Daniel made a few more notes, his eyes intent on the paper. The tip of his tongue stuck out between his teeth as he wrote. Finally he paused, although he didn’t look up.
“Do you and Dad ever fight?”
Lacey set her chin in her hand and thought over that question carefully. “Well, it kinda depends on how you define fighting. We’ve never screamed and yelled at each other, and we’ve never called each other names or thrown things. But we have disagreed, and we have argued when we’ve had different ideas about something.” She smiled at him. “Some people might call that fighting.”
Daniel pondered that, his eyes still down on his paper, although Lacey doubted he was seeing it. “So what’d you do?” he asked quietly. “How’d you fix it?”
Lacey pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She thought back to the few times she and Sam had disagreed. There weren’t many, but at the time, they’d seemed profound.
“I guess,” she said, piecing it out, “the first thing we did was kind of step back. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotions of the moment, but if we take a step back, put a little distance between us and the problem, it’s a little easier to see it more clearly. Then… we listened.” She tilted her head at him. “Have you ever been talking with someone and been so focused on what you’re going to say that you don’t really hear what they’re saying?”
Daniel was looking at her now, his dark eyes clear and thoughtful. He bit his lip, then nodded. “I think so,” he said.
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I think we all have at one time or another. But if we stop, step back, and just listen… we might find out things aren’t exactly the way we first thought. If we listen to the other side of the story, we might realize that what we originally thought, or felt, wasn’t the truth after all. Kind of like that store manager thinking you were the one who stole the phone. Once you explained what really happened, he’d know he’d been wrong.”
Daniel absorbed that, and Lacey could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.
“With you and Dad… who was right? Who was wrong?”
Lacey chuckled. “I think we take turns. Your dad and I come at issues from very different directions. We come from different cultures, different experiences, different thought processes. Sometimes he has a better grasp on a problem than I do, and sometimes my way works better. The point is, it doesn’t matter who’s right. What matters is that we come together and figure out the best way to solve the problem. We apologize and move on.”
Daniel glanced out the door to where his dad and Kenzie were playing with clay. Kenzie held up a coil of clay like a wiggly worm and giggled.
“It’s hard to apologize,” Daniel said.
“Oh, yeah,” Lacey agreed without hesitation. “At first. It gets easier the more you do it. You start to realize that apologizing doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re strong. Smart. Willing to see both sides. If you refuse to apologize, stay mad, you know what happens?”
Daniel shook his head, his full attention on Lacey.
She shrugged. “Nothing. You stay mad. And everyone else goes on about their lives.”
His gaze drifted away from her, but she saw him nod, just a barely perceptible dip of his chin. When he looked back at her, he smiled briefly.
“Okay, thanks,” he said. He gathered up his notebook and pencil.
“So you got everything you need on Miranda?” she asked.
“I think so.” He stood up. “If I have any questions…”
“Just ask,” she told him. “I’ll be right here.”
~~~
That evening when they took the kids home, Sam and Lacey walked with them to their apartment door. Kenzie, as always, wanted a big goodbye hug from both. This time, Lacey was surprised when Daniel came to give her a brief, embarrassed hug, as well, then quickly disappeared inside.
“What was that about?” Sam asked as the pair walked back to the car.
Lacey shrugged, smiling briefly. “I just helped him with his homework.”
~~~
EIGHT
Monday morning, Lacey gathered up all the paperwork related to the warehouse collapse and scanned it all again, just in case something new jumped out at her. It didn’t. They fought the last half of rush hour traffic on their way down to Inglewood and pulled up in front of the ravaged building a little before nine.
Ray’s truck was not in evidence, so they climbed the concrete steps to the loading dock and surveyed the site.
“Looks like they cleared out more of the debris,” Lacey noted.
Sam nodded. “That’ll make it a little easier to walk,” he said.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” she asked. Scanning the broken, blackened wreckage, she thought this case mirrored the physical debris—a jumbled mess with no clear path through.
“No. But I’ll know it when I feel it.”
The squeal of tires caught their attention. Ray’s truck rounded the corner at a good clip, then charged onto the lot. Ray stood on the brakes and jammed the truck into park, hoping out before the vehicle stopped rocking.
“Morning,” he called as he took the steps two at a time. “I’m afraid I can’t stay. I’ve got a situation with one of my other properties. You don’t need me to be here, do you?”
“No, that’s fine,” Sam said.
“All right. Just be careful, okay? I don’t need a lawsuit for injuries on top of everything else.”
Yeah, six deaths is probably enough, Lacey thought. “But I did want to ask you something,” she said. “We went over all the reports and didn’t find anything conclusive to refute the insurance company’s findings. Was there anything in particular about the collapse or the fire that you thought was suspicious?”
“Yeah,” he snorted. “Just the fact that a building is supposed to be able to withstand a little rain. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
Lacey hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Seven inches in less than an hour is more than just a ‘little’ rain. The insurance company called it a catastrophic amount.”
“I don’t.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Back in the southeast, they’ve been getting twenty, thirty, forty inches in just a few days. None of those buildings have collapsed. Hell, the buildings right across the street from mine didn’t, either. How come, if mine was built to the same code?”
Sam stepped forward. “I agree. There’s something different here, something that affected your place but not the others. We’ll work on it. I think we’ll be able to piece it out.”
“Good.” Ray was much happier with Sam’s assurances than Lacey’s questions. He glanced at his watch. “Gotta go. If you need anything, call me.” He bounded down the steps to his truck.
Lacey fumed silently. Feelings, suppositions. She wanted facts, damn it. She turned to Sam.
“Sorry, Lace,” he said. “There is something different here. We just have to find it.”
She huffed out a breath. Stuffing the papers back in her pack, she got out her phone. “Okay,” she said, still feeling prickly. “I’m ready.”
Sam retraced his path. He stepped across the threshold and started in the front left. He stood for a long moment just staring at the ground. Lacey recalled there were two people in this area, and wondered if their two essences were hard to distinguish.
“Pam,” he said finally. “She’s terrified, but not for herself. It’s for her boyfriend. She actually thought she was going to get out okay. She still thought so when the debris began to hit her head, her shoulders, driving her to the ground. She still believed she’d live. But not him.” He lifted his head and stared at the back right corner. “Not him.”
Surprising Lacey, Sam abruptly headed out toward the back corner. She scrambled to follow.
The recently cleared concrete floor showed two large, greasy black marks, each the size of a Volkswagen. There was a space of about six feet between them. Sam stood before them, breathing in the air, drawing in the unseen relics of the
tragedy.
“No warning,” he said. “Talking, laughing. The only sound was the wind and the rain slapping against the outside walls. Waves of it. Ferocious but… safely outside. No fear. No time for it.” He paused. “This is where it starts. This is the place.”
He spread his hands out before him, encompassing the entire area. His gaze slid up the back wall, up to the ragged heights and the gray clouds showing through the open roof.
Abruptly, he spun around and headed back toward the front, to the right corner there. “The foreman,” he said, pacing the area. “He knew. Saw it coming, but it was too fast, too close. Ducking, covering up. Crossing himself. This is number two.” He glanced over at Lacey. “The forklift drivers were number one; this is number two.”
She nodded. She didn’t totally understand his use of the numbers, but knew it was important. The video would keep the record of it.
Immediately thereafter, Sam was crossing to the diagonal corner, the back left. Lacey didn’t think she’d ever seen him move so fast on a walk.
“This is three,” he said. He stopped in one spot, but made a tight circle with his arms out in front. “The truck driver. So angry. Just… pissed. Wasn’t supposed to be here. He’s three.” He stopped and faced the front again. “Those two are four. Pam and the manager. They’re the last.” He walked directly up to Lacey, his image on the screen growing larger until only his chest was visible.
“This is it, Lacey,” he said. “This is what happened. We’ve got it.”
~~~
NINE
She clicked off her phone. “Okay, great,” she said in a moderate voice. “Now can you explain that to me?”
“Sure. Come on.” He was already heading toward the front, didn’t even pause as he walked through the area where two people had died. He cleared the building and jogged down the concrete stairs to the parking lot. A cold drizzle had started, but he paid no attention.
Lacey tossed her phone into her pack and followed, sprinting toward the car with her pack under her arm. She dove into the driver’s seat and closed the door, then shook raindrops from her hair.
“Where’s that layout of the building?” Sam asked. He wiped a few drops from his face.
Lacey pulled the sheaf of reports from her pack and leafed through.
“The one from the ME or the construction blueprint?” she asked.
“Either,” he said. Then, “The ME’s.”
Lacey found it and handed it to him.
“Got a pen?”
She found that, too. Sam took it and began to write on the diagram, a big number one with a circle around it in the back right, a number two at the front right, a three at the back left and a four at the front left.
“This is how the roof fell,” he said. “This back right corner went first, then the front quarter, then the back left, then the front left.”
Lacey was shaking her head. “The insurance company said no. They say the entire roof collapsed at once. It was the combined weight of all the water, from the whole roof.”
“They’re wrong,” Sam said. “It was a domino thing. That back right corner went, and then everything else followed. It wasn’t the combined weight at all. The other three quarters would have held if that back right hadn’t given way.”
Lacey turned toward him, one knee up on the console so she could face him squarely. “Okay, talk to me,” she said, starting to feel some of his enthusiasm. “How do you know? What tells you this?”
“Number one,” he said, tapping the number he wrote on the diagram. “Those two forklift drivers had no clue. They didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything. They wouldn’t have, over the sound of the rain. But they were crushed where they stood—or sat. They had no time to run, no time to even try to protect themselves. They were both dead before they hit the ground.”
He moved his finger to the large circled two. “Number two. The foreman heard it, maybe saw it coming. He still didn’t have time to run, but he tried to ward it off. He at least had time to do that.”
He pointed to the back left. “Number three. He saw the entire right side of the roof fall in. He had time to run for the door, but not enough time to reach it. The roof was collapsing behind him, and caught up before he could get outside.”
Finally he tapped the front left. “Number four. Remember on the first walk when I said she had called out to her boyfriend? Calling to Jay?”
Lacey nodded. “Yes. You said she was terrified.”
“She was, but not for herself. For him. She already knew the roof in his area had collapsed. She had to try to get out, but she knew she was leaving him, that he had already been badly injured, or worse. She was afraid for him, but not for herself. She didn’t realize they were all going to die.”
As Sam spoke, Lacey pulled out the Medical Examiner’s report and scanned it. “The ME says time of death for all was approximately 3:35 p.m., plus or minus two minutes. Probably taking into account that they might not have died immediately. But he makes no differentiation between victims.”
“Well, he’s not right, but he’s not far wrong. I doubt it was more than two or three minutes between the forklift drivers and the girl and the manager. Once it started, there was no stopping it.”
Lacey frowned down at the report and the numbered diagram. “Okay, but how do we prove this? No witnesses reported any sort of chain reaction, and the victims may speak to you, but that’s not gonna hold up in a court of law. Who’s gonna corroborate this?”
Sam pulled the construction layout from the pile of papers. “Who knows the building best?”
Lacey grinned. “The architect, of course.” She took the layout and checked the company name in the legend. “I guess we’re going to see Weiskopf and Associates.”
~~~
TEN
Lacey called and got them an appointment with Stephen Liang, the lead architect on the job, but not until four that afternoon.
“Ugh,” she said when she hung up. “Four o’clock in the Wilshire district. Rush hour on steroids.” She sighed. “We might get home by six or seven.”
“I don’t think it’ll take too long,” Sam said.
“I hope not,” Lacey said. She glanced skyward out the windshield. “The rain is coming down harder, which will make downtown even more of a mess, unless it passes through and clears out by then.”
She neatened up the pile of papers, stowed them in her pack and started the car.
“We need to go by the activity center and pay our share for Daniel’s birthday,” she said. “Wanna go do that now?”
“Sure. I’d like to see what they’ve got.”
They pulled up to Roxx Plus and parked in front. The activity center took up the central third of the strip mall, a huge building that dwarfed its neighbors.
“I’d hate to ever see that place collapse,” Lacey muttered as they approached.
Once inside, she understood why the place was so huge. One side wall was dominated by a twenty-five or thirty foot climbing surface, complete with faceted faces that supplied almost every angle of slope. Several people were in the process of climbing, harnessed to safety lines but picking their way carefully among the small hand- and footholds.
A sign further back proclaimed Air Soft Paintball in flashing neon, and the tinkling, pinging sounds of a video arcade filled the air. The aroma of pizza permeated everything, and had its prescribed effect. Lacey realized she was ready for lunch.
They approached the counter and a twenty-something man greeted them.
“Welcome to Roxx Plus,” he said with a smile. “How can I help you?”
“We need to pay for a birthday party,” Lacey said. “Daniel Firecloud.”
The man punched the name into his computer. “On the 23rd?”
“Yes, that’s right. Eleven kids.”
The man frowned. “I’m only showing ten.”
Lacey turned to Sam. “Didn’t we say Daniel could invite ten kids?” she asked.
Sam dragged his eyes f
rom the activity on the climbing wall. “He said he only wanted to invite nine.”
“Oh. Okay.” She turned back to the attendant and handed him her credit card. “Here you go.”
“This is for the remaining balance?” the man asked.
“Yes.” Lacey knew Christine had already paid her half when she’d set up the reservation. It was a good thing they could split the cost; this was not a cheap clown and a pony ride.
The man rang up the sale and gave Lacey the receipt to sign.
“Okay, you’re all set,” he said as he took the signed receipt and the pen. “We’ll see you on the 23rd.”
“Thanks.” Lacey picked up one of their brochures from a display on the counter and scanned it as they walked back to the car.
“Hmm,” she said. “It says they don’t provide birthday cakes. I wonder if Christine knows that.”
“Daniel doesn’t want one,” Sam said. He slid into the passenger seat.
“He doesn’t?” Lacey got out her keys and started the car.
“Nope. No cake and no presents. He says that’s baby stuff.”
Lacey blinked at him. “No presents? That’s new. Nice, but… weird.”
Sam shrugged.
“By the way,” she said, segueing into another subject, “what’d you say to him the other night? Did you think he seemed a little less pouty yesterday?”
“Yeah, I did.” He laughed. “I told him what you said.”
Lacey furrowed her brow and tried to think back. She and Sam had had several conversations about Daniel over the past two weeks; she’d said a lot of things.
“Okay, I give,” she said. “What pearl of wisdom are you talking about?”
“Remember when we said he was stomping around like a wounded bear? And you said who wants to spend time with a wounded bear. I told him that.”
Storm Walk Page 4