“Windows or doors open?” Gideon asked.
“No. All closed and locked,” Becca said.
“Any witnesses?” Gideon asked.
“My partner is knocking on doors as we speak. So far, he’s come up empty. Weather was cold and everyone had burrowed in—closed curtains, TVs, and such.”
She knelt in front of Dan, seeing hints of the guy who had once been attractive before a decade of long hours, no exercise, and a poor diet. She looked at the side table and noted there was also antibiotic cream and discarded gauze-bandage packages. In the trash were wads of more bloody paper towels.
“He was hurt recently.” Joan touched his thigh and felt the raised edge of a bandage under the sweats.
“I know he could be an ass, but why kill him?” Becca asked.
“Gambling, drugs, a pissed-off neighbor,” she said.
Gideon kept his comments to himself, but Joan sensed he was still mulling what she had said about Clarke.
Whoever had gotten into Dan’s home had killed him without leaving any signs of forced entry or signs of a struggle. This guy was strong and prepared.
Gideon and Joan left the house and paused to speak to Dan’s girlfriend, Nora. She had changed out of her uniform into a snug-fitting blue T-shirt, fur-trimmed blue jacket, and jeans.
Gideon tapped on the window and then opened the door. She rose, sniffed, and glanced toward the house as if it were a house of horrors.
“When did you stop by?” he asked.
“About an hour ago. We were supposed to eat pizza and drink beer and stuff.”
“I thought he was at your mother’s,” Gideon said.
“No. He asked me to tell people that. He wasn’t feeling well.”
“Looks like he was hurt,” Gideon said. “Do you know how?”
“He said it was an accident. Said he cut it on a barbed-wire fence he was fixing.”
“Did you see anything when you arrived?” Gideon asked.
“I used my key to get in. The TV was on, the room was dark, and I saw him in the chair. When I walked up and saw the plastic bag, I freaked.” Nora shook her head. “I called 9-1-1.”
“What did Dan think of Elijah?” Gideon asked.
“Hated him. Especially after the beauty shop burned. It dredged up bad memories of his truck. He thought his diner was going to be next.”
“Did you hear Elijah was beaten up?” Joan asked.
“Yeah, I heard, but what does that have to do with this?”
“Did Dan decide to give Elijah a reason to leave town?” Joan asked.
“He wouldn’t do that,” Nora said.
“Why not?” Gideon pressed.
“Dan’s all talk. He makes a big fuss but never follows through.”
“Maybe he decided this time was going to be different,” she said.
“No.” She shook her head, causing hoop earrings to tangle in her hair. “That’s not Dan.”
“Was there anyone who didn’t like Dan?” Gideon asked.
“He got along with most folks,” she said. “He just didn’t like having criminals living in a town full of good folks.”
“Did Dan know Lana Long well?”
“Like I told you before, he knew her from the diner. She wasn’t here long enough for most people to get a chance to know her.” Nora shifted her stance, as if working the warmth back into her limbs. “Is that all you got for me? I’m tired and want to go home. You know how to find me if you need me.”
“Sure,” Gideon said.
They watched as Nora slid behind the wheel of her red pickup truck and drove off.
“Elijah has broken ribs,” Joan said. “Suffocating a guy like Dan would be really painful.”
“Elijah could have surprised him. Dan could have been dozing in his chair. And you saw the bandages. Maybe he’d taken a few painkillers with those beers. Bag slips over Dan’s head, and before he realizes what’s happening, it’s lights out.”
Joan wanted to believe Elijah had not done this, but wanting and knowing were two different things.
A uniformed police officer approached Becca, the two talked, and then she approached them.
“No one has seen anything so far,” she said.
“Whoever did this must have left something behind,” Gideon said. “They always do.”
Gideon and Joan again fell into silence as he drove them back to his ranch. Joan had made a logical argument, but it was so outrageous. Clarke an arsonist. Until a DNA test came back proving Clarke had fathered Lana’s fetus, Gideon would reserve judgment.
The more time he spent with Joan, the more aware he became of her. The curve of her neck. The way she tapped her thumb and index finger together when she was thinking.
He slowed as they approached his driveway and passed under the double-B brand. As they grew closer to the house, he was tempted to slow-walk his approach so they could spend a little more time together. She was a puzzle he had not cracked.
“Home sweet home.” Bitterness dripped from her words.
“Why do you say it that way?”
She shook her head. “Just being sarcastic.”
“Say what you mean, Joan.”
The heater blew gently on her face, teasing the edges of her bangs. She moistened her lips, making them glisten. As he looked at her face, he was tempted to kiss her and see if she still tasted the same. Still, he was smart enough to know some territories were better undiscovered.
“I’ve got to get back to Philadelphia. My union rep and boss want a meeting next week. Rep says I’ll be back on the job soon, though it’ll be desk duty for a while.”
“That’s what you want, right?”
“That’s where I’m headed.”
“Then why the ‘Home sweet home’ comment?”
“Because there’s no such thing. No place feels like home. It’s all temporary.”
“That’s up to you. You can put down roots anywhere you want.”
She turned toward him. For once, her frown was gone, as if she had released a secret that had been weighing her down. “I once thought I could live out here. Then I realized it’s no different from back east.”
Gideon was so rooted in the Montana soil that he doubted he could ever break its tethers. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I can’t imagine.”
“That’s what drew me to you back in college. It was a certainty that you knew where you belonged. You never questioned it.”
“Is that the only reason you went out on that first date with me?” he asked, feigning surprise.
A small smile tipped the edges of her lips. “You also had a nice ass.”
He laughed. “Hopefully I’ve not lost my girlish figure.”
“No. You still got game.” For a moment, they locked gazes, and he was so tempted to brush the strands of hair off her forehead. Her body was rigid, as if she could not decide whether to stay or go. He waited, knowing she wanted to invite him up to that little apartment.
She parked, reached for the door handle, and opened it. Cold air rushed into the cab. “You need to stay on top of Clarke.”
“I hear you.”
Gideon watched her walk toward the house, hoping she would turn back and beckon him. Foolish to think she would suddenly reconsider. If whatever had joined them in the past was not enough to make her stick around, a short trip would not do it now.
She vanished into the garage, the lights in the stairwell soon turning on. He pictured her lingering by the door, kicking herself for not being with him. That image was enough to give him hope to wait another beat.
But she never came back out the door.
He parked and tried to picture Clarke setting fires for money and killing women, one of whom might be carrying his child. It was an outrageous theory.
Inside the house, he hung up his coat, his attention shifting to a picture taken of Clarke, Nate, Kyle, and himself. They had been fishing back in June. As he stared at father and son side by side, he saw the differences more than the similarities now. “Shit.”
He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and sat at his home office computer. He twisted off the bottle top and took a pull as he thought back to the trips Clarke had taken to various fire-training conferences around the country in recent years. There’d been one in San Diego, California, and another in Washington, DC. Next he searched for fires in those areas matching the time frame. Nothing came up.
He refined the search, digging into news reports in the outlying counties. After an hour of reading local crime reports around San Diego, he found articles detailing several shelter fires at a park thirty miles east of the city. The fires could have been caused by anyone. He read down three paragraphs into one article and noted the fires had been started with a cup full of gasoline. The heavy-duty plastic had melted, and whatever the arsonist had used as a wick had vanished in the flames.
He shifted his attention to the DC metro area. Another forty-five minutes of reading and he discovered a series of dumpster fires in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The site was less than an hour south of Clarke’s conference and easily reached off I-95 South.
Gideon sat back, rubbing his eyes. Though two fires had aligned with Clarke’s travel schedule, that did not mean there was enough evidence to request a DNA test on Clarke.