Earl W. Emerson

by The smoke room: a novel of suspense

I ride Engine 29 and take pride in my duties. On alarms I deliver the goods, and when we have a fire, my crew gets water. We drill for the chief and I make no mistakes. Sonja and I talk about having babies, about her day in the patrol car, my day at the fire station, about national politics or the last movie we saw together. Whenever the weather allows, I skate. When she’s not at work, Sonja skates with me. We listen to music. We read books. We take walks after dinner. We enjoy each other’s company and the company of our friends.

  Two weeks after I make the deal with the feds, my attorney calls. The government has flown experts from the Treasury Department to Seattle to examine the bonds and has learned they are fakes. Eventually the bank would have caught Tronstad for the bonds he cashed. The government bonds are counterfeit, and the private and foreign bank bonds are phoney, too. For twenty years Ghanet had been hoarding a treasure that is bogus.

  It kills me to think about it. Three sacks of garbage propelled the runaway machine that chewed up my life and killed six people. Once a day, sometimes more, black thoughts cross my mind, thoughts of pumping on Russell Abbott’s chest, of the charred corpses at the intersection of California and Admiral Way, of the tiny article in the Seattle Times noting Heather Wynn’s death. Sears twisting in the grip of the whirlpool. Tronstad choosing money over his very life. I lie to myself. I rationalize and I justify and I make the best of my part in all of it. I live my life and it is good, but underneath, I carry a secret that is as nasty as the cancer my mother walked around with.

  These days, perhaps more than anybody around, I realize the value of law.

  I do not trample rules. I do not roll through stop signs. I do not drive the interstate five miles over the speed limit. I do not hedge when filling out tax forms. I return my library books on time. I pocket my litter and that of the next man. Sometimes my punctiliousness annoys Sonja, but I will not change.

  308

  E A R L E M E R S O N

  I have to admit there are times when I am tempted by the money my mother left, but I know I’m happiest when I’m living a normal life like everybody around me. A life with simple pleasures. Sonja loves me and I love her, and I’ve found that’s more than enough.

  A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

  Earl Emerson is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department. He is the Shamus Award–winning author of Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno, and Pyro, as well as the Thomas Black detective series, which includes The Rainy City, Poverty Bay, Nervous Laughter, Fat Tuesday, Deviant Behav- ior, Yellow Dog Party, The Portland Laugher, The Vanishing Smile, The Million-Dollar Tattoo, Deception Pass, and Cat- fish Café. He lives in North Bend, Washington. Visit the author’s website at www.EarlEmerson.com.

  A B O U T T H E T Y P E

  This book was set in Minion, a 1990 Adobe Originals typeface by Robert Slimbach. Minion is inspired by classical, oldstyle typefaces of the late Renaissance, a period of elegant, beautiful, and highly readable type designs. Created primarily for text setting, Minion combines the aesthetic and functional qualities that make text type highly readable with the versatility of digital technology.