Becoming Quinn

4

“Sorry, Officer. Not a thing.” The man in the doorway was wearing a black golf shirt and a pair of jeans.

From not far inside, a TV was blasting and Jake knew even if someone had shot a gun in their front yard, the guy wouldn’t have heard it.

“Are you here alone, sir?” Haywood asked.

“My wife’s here,” he said. “And my kids.”

“Is it possible they might have heard something?”

“Kids are asleep, but I’m sure Jenny would have said something if she had.”

“Jenny’s your wife?”

“Well, yeah.” The man gave them a look like that should have been obvious, then turned away from the door. “Jenny, come here for a minute.”

A moment later a woman appeared beside him. She was shorter than he was, and not quite as overweight.

“These officers are wondering if we heard any gunshots. I know I didn’t,” the man said.

“Tonight?” she asked. “I haven’t heard any. Why? Were there some?”

Haywood smiled. “We’re not entirely sure. Just checking a report, that’s all. Sounds like neither of you heard anything, so we won’t bother you any longer.”

“We’ll keep an ear out in case it starts up again,” the man said.

“Thank you,” Haywood told them. “You folks have a good night.”

He stepped off the small porch, with Jake following closely behind him.

“You do the talking at the next one,” Haywood said as he opened his car door. “It’ll be good practice.”

But Jake was barely listening to him. Instead he was looking across the top of the car into the distance. After a second, he said, “That’s a fire.”

“What?” Haywood whipped around to see what Jake was talking about.

“There,” Jake said, pointing. “I think that’s one of the buildings we were going to check out on the other side of the intersection.”

“Get in!” Haywood shouted.

As they pulled away from the house, Haywood grabbed the radio mic. “9-82 Adam. We have a structure fire on Goodman Ranch Road just north of Tyler Way on the east side. Possible connection to earlier call.”

“Copy, 9-82 Adam. Will start fire and back up.”

Haywood replaced the mic, and pressed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. When they reached the dirt road that led onto the property where the fire was, he slowed just enough to take the turn, then accelerated down the uneven surface.

“No way the fire department’s going to get here in time,” Jake said.

The building — it looked like a barn — was nearly engulfed by the flames. The wood that had yet to be touched looked old and dry and ripe for burning.

Haywood skidded to a stop a hundred feet away from the structure. “We’ve got to make sure no one’s in there.”

Jake nodded as they jumped out of the car.

They split up and circled the building in opposite directions. The heat from the flames was so intense that every few seconds Jake had to turn away to keep from scorching his face.

“Anyone inside?” he called out. “Hey, anyone in there?”

He wasn’t sure what he would do if someone answered. There was no way he could go in and survive. When he reached the back, Haywood was already there.

“Anything?” the veteran cop asked.

“No,” Jake told him.

Haywood watched the flames. “Probably abandoned.”

“Maybe…maybe the fire was started by a gunshot. Someone could have been playing around, that’s why we got the call.” They had to be connected, Jake thought. One of his instructors at the academy had said more than once, “Never trust a coincidence.”

“Perhaps,” Haywood said. “My guess? Some teenagers messing around. Drinking, maybe shooting a little bit. Then they got bored and set this thing on fire.” He paused, looking at the blaze. “Take a look around. See if you can find any signs of people running away. They could be hiding out there in the dark, watching their handiwork, so also keep your ears open.”

With a flashlight in one hand and his gun in the other, Jake moved out to search the perimeter, but the only noise he could hear was the roar of the fire behind him.

There were footprints all over the place, some obviously older, while others could have been made any time in the past couple of weeks. Phoenix hadn’t had any rain in months, and as far as Jake could recall, there had been no real winds to speak of for some time. That meant a print made today or last week could be almost identical.

With so many tracks, Jake guessed the barn was a popular hangout. Probably a place local teens would come to on weekends to drink and party because no one would see them. Just like Haywood had suggested.

He moved around the barn to the far side, the beam of his light cutting back and forth across the barren ground. Sitting off to the side of the barn was a large tank that would make a perfect place for someone to hide behind.

He knew he should probably get Haywood so they could check the tank together, but thought he should be able to handle this, right? This was what he trained for, after all, and the more initiative he showed, the faster he figured he’d move up the ranks, bringing him closer to becoming a detective. That was his ultimate goal.

He swung his flashlight away from the tank, making it seem like he was checking in another direction, then he switched it off. Though the moon wasn’t up yet, the glow of the fire provided enough illumination to see what he was doing.

He went right, circling the tank, his gun held out in front of him in a double grip. Given the location of the tank in relationship to the barn, anyone waiting behind it would probably expect someone to come at them from the other direction.

With each step, he quietly set his foot down, heel to toe. Just a few more feet and he’d see the entire area behind the tank.

Relax, he told himself, as he felt his heart start to race.

In the four months he’d been on the job, he’d responded to domestic disturbances, gas station robberies, traffic accidents, and one suicide, but this was the first time he was in a situation where he might come face to face with a perp on his own.

He could feel his palms start to sweat.

Two more steps. One.

He held his breath as he took the final step, ready to shout, “Don’t move!”

But there was no one there.

He flipped his flashlight back on, and held it against his pistol as he swept the beam across the desert.

Nothing. He was alone.

A nervous laugh escaped his lips. He’d almost let himself get psyched up. He couldn’t let that happen again, not if he wanted to stay a cop for long. Thank God he hadn’t asked Haywood for help. He’d have looked like a fool, and any trace amount of respect the senior cop might have had for him would have disappeared.

Jake closed his eyes for a moment, letting his body calm down. When he opened them again, he noticed something strange about the dirt next to the tank.

He knelt down, and moved his light across the affected area. It looked almost as if someone had kicked up the dirt, erasing marks that had been there. The main area of disturbance was about three feet by three feet, with a smaller patch of rearranged dirt just beyond it.

Jake knew, like with the footprints around the barn, that he couldn’t be sure the disturbance had been made in the last few hours, but he couldn’t help feeling that they were. He stood up and moved to the smaller disturbance. That’s when he noticed something else that was odd. Starting about a foot away, and circling around the tank, more dirt had been moved. But instead of a roughly square patch, this was almost like a line.

He followed it with his light, then revised his initial thoughts. It wasn’t almost like a line. It was a line, one that stretched all the way back to the barn.

Jake walked beside it, having no idea why it was there. Then, about forty feet from the barn, he stopped. Whoever had been kicking the sand had missed a spot. He knelt down. It was a shallow depression in the earth, a round trough, less than an inch long. Like…

Like a wire or a cable might make.

He looked back toward the tank, following the line the disturbance made, then turned his head and followed it all the way to the barn. Could the mark have been made by whatever had been used to start the fire? He frowned, knowing that didn’t make a lot of sense. Why use something so elaborate on an abandoned barn that a person could walk right up to without being seen?

Jake pulled out the disposable camera he kept on his belt, and took a picture of the mark. He then took a few pictures of the surrounding disturbance. Maybe it was nothing, but better to be safe.

Just as he was putting his camera away, Haywood came around the other end of the structure.

“Find anyone?” he asked.

Jake was about to tell him about the depression, but hesitated. Haywood would probably look at it and think that Jake was making something out of nothing. But before Jake could actually decide what to do, sirens cut through the sound of the fire.

Both cops turned toward the road. Three fire trucks were racing in their direction, and right behind them were the lights of two patrol cars.

Once everyone arrived, Jake and another rookie, Berit Davies, were tasked with keeping civilians off the property. It was amazing that even at night in a sparsely populated part of town, people had gathered to gawk at the fire.

“So how long do we have to be on the force before we’re not automatically put on crowd control?” Berit asked as they drove one of the patrol cars down the dirt road to the property entrance.

Jake smiled. Berit was probably his closest friend on the force. They were both sort of outsiders — Berit a woman in a crumbling man’s world, and Jake a transplant from Minnesota, of all places.

“Come on,” he said. “You love crowd duty. Isn’t that what you told me last time?”

“Oh, yeah. My favorite thing in the world,” she said as she pulled the car to a stop.

There were at least a dozen people hanging around the opening in the fence. Nearly half of them were actually standing inside the property line.

“All right,” Jake announced as soon as he got out. “Everyone’s going to have to get on the other side of the fence.”

Several of those standing on the property began moving toward the gate. Two men, though, held their ground. Berit headed right for them.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Not sure you heard the other officer, but you’ll have to step back on the other side of the fence, please.”

“Come on,” one of the men said. “We’re not in anyone’s way. We just want to watch the fire.”

“And you can do that, sir,” Berit said. “But from the other side of the fence.”

“We want to watch from here,” the other one said.

Jake glanced at the rest of the crowd to make sure they were all safely off the property, then headed over to back up Berit.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “That’s not possible. You and your friend will have to move.”

“Really, honey?” the second one asked. “What harm are we doing?”

Jake wanted to step in, and knew that probably any other officer would, but he also knew it wasn’t what Berit would want. So he stopped several feet behind her.

In a controlled voice, she said, “Sir, I’m not your honey, and you’re not staying. So either you walk through that opening and get on the other side of that fence, or we arrest you for trespassing. Up to you.”

The first man put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Let’s go.”

The second man held his place for a moment, scowling at Berit, but then he turned and the two of them walked away.

Jake moved up next to her. “Impressive,” he whispered. “For a woman.”

“And damn near impossible for a man,” she said.

“True,” he agreed.

Together they walked over to the gate. For the next several minutes they were peppered with questions from the growing crowd, most of which they answered with “I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer to that.”

Though there had been no indication the fire was a crime, they knew they had to treat it as such until they were notified otherwise. So, per training, they noted the faces in the crowd, looking for anyone unusually interested in what was going on. But if there was an arsonist in this crowd, Jake was having no success picking out him or her.

It took less than an hour for the firemen to get the blaze extinguished. By then, most of the structure was gone.

“Oliver. Davies,” the voice of Sergeant Niccum said over the radio.

Berit touched the mic on her shoulder. “Yes, sir?”

Jake then did the same. “I’m here, sir.”

“Be advised, we have a nine-oh-one H.”

Both Jake and Berit tensed. A dead body.

“Yes, sir,” Jake said. Then, because he couldn’t help himself, asked, “May I ask where?”

“No, you may not,” the sergeant rebuked him, then signed off.

“Smooth,” Berit said to Jake.

“Yeah, I’ve been practicing,” he replied, trying to play it down.

He knew he shouldn’t have asked the question, but he and Haywood had been first on scene. He would have thought that gave him the right to know what was going on, but apparently not.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find out soon enough,” Berit said, no doubt sensing what was going through his mind.

If only he’d been thinking that way before he’d asked the question, but sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. It was his damn curiosity. A trait he was sure would help him when he became a detective.

If, that was, it didn’t sink his career before then.