Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [96]
“Funny you should mention Southeast Travelers. I followed that for our paper. It was the Chattanooga Times then.”
“You know a firefighter named Charlie Drago?”
“For a while Charlie Drago was one of my primary sources. The last year or so, he’s been a little less than reliable. What Donovan told me about you was intriguing, though. Especially in light of what I saw on the wire service yesterday. I understand you folks had an explosion a couple of days after you found out about this syndrome. We had almost the same thing happen three years ago.”
“Okay. You’ve got my attention. What happened?”
“Three of our firefighters turned into vegetables after that Southeast Travelers fire. About a week after that, just about the time we were gearing up to start an investigation, the fire department got called to an LPG tanker accident. Big explosion. Six firefighters died. These were the same guys who’d worked with the three who went down after Southeast Travelers. Same shift. After that everybody was talking about the tanker incident, not Southeast Travelers. You could almost say somebody’d planned it that way. At least that’s how it looks from this perspective.”
“So you think somebody caused your tanker explosion in order to get rid of the rest of the people who were going to get sick?”
“All I’m saying is you people start talking about this syndrome, then a day or two later you come within a cat’s whisker of losing everybody who’s left. Isn’t that what happened?”
“Basically.”
“Same thing happened here. That’s all I’m saying. Now we get a pretty big explosion in this area maybe once every twenty-five or thirty years. How often does your department respond to something like that?”
“I don’t even remember one.”
“If everybody had died at your trailer fire, how much time do you think the authorities would have for the syndrome? For one thing, there wouldn’t be anyone left to get the syndrome. They establish a cause for your trailer?”
“Ammonium nitrate was the agent. It’s beginning to look like it was not an accident, either. What about your LPG tanker?”
“Never really figured it out. Driver died in the fire. Impeccable driving record. A family man with kids. Nondrinker. Never used drugs. That we knew of. No reason for a wreck. It’s funny how much stuff happened right around that time. This isn’t really on the point, but the daughter of one of the downed firefighters died in a house fire during all the investigations. Pretty gal. Anastasia was her name. I guess she’d been doing a lot of legwork, kind of an unofficial private investigator for the families. Cops found her in her burned-out apartment. Somebody torched it with gasoline. Never found the perp.”
“You say Donovan called you?”
“Sure did. I know Scott from way back. Him and some other guy stuck around for a coupla weeks. Top-notch. Both of them. Couldn’t ask for a better pair. We had many a Scotch together. Those two slaved away from six in the morning until midnight. Canyon View was only one of a couple of dozen firms had packages in that fire. And hey, nobody else sent help. You see Scott, tell him ‘hey, boy’ from Carl in Chattanooga, will you?”
“I’ll do that. Did Scott happen to mention JCP, Inc.? Jane’s California Propulsion—”
“I know who they are. Why do you ask about them?”
“Did he mention them when he called?”
“Not that I recall.”
“They have any packages at Southeast Travelers? Anything that might have broken or spilled?”
“Why are you singling them out?”
“They had some stuff in the truck we think caused our problem.”
“I honestly don’t know. Only saw the complete list of companies once. I think I could get it for you, though. Might take a couple of days.”
“I would appreciate that, Carl. In fact, that might be about the best thing you could do to help.”
“You got it, buddy. I’ll call back when I find out something.”
“Thanks. Oh, and one other thing. Charlie Drago mentioned he caught somebody prowling Southeast Travelers sometime after the fire, maybe destroying evidence or looking for something. He said the