by Earl Emerson
I keep probing the darkness with the pike pole. The smoke turns to steam as the engine crew below us gets more water on the fire. Towbridge takes the pole and, braced by Rideout, fishes around in the hole. One of his gloves is missing. I drop down chest-deep in the cavern and begin walking around, holding on to the edges of the hole, feeling tentatively with my boots.
As we search, another truck crew arrives on the roof from the front of the house. Their weight, the four of them, over half a ton of men and equipment, begins sagging the roof even more. I am afraid Dolan is under them. That they are crushing him. I say as much. They back off.
When I see flashlights and firefighters below on the second floor, I ask them to pass up a hose line, which they do. It is hot and damp in the attic space, but I feel relatively confident in my footing. It is so hot I might as well be putting my head into a chimney. I pull up twenty feet of hose and begin hitting the remaining hot spots in the attic. My greatest fear is that he is burning to death while we are farting around.
Rideout says, “Oh God. We’ve lost Jeff.”
I am sick to my stomach, straining to peer through the smoke around me.
I pour water into every nook and cranny of the attic, into all the closed spaces under the collapsed roof. I still can’t find Dolan.
Then I get an idea. I shout down to the firefighters who handed up the hose line.
“Did somebody fall through there?”
“What?” A firefighter below is craning up at me.
“Did somebody fall through here?”
He steps back and shines his flashlight on a crumpled firefighter on the floor sitting amidst a pile of burned plasterboard. It is my driver, Jeff Dolan. He’s passed straight through the attic to the second floor and landed only a few feet in front of the hose crew.
“You okay?” I shout.
“I guess so.”
“Are you okay?”
“I broke my leg. Do you have the chain saw?”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“Don’t lose that saw.”
“Why? You want me to cut your leg off?”
He laughs through the pain. “No. I don’t want to have to explain to Stan down at the commissary how we lost it.”
“You just worry about your leg.”
Moments later as they begin to move him, he hollers.
“Remember you’re carrying a hero,” Towbridge shouts from above. “Don’t be messing with no hero.”
48. SHOOTING CHIEFS OUT OF CANNONS
Cynthia Rideout
DECEMBER 22, SUNDAY, 0340 HOURS
Whining like a baby the whole while, Dolan got patched up by the medics. Wollf, myself, and Towbridge stood at the back of the medic unit, the doors open. The medics cut most of Dolan’s clothing off. Towbridge and Wollf made it harder for Dolan the way only men can make it harder for each other.
“Jesus,” Wollf said. “Don’t you ever clean your toenails?”
“I clean ’em every morning right before I leave for the station. Then I come to work and have to wade through all the bullshit. That’s bullshit. Smell it.”
“No, thank you,” Wollf said.
“He’s hurtin’ pretty bad if he thinks somebody’s gonna smell his toes,” Towbridge said, laughing. Towbridge had minor burns on both wrists. Not enough to get laid off, but enough to ride up to the hospital with Dolan. How he got out of that attic without getting fried is something none of us have figured out. We came so close to losing two people.
Jeff’s leg is going to keep him out for at least six weeks.
There’s more. Katie Fryer made a rescue! Go, Katie.
She was working a trade on E-13, and they were sent to the second house, where they found two drunk civilians. The man managed to get out on his own, but the woman collapsed inside the front door.
Katie Fryer and one of the regulars from Thirteen’s kicked open the front door, and Katie dragged the woman out.
Later, the news crew from CBS showed up and began interviewing her, lights, camera, action. The civilian she rescued was on the heavy side, and during the interview Katie made the mistake of saying it was a good thing she’d been only a few feet inside the front door, because they couldn’t have dragged her much farther.
Eddings, who had been watching, called a halt to the interview and placed Fryer inside her Battalion 5 vehicle, where she began chewing her out for admitting she wasn’t strong enough to make a rescue. Eddings told her it was not only bad PR, but it was plain stupid. More than anything, Katie hates being told she’s stupid.
After the fire, the whole top of the house to the south looked like a collapsed angel food cake. Wollf and I went inside. Upstairs we talked to one of the guys on Ladder 7, who said, “It was a miracle you guys didn’t fall through sooner. Somebody sawed through the rafters in the roof.”
“The roof was booby-trapped?” Wollf asked.
“Sure looks that way,” said Fendercott, the Ladder 7 lieutenant.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wollf so mad. Everybody was backing away from him.
We went downstairs, walked through both floors and then the basement, tracing the evolution of the fire.
We found the fire investigators, Connor and LaSalle, poking through the basement, where the fire had been set. From there it spread up to the first floor, then to the second story, where most of the heat had been trapped until we popped the roof.
Three hose crews had gone inside. It was the crew from Engine 10 who ended up taking the worst beating. “Jesus,” one of them said later. “As soon as he fell through the ceiling, we could feel the relief.”
Wollf laughed. “Maybe we should do all our ventilation that way. We could mount a cannon on the rig. Shoot firefighters through the roof from down the block. We’ll shoot chiefs first.”
Outside, Wollf and I took off our face pieces.
I followed him around the house and found him staring at a can of Shasta soda on the back porch next door.
“Stay here,” he said. “Make sure nobody touches this can. Marshal Five is going to want prints.” You could see he was still pissed about the roof. I was too, but not like him.
Somebody tried to kill our crew.
Before long everybody on the fire ground was talking about it.
Marsha Connor came over while Wollf was gone. “Hey. I heard you guys had some excitement.”
“A little.”
“These fires are giving them fits downtown. Last night there were twelve arsons. Tonight we’ve got four to look at. Everybody’s working overtime. It’s a mess.”
It’s a shame so many people pick on Marsha. She’s one of the nicest people in the department. True, she isn’t in such great physical condition; in fact, God only knows how she dragged herself through drill school. But she treats everybody with the same respect she needs so desperately and almost never receives. LaSalle is especially rough on her, making monkey faces behind her back, belittling her to her face. Sometimes I want to slap him.
“No Shasta products in either house,” Wollf said, returning. “I saw the owner in front, and he said all they drink is Schlitz and Michelob Light.”
“You better leave the interviews to us,” LaSalle said, coming out of the house next door.
“Yes, sir,” mocked Wollf.
I had to turn around real fast so LaSalle wouldn’t see me laughing.
It was three in the morning. Our fires had generated a fair-sized crowd, neighbors, looky-loos from other parts of town, local news network cameramen and commentators. Down the street, the CBS guys were interviewing Katie Fryer again.
While we stood in the street waiting for orders, Wollf looked past my shoulder and shouted, “Hey, you!”
He was looking at a cluster of six or eight women, one in a belted tan raincoat, a redhead.
Suddenly the redhead took off running.
Wollf blew through the onlookers and chased her along the side of the house across the street and into a backyard. He was still wearing his mask
and all of his gear.
As she ran around the corner of the house, he pitched a ten-foot pike pole at her, threw it like a javelin, as if he wanted to kill her.
It almost did—kill her—it sailed through the folds of her raincoat and penetrated the sod.
Half a minute later the redhead raced out from between some houses down the street and turned south on the sidewalk. Wollf came out too, having dropped his MSA bottle and backpack somewhere in the darkness. He still had the pike pole, though.
All the firefighters in the street watched in astonishment. Nobody tried to stop him.
Wollf wasn’t somebody you tried to stop.
49. CHASING WOMEN IN THE DARK WITH SPEARS
I knew she was the woman who’d run from me at the Red Apple weeks earlier, the middle-aged woman with the heavy makeup. The woman Towbridge told me had visited the station to have her blood pressure taken. She had red hair tonight.
Running like that after standing around for so long with my bottle on, I was stiff, which was the reason I missed with the pike pole.
I lost her in the dark in the backyard.
I came out from between the houses to the street again and spotted her running south down Twenty-second, coattail flapping in the breeze, red hair hanging off her head like a piece of torn carpet.
She had a block lead on me and was running as if she already knew I was going to kill her. Which I was.
As I ran I realized several things. One was that Chief Eddings was calling my name from behind. Another was that I was losing bits and pieces of my mind. That I was beginning to move into a familiar hypnotic state. It was a form of mania. I’d done this prior to every bout of violence. I knew I was going to kill this woman. I knew also that I was going to lose everything over it.
The worst part was, I couldn’t stop myself.
At the corner of Winthrop and Twenty-second my prey turned left.
Without checking traffic, she bolted across Twenty-third Avenue South, a main arterial. A lone car crossed behind her.
Despite the turnouts and big rubber boots, I was gaining.
She crossed onto the property of an elementary school that took up half a city block, slowed, looked around desperately for somewhere to hide, then dashed behind the buildings.
By the time I reached the school, she’d vanished in the darkness.
I’d thought about killing the firebug for a long time, but over the years, my fantasies had centered around killing a man. Not a woman.
The building was long and ran north and south. Beyond the building was a small, fenced playground. Beyond that, woods.
I walked alongside the rear of the east wall behind the building, double-checking any nook or cranny that might harbor a fugitive. Any place from which an ambush could be launched.
So far my prey had done nothing but run, but I had to think that was over now, that I’d either cornered her or worn her out.
I wasn’t worried about hand-to-hand combat. I would win hand-to-hand. Even had I been chasing a man, the money was on me. If I didn’t win on size and strength, I’d win on rage. But what if she had a gun? Now that we were in the dark and blocks from the fire, she might get away with killing me. I would never get away with killing her, but she might murder me and skate.
Behind the single-story buildings that comprised the bulk of the school, I found a large, concrete play area encompassed by trees and a cyclone fence. I keyed my radio. “Dispatch from Ladder Three. I’m at Twenty-three Avenue South and South Winthrop. Behind the school. I need the police. I have a suspect.”
I don’t know why I was on the radio. I had no intention of doing this legally.
It was half a minute before the dispatcher said, “Twenty-two Avenue Command? Did you receive? Are you asking for additional resources?”
“That’s a negative. Forget that transmission.” I recognized the voice on the radio as Eddings.
I said, “Dispatch from Ladder Three. Repeat. I have a suspect at Twenty-three South and South Winthrop. Send SPD.”
I was still talking when she darted out of the shadows fifty yards in front of me, galumphing along like a water buffalo with a sore hoof, charging across the playground.
She used her good-sized lead to hit an opening in the cyclone fencing, ran behind the fencing, perpendicular to and in front of me. Instead of following her to the opening, I decided to intercept, thinking there would be another gap in the fence somewhere along the way, a gap I could reach first.
Then, as I ran and scanned the dark fence in front of me, I realized there weren’t any more openings. I couldn’t go back. I was committed. I would soon arrive at the inside northwest corner of the fence, which meant I would have to run the long way around the wing of the fence to reach her. Which meant she was going to escape.
There we were, jogging side by side, a sheet of cyclone fencing between us. Every once in a while she slapped into a wet branch that jutted out from the woods on her side. I could hear her breathing heavily.
Neither of us had spoken since the beginning.
It was eighty feet before we were at the corner that would box me in and free her. I raced ahead hoping to find a gap in the fencing.
I reached the inside corner and did find a hole, not nearly large enough for me to get through, made by kids. I had about two seconds before she would pass.
Our pike poles were constructed with fiberglass shafts and a steel tip formed into a point-and-hook arrangement for pulling ceilings. I inserted the point through the hole.
She was coming up fast, traipsing along the dirt path years of children had laid down, her hair wet and bedraggled, her face spotted with rainwater and perspiration.
When I shoved the pike pole through the opening, the shaft caught her mid-chest and took her down, the wind knocked out of her.
For an instant I thought she might have a skull fracture, but I gave up that hope when she tried to move. I stabbed at her viciously in the dark. She grabbed the shaft, and for a split second we wrestled with the pole.
Then I pinned her against an old tree stump.
The steel tip wasn’t sharp, but she held on to the fiberglass pike pole anyway in an effort to keep me from pushing it through her lungs.
I pressed it against her, telling myself over and over not to kill her. Knowing that in the end I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
I was trying to talk myself out of something I’d spent twenty-five years talking myself into.
I knew from experience once my brain clicked over on a decision, there were no second thoughts. My brother said it was a criminal’s mind, that the joint was full of people who thought like I did. But what was wrong with taking revenge on the person I believed had tried to kill me and my crew, the person I suspected had murdered my father?
Still, I was having second thoughts.
Extraordinary.
On the other hand, maybe I was only trying to prolong the pleasure.
It made me laugh.
She looked at me as if I were insane.
We stayed like that for a minute, me on one side of the tall cyclone fence, she on the other in the shadows. Me in what passed for light. She couldn’t get up, but I couldn’t leave either. Not if I wanted to hold her.
Finally, with one hand I reached down and switched on the department issue flashlight dangling off my chest, put the beam on her.
She was a mess. Torn nylons. Dirt-smudged dress. Wig twisted to one side, lipstick smeared down one side of her cheek and chin.
“You’re hurting me,” she gasped, trying to work the pike pole away from her chest. In the light I could see her hands. They were a man’s hands.
“Hurting you is what my program’s all about tonight, friend. Just like hurting us was what your program was all about.”
I had no doubt I’d broken ribs, perhaps ruptured internal organs too.
“I gotta . . .” She was gasping like a dog hit by a truck. Going down. Knowing it. “I gotta get . . . some air.” I put more force on the pole.
“Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.” The voice had changed as it strained to suck in air. It was a man’s voice now. Tears poured out of the mascara around his eyes. “Don’t kill me. You’re Lieutenant Wollf, aren’t you? I was there the night your father died.”
I eased up just enough so he could talk.
“How do you know my name?”
It took him four or five shallow breaths before he could get the words out. “You want to hear how your father died?”
Nobody had ever been able to tell me anything about my father’s death. It was one of the Seattle Fire Department’s best-kept mysteries, probably because it represented one of the biggest fuckups in department history.
“Keep yapping.”
“Your father was Lieutenant Wollf? Right?”
“I’m not answering the questions. You are.”
“In 1978 your father worked on Engine Seven. Out of Station Twenty-five.”
I pressed the pole so hard both his feet came off the ground. “Stop,” he gasped. “Stop, or I don’t tell the rest.” I eased up. “Okay. Okay. Your father died in a fire in 1978. Here’s what happened. I was walking down this alley minding my own business when this guy shows up and starts hassling me. Pretty soon he’s beating the crap out of me. That’s when your father shows up. Your father saved my butt, ’cause I think that other guy was planning to kill me. That’s the truth, man. Your father saved my life.”
“Tell me about the first guy.”
“I never knew his name. He was in civilian clothes, but he was a firefighter. Your father knew him, and he knew your father.”
“Keep talking.”
“This guy caught me outside this basement fire, only he didn’t know it was a basement fire. Didn’t know I’d set anything. All he knew was I was in the vicinity. So he grabs me, shoves me up against a wall and beats me. I was just a kid, man. I was only nineteen.
“He said I set them fires. I never did. But he said I did. He was trying to beat a confession out of me. He didn’t seem to realize we have a bill of rights in this country. This country was founded on—”
“Get on with it.”