Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(77)
“Where?” I asked.
“United States Penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas.”
Occam winced. I guessed that meant it was a particularly bad prison.
“Interesting,” T. Laine said, her fingers flying over her keyboard. “Yeah. I thought I remembered this. The Tolliver family has connections to a weapons factory. Did the stolen weapons come from the family factory?”
“Ask for the old court records,” Soul ordered. “Did Healy have a steady cellmate in federal prison?”
“Yeah,” JoJo said, clicking and swiping, working on three electronic devices at once. “Guy called Bradley ‘Boom Boom’ Richards. He’s still there, serving twenty to life.”
Soul said, “PsyLED doesn’t have a unit stationed in Texas. The closest is Mobile. Or maybe Arizona, with Special Agent Ayatas FireWind.” She frowned, thinking. “I don’t think we can make either one work. Dyson and Kent?” she commanded, addressing Tandy and T. Laine. “Fly out to meet with prison officials and talk with Mr. Boom Boom. See if you can interview the guards who lost Healy on the transfer.”
T. Laine said, “Whoot! Our first official flight! Overnight?”
Nose in her tablet, her earrings swinging, JoJo said, “It’ll have to be. There’s a flight out of McGhee Tyson Airport to Jefferson County, Texas, in two hours but no flight back from Jack Brooks Regional Airport until tomorrow. Booking now. If you run lights and sirens you can get there in time to make it through security.”
The two disappeared down the hallway, and we could hear them shouting back and forth about supplies, gear, electronic devices, and timing. JoJo’s face was tight, and I realized that her boyfriend . . . lover? some better title? . . . was leaving town with her best friend. She wasn’t jealous. She just wanted to be the one to go away with Tandy on an investigatory jaunt.
“You’ll have to check your weapons in your baggage,” Soul called to them.
“You booking us a hotel too?” T. Laine yelled back.
“Done!” JoJo shouted. “Confirmations for flight and hotel sent to your cells.”
And then they were gone. Soul and Rick exchanged a look that was full of something almost parental, as if to say, Aren’t the little ones cute at this stage? She slid her wide flashing black eyes to me. “Nell. It will be fully dark out soon. Would you feel up to reading the land near the DNAKeys research facility?”
My instant mental reaction was, NO! but my mouth said, “I thought we had ruled out DNAKeys as part of the problem. What do you have in mind?”
Soul shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. Everything about the case changed when we discovered that some of the Tollivers were pyros. We still don’t know why a pyro shot up the Holloways’ party and the Old City restaurant. We could have more than one thing going on and I don’t want to drop any strands just yet. I want to keep everything in the weave.”
“But the adult Tolliver males smell human. It’s the wives who smell nonhuman. None of this makes sense yet.”
“Unless—” Soul stopped. “Perhaps the males can mask all scent traces as they age. We don’t know enough and I have a bad feeling that we need to move quickly, need to tear the fabric of this case apart and knot it back together again.” Soul slowly twisted her hair into a coil, an unconscious gesture of self-soothing while she summarized. “The Tollivers own DNAKeys. DNAKeys is doing genetic research on paranormal beings to accomplish some amorphous goal. We don’t know what that goal is, so we have to consider the possibility that it pertains to this case. Brainstorm, people.”
“Okay,” I said, following her reasoning and guesswork. “What if the testing at DNAKeys has to do with some genetic problem the pyros have, or a falling birthrate, or a predisposition to some dire illness? Maybe the attacks lead back to that research.”
Coiling her hair tighter, she frowned, staring into space. “I want us to go back over everything we’ve done to this point and get a fresh perspective.”
Rick spoke for the first time, with what might have been amusement. “There’s no evidence for any connection between the pyros and DNAKeys except that it’s a business the Tolliver family owns. There’s no logic, in a world full of paranormals, to suggest that, if we have pyros, then we must have vampires and werewolves involved on the periphery of these crimes.”
“And mad scientists,” JoJo said with a straight face.
“True,” Soul said. “I agree we have no hard evidence other than the presence of known and unknown paranormals scented there and the Tollivers owning this medical research facility; however, a pyro is coming after the Tollivers and the Tollivers may be pyros. We have circumstantial evidence pointing to this facility and want to leave no stone unturned.” She seemed to realize she was coiling her hair and placed her hands at her sides instead. “I know it isn’t safe for you to read deeply,” Soul said to me, “but if you could read specifically for the traces you picked up in the ground at the crime scenes, it might help.”
“What do special agents with children at home do when they have a case like this, that requires long hours?”
Soul looked perplexed at my non sequitur. “Woolgathering again, Ingram?”
I said, “Yes, I’ll do the reading. No, not shearing sheep. What do people do with their children?”