Fireproof (30 page)

Maggie hadn’t known about the back door. She watched Kunze. She was used to seeing him angry, but there was something different tonight, emotion she didn’t recognize. He appeared shaken by these latest deaths.

“There was an eighteen-month-old child,” Kunze said quietly. “My ass is so going to get kicked when this hits the news.” He looked up at the two of them. “And so are both of yours if you don’t catch this bastard.”

In the security camera outside her front door Maggie watched the woman fidgeting on the portico. Her first reaction was that at least this time Samantha Ramirez had decided to come to the front of the house instead of the back.

“I know I should have called first, but I didn’t think you’d agree to see me.” Ramirez blurted it so quickly a slight Spanish accent slipped out.

“What makes you think I will now?” Maggie blocked the open doorway while Ramirez continued to shift from one foot to the other.

“Because I have something I think you’ll want to see.” She opened the flap of her shoulder bag to show Maggie the camera inside. “I need to run the footage for you to take a look. It’s from the warehouse fires.”

“What’s going on?” Patrick asked from behind Maggie.

At the sound of his voice she noticed Ramirez’s demeanor changed. At first Maggie thought the woman was disappointed she didn’t catch Maggie alone. But at second glance she saw that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t disappointment that had suddenly struck
Ramirez and dismantled her composure, but rather what plainly looked like a physical attraction to Patrick—an attraction that caught Ramirez off guard so much she hadn’t been able to control her reaction.

Maggie glanced back at Patrick. His hair was dripping. He must have jumped out of the shower to come to her defense. All he had on was a towel around his waist. She tamped down the urge to roll her eyes, but couldn’t stop a smile. No wonder Ramirez was blushing.

“Everything’s fine,” Maggie told him. “Ms. Ramirez has something she needs to show me at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning.”

“Actually Patrick may want to see this, too.”

Maggie stepped aside and waved Ramirez inside, enjoying her obvious discomfort as she passed by Patrick.

“Let me grab some clothes.” And he disappeared down the hallway.

“I thought Agent Tully already went over the footage from the warehouse fires?”

“We stopped when he found the man with the red backpack.”

Without waiting for permission, Ramirez started unloading the camera, adapter, cords, and cables.

“Agent Tully didn’t ask to see any more after that. But I noticed something.”

She stopped herself. Looked up at Maggie. Her eyes flicked to Patrick, who had returned, now wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. She quickly looked back to Maggie.

“Actually I noticed
someone
in the crowd. He wasn’t there until after the second blast.”

She pointed at Maggie’s television. “If I can plug it into your TV we’ll have a much better and bigger view.”

“Here, I can help you with that.” Patrick slipped past Maggie and held out a hand for the cable.

Maggie stood back and watched the two of them. She admitted electronic gadgets baffled her, but these two knew exactly what they were doing. And now she saw that the attraction went both ways—a graze of a hand, eyes trying to avoid but stealing quick glances.

Without warning she thought about Ben. She certainly understood that uncontrollable physical reaction. Her body wanted what her mind told her she couldn’t have. Telling herself that she couldn’t have Ben only made her want him more. Would she ever get it right? Would she ever fall for a man who was emotionally available at the same time that she was emotionally available?

Patrick turned on the TV. Ramirez pressed some buttons on the camera and suddenly the blaze from the other night filled the big screen.

“This is right after the second blast.”

Ramirez had swept the shaky camera across the grounds in front of her. She must have just been getting up off the ground. Maggie recognized Tully on his hands and knees, Racine beside him. And to his left she realized she was looking at herself. She hardly recognized the woman lying facedown, flat on the ground, pulling herself up onto her elbows. Back behind them was the perfect shot of the second building engulfed in flames. Ramirez couldn’t have positioned herself better without planning it.

“Watch carefully. He’ll be up on the far left of the screen.”

The image jerked around again. Ground then sky, like an airplane nose-diving before pulling up.

“I was a bit unsteady on my feet,” Ramirez apologized. “It gets better.”

The camera moved off Maggie, following Racine, who was on her feet and rushing to help a group of people beyond the crime scene tape. Several were still sprawled on the ground.

The camera paused on them, then continued tracking. In the background Maggie could hear a low voice—Jeffery Cole narrating the scene, frame by frame. Ramirez had turned down the sound.

The camera’s view swung back a little farther, taking in the crowd gathering on the sidewalk across the street. It panned the length of them, and halfway through Ramirez punched a button and froze the image. She put the camera down and walked to the left side of the television.

“Right here.” She pointed at a man standing in the middle of the crowd, hands in his pockets, face expressionless. On the screen the image was big enough and focused enough to recognize, and although Maggie thought he looked familiar she couldn’t place him.

Ramirez, however, wasn’t interested in Maggie’s reaction. Instead she was looking at Patrick.

“Who is he?” she finally asked.

“Wes Harper,” Patrick told her. “My partner.”

And suddenly Maggie became interested. She walked across the living room to stand in front of the television, taking in as much of Wes Harper as she could.

“It’s probably no big deal,” Patrick said. “He told me he likes to go watch other fires.”

“Watch them?” Sam said. “Isn’t that a little weird?”

“Tell me about him,” Maggie asked Patrick without taking her eyes from the big screen.

“I really don’t know him that well.”

“But you spend a lot of time together. Is he married?”

“No.”

There was something about the delivery of his “no” that made Maggie glance at her brother. He was staring at the screen, too, but to avoid her eyes.

“What is it?”

“He asked about you. It felt a little weird.”

“About my being an FBI agent?”

“No. About whether or not you were married. He’s a player. He likes women.”

She could see he was uncomfortable talking about this with her. “What exactly does that mean?”

It was Ramirez who answered. “It means every woman he meets he thinks about screwing her.”

“Did he hit on you?” Patrick wanted to know.

“I can take care of myself.”

Maggie studied the man. Ramirez had left the film frozen on an excellent view of Wes Harper. While others around him displayed that wide-eyed look of shock and awe—one with a furrowed brow, another held a hand over her mouth, still another bent over with hands on his knees—Harper stood straight, hands in his pockets and a placid, almost content look on his face.

He looked to be in his thirties, square jaw, medium height, thick-chested, and muscular. He wore trousers, not jeans, and a nice jacket. Maggie stepped closer to examine the logo on the pocket.

“Is that a Members Only jacket?”

“Yeah, he loves that jacket.” Patrick came up beside her. “I
don’t know how many times he’s told me that the company’s tagline was stolen by a condom manufacturer. Laughs every time he tells me. Thinks it’s pretty cool.”

“What’s the tagline?”

Patrick hesitated, uncomfortable again. “ ‘When you put it on something happens.’ ”

“Does he have a degree in fire science?”

“He started a program but said it was lame. Quit after a year.”

“The other night he was telling Jeffery and me what fire does to a body,” Ramirez said, and Maggie could see the woman was uncomfortable even with the memory of this. “He seemed to take great pleasure in describing it. It was almost like he had seen it himself and …”

“And what?” Maggie asked.

“And that he enjoyed watching a body burn.”

Maggie pulled out her cell phone as she told Patrick, “I need you to tell me everything you can think of about Wes Harper.” Then she punched in Racine’s number.

“Hey, I was just getting ready to call you,” Racine answered. “Virginia State Patrol just located Gloria Dobson’s SUV.”

Maggie was surprised to find the rest area backed to woods. No meadow or pasture with the funky yellow weed that Ganza had found. But it did look like a place deer would frequent.

She and Tully had made the hour-and-a-half drive while Racine put out another alert on Dobson’s travel partner, Zach Lester. She also had started a background check on Wes Harper. Maggie had to stop Racine from bringing Harper in for questioning, telling the detective, “We don’t have enough and you don’t want to tip him off.”

They parked at the far end of the rest area and got out to walk.

“The State Patrol already towed the car to their crime lab,” Tully told her. “I’m not sure what else we’ll find.”

“He had to have taken her from here. It’s a crime scene.”

“The car may have been the only crime scene.”

Maggie stood on the edge of the sidewalk and took a good look around. Down here she could barely hear the interstate traffic. The exit divided cars from trucks right before they drove down into the rest area surrounded by beautiful and remote woods.
Even the brick building with the restrooms was nestled in the trees. Well-kept sidewalks meandered all around, leading separate paths from up above where the trucks parked. She could hear the faint hum of their engines running. Through the trees she could see only five semitrailers occupied the area that, by Maggie’s estimate, could accommodate at least a dozen big rigs comfortably. She also noted that there were mulched trails leading into the woods.

“If it was her coworker, Zach Lester, why leave her car behind?” Maggie asked. “And how did he take her to the District?”

“Maybe he has an accomplice.”

“So they meet out here?”

“Or he called him. It’s possible. Might explain why the car doesn’t show any sign of a struggle inside. The State Patrol will be able to tell us if her car had been tampered with. He could have done something to it. Made her believe they were stranded.”

“So where did he take her to bash her face in? He couldn’t have done all that in a vehicle. Ganza found deer hair and weeds attached to her clothing. Dr. Ling made it sound like the killer used a large, heavy weapon.”

“If he had another vehicle or an accomplice, he could have taken her anywhere.” Tully was watching Maggie instead of studying the surroundings. “But you’re thinking it was here.”

“Just a gut instinct. I expected it to be secluded like this, but with an open field somewhere close by.”

“Because of Ganza’s weed?”