Fire Born (Firehouse 343) (16 page)

“
Ow
!” Martie hollered.

Chris froze.
“You all right?”

“It’s okay, keep going. There’s just this damn jagged edge that’s biting into me,” she replied. “It actually feels a little looser on that side, so keep going.”

“As long as you’re sure,” he said then, and returned to separating the step. Chris heard her hiss a time or two more before he was finally able to pry the front of the step up from the toe kick. He noticed the rope between
Martie and Logan had gone tau
t and he set the
Halligan
aside, moving to stand in front of her.

“On the count of three I’m
gonna
lift,” he said, slipping his hands under her arms.

“Got it,” Martie acknowledged, then allowed her weight to be supported by the rope tying her to Logan and Chris’s hands, her own now gripping his forearms tightly.

“Football, get behind him,” Logan called out from the top of the stairs.

Chris heard Football moving to stand behind him in case he lost his balance,
then
he started to count.
“One…two…three!”

With a small grunt, he pulled slowly, lifting Martie upward. When her left knee cleared the hole she put her foot down and tried to help push, but her leg gave out on her.

“Damn it!” she snarled.

“It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you. You’re almost out,” Chris said softly.

When he thought he could manage it without dropping her, he shifted his left arm to wrap it around her waist,
drawing her body against his and
enabling him to lift her the rest of the way out of the hole
. Logan let the rope go slack when
he tilted his head, indicating he was going to move. Chris slowly executed a 180-degree
turn and gently lowered her to her feet
on the step below the one he stood on
, keeping a grip on her until she got her bearings.

Martie sighed with relief. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thanks to all of you.”

“Anytime, Martie,” Logan said.

“You’re welcome,” was Football’s reply.

Chris studied her face, which was flushed fro
m embarrassment and exertion. W
isps of black hair clung to her cheeks and he reached to brush them back. “Think you can walk out to the car now?”

“I think I need a minute,” she replied. “My right leg actually doesn’t feel too bad, but the left is back to pins and needles.”

“Okay, we can take a few for you to get the feeling back. Guys, head out to the rescue and radio back. Tell them we’ve got her.”

Logan came forward and handed him the rope, one end of which was still tied around Martie. He then picked up the baby sledge and the
Halligan
and carefully stepped over the
opened
tread. When he was down on the first floor with Football, he reached down and picked up a flashlight tha
t had fallen and the two of them walked outside.

When they were alone, Chris gave in to impulse and
touched his lips to Martie’s. She
responded heartily, opening her mouth to admit his tongue, tangling it with her own. Breaking apart after a long moment, he smiled and asked her, “So where would you rather be spending the night?”

She leaned into him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist and said, “If you weren’t on call tonight, I’d spend it right here.”

Returning her embrace, he smiled into her hair and kissed her temple. “That can be arranged, you know. I can always lock the guys out of the bunk room.”

“Don’t tempt me, Captain,” she retorted, a smile in her voice.

Martie stood straight then and sighed heavily. “Not exactly a harrowing
experience, but it was a little scary. Thank you, really, for coming down here so fast. Now that I’m out of there and my legs are feeling better, I can actually get back to work.”

Frowning, he asked, “Get back to work?”

She nodded.
“Yeah.
Logan and I were on our way out to my car to grab my field kit when this happened. We found some burn trails in more than one of the apartments that were unoccupied at the time of the fire, suggesting multiple points of origin
and chemical accelerants,
which
in turn
jives with everyone’s recolle
ction that the smoke was black. It must be why
the fire spread so fast. We also discovered what I believe is
further evidence proving
that someone deliberately set this fire.”

“And what would that be?” Chris queried.

Martie looked up at him, and the tone of her expression told him her answer was one he wasn’t going to like hearing. “The ceiling beam that fell on Calvin and the little girl had been partially sawed through,” she said quietly.

Yeah. Definitely did not like hearing that one.
“So what do you need your kit for? Anything I can do to help?”
he asked as he reached to undo the knot at her back, then began coiling the rope around his arm.

She nodded as she turned around and carefully made her way down to the first floor. “Actually, the K12 would be useful—I want to cut the end of that beam off to collect as evidence. And I want to get samples from those burns Logan and I saw to see if the lab can discover what accelerant was used.”

“There were open doors in those apartments,” Chris observed as they exited the building. “I don’t remember if I told you, or if any of the others noticed, but every one of the empties had open interior doors.”

“He’s right about that,” piped up Football. “I remember now that the only door we had to kick in was 2A’s, where the elderly couple lived.”

“And Cal had to kick in 3C’s door because Jessica’s mother had locked it on her way out,” Logan added.

“Were the main entry doors
to the apartments
open?” Martie asked. “Because that could also affect how fast the fire spread.”

“Now that you mention it, 2C’s door was open,” Logan told her. “Not all the way, but I remember now that on our walk-through, all I had to do was push it open. It wasn’t latched at all.”

“And if 2C was the main flashpoint, then it is truly a miracle that the apartment above wasn’t fully engulfed by the time you guys got here,” Martie added. “That little girl was doubly blessed.”

After
her hands had been cleaned by Football with alcohol wipes from the medical kit (with much teeth grinding
on her part due to the
sting
), Chris took
the K12 back out of the truck t
o use on the ceiling beam and
dismissed Logan and Football back to the station, saying that he would stay with Martie
until she got what she needed.
Making sure to be more careful this time around, she
visited each apartment once more,
filling and labeling
several evidence bags, and in 3C she showed Chris where to cut the beam so that they could take the broken end with them.

When they were done
and in the car
getting ready to make their own way back to the station, she told him she was going to check on the whereabouts of the
Breckon
Apartments’ residents who’d been home at the time of the fire. She needed to interview
them as well, she reminded him, to get a complete picture of the timeline.

“Well, as far as I know, the elderly
couple are
still in the hospital, as is Jessica,” Chris said. “At least, they were last I heard anything. Bob will probably know for sure.”

“I got their last
knowns
from him when we spoke yesterday,” Martie said then. “The old couple and the little girl were still undergoing treatment as of yesterday, and the college kids were supposed to be staying with friends. I need to track them down so I can get their stories. It’s obvious that someon
e started that fire on purpose, and o
ne of them might have seen somebody. I also need to get in touch with the police who were first on scene.”

“You’re kind of sounding like a cop yourself.”

She glanced over briefly. “Technically that’s what I am
—the Montana Bureau of Fire Safety is
a state-level police agency
. I conduct investigations much th
e same as
detectives do—
it’s just that my specialty is fire instead of robbery, narcotics, or homicide
.
I have to interview witnesses and suspects, gather evidence,
and
coordinate with local police and fire
agencies in whatever city I visit
.
I have to be knowledgeable about
what can start a fire, how the different materials and chemicals involved can make a fire behave…
”

Chris laughed and held up a placating hand. “Okay, I get it. You’re one damn smart lady, and if I ever start a fire, you’ll know
the what
and the how.”

“And once I catch you—and make no mistake, I
will
catch you—I’ll find out why.”

***

When she and Chris had returned to the station, Martie went to the restroom to relieve herself and found that her legs were already sporting bruises.
It was a good thing her brother wasn’t around. Had Tony seen her stuck in the steps he’d have read her the riot act for being careless, and if he looked at her legs and saw them in this condition, he’d probably insist she take time off to let them heal.

Especially, she thought as she stood to redress herself and winced at a sudden, sharp pain in her left knee, if he learned that she might not be a hundred percent for a day or two. She
’d
noticed earlier that her knee was aching but it had been tolerable. Now it was not. Thank goodness she carried ibuprofen in her purse, because she’d hate to have to ask Chris for painkillers.

She smiled while she washed her hands, as it suddenly occurred to her that Chris and Tony were a lot alike. Both of them could be overbearing and overprotective.

As she walked back out into the lounge, she mentally reviewed what she needed to get done to move the investigation forward. She still had to get the evidence she’d collected to the BFS lab in Billings, interview the
Breckon
Apartments residents and the first police officers on the scene, and of course, type up her recorded interviews for the official record, along with her own observations.
She was, at some point, going to have to talk to Trevor
Breckon
as well.
And though she wished it weren’t necessary, she was also going to have to file a report on the accident since it had happened in the course of her duty. Graham was another one she wasn’t looking forward to hearing from about that.

After eating a late
lunch with Chris and his crew
, she called the Gracechurch Police Depart
ment and arranged a meeting with the two officers who were first on the scene. Their story (and subsequent report, which she requested a copy of)
wasn’t much different than that of the firefighters’: huge flames, black smoke. They’d been driving by as part of their daily rounds when they noticed the building was on fire and called it in. The two veteran street cops also expressed curiosity as to how come no one coming or going at the McDonald’s next door had seen or heard anything, which was something Martie also wished she knew but would probably never get an answer to. As Logan had pointed out earlier, how often did anyone really take notice of what was going on around them?

Finishing at the police station, Martie headed for the hospital. There she visited with the elderly couple from apartment 2A, Herman and Lucille Wilson, who had been assigned the same room.

Their doctor, she learned, was keeping Herman because the burn on his arm had developed a mild infection
, and because he had a heart condition he wanted to monitor for another day. Lucille was staying with him for the simple fact that she had nowhere else to go. They were independent enough that they didn’t need to reside in an assisted living facility or a nursing home, but their Social Security checks, even when combined, didn’t provide much income. Lucille’s family could be traced back to the founding of Gracechurch, she told Martie proudly, so she was reluctant to leave town. The apartment in the
Breckon
building was all they could afford right now, though of course they’d have rather taken a unit on the ground floor because steps were difficult to manage for both of them.

The fire had burned through the wall separating their apartment from 2B. Not knowing how it had started or why, Lucille had tried to beat the fire out with a blanket. When her dress had caught a spark from the flames she’
d
screamed for Herman,
who without thinking had thrown himself on her to knock her to the floor.