Harley kept stopping to sneeze, clearing his air passages of the burn smell that permeated the air. But the second they approached J.W.’s van, Harley started stepping high, tail going rigid as he sniffed the door on the driver’s side. When he reached the door handle, he sat, hard and alert.
He didn’t have the right to search the vehicle without probable cause, but that didn’t mean Noah couldn’t look inside through the window. He pulled his flashlight and aimed it inside the van. Between the seats in the back he saw a jug of all-purpose fertilizer. He stopped breathing. Ammonium nitrate.
“Damn,” Mark said softly when he had looked in.
“Yeah.” Noah barely had breath for sound. He pulled a treat from his pocket for Harley, and then a second one, praising his dog highly though he felt sick inside.
“What’d you boys find?” Durvan jogged up minus J.W., now being held by local police.
As Mark explained, Noah turned inward and mentally threw away everything they had been concentrating on during the night. None of it now applied. The facts now were these.
Carly was missing.
J.W. had taken her.
He must have decided she had figured out he was the arsonist.
He needed to get rid of her.
More than a fire this time, he needed more damage more quickly.
He didn’t have time to make an elaborate plan like he did for Noah’s suicide.
The grass fire had been called in by J.W. More than likely, he had started it for a reason. Distraction.
Distraction from what? Another fire.
Noah remembered Carly’s question about the Friday night fire. And it gave him a watery gut feeling.
Why not choose a place where the perpetrator had all the time in the world to set the fire and make certain it took?
What better place than in his own community?
Edgecliff Village was small. If J.W. wanted to distract the local fire department, it must be because the fire he’d set for Carly was nearby.
Heart thumping at low heavy strokes, Noah looked up. The prevailing winds whipping up from the southwest were driving the fire northeast, into a populated neighborhood. Evacuation would take the attention of every first responder, diverting attention from any other fire, especially one deemed less important.
Noah turned to face the opposite direction of the fire, upwind. For two hundred yards there was nothing but scrub brush and grass. Beyond that, the field gave way to a cleared area where the streets of a new housing development had been paved. No housing to see yet. Just a single, half-finished structure sat isolated in the middle of the second block. Someone’s dream house that had yet to be realized.
Noah shivered in response to an adrenaline rush. Could Carly be in there, close enough for J.W. to watch her burn, but using his involvement in the brush fire as his alibi?
Harley had followed his handler’s gaze, something dogs alone among domesticated animals do. He lifted his snout, sniffing the breeze moving directly past the house to the south and into the field where they stood. After a few seconds, he began to whine and tug at the leash, wanting to head in the direction of the structure.
Noah bent down and stroked his K9, the beginnings of a smile on his grim face. “Is that where Carly is, Harley? Do you smell her on the breeze? Or is it the explosive?”
He reached up and released Harley’s leash.
The German Shepherd took off like a furry dart across the field.
Noah stood up, fear suddenly crawling up through his glacial calm. Carly and a bomb. J.W. had left her to die.
Just as quickly as it reared up, the fear died. He’d worked the puzzle pieces and won.
“Got you, you bastard!”
And now he was going to get Carly.
*
Noah outlined the bare bones of his theory to his colleagues as they ran back to their vehicles.
Mark thought it was a long shot.
Durvan called it a Hail Mary pass without even the hope of a receiver. “That’s just plain nuts. J.W.’s gotta be smarter than that.”
Noah didn’t waste his breath arguing. His full focus was on Carly. If she was there in that house, then she had very little time left. The grass fire would be controlled soon. He could hear the sirens of additional FWFD apparatus rolling toward them bringing reinforcements in the way of firefighters and resources. J.W. must have wanted the explosive fire to start in the thick of things.
It took less than three minutes before they were pulled up before the house. Harley was there before them, barking and clawing at the front door.
Noah called him back.
Harley came racing back to his handler, tail flying and tongue lolling in happiness. He’d done good, and he knew it.
“Good Harley. Best damn dog in the business!” Noah crowed in a high excited voice, stopping to give praise that would have no meaning for Harley later. Dogs lived in the now. So he loved on his dog and fed him two more treats, using precious seconds that counted. Without Harley, he wouldn’t be here.