THE MASON FALLS Fire Department was housed in a historic building on Fremont Street, just behind a German deli that made the best Reubens in Georgia.
I had to be back for the press conference with Miles Dooger, but momentum was pulling me down a different path. A direction that proved out other possibilities. That Burkette, who Abe had shot, might’ve been innocent of Kendrick’s murder. And that the fire might’ve produced completely different results if Brodie Sands hadn’t put it out so quickly.
I got to the front desk and flashed my badge, heading up to the second floor to talk to Pup Lang.
Pup was the lead arson inspector for the city, and we’d become friends on a previous case. He was a transplant from the San Fernando Valley outside of Los Angeles and had left after twenty years there. His wife was originally from Marietta.
“What’s up, buddy?” Pup said as I got to his office. He wore a short-sleeved golf shirt, slacks, and flip-flops. Wraparound Oakleys were propped atop his graying head, even as it rained outside.
“Pup,” I said, “you know this mess I’m dealing with, right?”
“Sure,” he said. “The kid found in the fire. But you got your man last night, right?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how the fire out there was burning so slowly.”
“Yeah, us too,” he said.
“Except now I know the answer,” I said. “The crop duster who spotted it dropped slurry on the blaze.”
“No way,” Pup said. “My people talked to him. He never mentioned—”
“I know,” I said. “But he just admitted it to me.”
Pup took this in. Shrugged. “So he’s a Good Samaritan, and you got better evidence because of it. What’s the problem?”
I closed the door to Pup’s office. “Kendrick Webster was lynched,” I said. “I removed the rope before anyone saw it.”
“Jesus,” Pup said.
“So here’s my question,” I said. “If you’re some shitbag who lynches a kid—why do you do it?”
“Well, I’m not from here like you,” Pup said. “But history tells us it’s a racist show of force. Intimidation. Scares the community.”
I was pacing in the small area in front of Pup’s desk. “But if I’m thinking properly,” I said. “If that crop duster doesn’t put the fire out, by the time y’all get out there—”
“It wouldn’t have been ten acres burnt,” Pup said. “More like forty.”
“So the rope . . .” I put up my hands.
Pup nodded. “It would’ve burned up in the fire. No one would’ve seen it.”
“Which,” I said, “is counter to why you’d lynch someone in the first place, if no one’s gonna notice. So if the crop duster hadn’t flown over at five-thirty and your truck hadn’t gotten there when it did—”
“You’d be using dental records to try and ID Kendrick,” Pup said.
I ran a hand through my hair. The press conference was in less than an hour. The one where we told the community everything was solved.
“You know, back in LA,” Pup said, “you see arson-murders once in a while. But usually it’s a cover-up. Someone shoots someone. Burns the body in an apartment to try and hide a gunshot wound.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said.
“My point is,” Pup said, “it isn’t something I associate with small towns in the South. Has this happened here before?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Then something pinged in my head. Something that the crazy drunk in the cell had said. About the elbows. About it not being the first time.
“I gotta look into something. I may be back.”
I rushed out to my truck and drove back to the precinct, taking the steps up the back stairwell two at a time. I got in front of my computer and logged in to the program we used to research crime patterns.
ViCAP, or the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, was the FBI’s database of violent crime in the US over the last three decades.
I punched in some variables.
A victim between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.
An area with a population under two hundred thousand.
A fire that burned so much of his body that dental records were used to ID the vic.
I waited to see if anything similar had happened in the past, and I heard a beep.
I clicked on the single record. Shonus County. Arson-murder.
Shonus was twenty-five miles north of Mason Falls.
I downloaded the abstract and began reading it.
Junius Lochland had been seventeen when he was found dead in a field. I scanned down and saw that Junius was black, the grandson of a Baptist preacher.
But then my heart started racing.
Junius’s two elbows were broken.
I stood up, staring at my computer screen.
There was a problem. The case wasn’t current. It was from 1993. Twenty-five years old. None of our current suspects were even out of junior high then.
My cell rang, and I picked it up without seeing who it was.
“You on your way, bud?” Miles Dooger said. “We’re meeting the press in thirty minutes, and I need a word first.”
I stared at the abstract from the ’93 arson-murder. The case had been solved. A man had confessed to the crime twenty-five years ago and been sent to prison.
“Yeah,” I said. “Be there in ten.”
I found Patrolman Gattling on the way out. “Do me a favor, will ya?” I pointed at the printout of the crime from ’93. “Find out if the guy who did this crime in Shonus recently got paroled.”
“And then?” Gattling asked.
“Text me. And don’t talk to anyone else about it.”