Firebreak: A Mystery (6 page)

She stopped the jeep and they got out of the car, saying little. It was obvious the fire trucks hadn’t reached the home. No sloppy wet ash surrounded the house. It appeared the fire had burned hot and strong, and then had died out without taking the entire house. Josie knew Doug would take the loss hard. He thought the firebreak had been a complete success, and yet this fire on the wrong side of the break had been extremely intense.

Josie looked at Otto. He stood with his hands on his hips, looking perplexed at the jagged hole in the house.

“Looks odd, doesn’t it?” she said.

“Looks like somebody blew a hole through there.” He turned and looked around as if searching for something. “No sign of a propane tank, or something that could have caused an explosion.”

Josie hollered several times and they listened for a response from someone who might be in the house and injured, but they heard nothing.

They split up to walk around opposite sides of the house, keeping their distance from the blackened interior. The smell was horrible, like a trash fire but more acrid. Around the back of the house Josie found a wooden picnic table charred and still smoking. She felt the metal back door for heat. It was warm, but not too hot to touch. Josie put on a pair of latex gloves she kept in her back pocket and tried to open the back door, but it was locked. There were no cars behind the house. She wondered if the truck out front was dead and they’d had to leave it behind. She was hopeful the Nixes had heeded the warnings and evacuated.

Otto met up with her behind the house and gestured beyond, to the rolling hills that stretched out as far as the eye could see. “The burned scrub brush disappears down into that ravine. From here, it looks like the fire spread maybe another two or three acres and fizzled out.”

They walked back around to the front of the house and stood in the road directly in front of the property, appraising the damage, trying to understand the path of the fire.

Josie pulled her cell phone from her breast pocket and called Doug.

“This is Josie. You have a second?”

“I’m on the fire line, but go ahead.”

His voice was loud and she heard commotion in the background so she made it quick.

“We’re on Prentice Canyon Road, on the western edge of the fire. You know where Billy and Brenda Nix live?”

“Yes.”

“Their house burned. It’s about half gone. Do you know if you had any guys working their house?”

“That house isn’t one of the eighteen I talked about. I didn’t know it burned.”

“Okay. I know you’re on the line. Give me a call later when you have a minute.”

“Will do. I’ll check it out later today.”

Josie put her phone back in her pocket and turned back to stare at the house again with Otto. “So the house burned like hell, and then the fire went out on its own.”

“Appears that way,” he said.

“Look here,” Otto said. He was pointing behind them, to the edge of the road. “There’s tire tracks in the ash.” He pointed to where tires must have spun out and threw gravel as a vehicle took off.

“Probably some gawker driving by. They pulled off and stopped to look at the damage. The tire tracks are on top of the ash.”

He nodded. “Could have been this morning even.” He took his camera from his pocket and snapped several photographs at different angles and distances.

“You think Doug can look at the house, the burning trees, what might be burning inside, to determine when the fire started?” she said.

“Problem will be pulling him off the fire,” Otto said. “Let’s see how close we can get to the inside of the house.”

Josie and Otto were both wearing rubber boots over their police shoes to protect the soles from hot embers. They both walked slowly, carefully examining the ground outside the home, and around the opening in the house, for footprints or signs of foul play. A concrete pad, probably used as a front porch, stretched about fifteen feet, from the left side of the front door to the right side of where the living room window once was. Shards of glass covered the concrete and the floor inside the living room. The wood siding on this part of the house burned down to the foundation, and the fire had reached up into the rafters. A ten-foot-wide hole provided access to the room, but they were reluctant to enter the structure because of the roof damage.

Isolated trails of smoke drifted up from charred pieces of siding and smoldering furniture inside the house. Otto pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and placed it over his mouth and nose. Josie heard him mumble something into his hand. The smell of burnt wood and fiber and man-made belongings was overpowering and Josie felt her stomach cramping.

From where Josie stood on the concrete pad, she could see the layout of the living room: square in shape, modestly furnished with a couch and loveseat. To the left of the hole, the front door opened up into a small tiled entryway with a coat closet and a hallway, most likely leading to bedrooms. The hallway appeared largely undamaged by the fire.

The furniture faced an entertainment center on the wall opposite where Josie stood looking through the hole. The center held a large flat-screen TV and a great deal of electronic stereo equipment. The shapes were still visible, but the equipment was severely burned and melted.

To the left of the entertainment center was a wide doorway that led from the living room into what appeared to be a dining room. That room had been burned, but the walls were still intact and structurally it was in slightly better shape than the living room, but that wasn’t saying much.

“It’s a complete loss,” Otto said, still talking into the handkerchief.

Josie stepped gingerly into the living room, testing the floor to make sure it would hold her weight.

“I don’t think you ought to go in there until Doug takes a look.”

“I just want to get down the hallway if I can. Make sure there’s no one inside. If the floor feels soft I won’t go on.”

Now that she was inside, Josie turned to check out the living room one last time. She had a better view of the couch now and took a deep breath, stunned at what she saw.

SIX

Dell stood at the end of his bed and laid a pair of dark slacks on the blanket. They were navy blue with a crease down the middle of each leg. He’d not had a crease in a pair of pants in thirty years. He didn’t even think pants had creases in them anymore. It seemed like a ludicrous waste of time.

He walked to his closet and opened the sliding door. Three new button-down shirts hung on hangers, still stiff from the plastic packaging he’d unwrapped them from. He sighed, pulled one out, and laid it on the bed, too. He dug around in the hall closet until he found an iron he kept in its original box. He ironed the fold creases out of the shirt and moved on to his cowboy boots. It had been a while since he’d cleaned them, and they were showing their wear. He found the saddle oil to rub out the dirt, and then conditioned them.

After a quick shower, he stood in front of the steamy bathroom mirror to shave, something he typically did about once a week—once a month when he forgot. This was the third time this week he’d shaved, and it was grating on his nerves. By the time he’d dressed and was ready to go, the entire process had taken almost an hour. This is what females did to men, he thought. They turned them into sissies.

Dell drove his pickup thirty minutes to Presidio and parked in front of Lou Ellen Macey’s house, located behind the mammoth stained-glass-clad Our Lady of the Angels Catholic church. Dell walked past the brick rectory to the little house behind it that Lou Ellen rented from the Church. Apparently that gave the priest, a man in his early thirties, the right to snoop around in her private life, or Lou Ellen just freely gave away her private life to the priest—either way it made Dell uncomfortable. He didn’t share his business with anyone. He had lifted his hand to ring her doorbell when he heard his name being called from behind him. He turned to find Father Paul standing in a bed of thorny red roses, watering them with a garden hose. He waved cheerfully, and Dell tipped his hat.

Lou Ellen opened the door wearing a flowered skirt and a light pink blouse. He had to admit, she was a fine-looking woman, slim and smelling like soap and vanilla, with her white hair fixed and her teeth shiny. He’d met her a few weeks ago at the Texas Tractor Implements store where she worked as a clerk. She’d had to help him order a part for his tractor. It had taken three visits to the store before he finally got the part he actually needed. On the last visit she offered to buy him a cup of coffee for all the trouble he’d been through. He’d been so shocked that he’d not been able to say no. He’d been even more shocked four times since when she’d suggested new outings, and he’d simply agreed to the arrangements for lack of a better response.

This afternoon he was taking her to a musical being performed by someone she knew, or someone she wanted to know, or some such thing. He had no interest whatsoever in musicals of any sort and he’d begun to wonder what he’d gotten himself into. Except she smelled like soap and vanilla, a smell more intoxicating than he wanted to admit.

*   *   *

“Otto. We got a problem,” Josie said.

He stepped up to the edge of the living room, but remained outside on the concrete pad. “What’s wrong?”

Josie turned her head away from the couch, sickened. “There’s a body. Looks like a male. He’s burnt up bad.” She heard Otto exhale and saw him rub his hands over his face. There was nothing more horrendous to see than a body burned in a fire.

“Billy Nix?”

Josie forced herself to look again. “The face is unrecognizable.”

“I thought we’d dodged the bullet. No fatalities.” Otto started to step inside the house and took his leg back out. “You’re sure this floor will hold my weight?”

She peered down at the floor and bounced on her toes, checking the give in the floor. She walked slowly toward the loveseat and stood behind it, as if it provided some measure of protection from the grotesque body on the couch. “I don’t feel any give. I think it’s okay.” She glanced up at the ceiling where the rafters were burned. “The fire burned all the way through the roof. You can see daylight.”

He frowned. “I think you’d better get out of there until we find out if it’s safe.”

“It’s a smoldering house, Otto. We need to get details logged before we lose them.”

“Not if it means a house falling in on us!” He beckoned with his hand for Josie to come outside. “Call Doug. Have him get the fire marshal down here to start an investigation. I’ll call the coroner.”

Josie started toward the opening in the living room wall and stopped next to the body. She looked at Otto for a moment. “If you were in your living room, and it caught fire, what would you do?”

He smirked, refusing to answer what appeared to be a stupid question.

“Let’s say something inside your house exploded even, and caught your house on fire, what would you do?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“I’d get out.”

“How would you get out?”

He stared at her.

“What do they teach every kid in school about a fire?”

Otto finally caught on. “Stop, drop, and roll.”

She pointed at the couch. “Billy Nix, or whoever this is, is lying on his back on the couch. His hands are curled up around his head like he’s trying to shield his face. Wouldn’t he have rolled off the couch, onto the floor, tried to crawl out?”

“But if there was an explosion he wouldn’t have had time.”

She shook her head. “No explosion. Something burned through this part of the house. Look at the furniture in the living room.” She walked out of the house and stood with Otto, looking back inside. “The couch, with its back facing us, is still intact. It’s burned, the fabric melted, but not like it was blown away from an exploding living room wall. And, it’s directly in front of where the outside of the house seems to have been burnt first.”

“As if somebody put gas or an accelerant on the house and torched it,” he said. “Which would have given Billy Nix ample opportunity to get off the couch to safety.”

“Unless he was already dead.”

*   *   *

Josie cleared the rest of the house for other possible victims. She found it odd that Billy would have stayed behind during the evacuation and his wife would have left. She thought of them as a team.

After completing an initial sweep of each of the remaining rooms, she and Otto stood near the road where the stench wasn’t as strong in order to make their phone calls. She called Lou Hagerty, first-shift dispatcher at the PD, and asked her to begin the process of tracking down the Nixes. Josie instructed Lou to find them, but to provide no information. Josie wanted to talk with them first. Otto had also called Mitchell Cowan, the county coroner, who was on his way.

Almost an hour after Josie left a message for Doug about the body, her phone rang again. She explained the details they had discovered and their suspicions.

“Where did you find him again?” Doug asked.

“He’s lying on the couch, on his back. His arms clenched up with his fists around his face. Maybe in fear?”

“If he was afraid why wouldn’t he get out, at least try and crawl to safety?”

“That’s just what we thought. We’re assuming he was already dead when the house burned, but Cowan’s on his way. We’ll get the autopsy started unless we need to wait for the fire marshal.”

“No, that’s partly what took so long to call you back. I talked to him. He’s in Odessa, covered up right now with all the wildfires in the area. It’ll be at least tomorrow before he can get here. He asked if I would step in. You okay with that?”

“Absolutely,” she said, grateful for the help. She knew very little about fire damage, and she’d never worked a fire investigation for a possible homicide. Those investigations were turned over to the state fire marshal. The local police typically had little involvement.

“When can you get here?”

She heard him cover the mouthpiece on his phone to talk with someone. He finally came back and said, “I’m on my way.”

Josie received a call from Lou stating that she’d not been able to reach either of the Nixes by phone. Josie gave Lou the names of several additional people to call who might know their whereabouts, and asked Lou to text her a list of phone numbers and contacts that Josie would be needing.