Flame in the Dark Read online

  The action was in the game room and the stench of fire grew heavier. Inside was a pool table, comfy reclining sofas, and a TV screen so big it took up most of the wall over the fireplace. On the opposite wall were antique guns in frames behind glass. Cast metal that might have been machine parts was protected within smaller frames. What looked like an ordinary wrench was centered on the wall in a heavy carved frame as if it was the most important thing hanging there. People commemorated the strangest things.

  There were also lots of old, black-and-white photographs of stiff-looking people wearing stiff-looking clothes. Their hats and the way the women’s clothes fitted said they were rich and pampered. The men’s mustaches and thick facial hair made them look imposing, at least to themselves; they had that self-satisfied look about them, the expression of a hunter when he was posing with a sixteen-point buck. However, their expressions also made them look like their teeth hurt. Dental care was probably not very common back whenever these were taken.

  Standing in the doorway, I spotted Rick LaFleur, the special agent in charge of Unit Eighteen, talking to Soul, his up-line boss, the newly appointed assistant director, and another woman. If body language was a clue, the PsyLED agents were arguing with the African-American woman in the chic outfit. She wore the tailored clothes as if they were part of her, as much as the scowl and the aura of power. I figured she was the new VIP in charge of the Knoxville FBI. They were too busy to pay attention to me, so I strolled in. Saw things. Smelled things. Touched things with the back of my hand, here and there.

  The gas logs had been on, but were now only warm to the touch. A game of pool had been interrupted and balls were all over the tabletop. The solids were mostly gone. One cue stick lay on the floor in two pieces. Drinks of the alcoholic variety were on every available surface.

  The entire room smelled of fire, the sour scent of a house fire—painted wallboard and burned construction materials, lots of synthetics. The stench was tainted with what might have been the reek of scorched flesh. Icy night air blew in through the busted windows; blackened draperies billowed. Charred furniture and rugs spread into the room from the window. The fire seemed to have started there.

  There were bullet holes on the wall opposite the windows. And there was a pool of blood on the floor. A body lay in the middle of it. She had taken a chest shot. Dead instantly if I was any kind of judge. There was no taped outline. No chalk outline. Just the blood and the body, still in place.

  I stared at her. The victim was middle-aged with dyed blond hair and blue contacts drying and wrinkling, shrinking over her gray eyes. She was wearing a pale blue sweater top and black pants, three-inch black spike shoes. Diamonds. Lots of them. There was blood spatter on the wall in an odd outline, as if someone had been standing behind her. Blood on a chair and small table. Blood on a shattered glass on the mantel near her. That bloody pool beneath her was tracked through by the shoe prints of the people who had tried to save her. There was a lot of blood.

  My gift of reading the land—and feeding the land with blood—was less reticent now, more focused. Hungering. But I had been working with it, trying to harness it, and I stroked the need like the hunting cat I compared it to, flattening its surface, pushing it into stillness. Proud of myself that I had the strength of will to not feed my hunger and the earth beneath the house, I turned from the body.

  By now, the crime scene had been captured in photos and video and cell cameras and drawn out on paper by hand. Multiple redundancies. Crime scene techs were still working, but oddly, there were no numbered evidence markers in the room. I had to wonder why. Maybe they had been placed there, then already removed as CSI gathered up the physical evidence.

  I approached the broken windows. Outside, a coroner’s unit waited, lights not flashing, not in an upscale neighborhood. The EMTs and their vehicles had left with the wounded, three, I had heard, one critical. Farther beyond, a media van waited, a camera on a tripod and a reporter in front of it, filming for the morning news. In the dark of the driveway, where the cameras couldn’t get a shot, two uniformed figures lifted a gurney with a body bag into the coroner’s van. There was already one gurney inside. Three dead, three wounded at this scene.

  The window glass was shattered, in pellets all over the floor. It reminded me of the automobile glass outside, but this was clear and the vehicle glass had been tinted and well ground into the asphalt.

  The cloth blinds were burned and tattered, the drapery seared. The walls were scorched all around them, and up to the ceiling. A table by the window was mostly shattered charcoal and candles had melted across the surface. A blackened glass was on its side. It looked as if the shots had smashed the glass, spilling the alcohol and toppling the lit candle. I guessed that the fire had spread quickly, but I wasn’t a fire and arson investigator. I knew to keep my opinions to myself unless asked. Opinions went into the evidentiary summary report in the “Opinion” box, where they were mostly ignored. They weren’t facts.

  I slipped out before someone asked me what I was doing. Next door was the master bedroom. Master suite. Yes, that sounded right. It was full of people. Instead of pushing my luck, I slowly went up the staircase onto the second level.

  On the second floor were six bedrooms and four full baths. Counting the servants’ powder room, the en suite in the master, and the two guest powder rooms on the ground floor, that was a lot of bathrooms. I had grown up in a house that technically had more square footage and more bedrooms than this one, but it was nowhere near as fancy. The Holloways’ home was luxurious, what T. Laine probably called “new-money decadent.” They probably paid their decorator more than the yearly income of most American families.

  I traipsed back down, hearing T. Laine’s and Tandy’s voices from the master suite. T. Laine was Tammie Laine Kent, PsyLED Unit Eighteen’s moon witch, one with strong earth element affinities and enough unfinished university degrees to satisfy the most OCD person on the planet. That was how she had introduced herself to me. Tandy was the unit’s empath, who claimed his superpower was being struck by lightning.

  I’d wandered around as much as I could without entering the master suite, but I was nosy, so I stood just outside that door, taking the excuse to see, hear, and learn what I could before being banished back into the cold by Rick. Who was now standing in said master suite. He was in front of the window, facing the door and me, being dressed down by a well-suited FBI-agent-type in an expensive suit and tie, regulation all the way. Rick’s black hair was too long to be regulation, his black eyes were tired, and his olive skin looked sallow. Rick had aged in the last weeks, though he looked a bit better now that he had learned how to shift into his black wereleopard form and back to human. He frowned at me, but didn’t interrupt his conversation.

  “This isn’t one of your magic wand and broomstick investigations,” the fed said. It was said in the tone of an older kid to a young one, insult in each syllable, in a local, townie accent. “This was an attack on a house party and fund-raiser with some of the biggest movers and shakers in Tennessee. Super-wealthy business and political types, with their fingers in every financial pie in the nation.”

  Toneless, Rick said, “With all due respect, there were witches and vampires at the party. The strike could have been aimed at the Tennessee senator, Abrams Tolliver, as you assume, or at Ming, the closest thing Knoxville has to a vampire Master of the City, with whom he was speaking.”

  I knew of the Tollivers. Rich, powerful people who made their money when the Tennessee Valley Authority stole the land of all the state’s farmers and changed the face of the South. The men of God’s Cloud preached about the entire Tolliver family going to hell, and maybe taking up their own special circle right next to the devil himself.

  “Or just the fully human victim, or one of the human homeowners, which is far more likely. This is not your case,” the suit said. “This is a joint FBI, ATF, and Secret Service investigation, not some trivial mag
ic case.”

  “You are incorrect,” Soul said. I stepped quickly to the side, because the assistant director of PsyLED was standing behind me and I was blocking the door. My heart started beating too fast, and my bloodlust rose with my reaction. I pushed down on it, anxious about its agitation, but not worried enough to leave the house.

  “You need to return to the living room with the other guests, lady,” the suit said. He sounded frustrated. And unimpressed at the vision Soul presented, all gauzy fabrics, platinum hair, and curves.

  “On the contrary. I am exactly where I belong, young man.”

  “Who the hell are you? If you’re law enforcement, where is your badge and ID?” he replied.

  The room fell silent. I covered my mouth and moved inside quickly, along the wall, to keep them all in view. Soul walked slowly closer to him, silvery gauze waving in a rising wind that wasn’t really there. I didn’t have the same kind of magic as Soul, but I felt her power on my skin like small sparks of electricity. Arcenciel magic was wild and hot, a shape-shifting ability that defied the laws of physics as scientists understood them. It wasn’t common knowledge—in fact, half of Unit Eighteen didn’t know—that Soul was a rainbow dragon, a creature made of light. But even without that knowledge, if the suit didn’t know a stalking predator when he saw one, then he needed to spend more time in the wild, to hone his survival instincts.

  “What. Did. You. Say?” Soul asked.

  “Hamilton!” a woman barked. “What the bloody hell.”

  It was the woman from the game room, the African-American woman who wore the power of her office like a crown and robe. Her ID was clipped at her collar and her name was E. M. Schultz.

  Soul didn’t turn to her, keeping her eyes on the suit and saying, “I’ve been on conference call to PsyLED director Clarence Lester Woods, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the director of the FBI, as well as the head of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. This is a joint investigation between four, not three, branches of law enforcement. You may address me as Assistant Director, PsyLED. And your services are no longer needed at this crime scene.” She turned her head as if looking for something.

  In a tone that wasn’t quite a question, not quite a demand, she said, “Special Agent Ingram?”

  I jumped. Soul kept on talking. “Take Mr. Hamilton outside. Give him your flashlight. Teach him how to do a perimeter grounds search. Then come back in here. I need your services.”

  I was staring at Hamilton, his name touching down in my mind, in the place designated for it. Chadworth Sanders Hamilton, his father’s second son from his second wife, named for his mother’s grandfathers. And my third cousin, by way of Maude Nicholson, my grandmother. My distant cousin from the townie side of the family. I’d heard he had graduated from the FBI academy at the top of his class and come back home to make his mark. This embarrassing dressing-down was likely not the mark he wanted to make.

  I held up a hand to identify myself and silently led the way to the kitchen. There, I found foam cups, poured coffee from the coffeemaker, and put them on a tray with napkins, a bread knife, and a spoon. I could practically feel the embarrassment and fury emanating off Hamilton as I worked, my back to him. At least the anger would keep him warm for a while. And there was no way I was going to tell him that we were related when he was so furious. Maybe later. Maybe . . . Carefully, tray balanced, I left the warmth of the house, my cousin on my heels, not offering to help with the load. I didn’t know if that made him a jerk or just oblivious, but so far, my cousin was not making a very good impression.

  Outside, I flashed my light three times, handed it to Hamilton, and said, “Forty-eight hundred lumens. Battery will last another two hours before it has to be recharged. One yard squares, from the middle of the ditch to the middle of the lane. This’ll be the third pass so it should be pretty clean.”

  “What’s up, Ingram?” May Ree asked, joining us at a jog. The other deputies followed, and so did three SWAT officers, until we had a small crowd.

  “Coffee,” I said, unnecessarily, as they reached in for the cups. “Keys.” I placed them in May Ree’s hand. “There’s a loaf of bread in the passenger seat of my truck and a jar of jam. Bring the knife and spoon back in when y’all are done. I’ll get some fresh coffee out here as soon as I can.” May Ree dashed down the road to my car. I continued to the others, “This is Hamilton. Probie. Looks like he came out without a coat, so he’ll be cold.”

  “It’s all right, kid,” a deputy said. The county cop was six-six easy, and had a chest like a whiskey barrel. “We’ve all been stupid from time to time.” Several officers laughed.

  Hamilton flinched and burned hotter, probably thinking about the dressing-down he’d just received, not the coat he’d forgotten. Probably furious that he’d been called “kid” by a county cop, someone an FBI officer might look down on, in the hierarchy of law enforcement types. But he kept his mouth shut. He looked pale in all the flashlights and totally out of place, underdressed in his fancy suit.

  The deputy continued, “I got an extra jacket in my unit. It’ll hang to your knees, little fella like you, but it’s clean. Hang on, I’ll get it.” He too jogged off.

  I didn’t laugh at my cousin’s expression at the words little fella like you.

  Hamilton accepted a cup of coffee. And the coat. And a slice of bread and jam. I waited until the cups were gone and Hamilton was wearing the borrowed coat and starting on the road. He was all but kicking the pavement like a kid. I hadn’t told him who I was, that we were distant cousins. My grandma Maude had been disowned when she married into the church. I doubted that Hamilton knew I existed.

  Back inside, I figured out how to work the coffee machine and got coffee gurgling, found a gallon-sized carafe, a tablecloth, more napkins and foam cups. When the coffee was ready, I took the tray back outside, placed the tablecloth on the hood of a county car, the tray atop it, and went back inside, where I made another trip to the powder room and put on fresh lipstick. The assistant director of PsyLED wanted me for something. That made me nervous. I had learned that lipstick gave me false courage. False was better than no courage at all.

  I made my way through the house until I found Rick, Soul, and a seated man in khakis and a golf shirt, in a small room on the second floor. The room was no bigger than a closet, a tiny space dedicated to the Holloways’ security system, two vacuum cleaners, brooms, push mops of various designs, and lots of cleaning supplies. I slipped in behind Rick and leaned against the wall so I could watch the security video beside his shoulder.

  It was a nice system. I had studied most commercial brands and a couple dozen government kinds while in Spook School, the PsyLED training facility. This was an integrated one, with motion detection sensors that triggered the outside cameras and automatically downloaded all video to the system. Later someone had to go through all the captured images and delete the homeowners’ dogs, wildlife, and the occasional teenager sneaking into or out of the house after hours. Currently there were four images on the big screen.

  “There are four cameras with views of the outside,” the khaki-clad man said, “but there’s no sign of the shooter’s approach to the house until here.” He stopped all the video and pointed to the image on top. “He or she seems to be able to bypass all the cameras until he stops, where he—for convenience we’ll say ‘he’—appears as a vague shape outside the windows of the game room.”

  The shape was little more than a smear of movement, not really visible on digital, as if he somehow disrupted and blurred the images. Magic could do that. So could some types of disruptor equipment the military was working on in R&D. However, by the blurred images, it appeared as if it was a lone assassin. The image on the screen started moving again.

  “Exactly eight seconds after he appeared on screen, he started shooting, and, unlike the man—or woman—wielding it, the weapon is easily visible as a fully automatic M4 carbine.” T
he video progressed to show the attacker shooting.

  “M4?” Soul asked. “How did he get an M4?”

  “Don’t know, ma’am,” Khaki Man said. “The M4 carbine is heavily used by two branches of United States armed forces as the primary infantry weapon, it’s currently available on the open market, and it’s legal in Tennessee, so it isn’t impossible to get one.”

  I dredged through the day of class we spent on military weapons and remembered that the M4 was replacing the M16 rifle in most Army and Marine Corps combat units. Sooo . . . Except for the way the shots were fired, the attacker could be military. Or the weapon could be stolen. Or purchased on the commercial market. He could have gotten it most anywhere.

  “All right,” Soul said.

  Playing the footage again, Khaki Man said, “There were four three-second bursts, moving from the shooter’s left to his right, combined with one extended magazine change, which takes place here.” He stopped the security video with each statement, and pointed as the shooter changed out magazines. “Then he started shooting again and repeated the four three-bursts. Then he took off.”

  To me, the attacker’s motions, though blurred, looked masculine.

  “One thing of note. Shooting through glass is tricky. Well-trained shooters usually put a single shot through the glass first, then take out the targets. Inside,” he continued, “the female falls. Two other victims fall, here and here.” He pointed again, though the images were badly blurred, the outdoor camera picking up little inside. “People take cover. Rounds topple the candles, which ignite tablecloths. Fire leaps to the draperies, races over the furniture and up the walls, then follows the oxygen outside through the broken windows.” He showed us footage of the fire blazing out through the broken window.