Playing with Fire

by Rachel Lee

  “Ken tapped him to help get the burn building ready for Monday. He says he’s got some new stuff up his sleeve.”

  “Which won’t be much of a secret if Randy knows about it,” Donna remarked.

  “That’s what we’re counting on,” Jeff laughed.

  As they were walking back, carriers full of lattes with Charity carrying three whole pies she’d bought from Maude, Charity asked, “How is it you guys have a burn building? I’ve seen a lot of small departments that have to resort to burning buildings that are slated for destruction because of budgetary restraints.”

  “Three counties put their budgets together,” Wayne answered. “It’s near us because we already owned twenty good acres for it. Until then, we’d been putting together structures of our own. I don’t have to tell you how unsafe that can be.”

  “As unsafe as a real fire.”

  “Exactly. So a bunch of us went in together to put in a really good training building. Safer, and what’s more we can use it to simulate two story structures with attics or barns.” He shook his head a little. “It’s nice, and we can get some really long burns.”

  “And we get worn-out,” said Jeff, grinning.

  Charity laughed. “Just like the real thing.”

  “I hear we might put some more burn buildings out there,” Jeff said.

  “How can we do that if the county cuts our budget?” Donna asked.

  Wayne looked at her. “They threaten that every few years, Donna. It’s part of the game. And somehow in the end they never really cut anything important.”

  Back at the station, they left the coffees and the pies with everyone in the break room. Wayne headed for his office, and Charity and Donna trailed him.

  “So you’ll be done today?” Donna asked.

  Charity hesitated. In theory she would be, but she hadn’t forgotten her own determination to dangle herself like bait by hanging around. If they were ever going to catch this guy, they had to make him slip up.

  “I’m not sure,” she answered. “I might be a little longer.”

  Donna put her cup on her desk, then rounded it to take her seat. “Be gentle with Edna. She’s been through hell.”

  Charity eyed her. “What makes you think I wouldn’t be? I’m not a prosecutor. I just need to hear her story.”

  Donna nodded, and Charity continued into Wayne’s office. She could understand Donna’s protectiveness. After all, she’d told Charity from the start that Edna had been her friend since they were kids.

  When Edna Buell entered Wayne’s office, she didn’t look any better than her husband. This fire, the scare, the aftermath, had all taken a real toll on this family. Charity felt badly for them. She hated to have to do even this much.

  The woman, thin as a bird, sat on the chair. She had brushed her hair into a bun, she couldn’t have been much older than thirty-five, but right now she looked about fifty. Wind, sun and suffering had carved themselves in her face, and the dress she wore looked a least one size too big.

  Wayne made the introductions and asked after the children.

  “They’re okay. I lost all their school books in the fire, so they’re in school with the other kids.”

  “How do they like that?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s different and I think they feel a little lost, but the teachers are being nice, and so are most of the other kids. They know most of the kids from Bible school.”

  “Of course,” Wayne agreed.

  Edna shook her head a little. “First time I’ve been asked for a pink backpack, though.”

  “Probably wouldn’t have much use for that at home,” Wayne remarked.

  “None,” Edna said. “I’m talking to Fred about it, though. I know he needs the help, but maybe if I drive them we can manage to keep them in school. I could do more, then, around the place.”

  “A ranch is a lot of work,” Wayne said gently. “And this fire didn’t help anything. You want to talk to us about it?”

  “Not really.” But Edna’s eyes moistened. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. As long as I live and breathe, I’m never going to forget the way the ceilings were burning.”

  “Everywhere?” Charity asked quietly.

  “Just in patches at first. Fred says it must’ve been the old wallpaper. I don’t know why, but some folks papered their ceilings. He can’t recall it, so maybe it was his great-grandparents who did it. Anyway, some of it was painted over, some of it was the same as the walls. And it burned. Why would the ceilings burn?”

  Wayne and Charity exchanged looks. “We’re working on that,” he said.

  “And the smoke. By the time we’d grabbed the kids, we were choking. It was thick upstairs, not so bad downstairs, but by the time we got ’em all down, the front porch was burning. It looked like a window on hell. What if we hadn’t been able to get out the back?”

  Good question, thought Charity as she watched the woman pull a wadded handkerchief out of her purse and wipe at her eyes. “Every time I close my eyes, I see that fire, that smoke, those ceilings.” She dissolved into tears while Charity watched helplessly. Nothing she could say or do was going to make this any better for Edna Buell.

  When she could speak again, Edna said, “The kids are having nightmares. Every single night. I don’t know if they’ll ever feel safe again. Ever. I don’t think I will.”

  She cried some more, but kept talking through her tears. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without Fred. He kept it together. Kept us moving. Found the way out. Then he saw the barn, and that’s when he lost it, and it’s all my fault. All of it!”

  Charity felt shock rip through her. Aghast, she stared at the woman then looked at Wayne. He had to ask the next question since he was the official here, but she didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Edna,” Wayne said gently, “did you set that fire?”

  “No, no, no! But my wishful thinking... It was my punishment.”

  “Punishment for what?”

  “I wished I wasn’t stuck out there all the time. Every day was the same, nothing ever got better, always wishing next year we’d do better and maybe be able to have a little fun, and we never can. I was complaining all the time and I wonder Fred didn’t throw me out. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I made it happen because I couldn’t stand it.”

  Silence filled the office. “So,” Wayne said, “do you think Fred set the fire?”

  Edna’s head snapped up. “No way! He loves that place. He’s proud of it. He wouldn’t have a life without it. And he wouldn’t risk hurting his kids or animals. I’m such a fool. I have the kindest man in the world for a husband and I was wishing it all away because I was tired of it. Well, I’m not tired of it anymore! No, sir. I know what’s important now. It’s those kids and my husband. That’s all I want. But my stupid, wishful thinking... I brought it on us. I got my wish and now I wish I’d died.”

  Charity couldn’t stop herself. She reached out and gripped Edna’s shoulder. “Your wishing didn’t make this happen. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. You know that saying. If wishes made things happen, we’d all win the lottery or something.”

  “But I was evil inside!”

  “You were worn-out. There’s a big difference. Somebody else did this to you, and you shouldn’t feel guilty. You didn’t set that fire.”

  “No. And if I wished for it all to burn up, it would have been on a Sunday morning when we were all in church, not during a night when we were all in our beds and could have died.” Edna sniffled and wiped her eyes again. “I don’t wish my family dead. I don’t!”

  She broke down again and Wayne passed a box of tissues across his desk. Charity pulled a few of them out and pressed them into Edna’s hand. Her hankie was soaked through.

  “I feel so ugly inside,” Edna confessed tearily. “I
lost sight of what really matters and got so selfish. I don’t even know how I turned into that ugly woman.”

  Charity patted her shoulder again, then leaned back. “Sometimes our thoughts get stuck in a rut and start to reinforce themselves. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a shock to shake us free of that.”

  “I had a shock, all right. Thank goodness Donna helped Fred put in those smoke alarms when I asked.” Edna sniffled and wiped her face again. “I won’t be thinking that way anymore. Do you need me for something else? I gotta help my sister buy groceries. She can’t afford to feed all five of us and she’s waiting out front. The potluck helped. It really helped.”

  As Edna was leaving, Wayne asked casually, “Any reason Fred would leave stall doors open?”

  Edna paused and turned. Above her reddened eyes, her brow knit. “Of course not. If you knew how hard he was on the kids about that and leaving gates open... Just two weeks ago he was all over the youngest for not closing a stall door and a mare got out and into the oats. Lucky we didn’t lose her.”

  “Thanks,” Wayne said. “I didn’t think he would.”

  “Oats?” Charity asked after Edna had closed the door behind her.

  “Gassy food, those oats. As I understand it, you can’t feed too much at one time.”

  “Oh.” She sat there both perplexed and certain, an odd combination. She was certain that the Buells hadn’t caused the fire, but she was still perplexed by all she didn’t know and understand, not the least of them about the stall doors. “Why are those doors so important to you? You mapped it, but you haven’t explained a thing.”

  “I know. I’ve been thinking about it, but I’ll ask you to hold your curiosity a little longer. I want us to be somewhere we can’t be overheard.”

  She started. “You’re worried about ears here? In your office?”

  “I’m worried about ears anywhere right now. We don’t know who this guy is.”

  He had a point, she thought. She looked down at the scuffed toes of her boots, saw the dark streaks from the ash. “I’m going to stay and participate in the training exercise.”

  “How’d I know you’d say that?”

  She looked up, drinking in his now-familiar face and thinking how much she liked just looking at him. She wished they were far away and enjoying a different kind of privacy, the kind they had almost enjoyed early this morning. Some part of her seemed to have developed a perpetual ache to feel him hold her, surround her, enter her.

  “I’d much prefer you get out of here today,” he said.

  “I know. And I told you why I’m not. What better chance do we have?”

  She watched him frown, oddly discomforted to be making him unhappy. Why should that matter? They had a problem to solve, they both knew it, and she seemed like the best route to a solution. This should all just be a matter of logic.

  But she recognized that feelings had entered into it. She cared how he felt, and he seemed to care about her. Enough to hold her through the night so she wouldn’t be alone after what had happened. Enough not to try to take advantage of her in even a small way when she probably would have crumbled like a house of cards if he’d tried to make love to her.

  She looked down at her boots again. “I should get a room at the motel. People will talk.”

  “I don’t give a damn. Let ’em talk. I’m not letting you out of my sight unless I’m sure someone trustworthy is around. Are you ready to file your report on the fire?”

  “Pretty much. The Buells should get paid. I’ll try to expedite the check, but I’m not sure how much I can speed it up. I’ve never had a case quite like this before. But I know we should be paying some living expenses for them in the meantime, and there’s no reason that shouldn’t come fast.”

  “So no problems?”

  She looked up, feeling a small touch of amusement. “I didn’t say that. I’m not sure they’re used to paying homeowners who don’t have a mortgage to deal with. They’re more used to sending out estimators for repairs, and then stalling the big mortgagors for a while. This is going to blow their minds, paying the whole sum to the householders.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “Told you Fred was a careful man.”

  “Clearly. He made sure nobody could take the homestead without going to court. He’s used his herd as collateral, I see, but never his house or land.”

  “So no matter what, he’d have the basics to get back on his feet.”

  “In theory. It’s not looking so good right now.” She rose and stretched. “Guess I’ll go into the break room, then, and see how much I can get done.”

  “The guys’ll bug you to death.”

  “That’s fine.” She shrugged. “I know how to turn down the volume.”

  The hard parts of being a firefighter, she had often thought, were the hours spent sitting around the firehouse waiting for something to happen. There was only so much you could work on equipment, and work out. Although as a volunteer, she hadn’t had to do it often, she had heard about it plenty from the career types.

  The guys were watching a movie on the flat-screen TV on the wall. They paused it as soon as she entered.

  She looked at the screen. “An arson film? Really?”

  Six men laughed. “We’re not going to watch a kiddy movie,” said Jeff.

  “So you watch a movie about a firefighter arsonist?”

  “Damn,” said Hal Leas. “Isn’t he stupid? So convinced a firefighter would never get hurt. Besides, it’s fun to kibitz the way these guys fight fires. Most of ’em would be dead before they finished arguing with each other.”

  Everyone laughed because it was so true. Thirty seconds in black smoke without a breathing apparatus could kill even the healthiest of men, never mind one of those fires where the temps were obviously as high as a crematorium and one breath would have seared the lungs.

  “It’s a fun movie anyway,” Jeff argued. “And you could understand the arsonist. He was after that nasty politician who wanted to cut the department and was risking the firefighter’s lives.”

  “He should have looked further,” Hal retorted. “He killed firemen.”

  Charity put her laptop on the table farthest from the screen. “Doesn’t every life matter?”

  Immediately they all chimed agreement. “Of course,” one of the others said. “But it’s just a stupid movie.”

  “About a really stupid firefighter,” said Jeff, giving the other guy a little shove. More laughs.

  “Mind if I work back here?” Charity asked. “You can keep watching. It won’t bother me.”

  “We’ll try not to get too noisy,” Jeff answered. “And thanks again for the pie.”

  “Happy to do it.”

  She settled on the bench and opened her computer, waiting for it to boot up. Too many questions were swirling in her head, and nobody was off her mental hook.

  An arsonist who knew what he was doing, or an arsonist who had made a mistake, underestimated what would happen and nearly cost a family their lives? Right now she was having trouble thinking any part of that burn had been accidental. After all, it seemed this guy was willing to try to kill her.

  Freaking coward, she thought, as she connected with her files at the company and began entering her final assessment, which basically amounted to: pay the homeowners. Dealing death at a distance or indirectly was a whole lot easier than doing it face-to-face. Although a detective she knew had told her that once you killed someone, that line would never be there again. The next one got easier.

  But she didn’t see any sign of that. Burn a family out of its home, possibly killing them? Screw with carbon monoxide to kill her? Cowardly maybe, but not dumb. And definitely, it hadn’t gotten easier for the arsonist, not yet. He was still staying at a distance, with a possibility it wouldn’t work.

  Her head sna
pped up as she thought about that. What did it mean, if she was right? Risk-taking while hoping the full consequences wouldn’t occur? She was an arson investigator. Everyone in town probably knew that by now. What if she had been expected to recognize the effects of the carbon monoxide?

  Would she have? She’d been getting a headache but hadn’t felt any drowsiness yet. Anyway, everyone reacted differently. Some people seemed to feel nothing. Others reacted quickly and badly, including nausea and vomiting. The killer wouldn’t know what type of reaction she would have. Had he been betting on her knowledge?

  Her eyes strayed to the big screen, and she saw one of the climactic scenes beginning to play out. Back draft, one of the most dangerous situations a firefighter could face. A closed space heated to ignition or higher, but unable to flame once it had burned all the available oxygen. Then you opened a door or a window, letting in air, and the whole thing exploded. Firefighters had to be careful to check around doors and windows for smoke stains, indicating that the fire inside was trying to get oxygen. That it was fighting for its life, waiting for air to breathe. A deadly situation.

  But the Buell house had been a flashover. Maybe a back draft situation had built in the walls, but the attic had plenty of oxygen, and the fire had exploded in a critical flashover as soon as ignition temperature was reached. Instant ignition of everything in the room, every single surface.

  Too bad the walls were gone now. She’d have loved to be able to look around at some nail holes to see if the signs were there.

  Then she thought of the photos she had taken of those holes at the bottom of the house. She called one up, magnified it and studied it intently. The spray of black emanating from it could suggest a fire that wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It was sending out tendrils of smoke, because one of the weirdest things about a back draft was the way the nearly airtight space seemed to breathe. In and out like a bellows as it tried to burn, then gain oxygen. She’d even felt it once while touching a sooty window, a minor vibration, like a quietly growling beast.

  A warning, one no firefighter ever ignored. The minute sufficient oxygen reached the overheated room, it would explode.