Combustible (A Boone Childress Novel) (18 page)

Two more
guys joined Eugene from the back. They weren't big men. All were shorter than him, but they were put together like Eugene, barrel chested with forearms the size and density of cast iron pipe. They both wore jeans and red T-shirts that displayed the rebel flag and the slogan, "Heritage, Not Hate."

Considering the sign on the register, Boone found
it hard to believe that heritage was their motivation.

"We're closed,"
Eugene said.

Boone
put both hands in his pockets and tried to act nonchalant. "I need motor oil. I've got a hole in my line.”

"We're all out,"
Eugene said.

"
That’s funny,” Boone said. “I put five quarts on the counter. That guy wouldn't sell me any, either. I'm beginning to think you’ve got something against me."

Eugene
cracked his neck. “I think it’s t’other way around, possum.”

“Why? I’m not Mexican, am I?”

Eugene motioned for the clerk to take down the cardboard sign. “Sell the stuff to him. Cash only. Debit cards are just another way for banks to stick it to the working man.”

Sneaking
sidelong glances at Eugene, the clerk rang up the goods.

“
Dewayne was right about you,” Eugene said as Boone picked up his bag.

“How's
that?”

“You’re to
o nosy for your own good. Now get off the property and don’t ever come back in here again.”

“No problem,” Boone said and backed out of the door.
"One question: You guys don't speak Spanish. How do you feel about Japanese?"

Boone watched
Eugene for a reaction. He didn't flinch. The clerk, though, did. He dropped his head and stared at his shoes, which were suddenly very interesting.

It was all Boone needed to know.

Eugene shut the door in his face, threw the deadbolt, and flipped the sign to
closed
.

It too
k a few minutes for Boone to duct tape the leak and refill the oil, but the repair was a success. He started the engine. The oil gauge drifted to full and stayed there.

He was pulling the door shut when he noticed a red minivan parked beside the store. The license plate was in the shadows, so he unclipped his small keychain light and crept over to the rear
bumper.

This
, he was sure, was the same van used during the attack on Luigi. If only Luigi would press charges, they could send the whole crew to jail.

Get over it, Boone, he told himself. Luigi isn’t going to press charges, and
Hoyt would need more than a license plate number to get a conviction.

His cell rang
. He glanced at the ID and said, “Abner? I just left your house to—“

“
Ain’t there. I’m in Greenville. On the way to meet with the hyphenated lady.”

“Dr. Meredith Windsor-Smith?”

“The one and the same. Hoyt had the body sent to her for identification, and I offered to lend a hand. Meet me there.”

“Where is there?”

“Basement of McClain Hall. Get here as quick as you can, or you’ll miss the fun.”

When he reached McClain Hall on the campus of Carolina Tech, Boone pulled around the service entrance, where he found Abner’s car parked near a SUV with a faculty sticker. There was a light in the basement windows and another coming from the service doors.

He knocked for a good five minutes before Abner finally showed.
His grandfather was dressed in a white lab coat and rubber apron, and he wore latex gloves and a face shield. In the old days before everyone worried about pathogens so much, Abner would do field examinations without any gear at all, using just a dab of vapor rub under his nose to cut down on the stink of decomposition.

“Wear these,” Abner said as he thrust a coat and apron at Boone. “The hyphenated lady runs a clean ship.”

“No gloves?” Boone pulled on the gear. “What if I have the urge to touch something?”

“Then keep your
urges to yourself.”

Abner steered him to the lab.
The basement made for a half-decent morgue. It had a stainless steel table, refrigeration units, instruments, and a good light.

“Why are
you so interested in this case, Boone? It’s not like you’ve got a horse in this race.”

“Guess I'm too nosy for my own good.”

“You get that from your mama.”

“She says I got it from you.”

“All you got from me,” he said as he opened the door and stepped through the decontamination curtains, “was my charm and good looks. Hey, Meredith, I'd like to introduce you to my grandson, Boone.”

Boone reached out to shake her hand through the latex gloves.
Meredith was in her mid-30’s, with above-average height. Her blonde hair was cut chin length, and her cheeks blushed red from the cold air in the room. Boone noticed that she had eyes the color of coffee when she flashed a polite smile. Her handshake was firmer than Boone expected and warmer, too.

“Pleasure to meet you, Boone. Your grandfather tells me that you’re thinking of following in his footsteps.”

“His footsteps are too big for me,” Boone said, “but I am interested in a career in forensics specializing in fire investigation.”

“You should consider our forensic program, then,” she said and
nodded at Abner. “If you’re half as gifted as Dr. Zickafoose, you’d be a good fit here.”

“I’ll certainly consider it.”
In truth, he was considering three schools. Carolina Tech was one of them, but lately, State seemed more appealing.

“
Excellent,” she said. “Now could you sit over there? That way, you won’t be tempted to touch anything like a certain anthropologist I know.”

Abner laughed and Bo
one slunk over to a stool, feeling very much like a dunce.

Meredith Windsor-Smith opened the body bag containing the female torso. “Dr. Zickafoose, can you hit the tape?”

Abner thrust a mini-recorder under Boone’s nose. “Boone can handle it for us.”

“Okay, Boone. Hit it.” She waited
until Boone had pressed the record button, then began with a clear voice. “This is Dr. Meredith Windsor-Smith, Associate Professor, Carolina Tech University.” She stated the time and date and the names of the people in attendance. “Individual to be examined appears to be a female, between sixty and sixty-three inches in height. Age is still indeterminate. Traces of polyester fabric at the victim’s waist.”

Unable to fight the temptation, Boone
snuck over to the table. He picked up a probe and pushed away the material on the pelvis, exposing skin that was less burned.

“Skin has
a glossy appearance,” Meredith continued. “Arms are drawn up in the typical pugilist position.” She grabbed Boone’s wrist. “Put the probe down, please. I'm trying to work. What exactly are you looking for?”

“Any evidence of accelerants
on the skin?” Boone asked. “Or anything to determine the source of the fire that killed her?”

Meredith paused, then seemed to decide to answer his question.
“Before you arrived, I detected small amounts of shrapnel in the epidermis, along with some residue that I haven’t had time to identify. For example.” She pointed to a chunk of metal in the corpse's belly. “All burns are post- mortem. Ergo, cause of death is most likely smoke inhalation. There was enough skin, however, to take fingerprints. If she has any record in AFIS, we'll find her.”

Boone glanced at the corpse’s fingertips, wondering how Meredith could
ever see the prints, just as Sheriff Hoyt stepped through the curtains into the room.

“Well
hell, Abner,” Hoyt said, “if this ain’t a pleasant surprise. Except it ain’t pleasant, and I sure ain’t surprised to see you sticking your nose where it don’t belong.”

Boone and Abner glanced at the doctor, who stare
d at Hoyt. “Sheriff, Dr. Zickafoose is here to assist me.”

Hoyt tossed a manila folder on to the table. “The fire investigators filed their final report, and there’s no sign of foul play. Y'all go home.
This autopsy is over.”

“I haven't finished my work, “ Meredith protested. “I can't file a complete report about the identity of the victim.”

“That ain't your problem anymore,” Hoyt said. “You’re done here.”

Boone and Abner shared a look as Meredith pulled off the latex gloves and tossed them on the table, obviously disgusted.

“You two,” Hoyt said to Boone and Abner, “will be leaving.”

Boone walked toward Hoyt. “This is a public building, sheriff, and you’re out of your jurisdiction, so whether we leave or
stay is none of you business.”

“Suit yourself.” Hoyt turned back to Dr. Windsor-Smith. “Tag and bag the body, professor. I’ll be taking
it back to Bragg County with me.”

That night
when Boone got home, the weather turned windy. Before dawn, he got out of bed, intending to shut the window. On the pond's floating deck, he saw Lamar staring into the water.

What's he doing out there?
It was still a couple of hours before his stepfather normally woke up to feed the animals. It wasn't like him to go for moonlight strolls. For a few minutes Boone watched him. Lamar barely moved. Then Boone saw the flicker of a lighter's flame, the glowing ember of a cigarette. That explained it. Lamar was sneaking a smoke. He had quit years ago, but he had been known to sneak one or two when something was troubling him.

Since
he couldn't read minds and Lamar was as tightlipped as a snapping turtle, Boone decided to go back to bed. But sleep didn’t come easily. Lamar wasn't the only one with a troubled mind. The fires. The dead woman. The graveyard. There had to be a pattern here, an underlying set of dots that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye but would come together under the magnifying glass.

Then there was Cedar. Her comment about accelerating kept coming back to mind. What did she want accelerated? Their relationship? How was he supposed know?
She had thanked him for not pushing when they snuggled in the barn, but now, she’s was mad because he was going too slowly?

Long
before the alarm clock went off, he gave up. He climbed out of bed, then checked the window. Lamar was gone. In the bathroom he pulled on a pair of nylon running shorts and a shirt. He added a State hoodie for warmth.

"Feel like a run
?" he asked the cat as he passed through the living room.

The
gold and white tabby looked up from her rug in the living room. She sniffed, then put her head back down as Boone pulled the door shut behind himself. Exercise clearly was not on her agenda. Maybe they needed a dog like Chigger around the house to motivate her.

Outside, he trotted dow
n to the driveway. He stretched out beside the cars. Then he took off down the road. Except for the random logging truck, the roads around Frisco were always empty before dawn. His hands and feet were cold at first, but the air was still humid enough for him to work up a sweat. He trotted for a few minutes, then lengthened his stride and turned from the dirt road leading to the highway.

Mist rose from
the creek like a blanket that hid the water. In the summer months, the creek would be noisy from the sound of frogs croaking, but now it was quiet. The only sounds were thud of his sneakers on the pavement and the rise and fall of his breath. He was spinning his wheels in the quest to bring Eugene Loach to justice. The man was a racist who hated Mexicans. Latinos had turned up in the hospital, hurt but afraid to talk. The farmers in the western part of the county were complaining that they couldn't hire enough help to bring in the fall crops because the workers had left the county. It all added up an organized campaign against the Latino community, and Boone was sure that Loach and his boys were involved somehow. But where they smart enough to conduct an organized attack against the Latino community? He didn’t think so. Was someone else behind it? Or maybe he was just connecting dots that weren’t there.

The
cabin was empty when he returned. Mom had left a note reminding him to take the trash to the compost pile and also letting him know she would be late for dinner. She had a meeting with her attorney, whom she was consulting about the Tin City graveyard project.

As Lamar had expected, the sheriff hadn't show
n much interest in old dead bodies when he had a fresh one to occupy him.

As Boone expected,
Mom wasn't about to let that stop her.

So Boone
showered, did his house chores, let the cat out, and opened the door to a fire. Flames poured out of a bundle of sticks piled up outside the door, and a rivulet of fiery liquid spread down the gallery. Boone stepped back inside and grabbed a mini extinguisher from the pantry.

As he doused the flames with foam, he realized t
here was something wrong. The sticks weren't just sticks—they were switches, freshly stripped and stacked neatly for burning, an old-fashioned way of warning someone that they were in trouble.

No, he told himself, it's just a prank. One of the
dumbass kids from down the road had too much time on their hands. Last year, they had lit a paper full of cow patties in the driveway. He was lucky it was just switches and not a pile of steaming dog crap.

After hosing the mess off the gallery,
Boone drove to class, palms already sweating because he was going to see Cedar.

Cedar and Dr. K were waiting for him in the lab. A desk and four filing cabinets covered one wall, and a door to the supply closet, which was plastered with OSHA and NC Department of Safety stickers, took up most of another. There was a round table in the middle of the room. The table was stacked with circuit boards, a black box, and something that looked like a man's sock stuffed with cotton.

Cedar sat at the table. Chigger was in her lap
.

"Hey," she said with a tinge of excitement. "
Hope you don’t mind, Dr. K's trying to help me calibrate the N.O.S.E., and Chigger keeps acting up. That's a problem because technically, no dogs are allowed in school, even in the name of science."

Dr. K greeted him
, though she seemed a little out of sorts. “I understand that don't you mind helping us? You'll be excused from the lab assignment you missed."

"I'll be glad to help,” he said. “
What do I do? Record the data? Calibrate the machine?"

"Hold the dog,"
Cedar said.

Cedar had inserted two metal probes the width of spaghetti into
Chigger's nose and secured them with white tape. The beagle tolerated this pretty well, as long as Boone was willing to rub his belly.

"We're measuring the water vapor of the a
ir he inhales and then exhales." Cedar said. "According to my research, dogs can separate the air they inhale from air they exhale. My experiment today hopes to show that the amount of vapor proves that the air is different."

"What difference does that make?"
Boone held Chigger in his lap.

"Basically,"
Cedar said, "It keeps the dog from resampling odors. See the slits in the sides of Chigger's nose? They push exhaled air out. That stops it from blending with the new smells and diluting the scent. Keep rubbing, please. He's getting bored."

He wasn't the only one. Boone's attention had
begun to wander, too. Why would Dr. K be agitated? "What's the point in the water vapor? I thought beagles had thousands of scent receptors."

"They do," Cedar said as she
monitored the laptop.

"But as Cedar learned,
” Dr. K added, “it's only part of the story. Beagles as a breed have excellent noses, but almost every dog is capable of scent memory. There must be a physiological reason for his prowess, other than scent receptors."

"Okay, I understand that," Boone said, "but what's the ultimate goal here?"

Cedar looked up from the laptop. She pointed at the over stuffed sock thing. "The N.O.S.E."

"Whose nose?"

"Not whose nose,
the
N.O.S.E. Remember when I told you about the whole device at Red Fox Java?"

"Um. Well. See."

"Basically, you didn’t listen to a word I said, and so you don't have a clue what I'm trying to accomplish here."

"Not exactly."

"Dr. K," Cedar said as she rolled her eyes, "I was wrong. Holding the dog is the only job he can do right. Boone, you can rest for thirty seconds. The first set of measurements is over."

"Hey,"
Boone said. "That was harsh. Did I deserve that?"

"You
deserve a smack in the head," she said, "but you're holding my dog, and I don't want you to mess up my data collection."

Dr. K
laughed. It took Boone by surprise. He jerked, and Chigger almost tumbled from his lap. The small piece of tape pulled loose, and one of the probes slipped out. A warning sound beeped on the laptop.

“Boone!”

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to scare him."

Chigger used the opening to p
aw the other piece of tape off.

"
Dr. K?" Cedar peeled the tape off the dog's paws. "Do you have anything else we can use? This is annoying him, and I think it's messing up the readings."

She
hopped up from the table. "I believe so. Let my check the first aid kit in the storage area. We bought some of that expensive material that allows the skin to breathe…"

Her voice trailed off as she disappeared into the room. Chigger hopped down and began canvassing the floor for smells, while Cedar got the probes ready for another round.

Boone cleared his throat. "I'm really sorry for not listening to you before."

She punched a key on the laptop. "If
you don't want to take my research seriously, then don't, but I wish you would show more respect for the people it does matter to."

"
I'm meant no disrespect, Cedar, and I’m not trying to ignore you.”

“
Tell me then, what does N.O.S.E. stand for?"

"
Non canine…Odor Sensing…Ergonomically…thing."

"Ha! See. Not even close."

In the other room, Dr. K screamed.

"What's wrong?"
Boone said, standing.

The
professor came out of the room, her face pink, hands flying around in an old-fashioned tizzy. "It's gone! It's been stolen!" she said, her eyes searching for the phone on the wall. "I have to call campus police. Get the dog out of the room quickly, please."

"What was stolen?"
Boone asked before Cedar could.

"
Our store of alkali metals!" she said. "Sodium, potassium, they're all gone!”

A campus cop arrived several minutes later, a cup of coffee and a
Bragg Times Free Press
in hand. The headline caught Boone's eye: WOMAN KILLED… But he couldn't read the rest.

Between the time that
Dr. K called in the theft and the campus cop's arrival, Cedar had whisked Chigger out of the office and down to the faculty lounge. That left Boone to pack up Cedar's equipment while the cop filled out an incident report.

Guess I'm good for more than holding the dog after
all, he thought.

"Who's got access to the storeroom?" the
cop asked. She set her coffee down and dropped the paper on the table. Boone was still only able to read half of the headline. If only he could reach out and flip it over.

Dr. K
, who was growing more skittish by the moment, said that only she and the custodial staff had keys. "There are no signs of forced entry," she added.

The
cop coughed. "Let me determine that. What’s missing again?"

"
The alkali metals,” Dr. K said. “They're very dangerous elements. Explosive material. It has to be stored in oil because it can react with water. There was a large amount of sodium. The chemistry faculty likes to use it to demonstrate exothermic reactions."

"
Soda?"

"Sodium.
With an…yes, that the correct spelling."

"S
how me the room where the theft took place."

"Of course."

While they were in the storeroom, Boone took the chance to read over the newspaper on the table. The fire victim was a woman named Consuela Vega. Her daughter had been recently deported, and she had no other family in the area. The sheriff's office had been able to obtain her records from AFIS.

Boone pinched his lower lip, deep in thought
. The dots were connecting. She was Mexican. She was elderly. Eugene was the first responder, and he knew the area better than he would admit. It wasn't farfetched to think that he would turn his back on a victim he thought was worthless.

Boone scanned the rest of the front page. Beneath the article about
Mrs. Vega was a photo of his mom, standing in front of the row of open graves, her arms folded, staring down the photographer with a look Boone only saw when she was trying to take away his keys.

The headline read:

LOCAL VET FILES INJUNCTION.

(Stanford, NC) Local veterinarian, Mary Harriet Rivenbark, has filed an injunction against Landis Land Holding, LLC, to prevent the relocation of a small family cemetery in a remote area of Bragg County. "This is an atrocity," Mrs. Rivenbark says. "The county planning commission is nothing but a puppet for developers, and it's time for the citizens of Bragg County to stand against them." Rivenbark has organized a protest to (see A4)