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

  The man shook his head, and the woman turned back to face the church.

  “Anthony’s still in there! He’s still inside!”

  She stumbled toward the door, but the man with the handkerchief snagged her arm and held her tight. She struggled against him, wailing the name over and over again and staring at the blaze.

  Behind them, a huge beam of wood dropped from the ceiling just beyond the door, sending up a cloud of sparks.

  “Oh Jesus,” someone murmured, and it was a moment before Darger realized it wasn’t on the video.

  She swiveled to the right and found Mr. Thorne at her left shoulder, his eyes wide and glued to the screen of her phone.

  A commotion erupted in the video now as the people outside the burning church realized that not everyone made it out.

  “We have to do something!”

  Mr. Thorne listed, his knees buckling. Beck and Darger reached out at the same moment to catch him, just barely managing to keep him from going down.

  “Do what?” another voice responded. “The whole thing’s engulfed! We have to wait for the fire department.”

  “Turn it off,” Thorne begged. “Please. I can’t… I can’t listen to that anymore.”

  Darger silenced her phone and returned it to her pocket.

  They led Mr. Thorne over to the live oak tree and lowered him to the ground.

  “This shouldn’t have happened,” he said, eyes watering. “I still don’t understand how this could happen. This was such a happy place. I grew up here. My kids grew up here. I’ve had nothing but fond memories. Nothing but good things to associate with it. And now this.”

  A tear loosened its grip on his eyelashes and slid down his cheek.

  “The church had been abandoned for most of my childhood. Used for storage, equipment for the orchards. My playhouse on rainy days. I was the one who fixed it up, turned it into a venue. I tried to make something for the community here. A shared space. A place for people to come together and celebrate some of the biggest moments of their lives, and then… something like this happens and it all comes crashing down.”

  He studied the church for some time before turning his face away and closing his eyes.

  “I keep seeing the families, the mothers and fathers of the children who died, on the TV saying all this stuff… that those responsible for the deaths need to be held accountable. And if I’d only repaired that door sooner, those kids might still be alive. Does that make it partially my fault? Am I responsible? That’s what the reporters on my front lawn want to know. That’s the question they ask me when I go out to get the mail in the morning.” Thorne wiped his cheek with the back of his knuckles. “How do I answer that?”

  Darger knew he was feeling guilty, wondering if he was to blame for this tragedy unfolding on his property.

  “I don’t think anyone blames you. Not really,” Darger said. “It’s just that most people don’t know what to do with the grief. It overwhelms them and comes out as anger, and the anger makes them feel like something should be done. That someone should be punished. And someone does deserve to be punished here, but it isn’t you. Someone set this fire on purpose. That’s the responsible party.”

  Thorne bowed his head, his body shaking with sobs. Darger placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “I will find him.”

  Chapter 10

  “Well, you called that one,” Darger said.

  Beck raised an eyebrow. “Hm?”

  “The first thing you said when we got here was that you didn’t think he was handling this all very well.”

  She glanced back at where they’d left Mr. Thorne to gather himself while they continued their circuit of the place.

  Beck followed her gaze and nodded.

  “I feel for the guy,” she said. “It seems like such a small thing. An inoperable door. But you add fire into the mix and suddenly something as small as being able to open a door could be the difference between life and death for some of those folks. In any case, legally speaking, even with the inoperable door, the venue was up to code as far as the proper number of exits and so forth.”

  They passed the doors in question again, and Darger couldn’t help but stare into the gaping opening. What might have happened had those doors been unlocked that day? How many of the victims might have survived?

  Darger thrust her hands in her pockets and turned to Beck.

  “Any chance our arsonist could have been the one that broke in? He might have been checking the place out as a possible site for a fire and just made it look like kids. Maybe even sabotaged the door handle on purpose.”

  Beck shook her head.

  “We got the kids on camera, and they all had alibis for the time of the fire, so we’ve crossed them off the list of suspects for the arson.”

  Darger hadn’t recalled seeing any security footage from the church in the evidence she’d received.

  “There’s security cam footage from the day of the fire?” she said, not able to keep the eagerness from her voice.

  “No. The kids filmed themselves breaking in, believe it or not.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was,” Beck said. “And I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a perfect angel as a youngster. We might have gotten up to some mischief here and there, sure, but we weren’t dumb enough to incriminate ourselves by documenting it.”

  Darger’s chuckle was interrupted by a sharp intake of breath.

  They’d reached the back end of the church, the top of which was a skeleton of blackened wood and splintered beams. The utter destruction was startling.

  Darger played a new video, this one from after the fire department arrived. Firemen in reflective suits shouted to one another through the thick haze of smoke and steam. They re-arranged hoses, changing positions, trying to gain control over the fire. On one side of the lawn, paramedics administered oxygen and first aid to some of the survivors.

  Behind them, the flames flickered and danced. A column of black smoke rose like a mushroom cloud into the sky.

  Over the low roar of the fire, Darger suddenly heard something whistle and pop, and then what sounded like several small explosions.

  “What is that?” Darger asked.

  “Fireworks. They were going to do a little show once it got dark. Can’t do much out here, on account of the forest fire risk. The weak stuff — what the state of California calls the ‘safe and sane’ fireworks — are all you can purchase, and even then they’re only legal to buy from June 28 to July 6. I guess all the restrictions make what little we can do extra special.”

  The video footage jumped to a new angle, this one giving a clear shot through the entrance of the church. The entire inside glowed like a furnace, everything colored in shades of yellow and orange. The wind kicked up and the flames danced higher, roared louder. Smoke roiled and fluttered.

  Darger skipped through the rest of the footage from the afternoon and into the evening. Red and blue lights twirled against the sides of the church in the fading light of day. The fire crews still bustled about, talking into radios and issuing orders, but there was less urgency in their movements. By now, they knew the church was a lost cause.

  As the video zoomed out to give a fuller picture of the church, something shifted near the peak of the steeple. An almost imperceptible shudder. There was a muffled shout and one of the firemen ran forward, waving his hands at the two men running the hoses at the front of the church. They stepped back just as the roof caved in. The front facade crumbled and fell, landing where the men had been standing only a few seconds before.

  More pieces of the roof collapsed in on itself, falling to pieces. Cinders and sparks flew into the air, looking like a thousand fireflies released from the blaze.

  The screen went black as the video ended. She opened the last file, footage from the day after the fire.

  In the gray light of dawn, men from the local fire department hauled and shifted debris away from the main door of the church. The
y cleared a path inside, then set to work reinforcing key structural points so that the investigative work could continue without fear of the remainder of the roof collapsing. A pair of hydraulic struts supported the main doorway while wood rakers were used to shore up other parts of the structure.

  Outside the church, debris was raked into little piles — scorched bits of wood siding and shriveled wedding flowers instead of the traditional dead leaves of autumn.

  Darger skipped past most of the raking and hammering and drilling, and then the fire investigation team and coroner were given the all clear.

  They found the first bodies just inside the main interior doorway — what looked like a couple huddled together, though it was hard to be certain in this blackened state. A camera flashed to document it, and then bright yellow body bags were brought in and wrapped around the figures, one then the other. The lengthy operation of logging and processing the dead had just begun.

  Darger fast-forwarded a little more. Body after body found, photographed, bagged, and carted off — the camera flash flickering in fast motion as she watched the sped-up video.

  Something caught her eye, a change, a lull in the rhythm of the flashes. She rewound a little bit. Watched.

  Men helped clear away a cracked pew to reveal a body below — a body smaller than all of the others, tiny legs bright white and stark against the smears of dark soot.

  This was the first of the children they’d find.

  The assistant coroner snapping the photos raised his camera just like he had with all the previous bodies, but his arms shook. After a second, he lowered the camera and cupped a hand at his brow, stepping off to the side to gather himself.

  Chapter 11

  Darger attempted to question Thorne again once he’d pulled himself together — simple questions like whether or not he’d noticed anyone or anything suspicious in the days or weeks leading up to the fire.

  “If you’re asking me whether I had any inkling that this would happen, then the answer is no. Hell, if you’d told me ahead of time that this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed you. It’s too awful to comprehend. Even now, standing here in front of the wreckage, I can’t quite wrap my head around it.”

  Howard Thorne seemed to her a man broken, and she didn’t think she’d get anything further out of him. She thanked him for his time, and then she and Beck watched his slouched form drift back toward his Volkswagen. He moved like a much older man, and Darger wondered how many years the stress of this had taken off his life already.

  Glancing at her watch, Darger winced when she saw how quickly the morning hours had already melted away.

  “I’ve got to head back soon,” Darger said. “I’m supposed to meet up with Agent Luck this afternoon.”

  Beck nodded.

  “Let’s get a move on, then. I don’t suppose you’d mind if I run a quick errand on the way. If I don’t bring home batteries, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Darger smiled, remembered Beck’s daughter and her robotic dog toy.

  “Not at all.”

  * * *

  They parted ways in Beck’s driveway, Darger heading toward the street and Beck to the house.

  Just as Darger was climbing into her rented minivan, Beck paused on the stoop and called out to her.

  “Agent Darger?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really appreciate you taking the trouble to drive all the way out here.”

  Shaking her head, Darger said, “It wasn’t any trouble.”

  “No, it’s just… sometimes when you’re running a small outpost like this, you tend to get overshadowed by the big city happenings. Some folks might think our problems aren’t as big as what goes on in L.A. But this fire… there were a lot of people in this town affected by it. Most of us knew at least one of the victims, if not more. And it means a lot for you to come out here. To get to know the place a little. It’s important, I think.”

  Darger nodded.

  “It is. Thank you for showing me around,” she said, giving Beck a final wave. “I’ll be in touch.”

  The scene shifted in reverse as Darger drove back into the city, the green hills reminiscent of a backdrop from The Lord of the Rings transitioning to an endless sprawl of strip malls, apartment buildings, and small mid-century homes.

  Their killer was here somewhere. Hiding in a crowd of some 13 million people. The idea of finding him was daunting when she thought of it that way. But her whole job was to narrow the suspect pool.

  The fire at the church, that was the key. It had been a spectacle, for one. But because of its isolated location, she was certain it hadn’t been a random choice by the arsonist. He knew the place. Maybe not the church specifically, but the town. There had to be a connection there.

  Her mind instantly jumped to Howard Thorne, remembering what Beck had said about the wild days of his youth. That part might fit the profile, but the rest didn’t. He was too old, for one. Then there was his display of grief, which had seemed genuine enough to her.

  Lastly and most damning was the fact that he ran Thorne Farms, which by all accounts was an institution in the community. No, their killer was someone who felt like an outsider, she was sure of that. Even if he played the part of a normal person sometimes, it wasn’t who he really was.

  Still, she felt it was best to exhaust every avenue, so Beck would be looking into Thorne’s background, just in case.

  The steady hum of the car’s tires on the road lulled Darger into sort of a daze, and her thoughts wandered to the captain and her family.

  Beck had to be around the same age as Darger, and yet she was able to balance a husband, kids, and her career. Darger couldn’t even seem to juggle a single relationship with her job. Seeing Beck manage a full life like that made Darger feel like she was some kind of failure as an adult. Like she wasn’t a real grown-up but some kind of overgrown adolescent. Still figuring things out. Doomed to spend the rest of her life figuring it out, maybe.

  The Los Angeles skyline came into view as she crested a small rise, the details of the skyscrapers blurred through layers of smog.

  Darger sighed, willing the somber and self-pitying thoughts from her consciousness.

  She wasn’t a psycho who got his kicks lighting up a church full of people, at least. That was something.

  Chapter 12

  The automatic doors whisked aside with a whoosh. A janitor mopped the floor near the entryway, filling the space with the scent of lemon cleaner.

  Darger crossed the lobby and took an elevator to the fourth floor. The steel doors opened on a long corridor with windows on one side and a series of rooms on the other. She wasn’t sure which one was right, but she heard voices coming from an open door further down the hall.

  Boots thudding against the tile floor, she made her way down the passageway. The voices grew louder, enough that she could make out what they were saying now.

  “The guy is just completely fucked up, right? Dressed in an undershirt and boxer shorts, no pants. Blows a 0.2 on the Breathalyzer. He can barely stand, let alone drive, so I don’t know how he hadn’t already wrapped the 4-wheeler around a telephone pole,” the voice said. “He’s a big guy, too. Probably 250, wouldn’t you say, Teej?”

  “At least,” a second voice responded.

  “Maneuvering this beefcake into the back of the patrol car is no easy feat,” the first voice said. “He’s flip-flopping around like a marionette, not exactly fighting us, but not helping either. Swaying, you know. Letting gravity have its way with his dangling limbs. Teej is swearing. I’m breaking a sweat.”

  Darger reached the open door and peered inside. Officers Klootey and Bishop were leaned back in swivel chairs. Luck sat on the edge of a desk nearby. A pair of over-the-ear headphones rested around Bishop’s neck.

  “But we finally get him inside, and I lean across to buckle him in, and that’s when the gates of his bladder open as if by divine intervention, gallons of fluid spilling forth like the great flood the pr
ophesies spoke of,” Bishop continued.

  “He peed on you?” Luck asked, and Bishop nodded.

  “We are talking an extraordinary amount of piss,” Klootey said, spinning the wire of a pair of earbuds like a lasso.

  Bishop shuddered.

  “Thank Christ I keep an extra uni in my locker.”

  Darger rested one shoulder against the door frame.

  “Are you boys swapping watersports stories again?” Darger asked.

  Luck turned his stubbled face toward her and frowned, apparently not approving of her joke.

  Klootey hissed out a laugh.

  “Hey, wasn’t Albert Fish into the old golden shower?”

  Nodding, Darger said, “Oh yeah. And it was common at the time for widows to post classified ads looking for marriage prospects. Fish used to write obscene letters to them, and apparently he often went into great detail about his urophilia. He mentioned it in one of his famous confession letters, as well. And that wasn’t even the grossest thing he was into.”

  Klootey stopped spinning his wire lasso.

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Darger gestured to the styrofoam containers nearby.

  “Did you guys just eat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you don’t want to hear it. Trust me.” She turned to Luck. “So you got some interviews lined up for us?”

  Luck rose to his feet.

  “I actually came up here to ask if these guys might have any ideas,” he said, smoothing his tie, though she noticed he still wasn’t wearing a jacket. “What do you think? Any witnesses that might warrant a second pass?”

  Stroking his chin, Bishop appeared to give it some thought.

  “Hey, T.J. What was the lady’s name… the one that lives next door to the Galitis fire? The one that called 911 that night.”

  “Something with a P, wasn’t it?” Klootey squinted. “Peyton?”

  Bishop shook his head.

  “Not Peyton, but that’s close. Palin? Pay… Payne!”

  “Payne, yeah. That’s it.”