Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [35]
“Of course I do. What about it?”
“Meet me there tomorrow morning at zero six-thirty. It’s about Leary Way.”
“Who is this?”
“I can’t say anything over the phone. Zero six-thirty. Don’t bring anybody else.”
17. BLOWING UP GRACELAND
It was early when Finney rolled over in bed and peered out his window at a single light reflected off the inky lake. A heavy fog had moved in overnight, obscuring everything except the boat next door. Power lines buzzed. The weather report said the fog would burn off by noon and that the rest of the day would be clear and sunny, but Finney, a Northwest native, knew this kind of October mist could roost on Seattle indefinitely like a large, wet hen.
At twenty minutes past six, when he drove past Station 26, the rigs were in place behind the roll-up doors, everything dark except for a glow from the beanery lights. On A-shift, Peterson generally woke up a couple of hours before everybody else, rustling around in the beanery and whistling and just generally annoying the others who were still trying to sleep.
Finney drove eleven blocks past the firehouse and parked next to the river where Seventh and Holden merged with Riverside. He saw no pedestrians and no parked vehicles. What little traffic there was came and went in the fog with startling suddenness. After fifteen minutes, he began pacing the short chunk of Riverside Drive that paralleled the water.
Oddly enough, the vacant house Monahan had put on the dangerous buildings list for Finney was two blocks away.
Engine 26’s first-in district was small but tricky, bordered on the south by the city limits, bisected at odd angles by Highways 509 and 99. The Duwamish Waterway sliced through it, too, running between 26’s and the rest of the city, its muddy water spanned by drawbridges. Half a dozen streets and avenues dead-ended at the river and continued on the other side in Engine 27’s district, so that the drivers of both stations had to memorize dozens of individual addresses—or risk watching helplessly as a fire burned across the river.
By seven he was back in the cab of his Pathfinder with the heater running. He’d seen only a handful of cars, none with red IAFF union stickers in the window. Finney was assuming from the way the caller used the street designators and military time that he was meeting with a firefighter.
At 7:25 a pedestrian glided forward through the fog and tapped on his window. “They’re coming for you,” she said, as he rolled the window down. “The first thing they’re going to do is make us sterile. It’s only a matter of time before they get around to blowing up the Supreme Court, the Empire State Building, Graceland.”
“You’re out early this morning, Annie.” The homeless woman’s knit cap and eyebrows were freighted with moisture. He wondered if she’d been roaming these streets all night.
“The defenders of freedom are few and far between, but we don’t sleep in.”
She gave him a blank look that made him think she hadn’t gotten much sleep, then she turned briskly and pulled her cart away into the murk.
Finney was due at the station at 7:30, in less than five minutes, and it was obvious by now that last night’s caller wasn’t coming. Everyone in the department knew how to push Finney’s buttons, and the phone call the previous night was probably a practical joke. They were probably yukking it up in the beanery at this very moment over the thought of Finney out here in the fog waiting for secret information.
When he got to the station, nobody paid any attention to him. He carried his personal protective equipment over to the engine in the apparatus bay, removed Peterson’s gear, and put his own equipment on the rig. He Velcroed