“I wondered if you’d finished running whatever errands you were off to and if you’d heard anything from the lab again.”
Was that tension in his voice or was she now imagining things? This was Dan, for god’s sake.
“No to both of your questions,” she said. “I asked the lab to let me know the minute they were finished, no matter how late it was. I’ll call you as soon as they do.”
“How about meeting me for a cup of coffee? You sounded a little tense earlier. Something on this case I should know about?”
“No.” She kept her voice as even as possible. “If there was I’d tell you. Listen, Dan, I’ve got to run. I have something personal to take care of real quick. I’ll catch you later, okay?”
There was a long moment of silence. She didn’t want to even think about what might be going through his mind.
“Okay. Let’s touch base later for sure.”
“You got it.”
Jeff was already at her house when she got back. He and Scott were sitting at her dining room table, laptops open.
“Hey, Randi.” Jeff’s lips kicked up in a half-hearted grin. “Looks like we got ourselves a nasty problem here.”
“Seems so,” she agreed. She took the thumb drive out of her pocket and handed it to Noah, “Here they are. All of them.”
“Good. Jeff got copies of Dan’s so let’s go through each of them and see if anything sticks out. Even if it’s something that should be there but isn’t.”
Going over the reports was a painstaking, arduous task. Randi interpreted for them anything the didn’t understand. She was stunned and sickened to discover how much was missing from the reports Dan had turned in.
“I don’t understand.” She sat back in her chair and raked her hair away from her face. “Didn’t he think anyone would ever compare these?”
Jeff shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he figured he could fake it. That your captain and his lieutenant wouldn’t compare what you guys turned in.”
“But we always put one report together,” she protested.
“Then I don’t know.”
“And I don’t want to think of what he really had in mind,” Noah put in. “Randi, I’m not minding your business, just trying to show you the truth. You can’t trust him any more.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Then I’ll apologize to both of you. Meanwhile, we need to figure out where they’ll strike next.”
“But how?” she wanted to know. If every complex is owned by a different corporation, you have no way to tie them together.”
Noah pointed to his laptop. “I’ve got a program that can do wonders s arching for stuff. I just shared it with Jeff so we can both do a search for ownership all over the target area.”
“And what do you want me to do? I can’t just sit and do nothing.”
“Come sit next to me.” He tugged her chair over. “Maybe something you see will strike a chord.”
They had gotten about halfway through the lists when her cell rang.
“It’s Captain MacNeill,” she said, showing Noah the screen. “I have to take it.”
“Okay, but don’t clue him in to anything just yet.”
But the phone call changed everything.
“We’ve got another one, Randi.” MacNeill sounded exhausted. “Two of the four buildings went up. And Randi? This time we’ve got fatalities.”
She wanted to throw up. People had been killed because of someone else’s greed. If only she’d had her brainstorm earlier could she have stopped it?
“Here’s the address,” MacNeill said. “I already called Dan. You’d better get going.”
When she hung up she relayed the information to both men.
“We’re going with you.” Noah didn’t sound like he’d put up with any argument from her.
She swallowed her objections. “Okay, but let’s be sensible. There’s a possibility Jeff night show up at the scene, but not you, Noah. So if you insist on going, you guys follow me in your car and hang back. Let me see what’s going on there.”
Noah didn’t much like it nor did Jeff but in the end they both agreed with her. As she raced to the scene of he fire she prayed that she’d find something tonight that would help her close this case and stop this from happening any more.
The fire scene was easy enough to spot, even from a few blocks away. From the number of people and vehicles she could tell it had been called as a three alarm fire. Two ladder trucks were stationed by the still-burning buildings, spraying the flames that looked like the fires of hell. Red and orange and yellow tongues danced against the blackness of the sky. The water hissed as it hit the flames, sounding as if a huge snake was spitting into the air. Smoke was everywhere. Most of the firefighters work oxygen masks but not the onlookers who were choking on it.
Nothing seemed to be doing much good. Whatever had been used as an accelerant and an ILR had obviously worked fast and destroyed the buildings. It had been strong enough to soften and melt the mortar between the bricks and as the interior collapsed it brought down much of the exterior walls. Randi thought it all looked like the scene from a war movie.
There were several ambulances there and EMT crews working on badly injured survivors. Off to the side she saw where bodies were zipped into black bags and placed out of eh way for the morgue to pick up. Captain MacNeill, in full gear, was standing beside one of the trucks, talking to one of he firefighters. When he saw her, he waved her over.
“This is a real bad one, Randi.” He sounded tired. “Seven dead, twelve injured. They’re still fighting the blaze.” He point to an area beside the second building. “Dan’s already here. Look. He sees you, go find
