Smoke Page 5

  He looked down at the notepad in front of him. He’d written my name in block letters, tracing it over as we spoke.

  “You’d be mine, anyway,” he said quietly.

  And like the girl that I was, my heart started to fall.

  No one I recognize is manning the fire’s perimeter when we get to John Phillips’s house. The guys I know, those with the most experience, like Andy, are likely on the backside of Nelson Peak, fighting the upper edge of the fire, trying to get fuel out of the way so they can contain the blaze and keep it from spreading over the ridge, where it will slide down the hill like a ski racer into town.

  It used to be that all forest fires received this treatment. If it burned, it needed to be put out, regardless of the cost. But public policy has changed over the years. A century of suppression taught us that fire makes forests healthy, and that one in every ten years is less devastating than one in a hundred. Now, if the fire’s naturally occurring and it isn’t threatening a populated area, we let it burn, because smaller fires prevent bigger ones in the end. “Fire Use Fire,” the policy’s called.

  The most ridiculous term ever invented.

  Of course, regardless of my findings, this fire will need to be suppressed, because although it might be good for the forests that surround Nelson to have it consume the downed trees and underbrush that have accumulated over the past fifty years, it clearly wouldn’t be in the town’s interest.

  Or in mine.

  Deputy Clark escorts me past the trucks, equipment caches, and people milling about till we get a couple hundred yards from the scorched shell of John Phillips’s house.

  We take a lap around the property, keeping our distance. It’s still too dangerous to go inside the blackened structure, but I have a pretty good idea from the burn patterns in the grass that the fire didn’t start inside, anyway.

  When we’ve done the perimeter sweep, we climb into a full kit of firefighters’ gear: boots, gaiters, jacket, gloves, a helmet with a mask and a breathing apparatus. The fire is a thousand yards away, but better safe than sorry. It takes a moment to adjust to the unfamiliar weight of the equipment—a wildland firefighting kit is much lighter—and the brief moment of claustrophobia having a mask over my face always produces.

  My nostrils fill with the chemical smell of the suit as I walk slowly, notebook in hand, eyes on the ground, searching for the fire’s source.

  “So,” I hear Deputy Clark say through the radio that connects our helmets. There’s a quality to the sound that always reminds me of astronauts doing a spacewalk. “How does this work? Is it like processing a regular crime scene?”

  “You could look at it that way. Officially, there are four potential causes of a fire: natural, accidental, incendiary, and undetermined. We need to figure out which box this fire fits into.”

  “Undetermined doesn’t sound like a cause.”

  “You’re right. We don’t usually check that box.”

  It was a point of pride among arson investigators. Undetermined was like a failing grade, one you gave yourself.

  “How do you figure out which to check?”

  I pull up my visor and push aside my breathing apparatus. I take a deep breath. My nose is flooded with the scent of charred wood and burned grass. I search for undertones of something that shouldn’t be there. Gasoline. Kerosene. Some other accelerant. But there’s nothing. So far, the only chemical I can smell is the all-too-familiar one found in the standard retardant that’s been dumped liberally in the area. What I really need is a hydrocarbon sniffer—a handheld device that can detect the presence of ignitable liquid residues in the air—but the department isn’t equipped with one.

  “There are lots of ways to figure out what causes a fire,” I say, pulling my visor back down and readjusting my mask. “They have signals, fingerprints they leave behind, like any criminal.”

  When I started my arson training, I realized I’d been learning these signals for years. That as I fought fires, I was also absorbing their grammar. So when I took the specialized courses in fire chemistry, dynamics, and how to read a scene, it all seemed obvious and natural. As if the fire wanted me to know what started it, if I was patient enough to listen.

  If only I were as good at reading the hints left by those around me.

  I continue. “The first step is to establish where it began, which is called the area of origin. Here, that’s pretty simple.”

  I make a sweeping motion that encompasses the smoking house and the path of singed grass leading to the back of the property and into the woods.

  “Even if the neighbor hadn’t called it in before it left the lot, it would be clear that this is where the fire started.”

  “Does that mean it’s a human cause, then? There wasn’t any lightning in the area last night. I checked.”

  “We’ll see. Once you’ve established your area of origin, you need to look for the point of origin, the source of the fire. Again, the fire helps us do that.”

  I point to the streaks in the house’s backyard. The entire half acre of lawn is black and sodden with a mixture of water and retardant, and there’s a distinct pattern that makes it obvious—to me, at least—that the fire moved toward the house, not away from it.

  “You see that pattern? That’s telling us where the fire came from. So now we just need to follow its path.”

  We step across the seared ground. The protective suit and boots stop the heat from burning our feet, but I’ve already started sweating.

  The burn pattern leads me back to the edge of the property, where the grass goes from short to long to woods.

  And there’s my likely culprit: a fire pit.

  “Once you have your point of origin,” I say, “then you need to find out what sparked it. Out in the woods, it might be something as innocent as a piece of glass, or as dramatic as a lightning strike. Near people, it’s generally going to be a human source. A campfire left lit. Garbage burned carelessly in a barrel.”

  Deputy Clark points to the stone pit. “That’s where it started, isn’t it?”

  I bend down and hold my gloved hand above the white ash. It’s still radiating heat. It contains a few pieces of charred wood, the remnants of some paper, and two burned-out beer cans.

  “Get me a paint bucket,” I say. “And a shovel.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The Blame Game

  Elizabeth

  As we drive back to the elementary school, I’m starting to feel like a yo-yo. Our house to Ben’s parents’ house. Their house to the fire. The fire to the elementary school. The school to work. Work to the fire. The fire to the school.

  Each time I settle on a direction, snap! I’m pulled in another.

  We’re driving back to Nelson Elementary because that’s where John Phillips was taken after the EMTs treated him for minor smoke inhalation. I actually need to interview him and his neighbors, but the latter have scattered like the four winds. He’s the only one we have a fixed location on.

  At the school I check in briefly with a harried Kara, then follow the signs for the gym. It’s already been set up to shelter as many as possible, with rows and rows of empty camp cots and piles of army-surplus blankets and lumpy off-white pillows. I wonder where all the kids are, then remember they’ve been given a “fire day,” much to their delight, I’m sure. What will be done with them if the fire isn’t contained and this place starts to teem with refugees is something that hasn’t been worked out yet.

  I ask the lead volunteer where Mr. Phillips is as the gym doors clang shut behind us.

  “He’s over there,” a woman I know slightly named Honor Wells says, pointing to a lump of blankets in the far left corner in a condescending voice. “Sleeping, I think.”

  He might have been earlier, despite the penetrating fluorescent lights, but he isn’t when we get to him. He’s just lying on his back, staring at the ceiling tiles, his arms folded behind his head, which is resting on his palms.

  “Mr. Phillips?”

  “Kr
isty?”

  “No, Mr. Phillips. I’m Elizabeth Martin. And this is Deputy Clark. We’re from the police department, and we have a few questions for you.”

  “You can call me John.”

  He sits up slowly, blinking his brown eyes like we’ve just turned on the lights. His hair is snow white and close-cropped, and his face has the deep tan of someone who works outdoors. He’s snagged three blankets and two pillows. The bed he’s on is in the corner farthest away from the doors.

  A man with a plan, it seems. Or good instincts, at least.

  John places his bare feet squarely on the shiny wood floor. He’s wearing a pair of blue hospital scrubs and smells like industrial soap, presumably from the school showers.

  I begin by asking him some basic questions about his background. He answers me in a rambling way, his mind flitting back and forth between the present and the past like they hold equal weight.

  For instance, he tells me that he picked this bed because he was in the army over forty years ago, and he still remembers how hard it was to sleep in a room full of snoring men. And that was when he was in basic training and so tired that he should’ve been able to sleep through a bombardment, let alone the little kind of noises that shook him awake now.

  “It’s the days I have trouble staying awake through,” he says, his gaze fixed on a far-off place. “Like earlier. I just put my head on the pillow, thinking I’d rest for a moment, and who knows how long I slept for.”

  “You’ve had a shock,” I say. “It’s the way the body copes.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Going through something like you have, you can feel very tired afterward. For days even. It’s a normal reaction, but if you keep feeling poorly, you should see a doctor.”

  “That doctor in the ambulance said I was okay after the . . . fire.”

  His eyes go vacant, then snap back to attention.

  “You’re fine, John. Safe,” I say to him, placing my hand on his shoulder gently.

  “I’ve lost everything.”

  “I’m so very sorry. You can stay here for now, and I’m sure that . . .”

  I stop myself, because what am I sure about? That it will all be okay? That there will be people and money to help him? That when they shut this shelter down, he’ll have somewhere to go? How can I say anything like that to him, when I don’t even know it for myself?

  If he notices my trailing thoughts, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He simply blinks slowly as he looks around him.

  “This is Nelson Elementary, ain’t it?”

  I confirm it is, and he goes off on another tangent. This isn’t the elementary school he went to. Well, it has the same name, of course, but this building was built twenty years ago. The one he’d attended was torn down when it was found to be full of asbestos and the school district was sued for two cases of lung cancer. He liked that building, which was new when he attended it. Back then, everyone in town was pretty much like him; cattle ranchers’ sons and dairy farmers’ daughters. School cleared out at harvest and calving times. Reading, writing, and arithmetic made up most of the curriculum—it was all anyone who grew up in Nelson needed.

  Things are different now, of course, he says. He knows that. But it doesn’t mean he has to like it.

  He stops, his eyes going blank again.

  I can tell that Deputy Clark is growing impatient, but when he makes a move to say something, I signal him to let John talk. The talking is also part of the shock. I’ve found over the years that I get more out of someone if I just let them flow. People abhor the vacuum of silence in a crowd. It’s a natural instinct to fill it with whatever is foremost in your thoughts. If I were in his place, I’m sure I’d be babbling about Ben and what was going on between us and how it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t his fault, these things just happen sometimes. As it is, I know John will work his way back around to the fire, and if I’m lucky, put this case to bed before Ben even has to know I was working on it.

  So I let the silence rest until John continues. “We never had any kids, me and Kristy. Kristy, that’s my wife. You sounded like her for a second. Anyway, Kristy couldn’t or I couldn’t or we both couldn’t. We never really bothered to find out. No money for the doctor, and besides, we both knew that if it was one or the other’s fault, we’d start to blaming, and resentment would grow until there was nothing else between us.”

  He looks surprised at what he just said. I’m holding my breath, my heart thumping in my chest.

  Out of the mouths of scared old men.

  “You have any kids?” he asks me.

  “No.”

  “I bet you’d be good at it. You talk to people like they’re real, not like . . .” He nods over to where Honor is folding blankets. He lowers his voice. “She talks in that way people do to folks past a certain age. You know that way?”

  I know what he means. Honor’s the kind of person who speaks to seniors like they’re hard of understanding. As if they already had one foot on the other side.

  “I do,” I say. “So you’ve lived in Nelson your whole life?”

  That’s right, he says, his whole life and his daddy’s life before that. And he worked construction, used to anyway, and he’s lonely now, without his wife. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, and he feels like he might be to blame.

  “To blame?” I say. “Do you mean for the fire?”

  Deputy Clark leans forward, notebook in hand, looking as if he’s getting ready to take a statement.

  “I was asleep,” John says. “Why I’d be to blame for the fire?”

  “You might’ve noticed it sooner,” Deputy Clark says. I shake my head, but he presses on. “Or maybe . . . Were you using your fire pit last night, sir?”

  “The . . . Is that where the fire started?”

  “Likely.”

  “It’s too soon to say that for sure,” I correct the deputy, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. He’s given up a piece of information he shouldn’t have, and we can’t get it back. John Phillips was a blank slate before, but now he’s marred. If he knew where the fire started, it could have been proof of something. Now it’s only proof of Deputy Clark’s lack of training.

  John stares off into space again, and I can’t tell whether he’s trying to be careful about his answer or whether his brain’s simply on a skip-track. I let my own eyes travel around the room as a way to distract myself from pressing too hard, and that’s when I see her: Mindy Mitchell is standing at the gym’s entrance, talking to Honor.

  What’s she doing here?

  Volunteering, probably. A sliver of an uncharitable thought forms, but then I dismiss it. I’m still furious with her, and I can feel it in me like a shot of adrenaline. But it would be completely irrational to be irritated by her altruistic instincts. Ben would say everything that happened between us was irrational, but it’s one thing to hear about a fight and another to be in it.

  I turn my back to the door, hoping Mindy doesn’t notice me. I’ve spent a year successfully avoiding her in this small town. One more day seems possible.

  “Is there anything else you can think of?” I ask John. “Even if it doesn’t seem like it might be connected, you never know.”

  His hands travel to his shoulders and down his body to his knees, as if he’s trying to press out the wrinkles in his clothes.

  “They tell you about those kids?” he says slowly.

  “What kids?”

  “The kids I’ve been complaining about all summer. I phoned it in a couple times to your office, Deputy. You check.” He turns his body and leans back against his pillows. “They come at night and sit around that fire pit and drink beer. Wait till I’m asleep. Think I don’t know they’re trespassing.”

  “These kids ever started a fire in your pit, you know of?”

  “Sure enough. That’s one of the reasons why I called the police. Kids foolish enough to start a fire in these conditions . . . Well, they could burn the whole town down.”

  �
�Do you know their names?”

  “No, ma’am. But I’d recognize them if I saw them.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

  Mindy

  After dropping off food and clothing donations at the elementary school, checking with the administration that Angus would be allowed back into Write Club, and taking Carrie to her intensive ballet class, Mindy spent several hours doing the kinds of chores that were slowly driving her insane. Picking up the dry cleaning, taking her car to the car wash because it had been six months and the inside was starting to get embarrassing, and, finally, driving to three grocery stores to get everything on her list because no one store had everything she needed. One-stop shopping was not a concept that had made its way to Nelson. And even if it did, what did it matter? Because what else would she be doing with her time, anyway?

  That was an awful thought, wasn’t it, to think she had nothing better to do with her time. Not that taking care of her family wasn’t something worthwhile. But for years now, ever since the kids were old enough to feed and dress themselves, and even she had come to accept that Carrie was finally out of danger, she’d had this nagging feeling she should be doing more. For a while, her part-time work at the high school had kept the worst of it at bay. But then she’d been laid off and the days stretched before her. So she joined committees and volunteered at the school and her days were full—yet she still had time to go to three grocery stores in one day.

  Maybe that’s why she was already obsessing over John Phillips. Why she was making a mental list of all the things the Coffee Boosters would need to do to change the focus of the Fall Fling from earning money for the hockey team to getting him a new home. The event was only five days away, and she could already imagine the disappointed expressions of the rest of the organizing committee when the new focus was announced (by Kate, she fervently hoped). But they were doing the right thing, they were, so for once she wasn’t going to worry about gaining acceptance or pissing people off or any of the things she normally worried about.