Fatal Burn (West Coast 2)

“Sure?” she asked, once again feeling left out of her brothers’ secrets.

“Absolutely,” he said, and then with a smile and a hint of devilment in his gaze, added, “Go with God.”

She laughed. So he did have a sense of humor after all, could still laugh at himself. “Later,” she said. She told the rest of her siblings good-bye, then took off, driving her truck five miles over the speed limit, as if she expected one of her brothers to chase her down the street and pull her back into the swirl of tragedy that was her family.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she told herself, but checked her rearview mirror anyway. She saw the worry in her own eyes and decided it wasn’t worth it to try and psychoanalyze why her family sometimes made her feel claustrophobic, or why she often had the screaming urge to run away.

There was just no logic to it.

Not that there was much logic to any part of her life these days. She tromped a little harder on the accelerator and pushed the thoughts aside.

“We think we found the van.” Carter’s voice sounded grim. Strained. “The one that Madge Rickert saw while walking her dog, the one that had been parked behind Janssen’s Hardware Store that Earl Miller noticed, the one with the Arizona plates.”

Travis was sitting on the foot of his bed in the motel room. “Dani?” Travis whispered, throat tight, fear pounding through his brain.

“Not there, Travis. But her cell phone was.”

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

“The van was located in a garage of an abandoned farm in Idaho. The only reason we found it is that a neighbor who rents the acreage to grow wheat parked near the garage and he noticed a bad odor. He had his dog with him and the Lab was going ape shit. The garage door had a new padlock on it and the farmer thought that was funny, so he forced it open, found the van and inside it was a big garbage bag filled with bloody clothes. Men’s clothes. Lots of blood.”

“Whose blood?” Travis forced himself to ask.

“Blanche Johnson’s.”

Travis closed his eyes, counted slowly to twenty, willing his pulse to stop racing.

“The farmer called Blanche’s phone—the Idaho place is hers—and we took the call. Because the clothes were so covered in blood, we’re speculating that they were what the perp was wearing when he killed Blanche. We’re testing them for evidence, hoping something will tell us who he is.”

Travis’s hand hurt from clenching the phone so hard. “But you didn’t find Dani?”

“No. Just her cell phone on the floor of the garage. The Idaho State Police charged it and tracked its owner. Expedited our investigation. We’ve got men and dogs searching the area, but from the tire tracks, we figure he had another vehicle stashed and took off in it.”

“With Dani?”

“Probably. We found footprints in the dust. Ones consistent with a woman’s size seven, the same as your daughter’s.”

Travis squeezed his eyes shut. Please let her be alive. Safe.

“We have other footprint impressions as well, a man’s size thirteen, and the crime scene investigative team is going over the van and the garage now. The Idaho State Police are working with the FBI and the local Sheriff’s Department. I’m in the loop and I’ll keep you posted.”

Travis held the phone to his head with one hand, raked his fingers through his hair with the other. “You don’t think the blood on the clothes is my daughter’s?” he asked, forcing out the words.

“No, I don’t, but, of course we don’t know for certain, but we will soon. The butcher knife we found in the bag looks like one that was missing from Blanche Johnson’s kitchen set, and the link is her place in Idaho. She inherited the place a few years back but hasn’t lived there since she was a child. As far as anyone knows, she rarely visited it. The place is a shambles. She’s been renting it out for the past couple of years to the neighbor.”

Travis listened, his throat tight, his pulse pounding in his ears as he thought of bloody clothes, a dripping butcher knife and his daughter.

“I figure whoever killed Blanche wanted us to find the van…He had to have known that someone would eventually stop by, maybe notice the new lock. It’s also someone who knew Blanche owned the place. We’re checking all of her acquaintances, people who knew her way back when. It’ll take some time.”

“I’m afraid we’re running out.”

“Hang in there.”

“He’s here now. Somewhere around Santa Lucia,” Travis said, thinking of the recent fires. “And he’s got Dani. He left her backpack at the last fire.”

“I know, I’ve been talking to Paterno. Don’t worry, we’ll keep digging on this end. I’ll call you when I know something more,” Carter promised before hanging up.

Travis s