White Fire

13

Larry Chivers had seen many scenes of destruction in his career as a fire investigator, but he had never seen anything like this. The house had been gigantic — fifteen-thousand-plus square feet — and built with massive timbers, beams, log walls, and soaring, cedar-shake roofs. It had burned with a ferocity that left puddles of glass where the windows had been and even warped the steel I-beam stringers. The snow had completely vanished from within a five-hundred-yard perimeter of the house, and the ruin still radiated heat and plumes of foul steam.

Chivers, who ran a fire investigation consulting firm out of Grand Junction, had been called in at seven that morning. Most of his work was for insurance companies looking to prove arson so they didn’t have to pay claims. But once in a while he got called in by the police to determine if a fire was an accident or a crime. This was one of those times.

It was a two-hour drive from Grand Junction, but he’d made it in ninety minutes, driving like hell in his Dodge pickup. Chivers liked traveling with the lightbar and siren going full blast, whipping past the poor speed-limit-bound schmucks on the interstate. Adding to the appeal of this case, the Roaring Fork Police Department paid well and didn’t nickel-and-dime him to death like some of the other PDs he worked for.

But his exhilaration had been dampened by this scene of horror. Even Morris, the chief of police, seemed undone by it: stammering, inarticulate, unable to take charge. Chivers did his best to shake the feeling. The fact is, these were rich Hollywood types who used this colossal house as a second home — second home! — only a few weeks out of the year. It was hard to gin up a lot of sympathy for people like that. No doubt the homeowner could build five more just like it and barely dent his wallet. The man who owned this house, a fellow named Jordan Baker, hadn’t been heard from, and nobody had been able to reach him yet to inform him of the fire. He and his family were probably off at some posh resort. Or maybe they had a third home. It wouldn’t surprise Chivers.

He began preparing himself for the walk-through, checking and organizing his equipment, testing his digital recorder, putting on latex gloves. One good thing about the chief’s apparent paralysis was that the fire scene hadn’t been trampled over and messed up by all the forensic specialists who were still gathering around, waiting to do their thing. Morris had pretty much kept everyone out, waiting for his arrival, and for that he was grateful. Although, as usual, there was considerable disturbance from firefighter activity — chopped-through floors and walls, shoveled and turned debris, everything soaked with water. The fire department had done a cursory structural integrity survey and had identified the areas that were unstable, taping them off.

Chivers shouldered his bag and nodded to Chief Morris. “Ready.”

“Good,” the chief said absently. “Fine. Rudy will take you through.”

The fireman named Rudy lifted the tape for him, and he followed the man down the brick walkway and through where the front door had been. The fire scene stank heavily of burnt and soggy plastic, wood, and polyurethane. There was still some residual heat — despite the freezing temperature the house itself was still sending plumes of steam into the cold blue sky. While he was required to wear a hard hat, he did not wear a respirator: Chivers saw himself as an old-fashioned fire-scene investigator, tough, no-nonsense, who relied more on intuition and left the science to the lab rats. He was used to the stench — and he needed his nose to sniff out any residual accelerants.

Inside the door, in what had been the entryway, he paused. The second floor had collapsed into the first, creating a crazy mess. A staircase ended in the sky. Puddles of glass and metal lay in the low spots, along with heaps of fire-shattered porcelain.

He walked from the entryway into what had obviously been the kitchen, observing the burn patterns. The first order of business was to determine if this was arson — if a crime had been committed. And Chivers was already sure one had. Only accelerants could have caused a fire to burn so hot and fast. This was confirmed as he looked around the kitchen, where he could see faint pour patterns on the remains of the slate floor. He knelt, removed a portable hydrocarbon sniffer from his bag, and took some air samples, moving it about. Moderate.

Still kneeling, he jammed a knife into the burnt, flaking floor and pried up a couple of small pieces, placing them in nylon evidence bags.

The kitchen was a mess, everything fused, scorched, melted. A second-floor bathroom had fallen into the middle of it, with the remains of a porcelain-covered iron claw-foot tub and bits of the sink, toilet, tiled floor, and walls all heaped and scattered about.

Using the sniffer, he got a big positive hit from the remains of the second-floor bathroom. Moving forward on hands and knees, keeping the sniffer low to the ground, Chivers swept it about, looking for a source. The hydrocarbon signature appeared to increase as he approached the tub itself. He rose, peered inside. There was a lot of stuff in the tub — and at the bottom, a layer of thick, black muck in which debris was embedded.

He sampled the muck, giving it a little stir with a gloved finger. The sniffer went off the charts. And then Chivers stopped cold. Among the muck and debris he could see the fragments of bones poking up — and in the area he had stirred up, some teeth. Human teeth. He carefully probed with his gloved finger, exposing a small piece of a skull, a fragment of jaw, and the rim of an orbit.

Chivers steadied himself, lowered the sniffer. The needle shot up again.

He took out his digital recorder and began murmuring into it. The house had not been empty, after all. Clearly, a body had been placed in the bathtub and burned with accelerant. Putting aside the recorder, he removed another nylon evidence bag and took samples of the debris and muck, including a few small bone fragments. As he poked about in the black paste he saw the gleam of something — a lump of gold, no doubt once a piece of jewelry. He left that, but took samples from the grit and muck around it, including a charred phalange.

He stood up, breathing heavily, feeling a faint wave of nausea. This was a bit more than he was used to. But then again, this was clearly going to be a big case. A very big case. Focus on that, he told himself, taking another deep breath.

Chivers nodded to Rudy and continued to follow the fireman through the rest of the house, working the sniffer, taking samples, and speaking his observations into the handheld digital recorder. The charred corpse of what had once been a dog was fused to the stone floor at the back door of the house. Next to it lay two long, disordered piles of gritty ashes, which Chivers recognized as the much-burnt remains of two more victims, both adults judging by the length of the piles, lying side by side. More puddles of gold and silver.

Jesus. He took a sniffer reading but didn’t come up with anything significant. Christ, no one had told him — and now he realized they probably didn’t know — that the fire had claimed human victims.

Another couple of deep breaths, and Chivers moved on. And then, in what had been the living room, he came upon something else. Debris from the collapsed floor above lay in sodden heaps, and sitting in the center was a set of partly melted bedsprings. As he moved toward the twisted springs, he noted loops of baling wire affixed to them, as if something had been tied to the bed. Four loops — approximately where the ankles and hands would have been. And in one of those loops, he spied a fragment of a small, juvenile tibia.

Oh, Jesus and Mary. Chivers moved the sniffer to it, and again the needle pinned. It was all too clear what had happened. A kid had been wired to the bed, doused with accelerant, and set on fire.

“I need some air,” he said abruptly, rising and staggering. “Air.”

The fireman grabbed his arm. “Let me help you out, sir.”

As Chivers exited the fire scene and reeled down the walkway, he saw — out of the corner of his eye — a pale man, dressed in black, no doubt the local coroner, standing beyond the edge of the crowd, staring at him. He made a huge effort to pull himself together.

“I’m all right, thanks,” he said to the firefighter, shedding the embarrassing arm. He looked around, located Chief Morris at the makeshift command center, surrounded by the gathering forensic teams — photographers, hair and fiber, latent, ballistics, DNA. They were suiting up, preparing to go in.

Take it easy, he said to himself. But he could not take it easy. His legs felt like rubber, and it was hard to walk straight.

He approached the chief. Morris was sweating, despite the cold. “What did you find?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“It’s a crime scene,” said Chivers, trying to control the quaver in his voice. Faint lights were dancing in front of his eyes now. “Four victims. At least, four so far.”

“Four? Oh, my God. So they were in there. The whole family…” The chief wiped his brow with a shaking hand.

Chivers swallowed. “One of the remains is of a…a juvenile who was…tied to a bed, doused with accelerant…and set on fire. Another was burned in…in…”

As Chivers tried to get out the words, the chief’s face went slack. But Chivers barely noticed. His own world was getting darker and darker.

And then, as he was still trying to finish his sentence, Chivers folded to the ground, collapsing in a dead faint.