Chapter 10

November 21

Richard took the Molotov cocktail from the evidence locker and carefully removed the stopper.  The small amount of liquid inside smelled of gasoline and something else.  He wet the tip of his forefinger with it and slid his thumb over it, detecting an oily feeling.  The liquid evaporated slowly, leaving a slight residue, not enough to reflect light, but enough to leave a familiar, evocative feel.

A crisp fall morning at his uncle's place.  With a guttural cough, the balky engine caught, took hold, and then accelerated as if, finally awakened, it was now hungry for wood.  With a steadily revving whir the chainsaw bit into the log and a shower of wood chips flew backward, covering his boots.  Blue smoke charged the air with a strong cloying, but pleasant odor.

Two cycle chain saws ran on a mixture of gasoline and a special oil.  Could the perp have been so ignorant or so careless as to use chain saw fuel to make a firebomb?  It would account for the low intensity of the fire.  If the man had only decided to do it after getting drunk, then he could have made such a mistake.  It was consistent with the bungled firebombing.

He heard the sheriff's familiar laugh in the outer office, and soon the man's bulk filled the doorway.

"I need a prisoner transferred over to Butler County, Carter.  Looks like you're it."

"While I'm at it do you think I could take the and the slug from Harold Porter's house on over to the crime lab at Cape?"

Shug scowled.  His opponent in the last election had charged him with mismanagement of funds, and by nature he was sensitive to wasting the people's money.

"A little overkill for what's basically a nuisance crime, don't you think?" he said.  "I thought you said this was just an amateurish attempt to scare the guy off." 

"Amateurish or not, that shot has to be considered attempted murder."

"Especially after the firebombing," said the sheriff.  "At the least it's assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, or whatever the nomenclature for trying to burn someone alive is."

"I've been thinking that we should have them analyze the Molotov cocktail too."

"You said there were no fingerprints.  Did you find blood?"

"I want them to analyze the accelerant.  I think it's two-cycle chainsaw fuel.  If we move quickly enough, we could get a matching mixture from Preslar's place, provided we can get a search warrant."

Shug shook his head.  "Any idea how many people have two-cycle chain saws around here.  We're in the woods, boy."

"You mix your own fuel, right?  Gasoline and two-cycle oil.  So, gasolines come with different chemical additives and so do oils.  Plus, most people probably don't mix the stuff up exactly according to the directions.  They eyeball it.  The lab might give us the exact composition and the mixture by percentage of constituents.  It could make Preslar or it could eliminate him, at least as far as the firebombing is concerned."

"It's worth a shot," said Shug.  "Go ahead."

 

Richard went to the bathroom again to see how Mirabelle was.  For more than forty-five minutes Jill had been sitting in the cool water sponging her.

"Is it coming down?" he asked worriedly.

"Yes, I think so.  She feels cooler now, and I definitely am.  I think the worst of it is over."

Mirabelle fretted fitfully.  She definitelt did not think the worst of it was over.  She loved bath time, but this was not to her liking at all.

"Poor little thing," said Richard.  "She doesn't understand what's going on."

"She'll be all right, but Carl told me that we'll have to watch her tonight to make sure her fever doesn't get too high.  At least I don't have classes tomorrow.  Take her for a minute while I get out and get dressed."

Richard did his best to comfort his little girl, holding her to him in the damp towel and rocking her gently.  Later, as Jill dried Mirabelle and dressed her in a thin cotton smock for bed, he watched, thinking of the fragility of life.  So much could go wrong.  Suddenly he found himself worrying years ahead.  As much as he wanted to protect his family, he was acutely aware of the randomness that made protection an illusion.  He wondered what dangers Mirabelle would face when she went to school, went to college, began driving, dating.  His little girl's sudden illness and alarmingly high fever had come was a shocking reminder of all the lurking bad things that he was absolutely powerless against.

"Ninety-nine point one," said Jill.  "I must check her each half hour."

"Couldn't we give her a baby aspirin or something?" he asked.

"Heavens no.  If she has a virus and you give her aspirin there's a small but very real chance of Reye's Syndrome.  Carl said sponging ought to work.  If this is what is going around right now, it shouldn't last long.  He told me to call him at home if I needed to."

 

When he came back from the shower later, he found Mirabelle lying uncovered and asleep in the crib, which Jill had placed near the rocker on her side of the bed.

"She has no fever now," she said.  "But I'm still going to stay up with her.  Will it bother you if I read?"

"I can sleep with the lights on.  We can take shifts if you want.  If I can get three or four hours, I'm fine."

"I will wake you if I need you to take over," she said, stifling a yawn.

Richard knew she would do no such thing.  If tempted to, she would only ask herself what her Aunt Mirabelle would do, and that would be the end of it.

Aunt Mirabelle would have made a great Marine sergeant, he thought.  She sounds like the kind of no-nonsense person who would have blistered your ears when you did something irresponsible. 

Of course he wouldn't share that thought with Jill. 

That's your problem.  There are too many things you won't say to her---like how really dumb it is to have anything to do with Harold Porter.

He thought of Guidry's advice to lay down the law to Jill about the man.  He couldn't do that, and wouldn't, because that's not the way their marriage worked.  It was maddening though that her usual good sense had deserted her.  She couldn't see the obvious:  that giving attention to the almost universally shunned man would encourage him to draw closer and closer to her.  Hopeless Porter would become a leach if she let him.

"Jill, can we talk about Harold Porter."

"If you're going to apologize about Thanksgiving dinner, don't," she said.  "I've been thinking, and it was all my fault.  I should have known better than to . . . set up such a situation like that.  You were right to be upset.  Next time I'll---"

"Let's not have a next time," he interrupted.

"What do you mean?  Are you forbidding me to invite into our home?"

"I'm not forbidding you.  I'm just telling you that I don't want you to."

"That is the same thing, is it not?"

"No.  No, it isn't.  It's just that . . . Jill, where has your good sense gone?"

"Now I do not have good sense?"

"Not when it comes to him, you don't."

"That is what I hate about what you are doing, Richard.  It is another of your occupational hazards of being a policeman, I suppose.  You see everything in black and white, good guys and bad guys---"

"That's nonsense.  Porter is an ex-con who---"

"Which makes him a bad guy, then, now, and forever, right?"

"That's not it."

"No?"

"Jill, I just have a feeling about him.  I can't understand why you don't see what he's like."

"And I'm surprised that you don't see---"  Jill stopped in midsentence.

Her anger had almost goaded her into telling Richard about Ron Guidry's unwanted attentions. 

"I am surprised that you cannot give him a chance, cannot treat him like a normal human being.  Isn't everyone supposed to get a second chance after they pay their debt to society?"

"Theoretically," he said sarcastically.

"Theoretical?"

"We have Mirabelle to think about.  We can't afford your misplaced compassion."

"You think I would endanger my daughter?"

"I've told you how I feel."

The phone rang before Jill could form a retort.  Both were glad for the interruption.

"She is fine, Carl.  The fever is down.  I will watch her through the night though.  Thank you for calling.  Oh, okay."

She handed the phone to Richard.  "He wants to speak to you."

"Richard, I hate to bother you this late."

Hoag's voice sounded gravelly, as if he was nursing a head cold.

"I called because I need to tell you about that girl you asked me about the other day, Jennifer Cole."

Richard had a sinking feeling.  He was sure that Carl was about to tell him Guidry had been responsible for her injuries.

"Well, I wasn't entirely forthcoming with you the other day, as you, no doubt, knew at the time."

"It's okay, Doc."

"Damned right it is.  Doctor-patient privilege.  But now I'm worried that you might be thinking along the wrong lines as far as she's concerned."

"Oh?"

"And don't try that one syllable prompt crap with me.  This isn't an interrogation."

"Sorry, Carl."

"It's all right.  Anyway.  Her story that she fell and hit her face on a post is so much crap, but I don't want you thinking that it was related to the break ins or that attack.  Her injuries probably come under the heading of occupational hazard.  She's a prostitute.  I see her regularly---professionally, that is---and give her advice, which she routinely ignores.  She specializes in rough stuff.  I tell her that, sooner or later, it's going to get her killed.  But like with doctors, all the money is in specialization."

"That's why she does it?"

"How the hell should I know?  People are complicated.  Most of the things they do don't make sense.  Almost makes you believe in that death wish crap.  Try low self-esteem."

"Any idea of who did it to her?"

"She won't say---prostitute-client privilege, I suppose."

"So she's not worth worrying about?"

"They're all worth worrying about," said Hoag wearily.  "Just some of them are beyond the range of the Jolly Green Giant."

"What?"

"Rescue copter.  ‘Nam slang.'  She can't be rescued because she's too far out there and has her locator beacon turned off.  Jennifer doesn't want help.  She's made her covenant with hell and is satisfied with it."

"You're mixing metaphors, Carl."

"Allusions, I think.  Comes from not fishing enough.  When we gonna get back out to Sager Pond?"

"Whenever things settle down, I guess," said Richard noncommittally.  "Carl, thanks for calling."

"Your wife said that already.  She says it better than you do."

When he hung up the phone and got back into bed, he reached over to pat Jill's leg as a sort of apology.  She took her hand from her book, gave his a quick squeeze, and went back to her reading.

 

November 28, 9:45 A.M.

The report from the forensic lab disappointed.  The oil added to the gasoline was not two-cycle oil as he'd assumed, but a common brand of synthetic motor oil.  The perpetrator had like as not poured gasoline into a bottle already containing a small quantity of oil.  The resulting accelerant was not as volatile as pure gasoline, but the oil accounted for the high degree of smoke damage as well as the relative ease with which Porter had been able to extinguish the blaze.  The report left an impression that the act had been impulsive, consistent with a perpetrator acting under the influence of alcohol.

In a separate report, the ballistics technician said that the lands and grooves on the deformed .22 slug could probably be matched to the weapon from which it was fired.

As Richard reread the reports hoping to glean something useful, a lanky man in his thirties, wearing a baseball cap, bomber jacket, and jeans came into the office.

"Hi," he said, extending his hand as he strode forward exuding an ease uncommon for most people when talking to law enforcement people.

"I'm Chipper Arledge, your friendly medevac jockey," he continued without further prolog.  "I'm pretty sure there's a car out east of town someone put into a pond."

"Pretty sure?"

"Well, it's under cloudy water . . . but, yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Can you tell me about where?"

"Nope.  I can tell you exactly where.  It's out on U about three miles.  Got a topo map?"  He looked over Richard's shoulder to the black and white county map.  "Here, I'll show you."

"Right there."  

He stabbed his finger onto the paper directly at Marvin Hendrichs ranch.  "Spotted it on my way in this morning after taking an old guy to St. Francis Trauma Center.  If we'd had bright sunlight, I'd have probably missed it."

 

11:10 A.M.

Although Richard saw nothing through the murky water of the lagoon, faint impressions in the gravely, weed cloaked soil made him think that the medevac pilot was probably right.  Made either by a car or truck rather than a tractor, they led directly up the bank.  From atop of the bank he saw deep ruts running down into the foul, dark water.  No one could have accidentally driven in.  Once grappling hooks were used to haul it out, he was sure there would probably be at least one body inside.

On his way back to the car to call it in, he went through the barn, wondering again why Hendrichs had gone to so much trouble in fixing up the place when he'd had to sell off virtually his entire herd.  Pride could be the answer.  Everything the man owned was neat, well maintained, and expensive.  Even the lagoon had been outfitted with an aerator large enough to service a trailer park.

"I'll get a wrecker and our volunteer diver out to attach the cables to your vehicle," said Shug.  "But that'll probably be a couple of hours from now.  In the meantime secure the area."

It had turned sharply colder, and Richard went back down to the barn to escape the wind gusts at the top of the hill near the house.  On the way he passed the kennel, noticing that only indistinct stains remained where the Pit bulls had lain after starving to death.  Someone had removed the carcasses.

 

11:45

Raven held Mirabelle close, enjoying the warmth of the sleeping child against her breast.  She rocked slowly, wondering if she would ever have a baby of her own.  She shifted slightly, rubbing herself against the baby's cheek.  Mirabelle turned unconsciously toward the stimulus, seeking the nipple.  Her psych teacher said the reflex she was witnessing was the only instinct that could be found in humans.  The sensation caused a fluttering, pleasant tickle to radiate from the spot of contact to the pit of her stomach.

Tears came to her eyes as she imagined nursing a child of her own.  Her teacher had been mistaken in thinking there were only one human instinct.

Self-pity is the most destructive of emotions, she scolded herself.

A tentative knock interrupted her maudlin mood.  She wiped impatiently at her eyes and rose gently so as to not awaken Mirabelle.  A second hesitant knock sounded while she took the baby into the bedroom and placed her in the crib.  After reassuring herself that the child was still asleep, she pulled the door to and left the room.

"Just a minute," she called out as she tiptoed on bare feet to see who was at the door.

Pulling aside the curtain she saw Harold Porter standing with back to the door, staring out at nothing in particular in his peculiar way.  He turned, his pale face deepening its sour expression, which Raven took as disappointment at finding her at the door instead of Jill.

"Is Miss Carter home?" he asked, maintaining eye contact for only a split second.

"No.  She had to go in to the college this afternoon.  Can I help you?"

"Check's due."

"She didn't tell me anything about it."

Harold looked down, seemingly reluctant to speak or to leave.  As the moment stretched uncomfortably, she tried to think of a way to end the strange encounter without hurting his feelings.

"If you come back tomorrow, I'm sure she'll have it for you," she said.

He still made no move to leave.

"She's usually very good about those---."

"Sometimes she gets it from the fireplace," he interrupted, looking at her directly for the first time, a nervous smile distorting features unaccustomed to the habit.

"I'll go see," she said, a bit unnerved.  Leaving the door open, she went quickly across to the mantel.

She wanted to end the encounter as quickly as possible.  Being near him made her uncomfortable, but she wrote that off to her general unease with men.  Trying to take her lead from Jill, she determined to avoid making the unfortunate little man more uncomfortable than he obviously was.  An envelope addressed to Porter stood propped on the mantel along with a half dozen Christmas cards.

"Here it is," she called.

As she reached for it, she felt the almost subliminal tickle she sometimes got when someone was staring at her.  Don't be silly, she told herself just before a flash of light and a soundless explosion erupted inside her skull.

 

12:30 P.M.

Richard leaned against the sunlit roughhewn siding, warming himself in the lee of the barn.  He would have been more comfortable in the car with the heater running, but this was almost surely a crime scene.  He needed to observe and to think.

Probably murder.  Probably drug related.  Why conceal the car?  Obviously to delay discovery and make it harder to place the perp at the scene.  That's textbook.  So who had a motive?  Anyone wanting the drugs or the money, of which there would be no shortage if you were in the drug business.

He reluctantly left the sunlight and went inside.  Double doors at each end opened onto a central aisle of hard packed earth wide enough to admit a tractor and hay wagon.  On either side of the aisle were three rooms filled floor to ceiling square bales of fescue and straw except for the last on the left, which had been nearly emptied.  Roughly twelve by twelve, it had a four-foot wide "door" created by a hole left in the bales.  He flicked on his flashlight and went into it.

A single layer of hay bales clad the three walls, while three more bales were stacked against the back wall.  He played his light over them and saw that they were fescue hay.  It seemed odd given the almost compulsive neatness of Marvin Hendrichs.  Putting straw in one room and hay in another would be more in character.  A mélange of faint odors pervaded the cold dark interior:  seasoned oak, molding hay, the musk of nearly mature compost, and something else, perhaps ammonia.  He shined his light overhead.  Rough-sawn oak planks gapped to reveal more hay bales in the loft.

No one built barns any longer.  They were obsolete.  Experience had shown that cattle were at more risk of disease from crowding inside enclosed spaces than living exposed to the elements.  The barn would hardly house the number of cows that Hendrichs had before he'd been force to sell off his herd, so the barn had probably been built solely to store hay.  From the beginning something had seemed odd, then he had it.  Like the barn, small square bales were an anachronism for serious cattlemen.  Out back there was a concrete pad on which stood three rows of the more orthodox larger round bales.  Each row contained eight bales and was encased in a continuous plastic skin.  The large bales could be moved to feeding areas via tractor on a huge spindle.  So why all the small bales?  It could be nothing more than Hendrich's preference.  Maybe the guy felt more like a rancher if he tossed bales by hand.

Or maybe the bales were part of a stage!  He thought with sudden insight.  Maybe the barn isn't just a barn.

He frowned.  Each room would have to be unpacked.  They would get a warrant and do it as soon as they had pulled the vehicle from the lagoon.

A gray electrical entrance box at eye level next a double light switch next to the door facing the house caught his eye.  He opened it and saw three twenty-amp circuit breakers.  Flipping on the lights showed one controlled the aisle lights, and the other controlled the outside floodlights.  Flipping the breakers showed that each set of lights was on a separate circuit.  That still left a third circuit.  He flicked it off, but saw no results.  He climbed the loft ladder, but found no light switch near or at the top.  Puzzling over it, he finally thought of the aerator in the lagoon, but when he looked outside the water was still spraying.

The breaker box was mounted on chipboard attached to the wall by ceramic-coated deck screws.  Mounting brackets nearby held a gasoline weed eater and a heavy-duty yellow and black extension cord.  The cord gave him an idea.  He wanted to find where the third circuit went, and his tool kit in the trunk.  He brought back his cordless drill and driver bits.  After removing the cover of the breaker box, he found that the first two circuits led upward, while the third ran downward. 

He set about the laborious task of backing out the three-inch screws fastening the chipboard to the seasoned oak framing.  While removing the sixth screw from the bottom right corner he stripped the tip of his discount store screwdriver bit.  Suppressing both a curse and the desire to hurl the tool, he fit his fingers behind the three-eighths inch chipboard and pried it open enough to lodge the chuck of his drill inside to hold it open.  Then he got down and shined his flashlight in to see where the wire led.  A dull silver tube ran vertically, through a neatly drilled hole in the floor plate.  He had expected the conduit to make a bend, not plunge directly into ground. 

He went outside to see if perhaps it ran to another outbuilding or perhaps a well, but saw nothing to explain it.  He went back through the barn to see if he had overlooked something, but there was nothing.  The round bales sitting like giant sausage links out back made him wonder why Hendrichs would go to the trouble and expense of laying the pad, especially when facing bankruptcy.  Perhaps it had been the first stage of an addition to the barn that he'd abandoned when the money ran out.  It would explain the third circuit.  He looked for a capped conduit emerging through the pad, but found nothing.

Still puzzled, Richard went back inside to escape the strengthening breeze.  Now the odd mixture of smells seemed stronger.  He played his flashlight around the room open room where the smell was now rank.  Amid the litter of loose hay on the hard packed dirt, a small flash of light blue caught his attention.  Stooping to examine it, he discovered that Styrofoam blue-board was embedded in the dirt floor.  When he brushed away the litter not all came away.  He tugged at a loose straw, but it held fast.  Brushing more vigorously revealed a more of the board.  He went to the equipment shed and came back with a push broom.  A few swipes soon revealed a roughly oval section of discolored insulation board stuck with bits of straw, hay, and soil.  Using his pocketknife he removed a one-inch plug and took it out to the light for closer examination.

A hard coating of something hard, perhaps epoxy, had been brushed on and then hay, straw, and dirt had been embedded into it.  Going back inside, he used the push broom more vigorously and found a circular indentation in which a three-inch wooden ring lay.  When he pulled, hinges fashioned of dowel rods set into wooden sockets creaked.  A metal detector would never have revealed the trap door.  The odor now became intense:  ammonia, gasoline, and something he couldn't quite identify.  His flashlight revealed wooden rungs attached to the shored walls of a shaft sunk some eight feet down.  Just below the trap door, the aluminum conduit led toward the concrete pad out back, which he now was fairly certain was the roof of an underground room.

A went down a few rungs and then ducked to see into the tunnel.  The shaft leading north was only five feet high.  Its concrete ceiling had collapsed eight feet in and gravely soil completely blocked entrance.  Hill gravel, red clay, and seep water covered the floor.  Cracks in the unreinforced walls threatened immediate collapse.  A slight waft of air carried the faint odor of corruption, making him wonder if divers would find any bodies in the submerged vehicle after all.

Perhaps they were all killed by a meth lab explosion.  But why would Hendrichs bring them down into a facility that he'd tried so hard to conceal? he asked himself.

But something else didn't make sense.

If they were in the lab when it collapsed then who pushed the car into the lagoon?  And why?

He closed the trap door and went outside, thinking that it didn't make sense, and probably wouldn't until they dug out the meth lab and recovered the car to see who had been killed where and how.

Richard called it in and got the bad news that only a cash-strapped department with limited resources would have to deal with.  The backhoe man the department used was tied up with an emergency water main break and couldn't come before dark, and their diver was down with the flu and couldn't get a replacement until the morning.  Shug told him to secure the scene until relief arrived which would be in three hours.

 

Tired of waiting in his cruiser, Richard decided to take a look around.  The wind had sharpened, and the drizzle had coalesced into genuine rain.  On the way down to the equipment shed he passed a discarded red and yellow one-gallon metal can, but paid it little mind.  He was thoroughly chilled and glad to reach shelter.  The shed's back wall was hung neatly with tools on pegboard above a workbench.  Cans of lubricants, oil, and diesel fuel stood ranked by type and height on the floor beneath the bench, a gap marked the spot where a missing can should be.  Two sparkling, late-model tractors were aligned with military precision in the bay.

Marvin the neat freak.  If your cattle business had worked out would any of this have happened?  Would all three of you still be alive? he wondered.

He reminded himself that the car might not be Gary Kinder's, and that he and the girl might not have come.  There might not even be a connection, which led to the question of where the kids were.  Some of those questions should be answered tomorrow.

 

2:10 PM

Harold sat on the edge of the chair, a tingling tension radiating through him like an engine revving toward the red line.  His breath came through parted, cracked lips.  He could hear the beating of his own heart and feel his pulse at the back of his throat.  She lay on her side facing him, her pale tan dress set off the smooth soft golden glow of her skin.  It was almost right, but not quite.  He reached toward her with a trembling hand.

You shouldn't have made me hit you, he thought as he tenderly pulled a strand of her glistening dark hair forward to obscure the dark purple lump on her temple.

He pulled back, unconsciously rubbing his hands together as he drank in the sight of her.  Five perfect loops of soft, white cotton braid cinched her ankles.  A leader ran behind her to the ligatures securing her elbows at the small of her back.  Matching ligatures pinned her knees together.  Her delicate wrists and small hands were free, but she was completely, wonderfully, enticingly vulnerable.  It was so close to his dreams that it took his breath.  The ropes had just enough play to allow deliciously futile movement when she came to.  He couldn't wait.

He licked his cracked lips, his indrawn breaths rasping the silent house whenever the whistling wind abated outside.

You're totally under my control.

Had he said that aloud, or had it only been a thought?  For a fleeting instant he thought that he must be in the midst of a wonderful yet terrifying dream.

"Raven," he said softly.  "I wish you was really as innocent as you look."

Now what?  he asked himself, but he knew the answer to that.  There was no going back now.  Back meant prison.

"For the rest of my natural life," he muttered.

"Your unnatural life you mean, Cherry," taunted a voice inside his head.

"Leave me alone, David.  You're dead," he whispered.

"You can finally be a man, Cherry Harry.  Do it."

The girl shifted slightly, a barely audible moan escaping her lips.

Harold drew a shivering breath and held it, still in awe of what he was finally doing.

"All that crap about not hurting anyone!  What else has all the daydreaming been about?  Now you got the real thing, a real playpretty just like that cute little Preslar girl.  It's waiting for you right there.  You can do anything you want."

Harold shook his head.

Come on, Harry.  It's too late to chicken out now.  It's way too late.

 

2:15 PM

The dry front finally arrived, pushing at the clotted, gray-bottomed clouds, sweeping them from the sky as polar air fell forward in freshening gusts promising a bitter night and frosty morning.  Richard and Guidry huddled inside the barn while deputies strung crime tape.

"Things are looking up," said Guidry, hunkering against the cold.  "One of our meth cooks blew himself to hell.  One down and only a gazillion to go."

"There may be more than one body down there," said Richard.

"Good.  I'm glad he shared the experience."

"I don't think this was your typical meth lab explosion.  I think it was homicide."

"Because of the car.  That is problematical, but then again you're talking about people with holes ate into their brains.  It was an accident.  Happens all the time."

"No accident.  The trap door was down.  An explosion should have thrown it open---maybe even blown it off its hinges.  Someone put it back down and kicked litter back over it again."

"Recoil.  Slammed back so hard that it rebounded closed.  We didn't know what to look for so we missed it the first time though.  You saw how dark it was in there.  Old Marvin's luck ran out.  He went out in a blaze of glory, only not the kind he hoped for.  End of story."

"Let me show you something else," said Richard.

Richard led him to the equipment shed and pointed out the discarded gasoline outside.

"Notice anything?" asked Richard.

Guidry nodded.  "Okay, Sherlock, you'll have to spell it out for me.  All I see is an empty gas can, and it ain't nowhere near the meth lab."

"Look in there where it came from," said Richard, walking into the shed.  "See the space at the bottom where the can sat?  Hendrichs was a compulsive organizer.  See how neat everything is.  Can you see him tossing the can aside like that?  And where's the lid?  And what was he doing with the gas can out here anyway?  All the equipment is in the shed."

"Meth disorganizes your thinking.  And there's no telling how long that can's been out there.  It's even got rust on the handle."

"Not enough rust.  It hasn't been out here for more than a few weeks."

"You really think someone poured gasoline down the hole and blew poor old Marvin up?"

"When I first opened the trap door, I'm pretty sure I caught a whiff of gasoline."

"Gasoline fumes are heavier than air," said Guidry, thinking it through.  "And, sooner or later, they'd have reached the meth lab through the tunnel.  If he was cooking with an open flame . . .  Hold on.  Who can we make for it?  Kinder and his girlfriend?  Then they did what?  Drove themselves into the lagoon out of remorse for the loss of their drug source?"

"It could have been Gary Kinder," said Richard.  "Who knows how it played out?  He kills Hendrichs and decides to make it look like a meth lab accident.  Then his girl friend freaks.  He kills her and pushes the car with her body inside into the lagoon, and then splits.  But we're getting ahead of our evidence.  We'll know more after we recover the car and dig out the lab."

Guidry was shaking his head.

"I don't know how volatile the stuff they use to cook meth is, Richard, but gasoline I know.  Had a guy torch his house once, down in Louisiana . . . anyway, this fool pours about five gallons of gasoline around the basement . . . goes to the kitchen for matches, stands at the top of the stairs . . . intends to flip a lit one down there.  Strikes the match and blows himself through the wall behind him.  Broke about half dozen bones, caused a bunch of blast damage, and failed to set a fire, which was real fortunate for him, ‘cause it would have cremated him alive."

"If that happened it could have burned down the barn," he continued.  "Can you imagine the fire belching out that hole when it ignited?  Kinder or whoever the perp was would have got a faceful of brimstone if he was still pouring when it went off."

Chill ran up Richard's spine.

"Flash burns," he muttered.  "And at just about the time Kinder and his girlfriend went missing."

"Harold Porter?  No.  That was the opening shot of Preslar's halfwit vendetta."

"Porter's a little smarter than we thought.  He staged the Molotov cocktail attack to explain his facial burns.  Didn't you say there was some trouble between him and Kinder?"

"Yeah . . .verbal stuff," said Guidry dismissively.  "Nothing happened."

"But there's another little connection.  Hendrichs called Harold a couple of different times.  We won't get more answers here until morning.  I'm going to track Porter down and get his reaction to a couple of questions."

"I'll go with you.  This is my case, remember?"

"You have to stay and secure the scene."

"We got minions for that," said Guidry lightly.  "Where we going?"

"His place, I guess.  He should be done with his route for the day."