Jackson held her pen at the ready over her pad. “Their names and contact information?”

Denise provided the details. The man who’d been fired over the gun was Lewis Blakemore. The alleged groper/virtual peeping Tom was Phillip Gunderbaugh.

The detective thanked the women for the information and stood. “Soon as we figure this out, we’ll be in touch.”

We exchanged parting handshakes and walked back outside to my cruiser. I loaded Brigit back into her enclosure and climbed into my seat.

Jackson slid into the passenger seat, gestured to my laptop, and held up the list of names she’d compiled inside. “Let’s do a little triage. See which of these men look the most promising.”

I set about pulling up information on the men Denise had mentioned.

The web offered little on Harry Waltham, the one with the sick wife and the pending bankruptcy. He had no Facebook page. No Twitter account.

Jackson waved a hand. “Next.”

I ran a search on our next potential subject. Ronnie Butler, the gambler, had a Facebook page replete with posts about his gambling escapades. A post from last week stated: Lost my shirt at the blackjack table! Evidently, his luck had changed. An entry from earlier today read: Won $300 on a Double Diamond machine at the Flamingo!

I pointed at the post, which showed it had been entered only four hours ago. “Looks like he’s in Vegas.” Of course the entries could be faked, posted to throw us off his trail. For all we knew, he was right here in town.

Jackson pulled out her pen and wrote “Vegas?” next to Butler’s name on her list. “That brings us to Lewis Blakemore, the guy with the gun. See if he’s got a record.”

I ran his name through the criminal database. “Nope. He’s c-clean.”

I googled his name next. Like Waltham, he’d kept a low profile online, only a few items popping up. I clicked on the first one, which led me to an amateur website someone had put together for the Blakemore family’s 2014 reunion. Lewis Blakemore appeared in a wide-angle photo with approximately three dozen extended relatives, all of whom resembled each other to some degree. Being one of the taller people, he stood at the back, visible only from the shoulders up. He wore a wide smile and a blue-and-white striped cap. He also appeared in a second photo, a close-up shot of him holding a toddler, both of them wearing the striped hats this time, as well as sunny smiles. A third photograph featured him sitting in the shade on the bank of a river flanked by two adolescent boys. While Blakemore wore no hat in this photograph, he held a fishing rod, as did the boys on either side of him. The final photograph of Blakemore showed him shooting skeet with the same two boys he’d been fishing with.

Hmm … If a picture is worth a thousand words, some of those words would be “family man” and “doting grandpa.” He appeared to be nothing more than a normal middle-age man with a possible gun fetish. Not unusual in Texas.

Jackson glanced at the page, her gaze roaming over the photos. “Not sure I’m feeling it.”

“Should I open the other links?” I asked.

“First let’s take a look at that last guy. The groper.”

When I typed Phillip Gunderbaugh’s named into my browser and hit the enter key it was a wonder my computer didn’t explode. The search returned over a thousand results.

“Whoa.”

Gunderbaugh had posted what appeared to be hourly rants on his Facebook page, complaining about his termination on the baseless accusations of a few stupid whores! to the sons of bitches who’d refused to give him a fair hearing! He encouraged the citizens of Fort Worth to boycott the Transportation Authority via a three-stanza rhyme: They all lied! Support driver pride! Don’t take a ride!

A look at the man’s Twitter account showed he’d sent over three hundred tweets, ranging from a relatively benign Fort Worth bus system unfair to drivers! to a more insidious Fired unfairly! Ft Worth Transportation Authority fucked me over! and If FWTA thinks I’ll go down without a fight they’ve got another thing coming!

Jackson pursed her lips. “He doesn’t seem to have moved on.”

“That could explain the bus-jacking,” I noted. Stealing a bus, disrupting service, and making the department look incompetent would be a fitting revenge. “But what about the bank robbery? How would that play into his scheme? And who would be willing to go along with him?” After all, the guy seemed certifiable.

Before we could speculate further my shoulder-mounted radio went off. “We’ve got a report of a fire and robbery at a convenience store. Three male suspects. Two Caucasian, one African American.”

As the dispatcher gave the address, my eyes met the detective’s. Three men, two white, one black? Another fire and robbery? It had to be the same suspects we’d been tracking.

Jackson strapped her seatbelt into place. “Let’s go!”

Woo-woo-woo! We took off, tires churning up dirt and gravel as I punched the gas and rocketed out of the Transportation Authority’s parking lot.

Two minutes later, we careened into the lot at the convenience store. Derek was at the scene, speaking with a petite blonde woman. A witness, possibly. The fire department was already on site, too, pumping water into the store as black smoke poured out the front doors.

At the back of the fire truck, Seth held an oxygen mask to the face of an elderly Asian man sitting on the bumper. The man’s shoulders racked with deep, rib-wrenching coughs. Smoke inhalation, evidently. The man must have been the clerk on duty when the fire started. Thank God he hadn’t passed out in the burning building or he would have been burned to a crisp.

Jackson and I hopped out of the car and rushed over to him.

Seth shot me a pointed look. “We really shouldn’t have complained about our boring mornings.”

“I never will again.” We seemed to have jinxed ourselves.

He leaned in and whispered. “Let’s get margaritas when your shift is over.”

He wouldn’t have to ask me twice. It had been a hell of a day.

Jackson put her hands on her knees and bent over to look at the man behind the mask. “You up to talking, sir?”

When he nodded, Seth pulled the oxygen mask from his face.

“What happened?” the detective asked.

“Three men came into the store,” the man said, emitting a couple of short coughs. “Two were white. In their twenties maybe. The other was an older black man. Forty or so.”

When the man coughed again, Seth returned the mask to his face for a few seconds to give him a hit of concentrated oxygen. He pulled it back when the man signaled with his hand.

“All of them wore sunglasses. They got beer from the cooler and the little fat one opened his and drank it in the store. I told him he wasn’t supposed to do that and he left.” Cough-cough-cough. “The other white man paid for the beer and got a couple of hot dogs, and then he and the black man walked out.” He coughed again and took a fresh hit of oxygen from Seth before continuing. “I heard the door open again and the little fat one was back and his bottle was on fire. He threw it onto the floor and the fire spread everywhere, and while I was trying to put it out he grabbed money from the cash register.”

Derek stepped up beside us with the blonde in tow. “The guys who started the fire and robbed the place stole this woman’s car.”

“What kind of car is it?” I asked her.

“Fiat 500,” she said. “A 2013 model.”

“Notify dispatch,” Jackson told Derek. “Tell everyone to be on the lookout. And make sure they get the chopper back in the air. There’s no telling what these fools might do next.”

It was true. The clerk could have died in the fire. The men on this crime spree were out of control. I felt tension in the center of my forehead. We needed to find these guys and put an end to their reign of terror. Now.