Gathering String (46 page)

“Well now,” Delavan’s voice seemed to come from an echo chamber deep in his chest, “I hear you’re going to do every fire department in the state a public service.”

“You had problems with Miller’s office too then?” Jack asked flipping to a fresh page in his notebook.

“A couple over the last few years. To tell you the truth, I never thought much of him when he was just an inspector. How he got to be marshal still beats me.”

Jack pointed toward his Jeep. “How about if we get out of the cold?”

They started walking, and Delavan held up a thermos he was carrying. “I brought some coffee. I thought it might get chilly.” He studied Jack’s slower, stiff gait. “You look a little stove-up there, boy.”

With the Jeep’s seat warmers running and the interior light on so he could see to write, Jack took a sip of the steaming coffee and realized it was laced with brandy. At his appreciative nod, Delavan smiled, and settled back. Jack turned on his recorder.

“Of all the chiefs I talked to tonight, you’re the only one who knows Miller personally,” Jack began, taking one more, good sip and putting the foam cup into a holder.

“Well, I knew him awhile back. He used to live around Sheffield and was the inspector for our area.”

“And you’d say he was pretty incompetent even then?”

“Oh, not so much incompetent as lazy. You know, he was the type that spent more time sitting in the coffee shop instead of his office, shooting the shit with whoever was around, and letting a generous farmer or two pick up his check. To tell you the truth, he was considered pretty much a deadbeat. There were more than a few businesses around that wouldn’t take his personal checks. But when he got around to working, he seemed to know pretty well what he was doing. He’s not a stupid man.”

“So as an inspector, his work was credible?”

The older man took a sip of his coffee, thinking about that. “Mostly, yeah. There was one fire though, with a couple of fatalities, that I just didn’t see where he was coming from. Of course, I’m not the expert, he is.”

Jack leaned back in his seat, trying to stretch his sore legs. “Tell me about that.”

“It was the Governor’s Corner Store in Sheffield that burned, just before Christmas, right after he was elected the first time. You probably remember it.”

“Swede’s store? You know, not too long ago Augusta Erickson told me Swede was pleased with Miller’s work on that. In fact, I got the impression that was why Swede tapped him for fire marshal.”

Delavan shrugged. “I suppose to the Gov’s way of thinking, it was handled real well. It was a nasty situation, and I thought for sure it would lead to a long, involved court case. In all my years as a fire chief, and that’s been more than 25, I’ve never seen a case settled so quick. I suppose Ralphie-boy saw his chance to make a good impression and hopped to it for a change.”

Jack’s memory of the fire story was vague. It had happened just a few months after he bought the
Journal
and a lot of stories he covered then were quickly done while he tried to get his arms around the million other things he’d had to learn. “I need to go look at my clips to refresh my memory on this. Can you fill me in on the details?”

“We got the call about 9:30 at night. The store had only been empty for a few hours, but when we got there, it was all out of control. I sure haven’t seen many buildings go up like that. I knew right off that something wasn’t right.”

“Why?”

Delavan nodded toward the blackened ruins of the barn, a good hundred yards away. “If you’d seen that thing touched off tonight, you’d know. When someone torches a building, and is stupid enough just to throw gasoline all over the place, it leaves its mark. The gas fumes alone carry the flames like blue ghosts. Kind of an explosion on the run. Nothing looks quite like it. They leave scorch marks and so on.”

“Miller didn't think it was arson?”

“Oh no, we both agreed on that. It was plain as could be. It was the way Miller decided it happened that just didn’t add up for me. See, the guy that called in the fire said he’d been out in his garage or something, and this kid, Andy Brubaker was his name, he came running down the street, reeking of gas, his eyebrows and hair and clothes all singed, crying that his two friends were trapped inside. And when we finally could get in, we did find their bodies back in a little storage room, dead from smoke inhalation.

“Well, at the inquest, it came out that Andy had been fired at the store that day, and he and his two buddies snuck in that night to raise a little hell. It was Miller’s theory that the kids set fire to the place, not realizing how fast the gas would go up. When it got away from them, the one kid ran off, while his two friends couldn’t get out.”

“Well, I don’t care how stupid you are, you just don’t throw a match on a gasoline-spattered floor when it’s between you and the way out. Anybody’d make sure they had a clear shot to the nearest exit. That fire started near the front of the store, about 15 yards from the front door. No matter how fast the gas went up, they should have been able to get out.”

“There had to be a back door,” Jack said. “They must have planned to get out that way.”

Clint nodded. “Maybe. The back door was unlocked. But if you were going to make an escape from a fire you set, and it went up so hot and fast that it threw you into a panic, wouldn’t you hightail it out that door pronto? You sure as hell wouldn’t have run into a little room set about as far from either exit as you could get.”

“So what do you think they were doing there?”

“Hiding. I thought that when I first saw their bodies, and I still think that today. And the surviving kid’s story fits. They cut through the screen and came in through that storage room window. The kid said they were tossing shit around, kind of trashing the place when they heard someone come in through that back door. They ran back to the storage room and hid behind some shelves. But then they smelled the gas. The kid said he snuck around to the hall to try to see what was going on. That’s when the flash came …”

“The blue ghosts?” Jack asked, and Clint nodded.

“Right. It was most likely those burning fumes that singed him. Something brought the shelves down on his friends, probably knocking them unconscious. He tried to get them out, but the smoke and heat were intense, almost immediately. So the kid said he went back out that window, scraping the hell out of his arms and legs, to try to find help. And they did find fibers, skin and blood on the frame that all came from him.”

“If the smoke and heat were so bad, couldn’t they have gotten confused and ended up in the storage room when they thought they were near the back door? The shelves could have been overturned in their panic.”

“That’s a possibility. People do get crazy with fear in fires, and the kids that died weren’t that familiar with the back end of the store. I suppose it might have happened that way.” He paused, considering it again for a long moment, but then he shook his head. “But the fact that the kid’s story was at least partly true carries some weight with me. We found those poor boys right where he said they’d be. And he never tried to deny he was up to no good.” The big man sighed. “I guess it’s just hard for me to believe that two boys watched their friend pour gas all over the floor and walls, but ended up trapped.”

“Maybe they were always in back, making mischief, and didn’t know what their buddy was up to in front.” Jack was searching for a plausible explanation himself.

Clint’s mouth screwed down into a frown. “Don’t you think they’d have noticed the gas can he would’ve been carrying? If no one else came in, they all should have had a shot at one of the doors. And if they weren’t hiding, why did Andy squeeze out that window?”

Jack was silent, unable to think of a single reason the boys wouldn’t have made a straight run for either the front or the back doors.

Delavan sighed. “Of course, we’ll probably never know just what really happened. With kids anything is possible. We never did find any evidence that anyone else was there that night. But we also never found any kind of container that held the gas either. If Brubaker had it, where do you suppose he got rid of it?” Delavan looked at Jack, who could only shrug, and then shook his head. “It’s one of those fires that I still think over, trying to figure out some nights when I can’t sleep.”

“Did this Brubaker kid go to court?” Jack asked.

“No, he copped a plea. He was a juvenile, so I don’t know the details. They must have convinced him they had a pretty good case against him. But if you ask me, there was some room for doubt.”

Late as it was, Jack stopped at the
Journal
on his way back through town. His curiosity had gotten the better of him and he wanted to check his original story. Walking through the production room, he went stiffly down one set of steps, past the huge room that housed the press, then down another narrow flight of stairs into the basement.

In Lindsborg’s early days, the building had been a bank, and at the end of the hall, tucked deep into a thick, fireproof wall, was a room that had once held the safety deposit boxes. Two years after he bought the
Journal
, Jack began archiving back issues digitally. Prior to that, printed copies were saved in bound books. Snapping on the light in the tiny room, he saw row after row of these books, the copies dating to the early 1900s, each book a six-month increment. Over his first lonely years at the paper, he’d gone through every one, learning the background of the area that few of its residents ever grasped.

Jack knew that the story was written in the early months, before he had swung the process around to publishing digital before print. The easiest place to look for the clip was in the back issues. Without hesitation, he walked to the appropriate shelf and, running a finger over two or three bindings, came to the second half of the year he needed. There was no room for a chair, and jerking the book free, he sank to the floor, groaning softly as the muscles at the top of his thighs ached in protest.

Flipping to the month of December, he began scanning the front pages, but didn’t find what he wanted. He went through again, working backward from the end of the month, opening each paper and checking the inside pages. And on the day of the 19
^th,
he found what he was looking for, appalled that he hadn’t put the story on the cover.

The dead boys were named, but Andy Brubaker was not, since he was a juvenile accused of a crime. As he read the details, Jack finally began to vaguely remember writing it, and frowning, he realized uneasily that Swede had been his major source for most of the information. He’d never talked with Clint Delavan or, apparently, Ralph Miller. Shutting his eyes, the big book resting on his drawn-up knees, Jack tried to remember. The more he thought about it, the more clearly it came back.

“After all, Jack,” he remembered Swede telling him, “the boy is under age, and it was a fatal fire in my store. Frankly, I’m worried about the possibility of lawsuits. And really, what good does all this publicity do anyone? It won’t bring those dead boys back. And that poor, stupid bag boy is going to have to live with this the rest of his life. That’s bad enough. Wouldn’t it be better to downplay the whole thing?”

Jack had complied, burying the story.

It had made sense at the time, but now Jack frowned, aware of how easily he’d been swayed by Swede. He realized it was the kind of small-town behavior that made Augie Sanderson confident in suggesting writing columns to influence property owners.

He looked back down at the story, his mouth compressed to a thin line, knowing not even half of what should have been printed was there. Discouraged, angry with himself, he lifted the right side of the heavy volume to slam the book, the yellowed copies fanning forward. A small print headline caught his eye, and stopped his breath.

“Carl Erickson on Visit to Sweden.” For a long moment Jack only stared at the words, then slowly, reluctantly, his eyes moved down. According to the little blurb, Carl had left for Sweden early in the morning of December 20
^th
. His only surviving Swedish relative, a great uncle, still farming in Väderstad, was ill, and had requested a gathering of all the Erickson clan. Swede was quoted as saying his father would spend at least a month there, adding it was too bad he would miss the Governor's inauguration, "but this is a time to put family first."

Softly, Jack shut the book, his throat suddenly dry. He stared at the wall straight ahead, and the only sounds in the room were the soft hum of the fluorescent light and his own breathing. He didn’t want to believe what he was thinking. Like a dreamer in a nightmare, his mind searched for a way out, a reasonable, acceptable alternative. But he couldn’t escape the facts.

He knew Carl Erickson’s last gasp in the family business had been running the Sheffield store. Clint Delevan had just told him the Brubaker kid always claimed someone else was in the store the night it burned. Carl Erickson suddenly disappeared the next day. And Jack knew there was no way he'd gone to Sweden.

Shutting his eyes, Jack let his head drop back against the brick wall behind him.

Sam Waterman was reading the
New York Times
. Over the last few months, he'd come to realize he really hated seeing his name in a news story when it wasn't a byline. The HIPAA investigation was picking up steam for the
Times
to run another story on it. Not only that, for some reason, Tami Fuller seemed to take it up as a cause, working it into her goddamn stump speech. In the eyes of her fanatic followers, he'd become the poster boy for the evil, elite, "gotcha" media. Why the hell wouldn't this Idaho flying monkey just shut the fuck up? When the phone on his desk beeped, he grabbed it with a grunted, “Waterman,” his eyes not even leaving the screen.