by Archer Mayor
“She said something like, ‘Joe’s not going to like this,’ but I’m not sure that she does,” Beverly said. “She is still a kid, after all. Saying something and believing it is often a stretch.”
“Well,” he said, trying to be hopeful, “she’s likely to be more the police department’s problem than mine, given her beat.”
He suddenly shifted in his seat to check his pager, and then reached into his pocket to pull out his cell phone.
“You mind?” he asked her.
She smiled. “Of course not.”
He dialed the same number that Willy had earlier, listened for a bit, replied, “White River? Really? Okay. Thanks,” and hung up.
Beverly leaned forward eagerly. “Did I hear you say White River? Do we have a field trip as dessert?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s up to you. You invited me to dinner; I’m not about to start calling the shots.”
She indicated the mostly empty plates before them. “We were almost done. If I’m invited, I’d love to come. Is it something I’m going to end up seeing on my table?”
He signaled to the waiter. “I don’t think so. It’s an arson at the GreenField Grocers warehouse. Apparently quite a mess. Dispatch told me Sam and Willy are responding, and Lester may be on his way. And,” he added with both eyebrows raised, “of course you’re invited.”
“I love it,” she said. “You do know how to show a girl a fun time.”
It wasn’t until they were crossing the parking lot, heading toward their cars, that Joe turned to her and said, “You never told me your second piece of news.”
“Oh,” she said, shaking her head and getting out her keys, “compared to Rachel, it’s pretty small bananas. I’ve been invited to teach pathology by the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, part-time.”
He stopped in his tracks. “What? Talk about burying the lead. You’re leaving the medical examiner’s office?”
She chuckled. “No, no. Hardly anything like that. I’m simply cutting back a little to try a new opportunity. It’s a yearlong trial to discover if it’s a good fit—an experiment. I love my job too much to give it up, but, by the same token, I couldn’t resist seeing how this feels. I hope it will be a win–win for everyone.”
By now, they were standing between their two cars. They’d decided to drive separately to nearby White River Junction, in case Joe ended up being stuck there.
“Actually,” she continued. “I was thinking it might be useful to Rachel, as well. If I were to buy a place somewhere halfway between Hanover and Brattleboro, she would have a place to escape to when she needed a break, while I’d have a pied-à-terre that could double as an investment. I’m hoping it won’t turn into a typical mother–daughter nightmare, since—between being in Burlington half the week and working days at Geisel—I actually won’t be there much.”
Joe tilted his head slightly to one side and grinned at her. “Halfway to Brattleboro, huh? You know that’s gonna be too close for me to ignore. In your calculations, have you allowed for the odd visit by a strange man, now and then?”
She laughed and unlocked her door. “I have, actually. Or at least, I was hoping to.”
He turned her toward him and kissed her invitingly. “Count on it,” he promised, feeling lighter in heart than he’d expected. “I think it’s a terrific plan.”
She tightened her grip of him before looking into his face, laughing. “Thank God,” she said.
He tilted his head slightly. “What?” he asked.
“I didn’t quite tell you everything.”
“What?” he repeated.
“I’ve already bought it. A house. In Windsor.”
His smile widened. “You’re kidding. You own it?”
“Almost. I’m ninety percent along. It was too good to pass up, even if all I did was rent it out or resell it. Then, when the Geisel offer firmed up, I began thinking of it as something more than a good business deal.”
His mind flooded with delight and doubt at once, both of them exciting. He was astonished at how happy he felt, despite his natural, inborn sense of caution.
He kissed her again. “You do know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”
* * *
From the outside, as they drove into view, the fire scene resembled a training film. Response vehicles were there in droves, sparkling with lights and making the neighborhood pulse with LED strobes and deep-throated diesel engines. Of fire or smoke, however, there was not a sign—as if the special effects crew hadn’t yet set those up. Instead, there was an enormous, hulking, blank-faced behemoth of a building, squatting like the base of a half-built, windowless skyscraper, making the largest fire trucks look like scattered toys. Running along its entire length—as far as visible—an uncountable string of closed truck bay doors stretched out in both directions, suggesting the purpose of this otherwise daunting structure.
Joe and Beverly parked well on the periphery, and walked together toward a white tent filled with uniformed people—the incident command center.
“I had no idea it was so big,” she said as they approached arm in arm.
“A half-million square feet, I think,” he said, taking it in. “And almost fifty feet high.”
“And not a window in sight,” she added. “A monument to single-minded purpose.”
He laughed. “That about sums it up.”
Joe was preparing for the ritual of introductions and sorting through echelons on his way to the incident commander—normally the chief of the primary fire company—when a voice called his name from among the dozens of haphazardly parked vehicles.
“Joe. My God. How long’s it been? They had to burn down half the town to get you up here? Talk about being hard to get.”
Joe stopped, his hand on Beverly’s arm, and squinted into the blinding surroundings. Out from among the strobe lights stepped a narrow-hipped, broad-shouldered man wearing turnout gear stamped with the initials and logo of the Vermont State Police.
Joe stuck out a hand in greeting. “Jonathon Michael. I thought you’d be flying a desk by now. Or learning to fish in retirement.”
Michael closed in for a half hug on top of the handshake, taking in Hillstrom as he did so.
Joe conducted the formalities. “Beverly Hillstrom, Jonathon Michael, of the arson unit. You still are, aren’t you?”
“It’s in my bones,” Michael admitted. “I can’t seem to do anything else. Nor do I want to, which is why I’m stringing it out as long as they’ll let me.”
He shook Beverly’s hand. “And you brought the ME. Now, that was thoughtful, if a little pessimistic. You know something we don’t, Doc?”
“No, no,” she said with emphasis. “I’m merely a tourist tonight.”
“We were having dinner nearby when the call came in,” Joe explained.
“What happened?” Beverly asked.
Michael held up a forefinger authoritatively. “Aha. You happen to be asking the right person. At least, let’s hope you are, or the rest of these guys’re gonna wonder why I’m here.”
He dropped his voice slightly to add, “And not to hurt any feelings, but if you’d like an insider’s tour of the damage, don’t go to them. Just follow me.”
As they continued toward the colossal building, cutting between large trucks with engines idling, Jonathon kept talking, shouting over his shoulder as he led the way.
“Most of the crews are about to cut out anyhow. The fires are out, the structure is intact and fine, and the damage—considering what was at risk—was amazingly light.”
“Mom?” a young woman’s voice cut in, jarringly at odds with the circumstances.
The trio stopped abruptly. From the shadow cast by a truck, a young woman emerged, dressed in hiking boots and cargo pants, her torso crisscrossed by the straps of two cameras and an equipment bag.
Beverly was the first to speak. “Rachel? My God. What’re you doing here?”
The girl looked slightly nonplussed. “I’m on
my first assignment.”
As the two women embraced, Joe explained to Michael, “Rachel Reiling, Beverly’s daughter, newly hired as the Brattleboro Reformer’s photographer.”
“And Vermont Digger,” Rachel said, her eyes gleaming, shaking hands awkwardly because of her equipment, and adding, “They’re why I’m here, actually, this being a little outside the Reformer’s turf.”
“I wondered,” Joe commented as he introduced their host. Vermont Digger was a recent journalistic innovation: an exclusively online news outlet that was gaining a good reputation and financial momentum, largely thanks to the fact that it needed no printing press, fancy headquarters building, or costly method of distribution. It had a bare-bones staff, but also called on stringers—like Rachel—whose services were made available by their employers.
“Congratulations,” Joe said to her, giving her a high five. “How’re you faring in this mess? Has anyone yelled at you yet?”
“Not so far. They’ve been really sweet. But it’s not like I’m in the way out here, either.” She jerked a thumb at the towering blank wall beside them. “All the action’s been inside.”
Jonathon laughed. “Ah. We got you, didn’t we? Not enough doors to sneak through. Bummer.”
He suddenly gave them a conspiratorial look and drew them close together to say, as quietly as he could in the surrounding noise, “If you promise to keep it under your hat, I think I might be able to give you a small welcoming gift.”
Her face lit up. “Really? You’ll let me in?”
He smiled broadly. “Briefly. You can step in, take a couple of shots, and step back out. It’ll be worth your while.”
Joe cautioned him. “You sure? You could be retired prematurely.” Technically, this was breaching a crime scene. Not something to take lightly.
“Nah,” Michael reassured him in an aside. “We’re good. It’s wicked dramatic inside, with the smoke and weird lighting, but nothing’s really going on, at least not on the other side of that door. It’ll give the kid a boost.”
He stepped back, bowed slightly, and ushered them forward, adding to Joe, “Trust me. I’m a big cheese here.”
“You said, ‘fires’ earlier,” Beverly prompted as they resumed walking. “Assuming you can still speak freely.”
He shrugged the notion off. “Oh, sure. Yeah. I’ve done hundreds of these investigations over the years, as Joe can tell you. And there’ve been times when I’ve really had to scratch my head, trying to figure out the cause.”
He reached a surprisingly small door, given the context of the wall around it, pulled it open, and showed them through, instantly plunging them into relative quiet.
“This time, though,” he finished, “a five-year-old could’ve nailed it.”
He introduced them to their new surroundings with a wave of the arm. “Welcome to my crime scene. As for you,” he addressed Rachel, “start shooting. You’ve got under a minute.”
To his neophyte guests, what they were facing was nothing less than astonishing. The scope and dimensions of almost everything before them reduced their size to ants—an impression enhanced by how the thousands of tiny, distant, overhead LEDs barely dented the dark void of the warehouse’s interior—or the somber fogbank of slowly thinning smoke that still hugged the ceiling and made each light radiate like a star.
The sting and odor of the recent blazes accompanied it all, making Joe think of some melodramatic rendering of hell.
Beverly had a different take. “It’s like being in outer space,” she commented as her daughter darted about to catch the best shots she could. “Completely cut off.”
“It’s actually brighter than usual,” Michael told her. “All these lights are normally motion-activated, to save energy, so the lighting only works as you move. We overrode that to see better.”
He turned his attention to Rachel. “You good?”
She straightened after one last picture, smiling broadly. “Better than that. This was awesome. Thank you so much.”
He patted her shoulder. “Don’t thank me. We never met.” He reached behind her and opened the door again. “Now everyone’ll wonder how the hell you got those. Have a great career. I don’t doubt we’ll run into each other again. It’s that kind of state.”
Rachel waved to them as she stepped outside, saying, “See ya, Mom. Thanks again.”
After closing the door firmly, Michael walked to the middle of a large open area glistening with water, where, during regular operations, the shipping side of the enterprise readied pallets to be fed through the long row of truck bays and into an endless rotation of tractor trailers. He indicated the tall steel racks before them, reaching beyond their vision into the height and depth of the building.
“From what we’ve put together so far, five MHEs—floor jacks, forklifts, hi-lows, what they lump together as ‘material-handling equipment’—were somehow rigged to burst into flames within fifteen minutes of each other, in five different parts of the warehouse. Luckily, all but one of those ignitions pretty much stayed put, consuming the vehicle only and releasing some sulfuric gas from the batteries. The one exception was a floor jack that went up beside a stack of lighter fluid. That made more of a mess.”
He turned to smile encouragingly. “Still, given the options, between the sprinkler system, the overhead fans, the warehouse crew’s initial response, and the fire guys reacting like Navy SEALs, management shouldn’t complain. They may have lost some serious bucks because of this, but they should be up and running, at least partly, in pretty short order. In my book, it’s a frigging miracle.”
“You been able to isolate the mechanism of ignition?” Joe asked.
Michael smiled at Beverly. “Watch out. He’s starting to sound nerdy and official. I hope you came by separate cars.”
She laughed. “We did.”
“Good,” he replied. “’Cause we’ve barely begun. I’m putting money on somebody having monkeyed with the batteries of all five MHEs. How that was done, and especially by whom, I have no clue.”
He looked meaningfully at Joe before adding, “That’s what you and I are probably gonna spend the rest of the night trying to figure out. You got reinforcements coming?”
“I do,” Joe said.
Beverly leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. “That’s my cue, Special Agent Gunther. I will officially see myself out.” She then surprised Michael with the same gesture—unheard of from a woman well known throughout law enforcement for her observance of strict procedure. “I cannot thank you enough for what you officially did not do for my daughter.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Nice digs,” Willy commented, stepping up into the mobile command center and looking around as he removed his latex glove with his teeth and opened the zipper to his soot-stained Tyvek suit. “Whaddya say we get one of these, boss?” he asked Joe over his shoulder.
Joe was following him in, mimicking his gestures, the second in a line of people who had just spent the past six hours inside the cavernous GreenField warehouse, conducting interviews, collecting evidence, taking pictures and video, and documenting the source of the multiple fires.
“Sure. Why not? I bet we’ve got that much in petty cash.”
Next came Lester, Sammie, and Jonathon Michael, each one resembling an exhausted, trashed, Tyvek-clad Ghostbuster—minus the backpacks.
In turn, they settled down, making room for several technicians from the crime lab. By the time the door was slammed, the trailer, rigged with a long thin conference table between two opposing benches, smelled of hardworking bodies perfumed with damp smoke.
No one cared. Not only had they gotten used to their circumstances, they were beyond happy to sit down.
Joe readily conceded their shared exhaustion. “Jesus,” he let out in a sigh while opening a plastic water bottle. “Talk about a workout. I thought we were the Sherlock Holmeses of this business. All brains and theories.”
“Welcome to my world,” Michael told him, wiping his face with
a large red bandanna. “Now’s when you get to do that, after you’re too tired to think straight.”
“I like it,” Willy volunteered, massaging his bad arm, which he’d almost managed to forget about in the interim—and was struggling to do now. “It appeals to the geek in me.”
That part was truthful enough. Running at odds with most people’s perceptions of him, Willy was not exclusively dismissive, impatient, and action-driven by nature. He acted that way often enough. But to those who worked closest to him, he was known for watching, waiting, and pondering beyond the patience of the most stalwart fisherman.
“Me, too,” Michael agreed with him, smiling broadly. “Rarely get enough of it, though.”
“So, in the interests of time and a need for sleep,” Joe suggested, “what did we get, all told?”
Sammie, predictably, had that in hand, spreading stained and damp field reports across the tabletop, including photographs they’d printed out in the general manager’s office.
As she distributed them, Jonathon spoke. “Mostly, the hard part with arsons is finding the point of ignition. From there, you can identify the source, if you’re lucky. After that, maybe you locate some evidence, and finally, you build your narrative of who did what, when, and by using what.
“In this case, we had more people than we could count tell us that the points of ignition were five separate electrically powered MHEs—specifically their batteries—which thereby technically created five different crime scenes. The unusual aspect became the randomly mobile nature of these retooled incendiary devices.
“Each of the teams we put out onto the warehouse floor,” he continued, “came back with the same conclusion: None of the MHEs appears to have been sent to a target. Nor was the overall goal to burn down the building, notwithstanding the damage where the lighter fluid cases were. This then sent us to our sixth crime scene, the battery-changing station at the far north end of the warehouse, where we think each MHE was altered.”