Fatal Distraction Read online

  Jess shuddered briefly before she reached Vivian’s wheelchair. Marilyn Crawford was seated immediately to Vivian’s left and Matthew was next to his wife. Vivian’s chair faced the casket and was stopped on the aisle, open to passers-by on her right side. When Jess first arrived at the funeral home’s entrance and scanned the room, she’d noticed several people stopping to pay their respects to Vivian as well. Initially puzzled by this, Jess quickly remembered that Vivian’s husband had died only four days ago and had not been buried yet.

  Jess reached Vivian’s side in a matter of seconds and bent down to speak to her when she noticed that Vivian’s eyes were closed. The poor thing had to be so exhausted, in body and spirit. Jess took a moment to really see her.

  Vivian’s thin hair was artfully arranged and a bit of pale lip color had been applied to her mouth. Cheek color stood out on her pale face, but it gave her an appearance of warmth her skin would not otherwise display. Her clothes were clean and pressed. A dark navy silk t-shirt, a thin sweater and a skirt the same color covered her skinny limbs and almost camouflaged the clear tube that carried oxygen from the tank behind her to the two-pronged cannula beneath her nostrils. Vivian didn’t have the strength to organize herself this well. Marilyn Crawford must have dressed her and Matthew had obviously helped.

  As if Jess’s thoughts had conjured her attention, Marilyn glanced toward her. “Good morning, Jess,” Marilyn whispered to avoid awakening Vivian. She offered a weak smile. “This is so hard. Harder than I expected it to be.”

  Jess reached over and touched Marilyn’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Marilyn.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She lifted a damp tissue to her nose and wiped at the mucus that threatened to slide out. Jess saw that both Marilyn and Matthew had been crying. Whether from relief or sorrow, she couldn’t say.

  Marilyn sniffed a little, then placed a hand on Vivian’s skeletal arm laying in her lap in the wheelchair. “Viv, honey. Viv? Jess is here to see you.” Vivian didn’t stir. “She sleeps quite a bit now. It’s so hard for her to breathe, poor thing.”

  Jess looked at Vivian’s body more closely. Her chest was enlarged, characteristic of patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Patients like Vivian took shallow breaths difficult to detect at this stage. Jess moved closer and stared into Vivian’s face. Her gaze traveled to Vivian’s chest. She could detect no movement. Jess raised the back of her hand beneath Vivian’s nose, but could feel not the tiniest hint of a breeze.

  “Marilyn, how long as she been like this?” Jess asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Not breathing?”

  Then, everything seemed to happen at once.

  Marilyn screamed as if Jess had physically attacked her.

  Matthew rose immediately from his chair and grabbed Jess by the arm, raising her to her feet, almost lifting her off the floor.

  “What did you do to my wife?” he demanded.

  Marilyn continued screaming.

  A small group of protectors surrounded the four of them, as if Jess was an assassin they could imprison with their bodies. Angry voices denounced her.

  Jess heard Frank Temple’s men, voices raised above the cacophony, insistent, “Let us through. Police officers! Out of the way. Move!” People ignored them.

  “Let go of me!” Jess shouted to be heard, jerking her arm without any impact on Matthew Crawford’s grip. The more she pulled, the tighter he held on.

  Quite a few people had arrived for the service by this time, including reporters and publicity seekers. Jess felt the lights of videographers as cameras rolled capturing the scene. The melee grew larger.

  It seemed to Jess an interminable period of time passed before she heard sirens and medical personnel shouting “Coming through! Coming through!”

  The crowd parted enough to allow the paramedics to reach Vivian. Matthew continued to grasp Jess as if she’d personally strangled Vivian. Temple’s two officers followed behind the paramedics and reached Jess’s position just in time for all of them to hear the first question the medical personnel asked: “Who turned this oxygen regulator up?”

  The paramedic reached over and turned the regulator down. One of Temple’s officers flashed his badge and asked, “What do you mean?”

  The man responded, “This woman has been overdosed on oxygen.”

  The idea seemed so absurd that silence descended on the immediate group surrounding Vivian, although the larger crowd’s volume did not diminish. Matthew’s grip relaxed enough on Jess’s arm that she was able to yank free.

  Jess sought out the officers that Frank had assigned to protect her. “Berger? Prescott?” There they were. “Any chance we can take this somewhere more private?” she suggested.

  Normally they would have ignored her, but given the circumstances, her suggestion made sense. Berger and Prescott would need to determine quickly whether Vivian’s overdose was accidental or intentional. The chapel became a crime scene.

  The professionals began to handle the scene according to whatever protocols the FDLE followed, while Jess stood off to one side. She saw Mike shooting video of the entire crowd, along with a number of other cameramen. A flash of anger coursed through her. She’d told him in no uncertain terms not to film inside the chapel. She strode half the distance between them before her head cleared enough to realize that the film Mike had could be valuable in finding out exactly who had killed Vivian.

  She remembered something else, too. When she’d first entered the chapel, Vivian had been at the casket with Sarah Taylor and Ben Fleming. Jess looked around the chapel. She was too short to see many of the people inside the crowd around Vivian. She touched Mike on the arm. Without looking at her or stopping his camera, he said, “What?”

  “Can you see Ben Fleming anywhere?”

  “I saw him leave right after the two of you talked. Why?”

  “Never mind,” she said, pulling him toward the parking lot. “Save that film you were shooting, and let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Thornberry, Florida

  Sunday Noon

  AS HELEN PULLED ON HER BARN COAT and picked up a cup of hot coffee, Frank walked into the kitchen. “Where are you going?”

  “Meeting Mac at the barn.”

  The doctors were still running their tests with Oliver; until they had results to share, Helen craved the therapeutic distraction of work, the freedom to move about in the open air.

  “It’s hard for us to protect you outside,” said Frank. “You know that.”

  Helen nodded.

  “All right,” he said. “Wait a minute and I’ll come with you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

  “I know, but I’m coming all the same,” he said, following her right out the door.

  The day had developed cold and breezy. It was the end of December in Central Florida, when frost could cover the morning grass and even kill the orange crops in bad years. Despite the weather, Helen was glad to be out of the house, even if she couldn’t leave the premises. She’d been envying Jess Kimball’s freedom of movement since her surprise arrival last night. Helen hadn’t been free to roam for years.

  “What are you looking for?” Frank asked her when she stopped a few feet from Jake’s barn.

  She glanced at her watch. “Mac must have been delayed,” she said. While they waited, she sipped her coffee, and shrugged her shoulders to shed the weight of everything she’d been carrying since the explosion at the mansion.

  “Anything I can help with?” Frank asked.

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet.” It had taken her a while, but she’d absorbed the report details and the photographs the same way she’d done when she was a prosecutor. Apparently, legal skills were much like riding a bike, once learned, never truly forgotten.

  An odd sense of déjà vu followed Helen as she walked around the charred remains of the barn. This was the first chance she’d had to inspect the crime scene, and despite the devastation
, she couldn’t help but picture it exactly how looked before the fire.

  Frank followed her through the piles of black ash. “Do you miss it? Working as a lawyer?”

  “I do, actually.” Of course she liked the work a lot better when she wasn’t the focus of the crimes.

  Frank was quiet for a moment, as if he might hold his tongue. But he was nothing if not forthright. “You could go back to it. Lawyering. You don’t have to be a Senator. You could take some time off. You’ve certainly earned it.”

  Helen wasn’t prepared to discuss that subject with anyone just now. There were too many variables. She tried not to think about the possibility that Oliver wouldn’t recover. Everything had happened too quickly. She knew Ralph Hayes wouldn’t wait long for her answer, but at least she could take the weekend before she had to make a choice.

  Instead of responding, she changed the subject. “I’m used to investigators’ reports. But nothing replaces experiencing the scene yourself.”

  Frank kicked at the dirt with the heel of his shoe. “It’s gotta be weird for you in this situation, though. You were here the night of the fire, so you already have some context.”

  “I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. I know every inch of this land better than the arsonist could have ever hoped to know it.”

  “Unless the arsonist was Todd Dale. He lived here longer than you, and we haven’t ruled him out yet.”

  Helen didn’t argue, but she simply could not make herself believe that Todd Dale would have killed her son. Todd and Eric were buddies from the time Eric had learned to walk. Eric worshiped Todd, who treated Eric like the son he’d never had. Helen could not have been that wrong about Todd.

  Both Frank and Mac Green cautioned her repeatedly that the arson and Eric’s death were not tied together with a forensic umbilical cord, but Helen was long past relying on such false precision. She could no longer afford the luxury of certitude. A madman had attacked her family and invaded her home. If she allowed herself to believe any other fantasy, the indulgence could kill both her and Oliver, too.

  Helen kicked aside a tubular length of burnt wood that she recognized as the handle of a shovel used to muck out the horse’s stalls. “Why is this lying outside the foundation of the barn instead of inside?” she asked aloud. “Did one of the fire fighters move it?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “You should mention it to Mac, just in case.”

  Mac walked up behind her at that moment. “Not sure how much you’ve had a chance to read. There were three points of origin for the fire. No question about that,” he said, “and each fire was set using an accelerant.”

  She turned to see him dressed in much the same way that she was, hands thrust into his pockets, toothpick sticking out of the left side of his mouth, wearing a Ray’s hat.

  “Right,” said Helen. “You can actually see them.” She moved through the rubble, approaching each origin point identified in the reports and recalling what had been in that location before. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she kept looking anyway.

  Frank watched her a few more moments and then said, “I’ve got several matters to attend to, but Helen shouldn’t be out here alone. There are a lot of places around the property vulnerable to unauthorized entry.” He tilted his head toward the pair of field agents standing close by.

  Mac nodded amiably. “We’ll see you inside in a few.”

  Clearly he and Frank had previously agreed that one would stay with her at all times.

  Helen turned her attention to the rubble. One of the fires was started directly outside Jake’s stall. His panic rang loudly in her ears even now, despite the stillness of the morning. Helen voiced her conclusions aloud. “The point of this first fire was to kill Jake.”

  “That’s how it looks,” Mac allowed.

  The second fire began directly inside the door closest to the ranch house. If Oliver had managed to get the door open, he wouldn’t have been able to go inside through the impenetrable wall of fire.

  “The second fire was set to keep Oliver from saving Jake,” she said.

  “Yep.” Mac waited to hear her analysis before adding his own opinions.

  The third fire began nearest the most combustible materials inside the barn. As it spread, it would have had more than sufficient fuel to grow toward the other two fires and rapidly envelop the entire contents of the barn in an unstoppable conflagration.

  “So this one was the connector.” She gazed up from Jake’s stall and looked directly through the empty air that once was the wall of the barn toward Todd Dale’s cabin. Her line of sight was unbroken, leading to an old live oak tree that stood at about the half-way mark between the barn and the cabin. The tree had the characteristic shape of a senior: multiple heavy limbs extended from a single trunk, Spanish moss hanging from the branches.

  “The fire could have been much worse than it was,” Mac said. “It’s pretty dry out here. Could have been real bad.”

  “Why do you suppose he set such a carefully constructed fire, knowing it would be extinguished quickly and limited to the barn?”

  “He’s precise. He wanted to kill the horses and draw Oliver out of the house too late to save ‘em.”

  “I agree.” Helen looked at Todd Dale’s cabin again. It was a one-story structure with a pitched metal roof and a full front porch facing this direction. The front entrance was in the middle of the building, the kitchen on the left and the living room on the right. Both rooms had large windows that opened onto the porch. The night of the fire, the windows had been open.

  A drafty old cabin had been constructed on that spot in the 1950s originally, but Oliver rebuilt the barn and the manager’s house a few years ago. The cabin looked sturdy because it was. Hurricane force winds didn’t reach this far inland often, but when they did, massive devastation was inevitable unless you engineered your buildings in conformance with the most recent building codes. Thanks to Oliver’s preparations, recent wicked hurricane seasons had left the Sullivan ranch buildings unscathed when older structures in the region had been flattened.

  But everyone knew that hurricane-proof construction wasn’t fireproof. The arsonist could easily have destroyed more than the barn if he’d been so inclined.

  “He didn’t have to make the arson so obvious,” Mac said. “What’s your take on that?”

  “He didn’t want us to miss the point.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first killer to make the mistake of thinking I’m stupid,” Mac deadpanned, which made Helen smile.

  “No. But that’s not the reason. He wanted to be sure we knew it was arson right away. Didn’t want us chasing the wrong assumptions.”

  Mac chewed on that a while along with his toothpick. “So he wanted us to realize he’d killed the horses intentionally.”

  “And that he could have done worse if he’d wanted to,” Helen added. She drank more of her coffee and checked her watch before heading around the now-missing barn walls and exiting through the empty space that once was the back door. Mac followed her path toward Todd Dale’s cabin, saying nothing, giving her room to investigate and reach her own conclusions.

  She walked with purpose, but didn’t rush, stopping at the live oak tree and checking her watch again. “Less than two minutes from the back barn door to this spot. And I’m guessing that in daylight, he’d have a pretty good view of his handiwork from here.”

  Mac considered her point. “So he’d have worn some sort of night-vision. Which might explain why he removed the ski-mask. Those goggles can get heavy. With the exertion and the fire blazing, he’d have been pretty hot inside a ski-mask.”

  He stopped talking, but she knew what he was thinking. The killer didn’t expect any witnesses to see his face. He’d have felt safe enough to remove the ski-mask.

  Helen handed Mac her coffee cup, hoisted herself up into the crotch of the tree and settled in facing the barn, her back to Todd Dale’s cabin. She glanced around. Mac mimicked her position while on the grou
nd. He stood with his back to the tree, facing the same direction.

  “From down here, I can’t see much. Vegetation blocks the sight line to the ranch house,” he said. “How about you?”

  Helen thought about the question for a few seconds before she mused aloud, “Eric used to play in this tree as a kid. Even though we told him not to. He’d come over here to play around Todd. Todd let him do things we wouldn’t allow. From up here he’d watch for Oliver and me. The minute he saw one of us heading this way, he’d jump down.”

  “Too high up for a boy,” Mac observed.

  Helen jumped back to the ground, too, stumbling a bit and steadying herself with her hands on the dirt. She stood up and dusted herself off. “Exactly why he was forbidden to climb this tree. He broke his arm jumping down from here once. He wore a bright lime green cast from his elbow down to the palm of his hand. We’d never have known he was playing up there, otherwise.” She held out her hand and Mac returned her cup.

  “I remember,” Mac said. “That was the year you gave him Jake for his birthday, wasn’t it?” They exchanged glances and by tacit agreement, said no more about Eric.

  She sipped her coffee and thought about it for a bit.

  Helen said, “Todd knew all along that Eric was climbing the tree. He could see Eric from his front porch. But he never said anything because he thought we knew about it already. Todd was devastated when Eric fell, even more upset about it than we were, I think.”

  She checked her watch again and moved toward the manager’s cabin. She stopped before the porch steps, standing in front of the inviting cane rocking chairs. The breeze blew both rocking chairs enough to set them moving as if ghosts rested and watched.

  Again, when she arrived, she checked the time. “Two minutes more from the tree to here. A total of four minutes from here to the barn, four minutes back.”

  “Unless you wanted to stop and watch from the crook of that tree,” Mac said.