The fire was north. Mile 125. Cold Springs drainage. A BCS patrol had been dispatched. Walt had his pants buttoned and was reaching for his gun belt as he simultaneously called Kevin.
Fifteen minutes later, Kevin returned, wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. He climbed from behind the wheel of his beat-up Subaru and passed Walt on the front porch without a word.
Walt hurried to the Jeep.
41
Pulses of blue and white lights flashed in the treetops as Walt merged the Jeep into the phalanx of fire trucks and emergency vehicles. Fiona, wearing a T-shirt and full-length pajama bottoms, stood at the door to her cottage, arms crossed against the chill. Her hair down and tousled, she looked both tired and frightened, her attention fixed up the hill where rising whiffs of smoke still faintly clouded the air. Four firemen, clad in turnouts and armed with pickaxes and shovels, were chasing down the last vestiges of fire, the buried, smoldering plant roots that could hold fire for days.
She didn’t see him arrive. But when he told Beatrice to stay, Fiona must have heard his voice and she turned toward him, her solemn expression like a veil. He took away only this: she’d heard him over the shouts and pumps and diesel engines; she’d recognized his voice with only the single word spoken. Somehow, this gave him hope.
The fire had consumed an acre of hill, singeing the bark of the fir and pine trees, destroying the flower bed where Walt had stood with her only hours earlier. It left behind a black carpet of charred pine straw and the gray ash of what had been lawn grass.
Another sheriff’s office cruiser rolled in, only seconds behind him. Two deputies: Blompier and Chalmers. They clambered out and looked to him for instruction.
“Search the main house. Confirm it’s vacant.”
He walked slowly to her, wondering what he was going to say.
“I swear,” she said, beating him to it. She hung her head, shaking it side to side. “I know how this looks, but it isn’t true.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Lowering her voice to where he could barely hear, she said, “Tell me you’re not involved, Walt. If you did this for me—”
“Me? I’m not involved.”
“Seriously?”
“Do you honestly think I’d do something like this?”
They studied one another in the flashes of colored light.
Was he to believe this charade? After their discussion about this very act? Or was she playing out the hand he’d dealt her? Attempting to keep the cover story going?
“A lightning strike,” he said.
She said nothing, but snorted her derision. Her arms crossed more tightly, she lifted her head, wearing a look of incipient terror.
“I was asleep,” she whispered, though defensively. “It could have burned the cottage . . . I could have . . .”
A shudder passed through her head to toe.
For a fleeting moment he was tempted to want to believe her, but the moment passed.
“You called it in?” he asked.
“I smelled it,” she said. “Idaho air-conditioning. Without that . . . who knows?”
Few homes in the area carried any kind of air-conditioning. With forty-degree summer nights, the trick was to throw all your windows wide open and chill the house down and shut it back up again before eight a.m. A well-insulated house could remain cool the remainder of the day.
“Might have saved your life.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
He kept waiting for the wink or the nudge, but it wasn’t forthcoming. She wasn’t going to give him so much as an inch of rope.
“Okay, then,” he said.
“You don’t believe me?” Spoken as if it had just occurred to her.
“Of course I believe you.”
The flashing light continued to play across their faces. She looked at him searchingly. Probing.
“I should get on with it . . .” he said.
“Yes.”
“Get a jacket or something. It’s chilly out here.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“It’s cold. Get a jacket,” he repeated, heading off to a firefighter he recognized as the one in charge.
“Any ideas?”
“Storm strike,” the man said. He was tall and broad-shouldered and had a deep voice. “Best guess.”
“Yeah,” Walt said.
“It’s usually a tree takes the strike, but I’m no expert.”
“Got it,” Walt said, wanting to leave it right there. “Anything you need from us?”
“We’re good. Another thirty or forty minutes. I’ll send some guys back up here in an hour or two to make sure there’re no flare-ups. You might tell her, so she doesn’t scare.” He jerked a shoulder toward Fiona.
“Will do.”
Walt turned back downhill.
“Sheriff?”
“Yeah?”
“Shape of the fire doesn’t add up, in case you care. We