Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [108]
“Yes.”
“Okay. You want to hear my confession? At Leary Way when your mayday came through, we were in the basement. Our radios weren’t picking up anything. That’s why we didn’t have time to do much of a search. We weren’t supposed to be down there. We screwed up.”
“We searched the basement.”
“I know. We saw the tape on the door after we came back up. Maybe we could have found you and Bill if we hadn’t been messing around down there. Bill would be alive today. We never even looked at the door on the way in. We forgot to check it for tape. You think I don’t feel bad about that?”
Diana was still asleep in the easy chair when Finney’s parents showed up Tuesday morning and let themselves in with a key. It would never have occurred to her that nodding off in Finney’s living room would be awkward. There was some chitchat, a few avoided looks, a good deal of fidgeting on the part of Finney’s mother.
Looking weak and pale and grasping a morning newspaper, Chief Finney spoke gruffly. “How’s he doing?”
“Last night, not good. I haven’t seen him this morning.”
“He should be in the hospital.”
“I agree. He took a lot of smoke. It could take weeks for it to purge from his system.”
“If he ever purges it. Is he making any sense?”
“Well . . .” Even as she spoke, she regretted the bluntness of her statement. “He’s spinning fairy tales. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t.”
“He usually tells a pretty solid story.”
“Last night he was all mixed up. I found it hard to believe anything he said.”
When the room grew quiet, Diana realized Finney was in the doorway in a robe and bare feet. It was easy enough to see he’d been standing there long enough to overhear her comments. He was staring at her, through her. This would be a good time, she thought, for the floor to open up and swallow her. She’d been defending John at every fire station she worked at, and the one time she was caught off guard and said something denigrating, he’d overheard it. “John. I’m not awake yet. I didn’t mean that.”
“Thanks for coming over, Diana.”
“I really didn’t—”
“Thanks for coming.”
She glanced at his parents and said, “I’ll get my things.”
On the way down the dock she passed a man lugging a television camera and a coifed woman in a long overcoat. They would have detained her if they’d realized she was a firefighter, but in civilian clothes with her hair down it never occurred to anyone.
53. POPPING MOTRIN
G. A. stood in the backyard popping Motrin and staring at the mountain of debris the firefighters had hauled out of the house. There was enough garbage here for an entire apartment building. The pile was sopping wet, mostly clothing—but there were also stereo components, mail-order catalogs, pieces of a television, hunks of broken furniture, books, magazines, old shoes, wallboard, and ceiling tile.
Typically an overhaul was performed to make certain the fire didn’t rekindle after firefighters left; anything that might spark up and start another fire was removed from the building, placed in the yard or on the street, and hosed down.
G. A. knew the building owner was planning to tell the insurance adjuster this junk had been in mint condition before the fire.
When the owner sauntered around the corner into the backyard, G. A. pulled his handcuffs off his belt and cuffed the man’s hands around either side of a vertical support of the porch. The owner, a man named Yassar Himmeld, made a face that implied he was guiltless and said, “What for is this? I do nothing.”
Yassar was short. He wore a suit and a starchy white shirt without a tie, and G. A. knew he owned two jewelry stores over on Jackson, as well as eleven houses spread throughout the Central Area. Yassar wore a Rolex and four gold rings. Gold necklaces clanked at his throat as he made futile efforts to free himself from the handcuffs. G. A. didn’t like anything about him.
“For what is this?”
“I’m going to make it simple for you, Yassar. You got a nice little duplex here. A day-care upstairs that your wife runs.”
“Dar is my sister-in-law.