MacAvity's Burning. Dan H. McLachlan
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my time. His daddy, however, wasn’t lucky enough to escape my grip.
Rob smiled faintly and watched Butte.
Hammersmith joined in. “Rob, could you bring these two up to date on what we’ve been discussing?”
He nodded.
At that moment, Sheila and Ruthie came into the room and placed a tray of cups, a decanter of coffee with the makings, a plate of shortbread cookies on the table and pulled up seats from the side wall. Apparently Smoke and I had stolen their places.
There were now seven of us circled. I marveled how the Hammersmith’s house seemed to flex comfortably to accommodate however many came through its doors.
Ruthie poured and we reached for our cups.
Bruun sipped and sat back easily in his seat before speaking in a smooth, deep voice.
“Well, we were discussing the tragedy that befell you folks last night.”
He looked over at Butte and Shiela who sat closely together. “I flew in this morning with a pal of mine in his company plane, and it was apparent that MacAvity’s was firebombed in a rather crude fashion. Whoever did it emptied two five gallon jerry cans of gas over the back wall and then ignited it. But I haven’t found evidence of how they did that without torching themselves. Hucking a road flare into the fumes would have been disastrous for them.”
He took a second sip and leaned forward to set his cup down on a coaster, and stayed that way with his elbows on his knees. He certainly had a way of riveting our attention.
“Now, I suspect, even if they were fifty feet back, the ignition would have given them quite a start because the fireball had to have come damn near close to torching them as well. I suspect one or more of them had had military training. If so, they could have ignited the gas by shooting a tracer bullet at the back of the pub from, say, a pickup parked 500 yards away, and been on their merry journey back to wherever.”
He stopped to gather his thoughts as if considering the delicate nature of what he wanted to say next.
We waited.
“Now,” he began, ”The problem with this whole thing is Pastor Donny Larken’s murder. You’re County Coroner, a Sherman Vics, and I agree that the pastor was killed immediately following the firebombing, and that his murder--the seizing, binding and shooting---took nearly twenty minutes to complete. Which means those responsible for the firebombing and the killing could very well be the same men...or at very least been in collusion. And, we both agree that there were at least two men because of the difficulties involved in taping a person to his own pulpit.”
It was MacAvity who spoke.
“So, in your opinion, do you think torching my pub was a diversion?”
“You mean to tie the whole town up while they leisurely whacked Pastor Larken,” Bruun said. “I don’t think so. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes, and by the time they left, so many people were arriving in town their escape route would have exposed them to a heap of notice.”
We considered this.
Smoke sat his cup down and leaned forward and looked past me at the marshal...who looked back at him and waited.
“You’re not saying they’re locals, are you,” he said.
“No.”
“But you’re saying this thing was well planned, escape route and all. Right?”
Bruun smiled his faint smile again. He must have understood that Smoke, the Colonel, was thinking with him.
Smoke added, “So you’re thinking they knew of the back road over to Highway 95.”
Bruun nodded. “Exactly. They knew the only house on that road was vacant and the dust they were to throw up would not be visible at night even if someone from the highway could have been passing by just at that moment.”
He paused
“But, Smoke...it is Smoke isn’t it?”
Smoke nodded.
“What these two things, the arson and the murder, seem to be screaming is that what they have done was done by folks who have a clearly defined purpose, and know an awful lot about Ryback.”
He took his coffee back up, took a swallow and settled back into his chair, giving Hammersmith a nod.
Eric cleared his throat. “Before you two showed up, Charlie called to say he had you pay him a visit. From what you told him, Smoke, he suspects we--and that’s all of us, the whole town-may have seen the perps with our own eyes weeks ago.”
“The sightseers?”
That was me.
Everyone looked at me.
Finally Smoke said, “Yes, Paul. The sightseers.”
Bruun put on his faint smile.
“Oh,” I managed.
A dinger sounded in the kitchen and Ruthie got to her feet and went in with Shiela on her heels.
“You flew in, then?” Smoke was asking Bruun.
He nodded. “Yup. A Cessna Caravan. Belongs to my pal’s company, The Idaho Banner.”
Smoke and I stared at each other, then at Hammersmith and Butte.
“Um,” I managed, “Your pal wouldn’t be Billy O’Conner, would it?”
Bruun actually managed a deep chuckle. “Yup. ‘The world’s best investigative journalist’...or so he claims.”
“It’s true,” MacAvity said.
We all nodded.
Smoke pressed on. “And the rig outside. How’d you score that?”
“Billy woke up a Josiah Longbeach, who is Camus Tribal Police and has affiliations with the FBI under Bob Pfeffer.”
“We know both of them,” Smoke said.
Bruun nodded. “So that rig’s true ownership is rather sketchy, at best.” He gave a faint smile. “But it runs on money and has bullet proof windows. What’s not to like?”
I was beginning to understand this Robbins Bruun. If he hung out with Billy, he had to be OK. Billy had started his journalistic career in my office at the Confluence Tribune, “The Trib.,” and within two years left to rocket up through the ranks to be a near national sensation when it came to breaking stories wide open. He was instrumental in three different cases involving a drug cartel’s attempt to infiltrate the Pacific Northwest, and his detailed account had made national headlines. The death toll was twelve by the time everything was over. Amazing.
“So,” I asked, “where is the Irishman now?”
“Still in that traveling luxury suite and computer center he still claims is a plane. He’s trying to established if there are any parallels to what happened here last night.”
“Well, if there are, he’ll find them.” This was Butte, who had been almost immobile since we arrived.
A cell phone buzzed. Bruun took his iPhone out of the breast pocket of his gray Western cut jacket and looked at the screen as it buzzed again.
“Speaking of Billy,” he said. Then into the phone, “Anything?”
We waited.
Bruun continued to listen, nodding his head from time to time with a few “I see’s” thrown in.
Billy could be long winded when he was hot on a trail, so this was encouraging.
Ruthie looked out around the kitchen entry and signaled Hammersmith to come over. He got up and followed her into the kitchen. I could hear the three of them discussing something, plus I could smell garlic and a roast cooking.
“Okay