Blood of Cain

50

I was leaving Gladys Johnston’s driveway when a propane gas delivery truck rolled to a stop in front of the Fish Camp. The side of the red truck with the large white propane tank read: Paul’s Propane Service. I watched a twenty-something service tech get out of the truck, clipboard in hand, toting a small camera. He looked at the crime scene tape flapping in the breeze and made a decision to enter the property. I parked and followed him.

He was about halfway down the property line when he stopped, almost like he had paused to pay his respects to those in a funeral procession. He stared at what was left of the trailer. I walked up behind him and said, “I don’t think they’ll be needing gas for the immediate future.”

He jumped like he’d been touch with a cattle prod. “Man! You scared the crap outta me.”

“Sheriff’s deputies will scare you more if they see you traipsing through a crime scene.”

“I thought that yellow tape was just hanging all over the ground, like they’re pretty much done.”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll be quick, I’m just taking a couple of pictures. It’s for insurance. I can see it wasn’t our tanks that exploded. They’re still in one piece, pretty black from the fire, but they didn’t blow. Man, I just filled ‘em, too. Couple of days ago. So if somebody left the gas on, they got lots of gas to ignite.”

“When you filled the tanks did you see the girl living in the trailer?”

“She was feeding some ducks down there in the creek.” He turned and looked closer at the remains of the trailer. “She wasn’t hurt … was she? The news said two guys were killed in the fire.”

“She apparently wasn’t home when it happened.”

He inhaled deeply, reassured, nodding. “That’s good. She was real nice. This explosion and fire’s bad enough, but when you know somebody involved it sort of makes it personal.”

“Yes, it does. What’d she look like?”

“The girl?”

“Yes.”

He looked back down to the creek as if she was standing on the bank. “She was really pretty. About five-five, I’d say. She had dark brown hair … and her eyes.” He glanced back at me. “Her eyes were the prettiest I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to describe them.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Well, I best take the picture and be on my route.”

I caught I-75 north and headed across the state of Florida back to Ponce Inlet. I watched the traffic behind me, looking for a tail. I pushed the Jeep to near one-hundred miles an hour for a minute, then pulled off the interstate at a rest stop, parking on the side of the building farther from the highway. I watched for cars pulling into the rest stop, those passing in the event a driver might hit his brakes. Three cars entered the parking lot. One had a family of five, including a grandmother. The second car had two teenagers in it. The third was pulling a small boat. Two fishermen shuffled out, faces red from the sun, and walked to the restroom. I started my Jeep, placed the Glock on the passenger seat, and made my way back to the highway.

As I drove north, I now knew that Courtney Burke had been hiding in the trailer before it exploded, she was driving a red Toyota pick-up truck, and she was probably long gone from Gibsonton. On one hand, I wanted to call Detective Dan Grant and tell him what I knew. On the other hand, not so much. If my phone was tapped, my calling Dan would alert killers hunting Courtney. Dan and state police would issue a BOLO and set up a dragnet on major roads leading out of Tampa and Florida.

Since two men hunting Courtney had just died, and because one man giving her a safe haven was murdered, I knew that Courtney could easily be shot to death during a road-side stop. Subject resisting arrest, the report would read. Armed and dangerous. As long as the elimination was not in the immediate scope of the dashboard cameras, cross-fire shootings can be beyond accusation and reprimand.

The presidential election was coming up quickly. Somehow I had to keep Courtney safe until then, and that’s if Senator Logan’s opponent won. What would it mean if Logan won? Would Courtney always be a political liability? If she was found innocent of the charges, would that lessen her embarrassment factor? Andrea Logan would no longer be labeled the possible mother of a serial killer. But that would mean finding Courtney and getting a DNA sample first. That alone would clear the landscape for Logan or destroy it. Were they willing to roll the dice? The two dead guys in the fire spoke volumes. And now, under the circumstances, there was no safe jail or prison to hold her in some kind of protective custody.

I needed to buy a couple of disposable mobile phones, and then make a call to Dave or Dan Grant that would set in motion a trap that would catch hired guns and maybe free Courtney from what I now knew was a death sentence.