Nothing Left to Burn (29 page)

Yeah. Guess so.
“And then you left for good.”

He flinched, liked I’d kicked him in the stomach. “Yeah. I—oh God.” He folded over his middle. “It was
my
fault, Reece. Mine, not yours, and I just couldn’t face that, I couldn’t. You remind me so much of him. You look like twins, you sound alike, you even do that thing with your lips he used to do.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a minute, and when he opened them, they were wet. “It hurt, God, it hurt to lose him.”

Oh. Of course it hurt. He was Matt’s father. Of course.

“I know I hurt you, I know it, and I’m sorrier than I can tell you, because you’re right—what you said in that note—I was never a father to you. It hurt so goddamn much to look at you and see the evidence of just how colossally I fucked things up.” He swiped a hand under his nose and wiped his eyes, and I cracked inside.

My father was
crying
.

He didn’t even cry at Matt’s funeral. He got pissed off and stayed that way for months. What should I do? Was I supposed to hug him and say
no
sweat
, do one of those awkward bro hugs, and go grab a beer? I thought about that for a long moment and finally concluded what’s past is past. It couldn’t be changed. It couldn’t bring back my brother. Dad made the gesture. He broke years of silence and dropped all his tough, manly shit for me.

I cleared my throat and tried to talk around the giant lump in my throat. “Dad, there’s something you should know.” I broke off when my voice cracked. I swallowed and tried again. “I’m not really smart. I just take tests well.”

He gave me the yeah-right look. “Reece, I was there. Your IQ is off the charts.”

“No.” I waved a hand. “I’m serious. I am not a genius. I’m not brilliant like Alex. I take tests well because I never forget anything I’m taught.” I waited a beat, but he still wasn’t getting it. “I memorize shit, Dad. That’s all I can do. I’m a human computer, which means I’m only as good as the programming.”

He stared at me, eyes crinkling. “What happened on June 2 the year you were ten?”

I searched through memories and grinned. “Disney World. Got lost during the parade. When you guys found me, like hours later—”

“It was not
hours
later. More like one hour.”

I grinned. “When you guys found me
one
hour later, Mom was crying and hugging me, and you said, ‘Come on, leave the boy alone. He just wanted to hang out with the pretty princess.’”

“Remember which one?”

“Cinderella.”

“Smart kid, even then.” He swallowed more of my water, then put the cup back on the table. “I’m sorry, so sorry you thought I hated you all this time. I love you. I love you, Reece.”

Before I could react, before I could sink into those words and just let them kind of sink in, he was back to tough. He left the bed and stalked around the room. “What the hell were you thinking with this note shit? When Amanda showed us that piece of paper, I thought it was no big deal, just another stunt. And then I found out you used a line from some rock star’s suicide note. I thought we were gonna find you in a pool of blood somewhere. Your mother needed sedatives to fall asleep, according to the brunch date.” He sneered and held his hand up a few inches over his head.

Ah. He was pissed off the guy was taller than him.

“Not a suicide note.”

Dad stopped prowling the room and waved two fingers under his eyes. “Look at me. Look at me and swear on Matt’s grave.”

I did. “It wasn’t a suicide note.”

It
was.
But just like that, it suddenly wasn’t. Maybe it never was.

“So what the hell was it?”

“It was a good-bye note.”

“You were gonna leave and go where, exactly?” He spread out his hands and lifted his eyebrows.

I thought about coming clean and telling him the truth, but I…I just couldn’t do it. I grabbed the lie I’d been telling for so long and expanded it. “I was going to enlist. Not sure which branch yet. I like the idea of flying. But not submarines. So the Navy is a tough decision for me.”

“The Navy. Baby Jesus on a bun, are you freaking kidding me?”

“No.”

“Then why did you join J squad?”

I pulled up my knees. “Matt. Matt made me swear. Made me promise not to let you push me out of your life.”

“When? He never regained—” His face froze when the answer dawned on him. “Jesus. Oh God. How long, Reece? How long?”

“Twenty minutes, I think.” I wrapped my arms around my body, trying not to lose it. “He was pinned, Dad. Could barely breathe. He grabbed my hand, held it so tight, begged me not to let you go.” I held up my right hand. To this day, it still tingled from my brother’s grip. “He knew. I don’t know how, but he knew he was dying, and it was my fault, and he wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t let go until I fucking promised him.” I looked up, looked into my dad’s face, his lips trembling, his eyes wet. “I did. I didn’t want to at first, because I knew what would happen if I did. I kept saying no, but he begged, and he was in so much pain. God! Dad, it was my fault, so I promised I would do what he wanted. He smiled. He smiled, and that was it—he held my hand until he lost consciousness, and I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.” Tears fell out of my eyes and plopped onto my arms.

Arms grabbed me, the strong arms I used to wish would toss me high up in the air like Matt. Or carry me on his shoulders like Matt. They grabbed me and held me, and I cried until I couldn’t breathe, cried for Matt, cried for all the wasted years, cried until I was empty.

“Christ, will you put on some clothes? This is getting weird,” Dad muttered into my hair when my sobs finally slowed.

I was in a hospital on a suicide watch, in a fucking dress, but my dad was here, and damn if it wasn’t the best day I ever had.

***

An hour or so later, after Dad got me sprung from the hospital, we were driving home when he asked me the bonus question.

“So what did Steve say about your video?”

I braced myself for Dad’s wrath. “I didn’t show him yet. I waited for him, but he had stuff to do, and then I got admitted to the hospital.”

“You didn’t show him? Jesus, Reece! That could be crucial evidence in his investigation.”

I spread my hands apart. “I tried, Dad. I was in his office, but he said he had to interview the guys on-scene first. And then—”

“Then what?” He looked at me with a frown when he stopped for a light.

“Amanda saw the video.”

“Yeah, I remember. You think she knows this kid?”

“I know she does. He’s her foster brother.”

“Holy shit. Did you tell Steve all this?”

Slowly, I shook my head. The light turned green. Dad drove through town, impatience sweating out of every pore. “No. I didn’t get the chance. Amanda asked me to wait—”

“Oh goddamn it, Reece!”

“I know. But I owed her one, Dad. Amanda’s a foster kid. Did you know?”

By the unsurprised look he shot me, I figured he did.

“Anyway, she and the kid in my video, his name’s Larry Ecker, live with the Becketts. She told me how bad it’s been for her, for him, and how much they love it there. She asked me to wait to report to Steve, wait until she had a chance to see for herself what Larry’s been up to.”

Dad was silent for a moment, but when I looked over, I could see the muscle clenching in his jaw. “I knew Amanda was a foster kid. The Becketts are good people, so life can’t be that bad for her.”

“She loves the Becketts, Dad. She wants to stay with them. So does Larry. She said they could be sent away like that.” I snapped my fingers.

“Oh,” he said. “So Larry starring in your video could be enough trouble for the big adios?”

“Yeah.” I looked away. “Like I said, I thought I owed that to her. Time, I mean.”

Dad pulled up to the curb in front of our house—well, Mom’s place—and cut the engine. “Reece, everybody who steps into that firehouse has to do one thing, the
same
thing, and that’s do the job—period. What if this kid is guilty? What if he set three more fires since Saturday and you could have stopped him? What if one of us got—”

I shot up a hand. “I get it. She asked me for time.”

Understanding dawned, and he nodded. “Okay.” He slapped my leg and unfastened his seat belt. “I’ll call Steve.”

“Dad, what about Amanda? I don’t want to mess things up for her—with the Becketts.”

Dad’s lips went thin. “That’s not on you, Reece.”

But it
was
on me. I’d demanded that she trust me, but did I give her that same trust back? No, I acted like she’d betrayed me when all she was trying to do—all she was still trying to do—was keep her own family together.

Cursing, he shoved himself out of the car. “Okay, look. I’ll make some calls, see what we can do. The Becketts aren’t the only foster family in town.”

I opened my door and joined him on the sidewalk. “What if…what if it’s not enough? What if she never forgives me?”

He turned, faced me directly, and put a hand on my shoulder. “Could you live with it if he sets another fire that kills somebody? One of us, a civilian, somebody close to you?”

Somebody close to me…like him?

Tucker practically leaped into my arms when I walked in the door, followed by Mom. “Jesus, Abby, let the kid breathe.”

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“Reece, I—”

Dad’s hand squeezed her shoulder, and she left the thought unsaid.

“I’m gonna take a nap.”

They nodded, and Tucker followed me up the stairs and curled up on my bed next to me. Under us, hidden in an old iPod box, was something that could show everyone I was a liar.

I left it where it was. For now.

***

“And you shot this footage yourself?”

Steve, the fire marshal, sat in our living room, watching the video on my phone.

“Yes, sir. On-scene.”

The fire marshal took off his glasses and stuck one end in his mouth, a frown creasing his forehead. A moment later, he looked up at me. “Okay, Reece. I blew you off the other day, and I’m sorry for that. This is good work. Scoping out the scene on arrival is good, solid firefighting practice. You looked for the things that stuck out, and you found something. This, by itself”—he returned my phone—“well, it wouldn’t stand up as evidence. But it gives us a direction to look in.”

Steve put his glasses back on, opened a file folder, and handed me some sheets of papers.

“These are reports from the investigation—not just of Saturday’s fire, but of three others. I’m showing these to you because your dad says you’re sharp.”

I looked at my dad, and he nodded. My mother, who hadn’t stopped hovering over me since Dad brought me home, sat on the couch next to me. She made a sound that she tried to cover with a cough, but I knew it was one of frustration, and the glare that went with it was aimed straight at my dad.

“You and your friend Bear were first on-scene and reported the fire, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me exactly what you saw.”

“Uh, well, I was driving,” I began and recounted the entire event. When I finished, Steve’s eyes snapped to mine.

“Your dad tells me you have a perfect memory. Is that true?”

“Yes. If I consciously look at something, I remember it.”

“Let’s go back to the beginning again. You got out of your car. What did you smell?”

As soon as he said the word
smell
, it hit me, like I was right there. But I didn’t know how to describe it. “The smell was bad. Melting plastic. Rubber. Burnt sugar. Noxious—something chemical, because I felt my throat go tight. Not gasoline or kerosene. I know those odors.”

“You had no gear, correct?”

“Um, not exactly. I had practice gear in my trunk but an empty tank. Bear and I moved across the street, just two hundred feet away, and we could breathe better.”

“You did not see flames?” he asked again.

“No, only smoke. But we could feel it. The heat in front of the house was intense. You could see the heat waves at the roofline.”

“When did you see flames?”

“Not until Truck 3 vented the structure. Flames shot out at the front and back of the house.”

“Front
and
back?”

When I nodded, Steve jotted something down on his notepad. “Go back to the smoke. Describe it.”

I shut my eyes and imagined the moment when I pulled over to the curb. “It curled out from under the eaves. It was thick and moving fast.”

“What color was it?”

“Light. It didn’t turn black until after the trucks arrived and vented.”

Steve wrote more notes. “I want you to take a look at these summaries. See if anything there reminds you of Saturday’s fire.” From a folder, he took out three sheets of paper.

I read the papers. Three other fires this year, all empty and boarded-up homes. “He’s practicing.”

Steve angled his head. “Why do you think that?”

“Three previous fires—Saturday’s makes four. All residential homes. All were empty. Foreclosures. And the flames—each report states flames were colored. Purple, blue, green. Rainbow fire.”

At Steve’s raised eyebrow, I elaborated. “Something I learned in J squad. Metals burn in color; that’s the principle behind fireworks. At Saturday’s fire, I saw green flames.”

“Were all the flames green?”

“No. No, they weren’t. Only the first flames I saw were green, after the truck crew ventilated the roof. You’d need a lot of chemicals to produce that much green fire, right?”

“Correct.”

“I saw Larry Ecker leave the chemistry lab at school. The lab was empty and should have been locked. He’s not even taking chemistry. Coloring fire is possible with metals—metal salts, right? The chem lab would have those. Blue fire could be butane or copper chloride. And the purple flame could be created with potassium chloride. This isn’t about destroying property. He just likes the colors.”

Steve and Dad exchanged a look, and then Steve put all his reports back in the folder. “Reece, thank you for talking to me. I think the Ecker boy is a good lead.” He smiled, revealing that gap between his teeth, and left.

Mom shut the door after him and then stood awkwardly in the living room. “Well, thanks for bringing him home, John.”