Free Heartwood by James Lee Burke Page A

can work behind a horse all you want as long as you let him know what you’re doing,” I said.
    I ran my hand and arm along Beau’s spine and rump and let my body brush close into his when I moved across his hindquarters. “An animal is just like a human being. He fears what he doesn’t understand. Here, step up beside me,” I said.
    Ronnie Cruise rose to his feet, then hesitated, his tongue wetting his bottom lip. I picked up his hand by the wrist and set it on Beau’s rump, then pulled Ronnie toward me. Beau twisted his head once so he could see us, then blew out his breath and shifted his weight on the plank floor.
    “See?” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Your leg okay?”
    “Yeah, no problem.” His face was inches from mine now.
    “Do me a favor, will you?” I said.
    “What?”
    “Don’t wear a rosary as a piece of jewelry.”
    Raindrops as big as marbles clattered on the tin roof. He stared back at me, his mouth cone-shaped with incomprehension.
    In the morning the San Antonio and Austin and local newspapers were filled with news about the tornado that had scoured an entire town out of the earth. But they also carried a wire story about a fire that had burned down half a city block in Houston later the same day.
    Before I could finish reading the newspaper’s account of the fire, the phone next to my kitchen table rang. It was the Houston homicide detective whose name was Janet Valenzuela.
    “Why is it people from Deaf Smith keep showing up in my caseload?” she said.
    “You’ve lost me,” I said.
    “It’s not a good story,” she said.
    The fire had started in the bottom of an empty office building that had once housed a savings and loan company. The rooms had been filled with stacked office furniture, rolled carpets stripped from the floors, jars of paint thinner, and paper packing cases left behind by the movers. The fire rippled across the exposed dry wood in the floors, snaked up the walls, flattening temporarily against the ceiling, then blew glass onto the sidewalks and curled outside onto the brick facade.
    Five minutes later the ceiling collapsed and the second- and third-story windows were filled with a yellow-red brilliance like the marbled colors inside a foundry.
    A fireman inside the fourth-floor stairwell used his radio to report what he swore was the voice of a child. Three other firemen went into the building, and together they worked their way from room to room on the fourth floor, ripping open doors with their axes, theirheavy coats and the inside of their face shields starting to superheat from the flames crawling up the walls.
    Then a fireman yelled into his radio: “It’s a doll. A talking doll. Oh God, the tiger’s got us … Tell my wife I …”
    The fire, fed by a sudden rush of cold air, turned the brick shell of the building into a chimney swirling with flame. The roof exploded into the night sky like a Roman candle.
    “The doll was one of these battery-operated jobs. We think a homeless woman left it in there and the heat set it off,” Janet Valenzuela said.
    “How’d the fire start?”
    “Winos and street people live in there. Somebody saw some Hispanic kids hanging around earlier. The place was filled with accelerants. Take your choice.”
    “Why are you calling me?”
    “The building belonged to a savings and loan company before it went bankrupt and was seized by the government. But the land it stood on is owned by a man named Earl Deitrich. That’s the guy Max Greenbaum was an accountant for. Funny coincidence, huh?”
    “Come up and see us sometime. Widen your horizons,” I said.
    “If it’s arson and homicide on federal property, you’ll get to meet us as well as the FBI. Say, does this guy Deitrich know any Houston gang members?”
    “You ever hear of a bunch called the Purple Hearts in San Antone?” I asked.
    “Say again?”
    At lunchtime I walked from my office to our town’s one health club and sat in the steam room with my back against the