Fire Born (Firehouse 343)

by Christina Moore

  Shoving off from the table, he walked back over to where he’d left his nail gun. He picked it up and, eyeing the wall, prepared to finish nailing the plaster to the studs.

  “I guess that’s it then,” Martie said after a moment.

  “Yup,” Chris replied, then raised the gun and fired a nail into the wall.

  He shot three more before he heard her walk out.

  ***

  Though he had to get up early to get back to work tomorrow, Chris found himself utterly unable to sleep. He tossed and turned for a couple of hours, finally looking at the clock and seeing that it was a quarter to one. Groaning in frustration, he threw the sheet back and got up. He walked into the kitchen and reached into the fridge for the milk, chugging a couple of swallows before he put it back.

  He knew why he was restless—his argument with Martie. It pissed him off to no end that she had run the background check on him, but what hurt worse was that she hadn’t just asked him about his past. He would have told her the truth—why didn’t she believe that?

  Perhaps he should have known better. They barely knew each other, so expecting her to simply trust him had probably been foolish. But he trusted her—or he had, until he’d learned of her betrayal. Not once in the five days since he’d met her had he questioned anything she’d told him, or doubted that she’d be honest with him if he asked her a personal question.

  Maybe that had been his mistake. Trusting her so completely when he’d only just met her.

  He was on his way back to the bedroom to once again fight for sleep when he was startled by the ringing of the phone. Though he didn’t recall having given her his home number, Chris nevertheless wondered as he walked over to it if Martie was calling. He wondered if he’d be able to maintain his temper if it was her.

  A look at the caller ID showed him his mother’s number, and fearing that something had happened to one of the family, he snatched up the receiver quickly, saying, “What’s wrong, iná?”

  “Hello to you too, tȟakóža,” replied a gravelly voice that could only belong to one person.

  “Thunkášila?” Chris queried. “What are you doing calling so late? Are you okay?”

  His grandfather lived with his parents—his mother and father had taken him in due to his having developed the early signs of dementia, and they didn’t have the means to send him to live in a nursing home or assisted living community. Not that his mother would have wanted to or his grandfather would have allowed it. Leland Redhawk had long been a firm believer in the old traditions—that children should care for their elders when they grew weak as they had once been cared for when they were weak. He had instilled that value in his two daughters, and had his parents not honored those beliefs and tried to put him in a home, Chris knew that his grandfather would have raised holy hell and made life at the facility miserable. Probably to the point that he’d be kicked out, at which time one of his girls would have had to take him in anyway.

  “I am well, tȟakóža,” his grandfather replied. “It is your spirit which is not at peace.”

  Chris had to laugh. His grandfather had always had the uncanny ability to know when someone in the family was out of sorts, though how he could have known about his own disturbed spirit from as far away as Wolf Point was beyond him. His sensibility told him it was more than likely the old man had also found himself unable to sleep and had decided to dial his number just to talk.

  Nevertheless, he asked him, “And how would you know?”

  The answer was the same as always. “I had a dream,” Leland told him. “There was a beautiful woman, and she carried my ákta tȟakóža. But she was sad because you were not together. There was much anger in your heart, and you had left her.”

  Chris turned and sat down on the couch. His grandfather’s dream was much too close to his reality, although to his knowledge, Martie was not pregnant. Five days was simply not enough time to know for sure. But he was angry with her, that much was true, and his grandfather’s words were hitting a little too close to home for his comfort.

  “You should forgive your lady,” his grandfather was saying. “Iktomi is afoot.”

  “How in the world do you even know I’ve met someone?” Chris countered, ignoring, for the moment, his words about the trickster of Lakota legend.

  “I saw her in my dream, tȟakóža. It was clear that her heart belonged to you. You have chosen well, but take care that you do not lose her to Iktomi.”

  Frowning, Chris now wondered at his grandfather’s references to Iktomi, the spider-trickster. In many Native mythologies, including that of the Lakota, the trickster was a mischievous spirit that thrived on stirring up trouble and leading people astray. In the legend of his own people, Iktomi was once a man who was turned into a spider by other powerful spirits who despised him. When the people began to make fun of his new looks, Iktomi retaliated by playing malicious tricks on them.

  “Grandfather, what makes you think that Iktomi is involved?” he asked, despite not wanting to give any credence to the possibility that Martie was in danger. Even as angry as he was about what she’d done, the thought of her being hurt reawakened every protective instinct he had.

  “There was darkness surrounding the both of you. It has driven you apart,” the old man replied.

  Chris scoffed. “No, Thunkášila—Martie is the one who drove us apart. She betrayed my trust in her.”

  “That was the Trickster’s doing. Don’t let him take her away from you, tȟakóža.”

  His grandfather sighed. A moment of silence passed and then, “I’m going to let you go now—I know you will do what is right.”

  Before Chris could even reply, his grandfather hung up. He held the phone out and stared at it for what seemed a long time, wondering just how much faith he should put into the ramblings of an old man who was slowly losing his mind.

  Still, he was unnerved by what he’d been told. While he appreciated hearing sage words of wisdom once in a while, he’d long ago made a vow of ignoring the premonitions his grandfather rattled on about every so often. Unfortunately, the elder Lakota’s prophetic dreams had a really bad habit of coming true, and this one was about Martie—a pregnant Martie who was carrying his child. The thought of her being in trouble bothered him. A lot.

  Chris knew as he settled the receiver into its cradle that he would not be getting any sleep that night.

  ***

  What joy! While he hadn’t found a solution to the Breckon problem just yet, he had solved another one. A certain lovely Italian investigator had been the object of his desire for a very long time—God was she hot! She had a perfectly round ass, breasts that begged to be sucked, and a mouth that belonged around his cock as often as he could get it there. He’d wanted her from the moment he met her, and just thinking about Martie Liotta had blood rushing to his groin.

  Because he was alone and the door was locked, he indulged the sudden desire to take his flesh in hand. Unzipping his trousers, he freed his already stiffening member from the confines of his boxers and began to stroke it. He imagined his hand was Martie’s, that she was naked and kissing him as she touched him eagerly, wanting to satisfy him as much as he wanted to satisfy her. He knew without a doubt that she’d slide her fingers along his shaft with just enough pressure to titillate and sensitize him, to get him hard before she placed her succulent lips over the head.

  Learning that she had found herself attracted to one of the firefighters in Gracechurch had upset him, but he nipped that problem in the bud quickly. It had only been too easy to slip little seeds of doubt in her mind about him. She already had an unfortunate track record with men, much of which he’d observed first hand over the years he’d known her. Martie was no pushover by any means, but she had trust issues when it came to the opposite sex that had made her only too easy to manipulate. All he’d had to do was make her question her decision to get involved with someone she barely knew and bam! She’d not only done a background check but had pushed to get the asshole’s juvenil
e records unsealed.

  Perfect!

  Oh… Oh, yeah. Now he was feeling really good. His stroking became more insistent as he imagined Martie coming to him, crying over the fact that she and the firefighter had broken up before they were officially a couple. When he’d called her earlier to ask how things went at the funeral, she had revealed that they’d fought and that she’d be glad when the investigation was over. He pictured himself offering her a hug meant to comfort. She’d look up at him with teary eyes and he would lower his head to kiss her. She’d be surprised at first, but she’d melt into him once he slipped his tongue into her mouth and showed her what a real kiss felt like. Then he’d fuck her senseless and she’d come screaming his name.

  That happy thought undid him, and he shot jets of semen onto the floor. He kept jerking until he was spent, then put his pecker away and used a Kleenex to wipe his spilled seed from the carpet. He tossed the tissue into the trash and then headed for the bathroom where he washed his hands. As he looked into the mirror over the sink, he remembered that before he could make that little dream come true, he had another one—a nightmare—that he had to end.

  That bitch and her brat had to die.

  ***

  Martie hadn’t expected a call from the lab so soon, so it was with singing nerves that she hurried down from her office. She couldn’t make anymore headway in the Breckon Apartments case without those results—all the interviews had been conducted, pictures taken, evidence collected.

  Her heart broken.

  She shook that thought off as she stepped through the opening elevator doors on the lab floor. Now was not the time to be thinking about a certain Native American fireman who’d set her very soul ablaze in so short a time of knowing him. Martie was afraid to put her feelings into words, sure that if she admitted to the impossible the cracks in her heart would spread further, shattering it into a million pieces.

  She took a deep, steadying breath, then pushed open the lab doors. Various techs were milling about doing their jobs, but her eyes sought out just one person. “What have you got for me, Stillman?” she asked as she approached the man.

  Victor Stillman, the chief lab technician, turned to Martie with a grim expression. “What I have is your accelerant, Lieutenant,” he told her, rolling over on his wheeled chair and handing her a few sheets of paper.

  She looked them over as he continued to explain. “Those streaks you found in the empty apartments? They were made with acetone. As you know, your firebug poured a trail of it in every one of them.”

  Martie looked up at him. Acetone, she knew, as a highly flammable chemical with a flashpoint of 0˚ Fahrenheit. It was a substance that lit easily and enabled fire to spread quickly. “The use of acetone as the accelerant explains why the flames lit the entire building up before the fire department arrived. Was it the same batch, or did he use more than one source?” she asked, knowing it was possible that the arsonist had procured the chemical from different sources.

  “The molecular structure of the acetone in each sample was the same,” Stillman replied.

  “Which means the source was,” she mused, looking over the data on the pages. “I don’t suppose anything in here’s gonna tell me exactly what that source is or where it came from?”

  Stillman shook his head. “Not in that report, no—the solvent used by your perp was industrial grade. We have precisely zero industrial-grade acetone retailers in Montana.”

  “Are you kidding me? No acetone retailers whatsoever?” she countered.

  He grinned. “Oh, there are plenty of places that sell acetone—Home Depot, Lowe’s… Just about any DIY place or paint store. The Walmart in Gracechurch even sells it, but only in the form of paint thinner and nail polish remover.”

  Martie frowned. “Damn it,” she muttered darkly. “None of those places would sell industrial-grade acetone.”

  “Nope—only stuff they got is for removing paint, furniture polish, or fake nails,” Stillman replied. “Believe me, I looked—even did an Internet search for acetone retailers in our fair state. Closest maker of industrial-grade I could find is Seacole Specialty Chemicals in Plymouth, Minnesota. If your guy didn’t order the stuff online, and got it from somewhere here in the state, then he pulled a five-finger discount from someplace that uses it.”

  “What kind of businesses use that grade of acetone?”

  Stillman nodded toward the papers in her hand. “I put it there in the report. There are some agricultural applications for acetone, but the most likely candidates are furniture repair shops, automotive repair shops, metal finishing plants… We’ve even got some here in the lab. Out of curiosity I looked up where we get it from, and Requisitions orders it from Seacole Specialty.”

  Martie sighed resignedly. “Thanks, Stillman. These are mine?” she asked, hefting the pages.

  He nodded. “Of course, Lieutenant.”

  “You get anything on the kind of saw used on the ceiling beam?” she wondered then.

  “Haven’t matched the kerf marks yet—I’ll let you know when we do,” Stillman replied.

  Thanking the tech, she left the lab and headed up to Graham’s office to fill him in. He was as surprised as she had been that there were no manufacturers of industrial-grade acetone in Montana.

  “A great big state like ours, and there’s not one?” he said with a shake of his head.

  Martie shrugged. “Apparently not. According to Stillman there are plenty of places you can buy acetone for things like household projects, but not the kind the arsonist used.”

  “Well, at least we know what he used to start that fire. Explains why it spread so fast,” Graham said, echoing her earlier thought. “Doesn’t explain why the firebug passed himself off as an electrician to gain access to the attic of the building.”

  Clearing her throat, Martie said, “Sir, I can only think of one explanation for that,” she said slowly.

  Graham raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s your theory?”

  She’d thought a lot about it these last few days, when she wasn’t ruminating over her fight with Chris…and how much she missed him. “Well,” she said, pushing Chris to the side of her brain for the moment, “look at whose apartment he went into. After I talked to Veronica Thompson, I asked the other residents, even some of the ones who weren’t at home when the fire started, if they had ever received a visit from an electrician. Nobody remembered seeing one, or even getting a call from one.”

  “Veronica Thompson,” her boss mused. “That’s the woman from apartment 3C, right? With the little girl that was saved by the firefighter who died?”

  Martie nodded. “Yes. She said he was in every room, and that the one with attic access was her daughter’s. That’s the room where the ceiling beam crashed, the one that was partially sawed through.”

  “But why would anyone target a struggling single mother?” Graham pressed. “What harm could she possibly have done to anybody?”

  “That’s where I’m stuck,” Martie confessed. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it, and my gut is telling me that either she or her daughter—maybe even both of them—were supposed to die in that fire. What I can’t figure out is why anyone would want them dead.”

  Graham thought about that for a moment. “What about the girl’s father? Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Ronnie said something about having lived in Billings when she left him, but that she hasn’t seen him since.”

  “Because he wanted her to have an abortion.”

  Martie nodded again. “She moved around until she settled in Gracechurch about a year ago.”

  Graham propped his elbows on the edge of his desk and laced his fingers together. “It’s a good thing you put that story into your report, despite not having recorded it like you usually do.”

  “I’ll be honest, sir, I thought about not adding it since it wasn’t a part of the official interview,” Martie told him. “But as I was typing it up, something told me that it would be best if I did.”
>
  “And like I said, it was a good thing,” he repeated. “Having that conversation on record lends credence to the theory that Veronica Thompson or her daughter is a target. Since that’s what you think and I happen to agree, looks like you’re going to have to do a little digging into the woman’s history.”

  He stood then and Martie followed him with her eyes as he came around the desk, leaning back on the edge and looking down at her with what she recognized as his concerned expression. It was the same one that had crossed his face the other day when he told her she should take a closer look at Chris.

  “Speaking of digging,” he said softly, “how are you doing since breaking up with your fireman?”

  Martie shuddered inwardly. She liked Graham, even respected him a great deal, but he was her boss. She rarely called him by his first name even though he’d told her time and again that she was welcome to, and talking about personal issues with the man she answered to on the job made her feel more than a little uncomfortable. She’d felt odd about his concern the other day, and she was feeling the same way now.

  “I’m, uh, I’m doing alright,” she said casually. “Working helps, though making another trip to Gracechurch might make things a little difficult.”

  Graham frowned. “And why’s that? Why would you even need to go back there?”

  She fought a frown—surely he knew why? “I have to go back because I’m going to need to talk to Veronica Thompson again. Certainly I’ll still run a background check on her, but something tells me the answers I’m looking for aren’t going to be in any old police reports that might be on file.”