What Burns Within (3 page)

“What the hell?” Paul raced forward, toward the door. She tried to follow him. Other firefighters started running, and one grabbed her arm.

“Stay there.” He glared at her as he backed away, watching until she stopped moving before he turned around. The man disappeared amidst the sea of turnout gear each firefighter wore for protection on the job.

Ashlyn moved her head from side to side and up and down until she could see through the smoke and men to what had caught Quinlan’s attention.

A firefighter was racing down the front steps carrying a child.

The paramedic repositioned the stethoscope and paused. It had been at least twenty minutes since the girl had been pulled from the building, and the paramedic’s shoulders sagged. She shook her head.

“Fuck.” The firefighter who’d found the girl turned and kicked a garbage can. His dirt-streaked fingers clenched into a fist beside his head as he walked away.

Ashlyn pulled plastic gloves from her pocket, stepped forward and knelt beside the body. She tossed the helmet she’d been given aside. The girl’s hair was darker than hers. Careful not to touch her unnecessarily, Ashlyn surveyed the victim visually until she got to her hands. Then she reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a pen and used it to nudge the loose shirtsleeve up, revealing black and purple skin mixed with partially healed wounds. The gashes and bruises stretched out like an overgrown tattoo, covering the girl’s arm.

A voice cut into Ashlyn’s thoughts from above her. “Can’t you cover her up and get her out of here before the reporters start shooting photos?”

She shook her head. “This is a murder investigation now.”

“For Christ’s sake, she’s already been moved. What difference does it make?”

Purple shirt, green pants…It kept playing through Ashlyn’s head as she studied the girl’s face. There was a shiny metal pendant around the girl’s neck, and she reached for it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A different voice this time. One she’d describe as demanding, unapologetic…

Familiar.

“My job.” She pulled out her ID as she turned around. For a moment she crouched, jaw open, then dropped her hand and put her badge away. He was tall, athletic, dark hair, a face of stone, and he never let anyone call him by his first name. She frowned as she realized she didn’t even know his first name herself. That was the kind of distance he put between himself and even the people he worked closely with, but she knew he had a warm smile when he let his guard down and was a good person. “Jesus.”

“Well, I am back from the dead.”

“Your penance is over?”

One curt nod. “Sorry. Didn’t know you’d been called out on this.”

“I wasn’t. I’m working the arsons.”

The skin between his brows puckered. “Wasn’t that Robinson’s case?”

“Not anymore. He died.” Ashlyn was still crouching between him and the girl, obscuring Tain’s view.

She almost couldn’t believe it was him. They’d worked together once, on a tough case. One she tried hard not to think about. At the end of the day they’d solved it, but it seemed like Tain had managed to piss off every senior officer from Vancouver to Halifax in the process. It had taken a toll on him.

It had taken a toll on all of them. Maybe that’s why she’d found herself making excuses when it was over, picking up the phone and setting it down without dialing the number…

Willing herself to forget. Willing herself to believe they all had forgotten and that nobody wanted to hear from her because it would bring it all back.

“What have you got?”

“Likely the reason for the fire.” She stood up and stepped back so that she wasn’t in his way.

“Purple shirt, green pants…” Tain’s eyes turned down at the corners. With him, the expressions were all subtle, but she knew him well enough to see it.

“And a charm on a necklace.”

“Shit.” His fingers pushed through his short dark hair and into his skull. “It’s Isabella Bertini.”

Tain leaned back against the truck. “It never gets any easier, does it?”

Ashlyn shook her head. She was still reeling from the shock of seeing him, wondering about so many things but not knowing how to ask. “But you’d better pull yourself together.”

His eyes narrowed.

“There are uniforms all over this place. Don’t you have an image to maintain?”

The ghost of a smile flitted across his lips, but it failed to reach his eyes. She made the mistake of turning away from him too soon, jumping as his hand smacked her backside.

He leaned toward her as he walked by. “Just protecting my reputation.”

“Smartass.”

“Yours is pretty tight. You been working out?”

She pointed a finger at him. “I swear I’ll break—”

“Hey, is that the guy who found her?”

Ashlyn nodded. She sprinted ahead of Tain.

“This is my case, Ashlyn.”

“Carl, we need to have a word with you.” She ignored Tain as she took the lead.

“About the girl?”

“We need to know where you found her,” Tain said. “If there was anything near the body, anything you remember at all.”

Carl paused and stared at Tain for a moment.

“And you are?”

“Constable Tain.” He pulled out his ID and held it up as the firefighter removed his helmet and wiped his brow with the side of his hand, a futile gesture that only resulted in smearing soot across his forehead.

“I thought you were working the arsons,” the firefighter said to Ashlyn.

“Tain’s working the child abductions.”

His eyes widened. “You mean that’s the girl? The one they’ve been looking for? Shit.”

“We need you to keep that to yourself, Carl. We need to notify her parents before the press gets wind of it, okay?” Ashlyn said.

Carl took a breath and nodded. “Sure. Sure, I understand.”

“Anything you can tell us could be critical to the investigation,” Tain said.

Carl shook his head. “I was just concentrating on getting her out, you know? I thought she might be alive.”

“Where did you find her?” Ashlyn asked.

“Fourth floor. Back right-hand corner, lying on a table by the window. I just grabbed her and started running. There was smoke pouring out the window. I almost didn’t see her when I went in there.”

“The window was open?” Tain asked.

Carl froze, then shrugged. “It must have been.”

“Any chance you guys broke the glass, trying to get in off a ladder?” Ashlyn asked.

Carl’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head, slowly at first, then emphatically. “We didn’t have a ladder on that side of the building. You can check that with Quinlan yourself, but I don’t think we broke the window.”

“Okay,” Ashlyn said, making a note. “Do you remember—”

A uniformed officer stepped between Ashlyn and Carl. “Excuse me. I need to speak to Mr. Parks.”

“Can’t it wait?” Tain held up his ID again, his eyes narrowing as he glared at the officer, who offered only a fleeting apologetic glance.

“Mr. Parks, that woman right there—” he pointed to the tall woman in a straight skirt, brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, pacing by a dark sedan—“she needs to speak to you right away.”

Tain and Ashlyn exchanged a glance. As soon as Carl Parks was out of earshot, Tain turned to the officer.

“He found a murder victim. A child, and we—”

The officer held up his hand. “Look, I was just following orders.”

“You and the Nazis.”

“Tain!” Ashlyn turned to the officer. “I’m sure that girl’s parents will be thrilled to hear we couldn’t interview the person who found her body because you were doing your job.”

The officer blew out a deep breath. “Look, I’m just—”

“Following orders.” Ashlyn watched Carl get into the car with the woman. “What the hell is going on?”

“Constable Price is taking him home to be with his wife,” the officer said. “She’s been raped.”

Ashlyn watched the officer walk away, her shock overriding her frustration for a moment. She couldn’t imagine the hell that Carl Parks was about to find himself in. Talk about a bad day. A fire, finding a girl’s body, having to go home to deal with his wife after she’d been violated.

And there they were, pissed off because he couldn’t answer their questions. As though their dead kid trumped his raped wife.

She turned to Tain. “I see you’re still winning friends and influencing people.”

He responded with a thin smile. “One out of two, anyway.”

There was something about his mannerisms, his facial expressions, that made her suspect it was all veneer. That beneath the surface he was as fragile as a soft-boiled egg. Strike him in just the right spot and everything would come spilling out.

She didn’t think he’d ever really put what had happened behind him, but she hoped she was wrong.

Craig felt the icy stare on him when he pushed the Bruce Cockburn CD into the player, but he ignored it. It was as certain as death and taxes: what ever he liked Lori Price would loathe.

Either that, or she derived some perverse pleasure from being difficult, which he had to admit was a distinct possibility.

Bruce sang about screaming police cars, drunks, tunnels and bike paths while Craig drove through his own beat. His RCMP detachment covered Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, three of the twelve cities that, in conjunction with a few villages and municipalities, formed the Greater Vancouver Area, or GVA.

This part of the city suited him. Vancouver felt pressed in, the coast on one side, the Fraser River to the south and Burrard Inlet to the north, with more condos than trees and more people per square inch on an average day than shoppers in the mall on Christmas Eve. At least, that’s how it felt. The entire GVA was caught in the pre-Olympic boom, with skyrocketing housing prices and construction everywhere. Every vacant lot was being eyed for development. The Tri-Cities, as Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody were known, were no exception, but they had redeeming qualities, with the provincial parks hemming the north side, offering easy access to Burke Mountain to the northeast. Port Moody was a haven within the urban sprawl, hemmed by the Burrard Inlet but serving as the gateway to Buntzen Lake and Belcarra Provincial Park, miles of wilderness with hiking trails and waterways to satisfy kayakers and hikers alike. Coquitlam itself was a city, no question, but it was one that nestled against the backdrop of Mother Nature. It wasn’t unusual for hikers to encounter bears on the trails at Rocky Point, or even the odd cougar, and the number of coyote attacks on pets and people alike had risen in recent years.

Although the GVA was made up of several cities Coquitlam lacked the heart of a central core where people strolled from shop to shop. Instead, residents flocked to malls and, in Craig’s opinion, “downtown” remained a term more for appropriate for Vancouver than anywhere else in the lower mainland.