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headquarters, I sidestepped Main Street again as I cut over to Rock Creek. I caught a glimpse of Holy Rock Baptist church, its steeple still the highest structure in downtown Greenville. I had only the dimmest memories of walking into that church with my mother, sitting in a well worn Gold Rush era pew and admiring the particularly gory stained glass rendition of the crucifixion over the altar.
    The Jansen place was three or four miles out of town, back in off Rock Creek a good mile or so. The fact that I could picture nearly every winding turn along the way before I hit it wasn’t comforting. Two decades should have obliterated the familiarity.
    Anticipation of my upcoming reunion with Ken added to the anxiety stewing inside me. He’d been the perfect partner, damn near reading my mind when we were investigating a scene or interrogating a suspect. We could still be mowing down evil-doers in San Francisco if I hadn’t stepped over the line with him.
    I nearly missed the turn into the Jansen’s driveway, despite the massive stone and concrete mailbox that had been installed there. Old Mr Jansen’s mailbox had been standard gray metal on a four-by-four; this new one was five feet tall and topped with the name Markowitz in six-inch-tall letters. Old Mr Jansen was used to finding his mailbox broken off at the base Sunday mornings after young Greenville miscreants such as myself cavorted through the countryside on Saturday nights with baseball bats in search of mailboxes to flatten. He had a stock of four-by-fours in his shed, ready to repair the damage.
    Local juvenile delinquents wouldn’t put a dent in the Markowitz mailbox with anything short of dynamite. I guess big city transplants have no sense of humor.
    The Markowitzes had also paved old Mr Jansen’s pothole pitted gravel drive, smoothed it out with a sheet of high-dollar asphalt. It would make the trek up the driveway less messy when the winter rains hit, but considering the lack of a culvert at the halfway point where heavy storms always laid a ribbon of rushing water, the drive would be impassable with the first winter deluge.
    I pulled around the last turn into a clearing and my heart went pit-a-pat at my first view of two pretty red fire engines. Parked alongside were a fire truck, fire department SUV and an EMT rig. They’d apparently already quenched the blaze, leaving in black sodden ruin an out structure too big to be a shed, too small to be a barn. A detached garage maybe, a guess that was confirmed by a glimpse of what appeared to be the skeleton of a car under the collapsed roof.
    The two-story behemoth that had replaced Jansen’s tidy frame house seemed untouched by flame. Lucky Mr Markowitz. As I did a U-turn in the driveway, parking my car off to the side to give clearance for the fire rigs, the EMT pulled out, no sirens, no lights. Apparently no injuries for the Markowitzes either, another stroke of good fortune.
    I drew my creaky body from the Escort, a matchstick in my mouth to work off some of my nervous energy. As I tried to work some flexibility into my calf, I spotted a Crown Vic and Ford Explorer, both emblazoned with the Greenville County Sheriff emblem, parked over by the house. The fire companies were stowing their hose back in their engines, the captain chatting with a kid way too young to be wearing a deputy’s uniform. If Ken was here, I didn’t see him.
    A skinny, prematurely bald guy that was no doubt Mr Markowitz emerged from the house. A little girl, maybe six, trailed behind her father, clutching a teddy bear. Markowitz looked around him in agitation, then started toward the burned out garage.
    I couldn’t help myself, my attention strayed to the ragged, charred edges of unburned siding. In my twisted mind, the only thing more enthralling than fire was its aftermath. It had taken a heap of self-discipline over the years to resist the urge to move into arson investigation. Nevertheless, I’d dabbled in it on an amateur basis