In the Red - Softcover

Ashbaugh, Regan C.

3.43

21 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671027743 ISBN 13: 9780671027742

Publisher: Pocket, 2000

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When the top executives at the multi-billion-dollar investment firm of Morson-Grayhead are stalked by a killer who brutally murders their wives and burns their homes to the ground, it is up to arson investigator Jake Ferguson to hunt down the homicidal pyromaniac. Reprint.

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About the Author:

Regan C. Ashbaugh is a seventeen-year Wall Street veteran and a vice president of investments with a national brokerage firm. He teaches a course on the Federal Reserve Bank at his local high school, serves on two boards of trustees, and is a proud member of his town's fire department. He resides in Maine with his wife and two sons, and is currently working on his next novel for Pocket Books.

Chapter 1

Sunday
September 8

The phone call came at 2:47 A.M., shattering the oppressively hot and muggy night air in his bedroom like a head-on train collision. It was one of those steamy, sleepless summer evenings every New Yorker dreads, the kind where no one without air-conditioning even bothers with a sheet. Jacob Ferguson jumped from a fitful sleep, peeling his body off the bed. Reaching clumsily for the receiver on his nightstand, he knocked off his alarm clock.

Shit. "Yeah," he moaned as he sat, his brain still in the netherworld from which he'd just been catapulted.

"Jake, it's Don."

Jake knew it was Ederling before he even picked up. At least he hoped so. They'd done this drill a thousand times before. "What's up?" he asked, scratching the hair on the back of his head with his fingernails, instantly aware of the relentless buzzing of a fly against the black night of his bedroom window.

"I think we got another one."

An uneasy silence followed. But Ederling knew that Jake had heard him. He always did. After all, it was the middle of the night. Ederling knew that news just takes longer to filter through the rocks that form in your brain during REM sleep. Especially news like this.

"Jesus."

"It's not pretty, Jake."

"I bet. If it's anything like the last." Jake bent over to retrieve his clock. It had fallen on its numbers and glowed with an eerie, translucent red past its sides through the fabric of his carpet. Bad omen. "Where?"

"Mount Kisco."

Jake replaced the clock on his nightstand, asking the question to which he already knew the answer. "Same MO?"

"To a T. Victim's as crispy as you'll ever find. Can't tell the sex, but twenty bucks says it's another woman."

"Shhhit," Jake said, wiping away the sweat under his testicles with a sheet. "I hate roasts, Donny. They ruin my appetite for a week."

"Yeah...well...ever think of a new line of work? Kind of like a dentist hating teeth, don't you think?"

"Funny. What's the address?"

Jake fumbled for the light, holding the receiver between his chin and left shoulder while he jotted down the necessary information. He hung up, stuck the sheet of paper between his teeth, and slipped on the underwear he'd left on the floor when he'd retired for the night just three hours earlier. He sat silently on the edge of his bed, listening meditatively to the fly as it bumped again and again against the darkness of the glass. Jake grabbed for a pillow and felt an odd delight at the prospect of extinguishing this annoying little speck, and bringing silence, once again, to his womb. But there would be enough death to witness tonight. He reached down, opened his screen, and whooshed it away with his hands, watching with satisfaction as it made its way into the muggy night.

Jacob Ferguson had been named chief fire marshal for Westchester County in the spring of 1987. To everyone's surprise, including Jake's, he was chosen over Ederling, even though Ederling had been Westchester County's deputy fire marshal, as Jake liked to say, "since Christ was a corporal." There was a time, long since gone, when the appointment had formed a gaping chasm between the two men. But a lot can happen in twelve years, and Jake's appointment seemed to them now both ephemeral and distant, almost as if in another life. They had since grown as close as brothers.

Jake stood, stretching his neck slowly from side to side. He glanced at his clock again: 2:54 A.M. He lived in Port Chester and figured he could dress, drag a comb through his receding, coffee-colored hair, and make Mount Kisco before 3:30 A.M. He started toward the bathroom and stopped at the foot of his king-size bed. Jake gazed at its unrumpled right side, biting his bottom lip slightly, disillusioned that he was, yet again, fighting off demons. The lining of Jake's heart grew cold at the thought that it might always be like this, that he would never again experience inner peace.

He walked slowly to the tidy side of his bed and gently sat, as if not to wake a sleeping child. Reaching for the pillow with both hands, he held it softly to his face, breathing deeply through his nose. Jake closed his eyes, letting the distant echoes of her scent send him fleetingly to another world, a safer world -- one in which he was not alone. He placed the pillow carefully back in its place and covered it with a sheet, as he had done a thousand times before.

"I love you," he whispered.

Jake slipped on a pair of chinos and a T-shirt, hit the light, and shuffled sleepily to the bathroom. A night-light usually served his purposes for midnight jaunts to the toilet. The overhead was for wake-up time. To assist in the process he had wired his radio so that it clicked on when he flipped the wall switch. It seemed louder than usual this morning.

"...and the Yankees continue their tear through the Eastern Division, finishing a sweep last night of the red-hot..." The words continued ringing in his ears as he flipped the radio off manually. Though a Yankee fan, he wasn't interested in baseball right now. He preferred his own thoughts, his private slice of found sanity. It mattered little right then that it was fabricated, because real or imaginary, still, it was quiet and serene. The world Jake was about to enter would be anything but.

He splashed some water on his hair, whisking a brush through it just long enough to look presentable, slapped a glob of Crest on an old, fraying toothbrush, and stared hard at himself as he mindlessly went through the motions. He could see the exhaustion in his eyes; their whites were red, yet almost seemed to blend harmoniously with the golden honey color of his irises. Jake leaned closer, never having noticed that before. When he finished, he leaned against the tiled counter, closed his eyes, and took one long, deep breath.

"Ready?" he asked himself in the mirror.

As ready as you're ever going to be, came the customary response.

It was time.

As Jake turned the corner to Chiswell Lane, the scene was like hundreds of others he had witnessed before. Legions of flashing red and blue lights punctuated the surrounding trees and homes, inharmoniously fracturing the pure black of night in a macabre effect Jake liked to call Lucifer's Disco.

It was 3:37 A.M. when Jake Ferguson pulled his department-issue, 1998 Crown Victoria behind a yellow, articulated fire truck. He pocketed his keys and, as was his habit, stood silent a moment, eyeing the assembled crowd. He was actually looking beyond the crowd, hoping to see that one solitary face hiding behind a tree, a car, a Dumpster. Fire starters seldom hang with the throng. They prefer to watch, but usually from a distance. The experienced ones know better than to stand inside the lion's den.

It wasn't that Jake necessarily expected to catch anyone, although he was always optimistic. But if there was one quality for which he was known, it was his keen eye and photographic memory. He'd remember a face if he'd seen it at another scene -- even if it was two years ago. He walked casually a few houses down one side of the street, then back up the other side, scanning his surroundings, searching for anyone out of the ordinary.

Jake walked back to the trunk of his car and slipped on the working uniform of his profession. He looked like any other firefighter now, with his thick Ranger Firewalker boots, bunker pants, red suspenders, and bunker jacket. The only thing that set him apart from the others were the words chief fire marshal written in bright yellow on the rise of his helmet and across the back of his jacket. It was unbearably hot, and Jake consequently held his heavy firefighter helmet under his arm.

The captain on the scene was casual in his hello. "Chief," he said, sucking water from a sports bottle as Jake approached from the side of his truck.

"Hey, Rob," Jake responded. "Two bagger, huh?"

"Yeah. She was workin' pretty good when we got here. I called for a second the moment I saw it," the captain said, indicating that he'd immediately requested a second alarm.

Like all fire junkies, Jake had a scanner at home. But he asked anyway. "When was that?"

The captain removed his helmet, wiping sweat from his brow with a dirty, gloved hand. "Call came in about quarter of one, something like that. We probably got here ten, maybe eleven minutes later."

"Were you first in?" Jake asked, unwrapping a lozenge he'd pulled from a pack he always kept in his jacket.

"Yep," the captain responded, shaking away Jake's offer of a lozenge.

Jake raised his left hand silently at a couple of acknowledging firefighters as they walked by. "So that puts you here just about one, right?"

"Close enough."

"You say she was pretty well involved when you got here?"

"I'll say. We had fire showing on both sides of the house."

"Roof?"

"No, but she was smokin' like a bitch. We vented a few holes."

Jake understood the meaning of the captain's last comment. A good working fire creates incredible amounts of smoke and heat. If not given a venue for escape, it makes attacking the fire from inside more difficult, and more deadly. Known as truckies, ladder companies have but two primary functions at all working fires: search-and-rescue, and ventilation. Jake knew the captain had ordered his ladder personnel to the roof to vent some holes to facilitate the release of both heat and smoke.

And so began the obligatory interrogation of the officer on the scene. The captain had been through this before, albeit not as often as officers in larger towns. But still, enough to make it routine. He could have told Jake everything he wanted to know, but politely let him ask anyway. This fact didn't escape Jake, but there was protocol to follow. They were after a pro, a sick one at that. Both men felt it wise to follow procedure.

"See anybody coming or going?" Jake asked, resting his helmet upside down on the street, pulling a notebook and pen from his jacket pocket.

"Not that I noticed. I'll need to speak to my men when we get back."

"Do that and get back to me, will you, Rob?"

"Sure thing."

Jake scribbled something in his notebook. "Doors locked when you arrived?"

"Yep. Had to force our way in. Nothing out of the ordinary, really."

Jake looked at Rob, his face lit repeatedly red in staccato fashion, like a white ball in a room full of amber strobe lights. "Nothing but the roast in the bed."

The captain sneered at him. "Nice, Jake."

"Sorry. Under a lot of pressure is all."

Jake spotted Ederling as he came out of the house. At six seven, 263 pounds, he was a formidable figure; hard to miss in a crowd. Ederling spotted Jake speaking with the captain in the street and stopped to light a smoke. Someone approached and whispered something in his ear. Ederling nodded and strode across the lawn toward his boss.

"Thanks, Rob," Jake said, indicating he had what he needed. "Call me after you've debriefed your men."

"No sweat," the captain said before disappearing behind his truck.

Jake walked the incline of the front lawn, meeting Ederling halfway between the truck and the house. Fire hoses were haphazardly strewn across the grass, the smell of smoke still thick in the air.

"Hey," Jake said, staring up at the still-smoldering three-story Tudor home. "This is going to get old quick, huh, Don? Anything?"

"Nah. I spoke to the first three men to enter the house. Neighbors told them they thought there were occupants, so they went in for rescue."

Jake shook his head slightly. "Never ceases to amaze me the balls these guys have."

Ederling dug something out of the corner of his right eye with his ring finger. "Yeah, it's a rush I guess. God knows they don't do it for the money."

"So what have we got?"

"Shit, Jake, I don't know what to make out of this guy. I can't figure out what his gig is. I mean...I don't know if fire's his thing, or he just torches his scenes to make it more difficult to investigate."

It was quiet a moment. "Let's go see if we can narrow it down," Jake said, nodding his head toward the house. "Origin the same?"

"Yeah, I already told the fire boys the bedroom's ours."

"Good. Let's take a look."

"Time for more fun and games. Did you eat yet?" Ederling asked.

"No. Why?"

"After you see this one, you won't for a while."

It always struck Ederling as odd that Jake was so viscerally repulsed by a burnt body. Fire professionals call them crispy critters or roasts. A bit of gallows humor meant to protect their psyches. It's a defense mechanism used to lessen the burden of constant confrontation with destruction of human life and spirit. It's easier to face the evil that has no name. No fire professional likes to see it, but most can put it out of their minds. Unfortunately, mere euphemisms were not enough to protect Jake from the horror.

For it was the fire that juiced him. Fire is a living creature that eats and breathes -- and kills. When Jake was five, growing up in Poughkeepsie, he could remember the conflagration of the three-story apartment building across the street from his. But then again, how could he forget? Thirty-seven years later he still carried vivid memories of that bitter-cold January evening and still suffered nightmares at the sound of the screams from the burning man on the third floor before Jake watched him jump to his death. In fact, he could remember it as if it were yesterday, and only Jacob Ferguson knew why.

Jake suffered a love-hate relationship with fire, but from his earliest memories there was nothing else that would ever fascinate him so much. After Poughkeepsie, his future had been preordained. Fire became his obsession -- his reason for being. Unfortunately, it was a package deal, for fire brings with it unimaginable suffering. The two are inseparable, like spiders and webs.

Ederling waited at the front door as a couple of firefighters dragged out hoses. He entered the house first, climbing the soggy, burnt carpeting of the steps. Firefighters were overhauling rooms, ripping down plaster, throwing furniture out windows onto the back lawn, searching for that one remaining hot spot, that one ember that could set it all off again.

No one touched the master bedroom. Ederling had arrived at the scene before it was even extinguished and was let in as soon as the commanding officer deemed it safe. A good fire investigator itches to start working the scene. The sooner the better. Several of the rooms in the house showed signs of accelerated fire, but Ederling was only concerned with the master bedroom right now. Unlike the others, it was there that a murder had taken place. After determining that it, also, was a room of origin, Ederling had strung a yellow ribbon across the door marked FIRE SCENE -- DO NOT ENTER.

"This one's mine," he'd told a firefighter as he walked away, pointing over his shoulder with a thumb to the room.

Ederling stepped aside and let Jake enter first. ...

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