Tin City Tinder (A Boone Childress Mystery) Read online

  Mercer squatted on the plaster mound. “This is it? I can’t see a body here, just a bunch of maggots—Whoa! Whoa!”

  His weight cracked the plaster. The mound crumbled. His feet scrambled for purchase in the rubble, coating his gray uniform in soot and dumping him onto the bedsprings.

  Mercer landed hard.

  “Can I get a hand?” he asked Pickett.

  Pickett, Early, and Stuart shook their heads.

  Abner took my hooligan and offered it to Mercer. “Take hold of this, deputy. Watch out for the tip, it’ll poke a hole clean through you.”

  With a quick yank, Mercer was on his feet. “Thanks for nothing, Pickett. “

  He was smacking the dust from his uniform when three more prowlers pulled in. They parked behind Abner’s Rover.

  “Pete!” Sheriff Hoyt yelled. “What’re you doing wallowing in a crime scene?”

  Mercer looked at us and then ran to meet Hoyt. “Sheriff! Maggots! Everywhere!”

  “He didn’t even say thanks,” I said.

  “They never do,” Abner said. “Take that poker back to my truck. Cover it in plastic so the blade doesn’t cut my seats.”

  “Yes sir.”

  A minute later, I opened the back of the Rover and slid the bare end of hooligan between the rear seats. I covered the head the way Abner asked, which seemed like overkill. The tool had never cut anything in my truck. But Abner was meticulous, and I’d learned a long time ago to follow his rules.

  By the time I rejoined my grandfather, two deputies were carrying a body bag to the site. Another pair was stringing yellow crime scene tape around the perimeter, and Deputy Mercer stood next to the sheriff, still covered in plaster dust, taking notes as Hoyt questioned Abner. They moved on to Pickett’s men next.

  I watched them intently for a few minutes as they gave nervous answers, with Pickett gesturing toward the house and then pointing at Abner.

  “They’re making sure,” Abner said, “the cops knew I disturbed the crime scene.”

  “If not for you, this wouldn’t be a crime scene.”

  “Boone, it would’ve been easy to convince yourself the victim’s screams were wood whistling or air popping. Especially when your own folks thought you were wrong.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “I call ‘em like I see ‘em. For example, does the sheriff look like a man investigating a potential murder case to you?”

  “Murder?” My voice dropped. “Is that what you think?”

  “I think lots of things. It’s called an open mind.”

  I tugged on my ear. “I’ll be glad to help in any way I can. If you need me, you know, to help investigate.”

  “Didn’t you just get out of the hospital?”

  “I’m tough, and I have meds.”

  “There’s one problem,” Abner said. “Your mama. She thinks you’re at home, instead of picking through a burned out house.”

  “She’s at work. We’re good.”

  “Galax is a small town. Word travels fast.”

  “If she catches me, I’ll tell her—“

  “The truth. It’s not always the easiest thing to admit, but it’s the easiest to remember.”

  Hoyt shook hands with Pickett. He walked the investigators to their cars, then called to us.

  “Dr. Zickafoose,” he said. “Mr. Pickett tells me you popped that body out of the ground like you were harvesting carrots.”

  “That’s about all there is to it,” Abner said patiently, as if he were explaining the mechanics of osteoarthritic lipping to a college freshman. “I used the floor plan to locate the two bedrooms. The individual wasn’t at the first location, so I traced fly movement to the second. There she was.”

  “She?” the sheriff said.

  Abner explained how he had identified the sex. “I’ll be glad to do a more through examination when the coroner is done. I could assist, if you like. Is Leroy Sweeney still your man? We’ve worked a couple cases together.”

  Hoyt shook his head. “Leroy’s dead and buried two years at least.”

  “Dead?” Abner said, sounding shocked. “You sure?”

  “I was a pall bearer.” Hoyt let the news sink in. “And I’m going to have to pass on your offer, considering past history with this department. We’ll be contacting Dr. Windsor-Smith down at the university. She’s a crackerjack young forensic expert. Emphasis on the young part.”

  “Very subtle, Hoyt,” Abner said.

  I stepped in front of Hoyt. “Are you saying you don’t want Doc’s help?”

  “I’m telling you to get out of my way.” Hoyt pulled his leather belt higher on his gut. “Be glad you’re a vet, Boone. Or your ass would be sitting in my prowler, handcuffed to an O-ring. Now excuse me, I got to go play with the grownups for a while.”

  Hoyt waited until I stepped aside and then called for a deputy. He put on a pair of sunglasses and pull out a cellphone. What a pompous, officious, over-bearing, patronizing—

  “Jackass,” Abner said.

  “Sheriff!” I was going to find out who set the fire, and no expert, including the sheriff, Lamar, or that officious prick Mercer, was going to stop me. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said, after I caught up to Hoyt. “Doc found the body, and you’re blowing him off?”

  “Deputy,” Hoyt told Mercer, who was still shaking dust from his uniform, “escort Mr. Childress and Dr. Zickafoose to their vehicle.”

  “What if I decide not to leave?” I said.

  “Son,” Hoyt said, “after thirty-two years on the job, I got no sense of humor left, so I do not kid around. Go on, before I have to call your mama.”

  Before I could dare him to to it, Mercer walked toward me, arms wide, like a human lariat.

  “Keep walking,” Mercer said. He was on my heels the whole way to the Rover. “You heard the sheriff.”

  “There’s no speed limit for walking.”

  Mercer gave my shoulder a nudge.

  I spun around. “You really don’t want to to that.”

  Grinning, Mercer reached for the Taser on his belt. His face fell, though, as his hand groped his empty holster.

  The Taser lay on the box springs, covered in plaster dust and soot.

  “Oh no,” he said and bounded after it.

  With Mercer out of the way, I confronted the sheriff again. “Are you going to arrest Eugene Loach now?”

  “Eugene Loach?” Hoyt drew back. “What for? He didn’t start this fire.”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” I said. “But he refused to render aid to a victim, and that victim died in the fire. That makes him a killer in my book.”

  “You ain’t old enough to have a book, son.”

  “It’s the law!”

  “In this county, I am the law.”

  “This whole situation stinks to high heaven.”

  “You don’t like it?” Hoyt walked away. “Then don’t breathe through your nose.”

  4

  When she came home early and found me in the barn instead of bed, Mom screeched like a cat dropped down a well.

  “Boon! What are you doing out here?”

  “Charting the effects of certain insect larvae on decaying flesh.”

  I put a mason jar labeled "blow fly" on the shelf. The project consisted of forty-seven mason jars containing the flesh of dead animals. The mouth of each jar was covered with wire mesh of varying gauges. The variance allowed insects of specific sizes to reach the samples. Charting data helped me rein in my random thoughts, to reshape them the way a magnet realigns atoms.

  “I can’t believe you’ve been conducting research in my barn. You know how I feel about desecrating the dead.”

  “They’re dead animals. Not people.”

  “I’m a veterinarian, so it’s just as bad to me. Killing animals for research is unethical and unacceptable.”

  “You put down horses.”

  “It’s part of my job. A sad part. I’m not going to justify myself to you. Understand?”


  “It’s road kill, Mom. The only thing I hurt was the turkey buzzards’ choice of snacks.”

  “You’re a terrible child.”

  “That’s because I’m grown. We do that. Grow up. Have our own thoughts. Our own 401k plans.”

  She put her fingers in her ears. “Lalala. I can’t hear you.”

  “Cedar says that you’re experiencing empty nest denial syndrome. She read about in Psychology Today.”

  “Cedar is a lovely young woman.”

  “That she is.”

  “Who should stick to her studies instead of psychoanalyzing a middle-aged woman’s relationships with her unreliable, single-minded, inconsiderate elderly father and the son who is just like him. I also suggest better reading material. Cosmo, for example. They have nice quizzes.”

  “Essay or multiple choice?”

  “Ha-ha.” She peered over my shoulder as I dumped a sample on a metal tray and counted the fly larvae. “In the 80’s, we used the word gnarly to described things so disgusting.”

  “Gnarly or not.” I returned the bugs and the tissues to the jar. “This is an important project. Police will be able to use my data to accurately determine the date of death of an individual.”

  “Yep, you sound just like your grandfather.”

  “That’s a bad thing?” Abner said, stepping from the field and into the barn. His hair was helter-skelter, and his pants looked like twisted rope. “I happen to like his grandfather.”

  “Dad!” Mom caught her breath. “You snuck up on me!”

  “Would it’ve changed what you said?”

  “Not one bit. You know how I feel about your disregard for simple human dignity. You treat people like pieces of meat.”

  Oh, no, here they go, I thought. Mom’s dislike of Abner’s profession was no secret. Lately, she’d become an internet crusader for human dignity. She had been quoted several times in blog articles and had once done a Reddit AMA about her belief that forensic anthropology was a ghoulish hobby.

  "That’s because we are all meat in the end. Including yours truly.” Abner stroked his beard as he scanned the specimens. “Boone, did you tell your mama what we did this morning?”

  “This morning? I don’t recall anything unusual.”

  “Mary Harriet.” Abner looked a man who would rather eat the contents of my jars than to confess, but he did anyway. “There’s something we’ve got to tell you. Right, Boone?”

  “As I still maintain a Top Secret clearance,” I said, “my actions are classified.”

  “Who says?”

  “Me.”

  “If he won’t tell you, then I reckon I will.”

  Abner spilled the whole story. The trip to the Nagswood house. The discovery of the body. All without the truly gory details.

  Mom turned to me with tears misting in her eyes, and I clenched up in anticipation of what was to follow.

  A hug.

  “What’s that for?”

  “For finding that poor woman. And for restoring my faith in you."

  “Sprained neck, Mom.” I grunted, and she patted my back in sympathy, which made me grunt again. “One more hug, and I’m going to be in traction.”

  “Tough.”

  Abner also told her about Hoyt chasing us off the property. He left out the fact we had gathered evidence from the hooligan and saved it plastic evidence bags. The bags were now stored in Ab’s Range Rover.

  “My god." Mom sat down on a straw bale. To keep from fainting, she pressed a knuckle under her nose. “The victim. Do we know who she is?”

  “Not yet,” Abner said.

  But we will soon, I thought. Like a hound dog, Abner had his bone, and he wasn’t about to let it go.

  “Who owns the house?” Mom said.

  “Some corporation,” Abner said. “Bought from some band teacher named Blevins.”

  “Troy Blevins?” Mom asked.

  “That’s him.”

  “Small world, huh?” I reached for another jar. The sudden movement sent a spike of pain through my back. The meds were wearing off.

  “Sit,” Mom told me. “You’re pushing too hard.”

  I sat next to her on the bale. “Happy?”

  “I’m on the horns of a dilemma,” she said. “On one hand, I’m sorry a woman died because nobody believed you. You did a good thing finding that person. Now, she can be laid to rest properly.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now, Mary Harriet,” Abner said. “Don’t turn on the boy. I was the one that took him there in the first place.”

  “A fact that I very well aware of. You’ve betrayed my trust. Both of you.” Mom wiped her eyes. Then she shook a finger at us. “Dad, I left my son in your care. You promised to bring him home.”

  “He’s home, ain’t he?”

  “Taking him to a forensic investigation on the way from the hospital doesn’t fit my definition of home! And you, Daniel Boone Childress, you were to get bed rest. Instead, I find you out in the barn!”

  “What’s going on?” Lamar stood silhouetted in the doorframe. “I heard the commotion all the way in the house.”

  “You wouldn’t believe what these two did.”

  “Since every firefighter in the county knows about the business in Nagswood," Lamar said, "I can make a good guess.”

  “Boone.” Mom stuck out a hand. “Give me your license. You’re too injured to drive. Hand it over.”

  “Not happening,” I said. “You can’t ground me anymore.”

  “Then I reckon I’ll have to.” Lamar stood beside Mom. A united front. “Did I not put you on probation?”

  “Yes, but—“

  “No buts. You defied a direct order from your captain.”

  “Seriously?” I swept past Abner. “We found a woman’s body!”

  “No matter what y’all found, you still broke regulation.”

  “If you really heard what happened,” I said. “Then you know that I was right about the screams. And I was right about Eugene Loach and those two other morons refusing to render aid. Instead of busting me, you should report them for misconduct.”

  “Those are dangerous charges to make about a firefighter.”

  “The truth shall set you free, Captain.”

  “Not in Allegheny County North Carolina, rookie.”

  Mom pulled Abner out of the barn. "Come on, Dad."

  “Give me a holler,” Abner told me, “when your ears stop burning.”

  “Deserter,” I mumbled and waited for Lamar to speak. As a teenager, the whole Clint Eastwood tough guy act really ground my nerves. Now, I was used to standing at attention. I could wait all day. But when Lamar spoke after a minute, I was relieved.

  I needed to pee.

  “I’m going to pass on the advice my captain gave me when I started out,” he said. “There’s horrible things we see that men aren’t meant to see. If you let them, the horrors turn into ghosts, and they’ll haunt you every minute of every day. That’s the first hard lesson about fire. When you walk away from the job, you walk away from the memories, too. You go on with your life like nothing happen, because it’s the only way to survive. You ain’t learned that yet. This fire’s stuck in your craw, and until you get it out or learn to swallow, ain’t nobody going to trust you.”

  “I’m used to people not trusting me,” I said. “I can live with it.”

  “Well, I can’t,” Lamar said flatly. “You’re dismissed from the Allegheny Volunteer Fire Department. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

  He walked out, leaving me alone with me thoughts and test samples. Six months ago, men a decade my senior were saluting me. Now, I was dismissed. Dismissed from a podunk fire department in the middle of nowhere North Carolina. I picked up an empty jar and would’ve fired it against the wall if a knock hadn’t interrupted me.

  “Spare me, Mom. I’ve had enough lectures for one day.”

  “Then I’ll skip the discussion on Newtonian physics.” Cedar swept inside, holding a shopping bag. “How about a snack ins
tead?”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” She looked up at my sample jars. “That’s your Olympiad project? Awesome. Disgusting and disturbing on many levels, but awesome.”

  “Sorry, I thought you were—“

  “An over-reaching parent who doesn’t know how to land the helicopter? I’ve got two of those myself. Just one of the reasons I’m looking forward to transferring to Carolina.” She took two containers out of the bag. “Hope you like sweet and sour.”

  “I like sweet.”

  I ran a thumb along her cheek and leaned in for a kiss. As our lips met, I caught a whisper of citrus from her body wash. Wearing no make-up, dressed in only an untucked button-down and jeans, she could make fresh-scrubbed look alluring.

  “That was pretty sweet.” Cedar put her head on my shoulder. “Where’s the sour?”

  “I save the sour for other people.”

  “So I noticed.” She looked up. “What’s been going on? Your folks looked really tense.”

  “It all started when Abner decided to take a detour on the way home.” I told her the whole story, including Lamar’s decision to dismiss me.

  “That sucks.” Cedar gave me a big hug, which made me grunt with pain, though I wouldn’t admit it. “If it weren’t for you, the body would still be there. Can’t they see that?”

  “They have a blind spot when it comes to me. They think I’m still a kid.”

  “Well, you’re not. You’re grown man who’s about to enjoy a movie with a nerdy young woman. Where should we sit?”

  I motioned to a bench near the horse stalls. “That will work. But there’s no TV out here.”

  “Check out my backpack.” She carried our food to the bench. “There’s a laptop, and I have a Netflix account.”

  “Are you one of those people who thinks of everything?”

  “Not everything,” she said smiling. “But pretty close.”

  We spent the rest of the day eating Chinese and chain watching one movie after another, sitting on the bench at first, then snuggled under a blanket in a pile of clean straw.

  It was well after dark when we finished the last film. The stars were out when I walked Cedar back to her car, and the moon was a huge ball of light on the horizon, bright enough to cast shadows on the fields.