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Walt heard himself breathing into the phone. “The feathers.”
“Dude!” Brandon said. “The hawk runs the guy off the road. Driver knows what he hit. Finds himself off-road, maybe sees the hawk flapping away in the mirror. Heads back to check out his victim-”
“Our witness confirmed that,” Walt said, recalling the woman at the nursery.
“Any bow hunter knows it’s a felony to collect feathers from a wild bird. But this one ran him off the road. This one asked for it. He isn’t about to risk the fine by taking the whole bird, but he lifts a couple feathers. Who’s going to notice?”
“You are,” Walt said.
“We can check it. Right? I collected that bird. It’s in the property room fridge.”
“So the BOLO should include an inspection of the front grille.”
“Could be easier than that. A pickup sucks a bird in the grille, it’s not going off the road. But if the bird hits the windshield, that’s another story.”
“A broken windshield.”
“A red-tailed hawk? Going fifty or sixty, it’s like hitting a freaking rock.”
“Window welders. Window repair shops.”
“A pickup with a light rack,” Brandon said. “That ought to narrow it down. We catch this guy, maybe he saw Gale, maybe not. But he’s someone we want to talk to.”
“It’ll be good to have you back,” Walt said. The first raindrops fell in huge splashes on his front walkway. Lightning flashed high in the sky to the north.
“Keep me posted, Sheriff. And just in case anyone asks: daytime TV sucks.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
Walt was at the foot of his bed. He had his shirt off and was stripping down to his shorts when he heard the distant grind of heavy machinery. Living just two blocks from the town’s firehouse, he knew exactly what it was. He crossed the room, grabbed his radio off the dresser, and called dispatch.
The fire was north. Mile 125. Cold Springs drainage. A BCS patrol had been dispatched. Walt had his pants buttoned and was reaching for his gun belt as he simultaneously called Kevin.
Fifteen minutes later, Kevin returned, wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. He climbed from behind the wheel of his beat-up Subaru and passed Walt on the front porch without a word.
Walt hurried to the Jeep.
41
Pulses of blue and white lights flashed in the treetops as Walt merged the Jeep into the phalanx of fire trucks and emergency vehicles. Fiona, wearing a T-shirt and full-length pajama bottoms, stood at the door to her cottage, arms crossed against the chill. Her hair down and tousled, she looked both tired and frightened, her attention fixed up the hill where rising whiffs of smoke still faintly clouded the air. Four firemen, clad in turnouts and armed with pickaxes and shovels, were chasing down the last vestiges of fire, the buried, smoldering plant roots that could hold fire for days.
She didn’t see him arrive. But when he told Beatrice to stay, Fiona must have heard his voice and she turned toward him, her solemn expression like a veil. He took away only this: she’d heard him over the shouts and pumps and diesel engines; she’d recognized his voice with only the single word spoken. Somehow, this gave him hope.
The fire had consumed an acre of hill, singeing the bark of the fir and pine trees, destroying the flower bed where Walt had stood with her only hours earlier. It left behind a black carpet of charred pine straw and the gray ash of what had been lawn grass.
Another sheriff’s office cruiser rolled in, only seconds behind him. Two deputies: Blompier and Chalmers. They clambered out and looked to him for instruction.
“Search the main house. Confirm it’s vacant.”
He walked slowly to her, wondering what he was going to say.
“I swear,” she said, beating him to it. She hung her head, shaking it side to side. “I know how this looks, but it isn’t true.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Lowering her voice to where he could barely hear, she said, “Tell me you’re not involved, Walt. If you did this for me-”
“Me? I’m not involved.”
“Seriously?”
“Do you honestly think I’d do something like this?”
They studied one another in the flashes of colored light.
Was he to believe this charade? After their discussion about this very act? Or was she playing out the hand he’d dealt her? Attempting to keep the cover story going?
“A lightning strike,” he said.
She said nothing, but snorted her derision. Her arms crossed more tightly, she lifted her head, wearing a look of incipient terror.
“I was asleep,” she whispered, though defensively. “It could have burned the cottage… I could have…”
A shudder passed through her head to toe.
For a fleeting moment he was tempted to want to believe her, but the moment passed.
“You called it in?” he asked.
“I smelled it,” she said. “Idaho air-conditioning. Without that… who knows?”
Few homes in the area carried any kind of air-conditioning. With forty-degree summer nights, the trick was to throw all your windows wide open and chill the house down and shut it back up again before eight a.m. A well-insulated house could remain cool the remainder of the day.
“Might have saved your life.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
He kept waiting for the wink or the nudge, but it wasn’t forthcoming. She wasn’t going to give him so much as an inch of rope.
“Okay, then,” he said.
“You don’t believe me?” Spoken as if it had just occurred to her.
“Of course I believe you.”
The flashing light continued to play across their faces. She looked at him searchingly. Probing.
“I should get on with it…” he said.
“Yes.”
“Get a jacket or something. It’s chilly out here.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“It’s cold. Get a jacket,” he repeated, heading off to a firefighter he recognized as the one in charge.
“Any ideas?”
“Storm strike,” the man said. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had a deep voice. “Best guess.”
“Yeah,” Walt said.
“It’s usually a tree takes the strike, but I’m no expert.”
“Got it,” Walt said, wanting to leave it right there. “Anything you need from us?”
“We’re good. Another thirty or forty minutes. I’ll send some guys back up here in an hour or two to make sure there’re no flare-ups. You might tell her, so she doesn’t scare.” He jerked a shoulder toward Fiona.
“Will do.”
Walt turned back downhill.
“Sheriff?”
“Yeah?”
“Shape of the fire doesn’t add up, in case you care. We should have a pear shape ru
“That is or isn’t significant?” Walt asked. “You didn’t mention that when I asked.”
“It’s different, that’s all. Significant? It’s not like I can put down a lightning strike to arson. Right? But it’s unusual. In case you care. That’s all.”
“Of course I care,” Walt said a little too defensively.
“Not something we see very often, if at all.”
“I got it,” Walt said.
“Okay. Okay.” The guy huffed, turned, and swung his pickax into the ground, spraying ash and soil. Walt couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard him say something under his breath: “Asshole.”
Worst of all, he thought he probably deserved it.
“Sheriff?” Deputy Linda Chalmers called out from the front door of the main house. Deputy Blompier stood just inside the house in silhouette.
It took Walt a moment to see the person wedged between them, the shorter girl, her arm clasped tightly in Linda’s hand. Took him yet another fraction of a second to process that it was Kira Tulivich. His mind made the identification, and then his eyes tracked over to Fiona, whose surprise appeared too genuine to be anything but. Barefoot, Fiona walked half on tiptoe as she crossed the driveway. She looked up the hill to Walt and back to Kira, mirroring him.