And under that was “Unknown.” In black. With a gray “Yesterday.”
Scrolling down the list, she found the other Unknown Caller. From when she’d answered the phone just before her window got shot out.
But she’d hadn’t answered a call from an unknown number. Hitting the information button, she frowned. The time stamp was yesterday morning, and it showed a call lasting three minutes—
The world spun and she threw out a hand.
Moose. When he’d called her about Deandra and Danny. That was exactly the date and time he had called her to ask to meet.
So he had to be one who had shot her car window. Put the gun on her doorstep. Texted her and watched her.
Stumbling over to a chair, she sat down and stared at the details. Maybe he had phoned her from . . .
She went through all her recents, all the way back to when he had first called her to go see Danny that night. There, the phone number in her contacts showed up with the entry that read “Moose.”
So he had a regular phone, and had gotten a burner and made sure he was anonymous? Which was what you did when you wanted to threaten someone. But why? What was his tie to Ripkin and Ollie Popper, the warehouse fires and the office equipment—
“The box trailer. Shit. The fucking box trailer!”
Bursting up, she went to her sofa. She’d printed out a screenshot from the CCTV and it was here, somewhere—
When she found the piece of paper, she tried to see if the trailer was the same as the one Moose used for transporting his cars in. She couldn’t tell. There had to be a thousand of them in the city of New Brunswick.
There was a temptation to scream from the rooftops, call Jack and send the SWAT team over there, get a helicopter in the air. But she didn’t want to put her foot in it. Slow. Methodical. Let the situation reveal itself . . .
It made no sense. Why would Moose set fires to destroy electronics for Ripkin? The two of them had never met.
“Yes, they have,” she said to herself as she fumbled with the phone.
As her call rang through, she prayed she was right. Prayed she remembered correctly—“Tom? Tom! Listen, I need a favor—”
“What time is it?” her brother mumbled.
“In your office. On the shelf behind your desk. There’s a picture—”
“Sis, you’re talking too fast. What—”
“The picture. From the opening of the new stationhouse. The picture behind your desk. I need you to take a photograph of it and send it to me right now. Okay? Just take a picture of it and send it to my phone.”
“Why?”
She thought about coming forward with everything. But this was not just her brother; it was Moose’s boss. What if she was wrong? All she had was Unknown Caller—she didn’t have the digits themselves. Jack was still working on that.
“I just need to see it. Please?”
“Sure, fine. Whatever. I’m upstairs in my bunk. Gimme five minutes.”
After she hung up, she cradled her phone. Tom no doubt had heard about the blowup between Danny and Moose at the 499, and if she started talking like Moose was some kind of serial arsonist setting fires for a psychotic killer businessman, he was going to think she was nuts.
What she needed was facts. Proof.
Motive: Moose had, in the last year, somehow managed to fund a fancy wedding, a set of implants for Deandra, two expensive cars, a new house, and all that ugly furniture on a fireman’s salary. Even if you assumed he was working as a roofer every second he was off of work? That was a couple hundred thousand dollars right there.
Ripkin could afford to pay well the people he had doing nasties for him.
Means: Moose was on the fire service. Fire service people did training runs in abandoned buildings where fires were set to burn in controlled fashion. Back when she had been at the 499, he and Danny had always been the ones clearing the sites and setting the fires.
It wasn’t that hard to imagine that he could set a controlled ignition by timer or remote device.
Opportunity: That was the box truck on the CCTV.
Assuming it was the one he owned.
“Come on, Tom . . . come on . . .”
From out of nowhere, an image came to her, coughed out of memories that she didn’t like to dwell on.
It was from the fire, after she had had her hand cut. Danny was carrying her to the collapsed wall that had presented an escape. He was pushing her through the hole, forcing her out . . .
Into Moose’s waiting arms.
Back to her mess of papers, flipping through reports, and tables, and photographs, and—
The incident report from the 499 was standard format, listing the time of call, the address, engines and ladders and ambulances that were sent . . . the crew that was working that shift. And down at the bottom, marked with an asterisk was the name Robert Miller.
Moose had been med’d out that night due to a migraine.
Which was why, when he’d helped drag her out of the collapse, he’d been in civilian clothes, not turnouts.
How had he known to be there?
Her phone went off with a bing, and she opened the text from her brother. Calling the image up, she enlarged it, passing by the line of officers and Ripkin standing in front of a red ribbon at the bays of the new stationhouse.
And there it was. Off to the side.
Moose talking intently with a man in a slick suit with silver hair. Sterling Broward, Ripkin’s fancy attorney.
But how exactly had it worked? Ollie Popper had been running a multistate fencing operation involving office equipment, and anytime things had gotten too hot for him with the police, he’d disappeared the evidence against him in fires that happened to be taking place in Ripkin’s warehouses. Moose would know how to set a controlled burn and make sure the fire destroyed what it was suppose to. But that didn’t necessarily mean he and Ollie had a connection to Ripkin.
Just because Moose clearly had talked to Sterling Broward at a public event didn’t mean the Ripkin connection was solid.
Her gut, however, told her something was there. That fire at Ripkin’s mansion that had nearly killed his daughter? The arson investigator who had been killed in the boating accident? Ollie Popper dead in his jail cell before his case went any further?
Putting her phone facedown, she continued to think about it all, especially about what Don had gotten on her about before: Beware information that confirms your hypothesis.
And start with what you knew for sure.
When it came to Moose, she knew what she needed to do, she decided as she went for her bag, her keys, and Soot’s leash.
On the way out of her house, she made sure she had her gun with her. And her license to carry concealed.
chapter
51
Anne hit the gas hard through the farmland. Moose had been on shift with Danny the day before, so if she hurried, she had a chance of getting a look at that box truck before the firefighter got home. As for Deandra? She would just have to deal with the woman when she got here. If worst came to worst, she could pull the inspector badge out.
It turned out no one was home.
She circled the property once before getting anywhere near the drive, and she was able to visualize through the trees, the empty parking area in front of the ranch—as well as the mess that was out on the lawn.
Someone had moved out. Or been thrown out.
One more pass around the acreage and she discovered a back way in. Given that she didn’t know when anyone would be home, the camouflage was excellent and she was able to get her car within a hundred yards of the garage.
And the box trailer.
“You stay here, Soot. I’ll be right back.”
Getting out, she had her gun in one hand and her phone in the other as she made quick time across the grass to the corner of the garage.
She froze as she back-flatted against the structure. When nothing happened, she shuffled along and stuck her head out around the corner.
The box trailer was big enough to fit a car in, with its roof and four walls enclosing its contents. The double doors in the back were shut with a heavy lock on them.