with the other detectives, interviewing anyone who’d been in the building just before the fire broke out. It was a long shot, but he kept hoping that someone might have witnessed even the slightest thing that seemed out of the ordinary at the time.
Because she wanted to spare the victims any more unnecessary trauma, and since the nature of the questions that the police were asking were along the lines of what she wanted to ask, Kansas decided it was best totemporarily join forces with the Neanderthal who had slung her over his shoulder.
The women and children who’d been in the fire had her complete sympathy. She knew the horror they’d gone through. Knew, firsthand, how vulnerable and helpless they’d all felt. And how they’d all thought, at one point or another, that they were going to die.
Because she’d been trapped in just such a fire herself once.
When she was twelve years old, she’d been caught in a burning building. It occurred in the group home where she’d always managed to return. She came to regard it as a holding zone, a place to stay in between being placed in various foster homes. But in that case, there’d been no mystery as to how the fire had gotten started. Eric Johnson had disobeyed the woman who was in charge and not only played with matches but deliberately had set the draperies in the common room on fire.
Seeing what he’d done, Kansas had run toward the draperies and tried to put the fire out using a blanket that someone had left behind. All that had done was spread the flames. Eric had been sent to juvenile hall right after that.
Kansas couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Eric after all these years. Was he out there somewhere, perpetuating his love affair with fire?
She made a mental note to see if she could find out where he was these days.
Kansas glanced at O’Brien. He looked tired, she noted, but he continued pushing on. For the most part, he was asking all the right questions. And for a good-looking man, he seemed to display a vein of sensitivity,as well. In her experience, most good-looking men didn’t. They were usually one-dimensional and shallow, too enamored with the image in their mirror to even think about anyone else.
More than an hour of questioning yielded the consensus that the fire had “just come out nowhere.” Most of the women questioned seemed to think it had started in the recreation room, although no one had actually seen it being started or even knew how it had started. When questioned further, they all more or less said the same thing. That they were just suddenly aware of the fire being there.
Panic had ensued as mothers frantically began searching for their children. The ones who hadn’t been separated from their children to begin with herded them out into the moonless night amid screaming and accelerated pandemonium.
The chaos slowly abated as mother after mother was reunited with her children. But there was still one woman left searching. Looking bedraggled and utterly shell-shocked, the woman went from one person to another, asking if anyone had seen her daughter. No one had.
Unable to stand it any longer, Kansas caught O’Brien by the arm and pulled him around. She pointed to the hysterical woman. “She shouldn’t have to look for her daughter on her own.”
Busy comparing his findings with Dax and all but running on empty, Ethan nodded. “Fine, why don’t you go help her.” More than any of them, this impetuous, pushy woman seemed to have a relationship with the women at the shelter. At the very least, she seemedto be able to relate to them. Maybe she could pick up on something that he and the others on the task force couldn’t—and more important, she could bring to the table what he felt was a woman’s natural tendency to empathize. That would probably go a long way in giving the other woman some measure of comfort until they were able to hopefully locate her missing daughter.
Kansas pressed her lips together, biting