Chapter 14 #2
This is likely as much as I can hope for via phone, but I’ll be finding a way to work it into conversation when I see her next.
We say goodbye and I head for my room.
Once I’m in bed, the idea of Meg helping my daughter achieve a goal—if that’s what she decides—stirs something raw inside my chest. It’s not a bad feeling.
It’s just…new. I know Greta and Meg talk sometimes and not just about cat sitting, so it’s not out of left field that Greta would seek her out for help.
I just never imagined seeing Greta with a female role model that’s not Kelly or one of her coaches.
Certainly not the person I’m fantasizing about deep-throating my cock.
It's a reminder that every decision I make with Meg, I have to consider Greta’s feelings.
The divorce was devastating for her too.
I was adamant about never sharing the reasons behind it—no twelve-year old needs to know such details about her parents—and for a long time, Greta buried her frustration.
She was hurting, and it tore me up. It’s exactly how I was at her age.
Until I snapped, and the fighting started.
Thanks to help from Dr. Greely, and Greta connecting with gymnastics, plus lots of steady reassurance mixed with my efforts to grow her self-confidence, Greta seems to have pulled through. But I’m never putting myself or my daughter through that kind of anguish again .
The tones wake me just after 3:00 am. Structure fire. All units.
I autopilot into my uniform and file into the hallway, where the others are moving toward the pole holes. Once I’m down in the truck bay, I suit up. Will Hayes comes next to me, his expression flashing between eagerness and flat-out panic.
Engines rumble to life and my crew climbs into the engine. Our three units pull out, sirens wailing.
Anticipation hums beneath my skin. A house fire isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy, but fighting one is a rare thrill.
And right now, it’s a welcome distraction.
“Are the inhabitants accounted for?” Scotty asks over the radio.
“Neighbors report it’s abandoned but we can’t rule it out,” Chief Greely replies.
The house is located in an older neighborhood I’m familiar with and not for good reasons.
When we turn onto the street, a muted glow is coming from a two-story structure in the middle of the block.
I clip my pack strap around my waist and slip on my gloves.
Next to me, Hayes is already geared up except for his mask clipped to his shoulder strap.
On the front lawn of the first house on the right, people are milling around in the darkness. Most likely neighbors. The hydrant is in between it and the next house, which is dark.
“That’s the closest hydrant,” Scotty says, pointing with his radio.
“Got it,” I say.
Hickman continues toward the two-story house.
The chief’s rig is parked on the other side of the driveway with his headlights trained on the house, illuminating the smoke rising from the back, which means there’s either a window or door open back there or the fire has self-vented through a roof space.
The windows are covered with decorative metal screens and draperies illuminated by the glow coming from inside the house .
“Shit,” Hayes mutters.
There’s a rambler to one side and a square structure with a dilapidated van taking up the entire driveway of the other.
Hickman parks alongside the curb in front of the blazing house.
“I’ll do a three-sixty,” Scotty says as we file out of the engine. “You and Hayes are my first attack crew.”
I get Hayes pulling hose lines while I take the tools to the hydrant and get connected and Hickman works the pump on the engine.
Scotty returns as I’m laying our attack hose line to the front door. “Let’s try to knock it down from inside,” he yells over the engines and the steady roar of the fire. “A secondary team will do a sweep.”
Hayes joins me with the axe and the battering ram at the front door. “Ready!” I call out to Hickman standing by at the pump. The limp hose in my hands goes rigid as water pumps in. Hayes mirrors me pulling on my mask and tugging my flash hood up, then after a nod from me, he rams the door open.
A wall of heat and thick black smoke blasts me while the gust of cold oxygen from outside sucks past our legs into the fire.
In the updraw, I get a split-second view of the empty living space floor.
Then the black cloud of smoke blinds us again, billowing from the back of the house—likely the source of the fire.
We move left, the hiss of my respirator loud in my ears.
We pass through an empty dining room to a kitchen space with peeling linoleum flooring and cabinets that look chewed by some kind of animal.
The rest is black smoke. If there’s carpet involved, it burns like a grease fire—hot and stubborn.
There’s also the possibility the fire had help from an accelerant.
I’ll know as soon as I hit it with water.
Sweat is soaking the inside of my flash hood and down my back. Past the kitchen is another open room, filled with black smoke. Flames licks up the walls and ceiling.
I open the nozzle and aim for the closest wall.
Steam hisses and the smoke explodes, thick and gray.
I take another few steps forward and sweep the hose up, framing the opening of the room.
Flames walk across the floor. We move in a little more, with Hayes behind me dragging the hose.
The heat doesn’t break, even as I fill the room with water.
I step into the room but the floor flexes beneath me, like it’s unstable.
From the fire? I think about those cabinets. Have rats eaten away at the floor too?
The secondary team enters the house behind us. I hit the window at the back of the room. The spray and the fire are so loud I don’t hear it shatter. This will help depressurize the system and vent some of the heat. The last thing I want is for the house to flash with us inside it.
Details of the room come in bursts of split-second visibility as I attack with the hose. The shape of a couch. An external heating unit. The frame of a bicycle. A second window.
What started this fire?
The second team attacks from the right side of the room, creating more smoke.
We gain on the walls and ceiling but the source of the fire in the center of the carpeted floor just dances around.
I move closer, testing my weight on the flexing floorboards.
Hayes swings behind to my left, dragging more hose. I aim at the base of the flames.
“We’ve got a victim!” someone says over the radio. It sounds like Jensen, the crash truck lieutenant.
I block out the radio chatter and advance another few feet on the fire. I can’t see to the other side of the room because of the smoke. Where’s the victim?
Though I want to help, that’s not our role. Hayes and I advance a little more. With the combined efforts from both teams, within a few more minutes, we get the flames knocked down.
“We’ ve got a glow in the upper floor,” the chief barks into the radio. “All teams retreat!”
There’s no way to save the victim if we have to switch to an exterior attack, but I don’t hesitate to follow orders. If this house is abandoned and structurally compromised, we’re at risk of it coming down with us trapped inside.
“What about the victim?” Hayes calls out as we turn back.
There’s no short answer, so I don’t try.
Outside, Finn River Sheriff’s Department vehicles are parked and I spot Everett and Sheriff Olson talking with the chief.
While my crew regroups, the medic rig from Evergreen arrives, but the chances of them finding a live patient in need of medical attention are slim to zero.
A news van sets up outside the police perimeter and the assortment of onlookers has grown to a small crowd. It takes another thirty minutes of attacking from both front and back of the house and the help of breaking a hole in the roof to finally put out the flames.
While the medics enter the house, our crews poke holes into voids and check for pockets of heat that would indicate fire still smoldering. Dawn breaks, melting away the darkness.
When I come around the corner of the house to start packing up our gear, Hutch and his partner step from the house and return to the ambulance empty-handed. Coupled with the presence of the medical examiner’s van now parked near the chief’s rig, I know the status of the victim.
Fuck. What the hell went down inside this house?
Did the victim accidentally start the fire?
A few years ago, I was on a structure fire that killed a homeless person who had been squatting in an abandoned home.
We pulled him out alive but the smoke inhalation killed him before he reached the hospital.
He’d been passed out drunk when a couple of kids thought it would be a good time to experiment with Molotov cocktails. News flash—they work.
Is that what happened here?
Or did someone intentionally start this fire to cover their tracks?
I’m loading hose back onto the engine when Everett appears, his notebook and pen in his hand. He sets his left foot on the running board so he can use his leg as a writing surface. “Reports so far point to arson. Do you agree?”
“Someone used an accelerant, that’s for sure. The fire inspector will be able to tell you more.” I glance up. “Any idea who the victim was?”
“Caucasian female. Slender build. No ID yet.”
My sweat-soaked layers are starting to cool, sending a chill over my skin. Or maybe it’s the knowledge that we were too late to save whoever was in that house. “Neighbors might know.”
He’s scribbling away, his left hand curled around the pen. When we were kids, teachers tried to get him to switch to his right hand, until Mom got up in their grill.
“M.E. thinks she was either unconscious or already deceased when the fire started,” he says.
Either conclusion offers little solace. Nobody deserves to be trapped like that. “Damn.”
“We had a bust not too far from here last month,” he says, gazing to the west.
Bust could mean plenty of things, especially in this neighborhood. “Why the bike?” I ask, stacking the last of the hose.
“Huh?” he asks, turning back to me.
“Inside that room. There was a bicycle.”
He shakes his head. “Maybe it was hers.”
Someone who gets around on a bike could mean they don’t have a car. The idea that this woman was homeless returns to my mind.
William Hayes comes around the other side of the structure with Scotty .
“Hellofa first day,” Everett says, arching an eyebrow.
“He did good,” I say with a nod. Hayes kept his head, didn’t get cocky, and worked hard.
Everett fixes me with a curious gaze. “Is it true you and Meg were at a house party on Walker Street last night?”
“Yeah. Why?”
I expect a ribbing—I rarely go to parties and he knows why—but his gaze softens. “How’s she doing?”
The ache behind my breastbone gives a sharp twist. I focus hard on loading up our tools. “Better.”
Now I know who tipped off Mom.
“That’s good to hear.” Ev flips his notebook shut. “Later.” He heads for his rig.
It takes us another hour to finish cleanup. Then I do a walk-through with the fire investigator, our boots crunching on the charred floor. It’s still warm in here, the air thick with the scent of doused campfire and the acrid hint of the fuel used to start the blaze.
The investigator videos the blackened shell of the room where the fire started. “Pretty warm this time of year for an external heating unit. Was it plugged in?”
I close my eyes for an instant to break into my memories. “Yeah, I think so.” But abandoned houses don’t usually have the electricity turned on, so maybe we’re wrong about that.
The investigator squats down in the center of the floor, where the fire was hottest, and scribbles some notes before taking a sample of the flooring for tests. Not that there’s any doubt an arsonist started this fire. The question going round and round in my head is why.
An abandoned home makes an ideal target for kids who want to play with fire.
Or the fire could have been set by someone who gets his rocks off watching firefighters and cops scramble around to put it out.
There’s an even more sickening possibility, but it’s so awful, it’s hard to fathom. A chill walks down my spine.
What if the fire was an attempt to destroy evidence of a crime—like murder?