Through the Fire (23 page)

I nodded. “Sometimes less tells more.”

“Even as a lay observer, it seems obvious to me that the bulk of these fires point to a similar method.”

Julianne stepped into the edge of a light circle. “And, subsequently, to a singular subject who has set them.”

“Your name,” Sower said to me, “has come into question behind closed doors.”

“I was starting to get that feeling.”

Julianne sat on the edge of a stool. “Ben told me that Chief Mauvain now considers you the prime suspect.”

“Mauvain isn’t even in Prevention.”

Sower’s voice was calm and direct. “You have exhibited unpredictable and, at times, irrational behavior on fires recently.”

“You disappeared right when these fires started going off,” Julianne said.

I crossed my arms. “Here we go again.”

“Just giving Admin’s point of view,” Ben said.

“Devil’s advocate,” Julianne added.

I shook my head. “Same difference.”

“The icing”—Ben leaned on the table—“is that you’ve managed to cross both Mauvain and Butcher on the fire ground. You’ve been burning your bridges with them for some time, just for the spite of it. Then Hartman gets hurt and the hammer comes down.” He sat back and unhooked his glasses. “If I’m not mistaken, Investigator Williams also happens to be tight with those two, especially Mauvain. Given your current relationship with him, Blake may not’ve hesitated to set you up as a suspect during questioning, especially if it meant getting himself out of hot water.”

“The city is desperate,” Julianne said. “The mayor’s public opinion polls have plummeted.”

I scoffed. “Say that ten times fast.”

“I’m serious, Aidan.”

“Somebody’s gotta pay.”

Sower interlaced his fingers and rested his chin on his thumbs. “And they’re determined that it will not be the brass.”

I looked at the floor. “What about Lowell? What’s his agreement with Mauvain?”

Ben shook his head. “I can’t see Lowell jumping in on a witch hunt.”

“Then what’s his deal? He’s been looking at me like I’m a traitor.”

“He’s in a tight spot right now.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’s due for an interview when the next driver-operator position opens at the end of this year.”

“They’re blackmailing him?”

“It’s possible.”

“I heard Mauvain yelling at him.” I rubbed my neck. “I can see that. Quid pro quo.”

Julianne folded her arms. “You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours.”

The pieces came together. “They want Lowell as a spy. That’s why he was switched with Timothy Clark on the engine. To keep an eye on me.”

“Mauvain may have left him little choice,” Sower said. I looked at Julianne. “What about your department car?”

“Seems like more than a coincidence.”

“Is there anything else that would connect that shop with the department?”

“Apart from being in District One?” She glanced to the side and shook her head. “No. Not that I can think of.”

Sower folded his arms. “What are you driving now?”

“My own Mini.”

I rubbed my hands over my face and exhaled. “Okay . . . So now what?”

“Now,” Julianne flicked on a microscope. “Now we get to work proving your innocence.”

She lifted a small glass slide to the ceiling. Barely discernable gray specks sat sandwiched between the two transparent rectangular pieces. “Yeah, this is the one.” She inserted it under the microscope. “I took the liberty of breaking apart one of the small pieces of char.”

“From Blake’s evidence boxes?”

“Yeah.” She held her eye half an inch from the lens. A thin light circle shone on her iris, and her pupil constricted in a cerulean sea. “Take a look.” She stepped back into the shadows.

I held her gaze, curious to know, before breaking off to stare into the microscope. At first I only saw bright light, and then an oscillating dark shaft that finally stabilized, allowing fine crystal-like granules to move into focus. “They’re angled, like a crystalline solid.”

“Very good, Firefighter O’Neill.”

I straightened and blinked. “They seem lighter in color than the char.”

“They’re the remnants of what was inside, what wasn’t fully burnt.”

Sower came beside me.

“Here,” I said. “Have a look.”

He held his head about half a foot from the lens, blinking and squinting. Julianne put a hand on his and set it on the focusing knob. “Here.”

He smiled. “Oh, thank you.” The tray adjusted downward, and Ben leaned in. “Okay. I see.”

I folded my arms. “So what is it?”

She pocketed her hands. “I can’t say specifically, but I was able to narrow it down to a family.”

“It’s a flammable solid.” Ben feathered the microscope dial.

“Yes.” Julianne cocked her head. “Exactly. How did you know that?”

“Ben was on the Haz-Mat team.”

He leaned back, opening his eyes wide and then blinking. “Yes. But that was some time ago.” He walked over and sat on a stool. “I just remembered something Aidan told me about the look of the flame in James’s fatal fire.”

A flammable solid.
It hit me, like the sudden heavy heat of a summer day. The bright white flame, the lightning-like appearance. I described to Julianne what I’d seen.

She leaned against the counter. “The white flame—that’s hotter than most.”

“Yes.”

“Hot enough to separate hydrogen from oxygen.”

Hydrogen plus oxygen. Water. “Right. We see it a lot in old Volkswagen engine fires. Super bright flames. When you spray water on them, the fire explodes brighter and bigger.”

“Water reactive,” Ben said. “Those engine blocks have a good amount of magnesium in them. The fires burn hot enough to break the chemical bonds in the water.”

“Exactly. The hydrogen burns and the oxygen accelerates the process.” I pointed at the microscope. “What do you bet this is magnesium?”

Julianne nodded. “There are a number of reactive metals it could be.” The can lights circled her hair. “I’ll hone my testing tomorrow and see what I find.”

“What time do you think you’ll be in?”

“Early. I want to make as much progress as possible before lunch. Mauvain wants me down south at Station Three for a meeting in the afternoon.” Subtle dark lines had taken up residence beneath her eyes. She covered her mouth and yawned.

Ben stood. “It’s getting late, and I need to get on home.” He patted me on the shoulder. “You two be extra heads-up. Whoever is doing all this isn’t blind to the fact that they’re being followed.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Julianne said.

He gave her a hug. “Be safe.”

Patting my arm, he said, “Take care, Aidan,” and walked down the hall. I heard the front door swing shut.

Julianne tilted her head. “Are you on shift tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t go picking any fights.”

“Seems like they’ve been picking me.”

She nodded. “You know, it’s worse than Ben suggested. Somehow that arsonist knows it’s us on his tail. By being here, by doing this, we’re going down a road that we can’t turn back from.”

That road started for me five years ago. I would ride it to its end. “It’s easy to say ‘Be safe,’ isn’t it?” Test-tube shadows stretched long and narrow. “But there’s not really a safe way right now.”

“Not until this is finished.”

I rubbed my eyes. Not until . . .
It is finished
. I extended my right hand to Julianne. She placed hers in it, the pads of her fingertips running back and forth over the scar in my palm. In that dim light we drew close. Our fingers intertwined. I felt her warm breath on my neck, her lips hovering by my jawline, her temple meeting mine.

We simply stood like that, guarded against time or threat, heart ties weaving bonds beyond words. And in that quiet, perfect moment lingered the unspoken understanding that with the new day nothing would be the same.

CHAPTER
43

T
he workday brought a lull in chasing phantoms.

I spoke little with others, methodically moving through the motions of the day. Rig checks. Morning chores. EMS training. I finished my afternoon workout and climbed the stairs, thinking of Julianne and wondering if she was back from her meeting at Station Three.

Outside, the clouds formed a soporific ceiling. Once-colored trees now stretched bare branches, wet fallen leaves plastering walkways. A quick chirp let out from the ceiling speakers.

Tones.

Kat gunned it down Mill to the freeway. Butcher zipped up his turnout coat. Piceous smoke surged from the overpass, sunlight coruscating off an overturned semi.

Lowell cinched on his air pack. I pulled on my mask, ready to go on air from the moment we got out. Kat swung around the northbound on-ramp for 395. The ladder truck ran not far behind us.

All the cars sat frozen, like an electric racetrack when the power goes out. At least half a dozen vehicles were twisted at odd angles around an overturned fuel truck, one pickup so severely damaged that the driver sat trapped inside. The semi’s undercarriage pointed toward us, the cylindrical trailer atop the center dividing wall. Fire rolled from the area of the hitch and around the tractor.

Butcher got on the PA. “Pull to the right. Pull to the right.”

Kat squeezed along with inches to spare. “There’s nobody in some of these vehicles.”

Our siren seemed excessive for the crawling pace, like a dog barking for something out of its reach. People ran down the freeway, abandoning their cars, doors left ajar, kids in arm. A wrecked car’s horn blared incessantly.

Kat moved her head out her side window. “This is as far as I can get.” The smell of burnt tar blew inside the cab. She snapped the air brake.

I grabbed a Halligan and met Lowell at the sideboard. We did an alley pull. Lowell took off for the front with a loop and the nozzle, his bottle breaking a sedan side mirror. I knocked one inward as I made toward the tailboard. With the line flaked out, Lowell climbed up on a hood and jumped from car to car, nozzle in hand. The smoke spread so thick that he disappeared and reappeared. I got between two bumpers to feed him more line, clicking in my regulator. Air hissed with inhalation.

Kat whipped water through our attack line. The engine revved up. Butcher weaved between cars ahead of the rig, holding his radio by the voice amp mounted on his facepiece.

Stygian smoke spurted fireballs. Lowell hunkered in the back of the T-boned pickup with the nozzle in a fog pattern, white bubbles spraying on the truck cab. Kat worked the pump panel, running the foam mixture thick through the water stream. I climbed up in the truck bed and supported the hose. The man inside threw frantic glances through the back window, shoving a door that wouldn’t open. His passenger side was wedged against a car facing the opposite way, its driver gone, its rubber weather stripping already warping and bubbling.

I patted the rear window. “Hang tight. We’ll get you out.”

Lowell darkened one section of fire only to see eruptions of flame in another. Kat stretched three-inch supply hose toward a standpipe in the median. Butcher strode for the tractor cab with an axe in hand. Flames lapped out like a solar burst. He tucked and shielded. Smoke swallowed his form.

“You got this?” I yelled.

He nodded, and I hopped down to the street, gripping the Halligan and ducking under the smoke.

Glass shattered. Butcher backpedaled from the belching cloud, dragging an unconscious driver up the freeway.

Radiant heat beat down. From the elevated side of the tractor spilled liquid fire like a lava river. The flow hit pavement and moved toward us. The more Lowell sprayed it, the more it spread, the hose stream serving to corral, not extinguish. The fire shifted away from the pickup, back toward the center divide.

And there, trapped under the trailer and next to the wall, sat a Mini Cooper with a crumpled roof and a damaged front end. In the driver’s seat, chestnut hair framed a blood-streaked face, two familiar eyes meeting mine.

I waved at Lowell. “Throw me the nozzle.”

He tossed it down. I diverted the fire away from the Mini, washing it toward the rear of the trailer. A steady stream of flame followed. Lowell hopped down and I gave the nozzle back.

“Hold it away from the car.”

I hopped over the fiery flow and ducked under the trailer, crouching to get next to the shattered passenger window.

“Julianne!”

“Aid—” She coughed uncontrollably.

The dash pinned her lap. A deflated white airbag hung from the steering wheel. I reached in and took her hand.

Her skin looked pale, her lips purple. “I can’t—” she coughed again—“breathe.”

I pulled the radio from my jacket. “Captain Butcher, O’Neill.”

He transmitted back. “Go ahead.”

“I need a spare bottle and mask and the extrication tools under the trailer.”

“Copy that. Truck crew’s making their way to you now.”

I pulled off my helmet. Lowell’s hose stream splashed along the car’s side, cooling my boots and the back of my pants. Julianne’s eyes drooped and she nodded forward.

“No. No you don’t.” I put a palm on her forehead and stripped off my mask, placing it on her face.

She took a breath and her eyes flashed open. She let out a shriek.

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” I kept the mask against her.

She looked as if she were drowning.

“Just breathe. Just breathe. I’m here, okay. Just breathe. I’ll hold this. I won’t leave you.”

The toxic brume pumped into the car. It stung my throat. My eyes watered. I hacked and coughed. My vision blurred. The myriad of colors faded into gray, and gray into a closing circle of black.

Just keep holding it.

Air fanned in my face.

Waits pressed a mask over my face, my extended arm still held my own over Julianne’s.

“Let’s switch.” I brought mine back in place as he strapped the spare mask over Julianne.

Behind us, someone started the power unit for the hydraulic tools.

I looked at Waits. “What’s happening with the fire?”

“They’re chasing it around, trying to keep the tanker cool.”

Timothy Clark walked over with the spreaders. Waits stepped aside and patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s get this open, Tim. Doesn’t have to be pretty.”