Chapter 13
13
Elliot Crane
Do you need anything?
Seth Mays
No thanks.
I couldn’t decide if I liked the fact that Elliot was still texting me, or if it just made things harder.
It meant he didn’t hate me, which I suppose should have been a good thing. But it wasn’t helping me to stop thinking about him—to stop wanting him. To stop wanting him to care about me the way I cared about him.
I liked how being with him made me feel—and I hated the way I felt without him. But if I went back, it wouldn’t be what I wanted, and it wouldn’t be what he wanted, and I was too tired to keep pretending that sex was enough for me.
It wouldn’t be fair to either of us.
I let out a long sigh, then deliberately turned my phone over so that I would stop checking to see if I’d gotten another message from Elliot.
Fool .
I forced myself to go back to comparing tire tracks taken from the side of the road beside the burned-out car. It was probably a futile effort—we had no way of knowing when the various sets of tracks had been made or whether or not they had anything to do with the car.
It was a matching game—checking makes and models of tires against the pattern, trying to eliminate certain treads and lock in others, then find the vehicles that might fit that tire. Smith would be the one to chase down vehicles, check with local garages and tire shops to see who had bought a certain type of tire or whose car had a particular kind of tread.
It wasn’t exciting, but it could prove to be useful, if I was able to come to any conclusions.
The real problem was that there wasn’t one set of treads to match, but at least a half-dozen. And most of them probably had nothing to do with the case. Just someone who’d pulled over to have a pee in the bushes, to help a turtle across the road, to pick up a piece of luggage that had fallen off the roof.
It might even be true that none of them were connected to the killer.
But the only way to know was to solve the case. And maybe what I was doing would help.
But it was hard to dedicate myself to something that might not mean anything. Given the state of my non-relationship—to which I’d dedicated a hell of a lot—it was ironic that I couldn’t make myself focus on matching the patterns of tire treads.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to.
Chief Ziemer pushed open the door to the room that passed as our shared sort-of-lab office.
I looked up. “Chief. What brings you here?”
“You, pup.”
I blinked, still uncertain if I wanted him to call me that. But he scared me a little, so I also didn’t want to correct him and risk making him angry. Or even just annoyed. “Me?”
“Yep,” he confirmed, coming over to lean against the corporate-style table that was passing as my desk. Well, a desk. We didn’t really have space that was ours—we all shared the long tables, which were usually stacked with equipment and evidence and on which we cleared just enough space for tablets when working, which is exactly what I’d done that day.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, trying to sound cheerful, but genuinely curious. Maybe he had some sort of chemical test he wanted me to run. Hopefully he didn’t want me to do another round of chemical sniff-testing, although I didn’t think that was likely.
“You seemed pretty interested in how we went about things yesterday,” he observed.
I blinked at him, confused. “I was,” I agreed.
“You interested in arson?” he asked me.
“Um. Not in committing it,” I told him.
He huffed out a laugh that rumbled in his chest. “Investigation, pup. Would you like to join my team? We’d train you, leave you here so that there’s someone in Shawano so I don’t have to drive all the way the hell from Peshtigo.”
“Where’s Peshtigo?” I asked him.
“An hour away, on the bay.”
“You drove an hour to get here?” I frowned. “But it only took you twenty minutes yesterday,” I pointed out.
“I was already in Bonduel for a suspicious barn fire,” he replied. “But if you were here, it would be your tail going to Bonduel, instead.”
“I—” I was conflicted. I’d found the fire investigation yesterday fascinating, and I was very much interested in learning more—but I’d also just started this job, and I felt like it was very bad form to just quit less than a week in.
Ziemer raised his eyebrows. “You what, pup?”
I felt my neck color. “I just started here,” I said.
“And you’d need to stay here,” he replied firmly. “This is a plus-and sort of gig.” He nodded at the microscope on the end of my desk-table. “I bet you having an arson guy on the team would get you a nice little salary bonus.”
“So there’s no one here now who does arson investigations?”
“Nope. Rupert retired in May so he could keep his one remaining eyebrow.”
I stared at him, trying to decide if he was kidding or not. It didn’t look like it, and the idea that I might not get to keep both my eyebrows if I accepted his offer was mildly alarming.
He chuckled, then smirked. “Don’t worry, pup. You’ve got enough fur on that face of yours that you’ll be okay if you singe off a whisker or two.”
I couldn’t tell if he actually didn’t like the beard or if he was just making a point. Being around Ziemer was unsettling—I still felt like I had to be deferential, but I also wasn’t sure what he thought of me or why he had decided to try to… recruit me?
“I, uh… Like my face unsinged?” I said.
“Think about it, pup.” He stepped closer, then handed me a business card. “And give me a call when you decide.”
It took me about five seconds. Just long enough for him to have turned around and walked out of the doorway.
I chased after him.
“Chief!”
He turned, an expectant look on his friendly features.
I could feel my neck heating again, and I was glad I had facial hair to hide the flush in my cheeks.
“I’m in,” I said.
He grinned, showing me those too-sharp teeth. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
Ziemer must have told somebody to contact me, because when I got home from picking up dinner-groceries, I had an email from someone named Betty Kramer with instructions about what to wear, what I would need to bring with me, and how to get to a facility in Green Bay where I would start learning about arson investigation.
For the next two years. Also, I’d have to go through regular fire-fighter training.
I blinked.
Did I want to actually spend that long doing this?
I was honestly surprised when my gut said yes . I did want to do this.
I followed the links in the email to get myself set up, to register for the first day, and to upload a picture of my EMT certification. I’d never actually worked as an EMT, but as someone who might end up being at an accident scene, they really liked it if you could be potentially useful to any surviving victims. There had been one accident I’d actually witnessed where I had gotten some use out of the first aid training, but I’d never actually needed it at work.
I did need it for this, so I was glad I’d kept on top of my re-certifications.
The more I read, the more excited I got—from what Ziemer had said, I’d keep working this job, but I’d start doing other training on my days off. The fire-fighter training and the CFI—Certified Fire Investigation—training.
They would let me work with other arson investigators while I was in training, and then, when I finished and passed the exam, I’d be able to work on my own. Well, with the Sheriff’s Office, of course. And the CSI team. But it was a way for me to be valuable. To contribute something that was important. Something that was mine.
It’s funny how you think you have everything figured out, and then it all goes to shit, and then something happens that makes you realize that you’ve just been coasting along and waiting for the right thing to fall into your lap—and it very much just might have.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think that doing this—for the next two years—was going to solve all of my issues. I was going to have to find the money to pay for it, I was going to have to give up my weekends, and I was going to go back to being the guy who didn’t know shit.
But I liked learning. And I liked the idea that I was going to be able to do something that my job needed, instead of being just one-of-three. It meant that I personally had a skill set that brought something to the table.
Maybe it’s because my parents had raised us to think of ourselves as sinful, corrupt, and inadequate, but I’d always had a hard time thinking of myself as belonging anywhere. Of deserving anything more than I got, and sometimes not even that.
I was under no illusions that I was the only person who could do arson investigation—but it seemed like I was the only one who wanted to. And that counted for something.
It would be my thing. My thing that I chose, that I worked for.
All by myself.
I sounded like an overgrown six-year-old, even in my own head.
Look at me! I put on my own pants!
I snorted to myself, then got up to take my dirty dishes all the way across the tiny room to the sink, where I washed them like a responsible adult.
I’d never been big into immediate dish-washing, but once I could smell the food left on the plates, the stench drove me to become a much neater person.
I set my plate and mug in the drying rack, then proceeded to attempt to distract myself so that my brain would slow down, but all I succeeded in doing was shifting from arson to Elliot.
It wasn’t an improvement.