Into the Inferno

by Earl Emerson

  “What is it, Daddy?” Britney and Allyson both had slipped into that same lazy summertime cadence I remembered as a youth, when everything slowed down and you had no worries and it seemed as if there were no such thing as clocks or teachers or homework.

  Too bad their lives were about to implode around them.

  “Does this have something to do with Stephanie?” Allyson asked, failing to conceal the note of hope in her voice.

  I let go of the slide and slid to the bottom, sat up as Britney scooted into my arms. Allyson followed, slamming into us. “Stephanie’s here because she’s my doctor. I’m sick. I’m getting sicker every day. If we don’t find out what’s causing it, I won’t be with you by the end of the week.”

  “What’s the end of the week?” Britney asked.

  “Sunday.”

  “Sunday?” Allyson flicked a lock of hair out of her eyes. “What do you mean, Sunday? Where are you going on Sunday?”

  I’d violated my own philosophy of dispensing bad news, the same philosophy I’d used just a few days ago with Marsha Beebe. The rule was: Spit it out quickly and concisely and in clear, unequivocal language.

  “If we can’t stop this, I’ll end up like your Grandfather Swope sometime on Sunday. I might even be in the same nursing home with him.”

  I still hadn’t said it.

  “You mean you’re going to get old?” Britney asked.

  Allyson had tears streaming down her face. “No, dummy. He’s going to get sick.”

  “Neither one of you is a dummy,” I said. Britney looked from Allyson’s tears to me and back to Allyson, her lower lip beginning to quiver. This was exactly what I couldn’t bear to watch. “My body will be here and my heart will be here, but my brain will be gone. I won’t be able to talk to you. Or look at you. And after a while, I’ll probably lose weight the way Grandpa did.”

  “You don’t love us anymore?” Britney asked.

  “Sweetheart, I’ll still love you a hundred years after I’m dead. Anytime anything happens to you and you feel like you need someone, you can know that my love will be there alongside you. I love you both more than anything.”

  “Then why are you going to the nursing home?” Allyson asked.

  “It’s not for sure. But if it happens, it will be because I don’t have a choice.”

  “How did you get sick?” Britney asked.

  “Nobody knows. It’s something to do with the fire department. I got sick at the same time Joel McCain and Stan Beebe and some others did.”

  “What if you get well?” Allyson asked.

  “I’m hoping I will. That’s why Stephanie’s been working on the computer so much. A lot of people want to help. We’re going to be seeing some experts today.”

  Allyson leaned her head against my chest. “So, Daddy? You shouldn’t be goofing off with us. You should be with Stephanie.”

  “Right now I want to be with you.”

  “If you’re not living with us,” Britney said, “how are we going to get to school? And who’s going to take care of us?”

  “We’ll take care of ourselves,” Allyson said, knowing the alternative was at that moment registered eight blocks away in a motel.

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  “I’m going to miss you,” Britney said.

  “I’m going to miss you, too. Both of you. More than anything.”

  Seconds later Britney was wailing so hard and so loud, Allyson and I thought she was acting. She cried so hard, she went blind with it. A moment later Allyson started up. Then I shed my first real tears in years.

  It was fifteen minutes before we ran out of water, another fifteen before we were composed enough to walk to the fire station hand in hand, talking about little things, anything but what was on our minds.

  At the station telephones were ringing, firefighters and volunteers rushing to and fro. A few people were there to help out with our research on the syndrome. Most were there for the funeral. It was nine o’clock, and Donovan and Carpenter had not arrived. I was surprised by how much their absence irritated me. Even my alcoholic in-laws were punctual.

  Ian Hjorth and Ben Arden had organized a squadron of volunteers to run errands and do the busywork. They’d even recruited children to keep Allyson and Britney company.

  When the kids disappeared into the game room upstairs, I located Stephanie at the computer in the officers’ room, Ben Arden’s wife, Cherie, behind her, fiddling with a pot of coffee. “I found some stuff,” Stephanie said.

  I sat down, rubbing an ear to clear the ringing. Stephanie looked at me full on. “You told them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’d it go?” When I didn’t reply, she said, “Sure. I know. But you did it, and now you can move on.”

  “Right.”

  “Try not to be despondent, Jim.”

  “Lieutenant? We’re going to stop this right here,” Cherie added vehemently. Just what we needed, a new cheerleader fresh from the wings.

  40. DIG UP THE CHIEF, QUICK; HE MIGHT NOT BE DEAD

  “You heard from Donovan and Carpenter?” I asked.

  “Huh-uh,” Stephanie said. “But I think I’m on to something. For a month now I’ve been on various Internet medical forums asking doctors if they’d had any patients with symptoms matching Holly’s. After we found out about that fire in Tennessee, I narrowed the search to the southeastern United States. This morning a general practitioner from Biloxi wrote back and said he recalled something from a couple of years ago. Two patients. Brain-dead. Waxy hands. Both much younger than your average stroke victim.”

  “What’d he say about them?”

  “They were patients of a doctor he’d heard speaking at a seminar, a specialist in Knoxville. He claims this specialist had a theory about what’d caused it. Also there’s a man named Carl Steding from Chattanooga left a phone message for you.”

  “From the fire department?”

  “A newspaper guy.”

  “What about this specialist?”

  “I’ve got a call in to him.”

  Cherie Arden spoke up. “I don’t understand this thing, whatever it is. I mean, if you were all exposed back in February, why didn’t you get sick in February? And why isn’t everybody getting sick at once?”

  Stephanie said, “People’s immune systems are different. Some are strong. Some are weak. We don’t know what might be affecting the way people react. As far as the lag time between exposure and onset of symptoms, apparently this syndrome has a long incubation period if exposure was minimal. I’m guessing the firefighters in Tennessee had a greater level of exposure than the people here, and that’s why their symptoms came on so much quicker.”

  I said, “A guy came through town a year ago. From Montana. Exfireman. On disability. He’d had a stroke. He said they fought a fire out in the dingles somewhere in a store that carried everything you could think of: pharmaceuticals, ammunition, painting supplies, dynamite. Afterward, people who’d fought the fire started going down. In nine months four of them had strokes and three had heart attacks. They never proved it was caused by the fire, and they never got any money out of the pension system, either, even though they all knew it started with that fire.”

  Cherie said, “I never thought it would happen here. I sure hope Ben doesn’t have it.”

  “Me, too, Cherie.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know. I really don’t want anyone else getting it.”

  Two King County fire investigators in jeans and button-down shirts appeared in the doorway behind me, the first looking dwarflike beside the second, taller man, who had ruddy, baby-butt cheeks on an otherwise pale face he worked hard to keep unexpressive. These were the two who’d responded to Max Caputo’s place after the explosion—the short one was Shad; the taller, Stevenson. Shad didn’t look tall enough to be a firefighter, but then, most departments in the area had relaxed their guidelines on height in order to recruit more women.

  “Need to tal
k to you,” said Stevenson.

  “I’ve got a funeral I’m about to go to.”

  “And we’ve got a man up on the hill came down in itty-bitty pieces,” said Shad.

  “We’re still trying to fit it together.” Stevenson planted a wan smile on his mug, delighted at his own witticism.

  Ian Hjorth came up the hallway, peered over their shoulders, and said, “Sorry to bust in, Jim, but Karrie brought in some doctor from out of state who claims he’s going to talk to the TV guys after the funeral. Says this syndrome is all in your head.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “How could he know that without talking to me?”

  “I don’t know. He spoke to Karrie, though.”

  “Karrie doesn’t know her ass from a sack of apples!” I glanced at the two fire investigators, who’d backed off in the face of my outburst. “Wait in the front office. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Just don’t be skipping out on us,” said Stevenson.

  “For God’s sake,” Stephanie muttered. “Where do you think he would go? A Mexican clinic?”

  Just then, Karrie walked past the doorway in her black dress uniform.

  “Karrie? What’s this I hear about you bringing in a doctor to debunk our syndrome?”

  “Dr. Perkins. I didn’t bring him in. Not actually. I found him on the Internet and called him. He said this sounded like an interesting phenomenon and would we mind if he flew out. When he showed up yesterday, I took him to see Jackie. I was just trying to help.”

  “He’s not even a real doctor,” Ian said. “All he does is write books, get on talk shows, and play kiss-kiss with celebrities.”

  Karrie brushed a speck of lint off her coat. “I would think you’d be relieved. He’s already proved you don’t have to worry. Or hasn’t anyone told you the syndrome’s a figment of your imagination?” When the room and corridor had been quiet for a few seconds, she added, “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

  “It would if I thought it was true.”

  “Oh, it’s true.”

  “Wow!” Hjorth said. “I guess there’s nothing wrong with Joel, then. And the chief must not be dead. Maybe we should go dig him up.”

  I gave Hjorth a sharp look. “Why hasn’t he spoken to Dr. Riggs, who right now probably has more medical information about this than anyone?”

  “He doesn’t have to talk to another doctor to reach an opinion. He examined Jackie. He said as far as he could tell she was a typical head case from a car accident.”

  “He saw Joel, too?”

  “No. I told him about everybody else, and he says they’re all within the realm of the normal.” She glanced at Stephanie, who was still seated at the computer behind me. “He said he’s almost positive this whole thing is hogwash. A sad and wonderfully illustrative case of collective delusion.”

  “He’s almost positive?” I said.

  “You look like you believe him,” Stephanie said to Karrie.

  “Well . . . sure I believe him. He’s a doctor.”

  “Listen, girl. I’m a doctor. My sister’s been in a brain ward for two months because of this nonexistent syndrome. Trust me, it exists.”

  “But Dr. Perkins is internationally recognized.”

  “Karrie,” I said. “What if he’s wrong?”

  “He’s written books. I found one in the library.”

  “A lot of idiots have written books that are in the library. Why not wait a couple of days before making an announcement? If this gets in the news as a fraud, nobody’ll help us. By Monday either I’ll go down or I won’t go down, and you’ll know once and for all.”

  “All I did was phone him. He’s researching a new book. Modern Medical Myths: The Hazards of Self-diagnosis and Mass Delusion. It’s so perfect, don’t you see? It fits in perfectly with what’s going on here. You don’t have it. Stan didn’t have it.”

  “Is this why your father was trying to disband the committee?”

  “I don’t know anything about what my father is doing.”

  “You took this doctor to the nursing home,” Ian snapped, “and then you told him about Jim’s wife leaving him and every other irrelevant piece of gossip you could think of.”

  “You told him about my wife?”

  Karrie backed away. “It’s not like you own the story, Lieutenant. I mean, she left town with my mother.” Having unexpectedly wandered into the mother lode of small-town gossip, Shad and Stevenson began rolling their eyes at each other. “I told him so he would have some background. And it’s a good thing I did, because your personal history works into all this. Dr. Perkins says all this womanizing you’ve been doing has finally come to a head with the delusion about the syndrome, because this woman from Tacoma you were dating, Holly, got sick, and now you’ve transferred your guilt about the way you treated her and whatever else you were feeling about women in general to this syndrome. I should really let him explain. He’s out in the other room gathering background material. When he puts you in his book, you’re going to be famous.”

  “As a jackass.” I turned to Stephanie. “You know Perkins?”

  “He’s written a couple of pop culture books. He specializes in exposing fad diets and exercise crazes.”

  “The chief died out in the woods,” Karrie said. “Happens to hundreds of people every year. Jackie had a car accident because of her alcoholism. Of course Joel has brain injuries. He fell off his roof. Stan got so worked up about this syndrome, he made himself have an accident. Dr. Perkins said he wouldn’t be surprised if you had an accident, too.”

  “Karrie. Let me see your hands.” When she tried to rush out of the room, I grabbed her left wrist and held on. She pulled, sticking her feet out like a balky horse, and we played it like a kids’ game until I reeled her in. “Jesus Christ, Karrie. What day are you on?”

  “Perkins says it doesn’t fit any syndrome he’s ever heard of.”

  “Karrie, you need to decide what you’re going to do.”

  “Perkins says the only thing wrong with us is we’re caught up in a form of sympathetic hysteria. Show me one person of all these people where there isn’t another perfectly suitable explanation for how they got hurt.”

  I nodded at Stephanie. “Her sister. She dropped on her kitchen floor for no apparent reason. Her hands look like yours. She’s been in a coma for over a month. Exactly like Joel.”

  “Let Dr. Perkins see her. He’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “In the watch office interviewing some of the volunteers. He says in most major mass delusion cases there are precursor episodes that weren’t as severe. He’s trying to uncover those now. He wanted to know if that explosion the other day had been a delusion, but I told him I thought it was real.”

  “You thought it was real? Karrie, listen to yourself. If it had been any more real, they’d be burying us in thimbles. You’re hobnobbing with a quack.”

  I stomped toward the watch office, Karrie riding my heels.

  An imposing man with a shaved head met me in the watch office. “Dr. Perkins?” I said.

  “And who may I have the pleasure of—”

  “Get your hairy ass out of this station before I throw you through a wall.”

  A moment later Karrie and the good doctor were on the sidewalk out front; he was already explaining away my actions in terms of his theory: “. . . understandable reaction to having the delusion exposed and—”

  “Wow,” Ian Hjorth said as I slammed the door behind them. Mouths agape, the volunteers Perkins had been interviewing stared at me.

  “Put Karrie on disability leave. I don’t want her falling off a rig on a response.” I pulled out the three-by-five card I’d been carrying. “Here. These are the symptoms. Make sure she gets a copy. In fact, make copies and pass them around. Who knows who else might need it.”

  “Yes sir, Lieutenant.”

  I found the two county fire investigators, S
had and Stevenson, outside the empty chief’s office. Judging by their faces, they’d been hugely entertained by our melodrama.

  As if he owned the place, Shad, the short one with scrub-brush eyebrows, entered Newcastle’s office and plunked down in the swivel chair with a familiarity that offended me. Shad wasn’t fit to carry Newcastle’s jockstrap to the laundry. Stevenson hunkered on the corner of the desk, while I leaned against the file cabinet.

  Shad said, “Buncha things. First, tell us again what made you suspicious when you got to the trailer yesterday.”

  “I found Caputo’s dog dying in the blackberries. After that the empty ammonium nitrate sacks and oil drums.”

  “Yeah,” Stevenson said. “How come nobody else found that stuff? Just you.”

  “I was the only one with the time to look.”

  “Trouble with what you’re telling us is, we can’t find any of it,” said Shad.

  “You didn’t find much of the trailer, either.”

  “We know explosions tend to diffuse materials over a large geographical area,” Shad said. “But we want to look into an alternate explanation for why we can’t find this stuff.”

  “What would that be?”

  “That those items never existed.”

  “Sure. Maybe the trailer didn’t exist, either. Maybe Max Caputo never existed. Maybe there was no fire. Maybe that head we found in the tree fell from outer space. In that case, you boys might as well go home. Aloha.”

  “The head belonged to Maxwell Devlin Caputo, born in North Bend in 1970. They found one of his legs, well, the bones from one of his legs, and a cap with his scalp in it. Pretty grisly stuff. His record was not exactly clean, but he was no master criminal, either. He had some drug convictions after he got out of the army. Other than poaching arrests and somebody accusing him of stealing a tractor and some riding lawn mowers from a store here in town, that was pretty much it.”

  “I can understand the sacks disintegrating,” I said, “but those drums probably went half a mile. You’ll find them.”

  “Yeah,” Stevenson said.

  “Yeah,” Shad said.

  For a moment or two I didn’t realize what they were getting at, and then it occurred to me this was their version of the third degree. Sarcasm. They sat back and stared, waiting for me to crack, both of them. I stared back. I was going to be a vegetable in three days. It was hard to think of anything they could threaten me with that came anywhere close. It was even harder to figure out why they were going after me.