by Harvey, JM
“Is there anyone else inside?” the fireman asked.
“Two men,” I told him as I sat up. “One of them is a murderer.”
“Murderer?”
“I think he set the fire, too,” I said.
He turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Two inside! One of them is the pyro!”
A moment later an ambulance raced up the driveway and a pair of blue-suited EMTs leapt out. One of them ran to the unconscious sheriff’s deputy while the other headed our way. He took over with Samson, freeing up the fireman to rejoin his crew.
The young medic snipped through Samson’s shirt with a pair of shears and peeled the bloody garment away from the wound.
“Oh, no,” I whispered when I saw the ragged wound high on the left side of Samson’s chest. I stayed back out of the way as the EMT worked over the wound, inspecting and cleaning it quickly. He put an oxygen mask over Samson’s face and took his pulse again while I sat there in the dirt, my eyes pinned on Samson’s narrow chest, watching it rise and fall, barely a ripple.
Samson groaned and his eyes fluttered open and he looked over at me. His lips moved behind the mask. I had to lean close to hear him as the EMT worked to save his life.
“He’s not dead,” Samson whispered, in a dry, creaking voice. “The devil is not dead…” His eyes closed again. He took one long shuddering breath and seemed to wilt into the grass.
His chest quit rising and falling.
“He’s not breathing!” I screamed at the EMT as I lunged forward to grasp Samson by the shoulders.
The EMT knocked me sprawling. “We’ve got a Code Blue!” he bellowed over his shoulder at his partner. “Code Blue!”
Chapter 31
The next few minutes passed in a blur of terror. As I sat on the gravel weeping, the second EMT raced over. The injured deputy was sitting up by that point, obviously injured but in far better shape than Samson.
The first EMT began to administer CPR, alternating between forcing air into Samson’s lungs and pumping his chest so hard I heard ribs cracking. The second EMT pulled a syringe from a medical kit, filled it, and gave Samson a shot of something directly into his chest. Samson heaved and bucked, his tired old frame convulsing, but the shot got him breathing again - long ragged gasps I felt right down to my marrow.
When they stuck an IV in Samson’s arm, fishing around to find a vein in his withered forearm, the pain brought my old winemaker fully awake. He stared at me with eyes blown wide, like a wild animal in a cage. He tried to speak, but the words would not come.
“Don’t talk,” I whispered as I grasped his hand.
They worked over him for more than ten minutes before the first EMT said to the second, “He’s stable. Let’s move him.” His partner nodded then ran back to the deputy who had been hit by the van. He got the deputy into the back of the ambulance, hopped inside, spun it around in a tight circle, and came racing back. The pair hustled Samson onto a gurney and shoved him into the back. I tried to climb inside with him, but the EMT unceremoniously shoved me away.
“He’s going to be okay!” he yelled just before he banged the door closed in my face, but I didn’t believe him.
The ambulance blasted off with my old friend barely clinging to life.
Two more fire trucks had arrived by then and the scene was crowded with men and women unreeling hoses, struggling under the burden of bulky oxygen tanks, breathing masks, and heavy canvas jackets. I spun around and saw the fire had reached the first floor of the warehouse, where cardboard packing crates of wine ready for shipment stood in long rows on wooden pallets. Bottles were exploding and the metal hide of the building was popping and groaning.
And Armand was still inside.
I wanted to follow the ambulance to the hospital immediately, but then I spotted Victor, seated on the grass ten feet from me, his arms wrapped around himself, shivering as sweat coursed down his face, his eyes pinned on the flames visible through the open door. His damp, stringy hair clung to his neck but it did not hide the burn scars that marred his skin. Victor had been very badly burned last year, and I could see the ghost of that day still haunted him. I went to him, dropped onto the grass and put my arm around his shoulders.
“I thought he was dead,” Victor said in a hoarse, choking voice. He was trembling all over, and his skin was clammy to the touch.
“He’s going to make it,” I said as I swiped the tears from my eyes and gave Victor a reassuring smile I didn’t feel. “He’s going to make it,” I said again, more firmly, as much for his benefit as mine.
He nodded but I don’t think he believed me. “We need to get to the hospital,” he said and started to rise, but I tugged him back down. At that moment I was almost as worried about Victor as I was Samson.
“Thank you for coming after me,” I said. “I couldn’t have gotten Samson out without you.”
“Where would the Lone Ranger be without Tonto?” he said with a sliver of a grin.
I forced a laugh. “I’m not the Lone Ranger,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. You’re Tonto.”
For a moment neither of us said anything as we watched the firefighters. They had a pair of hoses unrolled and hooked up. Three of them went through the side door in a group, two carrying axes and the third toting a long curved pole. Two more went in right behind the first group, dragging a hose, its nozzle set to spray a wide mist, creating a parabola of water around the advancing crew of three. Out front, two other crews of fireman were unreeling more hoses, though there seemed little chance they could save the building or any of its contents.
Victor broke the silence. “Armand’s dead by now,” he said. “No one could survive that.”
“We don’t know that,” I replied and Victor gave me a jaundiced look. “We don’t,” I repeated.
“Why was Samson even here?” he asked, though the answer to that question was obvious.
“The wine,” I said. “It’s always about the wine.” I stood and almost fell right back down. My ankle was throbbing and wobbly after our frantic run through the cellar. “We need to get to the hospital,” I told him after I caught my balance. “Can you drive or should I?” But Victor wasn’t listening. He was looking past me at the warehouse.
Armand Rivincita staggered out of the smoke, supported on one side by a rail-thin fireman. Armand had taken his shirt off and wrapped it around the lower half of his face. His forehead and nose were as red as a boiled lobster and tinged black with soot, as were his hands and clothing. His blond hair was singed at the edges, his eyebrows were almost gone, and he was dripping wet.
In his hurry, the fireman practically dragged Armand across the gravel. He unceremoniously dumped him on the grass beside Victor and I, then trotted over to the fire truck.
“Are you all right?” I asked Armand.
He nodded groggily. “I—” the rest of what he had to say was lost in a fit of choking. He hacked and wheezed and spit black phlegm onto the grass.
The fireman reappeared with a small green oxygen bottle and a plastic mask. He put the mask over Armand’s face and twisted the tank’s nozzle open.
“Breathe deeply and evenly,” he said, then turned and ran back through the warehouse door.
By then the fire was raging on the upper level. Flames flickered through the warehouse’s seams and smoke filled the air around us.
As he sucked up the oxygen, his shoulders heaving with the effort, Armand was staring at the fire. He seemed almost hypnotized by it. I knew I should leave him alone to recover, but I didn’t have the time for that. I needed to get to the hospital - but I had a question to ask first.
“What happened?” I asked. “Did you find Blake?”
He nodded. “I cornered him in the last cellar,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask. He held my gaze for a long moment before he added, “He shot himself, Claire. Right there in front of me.” He turned back to the fire.
“My God,” I breathed in shock. Despite all that had happened in the past
week - the deaths, the lies, and the fraud that had been uncovered, and even despite his shooting of Samson - I still felt a sudden, deflating sadness at Blake’s death. I had known him for his entire life. I had grown up with him when Napa had been a farming community, not a tourist destination.
“Why are you even here?” I asked Armand.
He looked up at me again and pulled the mask away. “I called Blake on his cell this morning. The little creep actually had the nerve to answer. I told him I knew he had stolen my wine and sold it, that what he had returned to me were fakes.” Armand paused to suck more oxygen then pulled the mask away again. “He said he still had my wine. Every bottle of it. He told me to come and get it.”
“And you believed him?” I asked.
“I was desperate!” he said. “It took me a lifetime to acquire that wine, Claire. Most of my money is tied up in it!”
“Okay,” I said, dropping a hand to his shoulder. “I understand. What happened when you got here?”
“He shot at me! Then he ran inside the warehouse. He had a Molotov cocktail in his hand already burning. I went crazy. I followed him inside and down the stairs. But I lost him in the back of the cellar. He had doused all the private cellars in diesel fuel. I was searching for my wine when the fire started …” He shook his head and looked back at the fire. “It’s all gone, Claire. All of it.” Tears welled in his eyes. But at that moment I didn’t care about the wine.
“What happened to Samson?” I asked. “How did he get shot?”
“Blake shot him,” Armand said. He barely glanced at me as he spoke. He seemed completely entranced by the flames consuming millions of dollars of his wine. “He came running down the stairs while I was heading in the opposite direction. I tried to get him to come with me, but he refused. We were arguing when Blake started shooting at us. Samson got hit. I was trying to stop the bleeding when you showed up.”
I was out of questions at that point. Armand went back to sucking oxygen.
A pair of fireman had dragged a hose across the parking lot and were dousing the trees and scrub brush on the slope behind the warehouse, in case the fire began to spread, rather than trying to save the warehouse. California wildfire protocol. I looked up the slope, past the men to the rocky ledge where my home and vineyard were perched. I couldn’t see the house or the vines from that angle, but I saw something else: a pair of figures in the trees, cutting across the slope a hundred feet up, heading in the direction of Blake’s cabin in the woods. I couldn’t make out any features from that distance, but one of them was blond and burly. It had to be Blake’s goon, Bartlett!
I stood and pointed. “There he goes!” I shouted just as the pair disappeared into a dense copse of trees.
Victor stood up and looked where I was pointing. “I don’t see anyone,” he said.
“He’s gone,” I said, “But I’m sure it was Bartlett! He’s heading for the road!” I was tempted to run up the slope and pursue him myself, and I might have, if Hunter hadn’t arrived in his pickup.
Hunter parked close to the warehouse, not far from the three fire trucks. As he climbed out, I ran over.
“Looks like you were ten steps ahead of me the whole time,” he said. His eyes went to the burning warehouse. The peak of the building had started to sag, weakened by the intense heat of the fire. It wouldn’t be long before the whole structure collapsed.
“I just saw Bartlett in the trees,” I said, ignoring his sort-of-apology and waving my arm toward the hills. “He’s getting away!”
He didn’t get a chance to reply before the five firemen who had entered the warehouse reemerged on the run.
“Get back!” one of them, a barrel of man with a fringe of orange beard, bellowed as he ran toward us. Harris was stenciled over the breast pocket of his canvas slicker. “Get back!”
His panic was infectious. One of the running firemen grabbed Armand and jerked him to his feet and propelled him down the driveway. Hunter grabbed my hand and he took off after them, dragging me along behind him like a tin can on a string, putting my ankle through a torture test. Victor was right behind us.
None of us stopped running until we were standing in front of Blake’s home, a hundred and fifty yards from the warehouse, all of us panting and wheezing, Armand most of all.
Harris and two of his men ran with us while three others scrambled up into the fire trucks. With a wild grinding of gears, the trucks lumbered our way, trailing hoses behind them like leashes, the drivers racing the engines of the huge vehicles.
Harris ripped off his oxygen mask and turned to Hunt. “We got a body in there, Sheriff,” he said. He was breathing hard, panting. “It’s Blake Becker. Looked like he’d been shot, blood all over him. Body was too far back in the cellar for us to drag him out. And we got a bigger issue. There are a dozen cans of diesel fuel scattered around down there. The fire’s crawling all over them. We’re going to have to get a—”
The massive sound of the explosion swallowed the rest of his words as a fireball erupted inside the building, bulging the sides of the warehouse like a Coke can stuffed full of firecrackers, blasting the roof twenty feet into the air. The concussion knocked us all to the ground as scrap metal, broken bottles, and chunks of burning cardboard rained down on the orchard, the lawn, Blake’s home, and the heavily wooded slope behind Star Crossed.
It seemed like the whole world was on fire.
Chapter 32
The firemen reacted quickly. By the time Hunter, Victor, and I had regained our feet, our ears ringing from the concussion, the trio of fire trucks had stopped moving and the firemen were racing back to their hoses. The warehouse was a lost cause – all that remained was a smoking black crater and a few freestanding pieces of sheet metal – so they focused their efforts on the woods, the orchard, and Blake Becker’s home, pouring hundreds of gallons onto the spreading fire while Harris screamed into his radio for reinforcements.
All the vehicles parked in front of the warehouse – Victor and Hunter’s trucks, Armand’s BMW, Samson’s Jeep, and the Star Crossed van – were instantly engulfed in flames. Victor’s old truck was the first to blow. It exploded like a grenade, leapt ten feet into the air and came back down a buckled and twisted ruin, sending shards of red-hot metal into the surrounding vehicles, setting off a chain reaction that caused all three of them to detonate, one after the other. With each fresh explosion we staggered farther and farther back, and the wail of approaching sirens grew louder and louder.
Another fire truck arrived and then another ambulance, the latter trailed by a trio of County Sheriff cars. As the deputies piled out of their vehicles, Hunter turned to me, Victor, and Armand.
“You three need to move further down the driveway. Down by the highway.”
“I saw someone in the woods,” I reminded him. “I’m sure it was Bartlett.”
Hunter nodded, but it was clear Bartlett was not his biggest concern at the moment. “I’ll send a couple of guys up there, but he’s probably long gone by now,” he told me, then trotted off to take charge of his officers.
I nodded mutely at his back. The three of us - me, Armand, and Victor, all bedraggled and singed - moved down the driveway toward the highway.
Already, cars were piling up on the road out front as people stopped to rubberneck. Hunter sent a pair of officers out there to block the driveway and wave the motorists on while Victor, Armand, and I huddled together twenty feet short of the asphalt, and rubbernecked ourselves.
The firemen were handling the fire on the heavily wooded slopes pretty well. Thanks to the deluge of rain the week before, the ground and foliage were wet and, aside from the apple orchard, slow to burn. But the orchard and Becker’s home were not going to survive. The asphalt shingles that topped Blake’s house had caught quickly after the warehouse explosion. It was only a matter of minutes before the fire had spread to the eaves and down the siding, engulfing the home in flames. In that same space of time the twisted gray apple trees had gone up like matchsticks, the f
ire leaping from tree to tree down the rows.
The burly fireman, Harris, who was still yelling into his radio, paused to speak to the newly arrived EMTs. He pointed them our way. There was nothing they could do for Blake Becker now. They piled back into their ambulance, rolled down the driveway, and stopped beside us. Two EMTs climbed out. Both were young and blond with California-surfer tans.
Armand had lost the oxygen bottle in his race from the warehouse, but not his glassy-eyed stare. His face was blistered, but he didn’t seem to notice. He seemed fascinated with the fire consuming a large part of his fortune – if Blake hadn’t already sold it. There was no way an insurance company was going to pay auction value for those rare bottles. I foresaw a lot of wrangling and perhaps a court case before Armand would ever see a penny.
“Everyone okay?” the taller of the EMTs asked.
“We’re okay, but he’s been burned pretty badly,” I said, pointing at Armand.
The EMTs took one look at Armand’s blistered face and exchanged a glance. The shorter one said, “Hospital,” and the tall one nodded.
But Armand didn’t want to go. “I’m fine,” he said, then looked back at the fire. “It’s my wine that’s dying, not me.”
“We need to get your face looked at,” one of them said. “It doesn’t hurt now because you’re in shock, but those are second degree burns.”
“I’ve been burned before,” he said distractedly, making no move to comply.
“Can I catch a ride with you?” I interjected a question. “They took our friend Samson Xenos to the hospital. He was shot.”
“All three of you should come with us,” he said firmly.
Armand didn’t argue further. We all climbed into the back of the ambulance and they set off, skirting across the lawn to get past the sheriff’s patrol car parked across the mouth of the driveway. As we turned out of the driveway, I took one last look back at the fire through the rear windows. Hundreds of cases of Violet’s cabernet had been destroyed, but I felt nothing. My only thoughts were for Samson.
