When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (3 page)

*   *   *

The sound of the warning alarm on Lucy’s air tank made her jump and swear. It sounded like a car horn on steroids. Her emergency beacon went off a second later, sending bright white flashes through the smoke. Their fifteen minutes were up. If there was anyone left alive in the house, they weren’t going to get rescued.

“Time to go,” she heard Gerald yell through his face mask.

She could feel him moving around, trying to get himself and the hose resituated. She waited until his hand grabbed at hers and placed it back on his ankle. She reached out to the wall with her right hand and put her axe in her left. She tugged on Gerald’s ankle to let him know she was ready, and they started to crawl back out. The strobe light from her beacon made the house look like a disco party gone wrong. She closed her eyes against the flashes and tried to slow down her breathing. She concentrated on her knees and hands making contact with the floor as she moved. She had about five minutes of emergency air left in the tank. She tried to think of something soothing, like getting a warm shower or breathing fresh air. Then Gerald’s alarm went off. He had probably been breathing slower than Lucy, giving him a few minutes longer. They were both on reserve air now. The sound of both alarms was almost painful, but Gerald didn’t crawl faster. They couldn’t afford any mistakes, which was what happened when people rushed. Instead, he kept the same pace for the next three minutes, which seemed to stretch on for hours, until they saw the lights from the fire trucks streaming through the open front door. Only then did Lucy let go of his ankle and take a full breath, pulling a last gasp out of her air tank.

CHAPTER TWO

December 20

The first thing Gil heard as he walked up to the fire scene was the loud East Coast accent of his partner, Joe Phillips.

“We are clearly in the county,” Joe was saying to a Santa Fe County sheriff’s deputy as both men pointed flashlights at a map held between them. They stood partway down a long driveway crowded with fire engines and emergency vehicles. They were about twenty feet off the road, but Gil couldn’t see the house at the other end of the driveway. The homes in the Montaña Verde neighborhood were purposely not visible from the street, their heavily forested two- to three-acre lots offering a natural screen from anyone driving by.

“Look right here,” the deputy said, poking at the map. “This is where we are, within the city limits.”

“You are either insane or blind,” Joe said. The jurisdictional fight was an old one. The lines that divided Santa Fe city from Santa Fe County always became an issue when both sides were called to a crime scene. It became a game of “Not It,” where the loser was left doing the investigation. Gil stopped and looked to the west, south, and north to get his bearings from the mountains in each direction. He could still make out the dark outlines of the Ortiz, Sangre de Cristo, and Jemez ranges. Joe was right. They were outside the city limits.

“Will you tell this guy that we are in the county?” Joe said to Gil as he saw him walking toward them.

“Hey, Paul,” Gil said, shaking the hand of Deputy Paul Gutierrez.

“Of course, you guys know each other,” Joe said. “I should have guessed. You’re probably cousins. Everybody’s a cousin.”

“What’s going on?” Gil asked the deputy, ignoring Joe.

For a moment, Gutierrez was quiet, then said, “Listen, Gil. My daughter is coming home tomorrow from her third tour in Afghanistan…”

“We are clearly in the city,” Joe said, folding up the map and switching off his flashlight. “We couldn’t be more in the city if we tried. Whoever said we were in the county was a complete idiot.” Joe walked off toward the fire scene without another word.

“Thanks, Gil,” Deputy Gutierrez, said. “And thank your partner for me. He seems like a good guy.”

“Sometimes,” Gil said.

“Listen, the least I can do is help you out before I leave,” Gutierrez said. “How about I go interview some neighbors. Maybe I can find someone who saw the home owners.”

They both turned to look as they heard the noise of car tires crunching from the direction of the street. A gray car, with M
ONTAÑA
V
ERDE
N
EIGHBORHOOD
S
ECURITY
written on the side, came to a stop near the end of the long driveway. A man dressed in a security guard’s uniform got out and adjusted his belt.

“I’ve got this,” Gutierrez said before trotting down the driveway and shaking hands with the guard. Gil went in search of Joe. He found him farther up the driveway, near the front of the house, watching the firefighters work. Much of the scene was in shadow, but other parts were lit with bright lights mounted on the backs of the fire trucks. One group of firefighters was guiding a truck as it backed toward a large, red rubber holding tank full of water. Others carried saws and ladders toward the back of the home. From this vantage point the house looked mostly intact. It was a single-story with a three-car garage. In this neighborhood, the houses, with their easy access to the ski area only seven miles down the road and views of the valley, started at around $5 million.

Gil glanced over at Joe, whose coat collar didn’t quite hide the chain around his neck that held his dog tags, which he still wore even though his time in Iraq was long over.

“Paul wanted me to tell you thank you,” Gil said. Joe didn’t respond. “He said that you are a really good guy,” he added. Still Joe said nothing. “He said it’s like your heart is filled with happiness and butterflies and a beautiful light…”

“Shut the hell up, detective sergeant, sir,” Joe said.

Gil smiled. They had been partners for only four months but they seemed to be easing into something resembling a routine, based mostly on Joe constantly harassing Gil about his crisp haircut or precise driving, and Gil occasionally harassing Joe back, mostly about his inability to take a compliment.

“You know taking this case means you might not make it to Las Vegas,” Gil said.

“My flight doesn’t leave until Christmas Eve, so we have”—Joe looked at his watch—“three days and twenty-one hours to find this guy.”

“What do we know?” Gil asked.

“They found two adult males inside who didn’t burn up,” Joe said. “Maybe they were overtaken by the smoke or something. I don’t have a report on the condition of the bodies or where they were found.”

“Do we have names?” Gil asked.

“Not yet,” Joe said. “Dispatch is trying to do a reverse search on the address to see who owned the house. I figure we can just run the plates on the cars when we get a look in the garage.”

“Who called the fire in? A neighbor?”

“Nah. Just some trucker driving by who saw the flames from the main road,” Joe said. “I don’t think there are any neighbors around this time of year. Most of the houses here are second or third homes.”

“I guess we should go find out when we can get inside.”

Gil asked a passing firefighter the location of Incident Command and was pointed to the fire engine closest to the scene. Inside the cab was a man holding a radio microphone in each hand and saying into one of them, “Make sure and check for any exposures. We have a lot of trees on the west and east sides of the house.” “Copy that,” someone on the other end of the radio answered.

“Charlie, how are you?” Gil asked the man in the front seat as they shook hands. Charlie Solano was an EMS commander who had retired from the Albuquerque Fire Department only to become a full-time volunteer with Santa Fe County.

“Not too bad, Gil,” Solano said. “Better than the folks inside. Hold on a second.” Solano listened to the radio as someone said, “Command, this is Team A. Can we get an ETA on the next tanker at the second drop tank?” Solano answered, “Copy that. Stand by.” He clicked the mike in his right hand, saying, “Shuttle Five, this is Command. We need that water ASAP. Our second drop tank is getting low. What’s your location?” The answer came back, “Just passing the county dump.” Solano answered, “Copy that. Command out.” He clicked the mike in his left hand, saying, “Team A, this is Command. Your water is five minutes out.”

“What can you tell me?” Gil asked once the radios had calmed down.

“Two bodies. In pretty good shape, according to my guys,” Solano said. “It looks like they weren’t touched by the fire. Don’t know what killed them. We haven’t had a good look at them, since we were busy putting out the fire.” The bodies would stay where they were until a field investigator from the Medical Examiner arrived to take charge of them. Dead bodies were not the fire department’s problem.

“I would assume that would be your priority,” Joe said.

“Pretty much,” Solano said. They cared only about the living.

“Are you thinking accidental fire or arson?” Gil asked.

“We have no idea,” Solano said. “I guess you’re wondering when you can go in. We got knockdown of the main fire about twenty minutes ago, so there is no more active flame. We have a few hot spots to still mop up. Let me make sure the structure is intact enough for you to go in. Say about another ten minutes.”

“Can we start limiting personnel in the house?”

“No problem,” Solano said. “We’re about done. I’ll release everyone except me and my engine. The water on the ground from the hoses is all turning to ice anyway. It’s getting too dangerous.”

“Can we talk to the firefighters who found the bodies before they go?” Gil asked.

“Sure,” Solano said. “One of them is out doing a tanker shuttle…”

“A tanker what?” Joe asked.

“He’s from back east,” Gil explained to Solano, “where every corner has a fire hydrant.”

“Well, out here we don’t really have hydrants,” Solano said to Joe. “What we do have are tanker trucks that go get water and dump it into big portable tubs at the fire scene. Then we pump the water from the tubs into the hoses.”

“A tub, like the red rubber thing in the driveway, that looks like an above-ground swimming pool?” Joe asked.

“Yeah,” Solano said. “That’s our water supply. We have to go get more when we run out. Tonight the nearest place for the trucks to get water is five miles away.”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” Joe said.

“Your guy will be back in about five minutes,” Solano said. “But his partner is still on scene. You can’t miss her. Just look for the tiniest firefighter out there.”

*   *   *

Lucy stood outside the house squeezing water out of the hoses and packing them back into the truck. The scene had quieted down a bit now that the fire was almost out. The outside teams had found the flames and hit them hard. The structure had been mostly saved. Only a corner of the house had been burned, but the rest was wet with water and stank of smoke. She and a half dozen other firefighters were trying to get the crisscross of hoses covering the driveway onto the trucks as fast as possible before they froze with the water still inside.

She was thinking about how much she would rather be in bed when she heard someone say, “Hey, it’s little Lucy.” A moment later Joe Phillips was wrapping her in a hug, his goatee scraping her cheek. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m good,” she said. “What are you up to?”

“We need to ask you a few questions,” she heard Gil say as he stood slightly away from them.

“And a big howdy to you too, Gil,” Lucy said. She hadn’t seen them in four months, since the fiesta. “Come here, you big lug.” She hugged Gil lightly, her head reaching only up to his midchest. “It’s like holding onto a big tree. I’m a tree hugger.” She laughed, as much at her own joke as at Gil, knowing she was making him uncomfortable.

“We’re just here to ask you about the bodies,” Gil said, as she finally let him go.

“What do you want to know?”

“Just tell me what happened,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “Um … we made an entrance through the front door…”

“Was it locked?” Gil asked.

“No.”

“Did you break it down?”

“No,” she said. “It was that way when we got there.”

“Could another firefighter have broken it down?” Joe asked.

“No. They would have had to check with Command before doing a thing like that,” she said. “Opening a door or window on a fire scene is a big deal. You’re introducing a new source of oxygen into the fire. That’s how you get a back-draft explosion.”

“What happened next?” Gil asked.

“We made a left-hand search of the house, and about ten minutes later I felt a leg tied to a chair. Gerald found the other guy nearby.”

“Did you check for a pulse?” Gil asked.

“No,” she said, stopping for a moment before saying, “There was no way they could have survived the smoke. If I thought for a second that they might be alive…” She surprised herself by almost starting to cry. She knew she must be tired. “Anyway,” she continued quickly, “my fifteen-minute alarm sounded, and we got out of there.”

A sheriff’s deputy came over and whispered something to Gil, who turned around to look across the driveway. Lucy looked in the same direction and could just make out a person standing near a car in the street. Lucy blinked as something flashed—and then flashed again.

“I think a co-worker of yours is here,” Gil said intently. It took Lucy a second to realize he wasn’t talking about a co-worker from the fire department. He meant someone from her real work—or at the least the work she got paid for—at the newspaper. There was another flash as the photographer took a picture of the fire.

“Sorry,” she said, feeling the need to apologize.

“Don’t be,” Gil said. “They’re just doing their job.”

“Are you going to give me your trademark don’t-tell-anyone-at-the-newspaper-about-this-crime-scene speech?” she asked.

Gil smiled. “I think you probably have it memorized by now.”

“You usually say, ‘Yada, yada. I’ll shoot you if you say anything yada,’” she said.

“That sounds exactly like him,” Joe said, surprising Lucy. She had forgotten he was even there.

She added, “Then I usually swear by all that is holy never to speak to anyone at the newspaper about what I have witnessed here.”

CHAPTER THREE

December 20