"Well this is just getting ridiculous," Jamie fumed, staring over the heads of the crowd at the corkscrew spiral of smoke rising from the dumpster.
It was pre-dawn Saturday morning, an hour before Conner was set to pick me up. We were standing with a gaggle of rubberneckers in the alley behind the hippie grocer - the back half of which, somebody had just tried to torch. It was a pattern that seemed to be causing Jamie more annoyance than concern at this point. Personally, I was just happy we weren't the ones trying to put it out.
'This generation,' a man behind me was muttering, followed closely by what I was fairly certain was 'the internet.'
Jamie's gaze met mine, his expression wry. "Teenagers," he pronounced, voice pitched just loud enough for me to make out the added sarcastic twang. "Always at it with their instant messenger and felony arson."
I bit back an uncharitable snort.
"Still," I said, allowing myself a bit of petty vindication, "so much for coincidence."
"So much for militant tree huggers," he countered, raising a brow at me.
"Like that was actually my working theory." Okay, so maybe I had considered it. In a vague kind of way. Very briefly.
A clatter and a curse pinball echoed through the alley. Turning my attention back to ground zero, I saw that Sheriff Young had come up with a length of old pipe from somewhere and was surreptitiously probing the dumpster's contents. Trying to find the remaining pockets of whatever was burning, I supposed and fought the urge to cover my nose. The only thing worse than kale, it turned out, was the smell of rotting kale that's been set on fire.
Odeur d'compost heap aside though, the morning's bonfire could have been worse. Compared to the cafe, the store had come through with only minor smoke damage. Not, I thought, from any lack of trying on the perp's part. A quick survey had told me that whoever they were, they'd done their job, doused this area just as thoroughly as the last. This time, the cavalry had simply arrived quicker and better prepared.
The thought settled itself like a weight in my stomach.
Your average, random vandal didn't go to this kind of trouble. And they wouldn't worry about sticking to such a clearly defined system. Jamie's comment a minute ago had been sarcastic, but I was starting to think he'd hit the target center mass.
A pink dawn was edging the sky by the time the sheriff declared the situation, "handled." The crowd was mostly dispersed by then. Just myself and Jamie and few stragglers from the morning coffee crowd at the cafe left hanging around.
------
The whole thing had taken maybe thirty minutes. Thirty minutes I should have spent getting ready back at the hotel if I wanted to be ready for "the hike." Aka, my imminent cardiac infarction. And yet, there I was, watching. Somewhere around age seven, my father had affectionately dubbed me 'inquisitive.' Mom, being the less flowery of the two, just called it a pathological inability to mind my own business.
You spot the lawyer.
"Don't suppose you boys are hagnin' around to file a report?" Young inquired, giving the lot of us an eyeballing as she smacked soot off her hat.
Behind her, deputy dipstick - Thompson, I reminded myself, was wrestling a roll of crime scene tape. And losing, by all appearances.
"Saw our man in the act maybe," she continued, still in that golly-gee amiable tone. "Maybe got his plate numbers."
Give her a few minutes and a muscle-mag and the woman could have had J. Edgar Hoover blushing like a schoolgirl.
"Well," hedged one of the old-timers, his Wilford Brimley brush of a mustache twitching in discomfort at this obvious dressing-down.
Young zeroed her gaze in on him, reproachful as a finishing school instructor whose charge has made an opening gambit for the dessert fork.
To some degree, I could sympathise with her angst. Spectators at a crime scene are a nuisance, no matter how you cut it. But her apparent indignation made me wonder if she'd been playing Mayberry so long that she'd lost touch with reality. Of course people were going to be curious. And really, didn't they have every right to be? Twice now someone had tried to set fire to a part of their town. The sheriff was kidding herself if she expected the locals to carry placidly along without taking interest. Or demanding answers.
I think some part of what I was thinking must have crept into my expression, because her eyes betrayed momentary surprise when her gaze met mine. Staring us down one by one, she clearly wasn't expecting to find her glare of disapproval directed back at her.
"Mr. Wallace," she said, still scowling at me. It sounded like a challenge.
I half expected to be read the riot act right then and there; told to keep my nose out of town matters that didn't concern me. But then I saw that one corner of her mouth had quirked up into a sly grin. That grin worried me more than any amount of browbeating could have.
"Very fortuitous, you being here," she continued, moving in closer so that she could be heard without raising her voice.
I felt the rest of the crowd shift imperceptibly back - putting distance between themselves and whatever was about to go down. While still maintaining a ringside seat, of course.
"Remind me, Mr. Wallace." Another step. Just a little too close now for politeness. "When exactly was it that you rolled into town?"
I couldn't do more than blink at her in surprise. The accusation was so unexpected, not to mention ludicrous, that my first and only reaction was to laugh. I tamped it down.
"Pump the breaks, Young," Jamie hissed into my silence, clearly not sharing my verbal hindrance. "And can the Wyatt Earp routine. You don't get to go around just randomly accusing people of setting buildings on fire."
Young snapped him a warning look, widening it after tick to include the remaining old-timers who were still hovering a stone's throw away. The old-timers shuffled a little further back at that, wholly cowed, but Jamie just stared back at her.
In a skills match of broadcasting silent and withering disapproval, they were rapidly reaching a tie.
"Jamie," I said, my brain finally shifting back into gear. "It's okay. It's baseless and stupid," I added, turning my attention back to Young,"but hell, it's a free country. She can sling all the b-movie theories she wants."
Young's upper lip curled into something that was probably supposed to pass for a smile. "I think it's time you and I had a little chat, Mr. Wallace." Up close, the woman so damn thin that her angles had angles
"Fine," I said, "chat away."
"In private."
"I think not."
"That wasn't a request."
I actually did laugh at that. It was a shade just too far on the wrong side of asinine. "Are you arresting me, Sheriff?"
Young clucked her tongue at me, the tired parent resigned to her task. "Now, now, you know better than that, detective."
She'd delivered her death knell with such a lack of fanfare, so little warning, that I'd half opened my mouth to shoot back a reply before the words fully processed. Fuck, I thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Excuse me," Jamie said into my redoubled silence.
"What?" Young inquired, slithering cleanly back into her Sheriff Andy act now that the deed was done. "You're not telling me Mr. Wallace didn't include that in his references? Why, if I'd made Major Crimes, I'd be-"
"Fine." The effort it took to make my mouth move felt disproportionately high. "You want to 'chat'? We'll chat."
"Christian," Jamie warned.
I didn't want to look at him. Didn't want to see the expression that went with that carefully blank tone. I took a breath, made myself turn and meet his eyes.
Only to find that I wasn't the one his attention was fixed on.
"Whatever it is that she knows," he said, speaking to me, but with a cool stare leveled on Young, "it isn't worth it."
"Mr. Worth," Young growled, her down-home bonhomie snapping like a dry twig.
Clearly she hadn't expected his continued backup after her little reveal. Neither had I. I stared at him in surprise. It was, apparently, my day for shocked silences.
"It's fine," I told him, forcing myself, with effort, to keep those two words level.
"Then I'll come with you."
For the third time that morning I felt the irrational urge to laugh bubbling up in my throat. I was pretty certain that under that layer of cool reproach he was leveling on Young, that he was seethingly pissed at me, but here he was all set to come and... what? Protect me from Sheriff Two-Face? Jesus Christ.
"It's fine," I said again, pointedly ignoring Young. "She's tilting at windmills."
Jamie arched a brow; a single, inflectionless twitch of facial muscles. "You're the expert."
Yep. Seething.