Fireproof

by Alex Kava

  He ate his sandwich, sipped his coffee. He had memorized the blown-up photo he had of the guy. Although the features were mostly shadows, he thought he would recognize the guy’s build, shaggy hair, and pointy beard. But it didn’t really matter. How many guys would be coming up from a manhole after five o’clock?

  He sat and ate and sipped and watched. Thirty minutes later his butt felt numb against the cold concrete. He thought about moving to one of the grates, but there were no vacancies and he worried he might not be able to see all three manholes. The sun had disappeared behind the buildings and from the sidewalk. It would get damp and chilly very quickly.

  Tully pulled himself up and leaned against the building, looking for a warmer place. He was a bit distracted when suddenly an orange hard hat popped up out of the manhole farthest away on the other side of the street.

  CHAPTER 60

  Maggie watched Dr. Mia Ling clearing her credentials with the uniformed cop at the first checkpoint. For Ling to be here instead of Stan Wenhoff, the medical examiner, or one of Stan’s deputies, meant the bodies inside had been reduced to very little flesh and mostly bone. Pathologists worked with tissue and organs. Anthropologists were called in when there wasn’t much left to recover.

  Just before Ling ducked under the crime scene tape she saw Maggie. She didn’t bother to hide the obvious relief on her face.

  Maggie wished that all it took was a familiar face to make her more comfortable. The fire had already been put out, the building no longer in flames or spewing black smoke. Firefighters had pulled back their equipment. A rescue crew of paramedics was treating three firefighters at the mobile unit. One sat with an oxygen mask. Another’s head had been wrapped, the gauze already soaked with blood. The third was bent over beside the tire well and it looked to Maggie like he was throwing up.

  She tried to ignore her own nausea. She had just taken three ibuprofen, hoping they might dull her headache. No luck yet. In the short time it took for her to walk the hundred feet over to Dr. Ling, she noticed the woman’s look of relief change to one of concern.

  Before Ling could ask if she was okay, Maggie held up her hands in surrender.

  “Just a bad headache,” she told the doctor, deciding not to share the fact that her stomach had started to roller-coaster on her.

  “You don’t have to go inside.”

  Maggie hadn’t gone into the previous buildings. Ling was right. She didn’t have to go into this one either. But this arsonist was accelerating at an unpredictable speed. If she wanted to understand him and know how to catch him, she would have to look at the crime scene herself.

  “I need to see what he does.”

  Dr. Ling stared at her for almost a minute. Then she nodded and headed for the burned-out entrance. Before going in, Ling stopped, opened her duffel bag, and pulled out two pairs of tightly rolled up Tyvek coveralls. She handed one to Maggie.

  “I always carry extra.”

  A firefighter had given Maggie a pair of fire boots when she arrived. She had slipped them over her leather flats and they still felt like clown shoes on her feet. She kicked them off to pull on the Tyvek coveralls.

  Both women rolled up their sleeves and pant cuffs. Maggie folded and placed their jackets in the duffel bag. She stuffed her feet back into the boots while Dr. Ling tugged on a pair of her own. Ling continued her preparation, slipping on a pair of goggles and letting them dangle from her neck; then came thin leather gloves and knee pads, the latter making her look like a baseball catcher.

  Maggie slapped on a navy-blue FBI ball cap just as Ling asked, “Ready?”

  Inside, ATF investigator Brad Ivan stood between the fire chief, who towered over him, and Julia Racine. When Ivan saw Maggie, he tucked his chin and shook his head like somehow this was all her fault. Maggie followed Ling’s careful steps to the pile of rubble that had attracted the investigator’s attention. In the middle lay what looked like a thick wood door.

  The fire chief looked at Ling and immediately began in an apologetic tone, “We came in this way. I’m afraid we stepped right on top of them.”

  The debris still smoldered and it took Maggie a moment to make out shapes. A skull with hollow eye sockets that stared up at the ceiling. Beneath the charred piece of wood Maggie could see a long, blackened bone. Then suddenly she could differentiate others poking up out of the rubble.

  Flashes of light startled her. Ling had a camera and was busy carefully maneuvering around the group. Quietly and patiently nudging them back without saying a word.

  “We didn’t lift anything off the bodies yet,” the fire chief said.

  “That’s great. You did good.” And even in her own zone, Ling remained polite. She pocketed the camera and looked up at the fire chief. “Can you help me move this large piece of wood?”

  No one moved while the two slowly lifted the charred and crumbling wood. Before they set it down, Racine let out a gasp.

  “Jesus! How many people do you think are under here?”

  “They were trying to get out through this exit.”

  Maggie counted four more skulls. One body was contorted into what she knew was called the pugilistic posture, a boxer on his side. Muscles reacting to being sucked of oxygen pulled the arms up toward the shoulders, leaving the hands fisted and legs bent at the knees, like a boxer ready to deliver a punch. She had only read about it until now. It meant the victim was still alive when the flames burned through the skin, making it tighten and split open, causing the muscles to clench. Alive but overcome by smoke inhalation. Thankfully carbon monoxide builds up in the blood rapidly and causes loss of consciousness.

  Again Maggie caught herself thinking of her father. This was what he would have looked like had one of his fellow firefighters not pulled him out. As a child she didn’t understand why he looked the way that he did in his coffin. His face looked painted and his eyebrows were gone. He seemed peaceful except for the crinkle of plastic underneath his suit. It wasn’t until years later than she learned that when most of the skin and muscle have been burned away, morticians have to wrap the body—arms and legs—in plastic to keep the embalming fluid from leaking out.

  Dr. Ling took her last photo, the flash bringing Maggie’s focus back to the pile of bones and ash.

  “I need to do this slowly,” Ling told them, ready to begin and ready for them to leave. She started bringing out plastic containers and paper bags, a garden trowel, a short-handled whisk brush, and an ordinary dust pan. “A couple of technicians will be joining me.”

  “Can we help you bag the larger pieces?” Ivan offered, while Maggie had already started stepping back, ready to escape.

  “Actually, I save the torso for last. Taking the big pieces first tends to break up and disrupt the smaller ones.”

  Ling brushed at the closest skull, revealing more pieces of bone. She carefully picked up each and placed them in a plastic box she had already labeled. Maggie had become so focused, so fascinated, by Ling’s small gloved hands, their movement confident and intent, that she had almost forgotten about her own purpose for being here until Racine tugged at her elbow.

  “The chief’s ready to show us the start point.”

  She turned to see the fire chief and Ivan going back outside. She glanced at Ling, who no longer seemed to notice anyone else. As Maggie walked past her she noticed the small child’s skull Ling had just taken up out of the debris and into the palms of her hands.

  CHAPTER 61

  Cornell didn’t make a fuss this time when the tall guy in the ratty-ass green jacket asked to talk to him. Even after the man mentioned a red backpack Cornell hadn’t recognized him. He pulled out what looked like a wallet and Cornell thought he might offer him some money until he remembered he was wearing the hard hat and bright city maintenance vest. Probably wanted to complain about some potholes or sewer backup. Cornell had gotten several of those. So he was taken off guard when the wallet opened, revealing a badge.

  “You’re the guy I tripped up.”

&
nbsp; “Agent R. J. Tully. And you are?”

  “Busted.”

  But he didn’t make a run for it and Agent Tully looked surprised, almost disappointed, like he had waited for it all day long. Maybe like this would be an opportunity to pay back Cornell for sending him facedown onto the pavement.

  Cornell didn’t remember how the police cruiser appeared out of nowhere. One minute Agent Tully was telling him he wanted to ask him some questions and the next minute a cop was there snapping handcuffs on his wrists.

  “Am I under arrest?” Cornell had to ask three or four times before Agent Tully admitted he just wanted to take him in for some questions.

  Before his life on the streets Cornell had been arrested once for drunk driving. That time he had been scared shitless that his clients would find out. Funny the direction life took and how circumstances could change a person’s perspective.

  This time all Cornell thought about was how warm a holding cell might be. He knew they’d have to feed him. Maybe even give him a clean orange jumpsuit. He found himself getting excited at the possibility of a shower and the availability of a toilet. It would certainly throw off the bastard who was following him. He almost laughed, thinking about the son of a bitch watching him slide into the backseat of the police cruiser.

  He’d answer questions all night or maybe not at all. Whichever one got him a holding cell. He could outsmart these guys. His job used to have him chewing up and spitting out guys like this over lunch, sending them into tailspins with all kinds of bullshit. No problem.

  Although it would certainly be easier with his friend Jack Daniel’s.

  CHAPTER 62

  Maggie needed to breathe. She took her time following Racine, Ivan, and the fire chief. Just a half dozen deep breaths of clean, fresh air would help. That’s all she needed, but soot and ash still filled the damp night. The oversize boots made her feet heavy, like lifting blocks of concrete while trying to be careful.

  The skull in Ling’s hands had looked so small. It had to be a baby, no more than a toddler. When Maggie got the call earlier, Racine had said this one might be bad. The shops below had closed for the evening but Racine had warned her that some of the shop owners lived in apartments above. This family had come down through the shop, hoping to escape. Why hadn’t they considered using the outside fire escape? She was about to find out why.

  “There was a pile of old rags and newspapers,” the fire chief told them, pointing to a black-and-gray stack of ash now on the pavement in the alley, but then the chief was pointing up to a landing. And Maggie immediately noticed that the fire escape was pulled down.

  “He probably soaked the newspapers with gasoline. He used a piece of wood to make a little platform on top of the flammables. Then he put the chemicals on the platform. It allowed him some time to climb down and just walk off. Maybe as much as five to ten minutes.”

  “Do we know what the chemicals are yet?” Racine looked at Investigator Ivan.

  “We sent the sample residue to the FBI lab.”

  The chief continued his assessment.

  “I’m thinking one’s a solid, perhaps in crystal form. The other must be a liquid. He might even place something between them so when he pours on the liquid it has to soak through that barrier before it’s absorbed by the first chemical. When the two mix, there’s an intense reaction. A white-hot flash that immediately ignites the stack of flammables underneath.”

  He pointed his flashlight back up at the landing and moved the beam over the side of the building, showing a black smudge that rode up the wall from the fire escape landing to a hole that used to be a window.

  “The entire windowsill was splattered with gasoline. He didn’t need to break in or enter the building at all. The fire broke in for him. There were curtains hanging in the window. After the glass broke, the curtains ignited and suddenly the fire easily spread inside. It’s similar to the warehouse fires. I don’t know much about the church fires in Arlington yesterday but I understand they were started from the outside, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Racine said, “but it seems like a lot of hocus-pocus to me. How did he know it would work?”

  “Just between us, I’d say he knows what he’s doing.”

  “Wait, what do you mean? Are you saying it could be a firefighter?”

  The chief shot a look at Ivan like maybe he had already said too much or, worse, offended the ATF investigator.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Maggie said. “I’m thinking of Benjamin Christensen in Pennsylvania. I think he was a volunteer firefighter. No body count but at least a dozen fires, some landmarks.”

  “John Orr in Southern California,” the chief said.

  “That was a long time ago,” Ivan said with a scowl.

  Maggie remembered the case. Although it was thirty years ago, it had come up when she began researching serial arsonists. Orr had been a fire captain and arson investigator and had even been assigned to one of the fires he started.

  She wasn’t surprised Ivan didn’t like anyone bringing up the criminal behavior of a fellow arson investigator. Surely they had their own version of the thin blue line.

  Maggie considered Brad Ivan. There was something about him that bothered her, but she hadn’t wasted time trying to figure it out. He hadn’t been happy about the FBI’s involvement, to the point of withholding information from her and Tully. From the beginning, Brad Ivan had struck her as someone who didn’t play well with others, nor did his confrontational manner fit in with other law enforcement officials.

  He listened to the fire chief with his arms crossed over his chest and she noticed that his coat bulged tight across his midsection. She remembered his hitching up his trousers yesterday and then looking almost surprised, like a man who was used to being in shape and suddenly finding he was no longer.

  He scratched at his steel-gray hair and swiped back the swatches that climbed over his ears like he was well past a haircut. She realized all the extra weight and need for a haircut could just mean he was putting in some unexpected long hours. Which would account for his irritability. But there was something that made Maggie wonder if he was disgruntled or just exhausted.

  He was standing behind the fire chief when she saw him frown at something the chief was telling Racine. Maggie decided she needed to take a look into Ivan’s background. She found herself wondering whether he could have followed her down the manhole, hoping to catch a fleeing arsonist and maybe scare the crap out of her just for good measure. Teach the profiler how much she doesn’t know. Was that something he was capable of? Was he the man she’d seen outside her property? As an ATF investigator he could easily get access to federal employees’ information, including her private home address.

  She was considering all this when something across the street caught her attention. An empty lot had been gouged out. Stacks of concrete and piles of dirt were all that remained except for monster yellow equipment with claws and dump wagons, all parked and quiet for the night. There were construction sites all over the city, but two of them right across from arson sites? Was it a coincidence?

  CHAPTER 63

  About an hour ago Sam had been laughing with her son, watching her mother struggle to pick up a fried dumpling with chopsticks. That’s when she had heard the first siren.

  It had stopped blocks away, but she felt her body tense up. She had forced a smile so her family wouldn’t notice that her pulse had started to race. She didn’t want them to see the slight twitch of panic as her eyes darted around the restaurant in search of the nearest exit.

  A few minutes later she had heard a waiter tell someone that the shops just five blocks away were on fire. And Sam thought immediately about Jeffery. She knew he’d be frantic to get in touch with her. She had reached for her cell phone to turn it back on. Had it out of her purse and in her hand when she caught herself. Across the table her mother and son had been giggling over each other’s fortune cookies.

  “Momma, read yours.”

 
Her palms had started sweating. The phone felt heavy in her hand as it slid from her fingers back into her purse.

  It had been the purest choice she had made in a very long time.

  Now when she saw Jeffery’s Escalade in her driveway a lump gathered in the pit of her stomach and she reminded herself that the right decision is not always the easiest. Nor would it be the best for her career, if she still had a career.

  “It’s my boss,” she told her mother.

  “Your boss here? On your day off?”

  Instead of explaining, Sam asked her mother to take Iggy into the house and put the leftovers in the refrigerator.

  “I’ll be just a few minutes,” she told them, hoping the alarm going off inside her head hadn’t affected the tone of her voice.

  She watched them scurry around the big SUV that left only two feet between her garage and its bumper. Sam almost smiled at the scowl her mother was giving Jeffery, despite the dark and despite the tinted windshield. Her mother’s defiance helped fuel Sam’s courage. Still, her knees went a bit weak as she climbed out of her vehicle and went to stand in front of the garage, keeping a safe distance between herself and Jeffery and choosing someplace where she didn’t think he could run her over. She also knew that where she was standing she couldn’t be seen from inside the house.

  She stood and waited.

  She would not get inside his SUV. If he wanted to rip her a new one, he’d have to do it where her neighbors might watch or call the cops.

  The engine started, a quiet hum. The driver’s-side window slid down. Jeffery’s face looked calm. His eyes did not.

  The glow of the interior lights gave him an eerie blue sheen, as if the illumination came from under the surface of his skin. His tie had been yanked loose and his white collar smudged. His jacket had been tossed aside and his shirtsleeves were rolled up in haphazard folds. His face didn’t look angry, but everything else about him looked enraged.