Storm Walk Read online

  STORM

  WALK

  Book 18 of the Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Series

  Melissa Bowersock

  Copyright © 2019 by Melissa Bowersock

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in an online review or one printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  First Printing

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover image by coversbydesign.net.

  ISBN: 9781090790996

  Books by Melissa Bowersock

  The Appaloosa Connection

  The Blue Crystal

  Burning Through

  The Field Where I Died

  Finding Travis

  (No Time for Travis Series Book 1)

  Being Travis

  (No Time for Travis Series Book 2)

  Fleischerhaus

  Ghost Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 1)

  Skin Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 2)

  Star Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 3)

  Dream Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 4)

  Dragon Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 5)

  Demon Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 6)

  Soul Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 7)

  Death Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 8)

  Castle Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 9)

  Murder Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 10)

  Spirit Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 11)

  Fire Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 12)

  Revenge Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 13)

  Gangster Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 14)

  Karma Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 15)

  Mystery Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 16)

  Bordello Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 17)

  Storm Walk

  (Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud

  Mystery Book 18)

  Goddess Rising

  Lightning Strikes

  Love’s Savage Armpit by Amber Flame

  (Originally published as

  The Pits of Passion)

  The Man in the Black Hat

  Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan

  Queen’s Gold

  The Rare Breed

  Remember Me

  Sonnets for Heidi

  Stone’s Ghost

  Superstition Gold

  STORM

  WALK

  Melissa Bowersock

  ONE

  It was raining. Again.

  Lacey glanced out the kitchen window as she finished the dinner dishes. The concrete path between apartment buildings was dark and wet, and a bubbling rivulet ran alongside, carving out a narrow rut between the concrete and the gravel ground cover. Rain dripped incessantly off the eucalyptus trees and pooled below them in their circles of scalloped edging.

  Lacey couldn’t remember the last time they’d had this much rain in such a short period of time. Normally Pacific storms blew in, dumped their rain on LA and then quickly exited, bound for the plains or the Midwest. Lately there’d been a veritable fire hose leveled at the California coast, with no off switch in sight. She hoped it would clear off by the weekend. Having to be stuck in the house with the kids might be challenging.

  She put the last dish in the dishwasher and squeezed out the sponge. Checking her half cup of coffee—cold—she put it in the microwave and nuked it hot again. Then she went to the living room to join Sam.

  Her husband was seated on the couch in front of the TV, but his attention was all on his notepad. She settled beside him and glanced at the designs he was sketching.

  “Some new ideas?” she asked.

  “Kinda,” he said. “Remember how Mariah Quinlin’s pottery was in Jerome? Very clean lines? Lots of white space?”

  “Yeah.” They’d been in Jerome, Arizona, several weeks ago, clearing ghosts from an old bordello. The job had been pretty routine until Sam became affected with Ghost Sickness. She shivered at the memory.

  “I just thought I’d play with a few ideas,” he said. “I can’t fire anything with this rain anyway.”

  Sam fired his pots in an open pit, under the sky and buried in sheep dung, as his Navajo ancestors had always done. While the traditional method was supremely satisfying, it was also limited by the weather.

  “Looks like this isn’t going to let up for days,” Lacey said, watching the meteorologist on TV with her weather map. The map was almost completely green, denoting showers all across the LA basin. “Maybe we should plan on taking the kids to a movie Saturday night.”

  Sam grunted, but Lacey knew he wasn’t really paying attention.

  The TV program switched from weather to local news. There were reports of flooding in some areas of LA County, a few swift-water rescues, and a huge fire in a warehouse. The entire roof of the warehouse had collapsed, ostensibly from the weight of the rain pooling there, and the collapse had initiated the fire when gas lines were ruptured. Neither the insistent rain nor the fire department could quench the fire, and six people died.

  Sad, Lacey thought. She changed the channel to something less depressing.

  ~~~

  By Saturday, the rain had lessened to intermittent showers, but everything was still soggy and the air was cold and damp. Usually in March, they could start to see the stirrings of spring, but this year it remained doggedly gray.

  They went to pick up Sam’s kids in mid-morning. Sam knocked on his ex’s apartment door, and Lacey fully expected to have ten-year-old Kenzie, her older brother Daniel and Daniel’s girlfriend, Tori, come streaming out. Instead Christine, Sam’s ex, answered the door.

  “Come on in,” she said. “They’re almost ready.”

  Sam and Lacey stepped inside, and Lacey still expected the kids to pop out of the hall with their backpacks, talking and laughing. The apartment was eerily quiet.

  Christine stepped close so she could whisper. “Bad day at black rock,” she said. “Daniel and Tori broke up.”

  “What?” Lacey said, patently shocked.

  “When?” Sam asked.

  Christine sighed. “Just yesterday. He’s—”

  Just then a door closed and Kenzie appeared with her pack. Her dark eyes, so like Sam’s, usually sparkled with pleasure at seeing her dad and Lacey, but now she barely smiled.

  “Daniel’s—” Whatever she was going to say was arrested by Christine motioning her to silence with a finger across her mouth.

  “They know,” she whispered.

  A second door closed, harder; almost a slam. Daniel strode into the living room with his pack dragging behind him. He glanced up, muttered,
“Hi,” and walked right out the door.

  Sam watched him go, then turned back to Christine. “Thanks,” he said quietly. To Kenzie, he said more brightly, “Okay, ready?”

  The girl nodded. Lacey put her arm around her and led her to the door.

  “See you tomorrow,” Sam told Christine.

  Daniel was already in the back seat of Lacey’s car. The other three climbed in, and Lacey circled around and out of the parking lot. She glanced at Daniel in the rearview mirror, but he stared stonily out the side window.

  “So,” Sam said, angling back toward the kids, “your mom said you and Tori…”

  Lacey could hear Daniel huff. “It’s no big deal, Dad.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  That martyred exhale again. “No.”

  “All right.” Sam turned forward again, but on the way, his eyes caught Lacey’s. He shook his head. “We were thinking, since the weather’s so crummy, we might go to a movie this afternoon. What sounds good?”

  Kenzie was happy to chime in with several options. Daniel was silent until she suggested an animated movie about a girl and her pony.

  “Forget that,” he muttered.

  “We’ll check the paper when we get home,” Lacey said. “I’m sure we can find something we’ll all enjoy.”

  Back at the apartment, Daniel went directly to his room. He didn’t close the door, which Lacey thought was a good sign, but he didn’t come back out to join the movie search, either. Lacey, Sam and Kenzie pored over the titles, the times and the locations and finally narrowed it down to two or three choices.

  “Hey, Daniel,” Sam called. “Come on out here and vote. Unless you want us to vote for you.”

  That brought him out, albeit reluctantly. He dragged himself to the dining room table and looked at the LA Times laid out to the entertainment section.

  “What do you think of these three?” Lacey asked. She’d circled the titles to make it easy. Daniel read them, then stabbed at one with his finger. Lacey was relieved. That was the one Kenzie liked, too, so at least they could avoid a head-butting.

  Lacey felt out of her depth. It was her way to talk things out when she had a knotty problem, but these Firecloud men were taciturn—and stubborn. They were much more inclined to hold things in, at least until they had mulled them over on their own. She’d learned to be patient with Sam, knowing he would eventually open up to her, but it was painfully obvious that Daniel was hurting, and she wanted badly to help. But she also knew he wasn’t ready for that.

  She connected so much more easily with Kenzie. The ten-year-old was cheerful and talkative and didn’t hide her emotions. Daniel was moody. While Lacey and Kenzie could talk about anything, Daniel required a lighter touch. He was only weeks away from turning fifteen and his growing independence, complicated by the emotional ups and downs of his first serious relationship, made him prickly. Lacey knew she had to leave him to himself, and to Sam.

  She did her best to act normally at the movie and at home afterward. She walked a tightrope, being neither overly solicitous nor callously indifferent, but her eyes strayed to Daniel whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. She fervently wished she could impart not just helpful words about his situation, but helpful feelings—confidence that he would heal in time, that he would find another love, that he would survive this.

  That night in bed, she and Sam talked softly.

  “Is he all right, do you think?” she asked.

  Sam, as always, thought the question out before he answered. “I think so. Right now it’s easier for him to ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, than deal with it. He just needs time.”

  “I hope so,” Lacey said, snuggling close. “My heart aches for him. And he and Tori seemed so perfect together.”

  “They did,” Sam agreed, “but how many couples do you know that have stayed together since they were fourteen? He and Tori both have a lot of growing up to do, and a lot of changes to go through. The chances of them staying together were always slim.”

  “I guess,” she said sadly. “I’m realizing that one of the hardest things about being a parent—or a step-parent—is watching the children struggle through painful times and not being able to do a thing to help.”

  “I know,” he said. He squeezed her gently. “Just keep loving them. That’s all we can do.”

  It was only after the weekend that Sam was able to talk to Christine on the phone and find out more details.

  “Apparently,” he told Lacey, “another girl was making a play for Daniel and he was enjoying the attention. Tori was hurt that he didn’t wave the other girl off, and they fought about it. When he wouldn’t see her side of it, she said if he couldn’t commit to their relationship, she wouldn’t either.”

  Lacey was patently surprised. “Christine got all that out of Daniel?”

  “No.” Sam chuckled. “She talked to Tori’s mom.”

  “Ah.” That made more sense. “Well, I can’t say that I blame her,” Lacey said. “But like you mentioned before, not many school sweethearts go the distance.”

  “No, they don’t,” Sam agreed.

  All they could hope for, Lacey realized, was that Daniel learned something from the situation. And that he wasn’t hurting too much.

  ~~~

  TWO

  Sam and Lacey, with Christine and Ed, began to draw up plans for Daniel’s fifteenth birthday party. Lacey wondered if it might be too bittersweet for the boy, having to pretend to be happy and excited when he was not. She voiced her concern to Sam, and he considered it, but finally shrugged it off.

  “It might be just what he needs to come out of his shell,” he said. “To realize life goes on.”

  Maybe, she thought. She hoped he was right.

  They settled on an activity center that offered pizza and ice cream, video games, indoor paintball and a climbing wall.

  Something for everyone, Lacey thought. They gave Daniel carte blanche to think of which ten kids he would invite.

  The rainy pattern continued with scattered showers, partial clearing, then another round of showers. Not as heavy as it had been earlier in the month, but Lacey thought it was an excellent idea to stage the birthday party indoors rather than outside at a park. If March roared in like a lion, wasn’t it supposed to go out like a lamb? This particular March, it seemed, was not making the transition willingly.

  One evening when Sam came home from his ceramics studio, he shrugged out of his jacket in the entry, sending droplets of water all over the floor. His sleek, damp ponytail gleamed blue-black and he wiped rain from his face with an already damp hand.

  “Raining again?” Lacey called from the kitchen.

  “No,” he said. “Still.” He hung his jacket on the wooden pegs on the wall behind the door. “I don’t know when I’m going to get to fire again. This makes me think I may have to break down and get a kiln.”

  He joined her in the kitchen, kissing her quickly as she stirred a pot of stroganoff.

  “Might not be a bad idea,” she said. “Then we’d never have to worry about getting behind on orders.” She knew he wanted to be true to his Navajo traditions, but sometimes practicality entered the equation.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said. Then, “Got a call today. Maybe a job.”

  “Oh?” She poured the stroganoff into a large bowl. “A pottery job?”

  “No. A ghost job.”

  “Oh. Where?” She brought the serving bowl to the table while Sam filled two glasses with water, then they were ready to eat.

  “A warehouse in Inglewood.”

  “A warehouse?” Lacey repeated. “That’s kind of weird. Do you know what kind of manifestations they’re having?”

  Sam served up a big portion of stroganoff. “That’s the thing,” he said. “They’re not.”

  Lacey blinked at him, clearly not following.

  “Remember a couple weeks ago there was that warehouse where the roof collapsed under all the rain, then caught fire and burned to the g
round?”

  “Yeah,” she answered. “Something like six people died.”

  “Right. That’s the place.”

  She set her fork down and waited for more.

  “The owner called me,” Sam continued. “His name is Ray Gibbons. He said his insurance company is refusing his claim because they’ve ruled it an ‘act of God.’ He’s disputing that, and wants us to check it out and see what we can find.”

  Lacey resumed eating as she mulled that over. “That is weird,” she said. “What does he think the cause was, if not the ‘act of God’ rain storm?”

  “He’s not sure, but he’s wondering if it could have been a flaw in the design or the construction. The warehouse was only a few years old.” Sam sipped his water. “I got the distinct impression he’d like to go after the construction company if that’s where the problem turns out to be.”

  Lacey nodded. “Well, yeah, I can understand that, with six people dead. And if it was a problem with the construction, how did that slip through? What about all the inspections and stuff they have to go through?”

  “Exactly,” Sam said. “Sounds like a real can of worms.”

  “I’ll say,” she agreed. “So they want you to…”

  He shrugged. “See if I can talk to the six people who died. They’re the only witnesses.”

  ~~~

  THREE

  Lacey did a search on the fire and found a bunch of articles online. She scanned them briefly, looking for a good representation of the unfolding investigation over the days and weeks that followed the fire. After a half hour of comparison, she printed out three articles that seemed to encompass all the facts found. One also included the names and ages of the victims.

  Witnesses, she amended.

  This was certainly going to be different, she thought. The good news was that they’d know from the start who the people were; the bad news was that they had no idea if Sam could connect with them or not.

  She read over the articles again to fix the alleged chain of events in her mind. The storm that day had been unusually strong, dumping seven inches of rain in less than one hour on the industrial area of Inglewood. Strong winds were also associated with the storm, blowing down trees and signs, ripping roofs off smaller buildings. The damage to the warehouse, however, seemed to be purely rain-related, the roof buckling under the heavy weight of water and collapsing with no warning, trapping all six employees underneath. The fire began before the dust had even settled, and had spread so quickly through the broken building that by the time the fire department was able to navigate the flooded streets and launch its assault, the site was a fully engulfed inferno. Firefighters could not even approach the building, much less enter and search for victims. Rescue was a pure impossibility.