The Blackout

by K J Kalis

  She sucked in her breath. There was a connection to Theta Sigma Delta at the marina fire, too. Kat didn’t have all the answers, but she knew she needed to tell Freddie. Kat jumped up from his desk and ran down the steps. She burst through the doors to the common room, “Freddie! I think I know who is starting the fires!”

  Freddie, still curled up with Jack on the couch playing video games, turned his head slowly, his red hair tracing a half-circle in the air as he looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think the church fire and the marina fire are connected. Maybe the transformers and the blue dots, too. I need to show you!”

  Freddie unfolded himself slowly from the couch. “All right, Jack. You are going to have to get Van to substitute for me before your mom blows a blood vessel.”

  Jack nodded and rolled his eyes, staring at the screen, “She does that. Just ignore her.”

  Freddie followed Kat back up to his office, Kat taking the steps two at a time. Kat started to speak, holding her hands up, “Please don’t be mad. I was curious about the church fire. I saw the file on your desk…”

  “So, you got all sneaky peeky on me?”

  “Yeah, sorry. But I think you’ll be happy with what I found.”

  Freddie squinted, his hands folded across his chest. “All right. Let’s give you a go as an arson investigator. Consider this your interview.”

  Kat couldn’t tell if he was mad or frustrated. She hoped he’d change his mind once he saw what she found. She walked behind the desk and opened the file. “Look at this here.” She pointed to the images of the pictures hung on the wall at the church. “Strange, right? Strange that when everything else in the church burned, these didn’t.”

  “Maybe. Could have just been a cold spot in the fire. That happens all the time.”

  “Well, the faces looked familiar to me. I couldn’t remember where I’d seen them or even if I had seen them at all. A few days ago, I was doing background research on Bart Walsh. He was a member of that fraternity I told you about, Theta Sigma Delta.”

  “Right. We found a matchbook at the marina fire from that fraternity. Couldn’t figure out how it fits. I’m thinking maybe he dropped it if he started the fire himself.”

  “When I was doing background on Bart, I looked at his social profiles, including Theta Sigma Delta.” She turned her laptop to face him. “Those people look familiar?”

  Freddie unfolded his arms and leaned over, staring at the computer. “Are those the same people in the pictures?”

  Kat held up the copy from Freddie’s file. “You tell me.”

  Freddie whistled. “They look the same to me. You think the husband of these two people is the one who is setting the fires — at least the marina and the church fire?”

  Kat nodded, “There’s definitely a link. This Lewis guy, his family dies. He and Bart were in the same fraternity. There has to be more to the story.”

  Freddie picked up the phone on his desk, “I’ve gotta call Yasmin. This might have just gone beyond our pay grade.”

  The call with Yasmin only took a few seconds. She was on the road and said she’d stop by the station in a few minutes. As soon as Freddie got off the phone, Kat said, “What do you think?”

  “I think you passed your interview. Let’s see what Yasmin says. For all her bluster, she’s a good agent.”

  The phone rang on Freddie’s desk, the color draining from his face. “Okay. Yeah, thanks.”

  Kat furrowed her brow, “What was that about?”

  “The Sauk Valley fire. They just found a couple. They’re dead.” He stared at Kat blankly, “The fires that took your house just became a murder investigation.”

  “Murder?”

  “Yeah. We found three transformers blown off of their poles at the bottom of the valley. That’s what started the fire.”

  Kat started to pace. “How’s that possible? We had no power! How could power surge to a transformer that wasn’t even on?” The facts of the fire that had nearly killed them crashed down around her. The power outage, the firefighters at her door, running for their lives after finding Woof, rescuing the kids from the bus, learning that their house was gone, likely burned to the ground – it was overwhelming. She sat down in a chair near Freddie’s desk. Her life, as she knew it was gone. She wasn’t the only one. She knew Jack would need help. The people in the community would need help if they even returned to Sauk Valley. Kat felt cut off from her past and the future, not knowing what would happen next.

  She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to avoid a panic attack. She’d had a long run of time without them until the meeting with Yasmin. No more. She could feel the shadow following her, waiting for the right time to pounce.

  “Kat?” Freddie’s voice broke through her jumbled thoughts. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just a lot to process.”

  Freddie nodded and lifted the handset on his office phone. “I think we’d better loop Van in.”

  Kat nodded. Freddie called down to the common room and had one of the firefighters who had been left behind send Van upstairs. Kat looked at Freddie, a spark of fear in her. Freddie reached for her, covering her cold hand with his warm one. “Jack will be fine down there. No one will let anything happen to him.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Van came in Freddie’s office and stood in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

  Freddie stood up, gathering up his file on the church fire. “Well, it looks like your wife has saved me a lot of legwork, that’s what.” Freddie quickly brought Van up to speed on the link between the church fire and the marina fire, pointing out the images on the social media feed of Theta Sigma Delta and the pictures that had been hung on the wall of the church. Freddie leaned over and pulled another file off of his desk and leafed through the pages, sitting back down in the chair. “Here’s the picture that we took of the matchbook.”

  “Looks like someone wanted it found,” Van said, picking it up.

  “You could say that.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was Yasmin. Kat looked at her. She was dressed in a dark suit, her long black hair pulled into a low ponytail behind her neck. Kat wondered if she dressed the same way every day. “You called?” Yasmin said.

  “Yeah. We’ve got some stuff for you to look at.”

  Yasmin looked at Kat and Van, ‘You guys okay? Heard you were in a fire this morning.”

  Kat nodded.

  Freddie walked through the progression once more, starting with the first fires they had found, the pictures Theresa had sent to Kat and then moving on to the marina fire and the church fire. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at it. “Okay, we should have the images back from the Sauk Valley fire.” Freddie folded himself down in front of his computer. He breathed, “Mercy,” and shook his head. Kat frowned, what had he found?

  A printer in the corner of his office whirred to life. Freddie got up and pulled the pictures from it as they came off. “Chuck just sent these over. He went back down to the base of the canyon after they checked him at the hospital.”

  Kat’s heart skipped a beat. What was Chuck doing out of the hospital already? “Is he okay?”

  Freddie nodded. “Yeah. A couple of first and second-degree burns. They are small. He’ll be fine. Par for the course when your coworker is fire.” Freddie laid the pictures out on the table, overlapping them slightly so the group could see them. He pointed, “Chuck said that at the base of the canyon, he found three transformers in close proximity that had blown off their poles.”

  Yasmin touched one of the photos, “Is that normal?”

  Freddie shook his head. “Not at all. Normally if a transformer goes down, we see the bolts come loose and the transformer drops directly below the pole. That hasn’t happened. Some kind of surge is snapping the poles and throwing the transformers out in about a twenty-foot arc.”

  Kat interrupted, “What Freddie hasn’t mentioned is that the power was off
in that area.”

  “It was off?” Yasmin said the words slowly, as if she was digesting the scene.

  “It was. And, Chuck reported there were three transformers that were in close proximity.” Freddie reached for another file. “These are the images from the first fires that Kat reported to me. If you look on this map, you can see the transformers are spread out. Chuck said the fire from last night resulted from the three transformers blowing in a tight pattern.” Freddie leaned back in his chair. “Our arsonist is progressing. He’s now figured out that if he blows three transformers that are close together, there will be enough energy for the fire to get some steam. That one last night,” Freddie paused, “it was bad. Kat and Van nearly lost their lives.” He paused, his face hardened for a moment, “We just found a couple that didn’t make it out.”

  Kat watched as Yasmin walked to the window, her back turned to the group. A quiet descended. Kat looked at each of the people in the room. They seemed to be lost in their own thoughts.

  Yasmin turned back, “What you are saying is that the information we got from Theresa Walsh, plus the marina fire, plus the church fire, they are all connected?”

  “Looks that way,” Van said. “The common denominator is Bart Walsh. The question is, what do we do about it?”

  41

  The group sat in the room for another few minutes, Yasmin sending a couple of texts to her team and Freddie calling Chuck to see if he found anything else that he hadn’t reported. As Kat left the room to check on Jack, she heard him say, “Yeah, these blackouts don’t do us any good if someone can override them and send a surge to the poles. Might as well leave the power on…”

  In the common room, Jack was still absorbed by video games. One of the other firefighters had taken Freddie’s spot and they were laughing when she came into the room. “Doing okay, buddy?”

  “Yup, Mark is really good. Better than Freddie. He’s teaching me some tricks.”

  “Good.” Kat glanced at Woof, who was perched on the couch with his head in Jack’s lap. “How’s Woof doing?”

  “I think he’s fine. He might be a little sad about our house, but I told him we will be okay.” Apparently, while she was talking to Freddie, Van told Jack about the house.

  Kat smiled. Jack was doing what she hoped he would. He was transferring his fear onto Woof and working through it. That was at least one bright spot. “I’m going to head back to Freddie’s office. If you need anything, come and get me, okay?”

  Jack nodded. Mark, the firefighter sitting next to Jack looked at her as she turned away. “Heard you lost your house today. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to it fast enough.”

  The kindness from a perfect stranger knocked the wind out of Kat’s lungs. She stammered, “Thanks. We’ll be okay.”

  Mark nodded. “I’ll watch him. Go do what you need to do.”

  Kat turned to walk back to Freddie’s office when she heard a noise behind her. It was Tyrant. She looked up at Kat, her ears up. “I’m okay, girl. Come on. You’ll like upstairs.”

  Kat and Tyrant went up the flight of steps to Freddie’s office. Van, Freddie and Yasmin were sitting, talking about what to do next.

  “Well, look who joined us!” Freddie said, patting his hands on his thighs. “Come ‘ere, girl.” Tyrant walked over to Freddie and let him scratch her back. “She likes me!”

  Kat shook her head and smiled. Freddie could go from talking about arson to being happy to see a dog in the blink of an eye. “So, what did we decide?” she asked, leaning against the wall.

  “The common denominator is definitely Bart Walsh,” Yasmin said from the edge of the room. Kat had watched her when Tyrant came in. She didn’t move toward her and Tyrant seemed to watch her from the corner of her eye. Kat felt the same way about Yasmin, but she wasn’t sure why. “I’ve got a couple of agents following him right now. He’s at an offsite meeting. I say we crash it.”

  Kat raised her eyebrows, surprised that Yasmin would take that aggressive of a step. “I’m in.” The rest of the group nodded. As they started down the steps, Kat remembered Jack. She looked at Freddie, but before she could ask, he put a hand on her shoulder, “Mark will stay with him and the dogs. That’s his job today. Victim support we’ll call it.”

  Kat sighed, grateful for Freddie and his easy ways. The loosely assembled team piled into their vehicles and headed out. Kat and Van rode with Freddie, Yasmin took her unmarked FBI sedan, another agent waiting for her in the car.

  “Who’s that with Yasmin?” Kat asked from the backseat.

  Freddie smiled, driving with one hand on the wheel, “Probably her bodyguard.”

  Van smirked, “You think she’d need one?”

  “Not a chance.”

  * * *

  The offsite meeting that Yasmin’s agents had trailed Bart Walsh to was in the busiest part of the city. At a couple of points, both Yasmin and Freddie turned on their emergency lights to get to the building in all the traffic. Freddie pulled off to the side of the road, parking right behind Yasmin and right in front of what looked to be a bank. Kat glanced up out of the side window and realized that it was Bank of Western America, one of the oldest and most prestigious banks west of the Mississippi. “Lots of old money at this bank,” she muttered as they got out.

  There were serious-minded people walking up and down the sidewalks in front of the building, wearing business attire and clicking high heels. The bank was flanked by a row of older structures Kat imagined held law firms, accounting firms and stockbrokers. There were parts of California that were very progressive. This wasn’t one of those places.

  Yasmin stopped the team just outside the doors. “He’s coming out of a meeting now. My agents and I will grab him in the lobby as he comes down. You’re welcome to come in but stay back until we have him under control. He’s got his bodyguard with him.”

  Kat chewed her lip. “How do you know he’s coming out of a meeting? You said he was offsite, but that’s all.”

  Yasmin smiled, a perfect set of white teeth emerging from between her lips. “You're not the only one that can use surveillance. We just do it legally. He’s a person of interest.” Yasmin turned on her heel and went into the building, her flock of agents following her.

  Kat shook her head and looked at Van and Freddie. “I can’t believe her.”

  “Let’s just see where this goes, okay?” Van said.

  They entered the building. The doors gave a whoosh as cool air descended over them, the quiet of the lobby pressing onto their skin. Kat looked around. The entrance of the bank, three stories of open stonework and marble, had long burgundy velvet curtains that hung around the windows. They crossed the highly polished floors as they approached the lobby desk. “We’ll meet him as he gets out of the elevators,” Yasmin said.

  A uniformed security guard approached Yasmin and her agents, his hands telling them to stop. Yasmin flashed her ID with a warning, “Don’t get in my way or you’ll find yourself back at my office with an obstruction of justice charge on you.” The guard stepped away. They waited.

  To their right and left were waiting areas with leather couches and coffee tables, the floor covered in plush carpet. Full-sized trees had been brought in to soften the area. There was a long marble-covered reception desk in the center of the lobby with wide steps leading to the banks of elevators, the lights above them moving silently up and down as they delivered passengers to their destination.

  An elevator at the far right of the bank pinged quietly, alerting the reception staff that someone had descended. Their heads turned. The doors opened. Kat saw Yasmin take a couple of steps forward and stop. Out of the elevator came Bart Walsh with three other men. Kat squinted. One of them was Sal Manko. The other two she didn’t recognize, but they were carrying briefcases. Attorneys or accountants, she guessed.

  As Bart came down the steps, Yasmin approached him, “Mr. Walsh, I need a moment of your time.”

  The entire group stopped, staring at Yasmin. One of the men steppe
d forward, “I’m his attorney. What’s this about?”

  Bart held his hand out, stopping the man. “Didn’t I talk to you about my wife?”

  “That’s correct. Have you found her?”

  “No.

  “Then why are you here?”

  “We need more information to try to find your wife.”

  “I’ve given you everything I have.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case, Mr. Walsh.”

  Kat watched the conversation between Bart and Yasmin as it developed, the FBI agents standing in the way of him leaving the building. Sal Manko stared at her with small black eyes. She looked away.

  Bart shifted the coat he was carrying from one arm to the next. “And what do you think is going on?”

  “I think either you have been doing some bad things or there is a connection to someone in your past. Someone who wants to do you harm. Want to tell me which one?”

  Kat watched as Yasmin pulled her phone out of her pocket, scrolled and lifted it up to Bart’s face. “What’s this? It was left at the marina fire where your boat was destroyed. I’ve now got people missing and a woman in the hospital with second and third-degree burns to her face.”

  Kat couldn’t see what Yasmin had shown Bart, but from their conversation, she imagined it was the matchbook from Theta Sigma Delta that Chuck and Freddie had found.

  Bart looked at the marble floor. Kat waited, her hands clenched. If they didn’t get some help from Bart, things would be much more difficult. “Guys go outside. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The man who had identified himself as Bart’s attorney protested, “Don’t you want me here? You shouldn’t answer their questions.”

  Bart frowned, “You do contract law. Go outside. I’ll be out in a minute.”