Flashover

by T. Alan Codder

  Maggie nodded then turned toward the door. He thought about catching her arm and pulling her back to kiss her again before she left. They normally exchanged a kiss in greeting and departing, but now, in front of all his officers, wasn’t the time or the place, despite the kiss earlier.

  “Let’s get this paperwork done, then we can go see if Fish and Chips need any help,” Sean said, turning to Will.

  The Brunswick Police Department normally had four officers on duty at any given time, working in four rotating shifts. The officers worked in pairs, Fish and Chips was one pair, Will and Eric was another. They rotated on different weeks on a three, two, two, three schedule, so the paired officers eventually worked with every other pair.

  The assembled group spent a few minutes putting the few tables back in place while Will carried the mat to the armory for storage. Sean followed, and after Will stored the pad, he recorded the serial number of the weapon being issued and then spun the forms around for Sean to sign.

  Sean signed and dated the forms that signified he’d accepted the Taser, along with the forms that would go into his personnel file that documented he was trained in the proper use of the weapon. The paperwork only took a few minutes to complete. Will signed off on the forms, kept a copy for his records, gave Sean a copy to go in his file, and then handed Sean the Taser and holster.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, Will. Good job on the training.”

  Will grinned as he filed paperwork in the metal two drawer file cabinet that lived in the armory.

  “No problem. It’s not often I get to shoot my boss and get away with it.”

  Sean chuckled. “No, I suppose that’s true.”

  While Will locked up the armory, Sean returned to his office, filed his copy in his personnel file, and relocked the drawer. Getting all that paper scanned and converted to electronic documents was high on his list of things to do. It was something he was going to have to do himself because of the sensitive nature of the information, and he just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  He changed out of the t-shirt and back into his regular shirt, a black polo with Brunswick PD embroidered in gold on his left breast. He didn’t wear a traditional police uniform, choosing instead to dress more casually in the hopes of being more approachable. Back in his uniform of tan pants and black shirt, he walked into the dispatch office.

  “Kim, what’s the status of the fire?”

  Kim Wells was one of the four 9-1-1 operators that also functioned as the police, fire and emergency medical dispatcher. She was in her late fifties and was the den mother for the entire force. Rarely did a week go by that her kitchen didn’t produce a cake or cookies of some kind that she left in the breakroom. Today it was cupcakes, prepared in honor of Sean being tased.

  Not only did she take care of ‘her boys,’ as she called them, but she knew her stuff and never got rattled, no matter what was going on. She may be working in small town Brunswick, North Carolina, but from what he’d seen, she was the equal to any 9-1-1 operator in Boston.

  “Fire is on site. From the radio chatter, it doesn’t sound like it’s that bad.”

  He nodded. “That’s good. I’m going to call it a day.”

  Sean made it a point to enter and exit the department through the front door so the dispatcher, who also functioned as the department’s receptionist, would see him come and go through the thick glass that allowed the dispatcher to see into the lobby.

  “How’d it go back there? I heard you yell.”

  He snickered. “Okay. I said a bad word.”

  She nodded in understanding, her lips quirked to the side. “I hear it happens. They’re all big boys. I don’t think they’ll be scarred for life.”

  “No, probably not. It’s still embarrassing though. I promised myself I wasn’t going to do that.”

  Her smile widened. “Don’t let it bother you. When Chips got tased, I heard him all the way down here. Goodness, such language!”

  Sean chuckled. “Really? Funny he didn’t mention that.”

  She shook her head in mock exasperation. “When he found out I heard him you could tell he was embarrassed.”

  At least he hadn’t yelled out his bad word. “Well, it’s over now and I don’t have to do it again.” He grinned at her. “You want me to talk to Will about having you trained to carry a Taser?”

  She smiled in return. “Nope. I’m good with how things are.”

  “You know, somehow I knew you were going to say that. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Have a good night.”

  He stepped out of the dispatch office, giving Kim a wave through the glass before striding out into the hot, muggy, North Carolina afternoon.

  He was going home, but wanted to stop by the fire to have a look for himself. That was one nice thing about Brunswick. Unlike Boston, you could be anywhere in town, from anywhere else, in ten minutes or less.

  It took only minutes for him to arrive at Daylin Street. When he arrived, a white and blue patrol car was sitting in the road, blocking traffic, it’s blue strobes flashing.

  Sean thought Brunswick’s patrol cars had one of the more attractive graphic packages he’d seen. The white cruisers were adorned with a bold blue reflective stripe that arced from behind the front wheel to just under the door handles as it thinned and flowed to the rear of the car. A low-profile light bar and POLICE emblazoned on the doors reinforced its function. It was a clean and stylish look he liked better than the slightly busy look of the Boston Police Department cars. While the Boston cars were also white, the straight blue and silver stripes, along with the blue trunk lids and hoods, were slightly more workaday than the clean, modern look of the Brunswick cars.

  He pulled his unmarked, black, Dodge Charger to a stop behind Chips’ cruiser. The car was sitting well back from the fire, forcing traffic onto one of the side streets. He lit off his own strobes before exiting his car and approaching the small crowd that had gathered to watch the fire department battle the flames. On the far side of the scene, he could see another cruiser blocking the road and detouring traffic. A third cruiser blocked a side road between them.

  “Everything under control?” Sean asked as Chips moved to meet him.

  Chips was about two inches shorter than Sean’s six-one, but he was much more heavily built, with bulging arms and a thick neck. He was not quite thirty and wore his dark hair cut military short. He could be as intimidating as hell when he wanted to be, but he was normally a very pleasant and laid-back guy.

  “No problems. They’ve got it under control already. Probably some homeless guy started the fire on accident.”

  Sean took in the scene as he absent-mindedly wiped away the trickle of sweat running down his left temple. There was only the single fire truck sitting in the road, its red beacons contrasting with his department’s blues. A large diameter hose snaked from a nearby hydrant to the truck, with another, smaller hose, disappearing into the weed choked lot. Smoke still poured out of the nearer of the two main buildings as a couple of firemen stood by the pumper. Everyone seemed relaxed, which he assumed was a good thing.

  “Okay. I’m on my way home but I thought I’d stop by and see what was going on.”

  Chips snorted. “No problem a little air conditioning couldn’t fix.”

  Sean nodded. He was experiencing his first North Carolina summer. It was only in the mid-eighties, but the humidity was killing him. Worse, it was going to get at least ten degrees warmer as summer progressed. By the time August rolled around, he was afraid he might very well die from heat stroke.

  “Believe me, I know how you feel.”

  Chips lips twisted to the side as his eyes crinkled. “Now you know how we felt when we were freezing our asses off all winter while you were running around with just a windbreaker on.”

  “Yeah, but you can put on more clothes to get warm. There’s only so much I can take off, and it doesn’t help much. I don’t know how you stand it down here in the summer.” />
  Chips’ grin spread. “Pfft… this is nothing. Just you wait. It hasn’t even gotten hot yet. With this little bit of breeze, when sun goes behind a cloud, it’s not that bad. But come late July and early August?” He shook his head in exaggerated misery. “Ninety-four, ninety-five degrees sometimes, and eighty percent humidity? You can’t get used to that. You just have to grin and bear it.”

  Sean groaned, but he supposed turnabout was fair play. He’d made teasing fun of his department all winter about being cold all the time, and now they were paying it back as he suffered in the heat.

  “Swell,” Sean muttered. “I think you and Officers Fisher and Caswell can handle it. I’m taking my candy-ass back to my air-conditioned car.”

  Chips, Eric and Fish were about three hours into their shift, but it was well past time for him to go home.

  “We’ve got it.”

  Sean gave him a nod. “Carry on, Officer Langley.”

  Chips grinned in return. The only time Sean was that formal was when he was razzing his officers about something.

  “You got it, chief.”

  Two

  “Hey, Marmalade,” Sean said as he opened the door to his apartment and used his foot to nudge his fat orange tabby out of the way.

  Marmalade was as faithful as any dog, greeting him at the door each time he returned home. Of course, he was pretty sure a dog would greet him because the animal was glad to see him, whereas Marmalade just wanted to be fed. At least that was how he felt. Food bowl filler, litter box cleaner and a warm lap for sleeping, that was his role in Marmalade’s life.

  Marmalade weaved around his legs, rubbing and purring. He picked the cat up, draped him over his shoulder, and gave him a good scratch on the ears before putting him down. When he began to move through his apartment, Marmalade trotted ahead to the cabinet by the dishwasher where he knew his food was stored and pawed at the door. When Sean walked past the kitchen on his way to his bedroom, the cat raced past him and was waiting for him on the bed, demanding to be petted again. They had a routine, and this was it.

  His apartment wasn’t large, a small single bedroom that had been freshly renovated before he moved in. He was still looking for the right house, but not as hard as he was before he’d become involved with Maggie.

  He tossed his computer onto the bed and then gave the cat another good scratch behind the ears, the animal purring and rubbing his head against Sean’s hand.

  “You hungry?” he asked, walking out of the bedroom.

  Marmalade knew what that meant and dashed past, stopping at the cabinet and meowing before he reared up on his back legs and scratched at the cabinet door again. His eyes crinkling at the cat’s antics, Sean gently bumped the animal aside and opened the cabinet.

  “Chicken or fish and shrimp?”

  Marmalade meowed.

  “Fish and shrimp it is then.”

  He pulled out the can and opened it as the cat weaved around his feet, purring and rubbing. He scraped the contents into a bowl and placed it on the floor. As Marmalade devoured the food, acting like he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four days, not just twenty-four hours, Sean returned to his bedroom for a couple of changes of clothes.

  “Hold the fort, Marmalade,” he said as he walked past the cat.

  Marmalade was sitting by his food bowl as he groomed himself, his head bobbing in a slow rhythm. Now that he’d been fed, and Sean had a plastic grocery bag containing his dirty litter, the cat had no more use for him and ignored him as he walked past. His lips thinned in amused exasperation. Food fixer and litter box changer.

  He chucked the bag of litter into the dumpster and then plopped into his car. Maggie would probably want to go for a run, the thought making him want to groan in despair. He’d started running with her when the weather was cooler, but as it warmed, she was more eager to run and he was less. The only reason he’d kept it up was so he wouldn’t appear to be a quitter. That, and getting to watch her change clothes and get all sweaty. Those were a bonus.

  He worked out Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Fat2Fit, but the workouts did him little good when it came to chasing Maggie. She could run him into the ground, and they both knew it. At the end of a couple of miles he was gasping for breath and ready to drop, and she was just starting to sweat good. He was getting better, though. When he’d first started running with her, he had to call her to a stop before she’d even started breathing hard.

  As he drove to her house he tried not to think too much about the run ahead. Like the Taser, the anticipation was usually worse than the actual run.

  He pulled into her drive and crept to a stop in front of her side-loading two-car garage. Maggie lived about eight miles outside of town on a large, tree dappled, three-acre lot. They ran along the country road that fronted her house to the stop sign, two miles away, before turning and running back.

  The really annoying thing was, she was taking it easy on him. She’d let slip one time her normal run was a bit over eight miles, and she still ran that when he wasn’t around to run with her. Maybe someday he could run the full loop with her, but that was still far enough in the future he couldn’t even imagine it.

  He rapped on her door, the thought of seeing her making his lips twist into an unconscious smile. At least since he’d taken up running, he didn’t have to worry about his weight and could indulge more often than he’d allowed himself in the past.

  “Come in,” Maggie said as she opened the door and stepped back.

  He stepped in and offered her a kiss, something she readily accepted and returned.

  “Nice,” she sighed. “How’s your back?”

  He followed her deeper into her house. Her house wasn’t large, but it was a well maintained older home that she’d updated over the years. It was obviously a woman’s home, decorated with soft colors and a bit of a southern country vibe, but he liked the hardwood floors throughout, the recently updated kitchen with the stainless-steel appliances and granite counter tops, and the large lot.

  “Fine. No wait! It’s killing me! I can’t run today, but feel free to go without me.”

  “Hah, hah, funny guy,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “It was your idea to start running with me, remember? As I recall, you told me to not let you quit until you could run at least five miles. Remember that?”

  “No,” he said, his tone light and teasing, but wondering what he was thinking when he’d committed to that.

  She snickered briefly. “Well I do.”

  “Yeah, well, that was before I knew you were a running machine. Besides, I can make it four miles.”

  She looked at him from under her eyebrow with her head canted slightly to the side. He grinned at her teasing disbelief.

  “Well, almost,” he amended.

  “I’m not sure I’d call the last half-mile running, but you’re getting there.” She paused and looked at him more seriously. “Do you want to skip today?”

  He did, but he wouldn’t admit it, and held up his running clothes. “No.”

  She grinned. “Good! It’s more fun to run with someone. Let’s get changed so we can get back. You’re staying for dinner, right?”

  They took turns hosting. They didn’t see each other every night, but they didn’t miss many. He bobbed his head.

  “I thought I would.”

  “Good.”

  They changed clothes in her bedroom. That was the best part of the run, getting to watch Maggie change into and out of her tight-fitting sports bra and running shorts. Dressed, he left his glasses on her dresser as they exited the bedroom because they were just an annoyance when he ran.

  By tradition, they walked along the road to the edge of her property, to loosen and warm up, before Maggie started her tracker and they began to run. He didn’t bother tracking his progress because he’d consider it a win if he could simply make it all the way.

  At almost six-one, he was nearly eight inches taller than her, and had much longer legs, but she could still run him until he was ready to collapse.
He could probably out sprint her at the start, but he would soon be gasping for breath as she pounded past him.

  He could now run the first mile without too much trouble. By the middle of the next mile he was breathing hard but the real pain hadn’t started yet. Once he made the turn, it always felt like the return two miles were actually four, and he still hadn’t figured out how it could be uphill both ways.

  “Come on! Don’t stop! Only a mile to go!” Maggie cheered as he began to languish.

  He took some satisfaction in that she was sweating, but she still had enough breath left to urge him on and a spring in her step, something he’d lost after the first mile or so. She slowed and began to pace him instead of making him chase her.

  “I can see the house, Sean! Push it and you can make it all the way! Come on! You can do it! You’re going to make it this time! Push it!” she encouraged as he slowly pounded along.

  His shirt was stuck to him like a second skin, sweat pouring off him in rivulets, and he felt like his lungs were going to burst. He couldn’t spare the breath to answer her, and he could feel his heart pounding all the way to his fingertips, but he kept going.

  The last half-mile was anguish but he managed to run all the way, even if he wasn’t very fast. He slowed to a walk as he cut across her front yard and tumbled into the cool grass in the shade of the large hickory, lying on his back, his arms and legs splayed wide as he gasped for breath.

  She dropped to her knees in the grass beside him with a giggle and a smile, and kissed him. “forty-six twenty-three, your best time yet!”

  “Great,” he panted. “You can… put that… on my… tombstone.”

  She snickered and kissed him again. “Are you going to make it?”

  “Define… ‘make it?’ If I… survive the heart attack… does that count?”

  She giggled again and bounced to her feet before offering him a hand up. He took it and groaned as she hauled him to his feet.

  “Stand up straight! How are you supposed to breath all bent over like that?”

  He straightened, his hands in the small of his back as he stared at the sky, slowly walking in circles, still trying to catch his breath. He huffed out a hard breath as his breathing finally began to slow.