Storm Walk

by Melissa Bowersock

  Lacey gaped at him. “And that helped?”

  Sam chuckled. “Seems like it did. If I’m any judge of his mood, he sure seemed to think long and hard about it. I think it probably helped that it came from you and not me. At this point in Daniel’s life, I’m pretty much a persona non grata, you know.”

  Now Lacey was patently shocked. “Then yesterday, he asked me to help with his homework…”

  “What kind of homework?” Sam asked.

  “Civics. The Miranda Ruling. But it was weird, because one minute we were talking about innocent until proven guilty, and the next he was asking me if you and I ever fight. And how we resolve it when we do.”

  Sam arched an eyebrow at her. “You told him we fight?”

  “Oh, all the time.” She grinned at him. “Like right now: what do you want for lunch? That pizza smell in there was driving me crazy.”

  Sam threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, whatever you want. I’m not going to argue with you about food.”

  “Good thing,” she said. She started the car and turned toward a good burger place she knew.

  ~~~

  Later that afternoon, they jockeyed amid downtown traffic on the way to the plush offices of Weiskopf and Associates. The building was a stark white asymmetrical creation of slanting roof lines and large trapezoid windows. Lacey thought it fit right in, near to the LA County Museum and its collection of modern art.

  They parked in the adjoining lot and walked through the ebony door with brushed nickel fittings. Inside, Lacey could see the appeal of the high, slanted windows as welcome afternoon sunlight streamed into the large, austere entry.

  A lone woman sat behind a chrome and granite table and looked up expectantly.

  “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “Hello,” Lacey answered. “We’re here to see Stephen Liang. Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud.”

  The woman smiled and stood, straightening the jacket of her charcoal gray power suit, and motioned them to follow. “This way, please.”

  She led them down a short, wide hall to a central atrium that formed the hub for numerous offices wheeled around it. The thin, graceful trees of the atrium reached for the skylights above them, and the potted plants and concrete benches lent a peaceful softness to the otherwise angular building. The woman turned left and led them to the first door, knocked and pushed the door open.

  “Thank you,” Lacey said. She and Sam entered the office as the receptionist went back to her desk.

  “Hello, come in,” the man inside called. He rose from his desk and buttoned his suit coat, coming around to greet them. “Stephen Liang,” he said, shaking hands. He was Lacey’s height, slender with short, straight black hair and almond-shaped eyes. He had a ready smile.

  “Lacey Fitzpatrick,” she said, “and my partner, Sam Firecloud. Thanks for seeing us.”

  “Of course,” Liang said. “Please, sit down.”

  He waved toward two modern straight-back chairs and took his own seat behind the desk. He quickly rolled up a blueprint and set it aside, effectively clearing his desk.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. He leaned both elbows on the desk and gave them his full attention.

  “As I said when I called,” Lacey started, “we’re private investigators and we’re looking into the collapse of the Gibbons warehouse.” She pulled out her paperwork as she spoke. “We have some questions about the construction we’re hoping you can answer.”

  She laid the ME’s diagram on the desktop, along with the building layout.

  Liang nodded as he recognized the layout. “Yes, Mr. Gibbons was quite vocal about the idea of a design flaw. I assure, you, there was none.”

  “We understand,” Lacey said. “I couldn’t see anything that refuted the insurance company’s findings, but my partner has. What we’d like to know is what possible reasons there might be for one quadrant of the roof to give way?”

  The architect’s smile froze, then slowly settled into a straight line. “I’m not sure I follow. The entire roof collapsed, not just part of it. The weight of the water—”

  “No,” Sam said. He tapped the diagram’s back right corner. “This section went first, then dragged the rest down with it.”

  Apparently unwilling to enter into an argument, Liang pulled the diagram closer and peered at it. “What are these numbers?” he asked. “And these things?” He pointed to one of the sketched figures.

  “Those are the locations where people died,” Lacey said.

  “The numbers are the order in which the quadrants of the roof fell,” Sam added. “Number one first, then two, three and four.”

  Liang studied the notations for a moment, then looked up as he sat back in his chair. The smile had disappeared completely.

  “You said you found evidence for this… theory?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  “Hear me out,” Sam said. “I’m a medium. I walked the wreckage twice to pick up the last thoughts and emotions of the people who died. The two forklift drivers here”—he tapped the number one—“had no warning whatsoever. They were killed instantly. The foreman, here, had enough warning to duck and cover, but that’s all. The people in three and four had time to run for the doors, although not enough time to get out. If the entire roof had collapsed at the same time, these people’s last seconds—and the way the bodies were buried—would have been very similar. They’re not. They’re all different.”

  Liang sat stiffly as he listened to Sam’s explanation. He held a mechanical pencil horizontally between the thumb and first finger of both hands, but Lacey thought that small barrier screamed skepticism as much as if he’d crossed his arms firmly over his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally, although he didn’t sound it. He got to his feet. “I’m afraid I don’t have time for this. If Mr. Gibbons wants to pursue this, he can—”

  “Mr. Gibbons is convinced there’s a flaw in either the design or the construction,” Lacey said, not budging an inch. “We’re not, but we do know something wasn’t right. There has to be a reason why the roof collapsed the way it did. We actually don’t care what the cause turns out to be; we’re only after the truth. Please help us find it.”

  Liang glared at them. He didn’t sit, but he didn’t move further toward the door, either. “Gibbons hired you,” he said with a tight jaw.

  Lacey nodded. “Yes, he did. And he’s definitely hoping we find evidence to corroborate his suspicions. However, we don’t work that way. We go where the evidence leads us. We find the truth, whatever it may be.” She pulled in a breath. “Gibbons is paying us, but we’re actually working more for these six people.” She tapped the diagram.

  Liang looked undecided. His posture was still stiff, but his eyes shifted from Lacey to Sam and back again. “No,” he said finally. “This is crazy. Talking to ghosts? You can’t really expect me to go along with this. There’s no court that would—”

  “No court, no,” Lacey agreed. “But the LAPD takes us very seriously.”

  She and Sam both continued to stare at the architect, their eyes serious and direct. Lacey felt the weight of their commitment and conviction, and hoped Liang did, as well.

  Finally her last words seemed to sink in. “The LAPD? Are you those psychics that work with the police? Help catch criminals?”

  Lacey smiled briefly. “We’re not psychics. Sam is a medium, and I’m just a private investigator. But yes, we do work with the police and we do catch criminals. Right now we’re just trying to get to the truth about the warehouse collapse.”

  Again that indecision; Liang looked half ready to escort them to the door, half ready to take his chair again. He glanced at the drawings still spread across his desk. Sighing, he settled in his chair and pulled it up close to the desk.

  “Let me see this,” he said, pulling the layout to him. He familiarized himself with the years’ old drawing, nodding as his eyes took in the details.

  “The roof was flat with a short parapet wall around the o
utside to hide the HVAC units,” he began. “This is basically like having a swimming pool on the roof—an empty pool, until it rains. To mitigate this pool effect, we put drains and downspouts at all four corners, and each quadrant’s section of roof had a very slight slope to it so the rain would run off to the drains. It’s all pretty standard. We’ve built hundreds of buildings the very same way.”

  He looked up, his eyes only slightly less hard. His mouth was still set in a grim line.

  Lacey leaned forward. “Okay, we understand that, and that all makes sense, but what could cause the back right quadrant to fail? What crazy, unthinkable scenarios could do that?”

  Liang glanced down at the drawing and shrugged. “Excessive weight—the heavy rain. Apparently the rate of rain was too much for the drainage system—”

  “No,” Sam said. “If that were true, all four quadrants would have failed at the same time. They didn’t.”

  Liang fumed silently. He sat back in his chair and rocked irritably. “So that drain was overcome. Something was covering it up, or debris was blocking it. That’s the only thing it could be. Nothing else makes sense.”

  Lacey glanced at Sam, finally feeling like they were getting somewhere.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now, if that were in fact the case, and the rate of rain was seven inches in less than an hour, would the roof be able to sustain that weight?”

  Liang stared back, his dark eyes like bits of glass. Lacey didn’t blink. The architect drew in a deep breath and blew it out, making no attempt to hide his annoyance.

  He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a calculator. Consulting the drawing, he tapped in some numbers, made some calculations and jotted down results on a notepad. Then more numbers, more calculations, more notes. As he went through the process once more, Lacey noticed how his eyebrows crept up higher and higher, until he stared at the calculator display with slack-jawed surprise.

  “Mr. Liang?” Lacey nudged.

  He snapped his mouth closed and pushed the calculator away. “No,” he said in a low voice. “It could not.”

  ~~~

  ELEVEN

  Lacey could hardly contain herself until they got back to the car.

  “What do you think?” she asked Sam. “This feels like the answer to me. Does it to you?”

  “It does,” he said. He was considerably less gleeful than Lacey, more thoughtful.

  She started the car. “Boy, Gibbons is not going to be happy to hear this. A stupid clogged drain? That puts the responsibility for this directly on him as the property owner.”

  Sam nodded. “And responsible for the deaths of six people,” he said quietly. As Lacey drove down Wilshire, he stared intently at the layout drawing in his lap. “We have to go back tomorrow.”

  Lacey did a double-take. “Go back? Where?”

  “To the warehouse,” he said. “We have to prove it.”

  Lacey snorted. “We just did. Liang admitted—”

  “No.” Sam shook his head. “Yes, he admitted that the roof couldn’t support that weight, which is nominally what the insurance company’s report said. We’re going to have to prove that drain was plugged.”

  Lacey took a moment to assimilate that. Prove the drain was plugged on a roof that no longer existed? “How are we going to do that?” she asked.

  Sam sighed. “I’m not exactly sure. But we have to do it.” He turned in his seat and held up the police report from the sheaf of papers. “This police report is closed, isn’t it? The investigation’s over?”

  She glanced over. “Yeah. They concur with the insurance company.”

  “So at this point, Gibbons is off the hook,” he continued. “He’s not happy with the findings because the damage won’t be covered by insurance, but with this”—he tapped the report—“no one is responsible for those lives except God. That’s not right. We have to prove that he was negligent.”

  Lacey forced herself to concentrate on the rush hour traffic, but her mind was racing. “You realize what that will do?” she asked. “That’ll open him up to lawsuits. Wrongful death lawsuits.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said. “Six of them.”

  ~~~

  That evening, Lacey went over all the paperwork again, while Sam was busy amassing a tool kit to take with them. She studied the layout, noting the drain holes were, indeed on the roof itself and not drilled through the parapet wall. Strike one. The downspouts, however, were attached to the outside of the walls. Those on the front were probably a mangled mess if they were still on premise at all, but were probably long gone. The ones on the back could be still there.

  Could be.

  She had a sudden thought. The first time Sam walked the warehouse, he’d been weirdly fascinated with the outside back wall. He’d even asked her to take pictures of it. She grabbed her phone and scrolled back through the photos. There it was.

  Both back downspouts were still there.

  She let out a relieved breath. That was something, at least. But was it enough?

  She found Sam crouching over an open duffel bag, peering at the contents. Inside, she saw his cordless drill and a heavy-duty flashlight.

  “Look,” she said. She showed him the picture of the downspouts. “They’re still there.”

  “Good. We need to do this as soon as possible before they bulldoze the whole thing.”

  “But,” she said, “the drains were in the roof, and the roof is completely gone. How are we ever going to know if there was something blocking this one?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m just trying to think of every possible contingency and take every tool we might need. I’m going to get my crowbar out of the truck. Be right back.”

  She was surprised when he came back through the front door with his phone to his ear. He held the crowbar in his left hand.

  “We are making progress,” he said, “but we don’t have it all wrapped up yet… No, I need to do a little more research… Whose family?” He glanced at Lacey, both his question and the surprised look on his face alerting her. “We’ll know very soon… Yes, you can tell them we’re working on it. Yes… I’ll call you as soon as I’m sure. All right. Bye.” He ended the call and blew out a breath.

  “Who was that?” Lacey asked.

  “Gibbons. He’s really chomping at the bit about getting our final report. Only thing is, he is not going to like it at all.”

  Lacey nodded. “What was that about a family?”

  “Oh.” Sam put the crowbar in the duffel. “He said Pam’s family is anxious to know our findings also. I guess he must have told them he was bringing us in on it. I wonder if they, like him, are looking for someone to blame.”

  “That’s possible,” Lacey said. “I ran into this when I was still on the PD. People who have suffered a sudden loss like this often feel totally helpless. Instead of howling at the wind or raging against a faceless God, some will focus their pain and anger on a person or a company that might be responsible. Doesn’t bring their loved one back, but I suppose it gives them a sense of justice.”

  “Well, I’m afraid they’re not going to like our findings, either,” Sam said. “I don’t know what would feel worse: knowing their daughter died due to a design flaw, or knowing that she died due to a stinking blocked drain.”

  Put that way, Lacey felt either scenario would be a kick in the gut. She swallowed.

  She had a sinking feeling that Pam’s family was going to end up grieving for their daughter twice.

  ~~~

  TWELVE

  The next morning they once again joined the braided streams of rush hour traffic that crowded the freeways. At least the day was sunny; only a few clouds lingered in the west, near the coast, but could well burn off later.

  They hadn’t notified Ray that they were visiting the site again, so didn’t expect to see him. They were relieved to be correct. Lacey parked the car and they walked immediately to the back, Sam carrying his bag of tools. He turned the back right corner and set his bag down
beside the downspout.

  Sam stared at the drainpipe. The galvanized steel was a rectangular tube still attached—mostly—to the building wall. At the top, Lacey noted, the downspout had been torn away from the roof as it collapsed, leaving the top foot of it leaning uselessly away from the wall. At the bottom, the tube curved outward, dumping the rain onto a small concrete splash block which then funneled it toward the back of the property. Again Lacey noticed the huge trees near the back fence.

  Bet they got all the water they need this winter, she thought.

  Sam crouched at the bottom of the drainpipe and reached into the opening there. The curvature did not allow him to slide his hand very far up into it. He felt around for a few seconds, then pulled his hand out. It was smudged with some kind of black residue, but dry.

  He walked down to the drainpipe at the other back corner and repeated the process. Lacey wandered behind him, not sure what his thought process was but willing to let it play out.

  “Lacey,” he called. “Come here. Look at this.”

  He held up the hand he’d just pulled from the second drainpipe. It was slicked with moisture.

  Lacey looked closer. “There’s still rain in there?” she asked. “From yesterday?”

  “Probably just condensation,” Sam said. He touched a green-black stain on the concrete splash guard. “This is damp, too.” He got up and went back to the first downspout, wiping his hand on his jeans. There, again, he crouched down and put his hand as far as he could up the pipe, then brought it out.

  “Completely dry,” he said. “And the stain on this splash guard is totally dry, too. There’s been no rain out of this drainpipe for a long time.”

  Lacey took pictures. “Could you feel anything in there?” she asked. “Anything blocking the way?”

  Sam shook his head. “No. But even this black dirt is very dry. It rubs right off. It almost looks like dry black mold.”

  Lacey took a picture of that, too.