Fireproof (29 page)

“Do we know what the chemicals are yet?” Racine looked at Investigator Ivan.

“We sent the sample residue to the FBI lab.”

The chief continued his assessment.

“I’m thinking one’s a solid, perhaps in crystal form. The other must be a liquid. He might even place something between them so when he pours on the liquid it has to soak through that barrier before it’s absorbed by the first chemical. When the two mix, there’s an intense reaction. A white-hot flash that immediately ignites the stack of flammables underneath.”

He pointed his flashlight back up at the landing and moved the beam over the side of the building, showing a black smudge that rode up the wall from the fire escape landing to a hole that used to be a window.

“The entire windowsill was splattered with gasoline. He didn’t need to break in or enter the building at all. The fire broke in for him. There were curtains hanging in the window. After the glass broke, the curtains ignited and suddenly the fire easily spread inside. It’s similar to the warehouse fires. I don’t know much about the church fires in Arlington yesterday but I understand they were started from the outside, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Racine said, “but it seems like a lot of hocus-pocus to me. How did he know it would work?”

“Just between us, I’d say he knows what he’s doing.”

“Wait, what do you mean? Are you saying it could be a firefighter?”

The chief shot a look at Ivan like maybe he had already said too much or, worse, offended the ATF investigator.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Maggie said. “I’m thinking of Benjamin Christensen in Pennsylvania. I think he was a volunteer firefighter. No body count but at least a dozen fires, some landmarks.”

“John Orr in Southern California,” the chief said.

“That was a long time ago,” Ivan said with a scowl.

Maggie remembered the case. Although it was thirty years ago, it had come up when she began researching serial arsonists. Orr had been a fire captain and arson investigator and had even been assigned to one of the fires he started.

She wasn’t surprised Ivan didn’t like anyone bringing up the criminal behavior of a fellow arson investigator. Surely they had their own version of the thin blue line.

Maggie considered Brad Ivan. There was something about him that bothered her, but she hadn’t wasted time trying to figure it out. He hadn’t been happy about the FBI’s involvement, to the point of withholding information from her and Tully. From the beginning, Brad Ivan had struck her as someone who didn’t play well with others, nor did his confrontational manner fit in with other law enforcement officials.

He listened to the fire chief with his arms crossed over his chest and she noticed that his coat bulged tight across his midsection. She remembered his hitching up his trousers yesterday and then looking almost surprised, like a man who was used to being in shape and suddenly finding he was no longer.

He scratched at his steel-gray hair and swiped back the swatches that climbed over his ears like he was well past a haircut.
She realized all the extra weight and need for a haircut could just mean he was putting in some unexpected long hours. Which would account for his irritability. But there was something that made Maggie wonder if he was disgruntled or just exhausted.

He was standing behind the fire chief when she saw him frown at something the chief was telling Racine. Maggie decided she needed to take a look into Ivan’s background. She found herself wondering whether he could have followed her down the manhole, hoping to catch a fleeing arsonist and maybe scare the crap out of her just for good measure. Teach the profiler how much she doesn’t know. Was that something he was capable of? Was he the man she’d seen outside her property? As an ATF investigator he could easily get access to federal employees’ information, including her private home address.

She was considering all this when something across the street caught her attention. An empty lot had been gouged out. Stacks of concrete and piles of dirt were all that remained except for monster yellow equipment with claws and dump wagons, all parked and quiet for the night. There were construction sites all over the city, but two of them right across from arson sites? Was it a coincidence?

About an hour ago Sam had been laughing with her son, watching her mother struggle to pick up a fried dumpling with chopsticks. That’s when she had heard the first siren.

It had stopped blocks away, but she felt her body tense up. She had forced a smile so her family wouldn’t notice that her pulse had started to race. She didn’t want them to see the slight twitch of panic as her eyes darted around the restaurant in search of the nearest exit.

A few minutes later she had heard a waiter tell someone that the shops just five blocks away were on fire. And Sam thought immediately about Jeffery. She knew he’d be frantic to get in touch with her. She had reached for her cell phone to turn it back on. Had it out of her purse and in her hand when she caught herself. Across the table her mother and son had been giggling over each other’s fortune cookies.

“Momma, read yours.”

Her palms had started sweating. The phone felt heavy in her hand as it slid from her fingers back into her purse.

It had been the purest choice she had made in a very long time.

Now when she saw Jeffery’s Escalade in her driveway a lump
gathered in the pit of her stomach and she reminded herself that the right decision is not always the easiest. Nor would it be the best for her career, if she still had a career.

“It’s my boss,” she told her mother.

“Your boss here? On your day off?”

Instead of explaining, Sam asked her mother to take Iggy into the house and put the leftovers in the refrigerator.

“I’ll be just a few minutes,” she told them, hoping the alarm going off inside her head hadn’t affected the tone of her voice.

She watched them scurry around the big SUV that left only two feet between her garage and its bumper. Sam almost smiled at the scowl her mother was giving Jeffery, despite the dark and despite the tinted windshield. Her mother’s defiance helped fuel Sam’s courage. Still, her knees went a bit weak as she climbed out of her vehicle and went to stand in front of the garage, keeping a safe distance between herself and Jeffery and choosing someplace where she didn’t think he could run her over. She also knew that where she was standing she couldn’t be seen from inside the house.

She stood and waited.

She would not get inside his SUV. If he wanted to rip her a new one, he’d have to do it where her neighbors might watch or call the cops.

The engine started, a quiet hum. The driver’s-side window slid down. Jeffery’s face looked calm. His eyes did not.

The glow of the interior lights gave him an eerie blue sheen, as if the illumination came from under the surface of his skin. His tie had been yanked loose and his white collar smudged. His jacket had been tossed aside and his shirtsleeves were rolled up in haphazard
folds. His face didn’t look angry, but everything else about him looked enraged.

“There were bodies tonight,” he said in a casual tone that sounded odd considering the context. “Just what Big Mac ordered up.”

She felt his eyes bore into her but she didn’t flinch or look away from them.

“Do you have any idea what you cost us, Sam? I hope your little chop suey dinner out was worth it. Don’t you dare turn your back on me again.”

The SUV’s window hummed back up as Sam’s stomach crashed down.

How had he known where they had gone for dinner? Had he followed?

Then she remembered that her mother had carried in the leftovers. Of course, the bag must have the restaurant’s logo stamped on it. But when Sam walked into the kitchen she saw the plain white paper bags still on the counter. There was no logo, no indication of a Chinese restaurant.

Maggie reeked of smoke but at least she didn’t look as bad as Tully.

“What happened to you?”

He came into the conference room and dropped into the leather chair across the table from her.

“I finally got that backpack bastard.”

“Is he our guy?”

Tully shrugged, looking defeated, tired.

“I think he’s some homeless drunk who’s paranoid and maybe a bit schizo. What do you have going on?”

He pointed to the file folders and maps she had scattered on the large tabletop. Instead of going home, she’d come back to Quantico to pull some files and access some databases. She was screening her calls, still avoiding her mother’s voice messages, when Assistant Director Kunze called, insisting she and Tully meet him in the conference room in an hour. Never mind that it was late on a Saturday night.

“There was a construction site across the street from the shops that burned down tonight.”

“Okay.”

“And there was a construction site just down the street from the warehouse fires.”

“Same contractor?”

“That was my first thought. Unfortunately no. Two separate companies. But here’s something interesting—both projects are federally funded. The one across from the shops is going to be a food pantry. The one in the warehouse district is something called the D.C. Outreach House. It’s going to be a community and sleep shelter for the homeless. Both are HUD projects.”

“Can we access employee lists to see if there’s anybody working on both sites?”

“I’m trying. There’s more red tape than even my clearance can cut through.”

Tully laughed.

“There’s more,” Maggie said. “I talked to the owner of the construction company working in the warehouse district.”

“I bet he was pleased to get a phone call on a Saturday night.”

“Actually he didn’t seem surprised.” Irritated was more what Maggie had detected, but Mr. Lyle Post had treated her phone call as if it were only one in a long run of federal interruptions into his business.

“Can he get you a list of his employees?”

“Said it would be tough.”

“Because of privacy issues?”

“No, that wasn’t the problem. He doesn’t keep track of the names of all his crew members.”

Tully blinked and sat up like he hadn’t heard her correctly and needed to get a closer listen.

“Said he’s had to hire a lot of private contractors because the
project got fast-tracked. Someone at HUD told him they needed the job done sooner than they needed to know every single person who was working on it.”

“He told you this knowing you’re an FBI agent?”

“I didn’t exactly tell him who I was.” It wouldn’t be the first time she or Tully had withheld information in order to get information.

“So someone could be working on both projects.”

“Or someone could think the fires would get more attention because they were close to federally funded projects.”

“Could be why Kunze has his panties in a twist.”

“It’s taken you both this long to figure that out.”

Assistant Director Raymond Kunze stood in the doorway of the conference room. Tully sat up in his chair, a flush of red running up his neck. Maggie dropped her hands into her lap and restrained a smile. Kunze looked like a linebacker but dressed like a nightclub bouncer. The blazer he wore was probably a rust color, but under the fluorescent lights it looked orange.

“I’ve got one senator and the director of HUD kicking my ass until you two catch this frickin’ firefly.” He started into the room but stopped halfway. “Tully, you look like crap. And O’Dell”—he sniffed the air—“you stink.”

If Maggie didn’t know better she’d guess Kunze was finally joking with them like they were part of a team. It certainly was the first time he’d admitted to the politics of his actions.

He threw what looked like a faxed document on the table. The pages were the old flimsy paper of antiquated fax machines that curled.

“I just received the ATF’s report on the church fires.” He sat at the head of the table, tapping the top of the papers he’d thrown down. “Gasoline was poured at the threshold of the door to the
basement. Not only did this bastard know there was a meeting being held down there, he was hell-bent on killing someone. Tonight he finally did. He murdered an entire family by setting fire to—of all things—the fire escape
and
the back door, their only other way out.”