Chapter 5
“You’re on time,” he says, like it settles something he wondered about.
“I’m always on time. Some might call it a personality defect.
” I order a coffee before I sit and put my folder on the table but don’t open it yet.
“I pulled the Bram Hollow dispatch log last night. You’re right.
Engine Four was paged at ten-forty-one to a structure fire fully involved on arrival, and Rick’s report puts ignition at eleven-oh-five.
He didn’t just get it wrong. He got it wrong in the only direction that hides someone was standing there when it started. ”
He turns the laptop toward me. “Here’s what I’ve got, and I want you to tell me where I’m wrong, because I’ve been staring at it alone for six weeks. That’s how you start seeing things that aren’t there.”
He has three fires. Bram Hollow in April, a vacant farmhouse on Quartz Creek Road in February, and a feed store outside Eagle Point last September.
He’s got the origin reports for all three, and Rick signed all three.
All three say the same thing in different words.
Electrical. Accidental. Started in a wall or a panel or a junction box, up high, and worked its way down.
“Fire wants to go up,” Matthew says. “That’s the whole personality of fire, it climbs.
When a report tells me a fire started in a wall at outlet height and the worst damage is in the floor system, I want to know what was on that floor that burned hotter than the thing that supposedly started it.
” He pulls up a photo of the Quartz Creek farmhouse, showing the floor caved into the crawlspace and the joists eaten through from below.
“That’s not a wall fire that dropped down.
That’s a floor fire that climbed. An accelerant was on that floor. ”
I open my folder. I have one structural report I wrote myself, on a commercial fire two years ago that I’d half-forgotten, and three I requested from the state archive yesterday afternoon under my own license, which I’m still allowed to do for another few days at least.
“The Eagle Point feed store... I didn’t assess it, but Pruett did before he retired last fall.
His report says the rear section failed but the front half is structurally sound.
Partial demolition, partial rebuild. That report exists.
” I slide the next page across. “This is what Cascade Mutual filed with the county to support the demolition permit. Same address. Same date. My colleague’s name.
Different conclusions. The filed version calls the entire structure a total loss, full demolition required.
Pruett never wrote that. He saw a repairable building and said so. ”
Matthew freezes. “A structural report was rewritten. That explains why there were two Pruett reports flagged for me.”
I nod. “That means they’ve been rewriting them for nearly a year, since the Eagle Point fire was one of Pruett’s last reports.
Mine from this week and Pruett’s from last fall.
” I tap the page. “Here’s the part that matters.
A real structural report and a real origin report are written by two different people at two different agencies who don’t coordinate, on purpose, so they check each other.
If the floor says one thing and the origin says another, that’s a flag.
The structural reports have been edited to agree with the origin reports, so there’s no disagreement left for anybody to flag. They made the two halves match.”
“Who’s they?”
“That’s your half.” I pull out the page I photographed in Rick’s office, the registry printout.
“Trentham Mitigation LLC. They do post-fire cleanup. They’ve been paying Rick on a second account, per job, no schedule.
They’re also the company that gets the demolition contract every time one of these structures gets condemned.
They get paid to haul away the building, and then the lot gets sold. ”
Matthew pulls up a county property map on the laptop without a word and starts typing addresses. Quartz Creek. Eagle Point. Bram Hollow. He sits back.
“All three sold within four months of the fire,” he says. “All three to the same buyer. A holding company out of Medford called Ridgeline Land Partners.”
“Trentham’s registered agent is a UPS box in Medford.”
We look at each other across a six-table coffee shop while the espresso machine hisses behind the counter. I came here to show him a forged report and clear my name. What’s on the table between us is bigger than my name or my marriage because Hallie Anderson died somewhere in the middle of it.
The Eagle Point feed store burned last September.
Quartz Creek was February. Whatever this is, Rick was already inside it last fall, which means he was running it across the dinner table from me for at least the better part of a year.
The affair isn’t the bottom of this. I don’t know when the affair began, but Rick was lying to me about who he was, and to what depths he’d sink.
That makes the affair the least interesting lie on the table, which makes it worse, not better.
I could have forgiven a man who fell into bed with someone even if I wouldn’t stay with him.
I don’t know what to do when the person I married never existed.
“Quartz Creek bothers me most,” I say, because if we’re doing this I’m going to do it right, which means following the part that doesn’t fit.
“The farmhouse was vacant. Nobody lived there. An empty house burning doesn’t pull a crew like an occupied one, doesn’t make the news, and doesn’t get a hard look.
It’s the safest one to burn. So why is it the one where the structural report didn’t get rewritten?
Pruett’s Eagle Point got doctored. My Adams got doctored.
Quartz Creek, the easy one, they left alone. ”
Matthew turns the laptop back and pulls the Quartz Creek file.
He reads for a while. “Because there was no structural report on Quartz Creek. Nobody ordered one. Vacant building, no injury, no dispute, so insurance paid without a fight.” He looks up.
“They only forge a structural report when an honest one would contradict the origin report. No honest report exists for Quartz Creek, so there was nothing to contradict and nothing to forge.”
“Which tells us something.” I pause, thinking it through.
“They forge mine and Pruett’s because we’d have said the building could be rebuilt or said it was a total loss for the wrong reason, like accelerant on the floor instead of bad wiring in the wall.
They don’t forge what doesn’t exist. They’re not papering everything.
They’re just...surgical. They only touch the reports that would trigger arson investigations that could expose them, so someone on the inside knows exactly which reports those are and knows enough engineering to know when a structural finding would blow an origin finding.
” I set down my coffee. “That’s not Shanna.
Shanna’s an adjuster, and she reads claims, not load paths.
And it’s not Rick. He reads fire, not floors. Someone in this knows my job.”
Matthew is quiet, and then he says the thing I’d been walking toward without wanting to arrive. “Pruett knows your job.”
I sigh but nod. The retired engineer could be a victim, like me, but he could also be an accomplice. “Either they’re using him or they’re using his name, and I need to know which before Rick does, because if Pruett’s a loose end for us, he’s a loose end for them.”
“My sister was a wildland firefighter.” Matthew keeps his gaze on the closed laptop.
“She got pulled to Bram Hollow on mutual aid because the structure was threatening the tree line, and they needed crews who could work the interface. She wasn’t even supposed to be inside.
She went in because somebody thought there was a person in there.
” He closes the laptop. “There wasn’t. The call that put her in that building was bad information, and the building came down on her.
The report says the building came down because of old wiring.
I think the report is a lie and the reason my sister is dead.
Until twenty minutes ago, I couldn’t prove the first part. ”
“Now you can.” I gather my pages back into the folder, hands steady. “Reports that were changed after they were filed. Money that doesn’t match a salary. Three fires, one buyer, one cleanup company, and one investigator signing off. That’s not a theory anymore. That’s a pattern with names on it.”
“It’s not enough to charge anybody.”
“No.” I stand, because I have somewhere to be and if I sit here much longer, the scope of it will catch up to me, and I’d rather be alone for that.
“It’s enough to start. Send me the three origin reports.
I’ll pull every structural assessment on every fire Rick’s signed in three years and find the ones that got rewritten.
You find out who at Cascade signs Trentham’s contracts, because someone on the insurance side is moving the money, and it isn’t only Shanna. ”
He looks up at me. “You already know it’s Shanna.”
“I’ve known Shanna was crooked for two years.
I just thought it was the ordinary kind, the adjuster who lowballs every claim and sleeps fine.
” I pick up my coffee. “Turns out she was practicing on me. Every report of mine she fought, every total-loss she pushed me to sign, she wasn’t being cheap.
She was finding out which engineers bend and which ones don’t, so she’d know whose name was safe to forge and whose she’d have to work around.
” I stand. “I didn’t bend. So they worked around me, and then they used my name anyway. I’m going to make them regret that.”