“Any guests or visitors?”
The tall man glanced at Travis. “None that I know of.”
“Okay, so what happened to her?” the female EMT asked as her partner radioed to someone that there were no other people known to be on the premises.
“She was setting the horses free, afraid this building might go up. I went to take care of the dogs…I wasn’t here, but I thought maybe she’d been kicked or trampled by a horse…”
“This is more than a kick,” she said, glancing up at both men. “How long has she been out?”
Travis said, “Five minutes, maybe six or seven.”
Quickly and efficiently, the female EMT bandaged Shannon’s head, frowning at the cut on the back side, then tore open Shannon’s blouse and bandaged the scrape that sliced down her ribs. “Surface laceration,” she said to her cohort before shining the beam of a penlight into Shannon’s eyes. “Shannon Flannery!” she yelled. “Shannon!” No response. “Let’s take her in, careful of the shoulder.”
She frowned as they unfolded a stretcher. Into a recorder, she said, “The victim’s suffered multiple contusions on the face and head…” She rattled off more of her vital signs, then snapped the recorder off. “Looks like someone beat the tar out of her.” She stared down the corridor to the smeared trail of blood, then said, “Let’s get her to the hospital.”
Travis’s insides twisted. What the hell had happened to her in those few minutes they’d been separated, when Shannon had gone into the horse barn and he’d run to the kennel? He stared down at what had so recently been a heart-stoppingly beautiful face, at the dark bruises, bandages and blood on what had been flawless features. The paramedics stabilized her neck, then carefully placed her on a stretcher.
The paramedic was right. Shannon looked as if someone had swung a baseball bat at her and connected. Because she’d stayed in the stables, because she’d cared enough about her animals that she’d risked her life for them.
His jaw slid to the side and he felt like a fool.
“You two, tell the investigators what you know about this fire,” the female EMT ordered, then she and her partner hoisted Shannon from the ground and carried her away from the fire, down the alley between the garage and stable to the waiting ambulance.
“Let’s start with you,” Santana suggested, his black eyes narrowing on Travis. Suspicion and plain-old distrust were evident in the set of his jaw. “Just who the hell are you and how is it that you happened to be here when the fire broke out?”
Chapter 8
Shea stepped on the accelerator. Pushing the speed limit, siren blaring, the lights on the cab of his truck flashing, he drove furiously through the empty city streets to the outskirts of town where his sister lived.
He couldn’t believe what Melanie Dean, the dispatcher at the 9-1-1 center, had told him. That there was a fire at Shannon’s house, on which both his sister and some man had called in. Melanie said the second call came from a cell phone registered to Travis Settler from Falls Crossing, Oregon. A few minutes later the center had received other calls from people who were driving by or lived close enough to smell the smoke and see the flames.
He braked to turn off the main road and cracked his window. The acrid smell of smoke, soot and wet, scorched wood hit him full force. It was an odor he’d grown up with.
One of his uncles had just retired from the San Francisco Fire Department after nearly forty years of service, another uncle had died on the job, fighting a wildfire in Southern California in the eighties. Shea had been with the Santa Lucia Fire Department before jumping ship and taking the fire investigator job with the Santa Lucia Police Department a few years back.
It was in the Flannery blood.
All of his brothers had, at one time or another, been associated with the fire department, but now, only Robert remained, upholding the Flannery family tradition of actually fighting fires.
Through the trees, he saw lights and within seconds he’d rounded a bend and stopped in the clearing that was the parking lot. Ahead, close to the stable, was what remained of a two-storied tack shed now reduced to charred rubble. Illuminated by the headlights of a remaining pumper truck, a few lanterns and heavy-duty flashlights, three blackened walls stood. The roof had collapsed, one wall was gone, all the windows blown. Smoke still rose in thin wisps from the smoldering, soggy mass. Fortunately, it looked like none of the other buildings had been involved. The stable, kennel and garage, even the house, probably had some smoke damage, but all in all, Shannon had lucked out. The shed was the least important of all the outbuildings that now stood with yellow crime scene tape roping off the area. Even the house was declared off-limits.
Killing the engine and hitting the emergency brake in one motion, Shea swore under his breath, then climbed out of his rig. The night had a bite to it, seeming as tense as his own stretched nerves. The ground was wet from the runoff of the hoses and his boots slogged through gravel, dirt and debris. Several firefighters remained, cleaning up, putting equipment back into the one remaining truck.
A van from a local news station and two police cars were parked at odd angles, squeezed into the neck of the lane on this side of the tape and leaving enough room between them to allow the big fire trucks to come and go.
The reporters who remained were already packing up, and Shea scowled when he thought of the headlines that would appear in the Santa Lucia Citizen or the sound bites that would lead into the story on the eleven o’clock news.
No doubt this fire at Shannon’s house would turn out to be another link to the past, to the time when Shannon Flannery had been on trial for murdering her son of a bitch of a husband. Shea’s jaw hardened when he thought of Ryan Carlyle. The bastard got what he deserved. So let the story die.
It would kill their mother, Maureen, if she had to relive the scandal all over again.
“Hell,” he muttered as he walked up to the cops, got the information that Shannon had been taken to Santa Lucia General and that no one knew yet what the cause of the fire was. That much he figured. Finding the source of the blaze was his job—well, his and the investigator for the Santa Lucia Rural Fire Department, which covered not only the city but the surrounding hills as well.
As Shea worked for the PD he was often at odds with the fire department’s investigator who, in Shea’s opinion, was a supercilious prick, all about advancement, getting press for himself and smiling for the camera. Cameron Norris might have degrees in criminology and business crammed up his ass, but he didn’t know that ass from a hole in the ground when it came to fires. And the dick had never been satisfied that Shannon hadn’t started the fire that had killed her husband.
The two cops were talking, still guarding the premises and keeping at bay anyone who happened to drive by: neighbors, concerned friends, lookie-loos, reporters and anyone else wandering up to the lane to watch the fire burn who weren’t all that interested in or aware of preserving the scene for the investigation. All they wanted was a chance to be close to the fire. That’s the way it was and always had been; everyone had a fascination with the burning, wild beast that could devour and destroy. It was a living, breathing thing that man needed to survive yet feared as instinctively as death.
He flashed his badge at the cops, who barely looked up, nodded and went back to their conversation as they waited for the crime-scene team to show up and start collecting evidence.