by Amy Waeschle
Zach lowered into the facing chair. Stu eyed him over his black-rimmed bifocals. His graying hair was trimmed short and perfectly smoothed into place, but the bags under his eyes gave away how little he’d slept.
“I read your report on the boathouse fire,” Stu said. “You responded to the Bremerton restaurant too, last month, and the Kevos Pond structure.”
Zach recalled the family-run Mexican restaurant, a mutual aid response with Bremerton’s department. According to Stu’s findings, the restaurant was some kind of warning from the cartel that was taking over South Kitsap’s drug trade.
“You think they’re linked?” Zach asked, feeling uneasy.
Stu’s face tightened, then released. “It seems unlikely, given the geographic locations. The motives don’t fit, either.” Stu slipped his bifocals off his face and tapped them against the desk. “One’s a hit and run, the others seem more juvenile.”
“Though they both had accelerants.”
“Exactly,” Stu said. “There’s another fire, too. Remember that dumpster on Eliason last August?” Stu crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair, squinting at Zach in that curious way he was known for.
“I thought it was ruled an accident. Fireworks, right?”
“It was,” Stu agreed.
Zach pinched the center crease on his Nomex pants and slid his fingers down its length.
“It reminds me of a well-known case,” Stu said. “He was a kid, things started small, he got by for a while, pulling pranks. Minor stuff. But his fires got bigger. More dangerous.” He paused. “He had a brother.”
Zach straightened, met Stu’s unreadable brown eyes.
“I know we’ve never talked about this before,” Stu added carefully.
Zach realized that of course Stu would know about his past, about Travis.
His vision narrowed as his pulse thumped into his ears. If his connection to Travis got out, the guys would never let him live it down. Though he knew that a percentage of all firefighters played with fire as juveniles, a fact that Travis’s case worker, a woman he had briefly and very mistakenly dated, had shared with him.
“I’m not here to put you through the wringer,” Stu said
The blood rushed straight to Zach’s hair follicles. “Then what do you want?” he replied, his voice too loud for the small office.
Stu’s calm gaze washed over him. “Kitsap County’s had isolated arson fires before. But if these are linked, we’ve got everything from a major structure with at least a million dollars in damage down to what looks like fire play—that dumpster. I’m going to need all the help I can get. My gut tells me this isn’t the same perp. But I can’t rule it out. You could help me with building a profile. Help me figure out what fits and what doesn’t.”
Zach crossed his arms, then uncrossed them to scratch behind his ear. “It’s been written up in about a hundred case files. I’m sure it would make good reading.”
“C’mon, Healey, you know I’ve read them.” His look was patient, optimistic.
Zach wished he hadn’t consumed so much coffee. He felt like a bug pinned to one of those boards while someone examined him with a magnifying glass.
“I know about his difficulties at home, so I—”
Zach gritted his teeth. “I seriously doubt that,” he said, surprising himself.
Their eyes locked.
The tones went off—MVA on the Agate Pass bridge.
“Then tell me,” Stu said. “So I can find him, make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Zach felt a shudder pass through him. He didn’t tell Stu about Travis’s latest postcard from the drilling rig in North Dakota, no doubt trying to make his predicament sunnier than it surely was. Nor did he tell him about the years of “treatment” that nearly killed him in an effort to make him safe. “I’ll do what I can,” Zach finally answered before spinning on his heel and joining the crews flooding into the truck bay.
An hour and a half later, the fender-bender already forgotten but the opposing traffic lane backed up for miles, Brody pulled the ambulance into their favorite roadside coffee stand. As Brody made their order, Zach’s restless mind flashed on his conversation with Stu. It wasn’t that he had meant to be insubordinate. He had the highest respect for Stu, and of course wanted to catch whoever was starting these fires. But bringing up Travis? Zach released a shuddering breath. There were just so many memories he had tucked away—memories that were better left alone.
“I heard about that fire down on Lemolo,” the barista crooned. She tucked a metal pitcher beneath the nozzle and turned the dial above it. “Were you boys there?” she asked over the squeal of the steaming milk.
“Yes, ma’am,” Brody replied, leaning forward a little to make eye contact.
“How did it start?” she asked, her face lighting up with curiosity.
“We’re not sure,” Zach said. “There’s an investigation.”
“Ooh,” the barista said with a conspiratorial grin. She turned off the milk and poured it into Brody’s mocha. “So exciting,” she added, giving it a stir then handing it and Zach’s Americano through the window. They paid and the woman’s eyes connected with Zach’s. “We sure appreciate what you do,” she said. “Be safe, okay?”
“Always,” Brody said next to him.
Zach thanked her and Brody rolled towards the exit.
“Think I could get her number?” Brody said as he entered the highway.
Zach sipped his coffee. “If you’re into that whole hero worship thing.”
Brody paused at the exit and looked both ways. “Actually, she seemed more into you.”
“That’s not even funny,” Zach said.
“Maybe that’s what you need, man,” he replied. “Get some strange.”
“What? No,” Zach said, shuddering at the thought.
“Weren’t you getting a little side action from that chick, what’s her name?” he gave Zach a quizzical glance.
Zach felt a sickly ball of guilt drop into his gut. “Sadie?”
Brody pointed his coffee cup at Zach. “That’s the one.”
“There was never any ‘side action,’” Zach replied, shaking his head.
“But you thought about it, didn’t you?”
Zach almost choked on his sip of coffee. Two years ago, to fill a requirement for paramedic school, twenty-four-year-old and doe-eyed Sadie James had done a ride-along with him in the ambulance. It had been a busy shift: a finger amputation at a construction site, a full-blown cardiac arrest—he and Brody had used all their magic but the guy still croaked—a motorcycle vs. lamppost, and a drowned kid. Zach had been worried she would quit her program after such a brutal day. Hell, he had considered quitting. But Sadie graduated two months later and was now working for the city of Spokane. She reached out after her first tough call, a murder-suicide. She had found the kids.
Zach knew he felt flattered, and as they talked more and more, he realized how much he enjoyed helping her. She was struggling, admitted to drinking too much, dating the wrong kind of guys. Zach started thinking about her more often, found himself checking his phone more than usual, but what was the harm?
But lately she had been sending him pictures of herself on hikes with her dog, or cryptic texts at one o’clock in the morning, or signing messages with “miss you.”
“Nothing ever happened with Sadie,” he replied darkly.
“So why’s she sending you half-naked selfies?” he replied, raising an eyebrow.
Zach looked out the window. A few weeks ago, Sadie had sent him a picture of herself on vacation, wearing a bikini. It had made him feel uncomfortable, like they had crossed some kind of line, though he wasn’t sure how they had, or how to get back to where they were in the beginning.
“It never hurts to have options, is all I’m saying,” Brody replied.
Zach grunted, not taking the bait because “options” for him had been off the table since he fell for Dana on their third date. That realization lived deep in him,
like an anchoring cable pulled tight. The thought that he might have to cut it in order to free himself from the mess he and Dana were in made him feel untethered, like an astronaut floating off from the mothership. His fingers shook when he brought his coffee cup to his lips.
“I see right through you, you know,” Zach replied, eager to get off this track. “You’re getting serious with Michelle, so you’re trying to live vicariously through me.” Not that there is anything to live, he thought.
“C’mon, I have a drawer. That’s hardly serious.”
They sipped their coffee in silence for a moment. The turn to Lemolo Shore Drive was approaching. “Turn here, would you?” Zach said, indicating the turn. He had been thinking about his conversation with Stu, and the idea of helping profile this arsonist. Though Zach had plenty of mixed feelings about putting himself back in those shoes, the desperation on Stu’s face wouldn’t leave him alone.
“I want another look at that boathouse,” he added as Brody flipped on the turn signal.
“Now who’s been watching Backdraft, huh?” Brody teased.
Zach threw his wadded-up napkin at him.
They descended a hill lined with dense blackberry vines, the bay-view homes growing bigger, more impressive. The view widened to include the soft blue water of Liberty Bay, with the far shore’s barren trees creating a ribbon of tan and yellow. Hanging above, the majestic Olympic Mountains, rocky and decorated with ribbons of snow, sparkled in the clear air. He had climbed one of the peaks the previous summer, a steep slog through thick brush to the snowfield which then took four more hours to ascend. But the breathtaking view of both east and west sides of the divide had been well worth the effort. That and the lightning-fast glissade descent.
When the charred remains of the burned boathouse appeared, Brody parked the rig in a narrow pullout just past it. Zach grabbed the radio and hopped out. Brody followed him across the road to the wide shoulder popular with joggers and dog-walkers, late-summer berry pickers.
“Good thing this tree didn’t go,” Brody said, gazing up at the giant fir adjacent to the consumed structure.
“We have the fire boat to thank for that,” Zach replied.
The steps descending the bank to the charred deck were sectioned off with yellow tape. Zach slipped under it, his boots crunching on broken glass and scorched wood. The salty beach air was overruled by the scent of a doused campfire and the lingering smell of the accelerant. The beams below him groaned, and he stopped.
“There’s where it started,” Zach said, pointing with his coffee cup towards a dark spot on the floor of the structure. Stu likely already had ideas—a jar of kerosene with a wick? Some kind of chemical soup? Whatever the source, the boathouse’s old timbers would have gone up in no time.
Help me identify what fits and what doesn’t, Stu had said. Zach looked across the slate-colored water to the far shore. He remembered the restaurant fire and the remnants of the Molotov cocktails used to start it. Why would someone do that and then go inside this little boathouse to play mad chemist? Zach shook his head.
He walked back up the bank to the road.
Brody trotted after. “I guess we’re done?”
Zach drove this time, deep in thought. He remembered Travis finding out that furniture stain would spontaneously combust given enough heat. Zach had let him experiment with a camping lantern and a soaked rag, believing he just needed to get it out of his system. But it had only made his craving for fire more powerful.
The road curved around the bay and in the rearview mirror, Zach saw the boathouse. He parked the rig and stepped onto the banked road. An old feeling—one he thought he’d buried long ago, took control. He remembered searching for a place after they’d set the fire, a hidden place where Travis could watch his work come to life and then, a front-row seat of the first responders putting it out.
Zach stepped down the bank to the narrow strip of beach. Brody joined him, silent, but Zach could sense his questions.
The street was now at eye level and slightly undercut, hidden by the weeds. The cool damp air gave the space a cave-like feel. Zach looked down the shore, the burned shell of the boathouse smack-dab in the middle of his sights.
Brody gave Zach an inquiring look, then squinted back to the view of the charred structure. “Huh,” Brody said. “What, you think he watched from here?”
“Maybe,” Zach replied as the anticipation he used to feel floated through him like a ghost, making him shudder.
“But it was dark,” Brody said.
“Not for long it wasn’t,” Zach said.
He turned away from the beach, looking for what, he didn’t know—cigarette butts? Sometimes Travis could be so careless. One time he’d almost left his lighter behind. Then, Zach saw something black flash from the weeds. Frowning, Zach approached the space beneath the bank and got a closer look at the object. It was a black skate helmet. He stepped over and lifted it by the strap, recognizing the style as the same that Jessie and all her skater friends wore.
“Damn,” Brody said.
Zach lifted it up higher but it held no clues to its owner—no name inside, no stickers.
“You think it’s the perp’s?” Brody said.
The helmet straps weren’t wet, such as from dew or floating in on the tide, so it hadn’t been there long. “I don’t know,” Zach replied, standing. “It could have just fallen down here,” he said, though without conviction.
Zach took one last look around, feeling that tingle of fear and anticipation. It was like he was twelve years old again, laying next to Travis in the weeds, his fast breaths so loud Zach worried they would give away their position.
Brody climbed the bank and Zach followed. “I’ll take this to Stu,” Zach said. “Maybe there’s prints or some way to identify it.”
“Like dried spit or something,” Brody said, chuckling.
Zach frowned, then looked again inside the helmet. There was more light now that they were back on street level.
At the base of the helmet, caught in the dial that adjusted the fit, he saw several dark hairs.
“How about one of these?” he said to Brody.
Chapter 15
Jessie
Jessie woke past ten o’clock to a quiet house. Her mom always did her super long runs on Saturday mornings, so she would be gone until past noon at least.
After everything that happened last night, it felt good to be in her comfy bed with the whole day ahead of her. She rolled to her side and thought back to the night before. Once they heard the sirens, they hurried back to the park, where he’d given her only a “later” and set off in the opposite direction.
That’s when the thought of Zach flashed into her mind. A part of her wanted to stay and watch. He never told her his stories, so this would give her a front-row view, but the other part knew it was too risky.
Zach had explained long ago that fighting fire was a rare thrill, a little bit of excitement that all the guys loved. Now she understood why—last night was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her.
But she was mad at Stef. Why hadn’t he warned her? What if they got caught? Her mom would freak, but what about Zach? She pictured the look on his face—disappointment, anger, expressions he’d never used on her.
Another thought had been building in the back of her mind. Stef seemed to know so much about chemicals, and the way he’d acted last night, so sure of everything, made her think that he knew what he was doing. Last week, there had been a fire at an abandoned house. A girl in her class had been talking about it because her house was nearby. A shiver went down Jessie’s spine. Could Stef be the one who started it?
Jessie got up and pulled on her robe, the fuzzy fabric brushing up against her chest, sending that weird fluttery feeling over her skin. She pulled the fabric tighter, then shuffled into the kitchen. She ate breakfast standing up, remembering the fire trucks streaking past her house, their red lights washing over everything. The sirens were so loud she worried it w
ould wake her mom, so she hid under her covers, waiting, wondering when her mom would come in, but she didn’t.
Her mom’s room overlooked the side of the house and Mrs. Tanner’s dahlia garden. Even in October it was packed with bright-colored flowers. Her mom’s window was open a few inches but the room still smelled like old wood and sheets that needed washing.
Jessie stepped to her mom’s tall dresser and pulled the top drawer open. Inside was a silky heap of underwear and bras. The stretchy sports bra Jessie wore every day was starting to cut into her shoulders. She also had a rash under her arms where the edge, so tight now, was rubbing. Other girls in her grade wore a real bra. Those high school girls she saw putting on makeup in the hallway had to be wearing them too.
Carefully, Jessie moved the garments around—the cool, silky fabric feeling weird in her fingers. Did her mom wear this fancy stuff for Zach? The thought of them doing it made her feel weird. Sometimes she heard them through the walls.
Something bright blue in the back of the drawer caught Jessie’s eye. It wasn’t stretched out like some of the others. The thick fabric felt silky. There was a stiffness to it that freaked her out. This is supposed to be comfortable? she wondered. She took a moment to work up her courage, then pulled off her t-shirt and rolled the tight sports bra up and over her head. A painful heaviness pulled at her chest. She fingered the mark on her broken skin, a red, ropy line that arced across her lower ribs. She blew cool air over the raised welts under her arms. There must be something she could put on it, maybe she would check her mom’s drawers.
The blue bra in her hands felt unfriendly and hard. She slipped her arms through the straps. The fabric touched her nipple and she recoiled at the strange feeling—like a tickle gone too far. It felt better when the fabric was pulled tight. But Jessie struggled with fastening the back. She had already examined the funny little hooks but couldn’t work them now that they were behind her.