Flashover

by T. Alan Codder

There was a bunch of trash, the blackened wall, the charred and ripped mattress, and not much else.

  “I can tell you the guy who did this is an amateur. Placing the mattresses against a brick wall like this and not splashing more of the accelerant around almost guaranteed the fire wasn’t going anyplace, not with the concrete floor above. Even if we hadn’t arrived, it would have probably burned itself out.”

  If this were winter, Sean could imagine someone setting the fire to try to stay warm, but staying warm wasn’t a problem now.

  “So, it probably was a vagrant?”

  Pete shrugged again. “Don’t know. By the time we got here the place was empty, of course.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  Pete glanced around then returned his attention to Sean. “My guess, the guy propped the mattress against the wall, poured on gasoline, threw a match, and ran the moment he saw the flame.”

  “Who reported it?”

  “Motorist. Saw the smoke and called 9-1-1.”

  Sean nodded. He’d check with Kim when he got back to the station to see if there was any more to the call.

  “You realize there’s no way we’ll ever catch him if that’s what happened.”

  Pete grinned, obviously enjoying the predicament he was placing Sean in. “Probably not. But that’s your problem, not mine. It stopped being my problem as soon as I told you about it.”

  “You’re enjoying this far too much,” Sean complained, but his tone took sting out of his words.

  Pete’s smile spread. “Yeah, I am,” he said, but then turned serious. “I know I’ve put you in a bind. I don’t expect you to catch whoever did this, and nobody else should either. But procedures say I have to tell you, and now I have. I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless we get a bunch of fires starting. If that happens then maybe we can piece something together to give you a place to start, but if it’s a one off, there’s not much either of us can do.”

  “And if Rudy comes pounding on my door again?”

  “Then you send him to me and I’ll explain it to him. Why would he, though? I think you’ve proven you know what you’re doing with that Locoste thing.”

  “Maybe,” Sean muttered.

  Rudy had apologized, and hadn’t meddled since, but Sean hadn’t forgotten either. The Mills at Brunswick was Rudy’s pet project, and when he found out arson was suspected, that’d be when he’d know if Rudy had truly learned his lesson.

  “Anything else you want to see?” Pete asked.

  “Anything else I should see?”

  “No. This is pretty much it. If this had been in a residential structure it would have been a lot worse because there would have been a much higher fire load. But here? It was more of a training exercise for my guys than anything else.”

  “Then I guess I’ve seen all I need to.”

  Pete nodded his head in the direction they came. “Okay. Let’s get out of here then.”

  As soon as he sat down in Pete’s truck, Sean turned the passenger side air conditioner vents so the cool air would hit him in the face, sighing in relief as the air began to flow. They rode back to the police station in relative silence, Pete pulling to a stop in front of the building but not turning his truck off.

  “I’ll have my guys ask around, and I’ll let you know if we find anything, but I’m not going to waste a lot of manpower on this,” Sean said as he cracked the door of the Durango.

  “I don’t blame you, but maybe you’ll get lucky and stumble across some guy with his eyebrows singed off.”

  Sean chuckled as he pushed the door wide. “That’s probably what it’ll take, but even then, all he’d have to do is claim it was a barbecuing accident.”

  Pete nodded. “Yeah. I’ve put out more than one barbecue fire gone wrong. Thanks for your help.”

  “We’ll do what we can.”

  “That’s all I need to hear.”

  Sean gave him a nod and shut the door. As Pete backed away, he entered the station. He’d check with Kim to be sure, but if the 9-1-1 was what Pete said, a motorist passing by seeing smoke, he wasn’t going to waste any time or effort on this.

  Four

  Sean looked at his ringing phone in annoyance. Between talking to Pete about the arson, having to explain to an irate woman that pregnancy was not a valid excuse to park in front of a fire hydrant, and then lunch, he hadn’t gotten anything done today he’d planned to do. With a sigh, he lifted the handset.

  “Sean.”

  “Mayor Klinger is here to see you,” Kim said.

  He rolled his eyes. He’d found out it was arson less than three hours ago and already Rudy was here. He probably wanted to know if he’d arrested the guy yet.

  “Send him back,” he replied then placed the phone back in its cradle.

  This was the first time Rudy had paid him a visit since the Locoste incident. Rudy had seemed contrite after he’d given him so much hell for investigating his longtime friend once Sean had been proven right. Now, after the news Pete had given him about the arson, he wondered if they were going to be right back where they started.

  “Mayor Klinger,” Sean said, rising and motioning to a guest chair in silent invitation.

  Rudy Klinger was greying, at least seventy pounds overweight, and hadn’t changed his appearance in decades. Wearing a brown suit with a wide striped tie and a slicked back pompadour, he looked like he’d stepped out of a nineteen seventies men’s catalogue.

  “Sean. Good to see you again,” Rudy replied as he settled into one of Sean’s brown leather guest chairs.

  Most of the police station was a typical government building with inoffensive paint, tile floors, and utilitarian furniture. Sean’s office, however, was much nicer than the rest of the building thanks to his predecessor. He still had the green and ivory fake marble tile floor, but his walls were trimmed with dark wood wainscoting and he had nice leather furniture and a wood desk.

  When he’d moved into the office it was a blank canvas, and was still mostly that way. Bill had removed everything except the furniture, the American and North Carolina flags, and a couple of paintings of Brunswick by a local artist.

  “How can I help you?” Sean asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Tilley.”

  Rudy’s response surprised Sean. He’d assumed Rudy was there to talk about the fire.

  “Okay. What about it?”

  “Hudson Voiles, the Tilley mayor, is asking if we’d, more specifically, you, can take over the policing of their town.”

  Sean rocked back in his chair, unsure he’d heard Rudy correctly.

  “He wants the Brunswick PD to provide law enforcement for Tilley? Why?”

  “A couple of reasons. One, their police force is overwhelmed and they don’t have the resources to hire more officers. Second, what you did with the Thacker case has impressed the hell out of everyone.”

  Rudy looked down, obviously still smarting over his actions and how he’d tried to influence the investigation. He looked back up.

  “You’ve proven you can get the job done.” Rudy paused again. “Lastly, because it’s a proposal I made to them years ago, back in my first term.”

  Sean’s eyes widened slightly and he leaned forward again. “You proposed the idea? Why?”

  “Because Brunswick was dying. We were headed in the same direction as other small towns as we lost jobs and residents to Raleigh and Fayetteville. When I took office, I had the idea that if Brunswick, Abbeyville and Tilley combined our resources, we’d be stronger together than we are separately. I approached Abbeyville and Tilley with the idea of our towns forming a partnership and working together to support each other. Part of that was Brunswick would provide essential services, specifically, water, sewer, police and fire. They took us up on the water and sewer, but not the police and fire. Until now.”

  “Why the change?”

  Rudy shrugged. “I don’t know, but I assume it’s because we’re beginning to turn the corner. The Mills at Brunswick is j
ust the latest development and we’re still recruiting hard. We’re growing again. I think it’s gotten their attention and, Tilley at least, wants to hitch their wagon to ours.” He paused and looked at his hands. “I suppose you heard about the rape last week?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sixteen years old. This isn’t the first time something like that happened. A couple years ago, before you got here, a young woman was kidnapped, raped and murdered. She was attending Siouan County Community College, studying to be a nurse. Beautiful girl. It was a real tragedy, and they never caught the guy who did it. I think Tilley is fed up, their police force isn’t getting the job done, and I think they’re looking to you, hoping you can make things better.”

  Sean nodded slowly. “What’s in it for us?”

  “Money for one thing. But more importantly, it gives us a bigger presence. If we can bring Tilley under our wing and work together as one community, we go from a population of around eleven thousand to nearly seventeen. If we can add Abbeyville, then we’d be at nearly twenty-five. We’ll never be able to compete with Raleigh, but with a combined population of twenty-five thousand, working together we can out compete all the other small towns in the area for development and growth.”

  “And Tilley can’t do this without our help?”

  Rudy shook his head. “Tilley and Abbeyville are dying, Sean. When the jobs began leaving, it hit them harder than it did Brunswick, and it hit us plenty hard. Crime is a real problem for them and people are fleeing. The only people left in Abbeyville and Tilley are those who can’t leave. Their police can’t handle it. Tilley only has four officers, one of which is their chief, and they can only respond to emergencies. The town is thick with drug dealing and god only knows what else. They have a really bad reputation, and I think it’s deserved, but they want to change that. Hud came to me yesterday and asked if my offer was still on the table.”

  “I know, but what I don’t understand is how this works. If they can’t afford to hire more officers, how are they going to afford to pay us? What makes them think we can do a better job than their own force?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about. What’s it going to take to clean up the town? Is this something that’s even possible?”

  Sean thought about it a moment. “We can do it, Rudy, but not with what we have now. With fifteen officers, we’re actually a little thin just covering Brunswick. Brunswick is pretty safe so we can handle it, but there’s no way we can take on another six thousand people, not without more manpower, especially as bad as it is there.”

  Rudy nodded. “Hud, he wants this. They’re ready to make the commitment to working together with us, and they know the first step is to get their crime problem under control. They’ve gotten a grant from the feds and the state to help pay for it. We’ve cut them a deal on the price, so they’re ready to pull the trigger.”

  “What kind of deal?” Sean asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Brunswick will eat all the benefits and admin costs, and we’ll provide all the equipment. Basically, they’re paying a flat fee for each officer, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

  “So, it’s just police now? Not police and fire?”

  “Just police for now. They have a volunteer fire department.” Rudy snorted. “That seems to be the only city service that’s working.”

  “Why are you willing to give them a deal like that?”

  “Because this is a good deal for Brunswick, too. Part of our recruiting problem is the crime rates of our neighbors. I’m not willing to take it in the shorts for them, but the admin costs are nominal. Getting those places cleaned up so it stops tarnishing our name will make it money well spent.”

  “I’ll have to look into it before I can give you any kind of answer. The short answer is ‘yes, we can do it.’ But what it’ll take, I don’t know. Give me a couple of days to work something out and I’ll get back to you with a plan. But I’m telling you now, it’s going to require more officers. Certainly more than the four they have now. Depending on the call volume, it may even require another 9-1-1 operator and dispatcher.”

  Rudy nodded. “Tell me what you’ll need and what it’ll cost, and then we can go from there. I’m not trying to rush you, but make it as fast as you can. I want to move on this as soon as possible. If we can bring Tilley into the fold and begin to turn things around there, maybe Abbeyville will follow.”

  Sean watched Rudy a moment. “And the officers who work in Tilley will report to me? What will Coop think of that?”

  Wayne Cooper was the police chief in Tilley, and Sean knew how he’d feel if he were put in Coop’s shoes.

  Rudy shrugged. “I don’t know. Not our problem, really. That’s Hud’s problem. If that’s how you want it setup, make it part of your proposal. I want this to work, Sean, and you’re going to know more about how to make it work than I am. I’m not going to tell you how to do your job.” He gave Sean an apologetic smile. “Well, not any more. I learned my lesson the last time.”

  Sean nodded. Maybe Rudy wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

  “That’s the way it’ll have to be. If I’m going to have the responsibility, I need the authority, and I don’t want someone bucking or undermining me.”

  Rudy nodded. “I understand completely. We’ll present Hud with your proposal and then go from there. If we can’t come to some sort of agreement…” he shrugged.

  “I’ll take a tour of Tilley later today and start putting some ideas together. As soon as I figure out what I need, I’ll get a proposal on your desk.”

  Rudy nodded. “I’ll go ahead and tell you now that your computer upgrades are going to be in this year’s budget, so factor that in as well.”

  Sean smiled at the news. “Good. If Tilley is as bad as you say, we’re going to need them or we’re going to be buried in paperwork.”

  Rudy stood. “I won’t keep you. When do you think you can have something on my desk?” When Sean glared at him, he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not rushing you, but I need to tell Hud something. Are we talking a couple of days, a week, what?”

  “Say a week to be safe.”

  Rudy nodded again. “Good enough. Thanks, Sean.”

  -oOo-

  “Kim, I’m leaving a little early,” Sean said as he stepped into the dispatcher’s office. “I have to take a quick tour of Tilley.”

  “Oh? What’s up?”

  “I need to do a little fact finding.”

  She gave him a nod. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  Abbeyville, Brunswick and Tilley, or ABT as the locals called it, had once been three completely separate towns. Over the years they had grown toward each other until there was little to separate them from one another other than an occasional sign. Now Brunswick was growing again and slowly surrounding its two smaller neighbors.

  Sean slowly drove through Tilley’s dilapidated downtown. Most of the businesses were boarded up or displayed dusty windows looking into vacant stores. Brunswick’s downtown area was thriving with small mom and pop stores, professional offices, and a few restaurants, but the only building which appeared to be occupied in Tilley was a secondhand clothing store, and it had a Closed sign hanging on the door.

  It was nearly five, and with the exception of a couple of clusters of men who watched him pass with suspicious eyes, he saw no one.

  It was areas like these that were breeding grounds for crime and drug use. He reached the end of the small downtown and turned right. Tilley was too small to get lost in and he wandered aimlessly through the town.

  As he prowled through the residential areas, his lips pursed in sympathetic despair. Every now and again he saw a house that someone took pride in, but they were the exception. He saw many abandoned houses, and the rest were in desperate need of attention. Most were in ill repair with sagging gutters and flaking, sun bleached, paint. Weed choked yards, oil stained driveways, and near derelict cars with crushed body panels and ruined paint were the rule.

 
Most of the houses were small, and the few people he saw were often sitting on porches, fanning themselves slowly, watching with blank faces as the world passed by. Occasionally he saw a child playing, but mostly it was empty yards. It was a depressing sight and he wondered if the lack of kids was because people were afraid to let their children play unsupervised.

  Most towns had a depressed area along with a more affluent section, but nowhere in Tilley did he see a well maintained and prosperous group of homes. Other than the occasional house with a well-tended yard and semi-fresh paint, all of Tilley was sliding into ruin. Rudy said the only people left in Tilley were those who couldn’t leave, and the general state of the town reinforced that idea.

  There was evidence the town had once been, if not prosperous, at least not struggling to survive. Occupying a large corner lot was an ornate brick church that once rang with the song of worshipers. Now it was abandoned, its roof collapsing and many of the windows broken. At the edge of town, he stumbled across a vacant building that had once housed shiny new cars, the old signage for GM Service still visible on the wall. Like most of the businesses, the Chevrolet dealership appeared to have closed at least thirty years before, probably about the time the jobs began to leave.

  According to what he could find, the ABT area had lost nearly ten-thousand residents from their heyday in the sixties. Brunswick was beginning to prosper again as a bedroom community for Raleigh, but Tilley was still struggling.

  He hated to judge based on appearances, but at half the size of Brunswick, Tilley appeared it would be twice the problem. Tilley was full of desperate people performing desperate acts to survive. If they took over jurisdiction they were going to have to move into the town in force and establish a presence to send a signal to the criminal element that things were changing.

  There was going to be a lot of resentment and resistance from the thugs and hoodlums who were preying on these people, but if the town was asking for help, hopefully that meant the general population would welcome the officers and the increased patrols.

  It was never easy to clean up a town, and it would take time before the predators decided to leave and find easier targets, but he was certain it was something his department could do, so long as they had the manpower and the support of those they were trying to help. He wanted to help. Nobody should have to live in fear and despair as these people appeared to. Tilley was trying to pull itself up by the bootstraps, like Brunswick had, and he wanted to give them a fighting chance to succeed.