved out, he’d still said it for weeks afterwards, out of habit, every time he’d talked to her. He’d gradually stopped as it became clear she wasn’t coming back and his feelings for her withered and died, but now it was starting to feel natural to end his phone calls with Maggie the same way.

  He was going to have to be careful of that. When he was finally ready to say those three little words, he didn’t want the first time to be an automatic response. He wanted to be sure, and he wanted her to know he truly meant them.

  He took another pull from his beer. Maybe, in three or four months, when he had something important to tell her, he’d get the Jag out, she could wear that red dress again, and they’d make another trip to Second Empire.

  Rather pleased with his plan, he smiled and gave Marmalade a vigorous scratch behind the ears before shoving the cat out of his lap and going to gather his things.

  Thirteen

  “If they won’t talk to you, or you think they’re feeding you a line, bring them back to the station,” Sean said Monday morning, addressing his gathered officers. “Don’t cuff them unless they resist. We want to keep this friendly if we can, but we’ll see if a ride in a patrol car loosens their tongues a little.” He met the eyes of the officers, looking for questions. “Everyone understand?” he prompted and all the officers nodded. “Great! I don’t want you spending a lot of time on this, but if you happen to see a stray while on your regular patrols, let’s take the opportunity to try to learn something. Dismissed.”

  Sean watched his officers file out of the breakroom. He’d just told the seven to three-thirty shift what he wanted, and he’d give the same instructions to the three to eleven-thirty shift when they came on duty. Those were the two shifts where they’d likely find the homeless. He wasn’t even going to bother with the eleven to seven-thirty shift. Only the gas stations were open after midnight and it was unlikely anyone would be hanging around them that time of night.

  He’d pass the word again when the next group of officers rotated to the morning and afternoon shifts, but until then he’d done all he could. Now he’d wait and see if anything turned up. While he waited, he had plenty to do. The new file servers and printer had been delivered and he was still configuring them so when their new laptops arrived they would be ready to go. If he was lucky, the new PISTOL servers and laptops would arrive today. If they did, he could begin installing Microsoft Office365 and get the officers’ email working on their new computers.

  Because they were taking the base software configuration with no custom modification, PISTOL was able to ship the severs and laptops as soon as the software was loaded. If he could get all the installation and setup done before PISTOL arrived, they could begin training immediately. Also, if any of the equipment was DOA—Dead On Arrival—he wanted to know so they could get a replacement shipped right away.

  By the time the training crew from PISTOL arrived, he wanted to have the laptops on desks, the servers up and running, all the computers talking to each other, all the email and office programs installed, and all the dozens of other little details completed. He would use his computer as a guinea pig and then configure the remaining computers the same way. That would save them at least two days in the schedule and his officers could hit the ground running with all the tools they needed already at their fingertips after training.

  -oOo-

  Sean watched as the UPS driver brought the fourth and final load of computers into the conference room. Forty laptops, two servers, plus all the bits and pieces required to make it all work together, created a sizeable pile of boxes. The conference room wasn’t used often so it was the logical place to store the hardware until he could get it deployed.

  After he signed for the delivery and the driver left, he stood staring at the pile of boxes that occupied one entire corner of the conference room.

  As badly as his officers needed their new computers, he was going to stick to his original plan and install the servers first, and then setup his laptop for a systems test.

  The two server boxes were obvious because they were much larger than the others, but he needed to sort through the laptops and separate them into two piles—the regular ones for the office, and the ruggedized ones for the patrol cars. His officers might have to share offices, but he wasn’t going to make them share computers.

  He’d already muscled the two PISTOL servers into the server rack with the file servers, and was hooking up wires, when Officer Yates stuck his head into the dispatcher’s office.

  “Sean, I have someone here to talk to you.” Rowdy said.

  Robert Yates, Rowdy to his colleagues, a nickname he’d had for years as a homage to Clint Eastwood’s character in Rawhide, was in his mid-fifties. He’d joined the Brunswick Police Department after retiring from the Bryant, Arkansas, Police Department and relocating to North Carolina to be closer to his daughter and grandkids.

  He was a short, square man, with a bald head, a laid-back attitude, and an easy smile. When wearing his ballistic vest, he looked like he was five foot eight in height, width and depth. He and Will had both been considered for the police chief position when Bill had announced his retirement, but both had declined, claiming they didn’t want to deal with the responsibilities and headaches.

  Rowdy was a good cop. He came in, did his job, and went home without ever complaining.

  Sean straightened and wiped at his forehead. “Who is it?”

  “He calls himself Toejam. I picked him up at the Taco Bell.”

  “Staying at the North State buildings?”

  “Yeah, was.”

  That hadn’t taken long. “Let’s go see what Mr. Toejam has to say.”

  The moment Sean stepped into the station’s single interrogation room, he recognized the man, but he couldn’t remember where’d he seen him before.

  The man was terribly thin with a patchy beard, stringy, greasy hair, and a smell which suggested it had been more than a day or two since he’d made use of water and a bar of soap. He was wearing a shirt that was at least two sizes too big for him, frayed jeans, and red sneakers that were falling apart.

  “You go by Toejam?” Sean asked as he stepped into the room.

  “Who wants to know? I wasn’t doin’ nothin’! Why are you fucking with me?”

  “You were staying at the North State Textiles buildings?”

  “Don’t know where that is.”

  “The building we cleaned out and then caught fire.”

  “Why’d you do that? We wasn’t hurtin’ nobody there.”

  “Were you staying there?” Sean asked.

  “Why should I talk to you?”

  “I’m just looking for some information.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Rowdy’s face went hard but Sean gave Toejam a small smile. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and extracted a twenty and laid it on the table. Toejam looked at it with hungry eyes.

  “You want that?” Sean asked, nodding at the bill.

  “What do I have to do? You want a blowjob?”

  “Information. Tell me what you know and you can have it.”

  The derelict licked his lips then smiled. “What do you want to know?”

  The moment Toejam smiled, Sean remembered where’s he’d seen the man. The blackened and destroyed teeth were the dead giveaway. Officer Limbrose had found Toejam semi-responsive and wandering down the middle of Main Street looking for his, probably, non-existent dog a few months ago. The man had been combative and uncooperative, refused to obey commands or give them his name, and they’d had to resort to force. He had Paul tase the man before they strapped him to a stretcher and sent him to Brunswick’s small hospital for evaluation.

  “You know there’ve been two fires where you were staying, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Fuck no. Why would I burn down where I was staying?”

  “Know who did?”

 
“No.”

  Sean shook his head in disappointment as he pulled the twenty back and put it in his pocket.

  “I don’t know nothin’, man!”

  “Were you there for the first fire?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I only sleep there, or did until you fucks chased us out.”

  “Where are you staying now?’

  Toejam looked down.

  “Get him out of here,” Sean said, jerking his thumb at the door.

  “Wait! There’s an empty house in Tilley. The back door’s busted.”

  “Anybody staying there with you?”

  When the man didn’t answer Sean jerked his head at the door. Rowdy took Toejam by the arm and started to pull him to his feet.

  “I’m staying with Moons, okay?” Toejam said quickly.

  “Who’s Moons?”

  “Just some bitch I sometimes fuck. If I give her a hit, she’ll let me fuck her.”

  “Who else?”

  “Nobody! It’s our place.”

  “Know where anyone else who was staying at North State is holing up?”

  “No. There are plenty of places in Tilley and Abbeyville.”

  Sean looked at Rowdy as he thought.

  “Give me the names of the people who were sleeping at North State.”

  “Me, Mustang Sally, George, Clicks.” He paused a moment, clearly thinking. “Sometimes Hammer and Sketch were there, but not always.” He paused again. “I think that’s all. Sometimes someone else would crash there for the night, but nobody else regular.”

  “Not Moons?”

  “No. She didn’t like Clicks ‘cause he was always hassling her for a fuck.” He glanced between Sean and Rowdy. “That’s all I know. I didn’t do nothin’, okay. I didn’t set fire to the place. I served my country with the CIA in Nicaragua and you fuckin’ cops are always fucking with me. I’m a war hero, man! I’m a trained killer. An assassin. You should treat me with more respect! I don’t want to have to call the CIA and have them put a hit on you, but I could. I’ve had thousands of guys killed.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sean grunted.

  He pulled the twenty out of his pocket and tossed it on the table in front of the seated man. Toejam grabbed the bill with a grubby hand and stuffed it into a shirt pocket.

  “Get him out of here,” Sean ordered.

  Dropping the beggars and vagrants off at the city limits was easier and required less paperwork than arresting them on some minor charge such as trespassing, disorderly conduct, public intoxication or any one of a dozen other statutes designed to protect the public good. They often walked back into town, but sometimes, after three or four trips, they would leave and find a place more tolerant of their presence.

  “Okay, Mr. Deadly Ninja Killer, let’s go,” Rowdy said taking Toejam by the arm and hoisting him out of the chair.

  As Rowdy led Toejam out, Sean looked around. If the four or five people who had been staying at the North State Textiles building had scattered to the winds, as Toejam said, tracking them down wasn’t going to be easy, and they were outside his jurisdiction anyway.

  He took a deep breath and then shook his head slightly. Nothing was ever easy. He stepped out of the room, but left the door open. He was going to come back and spray the room with Lysol to kill the smell of Toejam and wipe down the stainless-steel chair he’d been sitting in with one of the high-powered disinfecting cleansers they used, just in case.

  After disinfecting the room, Sean returned to his task of setting up the servers and his new laptop. It was nearing the end of the day and he had Office365 installed and all his files copied from the ancient Windows XP desktop to his new laptop. The backup of his files to the network file server was in progress and he was working on getting his email setup. He was going to take his office laptop home with him and confirm he had remote access to his emails and PISTOL.

  Once he got that working, he’d start poking around in the PISTOL software, tweaking the software’s configuration. Because it was the same software they used in Boston, he was familiar with the program and knew, more or less, how he wanted it to work. Maybe he’d start a case file for The Mills at Brunswick arson as a pilot to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.

  He leaned back in his chair and watched as his email began to download from the city’s server. It was going to be so nice to be able to check his emails without having to come into the station, and doubly nice that he wouldn’t have to tote his personal laptop in and copy files back and forth to his office computer, just so he’d have something decent to work with.

  He’d been with Brunswick only six months, so it took only minutes for all his emails to download. He snapped the lid shut when Outlook announced it was finished, a satisfied smile tugging at his lips. Today had been a good day.

  “Terri, I’m outta here!” he said as he strode past the dispatcher’s office.

  “Have a good evening! Enjoy the fourth!” Terri replied with a cheerful wave and grin.

  “You too,” he replied with a wave over his shoulder.

  He tossed the two computers into the back seat of his car. He was going to make a stop at Fat2Fit for a quick workout, feed his cat, then he was going to join Maggie for dinner and probably a movie.

  He and Maggie were off tomorrow for Independence Day and he was looking forward to spending the day with her. He wasn’t a big fan of fireworks, but they were going to drive back into town and watch the annual fireworks show at the park because she wanted to see them.

  He was driving along, day dreaming and wondering if they could find a place to throw a blanket on the ground for the show, when he saw a drab green Jeep out of the corner of his eye.

  His head quickly snapped around and he confirmed it was the Jeep he’d tried to stop a couple of weeks before. Not only had it failed to stop for him, but Caswell had also tried to stop the vehicle with no success. Now his department was looking for the Jeep, and if they caught him, the driver was going to have a very bad day.

  Sean braked hard, flipped on his lights and siren, and after a short wait for a hole in the traffic, quickly turned in pursuit, using the intersection of a side street so he didn’t have to back up. The driver of the Jeep had obviously seen him turn on his strobes, knew he’d been seen, and had shot away. Sean buried the throttle of his Charger, the Dodge whooping and roaring as his screaming siren parted the traffic, but the Jeep was nowhere in sight.

  “Dammit!” he snarled, bouncing the meaty part of his hand off the steering wheel.

  He killed the wailing siren, but left his lights on as he continued, driving well above the speed limit but no longer pushing it, looking this way and that down the cross streets. After another mile, he turned off his lights.

  He ground his teeth in frustration. The driver of the Jeep was mocking them. Three attempted stops and three failures. With no plate on the Jeep, and the driver wearing a helmet, they had no way to identify the driver, and probable owner. The Jeep was far faster than their police cars and it was now clear a single officer wasn’t going to be able to perform a stop.

  Sean sucked on his teeth as he turned around and started back to Fat2Fit. Alright, he thought to himself. If that’s the way you want to play it, that’s the way we’ll play it.

  Fourteen

  Sean groaned quietly as he stretched, slowly blinking his eyes as the darkness of sleep gave way to the ruddy glow of early morning light. He took a deep breath and sighed as he rolled to his side and snuggled up to the warm softness sharing the bed. Eyes still closed, he carefully slid his right arm under Maggie’s pillow as he pulled her close with his left, tucking his knees in behind hers in a spoon. He sighed deeply and then kissed her softly on the shoulder as her soft, rhythmic, breathing began to lull him back to sleep. As sleep began to take him again, his mind wandered aimlessly, thoughts rising unbidden.

  For dinner last night, Maggie had thrown together a cold salad made with mayonnaise, lemon juice, celery and shrimp, served on a shallow
bed of lettuce in a hot dog bun. It had been delicious and he especially liked the fact it was served cold. It was just what he wanted after working out at the gym.

  Because they didn’t have to get up for work, after dinner, they’d settled in her family room and watched a double feature of The Wave and Beauty and the Beast. Both movies were foreign language, and he’d rolled his eyes when Maggie insisted the only way to watch a foreign language film was with subtitles.

  He didn’t care enough to argue. It took him a little while to get into The Wave, since he found the subtitles distracting, but by the one hour mark he’d adjusted and then had enjoyed both movies. He could check another item off his bucket list—watching a foreign language film in its original language.

  The story of Belle and the Beast must have put Maggie in a romantic mood because afterwards they’d gone to bed and spent a very enjoyable couple of hours giving and receiving pleasure.

  Today he was going to grill steaks, chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers, corn on the cob, and a recipe Maggie found on the internet called Grilled Potato Salad. It was far more food than they could even attempt to eat, but it would serve for leftovers over the next few days.

  He sighed again and snuggled in a little closer, his eyes closed in the relaxed calm of half-sleep. That was for later. Right now, he was perfectly content to lie in Maggie’s bed with her in his arms and enjoy the quiet coolness of early morning.

  He jerked awake, Maggie stirring in his arms pulling back the fog of sleep. He felt like he’d just dropped off, but the red glow through the bedroom window had been replaced with bright sunshine, so obviously he’d slept longer than he thought.

  “Morning…” she mumbled, rolling over and offering him her lips.

  He took them in a long lazy kiss. “Morning,” he whispered as their lips parted.