Page 34 of Delusional

“You’re smart. You’ll figure something out.” She cocked her head so it was snuggled against his shoulder. They dozed off together.

CHAPTER 38

ROB TRILLING SAT in the passenger seat as his brother floored the Chevy Camaro they’d taken home from the car lot. He flinched every time Gary took a turn. The car even went airborne for a moment when they took a bump in the road too fast. He realized his brother wanted to get to the car lot as quickly as possible, but this was ridiculous.

Finally, Rob said, “It won’t help anything if we end up wrapped around a tree or run off into a ditch. The county’s firefighters are on the scene. They’ll still be there if we arrive a few minutes later than you want.”

Gary didn’t answer, but he did take his foot off the gas a little bit. The wheels no longer squealed when they took a corner.

Soon they could see the lights from the fire engines. That wiped away any restraint Gary had about driving recklessly. He punched the gas until they screeched to a halt in the street behind one of the fire engines.

The main building, attached garage, and storage shed behind it were a complete loss. Three of the cars parked closest to the building had also been destroyed. Smoke still filled the air as well as the stench of burning plastics and gasoline. It reminded Rob of a building he’d seen in Israel while on a training mission. The building had been hit by a rocket that killed the family of four inside. The smell had never left Rob’s nose.

One of the firemen escorted them onto the property. Another came walking over, holding Fido’s leash. The llama seemed disoriented but unharmed. The firefighter’s ungainly face shield was up. He looked at Gary and said, “I never knew llamas were so fast. It looks like he jumped the fence around his pen and escaped through the open garage door. I’d seen him here a few times when I drove past on my way to work. I knew he was your llama. But damn, he was hard to catch.”

Gary took Fido’s leash and said, “Do you know what happened?”

“Not yet. The place was fully involved when we arrived, totally engulfed. No one will be picking through the debris for another couple of hours. It’s still really hot.”

Rob kept his mouth shut. He knew the exact cause of the fire. It was that asshole from Los Angeles. Arnold Marks had just kicked negotiations into the stratosphere.

Then Gary said, “Oh, shit.”

Both Rob and the firefighter turned and looked at Gary.

“That’s Lillian’s Toyota at the back of the lot. She was working late tonight.”

The firefighter was stunned. “You mean there was someone inside the building?”

Rob felt sick to his stomach.

CHAPTER 39

IT WAS NEVER good news when my phone rang in the middle of the night. It had happened so many times over the course of my career that I couldn’t believe it still startled me so badly. But my initial reaction was always about trying to keep it from bothering anyone else.

Tonight that wasn’t an option. Before I even picked up the phone, my wife asked in the dark, “Who could that be?”

The answer was almost always the NYPD or someone associated with them. The result was usually me having to leave my comfortable bed to go to some homicide scene in upper Manhattan.

I looked at the phone’s screen and saw that it was Rob Trilling. Somehow that made me even more nervous. I answered the phone and said, “You okay, Trilling?”

The tone of his reply gave me a chill.

“No.” There was a pause, then Trilling said, “Sorry to call so late. I forgot about the time difference. But I’ve stumbled into something that might be over my head.” He filled me in on everything that had happened between his arrival in Bozeman that morning and the discovery of Lillian’s body in the remains of his brother’s burned-out office.

I asked, “What do the cops say?”

“No cops here—just a few deputies from the county sheriff’s office. Right now they don’t know what caused the fire. It’s going to take a couple of days of investigation. But I can tell you they don’t want to entertain any theories about an out-of-town guy murdering local citizens. They’re looking for the quickest and most efficient way to close the case.”

I threw out a few more general suggestions, then Trilling blurted, “I hate to ask this, but is there any way you could come out to Montana?”

For a few moments, I considered the bombing investigation, Mary Catherine, and my life in general. Then I said, “Let me talk to Harry Grissom in the morning. I’ll find a way to get out there.”

CHAPTER 40

AS SOON AS I was off the phone with Rob Trilling, Mary Catherine asked me what was going on. When I told her he wanted me to go out to help him, my wife didn’t hesitate.

“You need to go. You’re a father figure to that young man. And I know him well enough to realize he wouldn’t ask for help if he didn’t really need it.”