Karen Rose - Silent Scream

“I don’t think so,” Olivia said. “But I know he’s been called. Is the dog yours?”

“No, but I’m the one who takes care of him. Have for five years. His name is Bruno.”

Olivia wrote it down. “I’ll make sure the vet knows you’re the contact, Mr. Hart. You can tell him Bruno’s medical history and make sure he gets the best care.”

“Thank you.” He swallowed hard. “You probably think I’m a horrible person, being more concerned about the dog than Tomlinson, or this fire.”

“I have a dog, too. So, what can you tell us about this fire and Mr. Tomlinson?”

He rubbed his hands over his face. “I left at my usual time, about six. Barney was still here. He was doing the books. They said he was shot. How?”

“We don’t know yet, and we haven’t been in there. So Mr. Tomlinson was doing the books. Was the business in any trouble?”

Hart rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Tomlinson and the missus were in the middle of a messy divorce. He’d been cheating and she had pictures. She made sure everybody knew she had pictures and who Barney’d been doin’ it with. Young woman he’d hired as a temp. Nobody was surprised because we all knew why he’d hired her. The girl never did a lick of work except on him.” He winced. “Sorry, Detective.”

“It’s okay. Was the divorce the reason the business was in trouble?”

“Not the whole reason. We were hurting before, with construction slowing. Most of our customers buy for commercial building. But Weezie had just ordered an audit of the books, and all of our spending had to be approved. I guess she figured he’d been buying things for the other woman from the business accounts.”

“Was he?” she asked.

“Yeah. I tried to tell him to stop, that he was gonna get fried, but he didn’t listen. He was a fifty-year-old man with a twenty-year-old on the side. They never listen.”

“Mrs. Tomlinson’s first name is Weezie? Short for Louise?”

He nodded. “It’s a real shame. I like her. She didn’t deserve this.”

Olivia met Hart’s eyes. “But Mr. Tomlinson did?”

“No,” he said. “Nobody deserves that. But I won’t lie to you. Barney was a prick. He cheated on Weezie, he was rude to employees. Never made eye contact, always either on his cell phone or using it to surf the Internet. Probably looking at porn. And he hated Bruno,” he finished, as if hating the dog was the most egregious sin of all.

“What about you, Mr. Hart?” she asked. “Did you hate him?”

“Sure. He was racist, sexist, every bad ‘ist’ you can name. But he was my boss, and I said ‘yes, sir’ when he gave an order. The only time I ever held my ground was over Bruno. And before you ask, I was with my wife and some friends playing bridge when the fire started. I can give you their names.”

“That would be great. We can cross you off quickly. Sergeant Barlow said you were the one to call 911. How did you know to come here?”

A sheepish expression stole over Hart’s face. “I installed a smoke detector in Bruno’s run. Just in case. It sends an alert to my cell phone. We were just finishing our last game when my phone went off. I got here, saw the fire, called 911. I dragged Bruno beyond the fence. I didn’t want him to get burned or trampled on by the firemen.”

“Why the dog?” Kane asked. “Did you have a problem with theft?”

“We used to store porcelain fixtures out here and had some vandalism. Kids, with too much free time. They’d break up porcelain, that kind of thing. Barney got the dog, hoping Bruno would bite one of them. The kids went elsewhere and Bruno stayed.”

“Video security?” Olivia asked.

“Cameras outside, none inside. Feed goes straight to a recorder inside. Old-fashioned. Barney didn’t think he needed anything fancy as long as he kept Bruno.”

“We’ll need a list of your clients and employees,” Olivia said.

“Talk to Jake Mabrow. He does our IT. I convinced Barney to set up an outside server about a year ago so that we’d have a backup. Jake will have access to our files. So will Weezie. She came in and made copies of everything on Barney’s computer the day before she filed for divorce. He didn’t know she knew about the temp.”

“What about you?” Kane asked. “What will you do now that this place is gone?”

“Retire. I’d been planning to anyway. Weezie promised me Bruno.” Hart’s head whipped to the side, focusing on a minivan that had just arrived. “Vet’s here.”

Olivia recognized the vet immediately. “Barlow called Brie’s dad,” she told Kane. “He’s a good vet,” she told Hart. “He takes care of my dog. Bruno’s in good hands.”

“I can go?” Hart asked and was gone with Olivia’s first nod.

“We need to get Tomlinson’s customer list,” Kane said. “See if KRB Corp or Rankin bought plumbing supplies from them.”

“We also need to pay a visit to the Widow Tomlinson. Sounds like she won’t be so grieving. This one shouldn’t be as hard as Mrs. Weems. It’s my turn, isn’t it?”

“It is. You did good with Mr. Hart, by the way.”

One corner of her mouth lifted. “You’re just saying that so I’ll give you my turn.”

His brows lifted. “Did it work?”

“No.”

“Damn.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Firefighters at your six.”

Olivia looked over her shoulder at Barlow and three firefighters coming their way. David was one of them. That her breath backed up in her lungs and her stomach rolled was an annoyance she’d just have to get used to. David Hunter was handsome. Gorgeous. Total eye candy. And a jerk. So live with it and do your job.

By the time the men reached them, she was steady.

“I’m Cunkle and this is Sloan,” one of the firefighters said. “We’re with Company Forty. And this is Hunter. He’s with Company Forty-four. Barlow said you wanted to talk to us.”

“We do,” Kane said. “Tell us what you saw inside.”

“Fire was fully engaged,” Cunkle said. “The office walls were burning and the ceiling crashed in. Sloan and I pulled the walls down and there he was.”

“He wasn’t alive. He’d been shot.” Sloan pursed his lips hard. “Face was gone.”

“What about his desk?” Olivia asked. “What did you see?”

“A bunch of papers, splattered with his blood. They hadn’t completely burned, so I checked with my flashlight. They were hard to see, but they looked like sex pictures.”

“Sex pictures? You mean, like porn?” Olivia asked and Sloan shook his head.

“No. Looked like the guy was him. Pudgy, lots of white skin. Really white.”

“This time they brought their own fuel,” Barlow added. “They found gas cans.”

“Pour patterns were similar to the ones we saw in the condo,” David said. “They spread the gas on the floor in a line, then dumped what was left into a puddle. Looks like they came from the east and west sides of the warehouse and met in the middle.”

“And the ball?” Olivia asked and he met her eyes, his unreadable.

“Propping open a side door, just like you thought they’d done in the condo. The ball is covered in gel. I got a picture of it. Look where the ball touches the floor.” He handed her his camera and Olivia turned it so both she and Kane could see the view screen.

“What am I looking at?” she asked and David looked over her shoulder, his chin almost touching her ear. Her lungs stopped working as he pointed at the screen.

“There. Piece of a fuse. They used the ball to hold one end of the fuse in place.”

David moved back, and Olivia breathed again. “When can we go in?” she asked.

“An hour or two,” Barlow said, “when it’s cooled. I’ll call you.”

“Thanks,” Olivia said, then gave Barlow a small smile. “Thanks for calling Brie’s dad. He’ll take good care of Bruno, and that’ll make Mr. Hart more cooperative.”