The Devil's Snare: a Mystery Suspense Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 4) (2 page)

He fell off the couch and onto the floor, sending his laptop flying in a promising, destructive crash across the expanse of his living room. Instinctively, he shot his right hand backwards in a feeble attempt to protect his backside from any additional damage. When he drew his hand back, it was covered with blood. The pain, always a few beats behind a surprise injury, arrived on-scene.

“Sonofabitch!” Bo screamed. Another hand check revealed the bleeding was heavy and, though the thought of bleeding to death because of an ass puncture didn’t cross his mind, he knew getting the wound dressed and covered was his first course of action. Finding out what the hell was in his couch—and what had been briefly in his right ass cheek—would have to wait.

Being a level two Emergency Medical Technician, Bo not only knew a thing or two about cleaning and bandaging a wound, but he also had the medical supplies needed to get the job done correctly. Five minutes after his ass cheek was punctured, his wound was cleaned, closed with six butterfly bandages, disinfected and covered with sterile three by three gauze and bandages. It hurt like hell, but Bo was confident that unless whatever had violated his body was laced with some slow acting poison or bacteria, his butt would make a full recovery.

He tossed the remaining medical supplies into his EMT jump bag—the faded and cracked white letters on the outside of the bag reading “Ravenswood Medical Services”—back into the corner of his bedroom, then he walked over to inspect the couch. His fast reactions spared his couch from getting too much blood on it, but the puddle of his blood on the hardwood flooring in front of the couch and the trail of blood drops leading away from the couch demanded to be cleaned before any stains could settle in.
 

“Damn,” he said as he limped to his kitchen to retrieve a roll of paper towels and a bleach-water mix he kept handy in a spray bottle in the kitchen beneath the kitchen sink. Getting down on all fours was painful for Bo, so once he was done and finished cleaning and disinfecting the largest pool of his blood, his stayed on his knees to clean up the blood trail that led from the couch to his bedroom.

Once his blood was cleaned up, Bo stood, then walked to the couch. He removed the middle seat cushion and saw what had recently been sticking into his butt cheek: A three inch long, folding Buck knife. It was clear the knife had been positioned to deliver a surprise to whomever sat on the couch; a thin stretch of duct tape was holding it upright tight to the cushion on the left side of the couch.

“What the hell?” Bo said. He took a closer look at the Buck, knew it wasn’t his, then saw a small piece of folded paper sticking out between the knife and the cushion. Careful not to touch the knife so as to keep whatever fingerprints the authorities might be able to lift off the blade undisturbed, he pulled out and unfolded the note. Holding the note by its edges, Bo opened it, and read:

“Just another pain in the ass for you, Mr. Randall. Play with knives and you will get cut. Play with matches and you will get burned.”

The note was signed,
“A fan of your work.”

The local sheriff’s department dispatched two deputies to Bo’s house. Both were friends of Bo’s and neither spared Bo’s feelings when they learned where he was injured.

“An inch or two more towards the middle and you’d be paying for a proctologist’s kid’s college education,” one of the deputies joked.

“Funny,” Bo said. “Why don’t you take a load off and have a seat?” he said, gesturing to the couch.

“Thanks anyways, but I’m not a fan of anything entering my ass.”

“Not what the boys downtown say about you,” Bo quipped.

After a few more rounds of testosterone-induced ball breaking, the deputies snapped numerous pictures of the knife, the couch and, much to his chagrin, Bo’s wound.

“These pictures had better not show up in the slide show at the Fireman’s Ball next December,” Bo said.

“Why not?” the other deputy asked. “What I’m hearing is you’re the odds on favorite to win the election for the Chief’s position.”

“Meaning?” Bo asked.

“Meaning the cut in your ass is a great demonstration of what you’re going to be for the firefighters down at the station: An ugly, sore, pain in the ass.”

Bo said, “Kevin, I hope your house never catches fire. Because if it does, I have a strong feeling we’re going to have a problem with our pumper truck.”

“That pumper was really working hard last night, huh?” The other deputy, whose name was Ken, asked.

“What are you talking about?” Bo said.

“Serious, Bo? You’re not being serious.”

Bo said as a look of confusion and worry danced across his face, “I am being serious. What happened last night?”

“Damn, Bo,” Kevin said, “where the hell were you last night?”

“Got into some drinking out at Route Sixty-Nine,” Bo replied. “What the hell happened that the pumper was toned out?”

“Structure fire up on Morris Road. You serious about not knowing what happened?”

“Which house? Not Brian Mack’s?”Ken said, “Wow Bo, I’m thought you knew. It was Mack’s house. He and his mother didn’t make it out. I can’t believe you weren’t there or that someone didn’t at least call you a hundred times to tell you.”

“I lost my phone, or left it somewhere. Holy shit. Mack and his mom were killed?

“Mack never made it out of his bedroom,” Kevin said. “His mom, bless her heart, was found a few feet from the kitchen door. Looks like she was trying to get out when the smoke took her. Jesus, Bo, how drunk did you have to be to not know anything happened?”

Bo said, “Drunk enough, I guess.”

Bo joined the Ravenswood Fire Department on his eighteenth birthday. Back then, it was an all-volunteer department but as the Ravenswood community grew, so, too, did the demands it placed on the fire department. What began in 1953 as a single-truck all-volunteer department, had grown into a half-volunteer, half-paid fire department with two fire stations.
 
Each station had an EMS Rescue truck, a Sutphen-made ariel ladder truck and a Pierce custom-made pumper.
 

Holding the position of Line Captain, Bo Randall was still considered a volunteer, meaning he received a stipend of seven thousand dollars per year, was obligated to respond to only fifteen percent of all emergency calls, and had no supervisory status over the fifteen paid fire fighters.

Until the tones went off.

During an emergency response, Bo, the three other captains, four lieutenants, two assistant chiefs, one deputy chief and the fire department chief, were fully in charge of all responding personnel. The ranking officer on-scene was in charge of command, whether the responding members were paid or volunteers. When Bo was the in-charge officer, emergency scenes were flawlessly executed. Each responding member knew their assigned task, knew which squad they were assigned to, which attack team or scene support team they would be a part of, and all knew who was calling the shots.

It was surprising to some of the longer term members when Bo was promoted to captain. He had only been in the department for nine years, and while he completed the New York State Firefighter I, II, and Advanced Rescue Training courses, he was still, in the minds of some of the members, too young to be a captain. So when Bo’s name was floated around the station as the potential next chief, more discussions about his readiness were spawned.

It was no secret that Bo enjoyed drinking and there were some rumors about him using drugs, but neither the alcohol or the suspected drug use ever came into play when Bo was on-scene.

Becoming either chief or deputy chief demanded a full-time status. The total compensation for the chief’s position rolled up to a total of sixty-two thousand, four hundred dollars per year, about what Bo was earning in his sales position for a local copier company. But for Bo it meant a lot more. It meant he’d be able to retire in twenty-five years at the age of fifty-five. It would mean he’d receive free health benefits, deferred comp, a pension of sixty percent of his ending salary and a work schedule that was as flexible as he could make it while still responding to at least fifty percent of all emergency calls. But most important to Bo was going to full-time status, as the chief no less, meant he’d go to work most days doing what he loved to do.

Unlike many in the department, there was no one in Bo’s family that was a firefighter; he was the first in his family to become one. His father, a high-powered lawyer, never understood why his only son would risk life and limb to save someone’s wedding album or collection of “worthless crap” stored in their attics or basements.

“Bo,” his father had said the day Bo graduated high school and announced he was attending a community college in Syracuse and majoring in Emergency Services, “you’re wasting your talents. My God, son, go to law school, pass the bar exam and your name will be right up next to mine in the law firm’s name.”

“Dad,” Bo had said back, a confident smile playing across his face, “no offense, but the idea of wearing a suit, kissing the ass of some judge out on a golf course and pandering to people who think if they wear a neck brace for a few weeks that their settlement will hit a million bucks, sounds more like a death sentence than a career to me.”

“So instead,” his father replied without missing a beat, “you think running into burning buildings, pulling some drunk out of his crashed car or thumping on some degenerate’s chest is a better way to spend your life? Come on, Bo. You can get into any university you want, get a real diploma, one that means something. Instead, you want to go to a community college in Syracuse, New York of all places, and hope you get a job earning fifty grand a year for some fire department? Seriously, Bo?”

Bo was serious and despite his father’s continued and repeated admonishments, he moved to Ravenswood New York (where a friend of his had moved the previous year), enrolled at Onondaga Community College and volunteered with the Ravenswood Fire Department. Though his father threatened to not support him, Bo received a monthly check to cover living expenses. He recorded each check his father sent, promising himself that every last cent would be paid back.

After graduation and being unable to get hired with any paid fire departments in the area, Bo took a job selling Canon copiers with a local business in Ravenswood. He hated the job but he was good at it. His movie-star looks coupled with his calm, confident personality and his strong work ethic, served him well in his sales position. After only four years hitting the streets and knocking on doors, Bo was promoted to sales manager and earned enough money to start paying down the debt he felt he owed to his father.

Though his income was much higher than what he might have earned had he been hired as a fire fighter, the work was mindless for Bo. Eight to five, Monday through Friday of the same, droning crap. Sales meetings in the morning, conference calls with
 
vendors in the late morning, lunch with high profile customers, followed by one-on-one meetings with his reps or showing the newbies the finer art of cold calling. He often regretted not heeding his father’s advice, not going to law school and seeing his last name etched in fancy font on a crisp, white, heavy-stock business card.

But when the fire department tones went off, his regrets were scattered as if the blaring wail of the siren had an invisible ability to press a restart button in his mind. It was the siren’s cry that called to Bo, the notification that someone, somewhere in the town of Ravenswood was struggling and that he, along with his fellow members, could help ease that person’s pain.

Brian Mack was the chief when Bo first became a member and continued serving as chief until the department grew into a half-volunteer, half-paid department. Mack put in thirty-five years with the department, the last eighteen of them as chief. When the town voted in favor of the proposed changes to the department in 2009, Mack professionally and amicably stepped down from the chief’s position and retired from the department.
 

Now Mack was dead; burned to death as he slept in his own bed. His mother, who had celebrated her ninetieth birthday last month—a party Bo had attended—died a few feet away from the kitchen door and fresh, clean air.

“Holy shit,” Bo said. “How the hell did I not hear about the fire?’

“Did you have your pager on at the bar?” Kevin asked. “Your phone?”

“I told you already, I lost my phone,” Bo snapped. “And no, I never take my pager when I’m drinking. Don’t want the temptation of responding when I have booze in my system.”

“And no one stopped over this morning to tell you what happened? Ken said.

“Shit if I know. I was passed out till a few minutes before I sat on that knife. Damn, I can’t believe Mack is dead. They know what caused it? County must have double-timed their investigation to find the cause considering whose house it was. You hear anything yet?”

“Bo, man, you really are out of the loop with this thing,” Ken said. “Pretty sure it was arson. They found three flares in the basement. County fire inspector’s report stated the origin of the fire was in the basement, right around where they found the flares.”

“Isn’t unusual for Mack to have them in his basement. Shit, the guy practically hoarded the damn things. Loved them to start campfires them.”

Ken walked closer the couch, snapped a few more pictures of the knife and the duct tape. As he was snapping the pictures, he said, “May not be unusual for Mack to have flares in his basement, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have kept them right next to three five gallon cans of jet fuel.”

“Jet fuel?” Bo asked. “There was jet fuel in Mack’s basement?”

Ken said, “Not sure if it was jet fuel or just high octane gas. Either way, probably burned hot and fast.”

Ken finished taking pictures and walked over next to Bo and Kevin. “County fire investigator thought Mack had the fuel for his snowmobiles but turns out his sleds didn’t use that type of fuel. Someone put the jet fuel in his basement, lit the flares and placed them right up close to the cans. It was arson, no one doubts that at all.”