Fanning The Fire Marshal's Flame

Catching Up

Diarmid watched his friend curiously finish his breakfast while sipping his coffee. “You didn’t tell her.” He didn’t even try to hide the accusatory tone to his voice.

“Nope. She’ll figure it out.” Diarmid grunted. “She’s a smart girl.”

“I’m sleeping on your sofa for two weeks. You could have given her a heads up.”

“She’s hardly around anymore anyway. She met a bunch of mouthy women at the shelter,” he checked himself and sighed. “No. That’s not fair. She met a bunch of strong women who have helped her get better Diarmid. They are all like Corry. For a long time, she just worked at the shelter and doing top secret work for Clara Draxton and her friends. Then over the last couple of years she started getting more and more involved with them and working on projects for Draxton’s company. She has Corry and a girl named Chyna around a lot. She’s been getting stronger and stronger. She worked three years solely at the shelter, the last five back and forth between the shelter and in Manhattan. A few weekends ago, she went on a girl’s weekend away down South on a private jet owned by the husband of one of the girls she volunteers with. I think there was almost fifteen of them. I don’t know what any of them have in common but since they all met at the women’s shelter, I can hazard a guess.”

“You think they’ve all been hurt?” Diarmid asked quietly.

“The Corry one who was here, I didn’t know she was here one day, and I walked into the bathroom. She was just getting out of the shower after being at motocross,” he looked away embarrassed. “Her back is full of scars. Tons of them. It was in the moment I realized these women pull together. I mean anyone who knows the name Clara Draxton knows she had been kidnapped as a teenager and they left scars on her face. It seems logical to me women who are connecting at a shelter are connecting for a reason.”

“It makes sense,” Diarmid agreed. “It helps her, then? Lita?”

“They’re mouthy and feisty but Lita is stronger because of them. I just wish they’d stop hitting on me and talking about s*x when I’m in the room. It’s gross.”

Diarmid chuckled at his friend’s obvious discomfort. “You blush, Chief. You’re a ginger and you blush. You’re fair game.”

Conor glowered and reached for his coffee cup. “But do they need to do it with Lita right there?”

“Her friend called her Lolita. Her full name. She used to hate it as a kid.”

He gave a sad sigh, “Lita went to the fireman’s ball a timid shy little girl who liked building science experiments and doing the pas de chat in my basement and left a different person altogether. For two weeks she lay on the sofa out there and barely moved other than to attend the internal disciplinary hearing which was so f*****g rushed because Reardon was the boss’ kid. They blocked so much evidence and they tore her apart in the conference room. It was brutal,” he wiped the corner of his eye. “The inquiry fell apart and she came home the next day and told me she’d told the DA she was refusing to cooperate any further and without her cooperation, they couldn’t press charges against Reardon. She said she had talked to a woman on the stairs of the precinct who told her to go to the women’s shelter and talk to Clara Draxton, but she was so angry she didn’t right away. A couple nights later she disappeared on me and then came home in the morning and told me she had met with Clara. She left the chat with Draxton a woman on a mission.”

“Clara Draxton told her not to cooperate with the police?”

“No, she wanted him prosecuted and said she would pay for every damn bit of legal counsel she needed but Lita was broken, Diarmid. Broken. I was so b****y overprotective. I drove her to every counselling session. I took her to and from the shelter. Every class. I retired and made her my job. It didn’t help. She was just broken inside. She went from crying on the sofa for two weeks to rarely crying again. She channelled her energy into getting better. She started kickboxing and karate. She went to therapy five days a week. She finished her degree and her masters before she was twenty-two, working part time. Draxton paid for all her tuition so long as she continued with her treatment and her volunteer work.”

“Clara Draxton paid your daughter’s tuition?” Diarmid sat back. “Holy s**t. She is hobnobbing with the rich and famous.”

“Clara came here one day about a year after the incident. Sat with me right at this table and told me her shelter helps more women overcome a***e than any other in the state and it’s because the women who get help there, continue to help there when they are well. They keep giving back and turning out stronger and stronger women. She explained the services and then she told me Lita was special. She was brilliant and dynamic, and she was hiding all her true potential because she was angry and aching. She said Lita was only nineteen, but she could see an amazing future for her, but I needed to stop babying her. If she couldn’t step out of the house without a chaperone, she was not going to flourish. She offered to pay for my counseling as well.”

Diarmid blinked in surprise. “Really?”

“She did and I went. I went on my own and I went with Lita. It was around then I realized she had stopped introducing herself as Lita to people. She used her full name. I questioned her why one day and she told me only the people she loved and trusted would ever call her Lita again.” He looked away, “my guess is Reardon called her Lita while he abused her.”

“Motherfucker,” Diarmid clenched his fist on the table. “You know they asked me to come back and investigate the fire where he got hurt?” He still remembered how excited she had been for the dance when he’d seen her the week before. A kid with her whole life ahead of her. Today she seemed bitter and cold.

“I know.” Conor looked to him. “I know you declined. Asshole asked me point blank if I paid an arsonist to try to assassinate his kid.”

“I can’t believe his father wanted me to investigate. He thinks you paid to firebomb the place, but I’ll be honest, Conor, even if I had taken the case back then, I would have thrown evidence if I’d thought you, were the culprit.” They shared a smirk, “she was such an innocent kid, and they took advantage of it. Everyone knew. We all did. He is guilty. I was so f*****g glad he got burned and when I found out his d**k was on fire like a b****y candle, I think the only person happier than me might have been you.”

Conor chuckled, “I may have lifted a glass or two in celebration.”

He leaned back in his seat, “so basically she rose from the hell and become a strong resilient, yet still very angry woman and he never gets to use his d**k again.”

“You find her angry?” Conor laughed outright. “I don’t see it. Tough yes but not angry.”

“She gave me a look when she came in here as if she wanted me dead. We used to all play Uno together right at this table and today she wanted me dead.”

Conor gave a shrug, “she looks at everyone with a d**k like that. Don’t take it personal.” He sighed and took up his coffee cup, “pretty sure though you aren’t asking to sleep on my sofa because of my kid, and if you are, get the f**k out.”

Diarmid laughed loudly at his friend, “nasty. No. There’s been a weird series of explosions and fires on the east coast, predominant here in New York State, a couple in Maine and in a New Hampshire and crazy one not long ago in Boston. They get more and more strange.”

“Pyro?”

“Serial pyro. We think, and don’t repeat this, but we think it’s covering for a serial killer. The problem is, we can’t find a damn piece of DNA. No bones, no dust, nothing. About a year ago here in the city, a rundown house was burned to the ground but the way the fire was set was so deliberate the local guys thought maybe it was the same guy who did Reardon’s.”

Connor snapped his head back in surprise, “What?”

“Yeah. It’s why his file is now on my desk, like it or not. The difference between his file and the rest is simple. Reardon’s explosion occurred when he was standing directly over the device, and it was strategically placed. As soon as he stepped onto whatever mechanism he reported to have heard click, the thing shot upwards on him and burned so hot it melted his f*****g suit and lit his wick on fire. It was a booby trap. We know it was. Someone hated either him or someone on his squad. Considering the number of women who had come forward after the explosion to report one of the five of the self-proclaimed brat pack date r***d them, it could be anyone.” Diarmid watched his friend’s eyes widen incredulously, “you didn’t know?”

“No. I had no idea. How many women?”

“Reardon’s count as of last year is at eight. The pack as a whole, seventeen. It’s all kept pretty hush hush. He’s not on the squad anymore because of his injuries and one of the guys has such bad PTSD from the fire he’s never working again. The other three are still on the roster. The allegations go back as far as when they were in high school and training. The Me-Too movement brought them out of the woodwork.”

“Did they think Lita?” he let the question trail off

Diarmid shook his head. “If she was ever a suspect, I wasn’t made aware, but everyone knows you and I are friends so they probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.” He gave a loud sigh, “besides, if memory serves me right, the night they all burned to the ground, you were with me in Boston and Lita was on a retreat for the weekend. Wasn’t she upstate?”

He nodded, “yeah, she was at the assault survivor thing in the middle of nowhere. It was the first time she really wanted to go do anything. She came back after actually smiling and then I had to tell her he almost died. She went from joyful to sad and angry.”

“She was upset?” Diarmid made a face of surprise.

“I don’t know if upset was the word. I think for her, deep down, she had always hoped he’d confess what he did. She told me it pissed her off because now he got to play victim and it wasn’t fair.”

“I can see her point,” Diarmid sighed. “Poor Lita.”

“Don’t let her hear you say poor Lita. She’ll kick your ass.”

“Noted,” Diarmid grinned, “Anyway, long story short, same person who set the blaze the boys went in to battle and detonated a few explosives along the way, also set the one in New York over a year ago. It was a house. Rumored in the neighborhood to be used by a local g**g for whatever they were using it for. The same accelerants and the same type of burn pattern were evident in a few spots but it’s the heat which is making us think they’re linked. They’re too f*****g hot.”

“But two fires don’t make a serial pyro.”

“No but eight does.”

“Eight?”

“Eight. I had one in Boston last month and it was f*****g weird.” He leaned back and scratched his head. “Get this, the house looks like it imploded on itself. The only thing I can think of is the gas line which wasn’t supposed to be connected was connected and ruptured after having a lot of gas built up but,” he held his finger up against Conor’s nod, “there was no gas, Connor. There’s nothing. The house melted away from the inside out. The heat of the blaze as hot as the one to have burned Reardon’s d**k off, and maybe hotter still.”

“Holy s**t. What’s your theory?”

“Five days after the blaze PD got a tip of a girl being buried in the yard a few houses down, she’d been missing a while. There was a real estate agent and his kid and his kids’ friend who all went missing after an alleged a*******n of girls from their school. The girls though insist the boys had drugged them with needles to the neck and when they woke up, they were in hospital. Hospital records show the drugs in their systems and based on how it dissipated, their timelines match. Whether the boys chickened out and dropped them off in a different location I don’t know but the father and the two boys left their house in the middle of the night. Turns out real estate guy was linked to a local g**g in his youth and still had ties. Maybe his kids were in on it, but the boys and the father are gone. If they screwed up with the girls, they were supposed to deliver?” He made a face, “gangs don’t just traffic drugs anymore, Conor.”

Conor put his hand over his mouth, “no. You think they were trafficking girls?”

“Yes. My theory is, there is a cartel or a g**g operating out of the city here, and when one of their guys f***s up or their locations gets exposed, they burn it down. I think the blazes are so hot because they’re destroying bodies but neither me nor our forensics team can sort out the composition of chemicals being used or more importantly how it could be set off and not get burned. We’re not talking an amateur with a can of gasoline and a match. It’s chemicals, explosions, accelerants, and stuff normal people wouldn’t be able to get. It’s burning so hot it’s melting entire houses in on themselves. You would think the person responsible would end up with burns on their hands, faces, feet, something from setting up the blaze and then leaving but there’s nothing and each fire gets more and more intense.”

“Remote detonation?”

“Yeah, but you still have to put the s**t in place. Who is carrying these kinds of compounds around?”

“You should ask Lita.”

“Lita?” he frowned, “why Lita?”

“Her master’s project was on a chemical reaction of some kind. I don’t know. I admit her brains come from her mother’s side of the family. All I know is she’s got a master’s in chemical s**t. She’s been working at Draxton.”

“Isn’t Draxton technology?”

“Yeah, but she’s also not one to let a good brain go to waste. She found a project for Lita to do.”

Diarmid chuckled, “well if she stops glowering at me for ten seconds, I might pick her brain.”

“Speaking of women who hate your guts, what happened with Abigail?”

Just like that, Diarmid felt the familiar ache of humiliation rear its ugly head.