Through the Fire Page 9

  Butcher held his mask in one hand and motioned with the other. “Swirl us some water in there, A-O.”

  I shot the stream in the cloud. It shook and hissed. Lowell pulled more of the hose to the door. I shut down the bale. Butcher checked the doorknob. It didn’t budge. I felt around my belt grasping air. No axe.

  “Watch out,” Butcher said, nudging me aside. He turned around and burro-kicked the door.

  Wood cracked. He kicked again, pounding out splinters. A third kick. The frame snapped and the door flew open.

  Smoke snuck surreptitious glances around the corners.

  Lowell twirled his axe over his hand and sheathed it in his belt.

  “I could’ve got that, Marky.”

  Butcher motioned with his head. “Let’s get in there.”

  I hesitated. Lowell nearly snatched the nozzle, but I yanked it away.

  He strapped on his mask. “Wet stuff on the red stuff, A-O.”

  I put a hand on the doorframe and crawled inside. Lowell lifted the hose line behind me. I swam forward as though under murky water.

  The image of a giant wave flitted through my mind.

  Focus, Aidan. Focus.

  The temperature heightened. The front of my helmet hit something large and hard.

  “Keep going.” Lowell said.

  “I can’t.”

  I felt around to both sides. A hard flat object on my left, to my right something softer. I pushed and it moved enough for us to squeeze past.

  An orange glow lit the black fog beyond. The heat forced us lower.

  Again, the laughing.

  My breathing quickened, ineffective and shallow.

  Lowell pushed me on. Flames fanned around a shut door. I crawled to it, clenching my teeth. He reached in front and shoved it inward.

  The room lit like concert lights. I sucked the air from my mask. Waves of fire rolled overhead.

  I cranked open the bale. Water hammered the hose and knocked me to my rear. The line snaked and slithered back. I grasped the nozzle tight.

  Don’t lose it again, Aidan!

  Lowell burrowed his shoulder into my back. I balanced off him and made my knees, hosing the furnace, whipping the water stream in a broad circle.

  The ceiling darkened and the doorframe flickered down. Lowell pushed the hose forward. I steadied myself with a hand on the floor.

  He nudged my back. “The seat of the fire’s in the bathroom.”

  “I know, I know.” My knees kept sticking to the melted carpet.

  I penciled overhead with short bursts of water. We crept forward and found a door to a small bathroom burned halfway out, everything beyond involved in fire that shot out a high rectangular window.

  The flame seemed to form horns and turn its head.

  It saw me.

  Regrouping itself, it grew and intensified, coming for me.

  I brought one knee up and unleashed the water stream. It screamed and hissed, blowing ashy smoke back over us. Everything became lost in the cloud. I saw myself standing before the towering wave, it sucking me up, lifting me, clenching me in its indomitable fist, its arm cocked, ready to drive me back to the rocks.

  A terror-filled yell choked out in my throat.

  Then the atmosphere cooled, smoke color shifting to a thinning gray. And the vision fled.

  Lowell patted my shoulder. “All right, buddy. Let’s shut her down.”

  Fans roared from the front door. Flaming speckles dotted the doorframe. Smoke streams flowed out of the bathroom window. Sweat bullets ran down my cheeks. My chest heaved. Additional crews came crouching under the rising smoke line, setting droplights and throwing salvage covers over furniture. Lowell busted holes in the drywall, exposing charred studs. I followed behind and bathed the wood with the bale cracked open.

  The apartment cleared of haze, and I saw a scorched couch sitting cockeyed in the living room, our hose line winding behind it. A wall heater with a dent hung where I had hit my helmet. A kitchen counter rose beside it. Everything plastic sported elongated drips stretching to the floor in suspended animation. A television pouted, having folded in on itself.

  The truck company went to work pulling ceiling. Lowell and I regrouped with Butcher outside. I peeled off my mask.

  Lowell peered back in the doorway and motioned to Butcher. “Mark. Check this out.”

  On the kitchen counter rested a shotgun barrel and a hacksaw. The remains of a wooden table lay broken and splintered on the floor.

  Butcher pointed to the stock of a gun sticking out of a box on the floor. “An improvised sawed-off shotgun?”

  Lowell looked into the box. “This thing’s full of cartridges. We crawled right past it.”

  My stomach knotted. I ran my fingers through my hair and glanced around the living room.

  “Let’s tape this off until the investigator gets here,” Butcher said.

  A dark-haired cop with a Tom Selleck moustache walked over to Butcher. “You guys get the story on what happened?”

  Butcher wiped his brow. “No. We saw you catch our arsonist, though.”

  I loosened the shoulder straps on my air pack.

  The cop folded his arms. “Good old freaky Biltman. Turns out this is his place.”

  That got my attention.

  “Did you know he’s also a meth addict?” he continued. “He owed money to some gang members who, he said, were waiting for him outside this apartment with automatic weapons.” He rested his hand on his gun. “He doesn’t have phone service, so he figured he’d set a fire to cause a distraction and bring help.”

  Lowell shook his head. “Hacked up his table and set it on fire in the tub.”

  The cop nodded. “His neighbor came downstairs with a fire extinguisher and Biltman shoves a gun in his face and tells him that if he puts it out he’ll kill him. The fire spread faster than Biltman could handle and so he bailed. That was when you guys pulled up.”

  “Great,” Lowell said. “That’s just great.”

  Butcher nodded. “That neighbor must have been the guy yelling at us when we first got here.”

  The cop scratched the back of his head.

  “Good times,” Lowell said.

  The cop smirked. “Yeah. Good times.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  I flipped open my phone and dialed. It rang a couple times as I walked to the Cruiser.

  Blake answered, “Investigator Williams.”

  “You just like saying that, don’t you?”

  “What’s up, you hose dragger?”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “I’m over at Prevention. Trying to make some headway.”

  “You still want to meet this morning?”

  “Yeah. Yes, absolutely. In fact, I was just packing things up here and was about to call you. How was the night?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “Well, I’ll buy your first cup of coffee, then.”

  “Sounds great. Dreamer’s or Java Jungle?”

  “Let’s do Dreamer’s this time.”

  I rolled out of Central and crossed the Virginia Street Bridge, its century-old concrete weathered but stalwart, and parked by the coffeehouse in the old Riverside building. I took my coffee outside and sat at a table along its brick-lined walls and watched the dry-suited paddlers in the kayak park, marveling that the brisk autumn air did little to dissuade them.

  There is something discernable in the human spirit when fatigue has flooded the synapses. Time slows. Perception floats. I’ll hear leaves rustle, sense wind currents, notice light refracting off the dew-laden legs of an insect. A couple yellow boats sank and surfaced, spinning and turning off the standing waves. The sound of the water and the gentle rustle and dance of the Riverwalk trees proved a refreshing alternative to the Station One walls and the windows that wouldn’t open.

  One hour of sleep. The same sun I’d seen rising on my way to work had risen again, but my day hadn’t ended. Lowell said it was like the sun
was mocking him.

  A man and woman walked past wearing long wool overcoats. Coal for him, tan for her, along with a scarlet beanie. She laughed, their fingers intertwined and swaying in rhythm with their steps. I took a sip and thought of Julianne.

  I still couldn’t place her. But something about her seemed . . . right. Like home.

  I had a clear view of the corner loft in the Park Tower where I had lived when Christine and I started dating. She’d moved in there after I bought my parents’ house. It was a cool little flat, all four hundred and forty square feet—not including the balcony, which is what really made it great. The summer festivals, the concerts, Artown movies at night in Wingfield Park. I remember having ice tea with her while we watched The Wizard of Oz from a pair of chaise lounges we found at the Salvation Army store. If Reno had a heart, this was it. It was where mine fell for hers, six years prior. And that first year was good.

  Then my dad was killed.

  It made everything different. I know it shouldn’t have. But I became so caught up in the investigation. I wanted to know, needed to know, every fact about that fire. I read and reread every report typed by every captain and chief and investigator. Not to mention news articles and editorials. Stacks of papers cluttered up corners of my flat. When Christine came over after classes, we’d be less than ten feet from each other—me at the desk, poring over incident narratives and her on the couch, cross-legged and hedged in by a book. She read Ayn Rand a lot. That should have been my first red flag.

  Folks were full of wisdom for me. “Sometimes bad things happen, Aidan.” “It was just his time, Aidan.” “Believe me, Aidan, God doesn’t have anything against you or your father. Firemen die sometimes, and there’s nothing we can do to stop that.”

  That last shining nugget had come from Butcher.

  I stopped going to our church. It seemed as if every time someone saw me it made them think of my dad. I couldn’t walk from the foyer to the sanctuary without half a dozen “caring” and inquisitive comments about me and my mom and my grandfather. It was just easier not to go. So I didn’t. If I wasn’t at work, I was at the Prevention office with Blake, and if I wasn’t there, I was sitting on a stool nursing a Guinness, listening to stories about my great-grandfather and the San Francisco quake told by Patty McDonough, who was so ancient I couldn’t believe he still had the strength to pull the tap handle.

  Somehow, the stories soothed me. My father had died, but our family legacy hadn’t.

  My mother, amid her own heartache, still walked with a strange peace through it all. She encouraged me to talk things out. But I’d dodge her invitations, giving her clichés about how it didn’t work that way for guys. We fix our own things. We don’t ask for directions. We retreat to the cold dark shelter of our caves and concoct charcoal-laid plans for overcoming the beast.

  My solitary grieving eventually ran its course, and Christine graciously welcomed me back. She understood I had needed time for healing and resolution. Problem was, I’d never found any. I was just as confused and angry and frustrated with God as I had been when it first happened. We never really talked about how my father being crushed by a fallen brick wall affected me when I tried to go to sleep, or when I went on fires. Because I wanted to make sure that she and everyone knew that I wasn’t going to give in, that I wouldn’t meet the same fate. I would beat it. I would always know what the fire was doing. I would sense a structure before it collapsed. I would hear the fire before it flashed. And I would not be God’s next example of how firemen just die sometimes and there ain’t a thing anyone can do about it.

  I looked back at the river and swallowed lukewarm coffee, the heat from my cup already lost to the autumn air.

  Christine had come from an affluent upbringing, her sights always set a bit higher than mine. “One day when we have our home on the lake . . .” she’d say, meaning Tahoe. And, “Ooh, A-O, have you seen the new Porsche?” Which of course, I hadn’t. Or if I had, I sure wasn’t taking notes to decide what color to pick out.

  At times I would stop her midsentence and in all seriousness say, “Babe, I am a fireman.” I would elongate the word too, and associate it with the phrase “glorified garbageman.” And she would laugh as if I had just said the funniest thing in the world, and by the way, did I like her new Coach purse and wallet? She got the wallet on sale, only three hundred forty-eight dollars.

  What had fueled her persistent disassociation from reality? And what convinced me that it wasn’t that big of an issue?

  The fact that she had been in school had probably delayed the inevitable. As she neared completion of her degree and contemplated establishing her life as she had pictured and footnote-captioned it in her mind, the clear lens of reality started taking focus.

  She was engaged to be married to a fireman.

  No home on Lake Tahoe.

  No fancy foreign sports cars.

  No high-society art fund-raisers.

  A brisk breeze spun dried leaves in an eddy on the sidewalk.

  Someone spoke behind me, “What’s up, loser?”

  I turned to see Blake, his dark wavy hair combed with a pomade gloss, crisp lined collar under a tailored suit jacket. A slight fold betrayed the piece holstered at his flank.

  I took a deep breath. Sometimes a friendly ribbing found the space between the bones.

  CHAPTER

  21

  W hat’s up, Gary Cooper?” I stood. “You get a lot of chicks walking around in that getup?”

  He swung his arm wide and gave me a hearty handshake. “You look like you’ve been sleeping under a bridge. Somebody beat you up before I got here?”

  “Yeah, you know. Engine One nights. But I can still get chicks looking like this.”

  He grinned. “It’s cold out here. You want to go inside?”

  He was right, even my clothes felt cold. I followed him through the front doors.

  Espresso wafted through the room. Blake bought me a refill, and we found a seat by the windowed wall. A girl sat at the baby grand piano playing something somber.

  Blake’s news came sudden and unexpected. “I lost my house, Aidan.”

  His clean Brut-basted jawline defied what he was saying. It was like Pierce Brosnan telling you that he wasn’t really James Bond.

  I had expected him to unveil some sort of striking discovery and inroad on my father’s case. “What happened?”

  He leaned back in his chair and undid a button on his coat. “I did some pretty aggressive real estate investing. I got overextended and had to short sell three houses. Now the bank has foreclosed on my primary.” He shifted his lower jaw to the side and shook his head. “I screwed up, man.”

  I leaned forward with an elbow on the table and rubbed the back of my neck. “Wow. I had no idea. It all came down that quickly?”

  “About half a year ago I knew I was in trouble. But the market . . . you know. So . . .’’ He looked out the window. “I just needed to find somewhere, so I—”

  “Hey, if you need a place to stay you can always have the extra room at my house.”

  He shook his head.

  “I mean it,” I said. “It’s no burden.”

  He let out an embarrassed laugh. “You don’t make things easy, do you, A-O?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He swallowed and looked out the window again. He rubbed his forehead. “Look at me, huh? Here I am straight off talking about myself. Tell me what’s going on with you. How are you? I heard all about that fire with Hartman.” Then quickly, “I hear he’s getting better, though.”

  I ignored his questions. “Blake, it’s all right if you’re in need, man. That’s what friends are for. Whatever it is, just tell me and I’ll help.”

  He exhaled and nodded. “Right. Thanks. You know, I’ve actually been rooming over at the Cairo for the last couple of weeks. It’s not so bad.”

  “Last couple of weeks? You’re already out? What about your stuff?”

  “In storage.”

  “Why
didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have helped you move.”

  “You know, I kept thinking I’d find a way out of it.”

  I glanced at the earthy brown liquid in my mug. “So . . . how’s the room service at the Cairo?”

  He released a laugh. “It’s just great, Aidan.” He lifted his cup and mouthed a curse at me.

  I rubbed the scratch of day-old stubble on my jaw. “Look, man, I really mean it. I have that spare bedroom—”

  “Aidan, I can’t impose on you like—”

  “Don’t even.” I raised a hand. “The truth is out. Blake Williams actually needs help.” I stood and mock proclaimed it to no one in particular. “Blake Williams actually needs my help.”

  A man behind a laptop raised a disinterested eyebrow.

  I sat back down. “You can’t backpedal now. You don’t have anywhere else to go. Look, I could just as easily be in your shoes, and I don’t even know if I’d have sense enough to just go to a buddy and ask for a hand.”

  He jutted out his chin and stared at the table.

  “Just consider it payback for all your research on my father’s fire. You’ve done so much for me. Christine reminds me of that all the time.”

  “Heh. Right.” He sat up straight, a buoyed expression on his face. “You’re a true friend, Aidan. I’ll give it some thought, okay.”

  “All right.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Hey, about your dad’s fire.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I do have to get going here, but I will say that we’re close.”

  “Last time we talked you said you’d made inroads with some calculations.”

  “You’re talking about the ones on the wall’s structural integrity?”

  “Yeah.”

  He adjusted his watchband. “Oh, this goes far beyond that.”

  “But that was significant, right? That brick shouldn’t have collapsed that fast.”

  Blake nodded. “And your dad knew that. When James went into that structure, he expected, and rightly so, to have more time than he did. Even with unreinforced masonry, those rafters were all cut and stack, not lightweight trusses. Their integrity under those fire conditions should have been way longer than today’s gang-plated stuff. That fire with Hartman, you guys would have—”