Page 9 of Burning Justice

Besides, with a dead body, the last thing he needed or wanted was anyone getting in his way, especially not someone who didn’t really want to work with him. But if there was the slightest possibility of proving the Torrance Lane fire was arson, he had to follow the trail, no matter how faint. Working with her could uncover something new, something that chasing after random fires for the last twelve months had failed to accomplish.

Finding new evidence.

Brett tugged out his phone and dialed his RAIC.

“Brett,” Resident Agent-in-Charge Lori Olyawule answered. “How’s my favorite canine handler?”

“I’m your only canine handler.” With only forty handlers in the country, canine resources were spread thin. Still, Lori liked him and usually gave him carte blanche to work whatever cases he chose to. The only thing she asked for in return was that he do things by the book and keep her in the loop on his investigations so she wouldn’t get blindsided by HQ or the press. After Aldrich had been processed by the U.S. Marshals earlier that morning, Brett had called her. Succinctly, he now recapped where things stood. “I’m interviewing Aldrich the day after tomorrow.”

“That was quick,” Lori said. “How’d you manage that?”

“I didn’t. This is where it gets weird. Aldrich’s public defender pulled me aside after his initial appearance. Turns out Aldrich has quite the past.” Brett hadn’t been given a copy of the Pre-Trial Services report, but AUSA Deborah Moran and the public defender had given him the short, and hardly sweet, highlights. “When Aldrich was fifteen, he set fire to his house, killing his father. His mother had died several years earlier, and that’s when Aldrich’s father started abusing him. After the fire, Aldrich and his sister went into the system. The sister was adopted. Aldrich wasn’t. He spent years in a psychiatric institution before being released at eighteen.”

Lori whistled, and Gemma’s brows shot to her hairline. Their reactions were the same as his had been when he’d first heard Gavin Aldrich’s story. Among other things, the kid was suffering from PTSD, something Brett understood all too well.

If Judge Tafoya sentenced Aldrich into the correctional system, he wouldn’t get the help he needed. If he remained under psychiatric care and received proper support, he stood a fighting chance. At this point, things weren’t looking too promising.

“I’m putting you on speaker phone,” Brett said, doing just that, then holding the phone between them. “I’m with an NICB agent, Gemma Scott. Gemma’s got a theory. She thinks this warehouse fire may be connected to the Torrance Lane fire.”

“Why’s that?” Lori asked.

“I’ll let her tell you herself.” When he held the phone out, surprise lit Gemma’s face, as if she hadn’t expected to be asked for her input.

Five minutes later, Brett was impressed by her knowledge of the insurance industry, arson-for-profit investigations, and the articulate way she explained her theory.

When Gemma was done, dead silence came over the phone. “I’ll leave it up to you, Brett,” Lori said. “If you want to work a joint investigation with the NICB, I’ll back you.”

Over the phone, Brett met Gemma’s questioning gaze. “I’ll let you know,” he said, then ended the call.

“When were you planning on telling me about Aldrich’s history?” Gemma’s hazel eyes glittered with a mix of annoyance and suspicion.

In less than twenty-four hours of knowing her, he pegged her as a woman who not only didn’t appreciate being overlooked, but would never back down from a fight. And he liked that.

“I wasn’t.” He grinned. “Not until I decided to work with you.”

Chapter Three

The rich, meaty smell of crispy bacon vied with the scent of raw lumber as Gemma walked through her fixer-upper. She bit into a strip of bacon, chewing while she did a one-eighty in the middle of what would eventually become her living room.

Renovations on her tiny 1906 Victorian in the Eiber section of Lakewood were proceeding at a snail’s pace. Considering she had no formal carpentry experience, she’d been doing a darned good job by herself.

She bent down to plug in her compressor, wanting to make sure it was primed and ready to go. Her brain was torn between the arson investigation and the next step in what was fixing to be a five-year renovation.

There were some definite downsides to renovating a house alone, and sometimes she questioned the wisdom of that decision. But in the year since she’d closed on her little Victorian, she’d come to understand it was a way of proving to others that she was competent and should be taken seriously. The only times she’d asked for help were when she’d needed a licensed plumber or electrician. Other than that, working alone was easier. On her house and on the job.

The oak floor in the great room was covered with protective sheeting, on top of which were stacks of floor and ceiling molding yet to be installed, along with saws, hammers, and every other carpentry tool of the trade. At one end of the room stood a makeshift workbench comprised of two sawhorses and a sheet of plywood that held a small TV, her chop saw, a framing nailer, and a rolled-up set of original blueprints that were actually blue.

Taking another bite of bacon, she sat on the only piece of furniture in the room—a worn, cracked, leather sofa, half of which was covered in sawdust. She sat on the relatively clean side, letting her gaze wander proudly over the new great room.

To modernize a house that hadn’t had any work done since the day it was built, she’d knocked down all the walls between the kitchen, dining and living rooms to create a great room. Demo day had been a blast. Literally. Then, using a jigsaw, she’d crafted wood archways between all the rooms for visual separation. Those archways had been her first real carpentry success story.

Yawning, she took a long sip of morning coffee, a special blend, the recipe for which her mother swore she’d been gifted with by the famous New York City gourmet grocer, Eli Zabar, before her family had pulled up stakes from Brooklyn and moved to Colorado.

Through the dining room archway, the morning sun was just hitting the backyard. There was still so much to be done. Like replacing the wood deck where a herd of termites had taken up residence and hooking up the gas line in the new stone firepit. That would all have to wait.

Sighing heavily, she stood. It was time to get back to the job that paid her instead of the one that ate most of her paycheck. Taking her coffee and swinging by the kitchen for another strip of bacon, she headed into the small room on the main floor that served as both a temporary bedroom and office. Her realtor said this room had been added on sometime in the last thirty years. The only thing needed here was a new coat of paint.

Her laptop, two large-screen monitors, and stacks of notes and manilla folders sat on a table pushed against one wall. Taped to the same wall over the table was a three-by-five-foot map of Colorado dotted with red and blue push pins. Next to the map was a spiderweb diagram organizing the ISO data and any common links between the fires.