Lora knocked his hand away. “I damn well know who he was.” Can’t do this.
“I have some questions about those deaths. I need to know—”
“You’re SSD.” She nearly spat the words at him. How? How had this happened? “You’re the one they sent?”
The guy wasn’t perfect at schooling his expression. She was watching, closely, and didn’t miss the slight rising of his eyelids.
The SSD. One of the—supposedly—most elite divisions in the FBI. Newly formed, the Serial Services Division was the only unit in the Bureau specifically formed to track and apprehend serials. Serial killers, ra**sts, arsonists…
Like the serial fire freak that she was sure hunted in her city.
“You’re the one who called Hyde.” Certainty in that voice. Underscored with some shock.
“And you’re the superagent they sent.” Wonderful. Lora shook her head. “At least they sent someone,” she said, voice tight, “and didn’t just—”
“Something you should know, sweetheart.” Ah, some heat there. Okay, not just heat. The edge of fury. “I’m damn good at my job.” Steel backed his words.
Her eyebrows rose. “Guess we’ll see about that.” Time for full disclosure. “And, yeah, for the record, I’m the one who called Keith Hyde.” A real long shot, but she’d had to take it.
She knew when a hunter was playing with fire.
Lora was tired of finding the dead in the ashes of her fires.
So she’d used her connection and gotten the direct line for Keith Hyde, the man who was, for all intents and purposes, the SSD. He’d started the team. Handpicked every agent. And he chose the cases they covered.
“So you think you’ve got a serial arsonist in Charlottesville?”
Think? “I know we do. When you start investigating, you’ll see the same thing.” But the lead county arson investigator refused to see what was right in front of his face. The guy didn’t want to admit that he couldn’t handle the investigation on his own, that it was bigger than his office could handle.
Too bad. She was tired of seeing the bodies. So she’d gone over Seth’s head. Or rather, all the way around him to pull in the SSD.
But she hadn’t gone without backup. The chief had been the one to give her Hyde’s number. Garrison knew the score, and he’d recognized they were being outgunned by a killer.
A door opened down the hallway. A uniformed cop poked his head inside, his hazel eyes serious. “Sir, the suspect is waiting for you…”
“Suspect?” Her brows rose and, yeah, that was hope hitting her in the chest like a fist.
But Kenton’s lips thinned. “The junkie from last night. There’s a Detective Peter Malone—”
Yeah, she knew him. Too well.
“—he thinks Old Larry might have had something to do with the vic’s death.” One shoulder lifted. “I’m sitting in on the interrogation.”
“Well, um…” Her left foot eased back. “Good luck with that.” Lora turned away.
“I’ll be right there,” Kenton called out.
“Yes, sir.” The door slammed shut.
She kept walking. Another door waited for her, just a few feet away.
“You don’t think this death is related to the others, do you, Ms. Spade?”
If she did, Lora wouldn’t be walking away. She’d have been running to that interrogation room.
“Why not?” he asked, voice rising. “Doesn’t this one fit your pattern?”
Had the guy done any homework? Her fingers curled around the doorknob, and she glanced back at him. “No, it doesn’t.” His gaze seemed so watchful. “The fire junkie we’re after—” And, sure, she thought of guys like this as junkies. The fire was just as addictive as drugs. Lora swallowed over the lump that rose in her throat and managed, “H-he doesn’t kill the victims. He lets the fire do the killing for him.”
“This is personal for you.” He shook his head. “You can’t let the cases get personal. You can’t—”
A broken laugh rattled her chest. “It’s been personal for me… for months.” Her lips twisted. “Far too late to worry about distance now.”
It had been too late from the moment that she’d pulled Carter’s body out of that inferno.
“I ain’t killed nobody!” Kenton didn’t wince at the yell, and neither did the detective in the chair to his right.
But Detective Peter Malone did lean forward and lock his bright blue gaze on their twitching subject. “He was locked in, Larry. Sealed in that closet and left to die. You were the only other person in that building…”
Larry lifted his hands, and there was no way to miss their shaking. “I didn’t—I didn’t know anybody was there! Thought it was—was just me!”
“Did you start the fire to cover the murder?” Peter demanded, not letting up. From what Kenton could tell, the cop liked to drill hard and fast in interrogation. Some cops worked that way. Others were slower, sneakier.
One of the agents he worked with at the SSD, Monica Davenport, now she was one fine interrogator. She could make any monster spill his guts in five minutes or less.
The lady had a talent—one that worked particularly well with serial killers.
The guy in front of him was not a serial, and Kenton didn’t think he was an arsonist either.
Just a man who’d let drugs eat his soul away.
“You set the fire,” Peter said, “because you’d knocked the guy’s head in, and you were covering your tracks.” He shook his own head. “But then you got caught by the flames. The fire messed up your exit, huh?”
“What? No, man, no! I was just—just…” He inhaled, hard. “I had some—some drugs.” Whispered.
Not a big surprise. The guy’s body language screamed user, and one look into the man’s eyes had shown the pinprick-sized pupils and the bloodshot gaze.
“I swear, I didn’t s-start no fire! I didn’t kill nobody!”
Larry’s rap sheet backed that up. Drug charges stretching for pages, but no assaults, nothing even hinting at violence.
“Maybe you got high, and you got mean.” Peter stood and strolled around the table. “And the poor vic just got in your way.”
“Nah, nah, it wasn’t—”
“Tell us his name, Larry. He’s probably got a family out there, someone waiting for him to come home. Give us a name, help us out. And we’ll help you.”