Vertical Burn

by Earl Emerson

  As his father escorted him to the door, Finney found himself crying. It was the damndest thing; the tears wouldn’t stop. “John, you know if I was hard on you boys, it was because I loved you. You know that, don’t you?” His father had tears in his eyes, too.

  “Of course I do. I love you, too.”

  “John, all I want from you after I’m gone is a kind word. Can you do that for me?” It was an old family joke, something John’s grandfather had said.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. You’ll get plenty of kind words.”

  56. SIX WAYS FROM SUNDAY

  The less imposing of the two plainclothesmen and the one who did most of the questioning, Rosemont, was one of those people who, for whatever reason, made a habit of pretending to be smarter than he was. They were almost polar opposites, because his partner pretended to be dumber than he was.

  It was Thursday, the sixth of November, and early that morning while surfing the Internet, Finney had found a business news article that said, “Due to concern among building occupants, Cole Properties has agreed to increase its insurance coverage on the Columbia Tower in Seattle to an amount commensurate with industry standards for a building of its size, this to take effect as of November 2. Morganchild Insurance has—” Et cetera, et cetera. The article convinced Finney to see the cops.

  The police would have his testimony, his suspicions, a videotape of the Bowman Pork fire with Oscar Stillman loitering near the incident commander, and not much else. He explained that there was a cabal of conspirators intimately connected to the fire service whose goal was another major arson. That he suspected D-day was tomorrow, November 7, primarily because Monahan had been so sneaky about getting it off, that other than Monahan, he wasn’t sure who was in the group but suspected the individuals on the list Cordifis’s wife had found among his effects. He didn’t mention that his own name had been on that list. He still didn’t know why it was there.

  He knew this group had built a fire engine worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars, that they killed Gary Sadler, that they were probably responsible for Leary Way. What he hadn’t known until this morning was the upcoming target; and now that the insurance coverage on the Columbia Tower had been raised, he thought he knew why the prefire book for the Columbia Tower had been in the copycat fire apparatus.

  The second plainclothesman, Freeman, a big man with a flat nose and a prominent jaw that had a blue, stubbled look, took notes. He looked like an old-time cop, a strong contrast to Rosemont, who seemed almost prissy, a college professor type—eighteenth-century French poetry.

  Rosemont had short, greasy hair that he parted meticulously down one side and small, manicured hands he waved in front of his face as he spoke. “Okay,” he said. “You think there’s going to be a fire tomorrow. Let’s hear your reasoning again.”

  It had been three days since Gary Sadler’s death, and at times he still felt as if his head were spinning. He had to think through his sentences painstakingly before he uttered them, because he had a tendency to jumble the order of the words. “I told you. The Columbia Tower was underinsured. Now it’s fully insured.”

  “My house is fully insured,” said Rosemont. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to burn it down.”

  “Leary Way was some kind of practice run.”

  “I read in the paper that Leary Way thing was an accident. You can prove it wasn’t?”

  “Not so it would hold up in court.”

  “But you think Patterson Cole is trying to convert the Columbia Tower into cash?”

  Finney nodded.

  “He’d have to be awful desperate.”

  “He’s getting divorced. And he’s a skinflint. My guess is his wife is taking him to the cleaners and he doesn’t have the ready cash to buy her off. He gets a large insurance settlement, he’ll have the cash.”

  Freeman swiveled his dark eyes onto Finney and said, “Look, we’re trying to keep this on a friendly basis, but when a firefighter comes in saying he knows there’s going to be an arson at a specific place on a specific date, we get a little worried. Why don’t you read back your notes, Stu?”

  “The Columbia Tower. Oscar Stillman, Gerald Monahan, G. A. Montgomery, and Marion Balitnikoff. He any relation to the football player?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “God, he could hit. You ever see him play?”

  “A few times.” He’d been one of his father’s favorites, his father, who always admired the toughest players on the field. Finney was not planning to mention his own surname had been on the list, or that he had a brother in the department, or a father who’d retired just weeks after Leary Way. He didn’t mention Kub either. There had been a question mark after Kub’s name.

  “Why didn’t you take this to your fire investigation unit?” Rosemont asked.

  “Politics.”

  Rosemont gave Freeman a dubious look, not his first.

  Since Tuesday morning he’d been unable to recall familiar phone numbers, routes of travel he’d used for years, all sorts of simple words, even the name of his cat. The phrase “it’s on the tip of my tongue” applied hourly. He wondered if anything he’d said to these two made sense. Already he’d caught himself in a couple of embarrassing misapplications of language, though neither Rosemont nor Freeman bothered to correct him, practiced as they were at letting people hang themselves with their own words.

  When a uniformed officer came to the door with a note, both men exited the room. The officer gave Finney a snaggletoothed smile and blocked the doorway, arms folded. A large woman, she looked as if she played rugby—with the guys.

  After a few minutes of silence, Finney said, “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Then I can leave?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Finney had thought about relating this tale to the police for so long that now he was acutely aware that he had only one shot. And they weren’t buying it. He wasn’t sure he would have believed it himself. The more he explained, the more he realized he was spinning a classic tale of paranoid delusion.

  Five minutes later, when Rosemont reentered the room, Charlie Reese stepped through the door behind him. It surprised Finney, until he realized Reese had been called in not only as the resident expert on fire operations in the city, but as an authority on Finney.

  “Morning, John,” Reese said, as amicably as if they were meeting for coffee. “I understand you’ve been entertaining these gentlemen. The Columbia Tower. Is that what we’re talking about?”

  “That’s it,” Rosemont said.

  All eyes were on Reese now, who took his time with it, his voice silky smooth, his dark eyes unwavering.

  “Gentlemen. One of our people had already brought up the possibility that something was going to happen at the Columbia Tower. I don’t know why that particular building has become so popular with conspiracy theorists, but I can assure you we’ve checked it six ways from Sunday. There’s no way we’re going to let so much as a cigarette burn unattended in that place.”

  “You already checked it?” Finney asked. “Who told you about it?”

  “I can only give that out on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Diana Moore?”

  “I had Chief Murray check it for me. After he was finished, I sent in a second team, and they spent most of yesterday examining every nut and bolt. Then we had the building engineers go around behind and double-check one more time. Right now the Columbia Tower is probably the safest building in the state.”

  Rosemont, Freeman, and the uniformed officer who’d remained in the room watched Finney for a reaction; there was none. Finney didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know whether Reese was lying or he’d really checked the building. Reese strode to the door in a manner that signaled the others to follow and said, “Gentlemen.”

  “Wait a minute,” Finney said. “Just because somebody inspected the building’s life safety systems doesn’t mean something isn’t going to happen. You get one or t
wo floors going in a building like that and it’s a grounder, systems or not. Somebody could get in there . . . somebody could . . .”

  Reese’s voice grew smaller as they walked down the corridor. “Just like every other big city department, we have our resident two-twenties. This nutcase’s father was a dear friend of mine, so it’s particularly sad for me to tell you this, but if I could eject this poor bastard from our department, I would. Just like you guys, this is a civil service job, and we have to carry the deadwood. In case you didn’t recognize him, this is the same guy who survived Leary Way last June. A few days ago he managed to get one of our best lieutenants killed at that pig plant fire. We’re still trying to figure out how he did that. Also, and this isn’t for public consumption, we’re building a case against him for arson. Airtight. The trouble with—”

  A door closed, insulating Finney from the remainder of the conversation. Now all Finney could hear was the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. It didn’t matter that the house he found prepped for arson had burned down the morning after he reported it, or that he’d discovered a replica of a city fire engine, or that somebody driving that engine had tried to kill him. It didn’t matter that Sadler had been dragged back into the fire building and left to die. It didn’t matter that these men, whoever they were—Oscar Stillman, Jerry Monahan, whoever—were going to do it again.

  It didn’t matter because nobody believed him.

  “You all right?” asked the officer in the doorway.

  “Pardon?”

  “You look like you’re having trouble breathing.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good. Because I think they want to talk to you again.”

  Moments later the three men paraded back into the room, and Rosemont put his foot on the seat of a straight-backed chair. “Why don’t you run through this again?”

  Finney got up. “I told you what I came here to tell you. Now I’m leaving.”

  Rosemont looked at Reese. “Want us to dig up some charge to hold him on until you boys are ready with your own charges?”

  Charlie Reese stepped forward. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, gentlemen. As you can see, he’s not much of a threat.”

  Rosemont said, “If the Chief wants you out of here, I guess you’re free to go.”

  A few moments later Reese approached Finney in the corridor. It occurred to Finney that if Reese was part of the conspiracy, it would make sense to keep Finney out of jail so he could absorb some or all of the blame for whatever was going to happen next.

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, John, but I couldn’t go on letting you make a fool of yourself.”

  “Who else inspected the Columbia Tower?”

  “An engineer from the building and Lieutenant Stillman.”

  “Oscar? Oscar’s part of it.”

  Reese turned and looked at him. “You’re not kidding, are you? You really think this is going to happen. John, get a sound night’s sleep. In the morning make an appointment with a shrink.”

  It wasn’t until he looked down the hallway and saw the redheaded officer who’d taken his report after his tangle with the fake engine that something became clear: Rosemont and Freeman had been eavesdropping on him and Reese. Eyes locked on Finney, the redhead began whispering to the detectives. Finney could imagine what she was saying. “Yeah, we found him in his truck all mangled up one night, raving about being run down by a fire truck. Nutty as a pecan pie.”

  57. RIDING LIES LIKE A HOBBYHORSE

  During the afternoon a carpet of fog rolled across the lake and began bunching up around the downtown skyscrapers.

  At four o’clock Finney was in his kitchen on his hands and knees scrubbing and scouring. He found simpleminded tasks aided his convalescence from the CO poisoning. During the day a dozen messages had stacked up on his answering machine—from Diana, his father, Robert Kub, from news agencies wanting to interview him about Bowman Pork. He’d listened to each and replied to none, though he was tempted to pick up the phone when he heard Kub say, “John. Get your things in order. You can expect visitors this afternoon.” Finney’s houseboat was the second from the end on a narrow dock, not such a hot arrangement for moving pianos or dodging widows and a definite dead end when the police came calling.

  He realized there was a good chance he would never be allowed to put on the uniform again. Losing the uniform wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, but for some reason it felt as if it were. So much of his identity was wrapped up in being a firefighter. It left him with a satisfaction he couldn’t imagine finding anywhere else.

  He was almost finished with the kitchen. His checkbook was balanced, and his insurance and bank account information were neatly typed onto a single sheet of paper. He would ask Tony, who was allergic to cats, to keep an eye on Dimitri, and to put his personal effects in storage before renting out the houseboat.

  At four o’clock a pensive group showed up on the dock: Charlie Reese, G. A. Montgomery, Oscar Stillman, as well as three uniformed Seattle police officers wearing black leather gloves and bulletproof vests.

  G. A. Montgomery unfurled an arrest warrant, then stepped inside and bowed his head, a somber Stillman and Reese following. As if by prior arrangement, the SPD officers waited on the dock. Breathing through his gapped teeth with a whistling noise, Stillman gave him an avuncular look. With the moment upon them, G. A. seemed to have picked up a case of stage fright. In the tight quarters of the living room, G. A. seemed larger than life; his head looked as large as a bowling ball. Reese was the most chipper of the bunch.

  “You’re under arrest, John,” G. A. said, almost apologetically from the back of the room. Without moving from the wall, he read Finney his rights from a printed card. He’d been crowing to one and all that he was going to put Finney away, and now his slow words and funereal tone were puzzling.

  Chief Reese said, “Annie Sortland is finally alert enough that her doctors up at Harborview allowed G. A. to interview her. Says she saw you on Riverside Drive the morning of the fire. Right before somebody socked her upside the head.”

  “A captain, a chief, and a scoundrel,” Finney said, looking around the group. “And you finally found your witness.”

  “I never put anyone away who wasn’t guilty,” G. A. said, reaching for the handcuffs on his belt.

  Reese said, “Hold up a minute. John gave the police some interesting theories yesterday. Maybe he wants to share those with us.”

  “You want to say something, John,” added Oscar Stillman, not unkindly, “you go right ahead.”

  Finney looked the trio over. “Yeah, I want to say something. I didn’t set the fire. It offends me that any of you think I did. G. A. framed me. He knows it and I know it and I’m beginning to think you guys know it, too.”

  “Turn around and put your hands on the wall, asshole,” G. A. said, stepping past Reese.

  “No, no. Go back over there,” Reese said. “You’re beginning to think we know what?”

  “This is my gig, Charlie,” G. A. said, forcefully.

  “No, I want to hear what he has to say.” Reluctantly, G. A. moved back. “Let him talk. Maybe he’ll say something else to incriminate himself.” Reese turned to Finney, his brown eyes teary with gloating. “You thought you were hot shit, didn’t you? Voted top of the class. And there I was at the ass end of things. It’s turned around a little, eh?”

  “Is that what this is all about? A drill school that happened eighteen years ago? Jesus, get a life.”

  “I have a life. Yours is the one going down the toilet. Leary Way is what started it for you, John. If that hadn’t happened, you’d probably be all right. But then, with guys like you, something like that is bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “I’ve been back there. I cleared out the corridor where we met that night. I found the exact spot.”

  “Have you now? What an astronomical waste of time.”

  “Bill knew something was going to happen at Leary Way. One of you guys must have
given it away somehow. I’m thinking you didn’t realize just how much he suspected. The night of the fire Bill ran into Stillman and cursed him out. I heard him call Oscar a bastard, but I thought at the time it was in jest; now I know he was serious. I didn’t hear what he said after that, but I think he was probably accusing Oscar of having something to do with that fire. A few minutes later when Bill got into trouble, Oscar steered the rescue teams to the wrong side of the building. And you, Charlie, you went in on the good side and made sure nobody found him from there.”

  “You actually think we went in to keep Bill from coming out?” Reese’s face didn’t often show emotion, but he was incredulous now.

  “You wanted Bill to die the same way you want me in jail. To shut him up. To shut me up.”

  “This is bullshit!” G. A. said. “Let me cuff him.”

  “No, no, no,” Reese countered. “I find this intriguing. Go on. Please. Weave your web. Let’s hear more.”

  “I excavated that corridor where we met. My PASS device was maybe seventy-five feet straight down the corridor, twenty-eight paces. There was no way you couldn’t have heard it.”

  “We never said we didn’t hear it. We heard it. We just couldn’t find it. Your directions took us in circles.”

  “You said before that I didn’t give you any directions at all. And there weren’t any circles. I can take you or anybody else there right now and show you there were only two directions you could have gone: the way I showed you or back down the corridor the way you came in. The only other possibility was a corridor to the left, and that had a locked gate closing it off. You either went out or you went in. You couldn’t have gone around in circles.”

  One of those people who only pretended to listen while waiting for his own turn to talk, Charlie Reese found an opening now and began telling his story, a story that had been told so many times it came almost by rote.