Free All the Wrong Moves by Merline Lovelace Page B

face and arms the size of moon craters, I’d sent a certain high school chemistry teacher what might be categorized as a slightly unprofessional rejection letter. He’d reacted with a hysterical phone call that concluded with the crash of glass beakers being hurled against walls.
    There were others. I was composing a whole list of bitterly disappointed inventors in my head when I abandoned the lab and accompanied Pancho to consult with Assistant Chief Rodriguez.
     
     
    NEEDLESS to say, FST-3 didn’t get much sleep that night. The third night in a row, I might point out.
    Pen insisted on brewing herbal tea to soothe our frayed nerves. Thankfully, she abandoned the rest of us for bed around two-thirty A.M. Rocky, Dennis, Noel and I immediately dumped the tea and brewed a pot of coffee so strong I was sure it would put hairs on my chest.
    Now I don’t want to give the impression we were nervous about this arson business. However, Sergeant Cassidy did remove the weight selector shaft from the Universal Gym. His jaw working, he whapped the rigid pole against his palm a few times before announcing that he was going out to patrol our site perimeter.
    That left me slugging back coal-tar coffee and debating whether I should shut down operations or put in a priority requisition for a sidearm.
    Lest you think the latter another of my more hare-brained notions, I should tell you that I qualified at the expert level on the military standard issue 9mm Beretta at Officer Training School. I guess I should also mention that was one of the few portions of the curriculum I excelled at. Doesn’t matter. The idea of strapping on a 9mm semiautomatic was very appealing at that moment.
    It was close to four A.M. when I retired to the CHU I shared with Pen. Her snuffles and snorts combined with the 180-proof caffeine kept me wide awake until dawn. As a consequence I was not quite at my best when the Fort Bliss arson investigation unit arrived.
    The fact that CID Agent Andrew Hurst, aka Comb-Over, accompanied the team didn’t exactly improve my mood. I knew military arson investigations crossed functional lines. Specially trained firefighters provide the thermal expertise. Criminal Investigation Division agents add their input on the criminal end. I also knew the Fort Bliss CID detachment was as strapped for manpower as every other unit in the U.S. Armed Forces, with more than half their personnel deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. That didn’t mean I appreciated being treated like a suspect by Comb-Over.
    “You weren’t here at the time of the fire, Lieutenant Spade?”
    He had his pen poised and his notebook open. Angled away so I couldn’t see his scribbled notes, of course.
    “I was in El Paso. I arrived back on-site the same time as the pumper from Dry Springs.”
    “Mind telling me what you were doing in El Paso?”
    “I met Agent Mitchell for lunch, worked some paperwork at my office, hit the PX and Commissary, then stopped by my apartment to check my mail.”
    I’m not sure why I didn’t mention the meeting with Captain Dan Jordan. Must have been the way Comb-Over crabbed his shoulders to block my view while he jotted my response in his notebook.
    “What time did you arrive at your apartment, Lieutenant?”
    “I’m not sure. Six P.M. Maybe six-thirty.”
    “And you left when?”
    “Around eleven.”
    “You needed four hours to check your mail?”
    “I also took a shower and washed my uniforms. Why? What difference does it make when I left El Paso?”
    “I’m just trying to establish a timeline.”
    Like hell. There was something going on here. Something I didn’t understand but was starting to feel goosey about. I got a clue what it was when the CID agent treated me to a very unfriendly look.
    “I spoke to the lieutenant colonel who commands the USMC detachment on post yesterday afternoon. He informed me you and Agent Mitchell have decided to conduct your own investigation into the death of Patrick