Through the Fire (13 page)
Authors: Shawn Grady
She clenched her teeth behind closed lips, slowly nodding. I couldn’t tell if it was from agreement or just acknowledgment.
I scratched my cheek. “Where is he right now, anyway?”
She scoffed. “Good question.” She walked over to a wall where dozens of generic brown shoeboxes sat in organized rows. “I’m not sure what Blake has told you, but I think I may be able to help you with your father’s fire.”
I watched her trace her fingers under the white box-end labels. I stood and pocketed my hands. “Do you think these recent arsons are connected?”
“Yes, I do.” She stopped at a box and tapped on it. “And I am also convinced that Biltman isn’t the one setting them.”
E
ach box label bore a date, ID number, and investigator name.
She stacked two at a time in my arms. “You can put them on the lab table if you’d like.”
I laid them out, counting fourteen in all.
She waved a palm. “Each one of these is a separate fire. This one is the department store that collapsed on you guys.” She stole a furtive glance toward the door and lifted the lid. One small ziplock bag lay on the bottom.
I reached my hand out. “May I?”
“Sure.” She nodded. “Just don’t open the bag.”
I lifted the plastic into the light and let my eyes focus on a cubic centimeter of glassy black char. “Is this all the evidence you have from that fire?”
“That’s everything.”
“Out of all that?”
“That’s it.”
“Blake find this?”
She nodded.
I placed the bag back in the box. We moved to the next.
“This was from an apartment fire on the fourth of this month.” She shifted an inquisitive glance toward me as if to say,
“Were you
on that one?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t on duty that day. I was down in Mexico.”
She squinted her eyes in mock misgivings. “A likely story indeed.” She raised two plastic bags from the box, both containing fragments like shiny dark pebbles.
“And these?” I said.
“Same as the first. Blake says they may be incendiary residue.
I’ve run them through the IR spectrometer and haven’t found anything conclusive. Just carbon. Transformed end products of incomplete pyrolysis.”
“Char.”
“Yeah. Glassy char.”
We moved through all fourteen boxes, nothing more revealing than the first.
“I almost forgot.” She walked back to the shelves, tracing her hand farther down the row, squatting by a box near the floor. “Your father’s fire.”
She held it with two hands close to her abdomen. A torrent of memories rushed in. I saw his face in images tied together with onion-layered emotions that made my eyes well up. I turned, squinted, and pinched the bridge of my nose. I blinked out the moisture and acted as if I had removed a piece of debris from my lashes.
Julianne slid the box onto the tabletop, then stepped back and motioned with her hand. I placed my fingers on the lid and lifted it to the sound of smooth cardboard separating.
A dark coffin of air lay beneath.
I looked up at Julianne. “It’s completely empty.”
“I know. There’s nothing.”
“That’s your connection between this and the recent fires,
nothing
?”
“It’s a stretch, I know. But you’ve got to realize that out of all the boxes on this wall, this is the only one with absolutely nothing in it. The closest ones to it are these fourteen.” She walked back to the wall and returned with two others. She lifted the lids. Both boxes held a heap of evidence bags. “These two are from Biltman’s last fires before he was caught a few years ago.”
“Overflowing.”
“Right. Not hard to notice the difference between his fires and these fires. But the pressure from Admin right now is to prove progress with these recent arsons. Mauvain got wind that we found a connection between the recent fires and jumped at the chance to link them to Biltman, the obvious and known fire setter.”
“So, this fire last night . . .”
“Tons of evidence. The work of a mentally unstable amateur.”
“Unlike these other fourteen and my dad’s.”
“All, I believe, the work of a highly intelligent, experienced professional.”
“But why would Blake go along with Mauvain in molding the case to point to Biltman? He could clearly see that the evidence doesn’t support it.”
“Good question.” She took a seat. “There is one other thing. Did you happen to notice the investigator’s name on the boxes?”
I checked the labels.
B. Williams. B. Willliams. B. Williams
. . . Every single one.
I looked at her sideways. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
“Look, I’m not one to slander or even talk about other people. I’m really not.” She got up and paced. “I get along with everybody—”
“Just say it.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “All I’m saying is that Blake is under tremendous pressure to deliver results with this.
He’s on the promotion list for Prevention chief. They want decisive action.” She folded her arms. “Aidan, you seem like a great guy.
Just be heads-up, all right?”
“Just what?”
The lab door opened. A brass-badged Prevention chief leaned in, his pear-shaped torso pushing his belly over his belt. I stared at the boxes on the table and glanced at Julianne. She raised her hand slightly and gave a shake of her head to say it was all right.
The chief cleared his throat. “Julianne, I’m afraid I need you to process a new set of samples.”
She smiled. “Straightaway, Chief.”
He cleared his throat again. “That’s my girl.”
She walked past me and winked.
“Make sure to bring a jacket,” the chief said. “It’s a bit cold out there this morning.”
Julianne stopped. “Jacket?”
“Yes. I need you to go straight to the fire scene.”
She cocked her head. “The Biltman fire?”
“No, actually. There’s been a string of new fires this morning.
Investigator Williams was at the scene of the first and marked the items he wants you to bag and test.”
“Blake’s already been there?”
“Right.”
Julianne looked around the room for her coat. “Okay. Where is it?”
The chief handed her a paper and looked over her shoulder. “Young O’Neill, is that you back there?”
I raised my eyebrows and smiled. “Chief. Hey. Long time no see.”
“How are you all hanging in downtown after that roof collapse?”
“We’re getting along okay, Chief. Thanks.” It was like reciting lines. “Sounds like Firefighter Hartman is making a strong recovery.”
“Glad to hear it.” He held up a key ring for Julianne and dropped it into her palm. “This is for the Chevy. No running the lights and sirens now, young lady. And take this just in case we need to reach you.” He handed her a radio, then turned and left.
Julianne doffed the lab coat and pulled on a mahogany brown vest. She twirled the keys into her palm. “Care to join me?”
B
rick university buildings looped like film reel. Julianne leaned forward, gripping the ribs of black vinyl on the steering wheel.
“You know,” I said, “you can actually go a full twenty-five through here.”
She scanned through the windshield. “Quiet.”
“What?”
“I’m trying to concentrate.”
I leaned my elbow on the door. “Watch out for that student.”
She let off the gas. “What?”
“Oh, my bad. False alarm.”
“That’s not funny.”
I reached toward the center console. “I bet this siren switch will get us there real quick.”
She slapped my hand, returning her own with ninja-like quickness to the wheel. “Don’t you dare!”
I held my hand up and stared at it. “Who hit me?”
A smile creased the corner of her mouth.
We passed the planetarium and wove our way into the adjacent neighborhood. I read off a series of directions from the chief ’s notepaper and looked up just as Julianne slowed to a stop near the fire scene. An RPD patrol car blocked off access to a court where a single engine and ladder truck sat parked. Firemen moved with the slogging pace of overhaul, pike poles and drywall hooks in hand.
Vapid steam meandered off the roof.
“I know this house,” I said.
“You do?”
“Yeah. As a kid. Isn’t this Todd Youngman’s house?”
“I don’t know. Wasn’t Youngman a battalion chief?”
“Yeah. He’s retired. He and my dad used to fish together. He had golden retrievers.”
“Does he still live here?”
“As far as I know. I haven’t seen him since Dad’s funeral.” I opened my door to see Battalion Chief Anderson approaching in a huff, as if he’d just finished blowing out the fire by himself.
“Blake just left half an hour ago,” he said to Julianne. No introduction. No
“Hi, how are you?”
He pointed to the rear of the house. “The probable origin is taped off in back. You got gloves and bags?”
Julianne produced a silver briefcase. “All set to go, Chief.” She half-curtsied and smiled.
Chief Anderson’s face did what looked like a hard reboot. His affect sweetened and changed, as though he were looking at his daughter or grandchild. “Well, that’s excellent. Now, you just let me know if you need anything.”
“Sure will, Chief. Straightaway.” She motioned with her hand, hooking it in front of her like Shirley Temple saying something with determination. I had to look away to keep from guffawing.
Chief Anderson started back toward the scene. “And there’s coffee and drinks at the back of the safety officer’s rig if you’d like.”
Julianne waved again, like only a girl can wave, wiggling fingers and all. Chief Anderson returned the gesture before he realized I was watching. His face fell into a frown. “Morning, Aidan.”
I stifled a grin. “Morning, Chief.”
He disappeared behind the ladder truck. I walked around the hood of the Tahoe. “How do you do that?”
She clipped the handheld radio on her belt. “Do what?”
“You’re like a snake charmer.”
She smiled and put a finger by her lips. “Shh. You’ll reveal my secret.” She started toward the house, briefcase in hand.
“Here,” I said. “Let me get that.”
She pulled it away. “I’ve got it.”
She walked on and I stared at her for a moment. I quickened my pace to catch up. “Is it the
straightaway
that gets them or the curtsy?”
She stopped and twisted her lips, looking up to her right. “Probably a combination of both. But the
straightaway
seems to give the whole thing a sort of British flare that just melts their butter.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “That’s so awesome. You’re like the Chief Whisperer.”
We suction-cup-stepped through mud along the side and back of the house. Yellow fire-line tape cordoned off an area that, from the looks of the scattered concrete pillar foundations, had once held a wooden deck. A large black triangle stained the building side, showing where the flames had lapped up at the soffit and attic vents. Three little orange flags, like the kind used to mark damaged turf on a field, stuck out from the charred debris on the ground. Julianne flipped open the briefcase and pulled out a digital camera. I stepped back as she snapped several photos.
She donned exam gloves and picked out a pair of tweezers; a long, thin scalpel-like device; and three plastic bags. As she bent under the fire-line tape, I leaned forward to hold it up for her, watching as she took care to place her feet only in the existing footprints in the mud.
I let the tape back down. “You’re a natural at this. What a crime to keep you cooped up in a lab.”
She hunched over the first flag and tilted her head with a dismissive shrug. “You should see me when I get things cooking indoors.”
Whoa. Deep breath.
“So . . . what do you see?”
She poked around with the long instrument. “Looks like another one of Blake’s interpretations of a suspicious char fragment.” She opened a ziplock bag one-handed and used the tweezers to pluck and deposit the piece.
The next two didn’t prove to be much different. She retraced her steps and I again held the tape as she ducked and returned to the briefcase. She opened one of the bags and transferred a kernel into a test tube.
I sat on my haunches. “Now what? Chemical tests?”
She uncapped a small vial and plunged fluid from it with a pipette. “I’m starting a series of algorhythmic experiments to test the reactivity of the unknown. The sooner you do it, the better chance you have of detection before it decomposes or evaporates. You’d be surprised at how fast a little heat and humidity can eradicate evidence.” She said all this as she worked, deliberate and methodical, exacting in her measurements and procedure. She gave a swirl to one of the tubes. The liquid changed to a faint amber.
I raised my eyebrows. She looked at me and nodded. “Could be something.”
She drained the test tube and returned the fragment to its bag, marking the outside with a pen. “All right.” She capped the vials and placed the tools in a separate plastic bag. “These will need to be cleaned.”
“Wait.” I stood. “What is it? What about the other two pieces?”
She shook her head. “There are further tests I need to do.” She shut the briefcase. “We need to get this back to the lab.”
S
he drove with hands at ten and two, staring straight ahead.
I adjusted my seat belt. “What is it?”
“I keep thinking I’m forgetting something. I bagged the samples, the scooper; I have the radio . . .” An alarm beeped from her wristwatch. She glanced at it. “Oh. Dad.” She stopped at a light and played with the zipper on her vest.
Dad?
“You need to make a stop?”
“Do you mind taking a detour?”
“No, not at all. Whatever you need to do.”
“It might take half an hour . . .”
“That’s fine. It’s no problem.”
She switched on her blinker and glanced at her watch again. We drove for about ten minutes before pulling into a parking lot with a sign that read
Pathways Memory Care
.
She shut off the engine and exhaled, staring at the steering wheel.