Lonesome Lawmen

Two-1

Two

Against the peaceful back drop of the Rocky Mountains, middle class subdivision and rising sun, the sprawl of emergency vehicles around the burnt-out house looked starkly obscene. Fire hoses snaked across the trampled lawn from the opening where the front door had been. Wisps of smoke drifted out from the blackened interior. Uniformed personnel picked their way across the debris-strewn lawn. Outside the official perimeter, neighbors, still in bathrobes, gave their impressions to a press corps filling time while waiting for an official statement from the Denver Police Department. A gray sedan nosed its way into the mess, moving with determined care through the press of people and vehicles, pulling into a spot between a fire engine and the coroner's wagon. Though dressed casually, the woman and two men who climbed out of the car examined the scene with a less than casual thoroughness.

A DPD officer saw them and approached, his arms extended to wave them off. “You can't park there—”

Matt's dark detached gaze choked off the effort to stop him even before he flashed his badge.

“Matthew Kirby, United States Marshals Service.”

Nature had made Matt a hunter long before the government gave him his license to pursue. Time took nature's gift and honed him into a force to be reckoned with. His powerful, stocky body radiated raw aggression held in check. Determination beamed out of eyes set deep in a face hammered out of mountain rock. Blunt features neither asked nor gave quarter. He brushed his hair straight back from his high broad hairline, unconcerned by its recession or the lines cutting deep into the weathered skin around mouth and eyes. Only in his full lower lip and a lift in the straight, dark brows gave any indication that softness was possible, though not preferred.

A man of nature, part of the rugged mountains at his back, the requirements of civilization on him looked as uneasy as the tie knotted around the strong column of his neck. His conservative suit jacket both confined and contained the broad shoulders that angled down to lean hips and powerful legs. A white shirt threw into sharp relief the tan burned deep into his skin. His booted feet planted, his large, square hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans, he looked immovable.

The police officer read the warning signs and chose not to get in his way.

“Who's in charge?” An undercurrent of annoyance threaded harshly into Matt's husky bass.

The cop gestured towards a woman and two men standing in the driveway. “I guess that would be the Fire Marshal. Or Henshaw. She's from Homicide. Over there, talking to the coroner's man.”

“Right.” Matt jerked his chin towards the house. “Let's go.”

He started forward, got blocked by two firefighters coiling a hose. His shoulders hunched impatiently. “What a screw up. Deputy Neuman oughta be shot.”

“All right.” Toby Riggs hitched up his pants, they immediately sagged back into folds on his tennis shoes. He took a big bite of his Egg McMuffin, chewed it with messy relish.

If Matt was rock, Riggs malleable clay. He tried to adhere to the Marshals Service dress code, but some factor in his biology resisted spit and polish. Fortunately for his future in the Service, his untidy exterior and sleepy-cow-grazing gaze hid a brain designed for solving puzzles and seeing through bull. His voice muffled by its passage through egg and muffin, Riggs added, “If he's not a crispy critter.”

“Crispy critter?” Alice Kerne's sculpted brows rose. An attractive black woman balancing confidently atop spiked heels, her designer jeans and silk blouse hinted at the crisply intelligent point of view that made her such a good foil for Matt and Riggs. Alice was far more than just a nod to Affirmative Action. No one stayed on Matt's team to appease or please.

The Marshal's badge suspended from a chain about her neck swayed between her generous breasts when she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Not exactly sensitive, Riggs.”

He looked grieved. “I’m the most sensitive guy in the office—”

“Compared to—?”

“Alice,” Matt cut her off, “you got those files faxed to us from New Orleans this morning?”

She lifted a leather folder, then her brows in reproach that he'd asked. Matt let her look pass. Her punishment waited inside the house. It went against his instincts to do it, but it was part of the job. She wanted it. The Supreme Court said he had to give it to her. At least Alice didn't whine when she got it. He liked that about her.

“You're with me, Alice. Riggs, take the perimeter.” Their path finally clear, Matt strode forward. Inside they ran into a wall of heat, thinning smoke and the stench of cooked flesh.

Matt held his ground, breathing shallowly until his sense of smell adjusted, a trick he'd learned from a coroner at his first crime scene. No tricks for his eyes or mind to use to help him look at the blackened, barely human forms amid the still smoking remains of the living room. Around them, like grim sentinels, skeletons of what had been furniture dotted the gutted room, while above electric wires dangled uselessly.

“I guess we won't be needing their ID photos,” Alice said, a sudden pallor leaving islands of makeup on her face.

“How many?” Matt asked.

“Three.” The Fire Marshal, a grotesque parody of Kris Kringle in grimy gear, rubbed his face tiredly.

Matt looked at Alice, saw his own question reflected in her eyes. They'd been faxed files on five Deputy Marshals. Dani Gwynne's file had already been in the office in anticipation of her transfer to their jurisdiction. “All the bodies here?”

The man nodded. “Our people found them when they got the fire under control.”

“Looks like you caught the fire before it spread too far.” Alice's eyes stayed blank as she studied the disposition of the dead.

“Neighbor called it in early.” The homicide detective, Henshaw spoke this time. A sturdy, competent woman with tired eyes, a smoke-smudged face, she had the inevitable chip on her shoulder from making her way in the male world of law enforcement. “Baby woke her up. She saw the glow in the windows. As soon as the fire was out, we moved in. When we found the badges, we called you.”

A fireman signaled to the fire marshal, who muttered an excuse and left. Matt looked at Henshaw. “Your people been over the scene?”

Henshaw's gaze passed over the black mounds, “Just a prelim. At least one of them got it in the kitchen. There's enough blood in there to float a boat. Our guy says—”

She drew her hand across her throat.

“In the kitchen with the knife,” Alice murmured, giving Matt a quick look. “Quick and quiet.”

“They all get caught napping?” Matt asked. He kept his face cool, but couldn't do anything about the tension that started a knot between his shoulder blades. Only one man he knew that could pull off a hit this thorough, this messy, and get away clean. Ten years since their last meeting. Matt would've been happy to make that twenty.

“Maybe one insomniac in a bedroom.” Henshaw nodded toward a hallway to their right, then hid a yawn behind her hand. “Can I get my people started? We've been here two hours already.”

Matt nodded. “Have them start in the kitchen. Oh, and tell your guy, when he does the blood work to look for the latest in tranqs. This looks like the work of a guy who likes to neutralize everyone but his target victim before he kills. Let's go look at that bedroom, Alice.”

About halfway along the narrow hallway, the scorching marks of the fire faded into light brown carpet, but the choking smell of smoke and death lingered.

“Looks like he dragged them to the living room after he killed them, then started the fire.” Alice kept to one side of the rusty brown trail, nearly obscured in places by sooty boot marks, that ran down the center of the hall. She hesitated, then burst out, “Why move them? Why the fire?”

Matt stepped over the marks into the first bedroom. “With this perp, the why only matters to him.”

“You've seen this before.”

“Yeah,” he moved about the room, not touching anything. “I’ve seen this before.”

The dawning sun entered the room uneasily, falling on rumpled bed sheets, messy with the marks of recent violence. A service revolver hung in a holster over the edge of the bed, just inches from the blood-splattered pillow. No insomniac here.

Matt moved to the next room, probably the witness's. Like the previous room, rumpled bed covers were tossed back, but the violence that had invaded this room hadn't touched the bed. Looked like most of it went into a crumpled throw rug, except for the bloody trail heading out the door towards the killer's funeral pyre.

A lamp lay in pieces between an overturned night stand and desk chair. Scattering of books. Whether it indicated serious resistance or just a sloppy landing, he couldn’t tell.

If there had been resistance, it had not lasted long. Hard to believe in God at crime scenes and yet—

A pragmatic man, not prone to imagining things, still Matt felt the difference in a room where death came quietly and one where the victim saw it coming.

This one saw it coming, fought it hard.

Matt stepped into the room through air still thick with smoke and betrayed trust.

Alice propped a shoulder against the door frame and pulled out the witness's file, scanning for information they didn't need to know. Matt didn't stop her. They all had their own routine for coping. Alice liked to bond with the victim. Probably a female thing. He liked to keep his distance.

“It started with a family affair turned nasty. Victim was a witness against her ex-brother-in-law and upstanding citizen, Richard Hastings.”

“Upstanding citizen with his own hit man?” Matt looked at her with one brow arched.

Alice made a movement that could have been a nod or a shrug. “Dani Gwynne, divorced romance writer.” She found a photo, studied it, and then handed it to him. “She doesn't look like a romance writer or a murder witness.”

What she looked like didn't matter anymore, but he was curious to see what a romance writer looked like, so he studied the photo. Alice was right, she didn't look like a romance writer. Or like what they'd seen in the living room. Her face looked too alive to be dead, surprisingly attractive. Weren't romance writers frustrated wall flowers or something?

Her face had a grownup beauty, as opposed to the walking corpses of fashion runways and Hollywood semi-prostitutes. A charm that owed nothing to youth, artifice or surgical enhancement and everything to character, though he was sure Alice would insist her good bones helped some. The lines at the edges of her green eyes and smiling mouth, the fullness time had added to her figure, Matt considered a plus. He'd lost his taste for the young when he quit being young.

Matt frowned down at the photo, uncomfortable with the odd feeling that he had missed something by not knowing her. Still holding her picture, he started around the perimeter of the room, looking without touching, instinctively avoiding the places where her blood had turned brown in the matted carpet.

“Caucasian female, thirty-four years old, five feet nine inches tall, wouldn't give them her weight—with an appendix scar on her right abdomen and another in the hairline above her left ear.” Alice looked up. “Seems she fell off a ladder when she was six and is—was afraid of heights.”

Matt found he didn't want the details of her life, not while assessing the chaos of her death. Every detail brought her more into focus. She wasn't what he should be focusing on.

“Divorced soon after her eighteen-month-old daughter, Megan, was killed in a car accident. Her ex, brother to Mr. Upstanding, was driving when it happened and decided to become an alcoholic.” She looked at Matt. “That sucks.”

They ought to know, he thought wryly. They had both done time in divorce court.

“Likes to read—obviously,” Alice gave the scattered books a pointed look, “and write, does amateur theater, loves New Orleans' jazz and pastries, is interested in computers, likes to surf the Internet.” Alice looked up. “We could be soul-mates if she'd lose the computer crap. A friend just gave me one of her books to read. I—liked it. It had heart.”

“Really?” What did that mean? Matt used the tip of his pen to slide open the dresser drawers. They were all empty. On the desk was a laptop, plugged into both electrical and telephone plug, the switch in the “on” position. If she had been working, that might explain why she had been awake. The telephone line to the computer was interesting—because it shouldn't have been there.

“Let’s take the laptop with us when forensics has been over it,” Matt said.

“Okay.” Alice flipped to the next page of Dani's file. “Hmmm…can't live without Diet Dr. Pepper and M&Ms. She has good taste in junk food.”

“Isn't that a contradiction in terms?” Matt used the pen to sift through the contents of the waste basket and found confirmation of her junk food preferences. He turned to the closet. On the rod hung a tee shirt with the words, “My life is filled with romance, lust, danger, and dust balls the size of cattle” written across the front. Next to it was a severe black dress, the kind witnesses wear so juries will know they are telling the truth. Next to it was a long, purple feather boa.

Intrigued, Matt held it out for Alice to see. “Standard equipment for romance writing?”

Alice grinned. “Maybe she was planning to wear it at the trial. Wouldn't Sheridan have had a cow?”

Her obvious regret at missing the prosecuting attorney having a cow kept the grin on Matt's face as he stepped into the bathroom. The first thing he saw was a towel, dry but with the indefinable look of having been used, slung over the mirror. What hadn't she wanted to see, he wondered, the grin fading. A few personal items cluttered the ledge above the sink, all well used. On the tub was a small bottle of shampoo. He bent close and sniffed, catching the faint scent of—coconut? Not flowers or spice. No, the romance writer chose to smell like fruit. It didn't seem to go with the boa or the M&M's. But then, what would?

Against his better judgment, he looked at the photograph again, trying to fit her face with what he'd learned. The character in the curving oval of her face didn't go with a purple boa. Cool green eyes with integrity and an M&Ms addiction? A determined chin, the sunlight striking gold in her hair, and color warming creamy skin defied the unalterable reality of her death.

“She traveled light,” he heard Alice say. She moved into his sight line and knelt by the tumbled pile of books, “except for these.”

He could have got a dig in on Alice, who was notorious for not traveling light. When he didn't, she looked up, her brows arched.

“You find something?”

“No.” He leaned against the door frame and watched Alice do a visual catalog of a dead woman's reading material. Maybe it would answer his questions, put his unease—and the romance writer—to rest.

“Interesting mix. JD Robb, Tom Clancy, Tonya Huff, Alastair Maclean, a couple of romances—oh, look, an advance copy of Kelly Kerwin's new historical. Too bad it's evidence.” He heard the hopeful question in Alice's voice and gave a negative grunt. She sighed. “Here's your personal favorite: Louis L'Amour's Last of the Breed—”

The romance writer had liked the story about a man who refused to settle for what was possible? Matt frowned. Too bad this was the real world where what was possible was the only option available.

Sometimes not even that.

“—the Bible, and something called Lord of the Rings,” she twisted her head to see better, “which seems to be two books of a fantasy trilogy about some ring, oh, there's the other one, by your foot.”

Matt read the title through a smattering of her blood.

“You all right?” Alice stood up, looked at him in concern.

He rubbed away the sweat beading on his forehead. “It's hot.”

“As an oven.” She looked around. “Shame.”

“Yeah.” Beyond Alice, Matt saw the bed, the white sheets thrown back, the pillow bunched against the headboard as if she'd had trouble getting comfortable. Stronger than before, he felt her passionate rejection of death. She had not gone quietly into the night in this dreary little room. Like something tangible, he could feel her demanding that he—what? He couldn't change what had happened.

He could only hunt her killer.

He handed Alice the photo.

“We done here?” Her voice neutral, she secured the file and tucked it back under her arm.

“Yeah. Put a call in, have Henry start pulling up everything he can find on a hit man named Jonathan Hayes—” Matt broke off as Riggs came in. “What you got?”

“Killer did a first class job of bypassing the security system. Cut the phone lines, too. Fire boys trampled things outside, but I did find one thing that doesn't quite fit.”

“What's that?”

“The flower bed outside this room is all torn up.”

“Really.” Matt pulled the curtains back and found the window off the latch and ajar. “Show me.”

Outside Matt followed the marks in the flower bed to where they stopped by the corner of the house. Had someone stood there, perhaps straining to hear or see in the pre-dawn dark, while the orange glow of fire flickered nearby? They had three members of the team still unaccounted for. If someone had survived, why hadn't they phoned home?

Alice came around the corner of the house and Matt turned to her. “Got something?”

“How do you feel about the resurrected?” she said.

“What?”

She shrugged. “Neuman and McBride aren't crispy critters after all.”

Riggs looked disappointed. “Does that make them the bad guys or one bad guy and one dupe?”

“Let's go find out.” Matt frowned. Two down, one left to account for. Maybe one of them could explain how Jonathan Hayes had found and killed three people as easy as taking a walk in the park.

“Two deputies and Gwynne were in the house when we left to take Peg—Deputy Oliver—to the hospital,” Neuman said, his clean cut, nice guy face white with shock. “McBride came with me.”

That accounted for everyone. So why was his gut still insisting that something didn't add up? Matt exchanged a quick look with Riggs before he said, “You screwed up, Neuman.”

Neuman shoved a trembling hand through his dark hair thatch of hair, marring the perfect line. “No shit.”

Either he was seriously shaken up or a big loss to Hollywood, Matt thought grimly. “You didn't smell a rat in your op when your girl got sick?”

“Of course I did! I've smelled a rat since I got this detail! I asked the hospital to run tests—sent McBride off to arrange a move, but—”

Matt bit back a blistering critique. “Go to the hospital and talk to her, Alice.”

Neuman looked up, spots of color coming into his cheeks. “I’ll go with you. It's going to hit Peg hard—”

“That's the down side of a blown op.” His mixed feelings put a sharp edge to Matt's voice. “Isn't that right, Alice?”

“That's right.” Her face was as unforgiving as Matt felt.

“And you'll break it to her gentle, won't you?”

“Gentle's my middle name,” Alice said.

Right after “castrating b***h,” according to her ex-husband, Matt recalled with grim humor. Course, he'd gotten on her bad side. Not a good place to be.

“I want—”

“I don't give a rat's ass what you want, Neuman.” Over Neuman's shoulder Matt saw the first body being wheeled out of the house. “You're still on duty. Or maybe you don't care if we catch the son of a b***h that killed your witness and your people?”

“You bastard.” Neuman's fists clenched.

“Try it,” Matt said, wishing he would. He had wanted to hit something or someone since he got the call from PD. Maybe Neuman realized it. He didn't try.