Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 8

BRITT PRACTICALLY POUNCED ON DELNO. “WHAT ABOUT THE autopsy?”

Raley braced himself. He figured Britt would probably need bracing, too, so he went to stand near her where she had squared off with Delno.

“They said-”

“Who? Who said?”

“The men on the TV.” Looking beyond her at Raley, Delno said, “Have you gone plumb crazy, kidnapping her?”

“Reporters?”

“Huh?” Delno’s eyes shifted back to Britt. “Yeah, reporters. Them and the cop they was talking to.” Then back to Raley. “What the hell do you expect to gain by-”

“What did he say? The cop.”

Delno was losing patience with her interruptions. “He said that, accordin’ to the autopsy, Jay Burgess died of suffocation.”

She fell back a step. “Suffocation?”

“Smothered-like. With a pillow over his face.”

She stared at Delno with disbelief. “That’s impossible.”

“I ain’t lyin’, lady. That’s what the fella said.”

For several seconds nobody moved, then Britt flew into action as though she’d been jabbed with an electric prod. “Where’s your phone?” Without waiting for Raley to answer, she went tearing around the cabin, knocking a stack of books off a table, scattering a deck of playing cards, flinging aside anything her hands landed on as she searched for a telephone.

“I don’t have a phone,” he said.

“A cell then. You’re bound to have a cell phone.”

“No. And I purposefully left yours behind.”

“A TV. Radio.”

“None of the above. Britt, calm down.”

She rounded on him, her eyes wild, arms held rigid at her sides. “Who doesn’t have a telephone?”

“I don’t,” he shouted back.

She gaped at him as though he’d just arrived from another planet, then she headed for the door. “I’ll take your truck. Are the keys in it?”

She made it through the screen door, over the mound of dogs, and down the steep steps before he caught up with her. He grabbed at her windbreaker. That broke her stride but didn’t stop her. She pulled her arms free, leaving him with nothing but a fistful of synthetic fabric.

She was rounding the truck bed when he managed to hook her elbow and jerk her to a stop. “Will you wait a damn minute?”

“Let go of me!”

“Not yet. Not until you tell me what you plan to do.”

“What do you think? Go back. Deny it. Tell them I had nothing to do with Jay’s dying. Tell them I don’t remember what happened that night, but I would certainly remember killing him. Holding a pillow over his face? My God!” She pulled her arm from Raley’s grasp and put her hands to the sides of her head, grabbing handfuls of her hair.

“You already told them you’d lost your memory. They didn’t believe you.”

“Still don’t.” This from Delno, who’d come out behind them, following the action as though they were staging it for his entertainment. “They’re looking for you,” he said, addressing Britt. “Said a warrant had been issued. They went to your place. Said it looked to them like you’d runned off to avoid arrest.” He grinned at Raley, showing his dental stubs. “Reckon they didn’t figure on her being kidnapped.”

“I’ll make them believe me.” Britt spun away and headed for the cab of the truck.

Raley reached out and caught her arm again, bringing her around. “How? How, Britt? You were there, with Jay, all night.”

“Yes, but there’s no solid evidence against me.”

“They got the pillow,” Delno said.

That statement arrested her attempt to get free from Raley’s grip. She stared at Delno, then looked up at Raley. “How could I have smothered a man and then calmly gone to sleep beside him?”

“I don’t believe you could.”

“Then-”

“But they do. They do. Jay was one of their own. They’re looking for a scapegoat and somebody-Jay’s killer-made certain they’d have one.”

“Jay’s killer?” Her eyes probed his. “You knew all along he’d been murdered?”

“I suspected. I was anxious to hear the autopsy report, same as you.”

“Did you suspect me?” she asked, her rich contralto suddenly going thin.

He hesitated, then said, “Not really, no.”

“Do you know who-”

“Not yet.”

The faint ray of hope he’d seen momentarily in her eyes dimmed and then flickered out. “I’ve got to go back and clear myself.”

“Listen to me,” he said, taking a step closer. “You can’t go back unarmed. They’ll put you through a shredder. I know. I’ve been there. Come back inside. Listen to everything Delno heard on the news.” Lowering his voice, he said, “Listen to what I have to tell you. Then I’ll drive you back myself. I swear.”

She stared at him, then looked at Delno, who had lifted one of the hounds into his arms and was stroking its lolling head. She looked back at Raley. “I’ll give you an hour.”

Delno dropped the hound onto the porch and held the screen door open for them as they filed back inside. He helped himself to the last of the coffee. Raley offered to brew a fresh pot, but Britt declined with an absent shake of her head. She resumed her place at the dining table. Raley took his previous seat. Delno sat in the third chair.

Britt seemed to have expended all her energy. She sat with shoulders slumped, staring at the nicks in the tabletop. She traced one with her thumbnail. Finally she looked up and caught him and Delno staring at her.

She turned to Delno as though only now registering his presence. “Who are you?”

“Delno Pickens,” he replied, at the same time Raley said, “My neighbor. He has a place a couple miles from here.”

He remembered his first exposure to Delno, what a shocking sight the old geezer had been. Britt was experiencing that mix of amazement and repugnance now. Delno never wore a shirt beneath his overalls, except on the coldest days of the year. This left his arms and upper chest exposed to the elements almost year-round. His skin was crepey, tanned to leather, overlaid with a sparse crop of white hair.

It was hard to determine the natural color of the hair beneath the hat he perpetually wore. A straggly ponytail hung long down his back. He greased it to discourage lice. At least that was what Raley had surmised.

It was a testament to Britt’s basic kindness that she remained sitting that close to the man, because he was no more inclined to bathe than he was to wash his hair. Or maybe kindness didn’t factor into it at all. Maybe she was simply too shell-shocked to angle away from his overripe odor.

“Raley here won’t get hisself a TV,” he said to Britt. “Says he hates the goddamn things. So if there’s something really important in the news, it falls to me to let him know.”

“They have Jay’s pillow?” she asked, her voice still thready.

Delno nodded. “They took it as evidence that first morning. Said it was on the floor next to the bed. One of them hard, foam kind. It bore the imprint of his face. They suspected right off you’d smothered him, but they kept it to their selves till the coroner could prove it.”

“He may have been suffocated with his pillow, but I didn’t do it, Mr… uh…”

“Pickens. And it don’t matter to me none if you did or didn’t.”

She scraped back her chair and stood up, went to the fridge, got a bottle of water and took a long drink. Raley sensed Delno watching him curiously, a thousand unasked questions in the old man’s rheumy eyes. Raley pretended not to notice.

Britt said, “They went to my house to arrest me. What did you mean when you said it looked to them like I had run away?”

“Well-”

“I can answer that,” Raley said. “I left my pickup and hitched into town late yesterday afternoon. After stopping at The Wheelhouse, I walked to your house.”

“That’s-”

“A few miles. After I knocked you out, I-”

“You knocked her out?”

He didn’t acknowledge Delno’s interruption. “I looked for your car keys and found them on the hook by the back door. I left as you would, going out that door and resetting the alarm.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I watched when you punched in the numbers to turn it off, so I knew the code.”

“Oh.”

“I made up your bed and brought along your handbag. It’s still in the truck, by the way.”

“But not my phone.”

“No.”

She assimilated what he’d told her. “You left no sign of a struggle.” He nodded. “You covered your tracks but made me look like a fugitive from justice.”

“Basically. That was the general idea.”

“Great. Fabulous.” She sighed with asperity. “How did you get me out of the house?”

“Carried you. I was trained to carry people, remember?” Without waiting for a response, he continued. “I drove your car to where I’d left my truck.”

“I remember you transferring me from my car.”

“I knew you were conscious at that point.”

“Where is my car?”

“At an abandoned airstrip. In the middle of nowhere. A road dead-ends at it. No one goes out there.”

“How did you know about it?”

“Jay’s uncle had a deer lease near it. We used to do target practice out there.”

Mention of Jay’s name brought a pained expression to her face. “I still can’t believe he’s dead, and that he died in that manner. He must have put up a struggle.” Lowering her head, she rubbed her temples. “I want to remember. I do. But I can’t.”

“The police said he was too far gone on whiskey to have put up much of a fight,” Delno said. “Course he was sick with the cancer, too. That would have made him even weaker.”

“Weak enough that a woman could have killed him,” Raley said.

“That’s what the cop speculated,” Delno said as he scratched his armpit. “ Clark, I believe his name was.”

“He’s one of the detectives who questioned me.”

“I know him,” Raley said. “He’s a good cop. Dedicated to his work. And one hundred percent loyal to everyone on the police force, especially Jay. If the evidence indicates you killed him, Clark will move heaven and earth to see you tried and convicted.”

She turned away to look out the window above the kitchen sink. Raley looked over at Delno, but when he saw a question forming on the tobacco-stained lips, he shook his head and Delno remained quiet.

Finally, Britt turned back. “Tell me what happened to you, Raley.”

“Sit down.” He nodded toward the chair opposite his. She did as he asked.

Delno got up. “Heard it already, and it ain’t a story I wish to listen to again. I’ll be outside with the dogs.”

The screen door slammed closed behind him. The hounds whined in welcome, then stood and stretched and began weaving themselves around his legs. He disappeared, trailing the pack and a stream of muttered curses.

“Quite a character,” Britt remarked.

“You don’t know the half of it. He has an obsessive hatred for mankind. He tolerates me. On occasion, and only then just barely.”

“Once he recovered from his shock, he was friendly enough toward me.”

Raley gave her a quick once-over, then he looked away, mumbling, “You’re different.”

He left the table abruptly, but only long enough to get himself a bottle of water from the refrigerator. Sitting down again, he asked, “How did you know that Jay and I grew up together?”

“He told me once. He said you were best friends almost for as far back as he could remember.”

“From kindergarten through college and beyond. Our parents thought we shared the same brain. We shared everything else. Bikes, toys, food, clothes.”

“Girls?”

“Sometimes. In our wilder days,” he said without any embarrassment that she could detect.

She could imagine them almost at every stage, but especially as college men. Equally attractive. Jay: fair, suave, and charming. Raley: dark and…And what? Not as suave and charming. Or maybe he’d been quite charming before his life was turned upside down. Maybe the bearded, scowling man sitting across from her now had once been more of a charmer even than Jay.

“We grew up knowing that Jay was going to be a cop, and I was going to be a fireman.”

“These were childhood ambitions?”

“Always. We enrolled in college knowing what we’d study.”

“What was your degree in?”

“I got dual degrees. Fire science. Environmental health and safety. Then Jay and I went through the police academy together.”

She looked at him with puzzlement. “You went through the police academy?”

“In order to become an arson investigator, you must first be a peace officer. Otherwise, once arson is detected, a fire inspector must turn the case over to the police.”

“I see. So you got the police certification first.”

“Then did my fireman’s training and went on to get my certification as an arson investigator.”

She was impressed by the amount of education and training he had.

He continued. “Jay and I excelled in our respective fields. I was working my way up through the ranks of the CFD. Jay made detective before the deadline he’d set for himself. We remained best friends.” He paused to take a sip of water.

“And then?”

“And then there was the fire at the police station. That changed everything.”

He scooted aside the bottle of Tabasco and reached for the box of toothpicks he’d toyed with earlier.

She was impatient to hear what he was about to tell her, but she said nothing, giving him the time he needed to arrange his thoughts. She tried not to think of police officers with a warrant for her arrest, cruising the streets of Charleston in search of her, believing not only that she’d committed murder but that she had fled to avoid capture.

She knew what she would have done with that news story if it had been about someone else. What she had done with similar stories. Had the subjects of her breaking news bulletins been as frightened of their futures as she was of hers now? Not once had she put herself in the shoes of the accused. She’d never stopped to consider their desperation. All she’d thought about was how much face time on camera she would have to report their crime, their flight, their capture.

“I was off duty that day,” Raley said, drawing her from her disturbing thoughts. “But I lived near downtown and heard the sirens and was already on my way to the fire station when my phone rang.” He glanced at her. “I carried a cell in those days.” She gave him a weak smile; he continued. “The blaze had gone to two alarms. I was told to get there as soon as possible.”

She watched his expression change as he reflected on that day. “I’ll never forget it. You can’t imagine the heat.”

“Actually I can. I covered the sofa factory fire.”

Another disastrous fire in which nine firemen had died.

“Did you know any of the men who died in that blaze?” she asked.

“Three really well,” he replied sadly. “The others by face and name.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment, then he picked up his account of the other major fire in Charleston. “The police station fire burned just as hot. Heat like Hell must be like. Consuming and inescapable.”

“You went into the building?”

“No. By the time I got there-I think it took me six minutes-it was an inferno. The roof had already collapsed. Which caused the floors to cave in one by one. Everyone who could be evacuated already had been. I got into gear, but our captain wouldn’t let any more of us go in. For anyone left inside, it was hopeless.

“The best we could do at that point was try to confine the blaze to that building. The first alarm had come in at six oh two p.m. Twelve hours later, we were still putting out hot spots.” He looked across at her. “Were you living in Charleston then?”

“I came about a month later. The building was still a pile of charred rubble. An investigation into the cause was ongoing.”

“Yeah. My investigation.”

“You were investigating the fire?”

“You didn’t know that, did you?” His facial features hardened. Anger radiated off him in waves.

“No, I didn’t,” she admitted.

“All those stories you did about me, and you never mentioned that.”

“I didn’t know it.”

“But you should have, shouldn’t you? You were the reporter covering my story, you should have gathered all the facts. Instead you were busy sweeping up the dirt.”

“I’m sorry.”

He gave the humble interior of the cabin a scornful glance. “A little late for apologies.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, a bit huskily.

He maintained his hostile silence for several long moments, then muttered “Screw it,” and continued his account in a neutral tone of voice. “Pat Wickham, George McGowan, and Cobb Fordyce. Do those names mean anything to you?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Those three and Jay saved dozens of lives that day. They got people out of the building. Even before the first fire trucks arrived, they risked their lives to lead people out. As catastrophic as the fire was, only seven people died. If not for those four men, there would have been many more casualties.”

Frowning, he said, “The four of them did lead people out. They did save lives.”

“So you don’t dispute that?”

“Not at all. When I arrived, it was a chaotic scene. People suffering from burns and smoke inhalation but weeping with relief that they’d escaped. Firemen battling the blaze. Policemen trying to maintain some semblance of organization. EMTs dispensing oxygen and performing triage, dispatching the worst of the injured to the hospital. Those four refused to go, even though they were near collapse. On oxygen. Scorched. You’ve seen the pictures. Cameras don’t lie.”

The bitterness with which he’d said that caused Britt to withhold her observation for several seconds. Then she said quietly, “Your best friend Jay was hailed a hero.”

“Overnight.”

She had dipped her toe in, she might just as well take the plunge. “Saving people from a fire.”

He came up out of his chair. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“That I was jealous of Jay because he got famous for doing what I was supposed to do. That I resented his becoming a hero in my field of expertise.”

“Were you jealous? Did you resent it?”

“No!”

“Are you human?”