“So old Peter’s got you investigating the fire down at Zeke’s shop, huh?” Chief Beckett asked as he was bent over the open drawer of the squat file cabinet behind his desk. “His goddaughter trying to put up a defense then?”

“Sure is,” I said, still leaning against the doorframe, my arms crossed in front of me. “She doesn’t believe Zeke could try and burn his own place down like that.”

“Well,” Beckett said, pulling a folder from his file cabinet and dropping it on the desk, “can’t say I blame her. Surprised the shit out of me, too.”

“That he’d do it?” I asked as I sat down in one of the guest chairs and grabbed the file. “Or that the sheriff would arrest him for it?”

“Both, to be honest. Known Zeke for a long time, and he never struck me as a firebug.”

I flipped through the logs for the month of the fire and found the date. Nothing really happened around Enchanted Rock, but that day was particularly busy with two calls within a couple hours of each other.

“Glick said you were the one who spotted the arson device,” I said, looking up from the file.

“That’s right. Pretty simple one, but still effective. Hadn’t seen anything like it in a couple years, though, not since a continuing education class the county wanted me to take.”

“So you had seen one before, then?”

He gave me a weird look, then laughed a little. “Well, course I had, Jones. I’ve been doing this for years. Did it in Denver before I moved up here.”

“Look, the only reason why I ask is that we’re getting paid to investigate this from all angles.”

“You don’t think he did it, do you?”

“We’re looking at all the details,” I said. “But, it does look like it could be someone else. Just a few little things are off. For instance, it was too perfect. I think the person that set this has set them before.”

“Who do you think it is, then?”

I told him about the Florentinos, and Zeke pointing the finger their way.

The chief laughed hard, putting a hand on his belly. “You think the Denver Mafia came up here and lit his building on fire?”

“Makes more sense than Zeke doing it,” I said, unfazed by his laughter.

“Well, hell, makes about as much sense as me doing it, Matthew.”

I hadn’t wanted to bring up my suspicions, that he might have a tie to this kind of business. I didn’t like accusing anyone of arson, and certainly not a fellow fireman. After all, this was exactly the opposite of what we stood for.

And, on top of that, I’d known Chief Beckett almost since I’d arrived in town to join Frost Security. He had been my mentor, of sorts, and even helped to introduce me around a little bit when I first landed here. The idea that he might be involved with this fire over something that had happened ten or fifteen years ago damn near killed me inside.

I fixed him with a look.

“You’re gonna fucking do it, though, aren’t you?”

I sighed and nodded. “Yeah, unfortunately. It’s what I’m getting paid for, Chief.”

“Well, I didn’t have anything to do with it. Zeke and I go a ways back, and we might’ve had our differences, but I’d never try and frame him for fucking arson.”

“Even though you guys had a falling out years ago?”

He rolled his eyes. “That was damn near two decades ago, Jones. Put that behind me a long time ago.”

“Well, mind if I ask what it was about?”

“Yeah,” he said, fixing me with a stare. “I do fucking mind.”

I carefully closed the file in front of me. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to prey on a few ingrained prejudices. And if there was any longstanding prejudice, it was the one between city firemen and city cops. “Look, chief, I wouldn’t be digging into your personal business if this wasn’t important. You know how it is, I have to chase down all the leads on this case. The cops think Zeke did it, and I’m saying Zeke didn’t do it. I’ve gotta do our work here, and theirs. So don’t blame me for asking these questions, blame Peak and Glick for not asking them months ago.”

His stone-cold look wavered for a moment, then broke. He sighed, a big belly-heaving breath. “Okay, just shut that door. I don’t think anyone’s here right now, but I don’t want this shit getting around town, okay?”

I got up and closed the door, then settled back into my seat.

“You know I love my wife, Jones. Wanda’s my one and only. I’ve loved her since the day I laid eyes on her forty years ago.” He paused and licked his lips a little. “But a while back, I met this waitress down at the Nugget, okay? I mean, a real while back. And, well, Zeke and I used to be thick as thieves back then, always out drinking together, going fly-fishing. You name it.”

“Playing poker?”

He nodded. “Yeah, playing poker. Well, I take him up there to the Nugget one night for a drink, and he sees the way I’m acting with the waitress, okay? He sees me, and he figures out it’s more than just flirting.”

“What happened? He tell Wanda?”

He shook his head. “No, no. No, Zeke confronted me about it at poker the next week, pulled me out onto his front porch, gave me an ultimatum. Said I didn’t know how good I had it, finding a woman like her, that I didn’t deserve her. Told me he’d tell her himself if I didn’t break it off with the waitress.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I broke it off. What else was I supposed to do?”

“You and Zeke stopped playing cards together after that. That’s what Rebecca said, at least.”

He waved his hand, dismissing my question. “What’s wrong with that? Two minutes of me and that waitress together, and that old asshole knew I was bluffing. You wanna play cards with a man who can read you that well? I sure as shit didn’t.”

I chuckled a little despite the seriousness of the situation.

Chief Gilbert Beckett just shook his head, though. “But, no, the real reason I stopped hanging around with Zeke so much, doing the poker nights and the happy hours, is I quit drinking that night. The waitress, the gambling, all that, that was because of the booze. So I stopped, before it got any worse, or I went to some point I couldn’t return from.”

“You and Zeke stay friends after that?”

He shrugged. “A little. We’d still go fishing and hunting every now and then. But it’s hard to sometimes. I ended up spending more time with Wanda and the kids after that. Never looked back, to tell you the truth. I had a family to look after, and they were more important than boozing or whoring could have been.”

“Never told your wife, then?”

“What was there to fucking tell, Jones?” he asked as he leaned in. “I made a stupid mistake. Zeke caught my ass and dragged me back from the line in the sand, and that was that.”

I frowned. What he had done was, in my books, more than just a mistake. It was a betrayal of the woman he cared about, of the trust she’d put into him over the course twenty or more years of marriage. The fact that Zeke sacrificed a friendship to remind the chief of that trust, of that promise, certainly didn’t give Beckett any good marks in my book. Though, it did raise my estimation of Zeke. Now I certainly didn’t believe he’d set his own business on fire.

“Fine, Chief,” I said after a while, my voice so low it was like granite grating on concrete. “I hear ya. Whatever happened all those years ago, that’s between you and your wife. And Zeke, of course.”

Chief Beckett frowned as I grabbed the file off his desk. “Mind if I hold onto this and make some copies? I’ll bring it back soon as I can.”

The older man leaned back in his chair, the look of a sad bullfrog on his face. “Yeah, hold onto it. Whatever help you need to keep Zeke out of prison, you got it. Just ask.”

I nodded as I went to stand. “Will do, Chief.”

I got up to leave, but the chief got my attention again just as I put my hand on the knob. “Yeah, Chief?”

“Do me a favor,” he said, licking his lips again. “If you can keep this out of your file, whatever file, I’d appreciate it. Like I said, it was a mistake I made years ago. I’d like to think I changed my life to earn a little bit of credit, you know?”

“Can’t make any promises.”

Chief Beckett winced.

“But I’ll try. Good enough?”

“Gonna have to be, ain’t it?”

I shrugged. “That’s the way it looks.”

He nodded like a man resigned to his fate, whatever the future may hold. But Zeke had spared him all those years ago. Sure, he’d made him go halfway to doing the right thing, but he’d still saved Chief Beckett from suffering the consequences of his actions and his deceptions.

“Hey, Matt!”

It took me a second to realize they were even talking to me, I was so lost in my thoughts about Beckett and Zeke and Wanda.

Derrick Newhouse, our other more recent rookie was over on the other side of the garage, by the lockers. He stood there, shirt off, mid-change between his blue ERVFD shirt and a plain one. “What’re you doing in today? Thought you were just on call?”

“Just came by to pick up the log sheets on a call you guys did a few months back,” I said as I crossed the garage to him.

Derrick and I had worked a couple brush fires over the last few months since he got started with the ERVFD. No structure fires, though. For a rookie, he wasn’t bad. Maybe a little more brash than he needed to be, but overall not a bad firefighter. And, yeah, I was hard on him when it came to training, but not any harder than Peter was on us. Bottom line: we were all there doing jobs that could end up with us dead, or worse. We didn’t drill them to be dicks. The harder I was on a guy like Derrick, the better his chances were of coming out of a fire alive.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked as he pulled his shirt all the way down and flattened it with a downward sweep of his hand.  “What call? Maybe I can help you out.”

“The hardware store that belongs to your friend Rebecca Stokes’ uncle?”

“Right,” he said, nodding. “Shitty call with that one. Rebecca’s taking all this real hard with Zeke.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She actually came into the office today over at Frost and hired me to look into it. Guess they’re trying to pin an arson charge on him.”

“Yep, that’s what she was telling me last week. Think you’ll be able to help the poor guy out? I know he means the world to her. Hate to see the guy go down for something she doesn’t think he did.”

“Yeah,” I said, noting the phrasing he’d used. He hadn’t exactly said it outright that he thought Zeke did it, one way or another. “You two are friends, right? You and Rebecca?”

“Yep, from back in the day. We met sophomore year of high school, started hanging out again when I got back in town a few months ago. Been friends off and on since back in the day. Just, you know, drinks and stuff. Help kill the time in a town like this. Why, what’s up?”

I searched his face to see if there was any attraction there. If there was, I didn’t see it. But, then again, he might have been a hell of a lot better poker player than Chief Beckett. “No reason, just curious.” I flipped open the log file and checked through the pages. “Says here you weren’t on call that day.”

“I wasn’t?”

I flipped the file around and showed it to him.

“That’s weird.” He scratched his chin for a second. “Know what? Chief called me in on the scrub fire up in the hills cause he couldn’t get hold of Ricky, or he was at work or something. I was with him for that little one when we got the call for Zeke’s, so we just hightailed it back down here to town.”

I nodded. “You know Zeke at all?”

He shrugged. “Kinda, I guess. Think I met him back when Rebecca and I were first friends, but then she left for school and I went to go work in the oil fields up in South Dakota. By the time I came back, she was back here teaching. Never had much call to see Zeke. I mean, I’d recognize him if I saw him, but he probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

“Got it.”

“Anything else, Officer?” he asked with a big, shit-eating grin.

“Haha, Derrick. Look, I’m just trying to put all this shit together. The more I look at this thing, the more I feel like the sheriff’s office barely investigated it or turned over any stones. Just seems really haphazard. I just know Zeke didn’t do it, though. I can practically taste it.”

“Well, it was definitely arson. No doubt about that.”

“You’ll find no debate on that here. Someone tried to burn that place down. Right now it’s just a matter of figuring out who.”

“Any ideas, in that case?”

“A couple. If I have anymore questions, you mind if I give you a call?”

“Sure thing. Need anything, gimme a ring.”

I left the firehouse, file in hand, and climbed back into the cab of my truck. I mentally went through the list. Both Derrick and Chief Beckett had been on my list of suspects because of access and knowledge. But, after speaking to them both, I couldn’t detect any hint of malice. Sure, Zeke and Chief Beckett had their differences over how the chief was treating his wife Wanda. But why wait almost fifteen years before striking? Of course, people had gone out of their way for more elaborate revenge plots before. Maybe Zeke approached the chief again about ratting him out to Wanda and so Chief Beckett had to destroy his credibility?

Even considering that whole scenario caused me to start rethinking my own credibility.

It just didn’t make any sense.

And it made even less sense that Derrick could be the perp. He might know plenty about spotting arson—I would know since I taught him myself when he first began—but why would he want to ruin Zeke Rogers? So he could do what? Try and put out the flames, be declared a hero for saving an empty hardware store? Besides, he was friends with Rebecca, and had been since they were in high school. What good would it do to hurt her godfather? So I had to scratch that name off the list.

No, the only people that were on my list of suspects were based out of Denver and had a last name that started with the letter F. The only question was, do I talk to Zeke first? Or the Florentinos?