Chapter Twenty-One
Eliot
I sit in my truck for a full five minutes, windows down, listening to the scene.
The building’s new construction—or was. A mixed-use retail strip, six storefronts in a row.
The kind of thing going up all over Mueller as the neighborhood fills in.
Three of the glass doors are gone, frames warped, the storefronts behind them gutted.
The two units at the very end are mostly intact—though they’ll never be occupied. Not now.
Smoke damage runs up the exterior, dark tongues of soot extending from where most of the large, glass windows used to be.
The heat’s worse here than at the Ranger station. Radiant warmth comes off the concrete in waves. Wet char and a faint chemical tang hit the back of my throat as I ease myself out of the truck, giving my knee a moment to remember what walking feels like.
I work through the protective gear methodically. Coveralls, hard hat, safety goggles, leather gloves over nitrile, respirator. By the time I’m done, my back is soaked with sweat.
A tall, older man, the only one in a captain’s helmet, breaks away from a cluster of AFD personnel near one of the ladder trucks and hustles over to me.
“Flint?” he asks.
“Yup.” I show him my credentials. “You the incident commander?”
He pulls off his helmet and wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist. Deep creases around his eyes are lined with soot, and he carries himself with a weariness I remember all too well.
“Captain Okafor with the one-four. We were first on scene. The call came in a few minutes after nine a.m. By the time we got here, it was fully involved. Finally got it knocked down at ten thirty.”
“What about the fatalities?”
Okafor’s jaw tightens. “My crew found them in Unit B. They were right up against the emergency exit door at the back of the building.”
Fuck.
If they were at the door, why didn’t they escape? Smoke inhalation kills faster than people think, but the victims still should’ve gotten out.
“That’s…”
He nods. “Twenty-two years, and this job can still surprise me.”
I gesture to the Medical Examiner’s van parked at the corner. “Any idea how much longer the ME’s gonna be?”
“Any minute now. We’ve kept the northeast corner secured,” Okafor says.
Hefting my gear bag, I grit my teeth as the skin across my torso pulls taut. “Anyone else been inside?”
“Two of my investigators. But they’re out now. I’ve got one firefighter doing a final stability check—Martez—she’ll be out in five. After that, the scene’s yours.”
I shake the captain’s hand, then head for the building. “Flint?” Okafor calls, his voice strained. “Somethin’ about this ain’t sittin’ right. When you figure it out…will you call me?”
I turn, holding his gaze for a beat. “Count on it.”
A full circuit of the exterior takes me twenty minutes.
The east face took the heaviest damage, while the west is almost pristine.
At the back of the building, two of the steel doors are propped open—likely by one of the crews on scene.
Not the one to Unit B. I take a couple of close-up shots of the hardware on the door in question.
Exterior hinges look fine. The lock’s intact. So why didn’t they get out?
Martez is standing outside Unit C when I return to the front of the building. She’s young. Mid-twenties. Has the same look in her eyes Zack always got after a bad fire. Like a tiny crack in her innocence just got wider.
“Cap said you’d want to hear my report, sir.” She straightens her shoulders and waits for me to nod. “The ceiling assembly in the northeast corner failed. There’s a twelve-foot gap in the firewall along the ceiling.”
Well, shit.
“What about the suppression system?” I’m already calculating how long it’ll take Parker and Nate to figure out who inspected this building.
“It discharged. But it didn’t do much in the northeast corner.” She pulls off her helmet, red hair secured in a tight bun. “Watch yourself near the back wall. Debris from the ceiling collapse is pretty thick.”
“Will do. Thanks.” I adjust my respirator, double-checking the fit one last time before I step into the crime scene.
A quick glance up the street confirms the medical examiner’s gone. It’s a small relief, but one I don’t take for granted. Too many bodies in my past I’ll never be able to forget.
The interior is dimmer than it should be. The blown windows let in the light, but soot and ash absorb more than their fair share.
Starting with the least damaged unit—the one on the far end—I work my way through the building. Suites F and E, the last two storefronts, are completely empty and mostly intact. Smoke damage. Nothing more.
But by the center of the building, the ceiling tiles are gone, the grid that used to hold them warped in some sections, twisted and laying on the floor in others.
On the south wall of Unit C, I find a clear V pattern. It starts at floor level, spreading up and out in an almost perfect triangle six feet wide at the ceiling.
I crouch, stifling my groan as my body protests, and run the hydrocarbon detector along the floor at the base of the V, around a rough, two-foot area where the concrete’s one shade darker than everywhere else.
I mark it, take half a dozen photos, and label my first sample can.
Filling it with some of the fine debris—ash and small fragments of ceiling tiles and drywall—I seal it before I probe any further along the wall.
The official report can’t be filed until the lab processes everything, but I can smell the naphthalene through the respirator.
Before moving on, I sweep the flashlight along the ceiling. The smoke detector sits high on the wall in the far corner. I ease it out of the mount, expecting the wire tethering it to the electrical system to catch. It doesn’t.
Fuck.
All new construction requires smoke detectors to be hardwired with a battery backup. The small plastic compartment is empty. Whoever set this blaze didn’t leave a damn thing to chance.
I bag the entire thing, seal it up, and move to Unit B.
It’s lighter now, the summer sky visible through a hole in the roof. The gap in the ceiling assembly—the twelve-foot run Martez described—should never have been there. It channeled the fire up from the adjoining unit, into this one, and took the ceiling with it.
The flashover would have been terrifying. With no smoke alarm in the next unit, theirs would have gone off, and the whole fucking ceiling above them would have burst into flames seconds later.
The rear of the unit is cordoned off with more caution tape. Two yellow numbers almost glow in the disturbed ash—placards left behind. One for each victim.
Ducking under the tape, I start snapping pictures of the door. It takes me five shots before I understand the wrongness of what I’m looking at. I crouch down and run my fingers over the panic bar assembly.
Whoever mounted the damn thing flipped it around. The push rail is facing the hinges. Not the latch. No amount of force was ever going to open that door.
My hands shake, and I shove the camera back into my bag. The building should have been safe. The two victims—fuck, I don’t know their names or why they were here in the first place—should have gotten out easily.
Zack should have gotten out too.
One breath. Two. Three.
Sweat beads along the edge of my safety goggles and runs into my left eye. I try to wipe it away, but the angle’s wrong. Twisting my hard hat slightly, I manage to run the edge of my sleeve over my forehead.
A dry, sliding sound from above registers a second before a concentrated point of heat hits the back of my neck and left shoulder.
I land on my ass, swatting at my shirt through the coveralls until the sensation fades away.
Shit. That could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. I take another beat to calm my racing heart, and keep working.