I love you.
You be safe, too.
I sighed, then pushed myself to my feet and went to sign out the truck. Colfax’s request forkitmeant that I’d probably want more than just the bag that I kept in my car. That, and I’d be able to save my poor, ancient car a little mileage.
I pulled up the address Colfax had sent, then put the truck in gear and headed out to the highway.
The driveway was asphalt,but cracked, with the dead and brown remnants of weeds and grasses pushing through. There were massive wet tire tracks that told me at least one truck had been through, although my guess was that it was probably two.
The driveway was long—maybe a quarter mile—and it reminded me of the track out to the bonfire where I’d met Colfax the first time. I had no idea if this was related, or something completely different, but I felt better when I rounded a corner and found the end of the driveway.
I pulled into a gravel patch beside the house occupied by two fire trucks and a fire department SUV. I was driving the pickup from the Sheriff’s Office, so one of the uniforms holding the perimeter waved me through immediately. I parked next to the fire department’s SUV and got out, holding back the usual wince when I put weight on my right leg.
A figure in full fire kit came up to me, and I grinned when I realized it was Nathanial from my fire investigation course. “Nathaniel,” I greeted him, holding out a hand.
“Seth,” he came back with, gripping my arm. I returned the pressure, then snuck a look downwards to see how they did fire boots for fauns. They were hoof-shaped, thick rubber just like those the rest of us wore. Made sense, I supposed.
“Why did they callme?” I asked him.
He grinned back at me. “After we found the first body, I might have mentioned you and pushed them to call Colfax and Ziemer.”
“Gee, thanks,” I told him, sarcastically.
“Hey, you’re logging scene hours, man,” he pointed out. As part of training, we all had to log a certain number of hours atfire scenes. This should count as hours, but I was technically supposed to do them under the supervision of a senior officer.
“Is Chief Ziemer or Lieutenant Colfax here?” I asked Nathaniel.
He turned and pointed to a bulky figure that was a little taller than the rest of the equally bulky figures. Fire gear essentially erases any sense of body proportions other than height.
I made my way across the lot, streaked liberally with both water and ash. As I approached, Colfax turned and I could see the orc’s face under the helmet, yellow-green-brown lips compressed over protruding fangs.
“Excuse me, lieutenant?”
“You’re going to need full gear,” Colfax told me in a voice that was gruff, but not unkind. “Shanahan!” the orc called, and another of the bulky forms turned. “Mays here needs gear.”
Somebody—I couldn’t tell if it was the person Colfax had called Shanahan or not—trotted over with an armload of gear a few minutes later. I wondered whether I was going to get a set of gear—and boots—that were too big or too small. Having already experienced too-small boots, I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than then inevitable blisters I’d get from boots that were too big.
I used the back of the Sheriff’s Department truck and changed boots—too small, again—then pulled on the gear over my clothes, leaving my hiking boots, parka, and mittens in the truck bed. It wasn’t just the boots that were too small, and I grimaced, the heavy gear restricting my arm movement. At least the boots went halfway up my shins, so that it didn’t matter that the pant legs were too short.
Geared up, I grabbed an evidence kit from the back of the truck and trudged painfully over to where Colfax was watching the fire team starting to pack up the hose.
“Ready?” the big orc asked me.
“As I ever will be,” I replied.
With a nod, Colfax led me out into the still-steaming ruin of what looked to have been a rather large cabin of some sort. In the dark, lit with harsh floods mounted on a tripod and most of the frame and contents blackened and falling apart, it was hard to tell whether the building had been dilapidated or newly built or somewhere in between.
Several hours of crouching,bending, squatting, and sniffing ended with calling Sheriff Mallet because the two bodies in the fire had definitely been shot and Aniwa wasn’t big enough for its own police department. My bet was on murder-suicide-arson, but that wasn’t my job. My job was to photograph the scene, investigate possible causes of arson (which I was confident was the case, and Colfax and Nathanial both agreed), and call in someone if I thought there was additional foul play, which I did and had.
Mallet himself had shown up with one of the new investigative deputies, dragging a very reluctant K9 with her.
Colfax and I had tromped out of the still warm fire site to brief Mallet and Deputy Ginny Gunderson, along with Francis, the dog, who was some sort of mixed breed that looked to have German Shepherd in him, along with something fluffier. Francislovedme.
Of course Francis loved me. I smell like a dog.
Gunderson was turning various shades of pink trying to get Francis to stop sniffing my ass, and I suppressed the urge to snark about it, not really wanting to out myself. I could see both Colfax and Nathaniel trying very,veryhard not to laugh. Nathaniel was grinning from horn to curly horn, showing hisenormous teeth. Colfax at least kept their face under stricter control, only one corner of their lips twitching.
“What’ve you got, Mays?” Mallet asked.
