Smoke (26 page)

That they had been just that—happy—less than a week ago was something Mindy couldn’t quite wrap her head around even though she’d lived through it, and was living right in the middle of the change in circumstance now. Maybe they hadn’t been happy? Maybe the undertow they’d felt from Angus, or his angst in the first place, was a symptom they ignored, a flaw they hadn’t picked up on like the doctors with Carrie’s heart?

Mindy looked around the restaurant to distract herself. It seemed like the whole town was there, doing the same thing as they were. Or maybe it was because so many people had been evacuated from their homes, the elementary school couldn’t feed them all. To Mindy, it felt like a roomful of people waiting for bad news.

Were they really still going to hold the Fall Fling tomorrow night? It all seemed so banal now, so useless. Of course she still wanted Mr. Phillips to end up somewhere better than where he was, but beyond that, she was so far removed from the obsessed woman she’d been two days ago, she couldn’t even understand her. When she thought back, it was like she was watching a home movie of the life of someone she resembled physically. Recognizable, but different enough to be disconcerting, like hearing your voice on an answering machine.

All that mattered now was Angus. Keeping him safe. Keeping what she’d learned that afternoon out of Detective Donaldson’s hands. To do that, to keep her family intact, she was willing to do anything, come what may, even lie to Peter.

Not that he asked her anything throughout dinner other than to pass the salsa. He just gave her meaningful looks over the rim of his margarita glass as if they could communicate telepathically. But the only signal she was receiving was that he was pissed off. That one was coming in loud and clear.

Finally, their food was half-eaten and Peter’s drink was down to the divot in his glass, and it was time to go. Back in the car, headphones in place, they drove.

The town meeting was being held in the auditorium at the elementary school. It was renovated several years ago to make it multifunctional. A stage was installed with set pieces that could be adapted to almost any plan. The seating was that soft, flipped-chair kind you find in movie theaters.

It was a familiar place to Mindy and Peter. They’d attended concert after concert there over the years. Angus squeaking away bravely on his clarinet when he was eight. Carrie doing that surprisingly heartbreaking solo contemporary ballet performance in the flowing green dress they could barely afford when she was ten. And before heading off to middle school, first Angus and then Carrie had walked across the stage in little miniature caps and gowns to receive their “diplomas.” They’d forgotten lines in plays and been embarrassed when Mindy had been roped into participating in a group “health” class, and oh, oh, oh . . . Mindy’s
life
had rolled across that stage. So many pieces of it.

But at that moment, a strong, small woman, who Mindy figured must be the Kara she’d always heard Elizabeth talking about, was standing on a box before a lectern. Her dark brown hair was tied back in a neat bun that reminded Mindy of the way Carrie wore her hair, only it had a thick, glossy texture to it no child of hers was ever going to achieve. She had that same erect posture too, the slight turn out of her feet, and a burnished balsa-wood complexion. Something about her quiet assurance made it easy to see how she marshaled the respect of the thousands she sometimes had at her command.

As they found a set of seats together, Mindy realized that the room felt electric. She’d never understood what that saying had meant before, not really, but it actually was as if a current were swirling through the auditorium, like that game she’d played as a child where you all held hands and someone touched a battery. Everyone looked strained, even Kate Bourne, who was sitting with Bit across the room. The room buzzed with nervous chatter, like the din of a funeral reception in its second hour.

Kara stood there calmly surveying them. Behind her stood four burly men, almost at attention. Sunburned faces, wild sun-stained hair, untrimmed beards. They looked tired and grim, these “area commanders” who Kara introduced to the audience at precisely one minute after eight, identifying first herself, and then the men one by one.

It was only when Kara said the last man’s name, Andy Thomas, that Mindy thought to look for Elizabeth.

She found her just off the stage where Ben was standing too, scowling at Andy. Elizabeth had always said that nothing happened between her and Andy, but Mindy wondered, not for the first time since their fight, whether Elizabeth had been entirely truthful.

Kara asked for silence several times. By the time she’d gotten it, Elizabeth had found her place on the side of the stage.

Kara gave her a curt nod, then proceeded with her talk.

“Thank you for coming tonight. I know the last couple of days have been an extremely stressful time for all of you. Many of you have had to leave your homes. Many of you are scared. Many of you have questions. This is why I’ve assembled my team here for you tonight. We’ll give you a brief overview of the situation as it stands now and then open the floor for questions.

“We’ll be here as long as we need to be. There are no wrong questions, nothing too small, nothing you should keep to yourself. But first let me assure you of this: we are doing everything we can to protect this beautiful town. This is a tough fire. A tenacious fire. The weather is not helping. We’re up against a formidable foe. But we believe we have the measures in place to contain it. Please believe me that there’s nothing that is more important to my crew and me in this moment than achieving that goal. We will give our all to bring it about.”

Kara stepped back. Andy replaced her to explain where the fire was and what they expected it to do. There was a screen set up next to him, projecting a PowerPoint presentation. He used the statistics they’d been reading all week: the acres consumed, the weather report, the number of crew and equipment on-site. But there was something in the way he explained it all that made it understandable. Not just words on a page, but images too. This is what an acre of land looks like, this is five thousand acres. This is where the line has been drawn, this is why we draw that line, this is what we hope to achieve. This is our greatest enemy: the weather, the weather, the damned unrelenting fire weather. If the weather didn’t turn . . . Well, that was the cold, hard reality he hoped they had no chance of facing. But he’d been looking and looking at the maps with their weather specialist, and he thought he saw a glimmer of hope. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day, if the stars aligned, there’d be a break in the heat, the wind, even a hint of rain.

“But if that doesn’t happen, are we totally screwed?” asked a twenty-something man who had the broad shoulders and skinny hips of a rock climber. “Like, shouldn’t we be evacuating the whole town?”

There were murmurs of assent around the auditorium.

“No,” Andy said. “That’s not necessary. We’ve placed fire breaks all down the south and west sides of the mountain.” Images flashed onto the screen next to him. Elizabeth’s street. Elizabeth’s neighbor’s house. Elizabeth’s home. “We’ve done all we could to fortify these areas. Even if the fire gets over the ridge—and that’s still a big if—we’re continuing to make sure that there’s nothing for it to consume. It’s a simple equation: fire needs fuel to survive.”

“But what about those houses? That looks like fuel to me.”

Andy spoke patiently. “The houses have been heavily watered, and we’ve installed a complete set of hoses around them if anything blazes up. We’ve also been cutting down trees between the houses so the fire doesn’t have anything to catch on and spread. No structure is completely safe in this kind of situation, but we’re doing our best.”

“When can we go home?” asked another man, whom Mindy recognized as a father of two who lived one block over from Elizabeth. “We’ve been sleeping on our friends’ floor for four nights. My children are scared. We couldn’t find our cat before we left and . . .”

Ben walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned in and whispered something while the man buried his face in his hands. Ben led him away from the microphone and back to his family.

“This is one of the hardest things to deal with in these situations,” Andy said. “Not just the possibility of losing our things, but the displacement. Anyone who needs a bed will have one provided. We’re also serving meals twice a day. And, most importantly, there are counselors on hand. Please, don’t be prideful. This is one of the most stressful things someone can go through. We want you all to come through safe and sound, both mentally and physically.”

A woman in her late fifties approached the stage looking determined and angry. She stooped slightly with the beginning of osteoporosis but seemed formidable, nevertheless.

“What about how this fire started? Look at what we’re all going through and that man,” she lifted her finger and pointed it toward John Phillips, who was standing near the left stage door in a shadow he must’ve thought protected him from view. “That man is the reason all of this is happening and he’s getting fed and a roof over his head and . . .”

Elizabeth stepped forward. “We’re working diligently to establish what caused the fire. Please have some patience with the process. We do not yet know exactly what happened. Let me repeat that.
We do not know what happened
. And until we do, I’d ask you all to please remain calm and rational. Rumors aren’t proof of anything.”

“You mean the rumor that a bunch of kids started it?” someone yelled.

“I heard you guys know exactly who did it,” said another voice, younger.

“That’s not true,” Elizabeth said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but there is an ongoing and confidential police investigation. Just because something is printed in the newspaper or you hear it from a friend does not make it fact—”

“What about this, then?” asked that same young voice, holding his phone aloft. “Seems like this video makes it all pretty clear.”

In the chaos that followed, Mindy leaned her head over Peter’s phone as she tried to keep her body from being overtaken by the shakes.

After the kid shouted out about the video, people began pulling their phones from their pockets. When she checked, Mindy hadn’t received the video link in her e-mail, but Peter had. It came from an anonymous address. Kara called for order, but no one was listening.

Mindy turned to Angus, but he was just sitting there, staring straight ahead with his jaw rigid. Carrie was on the other side of Peter, craning in for a view.

When she turned back to the phone, Mindy saw that the footage was from the town-square cam. It had been installed years ago and streamed live on the
Nelson Daily
’s website, along with a few other strategically placed cameras around town. If you wanted to, you could spend the whole day watching the world go by on those cameras. Tourists posing for pictures. Locals scurrying from one place to another. And for the last couple of days, smoke swirling through the abandoned square.

The footage was time-stamped from late Monday night. As it neared midnight, a group of kids—four boys and one girl—walked through the square. They were all wearing puffy vests and hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up, and Mindy remembered how cold it was that night. It was impossible to tell who they were. Their heads were down, and they were moving quickly.

The video sped up. Whoever edited it had put it on fast-forward. One minute, two, ten. Then another teenager walked through the square. He was wearing the same uniform as the others, and the same posture too. Hands shoved into his pockets to keep out the cold. A knit hat pulled down tightly over his ears. Another anonymous kid.

He left the frame and the assembly room held its collective breath as the frames sped up again, and minutes, then an hour, flashed by. When it slowed down, the original four boys weren’t strolling through the square; they were running as fast as their feet could take them. The girl was missing, and the fifth boy was also nowhere to be seen.

The time stamp on the footage was 1:22 a.m.—approximately ten minutes before the fire started.

The tape sped up again. Now it was 1:42 a.m. The fifth boy and the girl appeared, walking slowly, hand in hand. It would’ve been a touching scene except for what had come before, what the whole room knew was happening elsewhere. In his free hand, the boy was holding something that kept emitting a weird flash.
On/off. On/off
. The couple stopped next to a bench, kissed, then gave each other a quick hug. The boy watched the girl walk away, absentmindedly bringing his left hand closer to his face.
Flash, flash
. He was flicking a lighter on and off, and when it got close enough, it illuminated his face clearly.

It was Angus.

DAY FIVE

COOPER BASIN FIRE

New Evidence Links Local Teen to Fire

POSTED: Saturday, September 6, 7:08 AM

By: Joshua Wicks,
Nelson Daily

There was a dramatic ending to the town meeting last night when video footage from the town square camera came to light that appears to link a local teen to the setting of the Cooper Basin fire, which has been raging on Nelson Peak and threatening the town since early Tuesday morning.

The fire began at approximately 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Local authorities have been investigating its origin since then. As this paper previously reported, a local teen was suspected to have been involved in starting it. Last night, as a town meeting with fire officials was taking place, footage from one of the town’s surveillance cameras was posted online anonymously and appears to implicate at least one teenager with the origin of the fire.

It is not yet known who released the surveillance video. While the identity of the teens in the video cannot be revealed since they are underage, the
Daily
has confirmed that a sixteen-year-old male was taken into custody last night and is now the prime suspect. If he is found guilty of either negligently or deliberately setting the fire, he could face jail time, substantial fines, and civil suits against both the minor and his parents. The current estimated cost of fighting the fire is at three million dollars and climbing daily.