Page 16 of Justice for JoElla

“JoEllaTompkins.”

“Ah, yeah. I saw her there, her and Mick both. Were you around front?”

Brandon nodded. “It was a mess.”

“Yeah. It wasalla mess. I have a feeling the state fire marshal is going to have a field day with the company that operated that home. I swear to god, I don’t think anything in there was up to code.”

“That’s a damn shame.”

Landon gave a vigorous head shake. “No. It’s murderous.”

“I heard the coroner took away seven.”

Landon shook his head again, but slowly. “No. More like fifteen.”

“What?Are you kidding?”

“Not kidding at all. I thought one of them was going to be a firefighter. The guys were all in there trying to get people out, and it was almost impossible.”

“And Breckin?”

“He’s okay. He was two feet from a woman when the ceiling collapsed and cut him off. She didn’t make it out. He was pretty upset.”

“I’m sure.” Brandon didn’t know what else to say to that. Yeah, he’d lost people on the table, but his own life wasn’t in danger at the time. But for Breckin and Landon, danger was all around them, and yet they were still upset when they couldn’t help someone else. “You’d better get some sleep while Jerrica and Sim are gone.”

“Yeah. I probably should. I’m going to set my clock for five, get up, and go meet them for dinner. Wanna go?”

Brandon smiled. “Sure. I’d like that.”

“Okay. See you in seven hours.” With that, Landon disappeared down the hallway and in seconds, the house was silent.

Brandon lay there in the quiet, thinking about the events of the evening. Danger. Chaos. Heat. Fear. And death. He’d seen what was going on. It was horrifying. And yet his brother and all the other firefighters went out there every day, over and over, never thinking about themselves, only the lives of others.

Then he thought of JoElla. What had she spent the evening doing? And why was she so closed off? Just like him…

That was the moment when BrandonFox decided he’d find out what made JoEllaTompkins tick. Why not? After all, he didn’t have anything better to do.

* * *

“Anything else?”

“Nope. They said they’ll send the surveillance footage to us to see if we can identify them.”

JoElla closed a folder on her desk. “When?”

“Hell if I know. That bunch doesn’t get in any hurry.” Apparently Mick had dealt with the sheriff’s office in BullittCounty before. “You about ready to call it a day?”

“Did you set up an alert for that video?”

Mick nodded. “Yeah. If it comes in after we leave, we’ll both get a notification. Once you’ve watched it, let me know. I’ll watch it too and we’ll compare notes.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be out of here in about ten minutes.”

“See you in the morning.”

“Yeah. See ya.” JoElla watched Mick leave and smiled. He was a good detective and a good guy. She hadn’t met his wife yet, but she knew Cassy was wheelchair-bound. They had one son, a teenager, who’d been their foster child when he was six, and when the state severed his parents’ rights the year he turned eight, Mick and Cassy adopted him. If you said anything about Jerome, Mick would start in about his good grades, his baseball skills, his friends, anything he could think of to brag about. Jerome also had the distinction of being the first black child to be adopted by white parents in BullittCounty, a thing they’d struggled with for years when dealing with the school system. Mick told her that, as a white man, he’d always wondered if racial discrimination was a real thing. According to him, he found out very quickly that it was a day-to-day fact of life for any non-white resident of the country, and he’d pushed hard for diversity training for the sheriff’s department, which SheriffBillings was quick to agree to. Mick had told her that the Billings’ grandkids were Hispanic and adopted, at least the two oldest ones, and Laura’s nephew by marriage had a son who was black. The department had problems with a lot of things, but diversity wasn’t one of them, and that welcoming spirit extended to female officers as well.

And JoElla would be the first to admit that she’d felt welcome from the first second she stepped into the department. She’d been treated like just one of the guys, and she felt comfortable with that. As she walked to her car, she thought about that little bar they’d visited, and she decided she’d go back down there. Mick had mentioned that they had delicious potato skins, and that would be just about enough for her dinner.

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