Fire in Broken Water

by Lakota Grace

  “This way!” Shepherd pointed to one side of the barn where three first responders huddled over a still human shape on the ground. Gorge rose in my throat. Was there a fatality?

  They had oxygen out, and one man was doing CPR. I remembered that course at the police academy, practicing until my arms ached on a rubber dummy. Here, an actual life was held in the balance.

  Thump, thump, thump, then rest and breathe in. The man was unresponsive, with the cherry-red cheeks of carbon monoxide poisoning. One of the EMTs looked up at our approach. I tilted my chin in a mute question and he shook his head. The prone man was probably already gone. But they'd try. They always tried.

  The warble of an ambulance pierced my perception.

  The young woman from the office yesterday rushed up to us. Her dark hair hung in tangled ropes, her eyes reddened by the ash filling the air.

  “You called it in?” Shepherd asked.

  She nodded. “Gil’s hurt!” She pointed to the man on the ground. “The roof collapsed. I couldn't reach him.” Tears mixed with soot on her cheeks, and she brushed them away in frustration. “The heat drove me back.”

  A shiver ran through me in spite of the super-heated air. Gil Streicker! I’d questioned that man less than twenty-four hours ago, under this very cottonwood tree whose leaves now drifted down in a fiery shower.

  A firefighter sent a fierce stream of water cascading over the tree, and the fire hissed in defiance through the blackening limbs. A beam in the barn collapsed with a muffled whump.

  The young woman took one unsteady step forward.

  “We got the horses out,” she said. “But when I turned around, Gil ran back in. Then he was gone. Gone!”

  I put an arm around her shoulder to hold her upright. Her expression was confused and her skin icy cold. She was shocking out.

  “Someplace quieter we can talk?” I asked, wanting to remove her to a place of safety.

  She waved vaguely at a big house shimmering through the haze. “The kitchen.”

  Shepherd looked at me. “Go with her. I'll watch over things here.”

  I didn't argue. I moved toward the house with the girl, leaving the searing fire-edged world behind.

  An angular Hispanic woman in a maid's uniform greeted us at the back door. The kitchen was a cool sanctuary after the smoky hurricane outside.

  The woman put both arms around the girl and held her close, murmuring softly. The girl leaned into the embrace for a moment and then jerked back.

  “Daisy, our barn cat—she might be hurt!” She said in jerky breaths.

  Then she broke from the woman's embrace and whirled back toward the door. “He's dead,” she wailed. “Gil’s dead!”

  I intercepted her before she could leave. “Come, sit here for a moment.”

  I took her arm and steered her to a kitchen chair. She slumped into it, weeping.

  The woman who had embraced the girl extended her hand to me. “I'm Rosa Morales.” She touched the girl’s shoulder. “Pobrecita, my poor little one.”

  Then she went to the kitchen sink, filled a glass with water, and set it on the oak table in front of the young woman. She gestured toward the glass to ask if I wanted one, and I shook my head. Then she silently left the room.

  The young woman's fingers shook as she grasped the glass with both hands and gulped the water. She set the glass on the table, almost spilling it. Then she straightened, sniffing loudly and wiping her nose on her sleeve. Slow awareness returned to her eyes.

  I reached into my pocket for a notebook. “What's your full name, Miss?”

  “I'm Amanda—Amanda Riordan.” She raked shaky fingers through her matted hair. “I was upstairs when the fire started, trying to quiet my grandfather. He's old, gets upset by things he doesn't understand.”

  That would be Heinrich Spine, the ranch owner. This young woman was more than an employee then. I made a scribbled note. “Then what happened?”

  “I smelled the smoke and ran down.” Amanda Riordan’s eyes filled with tears and she snatched a handful of tissues from the box on the counter. Dark smears of soot streaked her cheeks as she swiped at her tears. “I called the fire department. But it wasn’t enough!”

  I waited a moment, letting her settle. “Any idea how the fire might have started?”

  “Anything can set off fires in a barn,” Amanda said, her voice raspy from the smoke. “Moldy hay. Or a careless cigarette. Smoking isn't allowed in the stables, but Heinrich smokes wherever he wants to. He and Gil often fought about it.”

  “Your grandfather,” I prompted.

  “Doctor Spine, world-famous German chemist.” Her tone turned bitter. “His steel-trap mind snares everybody.”

  “Does that everybody include you?” I asked. It was almost as though she used her dislike as a buffer against this moment that was too heavy with smoke and death.

  “Sometimes,” Amanda admitted. “The family moved back here about three years ago to take care of Heinrich. Frankly, I don't think he's really that sick—he just wants the attention.”

  “You all live here in this house?” I asked.

  Amanda nodded. “There’s three of us—Heinrich, my mom, and me—oh, and Fancy, grandfather's nurse.” Strength came back into her voice with the recitation of facts. “My dad doesn’t live here. He's a doctor, but he and Mom are separated, sort of.” Her dirty fingers traced the grain of the oak table, leaving ugly blotches of ash and mud.

  I turned a page in the notebook and continued writing.

  “Gil shouldn't even have been out there,” Amanda said. “He was ill.”

  “Sick?”

  “Vomiting, couldn't keep anything down. But it seemed to cycle. He'd be fine one minute, the next minute, really sick. I wanted him to go into the emergency room, but he brushed me off. Flu, he said.” She jerked upright. “How is he? I have to go to him!”

  “They are doing everything for him they can. Stay here with me.” I touched her hand, trying to gentle the agitation that seemed to cycle through her body. I watched her closely as I asked the next question. “Was the fire accidental, then?”

  “I suppose so.” Her face turned doubtful. “But it shouldn't have spread like that. We put in a new sprinkler system last month. The water turn-on valve links to rate-of-temperature detectors. The sprinklers should have stopped the fire the moment it started. Gil was so proud of that system…”

  “What was he like, your ranch manager?” I interrupted. My speech had shifted to past tense, anticipating the loss ahead. Amanda didn’t follow my lead. On one level, she seemed to acknowledge the possible death and yet on another, fiercely denied it.

  “Good with horses. The best.”

  Her eyes held shock and loss. And grief as well. Gil Streicker might have been good with horses, but he’d made a conquest here, too.

  “Does Gil have any family, anybody who should be notified of his accident?”

  “Nobody here. He’s got a daughter back east. Her address might be in the files somewhere…” Her voice drifted off as she shivered again, arms crossed tight to her chest. She seemed to drift in and out, losing awareness.

  “When can I speak with your grandfather?” I asked.

  “I'll call upstairs and see if he is up for visitors.”

  She spoke briefly to someone on the phone. Then she rose from her chair, her back stiff. “Come on. Let's get this over with.”

  We passed from the kitchen into a hallway filled with Pre-Columbian art, cloistered in deep alcoves, and from there into a huge living room. Thick adobe walls muffled the sounds from fire crews outside, and light filtered through curtains made of black and white Mexican serapes. The room sat heavy, masculine-hard at the edges, with outsized leather furniture and Western oil paintings.

  A broad stairway banistered in wrought iron led to the second floor. At the top of the stairs, tall double oak doors blocked our way. Amanda Riordan knocked once and then walked in. I followed close behind. We entered a library lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshel
ves: some purchased-in-sets classics, combined with a mixture of old chemistry texts and books with German titles.

  Dr. Heinrich Spine sat in a raised chair by the window, a cane by his side. His clothes hung loosely on a frame wasted by illness, his thinning gray hair plastered into a rigid comb-over. He had parted the curtains with one hand, looking down at the fire scene below. As we entered, he glanced up. His body showed the brittleness of advanced age but his eyes held a fiery intelligence.

  His nurse sat in a shadowed corner, her body still to the point of invisibility. A tallish, middle-aged woman, pale in complexion. She was dressed in a dull mauve-colored shirtwaist and crepe-soled shoes, her graying hair pulled back in a severe bun. What was her name—Fancy?

  “I wondered when you would bother to attend to my needs.” Dr. Spine’s querulous voice formed Germanic vowels with guttural preciseness.

  “Heinrich, this is Deputy Quincy,” Amanda began.

  “Doctor Spine, please, since you cannot bear to call me grandfather. I can see the police uniform.”

  “Sit,” he ordered me, gesturing to a wooden chair near him. “I cannot look up to that tallness.”

  A bony forefinger jabbed at the windowpane. “The smell of smoke awoke me. Then I heard the fire engines. Inform me what is going on down there. Is the fire contained?”

  “Mostly,” I said, “but your ranch manager, Gil Streicker, may have lost his life.”

  “A tragedy.” His tone was perfunctory. “And the horses?”

  “Safe,” Amanda said.

  “And you assisted in their rescue? I would expect that of you, at least.”

  Amanda’s lips compressed into a tight line.

  “Any reason why the alarm system in the stable would be inoperative?” I asked Dr. Spine.

  “Absolutely not, if everyone did what they were paid to do.” He slammed his cane against the chair leg as if striking someone. The sound of wood hitting wood jarred the stillness of the room.

  “But they may all be incompetent, just as you have proved yourself to be, granddaughter.” His voice was harsh, unforgiving.

  The old man's fingers restlessly explored the table next to him. “Fancy, my cigarettes.”

  The nurse rose, extracted a pack from her uniform pocket. She lit one and handed it to him. When she passed me to return to her corner seat, a purplish birthmark on her right cheek flared. She angled her head, pulling the disfigurement into the shadows as she resumed a position of readiness nearby.

  Heinrich held the lit cigarette in his mouth without smoking, the fumes curling upward. When the ash grew to an inch in length, the nurse picked up a thick crystal ashtray from the side table, waiting.

  When he removed the cigarette from his mouth with shaking fingers, she followed under his hand with the ashtray, waiting for the ash to drop. When it did, Heinrich replaced the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and the nurse retreated once more.

  “And your mother, Amanda? Why is she not here?”

  High heels clattered in the hallway and a woman in her late forties entered the room. A Prussian blue silk dress draped her fashion-gaunt figure, and her face had the smoothness of cosmetic surgery.

  “Father! You know you can't smoke like that...”

  “Bad Heinrich!” He mocked her tone.

  He waved the lighted cigarette in the nurse's direction. “Put it out, Fancy.”

  She lifted it from his fingers and stabbed it out in the ashtray. Her hands were red with nails bitten to the quick. Heinrich hadn’t bothered to introduce the nurse to me. It must have slipped his steel-trap mind.

  The slender woman turned to Amanda. “There's a smudge on your cheek.”

  Amanda jerked back from her mother’s touch. “Gil is dead,” she said dully. “I just know it.”

  “I'm sure that's not the case.” The mother’s hand waved in dismissal. “I saw the ambulance out there. They'll take care of it.”

  Some folks react to stress by minimizing events, by distancing. I tried to give Amanda’s mother the benefit of the doubt.

  “You don't understand. I loved him!” Amanda raised an anguished fist to her mouth and then pivoted and ran from the room.

  “Please excuse my daughter's ill manners. The excitement must have distressed her.” The woman brushed platinum locks away from her eyes with a nervous gesture and extended her hand. “I’m Marguerite Spine-Riordan.”

  I explained that the arson team would be investigating.

  “That is not necessary. The fire was accidental.” Heinrich’s tone was harsh, daring me to contradict him.

  “And you know that because?” My own voice turned strident. A man had possibly died here, and other than Amanda, nobody seemed to give a damn.

  Calm down, Peg, I cautioned myself, taking a breath. “Gil Streicker was your manager. Any family that you know of?”

  “None,” Heinrich said, contradicting Amanda’s earlier statement. “If he’s dead, I suppose we’ll arrange for cremation and burial.” His voice was emotionless.

  Like trash you have no further use for. I swallowed hard.

  I gave Heinrich and Marguerite my cards so that they could contact me as the official family liaison officer assigned to the case. Then I offered one to the nurse, Fancy. She took it without comment and placed it on the table next to the pack of cigarettes.

  Were Gil Streicker’s injuries fatal? A niggle of suspicion started in the back of my brain. If so, we'd need to investigate. I’d make sure it was a very thorough investigation, before I'd let this family go back to business as usual.

  I met Shepherd in the yard and we walked back to the squad car.

  “Dead?” I asked.

  He nodded and settled himself on the passenger side, while I buckled up to drive. I rammed into gear and applied pressure to the gas pedal, needing to release some tension. The back tires spit gravel as we left the parking area.

  “Whoa! Take it easy,” he said. “What did you find out from the ranch owner?”

  “He’s an old man with too much money wielding too much control over his daughter and granddaughter.”

  “But any evidence of foul play?” Shepherd pushed a little.

  “It could be a case of misjudgment,” I admitted reluctantly, “If the man was overcome by the fumes when he ran back into a burning barn.”

  Shepherd grunted. “Won't know until the ME's report. Don’t forget to follow up on that autopsy. Make sure they put this body at the head of the line.”

  That order was Shepherd's need to boss me around. Even with the current budget restraints, he never let me forget who was senior in the office.

  “On it,” I said.

  He shifted into teaching mode. “Ever been through an arson investigation? You might want to follow the guy around tomorrow. Learn something.”

  “Good idea.”

  I jumped at his suggestion. I hated autopsies. The smell of my first one cost me my lunch. Didn't want to repeat that performance anytime soon. Shadowing a guy with a clipboard, sifting through ashes, suited me just fine in its stead.

  ***

  At the end of our shift, Shepherd let me off at the sheriff’s carpool where I picked up my Jetta for the climb up the hill to my apartment in Mingus. I was almost there when the check-engine light signaled an ominous red. Anxiety tightened my gut.

  My car was twelve years old with over 200K on the speedometer. But it was a Volkswagen. They lasted forever, didn’t they? I pulled to the side of the road and switched off the ignition to let it cool.

  While I waited, I dialed the medical examiner’s office and asked to speak to Dr. Sidney Morrison, my contact there. Solemn Sidney, we called him, because the dead fascinated him much more than the living. He loved conundrums. Maybe I could tempt him with this one.

  “Heard about this interesting case,” he said when I got him on the phone. “You'd love it. This guy gets drunk, pulls out his six-shooter. Pops off at one of those tall saguaro cactus in his backyard—one, two, three. Never guess what happe
ned...”

  I knew the story, but I didn't want to ruin his fun. “What?”

  “Damn cactus fell over on him, killed him on the spot. Death by cactus. They lowered him very carefully into the old pine box.”

  I chuckled at the punch line. How to win friends and influence medical examiners. Then, “Hey, Sidney, I need a favor.”

  “Name it.”

  “Man by the name of Streicker, killed in a fire today.”

  “Got him lying on a slab here like a nice piece of rib-eye, medium rare.”

  Bile rose at the image. “Could you do the autopsy soon? Run the full tox screen on him.”

  “We always do the usual drug tests—meth, heroin, alcohol—but you’re asking for more. You suspect something?”

  Perhaps it was Amanda's report that Gil had been sick, or maybe my dislike of Heinrich Spine raised my suspicions. But whatever the reason, I wanted to make doubly sure Gil Streicker had died of natural causes. “We want the full tox screen,” I confirmed.

  Sidney was silent, and then said, “You mean the Marsh test for heavy metal poisoning? Led Zeppelin time! Who do I bill it to?”

  “The sheriff's office here in Mingus.”

  So what if Shepherd objected. My partner was on his way to retirement anyway. Then I’d be in charge of the office again—that is, if the budget ever came through.

  I hung up and tried the ignition. The Jetta started smoothly, no red light this time. I pulled the car onto the road and drove up the switchbacks to Mingus. Probably just a loose connection. I put the car’s well-being in the same “think-about-it-later” bin as I did the future of my job with the sheriff’s department

  It was almost dark when I pulled into the drive next to the old building that held my studio apartment. Reckless announced my arrival with a deep bay. When I opened the door, he planted huge red paws on my chest in proper coonhound greeting. Then he dashed down the steps and into the side yard to relieve himself.

  Not easy on the big dog, shut up here by himself. I’d accepted the responsibility of caring for him because a man I’d sent to prison asked me to. The hound was a nuisance, but he was company, somebody who welcomed me home at night after a long shift.