“The mystery is solved.”

The recipe was simple: Butter, sugar, cream of tartar, eggs, vanilla, flour, and cinnamon. The instructions were straightforward like a science lab. What was the big deal here? With directions like these, what could go wrong?

An hour and twenty minutes later, I took a pan of cookies from the oven and set it on the stove top next to the three glass bowls I’d used for mixing, The bowls were stacked next to a metal dish I’d used for working the butter, as well as the decanter of sugar I spilled on the counter when I burned myself putting the raw cookies in the oven.

I poured a tall glass of milk.

With a thin spatial, I gently lifted the cookies from the pan and arranged them on a clean, white plate. I sprinkled cinnamon on twice because there’s no such thing as too much cinnamon and put the plate next to the milk glass.

Taking a bite of the crisp cookie, I waited for the rich, buttery flavor to fill my mouth, for the warmth to spread over my tongue, and the cold of the milk to harden the dough so that it crunched satisfyingly between my teeth.

“Oh my god!” I spat cookie everywhere. “Paste! I tastes like paste!”

I emptied the glass. Refilled it and emptied it again.

The cookies were totally fibered.

It made no sense. I had followed the recipe precisely. I held a snicker doodle in the light, turning it over and over. The shape was right, the consistency was right, but the texture was all wrong. It was lumpy and grainy, like congealed cream of wheat. The flavor was worse than the jar of paste I’d eaten in kindergarten.

I carried the plate to the porch and flung the cookies into the yard. “Bon appetite, birds!” The crows would eat them for sure.

Bzzt. My pager went off.

The call codes indicated a house fire in Nagswood, a wide place in the road on Highway Twelve. Only ten miles away. Nobody had a chance to get there before me.

“No heroics this time,” I admonished myself as I started the truck. My turnouts were on the floorboard, and the hooligan tool was on the gun rack. “Rules and regs, just like Lamar wanted. You’ll even follow the speed limit. Sort of.”

I radioed Julia, who was working dispatch. “I’m 10-76 and running 10-39. ETA, ten minutes.”

“You’re first responder,” Julia replied through the static. “You know the drill. Status report only. Don’t take action till the Captain has boots on the ground.”

“Roger that.”

“I mean it, Possum.”

“So do I. Out.”

I swerved around a fresh load of horse apples in the middle of the dirt road. If I needed any motivation to behave, the apples were there a reminder of all the stalls I’d have to muck if I screwed up again.

There was nothing like a pile of steaming manure to inspire you to do better, even when you knew in your heart that you hadn’t learned your lesson.

2

Like the Tin City and Duck properties, the house in Nagswood was set well off the highway, down a mile long dirt road that was so overgrown with cedar trees and white pines, it was difficult to navigate. If not for a For Sale sign marked SOLD from Landis Commercial Real Estate, I might have driven past the road, and I definitely would’ve missed the sharp left turn through a hedge row, even though there was a thick column of smoke already rising into the blue sky.

A stream cut the boundary between properties. The ground was scorched. The yard was lined with electrified wire and two large signs warning trespassers that violators would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No Trespassing signs were ubiquitous in this part of the county. The growth of the towns in the east had forced wildlife west. Hunters followed along behind, and property owners found their quiet weekends destroyed by the baying of Treeing Walkers, a dog breed known for their ability to flush out small game by making enough racket to wake the dead.

“Number Seventeen reporting in. Julia, I’m on site.”

“Roger that.”

I parked next to an old tobacco barn a hundred yards from the house. There was another truck already on site, a half-ton pickup with dual rear wheels. Three firefights stood beside the truck. They were dressed in yellow turnouts with orange piping. Atamasco Volunteer Fire Department was stenciled across their backs.

How had they gotten there before me?

“Atamasco VFD’s already on the scene,” I told dispatch.

“That’s real quick,” Julia said. “Lamar called in right before you. He says to radio in a status check.”

“Roger that.” I pulled on my turnouts. Grabbed my helmet and the hooligan. Walked across the patchy grass field toward the other firefighters.

The leader spoke to the other two vollies, and they moved toward the house. They wore hand-me-down turnouts and sweat-soaked T-shirts. Their hair was stringy and hung down past their necks, and unless I was mistaken, they were twins.

They split up and took either side of the building.

Something didn’t seem right.

“Y’all got here quick,” I said. “Thought I’d be first responder.”

The leader sported a mop of black hair and a threadbare beard. He wore a blood-red shirt under his unbuttoned fire coat. His head barely reached my chin, but he was broad and stump-shaped, which made him seem bigger. There was something familiar about his face, the way his teeth jutted forward from a pronounced prognathism.

“Looks like you thought wrong.”

“Atamasco’s a long way from here.”

“We’re out hunting the Black River. Not that it’s any of your goddamned business.”

“How’s the hunting?” I offered my hand. “Boone Childress, Allegheny VFD.”

“I know who you are, Possum. My kid brother is Dewayne Loach.”

That explained the animosity. The brothers looked nothing alike, except in the shape of the mouth. That’s why he had seemed familiar.

I faced the fire. “What’s the situation?”

A deserted farmhouse. An isolated location. A fire burning so hot and fast, it was a loss before the first responders reached it.

Two times is a coincidence.

Three times is a pattern.

Loach spat tobacco juice at my boots. “Farmhouse is engulfed. Going to be a total loss.”

Nobody could walk up to a house that looked like ground zero and instantly assess the extent of the situation. Maintain professional decorum, I reminded myself. “My captain asked for a visual assessment.”

“Don’t waste your time. The house’s been empty since forever.”

“You know the owners?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Not everybody,” I said. “You must know this area pretty well?”

“Ronnie! Donnie! Y’all done yet?”

“You just said—“

“Shut it up, Possum. Let us professionals handle the assessment.” Loach spat tobacco juice again.

It hit my boot.

“Too slow, Possum.”

I kicked the wad of tobacco back at him. “This is a pitiful excuse for an assessment, if you ask me.”

“Didn’t nobody ask you.” He grabbed my turnout and tried to push me away. “How ‘bout you sit in the truck till your daddy gets here.”

“How about you take your hands off me instead.” I sidestepped, rolled my arm over his, and pushed hard on his straightened elbow. “I’m not in the mood for dancing.”

“Hands off me, ass wipe!”

"Gladly." I let him go. “No hard feelings?”

He looked my hand over like it was leprosied. “Wouldn’t shake your hand if you was a native-born President of the United States, you goddamn liberal.”

“Liberal? Are you trying to insult me, because I don’t get it.”

“Donnie! Ronnie! Y’all come on back. Mr. Possum’s going to put this here fire out all by his lonesome!”

“I never said that.”

“No you didn’t.” Loach reloaded another plug of tobacco in his jaw. “But I did. Do what you want, but don’t expect us to lift a finger to help.”