Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Read online

“Well, I never heard any mention of fire-starting.”

  “Did you talk to him after the fire?”

  “Sure did,” Beck said.

  “How did he seem to you?”

  “Devastated. Rendered absolutely speechless. Honestly, I’m not sure how much help he’ll be even now. He doesn’t seem to be handling it so well.”

  Beck shook her head before she went on.

  “Of course, fire out here means something different than it does in the rest of the country. The wildfires are such a threat, I guess, it takes on almost a religious meaning. Everyone is conscious of it all the time. Constant vigilance. We get calls any time a cigarette is pitched out a window on any of the rural highways. Drivers here will actually pull over and try to locate it and extinguish the butt themselves. If the winds are blowing right, one cigarette could take out thousands of acres of forest, homes, businesses. And of course, there’s the loss of life. The threat is just so big here. Everyone feels a responsibility to try to stop the fires before they start, do whatever they can to protect each other.”

  Darger remembered hearing that somewhere before — that the people living out here would pull over at the sight of a flicked cigarette. It was hard to wrap her head around, though hearing Beck lay it out helped the concept get home.

  “Shoot, I’m sorry,” Beck said. “I didn’t mean to carry on like that. I’m sure you know… you know… all of this.”

  “Don’t apologize. You know plenty more than me about the way of things around here.”

  “I’m— I mean, I understand. I guess I felt out of my element at the task force meaning. I’m just there because one of the fires happened in my little neck of the woods. All of you have so much more experience than me when it comes to anything like this. Look around. Kids putting M-80’s in mailboxes is about the most excitement we get out here. A DUI or two every weekend. Possession of narcotics now and again. Petty theft. But violent crime? It’s nothing like what the LAPD deals with, what you deal with.”

  Darger nodded.

  “One of my colleagues here in L.A. used to be a cop in rural Ohio. He said pretty much the same thing.”

  “My hats off to ‘em, because I couldn’t do it, myself. Wouldn’t last a day. Even with this case, I feel out of my depth. This is big city stuff, and I can’t stop worrying that I’m going to mess things up somehow.”

  “How would you mess things up?”

  “Hell, you saw me dump that pile of papers outside the elevator yesterday. I’m a klutz on a good day, but the pregnancy just makes things worse.”

  “Well, if we get to a place in the investigation where you have to balance an egg on the end of a spoon while walking along a balance beam, we could be screwed.”

  Beck shook her head and smiled at Darger’s sarcasm.

  “Funny.”

  “Forget this case,” Darger said, turning in her seat to face Beck more squarely. “On a normal day, when you’re running things out here, would you say you’re a good cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then that’s all that matters. The stakes are high in a case like this, sure. But at the end of the day, what ends up solving the big cases isn’t much different than what ends up solving the small cases. You do your job. You follow the evidence. So long as you work hard, there’s nothing to mess up.”

  Chapter 8

  The road wove through the canyons and sometimes up into the hills. Darger watched the blended scenery pass along the roadside — a mix of small subdivisions, open country, and farmland. Most of the fields were planted with neat rows of gnarled old trees.

  “This is Oak Glen. Old apple orchard country, if you couldn’t tell,” Beck explained.

  Darger’s stomach dropped as they rounded a sharp bend. To the right, the canyon wall rose vertically at almost ninety degrees. And to the left, a sheer drop onto a canopy of pines. She shut her eyes until the landscape on either side leveled out again.

  When she opened them, she spotted a wooden sign ahead with hand-painted letters that read, “Thorne’s Farm and Apple Orchard.” The church lay along the perimeter of the orchard’s grounds, Darger knew. It would certainly make a scenic location for a wedding.

  Beck slowed the car and took a right onto a dirt lane. It was narrow, with trees and undergrowth crowding both sides. They bumped over potholes and ruts, and then the trees opened up on a large swath of flat land at the base of one of the foothills.

  An old white farmhouse stood on the west end of the property, surrounded by a few outbuildings, and then Darger saw it.

  The blackened husk of the church stood taller than the other buildings. Flames had chewed through one side of the building, a ragged hole eaten through roof and walls to lay the innards of the structure bare. On the opposite side, the white paint remained intact. Something eerie about that juxtaposition, Darger thought.

  Beck parked in a gravel lot that bordered one end of an orchard. The hunched apple trees reminded Darger of stooped crones.

  She climbed out of the car and had a brief bout of dizziness. She turned to face Beck over the top of the car, squinting against the sunlight.

  “What’s the altitude up here?”

  “Close to five-thousand feet. You feelin’ it?”

  Darger nodded.

  “Just a little. Kinda makes me feel like a wuss, though. I’m from Colorado, originally, and people back home would give me hell for getting woozy at a measly five-thousand feet.”

  Beck chuckled.

  “Well, your secret’s safe with me,” she said and glanced around. “Doesn’t look like Howie’s here yet. Normally I’d say we could start poking around on our own, but considering my current condition —” she gestured at her belly “— and your need to adjust to the altitude, I say we rest our rears right here in the car while we wait, let your stomach settle and whatnot.”

  Darger settled back into her seat with a sigh.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She closed her eyes, letting the sensations of the place wash over her. Birds twittering in the trees. A cool breeze stirring the hair at her temples. The sun warming the side of her face.

  It was a lovely spot. Peaceful.

  After the novelty of tweeting birds and perfect weather wore off, Darger remembered the videos on her phone.

  Aside from the video taken by the fire crew, there were dozens of cell phone videos taken by the wedding guests, plus some footage from a professional videographer hired for the event. It was a rare opportunity for the investigators to stand in the shoes of an actual eye witness. To see what they saw. To hear what they heard.

  Darger scrolled through the video files on her phone. They were arranged in chronological order, and she played one of the earliest clips first.

  The camera zig-zagged through the crowd of people milling about. Judging from the height of the point-of-view, Darger thought it was probably a kid manning the camera.

  Turning toward the church, Darger was able to match up the location of the video with the expanse of lawn out front. It was empty now, but in the video there were two long tables set up with white table cloths. Mason jars clustered near chalkboard signs labeled with the various offerings: beer, wine, peach tea, ice water. White paper lanterns hung from the branches of a live oak tree.

  A white-haired woman in a paisley dress and a broad-brimmed straw hat reached out to the camera.

  “Joshua! Oh come here, and let me look at you.”

  She leaned closer, smiling. Pink lipstick leeched into the wrinkled spaces around her lips.

  “Just look at what a handsome little gentleman you’ve grown into.”

  “Uh… thanks Aunt Dorothy.”

  The camera took off again, zooming through the kaleidoscope of pastels and florals and chinos. Behind the people, Darger got a good look at what the church had looked like before the fire. It was the type of old church found in many rural areas, beautiful in its simplicity. Comparing it to the wreckage she saw in its place now, it almost didn’t look like the sa
me building.

  The video paused to focus on a grasshopper. The voices in the background merged into a collective murmur. Darger skipped forward a few minutes and pressed play again.

  “—would please proceed inside the church. The ceremony will be starting soon,” someone was saying, but the speaker was blocked by the crowd of adult bodies.

  They began to file inside, through the front entrance. They were chuckling, joking with one another. Greeting old friends and relatives. A little girl in a pink lace dress ran past, chasing a boy in khakis. Everyone was smiling and in good spirits. Completely ignorant of the tragedy about to unfold.

  The boy and the camera proceeded inside along with the rest of the guests. Beck gesturing at the screen with her index finger.

  “You see how the crowd bottlenecks right here, as they’re passing from the little entryway into the main area?”

  Darger nodded.

  “The same thing happened once the fire broke out. Everyone ran back the way they’d come in.” Beck shook her head. “A hundred-or-so people trying to shove through that one narrow passageway, all at the same time. Even if the doors had been operable, it would have been disastrous.”

  The low chugging sound of an engine caught Darger’s ear. A moment later, an old red-and-white VW bus pulled into the lot, surrounded by a cloud of dust, but in otherwise pristine shape.

  Beck’s eyes went to the rearview mirror and then over to Darger.

  “This is him.”

  Chapter 9

  Darger tucked her phone in her pocket, eyes on the VW bus. It pulled in a few yards away from where she and Beck sat, and a man climbed out. He was older, probably in his late 40s judging by the streaks of white and gray in his goatee and mustache. He wore thick horn spikes in his ears, sported two full sleeves of tattoos, and a pair of beat-up Birkenstocks clad his feet. He had a definite old surfer, hippie vibe.

  “Mr. Thorne?” Darger asked, extending her hand.

  The man nodded, a somewhat vacant look in his eye. Was he high? It wouldn’t have been the first time someone had hot-boxed in a Volkswagen. And she didn’t particularly care one way or the other, she just hoped he was still lucid enough to answer her questions.

  They shook.

  “I’m Violet Darger,” she said.

  He nodded again.

  To fill the uncomfortable silence, she added, “I assume you know Captain Beck?”

  Another wordless nod, and finally, he spoke.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Thanks for coming out, Howard,” Beck said.

  He seemed disturbed and began shaking his head.

  “Good morning?” He swiped a hand over his face. “Jesus. What am I even saying? It’s not a good morning. I haven’t had a good morning since the fire.”

  He stared over Darger’s shoulder at the ruined building, eyes moist with tears.

  Darger and Beck exchange a look.

  “Well, we appreciate that you agreed to talk with us,” Darger reiterated.

  “The only reason I’m here is…” He sighed. “Hell, I don’t know why I’m here.”

  An awkward few seconds passed, with no one saying much, and then Beck cleared her throat.

  “Shall we?”

  She gestured that they should head over to the church.

  Three sets of feet crunched through the gravel, followed by the relative silence of swishing grass.

  There was still tape cordoning off an area extending about twenty feet around the building, but that hadn’t stopped people from piling up mementos nearby. Flowers and wreaths and teddy bears clustered around the massive trunk of the live oak tree that stood near the entrance of the church.

  Darger spotted a cross with the name of one of the victims. Beside that, a bunch of shriveling carnations and stuffed animals. The wind kicked up, disturbing a piece of poster board with a poem titled “Little Angels” written on it in permanent marker.

  She followed Beck beyond the tape line but turned back when she realized Thorne was hanging back.

  “Are you coming?”

  “I don’t… I’m not… they said no one’s supposed to go inside the taped perimeter.”

  Darger’s eyes slid over to Beck, who raised an eyebrow. She took a step toward Mr. Thorne.

  “And I thank you for respecting that boundary, Howard, but this crime scene is under my jurisdiction. You can come on inside if I give the OK. So come on in, alright?”

  He stepped forward, though Darger could tell by the look on his face that he was still hesitant. His hand shook as he pulled the tape aside to duck under it.

  They moved closer to the building where more yellow tape was stretched across the main entrance. Signs cautioning against entering had been posted by the fire marshal.

  “We’ll have to keep to the outside and look in through the openings where we can,” Beck said. “I talked to the fire marshal about going inside, but he’s worried about the structural integrity of the remaining roof area.”

  Darger could smell the char now that they were close up to the place, like the remnants of a bonfire. Broken glass littered the ground beneath gaping windows — they were too high to serve as escape routes, but the blast from the fire hoses had toppled them all the same.

  They stepped around the glass and peered inside. It was even more obvious why they couldn’t go into the building from this vantage point. Aside from the roof above caving in, part of the floor was gone, and the floor that was intact was littered with debris.

  Darger slid her phone out and played the wedding video, comparing the interior then and now.

  It had been a beautiful space. High windows let in streams of late afternoon sun, dust motes glistening like fairy dust. Blue and red stained glass added streaks of color to the bars of sunlight.

  Darger sped the video up, watching in double-time as the guests paraded through the space and took their places in the rows of pews. Beyond that, an arch covered in roses and maidenhair fern served as the backdrop for the ceremony.

  Glancing back into the ruined church, Darger saw the remnants of the celebration. Scorched pews. Shriveled flowers. A shattered chandelier. Chiffon hanging in charred and tattered rags.

  Darger glanced over at Thorne, who held his hand over his mouth. At first she thought he was trying to block the smell, but then she noticed the rapid blinking of the eyes and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down every few seconds when he swallowed. He was trying not to cry.

  The wind kicked up, wafting a bunch of ash into the air. A mini cyclone of spent cinders. A singed strand of fabric swayed to and fro.

  Darger scooted closer to the gaping doorway. Soot smeared the edge above the opening where the flames had licked at the lintel. She poked her head inside at the small entryway where twenty-six people had lost their lives.

  “These were the doors that were locked on the day of the fire?” Darger asked.

  “Not locked,” Thorne said, his voice pitching high. “We had a break-in the weekend before the wedding. Some local kids forced the door and had a little pow-wow in the sanctuary. Smashed a few beer bottles and broke a window. Standard juvie stuff. We thought we got off easy, at the time. They could have done a lot more damage.”

  Mr. Thorne paused, staring blankly into the ruined church.

  “Anyway, they busted the latching mechanism on the door when they broke in. I needed to repair the handle, but I was waiting on a replacement spindle…”

  His voice trailed off. Darger finished for him.

  “But until then, the door was essentially locked shut with no way of unlocking it.”

  The man’s shoulders sank.

  “Not without tools. No. We’d told them to leave it open, but…”

  Darger skipped ahead in the video again. The ceremony was just hitting the exchange of vows when a murmur went through the crowd.

  “Do you smell smoke?” one of the voices said.

  Heads whipped around, searching for the source of the smell. One man seated
close to the altar suddenly pushed up from his seat and pointed at the flickering flame now visible along one wall.

  “It’s on fire!” he shouted.

  Instantly panic broke out. The crowd instinctively stampeded toward the front entrance, the same way they’d come in. But the space was too narrow, the door sealed shut. The medical examiner’s report said that several of the victims had injuries consistent with being trampled. After being knocked to the ground by the surging mass of people, they would have been helpless against the deadly smoke. Even once the rear exit had been discovered and some of the survivors pried the front door open from the outside, for many of those still inside, it was too late.

  Almost immediately, the entire front half of the church was filled with thick smoke. The black curtain of ash acted like a deadly curtain that concealed any means of escape.

  The visual footage on the camera became useless as the person holding it scrambled to find a way out. It was all a blur. Shaky shots that gave Darger motion sickness. But the audio was clear. Screams of terror. Coughing, choking gasps. The roar and sizzle of the flames.

  Darger closed the video and opened a different file, this one taken from the safety of outside the church. The person filming walked around the front corner of the building, focusing on the flames shooting from the windows. It was an absolute inferno. The fire crackled and whooshed like wind.

  From this angle, it looked like the flames engulfed the structure so completely that it was no longer possible to believe that there was wood underneath. In this moment, the building was made of fire itself. Inside, there was a periodic tinkling like breaking glass.

  The camera swung around to show the people huddled in the lawn, coughing and chugging water. A woman with singed hair clutched a crying child, rocking him back and forth. Another group clustered around a man with a severe burn on his arm, arguing about whether or not ice would help the wound.

  “Anthony!” a woman’s voice called out.

  She came into view then, a smear of ash marking her face. She ran up to a man wiping his neck with a handkerchief and clawed at his arm.

  “Do you have Anthony? Tell me you have my baby.”