Chapter Forty-Two
Eliot
I feel like I’ve lived three days since sunrise. The preliminary report from Rutherford Lane is tucked in my bag. The accelerant, the problems in the suppression system, the missing coating on some of the steel supports… My findings are solid in a way nothing else is right now.
The bullpen hums with conversation, the occasional ringing phone, and typing. A printer whirrs somewhere to my left, and behind me, in the break room, the coffee pot sputters the last few drops of its brew cycle.
The normalcy of it all should settle me. But today…I’m not sure anything will.
I spent most of last night convinced that if I stayed busy enough, I’d eventually sleep. That I’d feel less like I was about to walk right off a cliff.
It didn’t work.
The hours passed, my hands ached, and I bruised my shin after tripping over a hammer and slamming my leg into the bed frame. But I was staring at the ceiling at two a.m., three a.m., four a.m., and all the minutes in between.
In a few hours, I’ll tell Parker about my last day on the job. About Zack. I’ll give her the one thing I’ve been afraid to give anyone since it happened: the truth. And then I’ll watch her leave.
I force myself to nod at the few Rangers who look up as I pass by. I’ve met a few this past week—Bennett, Merriweather, Parina. Good folks. Friendly enough.
Yet every step takes more out of me. Because the worst part won’t be losing her tonight. It’ll be coming back here tomorrow and sitting in the same room with her after she’s gone.
I take a breath, and push through the conference room door.
AJ glances over at me from where he’s leaning against the wall closest to the whiteboard. “Good timing, Eliot. Parker and Nate were just bringing me up to speed on our missing inspector.”
I set my bag next to the chair I’ve claimed as mine. The one right next to Parker. “Missing?”
Nate snorts. “Hiding is probably closer to the truth. We’ve been trying to track him down all day. Calls go straight to voicemail. He wasn’t home, and he never showed for a scheduled inspection on Third.”
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Parker adds. “And Vern said he’d park a uniform outside Kessler’s house tonight.”
I nod, pull a thumb drive out of my bag, and slide it across the table to Nate. “Good idea. Kessler definitely has good reason to turn tail.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Parker says with a little shake of her head. I try not to notice the way one corner of her mouth ticks up in a wry half smile. “But Kessler ain’t the inspector of record anymore.”
I fumble with the paper copy of the report, and half a dozen pages spill across the polished wood table. “What do you mean, ‘anymore’?”
She pops the tab on a Dr. Pepper. “The report had Charlie Kessler listed when I pulled it yesterday. Today…it’s our old friend Todd Ferris.”
“You’re kidding.”
Nate slides the thumb drive into his laptop. “Afraid not. Databases don’t usually wake up in the middle of the night and edit themselves.”
“We’ve got a subpoena request in for brYCER’s logs,” Parker says. “Soon as it comes through, we’ll know who made the change and when.”
“Assuming they didn’t find a way to scrub that, too.” AJ runs a hand through his hair, leaving a few strands sticking up.
“If they did,” Nate replies, sending the first page of my report from his laptop to the monitor on the wall, “that’s a whole different level of problem.”
“We cannot bring Zephyr in on this.” AJ stares Nate down, then turns his gaze to Parker. “You hear me?”
I glance at the three of them. Parker and Nate both look a little guilty.
“Who’s Zephyr?”
Parker clears her throat. “A…friend.” Nate rolls his eyes, and Parker cuts him a look. “A friend who’s exceptionally good with computers.”
“The kind of skill that comes with paperwork I’d rather not do,” Nate says.
AJ shakes his head. “She’s a hacker. A brilliant one. Which is why she’s staying as far away from this investigation as humanly possible.”
“Got it. Well, I hate to add to the day’s problems, but I brought you a couple more.”
Nate sighs. “Please tell me one of them directly leads to somebody going to prison.”
“Eventually.” I reorder the papers I dropped, and find the page Nate has on the monitor. “But probably not today.”
“Go ahead.” AJ settles against the wall again, arms crossed. “We’re listenin’.”
“The first problem is the fire suppression system.”
Nate passes me the remote, and I click on the first photo. “The water supply’s live, fire pump’s installed, powered, all gauges are in the green.”
Parker tilts her head. “But?”
“But the pressure switch that tells the pump to turn on was wired to the wrong setpoint.” I aim the laser pointer at the control assembly. “When the sprinklers activate, the system pressure drops. That drop should signal the pump to boost it up again.”
AJ stares at the monitor, a line forming between his brows. “I’m gonna need a little more.”
“Think of it like this. You put a new thermostat in your house in the middle of June, then set the heat to turn on at sixty-six degrees. The installer tests the heat. Hot air comes out of your vents just fine, and he leaves. This part of Texas—hell, any part of Texas—you won’t need heat until at least October or November.
You wake up the first mornin’ it’s below freezing, and it’s forty-seven degrees in your house.
That’s how you find out the temperature wasn’t set right in the first place. ”
The purple highlighter Nate’s been spinning between his fingers stops moving entirely. “So…you’re sayin’ no inspector could have caught this?”
“Oh, they should’ve caught it. You can’t sign off on an inspection without a pressure test.” I move to the next image—a wide shot of the pump room—and aim the laser pointer at a valve near the ceiling.
“Hook a hose up here, discharge the water outside, and force the pressure to drop. The pump should start automatically. Takes maybe twenty minutes to confirm everything’s workin’ properly. ”
Nate sets the highlighter down next to his legal pad. “So Kessler either skipped the test—”
“Or signed paperwork saying it passed when it didn’t,” Parker finishes.
I move on to the next set of images. “This second issue is older. The beams and columns were coated. But at the joints…nothin’.
Bare steel. The pump issue? That could’ve happened when they did the retrofit three years ago.
But the joints? They were never coated. The building’s eight years old. Almost nine.”
Parker reaches for her Dr. Pepper, but pauses with the can halfway to her lips. A bead of condensation hits the table. “Well, shit.”
Nate flips back through his legal pad, scans the page, and flips forward again. His brow furrows. “Say that again? The joints were never coated?”
“Nope.” I point the laser at the photo. “The weathering’s consistent across every exposed connection. That’s original construction.”
With a sigh, Nate reaches for his laptop. “I’m gonna need a bigger spreadsheet.”
“For what?” I ask. I’ve seen Nate’s spreadsheets. Pretty sure NASA has launched missions with less documentation.
“Every inspection Apex has ever done,” he says. “I’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. All my color coding. Wasted.”
His fingers fly over the keyboard, while Parker and AJ exchange a look.
“Is he gonna be okay?” AJ asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.
Parker shakes her head. “He’s in shock. Either that or Hell’s frozen over.”
Nate sits back, his hands shaking slightly. “I was hoping for twelve.”
AJ peers at the screen, eyes wide, and all the color draining from his cheeks. “Fuck. Two hundred and three?”
With a few clicks, Nate sends the results to the wall monitor.
I scan the list—the first page of it, anyway—and see addresses across half a dozen counties.
Homes. Businesses. Two hundred and three buildings where people are depending on an inspection that might not be worth the paper it’s printed on.
For a long moment, no one says a word. The HVAC system shudders, trying desperately to keep up with the June heat.
“Can you sort by occupancy?” I ask.
“Doing it now. Also adding filters for building age, stories, ownership, use type—schools, churches, hospitals, care homes, hotels…” With the speed of a man running on caffeine and spite, Nate adds filters in every color under the sun.
“You forgot fuchsia,” Parker says when he tries to pick a second green that’s too close to the first.
“And that’s why we work so well together.” Nate snaps his fingers, adds fuchsia, and sorts again. “Eliot, I’m putting two copies of this on a secure file share. Do whatever you want with the copy named SFMO. The other one’s my original. Don’t touch.”
“Got it.” I reach for my phone and pull up Chief Alvarez’s number. “We start with the buildings where evacuation’s a nightmare. Hospitals. Nursing homes. Anywhere the occupants can’t just walk out.”
Parker finally takes a sip of her Dr. Pepper. “If we’re lucky, some of these are vacant.”
“That’d be a hell of a turn.” Pinching the bridge of my nose, I try to work out how long it’s gonna take to inspect every one of those buildings. “Before I light this fuse, can you tell me which inspector signed off on each building?”
“The chartreuse button lets you sort by inspector,” Nate says.
“Am I supposed to know what color that is?”
“Yellow green.” With a shake of his head, he mutters, “No one appreciates me.”
I glance up at AJ. “This is the Ranger’s case, Stone.
Your task force to run. But we’ve had four suspicious fires in ten days.
There’s no way the half a dozen inspectors in my office can get through all these buildings before another one goes up.
I gotta call Chief Alvarez. He’s the head of Major Investigations for SFMO out of Dallas.
He can start pulling every competent inspector in the state. ”
AJ nods. “Make the call. The task force might be run out of this office, Eliot, but you’re the fire guy. I ain’t about to tell you how to fight one.”
I hit dial, and Chief Alvarez answers on the second ring. “Eliot? How are things out there in Austin?”
“Not…great, sir. We’ve got an inspection problem. Or an inspector problem.” I spend the next few minutes summarizing the past ten days. When I finish, Alvarez clears his throat.
“So…what do you need?” he asks.
“Inspectors. As many as you can free up. We need rapid life-safety assessments. Exits. Suppression systems. Anything that presents an immediate danger to occupants. If a building looks unsafe, we coordinate with the local fire marshal and get people out until we know what we’re dealing with.”
His weary sigh says more than any words. “I’ll start making calls.”