by Earl Emerson
“Nobody was talking about it here.”
“Yeah, well . . . I suppose you coulda missed it. It was just a little article, and her last name is—”
“I know her name.”
“I forget the name she goes by.”
“Wynn.”
“Right. Fire boat pulled her out of the canal four days ago. They figure she jumped Friday night. Aurora Bridge. What’s that? A hundred eighty feet?”
My mind couldn’t help replaying the events on Beach Drive a week ago Friday. Tronstad had scheduled her arrival for half an hour after our visit.
I’d always admired Heather’s independent spirit. Given her strong-willed temperament and her determination to find out what had been going on in the station before her husband died, suicide didn’t seem a plausible prospect. It was more likely Tronstad had staged her death the way he’d staged the other deaths.
After Snively hit the sack, I sat alone in front of the movie. If I’d done the right thing at the beginning of this whole fiasco, none of this would have happened. It was all my fault. I was going to the authorities first thing in the morning.
At two A.M. I dragged myself to bed.
The station bells hit at 0315 hours, the tones signaling a fire rather than an aid call. I’d been sleeping so soundly, I mistakenly thought it was the morning hitch, that the entire night had elapsed, and that I’d been in bed five hours instead of one. I was so exhausted I could barely pull myself out of the bunk.
Our chief for the shift, a large woman named Cindy Polson, came out of her office in her black trousers, white chief’s shirt hanging out, pager beeping. “Where is it?”
“Beach Drive. Go down Admiral to Sixty-third and head south. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
By the time I came fully awake, the rig was roaring down the hill on Admiral Way, the chief’s Suburban behind us. I was slinging the mask built into the seat back, cinching up the shoulder straps and waist belt, getting ready to go into a fire building with my reluctant partner, Snively.
“Goddamn fucking station,” Snively repeated over and over. “I knew this was going to happen. Goddamn fucking . . .”
The address was on Beach Drive SW. Engine 32’s district, or Engine 37’s. It was the house where we’d met Tronstad the other night, but I was too sleepy to run through all the mental gymnastics required to figure out what that might mean.
As we arrived and parked behind Engine 32 and Ladder 11, we smelled smoke in the air. Chief Polson ordered Engine 29 to take a line into the house to back up Engine 37’s crew, who were already inside looking for the seat of the fire. In seconds Snively and I were carrying two hundred feet of the same interconnected line, fifty pounds for each of us, plus the fifty pounds of protective gear we were wearing. Muir and Johnson would follow after they got their bottles on.
There was no doubt in my mind Tronstad had killed Heather Wynn and was belatedly attempting to destroy the scene of the crime.
“Goddamn it,” Snively said, as we carried our hose bundles up the dark driveway. “I knew something like this was going to happen. I just fuckin’ knew it.”
“You don’t want fires, you could transfer to the park department.”
“Fuck you.”
The driver on Engine 37 took our wye, attached it to a discharge port on his engine, and told us he’d give water when we called for it. The first line in the driveway was already hard and pulsing.
The front door to the house was wide open, the hose line running across the front step into the smoke. The outer walls of the house were blackened and wet where they’d already poured water, the burn pattern spreading horizontally along ten feet of outer wall. Fires didn’t routinely spread horizontally. They went up, generally in a V pattern, so this indicated an arsonist.
But then, I already knew that.
Heavy black smoke rolled out the front door. Inside we heard glass breaking and the sound of a nozzle opening and shutting as firefighters endeavored to use only enough water to tap the fire.
“Oh, shit,” Snively said. “Fuck! Fuck!”
“Water!” I yelled. Seconds later the hose line stiffened at my feet.
Snively had been in the flower bed putting his mask on, but now he was grabbing his wrist and spinning in circles as if trying to unwind himself. He grabbed his neck. For a moment I thought he’d stepped into a hornet’s nest.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What is it? Come on, man. The other crews are going to run over us.”
“Jesus! Fuck! Shit! Would you look at this?” He held up his left hand.
Switching on my helmet’s flashlight, I spotted a fishhook through his glove, a line from the fishhook strung to the rhododendron he was standing beside. He was tethered to the bush by half a dozen sections of fish line. One hook had bit into his neck, others snagging his bunking coat.
“Just a minute,” I said, pulling a small, folding knife out of the thigh pocket on my bunking trousers.
Just then, Lieutenant Muir and Robert Johnson arrived and began masking up. “What’re you doing?” Lieutenant Muir asked. “You’re supposed to be inside.”
“The place has been booby-trapped,” I said. “Watch out for holes in the floor. That sort of thing.”
“What?”
“Tronstad set traps,” I said, tapping Johnson on the shoulder.
Muir and Johnson lowered themselves to their hands and knees and crawled through the front door, dragging our hose line with them.
In all, there were seven fish hooks in Snively or his gear. After I cut him loose and guided him to Medic 32, the medics took him into the back of their unit and began patching him up, though it turned out three of the fishhooks couldn’t be removed until he got to the hospital. As the medics tended his wounds, he cursed a blue streak.
Chief Polson wore a concerned look when she met me at the medic unit. “What’s going on?”
“Ted Tronstad is the one who did this. I bet he’s around somewhere.”
“Now, don’t be accusing anybody without proof.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
As we spoke, Engine 37 reported a tapped fire. The chief confirmed it and gave the news to the dispatcher before turning back to me. “I want you to stay calm. I know you have a grudge against him, but don’t go making any wild accusations, okay? I’m on your side here, and I don’t want to be up all night with union reps.”
“Where is he?”
40. THE ONE-EYED MAN HAS A BLIND DATE
“HEY, GUMBALL,” TRONSTAD said, grinning as if we were meeting at a train station to pick up a mutual friend. “What’s goin’ on?”
Tronstad was on the side of the road behind the medic unit, an aging bottle-blonde under his left arm. He wore motorcycle boots, leather pants, and a leather jacket, his long hair pulled into a ponytail. A black eye patch covered his injured eye, and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. The guys on another shift had told us he’d come in to shit, shave, and shower, but he hadn’t come in on our shift.
“You set fire to this house.”
“Gum, you need to see a shrink. I was afraid something like this was going to happen.”
Chief Polson moved beside me. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but be careful what you say here, Gum.”
The blonde had her arms wrapped around Tronstad’s waist and appeared to be drunk. I said, “Were you with him all night?”
“’Cept maybe for when I hadda pee.”
“Don’t be interrogating my date, Chiclet. I’ll ask the questions.” He looked down at her. “Where’s your husband, honey?” He laughed.
“Were you with him all night?” I persisted.
“I dunno. I fell asleep.”
Beside me, Polson shuffled nervously. “Gum, let’s get back to work.”
“You set fire to this house. You put those fishhooks in the rhodie.” The blonde leaned into him drowsily, and he kissed the top of her head. “You killed those two people last shift.”
“Whoa. Whoa,” said Chief Polson. “I thought we were talking about tonight.”
“We are. But last shift we had a car fire. Two people died.”
“Gum went berserk and attacked me,” Tronstad said, addressing the chief. “I almost lost an eye. I didn’t press charges, Chief, because I felt sorry for him. Just between you and me, I think he needs to go into Admin for a couple of weeks and get some rest.”
“Did you see him set either of these fires?” Polson asked. “You have any proof?”
“No, but—”
“You tell the police?”
“No. Well, yes. One of them. I don’t know if the . . . I’m not sure.”
“Whoa, now. Whoa. If you go around accusing people of things you can’t prove, you can be sued for slander. And you don’t seem to have your story straight. Did you tell the police or didn’t you?”
“Jah, you vouldn’t vant to be sued, vould you?” Tronstad asked, slipping into his phony Scandinavian accent, which I’d always found hilarious until now. He thought it was funny that he’d fried the Browns. That he’d set this fire tonight. That he was getting away with it.
“You stupid bastard!” I said.
Before I could step forward and hit him, Polson wrapped her arms around me from behind. She was fifteen years older than me and I could have thrown her off easily enough, but too many people had been hurt already. Within moments, three other firefighters stepped out of nowhere and took my arms, pulling me away from the chief and holding me like I was some sort of lunatic.
“He set this fire. I think he killed Sears’s wife, too. I’m almost sure he did. She came here to see him a week ago Friday night.”
“Did you see her here?” one of the firefighters asked.
“I saw her truck. Sears’s truck.”
When I peered around at Chief Polson and the others, I could see this was more than a case of simple disbelief—they thought I’d gone insane.
“I believe he’s having a nervous breakdown,” Tronstad said.
“He killed Heather Wynn because she was looking for the money! And he set this fire. He was here—inside this house. Ask Johnson. He was with us.”
Chief Polson said something to one of the firefighters, who then left.
“Listen to him,” Tronstad said, perfectly at ease. “He’s nuttier’n the cashew bin at Safeway.”
Indeed, it sounded as if I were the Fruit Loop and Tronstad was the one talking common sense, but I was too tired to figure out how to turn it around.
“It was too much for him,” Tronstad said. “First the chief and then our lieutenant. I told him to get help. I even told the department he needed counseling, but nobody listened to me.”
“Calm down,” Polson said.
“You think I’m going to come up with the bonds after this?” I said, staring at Tronstad.
“My dear boy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Because you’re not going to get those bonds. Not after breaking into my house and threatening my mother. Not after what you did to Sears and the Browns. And Abbott.”
Tronstad looked at Chief Polson and raised his eyebrows, signaling that somebody better do something quickly. Polson said, “Are you all right? Are you really all right?”
“I’m trying to turn this fucker in. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to turn this fucker in!”
“Don’t swear at me.” She turned to Lieutenant Muir, who’d just arrived with Robert Johnson. They’d taken their masks and backpacks off, had unbuttoned their bunking coats to let their wet T-shirts breathe. Both were carrying paper cups of Gatorade. “Has Gum been able to do his job today?”
“His job? Yeah. Sure. No problem. He’s been good.”
“He hasn’t shown any signs of instability?”
We were in front of Ladder 11, the wigwags on so that the headlights alternated between high and low beam, casting an eerie syncopation over our discussion. I was sure it made me look even more insane.
Muir sized me up and said, “Instability? I don’t think so. What’s the problem?”
Polson looked at Johnson. “Were you ever at this house with these two?”
When he worked at it, nobody could look more innocent than Johnson. He was working at it now.”No.”
Tronstad’s laugh was like a rooster cackling.
“You’re sure?”
“I never been here before.”
“Do you know anything about Tronstad setting a car fire?”
“I know Gum thinks he did, but Gum’s been having problems.”
“Ask him how he even got here!” I screamed. “It’s four in the morning. Tronstad doesn’t live around here. How’d he know there was a fire? Because he set it.”
For a moment I thought Polson was going to take me seriously. “How did you happen to be here?” Polson said, turning to Tronstad.
“Oh, now you’re accusing me?” Tronstad grinned broadly, loving it, thinking he was invincible. “How did I get here? I was driving by Lincoln Park looking for Marci’s house—she’s staying with some people, and she sort of forgot where it was—and I heard the fire on my scanner. I knew my guys would be here, so I came down to watch.”
“I don’t know what to do with you two,” Polson said.
“First thing is, you better keep him away from me,” Tronstad said. “I almost lost the vision in one eye because of him, and I swear, he does anything else, I’m going to sue the department.”
“I want him arrested,” I said. “Start with arson, and we’ll work our way up to murder.”
Chief Polson looked at me for a long time and said, “Ted, could you make yourself scarce while we finish up with this fire?”
“You’re not letting him go, are you?”
“I’m not a cop. I don’t have the power to arrest anyone on your say-so.”
“I’m telling you he set this. He killed Lieutenant Sears.”
One of the firefighters from Ladder 11 said, “How? He dug the hole and filled it up with a garden hose?”
“He moved the traffic barricades. He waved us in there.”
“You tell the police any of this?” Polson asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I . . . Goddamn it. He killed Heather Wynn. And Chief Abbott.” With the mention of Abbott, I could feel everyone around me sigh. There was no doubt I was demented.
“You’re going to have to tell this to the police,” Polson said. “There’s an officer right over there.”
While I glared at Tronstad, everybody else stared at me. Finally, Johnson came over and put his arm around my shoulder, extricated me from the group, and walked me away without saying anything. He and I’d both known things would come to a head sooner or later, and now that I’d publicly accused Tronstad of everything I could think of, I had a bad feeling it wouldn’t make any difference with the police. Not without Johnson to corroborate.
“Hey, Doublemint?” Tronstad shouted after me. “One last thing. If you’re planning to make off to Cabo San Lucas, forget it. I know you wanted to screw me, but it’s too late.” His grin was manic, his teeth white in his shadowy face.
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you think I’m talkin’ about?”
“You found them?”
“It wasn’t that hard once I put my mind to it.”
At first I thought he was trying to trick me, but the look on his face was so smug, I began to have doubts. “When did you find them?”
“Just now.”
Johnson whispered to me. “He’s got them?”
“I doubt it.”
“But is it possible?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“Shit!”
When Tronstad began to walk away, I yelled after him, “If you hurt anybody . . . If you hurt anybody . . . I swear . . .” He continued to guffaw as he and the blonde disappeared down the street.
“Are you going to back me up?” I said to Johnson. “When I
talk to the cops?”
“I can’t believe he’s going to walk away with my share.”
“Are you going to back me up about Sears and Abbott?”
“And go to jail myself? Not likely.”
“He just robbed you.”
“He’ll give me my share. Tronstad and I are buddies.”
“We have to tell the police.”
“I am not going to prison. If you had any brains left, you wouldn’t be, either. You’re just going to get your own self in trouble. Nobody else. Just your own self.”
41. I JUST CAME FROM MISSOURI
BY ACCIDENT OR design, I was able to catch the blonde alone. I wasn’t sure whether Tronstad left her alone on purpose—knowing I’d rush over to pump her for information—or if she’d gotten lost in the mix.
“Marci?”
“Uh.”
“I thought that was what he called you. How long have you been with Tronstad? All night? What?”
“Who?”
“Ted Tronstad. The guy you’re with.”
“He’s so funny. He’s going to get the truck. He’s going to pick me up in a minute. He’s a sweetheart, ain’t he?”
“Yeah. Tons of fun. You haven’t been with him all night, have you?”
“We was at this party until a coupla hours ago.”
“What about the last hour?”
“Just drivin’.”
“Around here? Did you drive by here?”
“We’re here, aren’t we?”
“How about Alki Beach? Did you go by there?”
“I don’t know this area. I just came from Missouri.”
“Were you sleeping? Was that it?”
“Yeah. Part of the time. And we partied a little.”
“Did he stop and get some bags?”
“Yeah. We scored some shit. Want some?” She began to reach into the top of her disheveled blouse.
“No. Three large garbage sacks?”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that. He wanted me to sleep with his friends, though. I told him I don’t go in for chain bangs.”
“Did he drive near the beach?”
“I just came from St. Louis two months ago. My ex is in prison here. Lotta nice people here in Warshington, though. I never knew that was how they pronounced it. War-shing-ton.”