Blessed Are Those Who Mourn (5 page)

 

Chapter 9

T
HE GRUMPY WATCH
commander I reach by phone at the Livermore Police Department says no missing persons reports have been filed in the past two weeks in his city.

I text Donovan again:
Was she also college student? Where
?

But he doesn't respond to my text.

I've just filed my murder story when Lopez swings by my desk. He has his camera bag slung over his shoulder and is jingling his car keys.

“House fire. Maybe a kid injured.” He presses one finger against the earbud in his ear. The cord trails down to where a scanner is clipped to his belt. “Three-­alarm.”

Usually most house fires are one or two alarms. Three alarms means they've called for additional firefighting vehicles and firefighters.

Lopez nods. “They've got two ambulances on standby. Sounds like they're searching for a kid inside one of the houses.”

I close my eyes for a second. It used to be so easy to write about death. Opening my eyes, I stare at the framed photos on my desk. Grace's little face, nearly identical to Caterina's picture beside her. The only difference is Grace has dark brown curls and light freckles, while Cat's skin was olive and her hair blue black. But their eyes are exactly the same, deep, knowing dark pools glinting with life and merriment.

A kid injured in a fire is nothing new for me. But it was easier before I became a mother. While it was always difficult to write about a child's death, now the very idea makes my heart pound and my stomach somersault.

Lopez waits. Not saying a word.

“Let's do this,” I say, standing and grabbing my bag and a notebook.

As soon as we get within two blocks of the house fire, we look for a parking spot. The street is blocked off with ambulances, fire trucks, trucks from the gas company, and TV vans. And this is around the corner from the actual fire. Huge, billowing streams of smoke show us where the fire is.

Lopez and I park and make our way around huge fire hoses snaking across the wet streets. At least three fire trucks are pulled up right in front of two houses that still have flames shooting out of them. Another four trucks are across the street. We split up, Lopez hurrying ahead to get shots of the flames and me scanning the crowd for someone who might be able to tell me something.

­People stand in clusters, talking and watching the fire consume the two houses. A firefighter walks a few feet in front of me. I hurry to his side and hold out my press pass, which is on a chain around my neck.

“Excuse me, I'm with the
Bay Herald
. Can you let your public information officer know I'm here?”

He casts a quick glance at me. “Sure. Wait here on the corner.”

As he walks away, I make a face. I'm not staying a block away from the fire when the rest of the world is in for the close-­up.

I'm heading closer to the fire when a burly man with a badge on his helmet appears before me.

“Looking for me?” I say with a smile. It's Rick Mason, the public information officer for the fire department. He is decked out in fire gear, but his ready grin is still there under his bushy moustache.

“Sorry I wasn't,” he says, smiling even bigger. “Didn't know you were here.”

Sort of what I figured. And why I didn't wait on that corner.

“What can you tell me?” I ask.

“Still sorting it all out,” he says. “Why don't you wait across the street from the fire, there's another reporter there, someone from the weekly paper. I'll come over when I know more.”

I'm about to ask him about the kid I heard about on the scanner when his radio crackles. He speaks into it and hurries off.

A reporter from the weekly? They don't usually cover much in this area. I remember my days on a weekly, busting my butt and wondering if I'd ever get a break at a big daily.

When I cross the street, I see a skinny guy with sideburns standing there, hands dug deep into his pockets.

“Hey, you with the weekly?”

He looks up in surprise.

“I'm Gabriella. With the
Bay Herald
. Been here long?”

He sticks out a hand. “Michael Dillman with the
Pleasant Valley Weekly.
I live right around the corner. I heard this on the scanner and walked over.”

“What do you know?”

“Not much.” The kid digs his hands even deeper into his pockets. He has a book bag slung over one shoulder. We stare at the fire for a few seconds.

“How long you been at the weekly?” I ask.

“Three years. My father keeps getting on my case. Tells me I'm not a real journalist until I work for your paper.”

I scoff. “That's absurd. You are a real journalist. We all have to start somewhere. I worked at weeklies. They're great training grounds. Do you have a card?”

Red creeps up his jaw to his ears. “No, we don't have business cards.”

“That's okay.” I dig around in my bag. “Here's my card. Let's get you in to talk to the editor about working for us someday.”

“Really?” The corners of his mouth turn up in a grin.

“Hell yes.”

I know firsthand that plugging away at a weekly for a few years is harder than some of my colleagues have ever worked. Many of them graduated with a master's in journalism and landed at my paper with very little boots-­on-­the-­ground training.

I glance around. Rick Mason is nowhere to be seen. The clock is ticking and deadline is looming.

“Screw waiting around,” I say. The kid's eyes widen.

I walk over to a group standing nearby.

“You guys live here?”

“Right over there,” one woman says, pointing to a house down the block.

“Do you know who lives in those houses?”

“Yeah. Dan and his family. His son is right there, across the street. A man with some kids lives in the blue one,” she says.

The flames are extinguished on the blue house, and the firefighters are concentrating on their efforts to contain the fire at the green house, which still has spurts of flame shooting out of the attic roof and window. A ladder truck holds a firefighter with a hose, who's leaning close to the roof and aiming a high-­pressure hose on it. Right when I think how dangerous it is, the ladder lowers. A few seconds later, there is a loud popping noise and flames shoot out a window right near where the firefighter was.

The ­people around me gasp.

I head back toward the weekly reporter.

“Dillman, take a walk with me.” I don't wait to see if he follows, but when I get across the street and am in front of the man in pajama pants, he is by my side.

“Heard you were Dan's son,” I say to the man, who is shading his eyes to watch the firefighters work.

“Yes.” He bounces up and down, his eyes darting around him.

“Did everyone in your house make it out safe?”

“Yes, thank God,” the man says, tugging on his pajama pants.

I sigh with relief. Nothing about a kid yet.

“I'm with the
Bay Herald,
and he's with the
Pleasant Valley Weekly,
” I say. “Can you tell us what happened?”

The son in the flip-­flops describes how he was watching TV when he heard a loud popping noise and a bang, and when he looked up, his window was engulfed in flames. The fire had leapt from the house next door and broken through his windows. The two houses are only about five feet apart.

“I ran screaming from my room for my mother and my grandmother,” he says, pointing at a bottom window. “My grandmother's room is in the attic, so we ran up there. I had to pick her up and carry her on my back. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I looked behind me and the stairway was filled with flames.”

“Grandma okay?”

“Yeah, they're giving her oxygen over at the ambulance around the corner,” he says, now pointing behind us.

I scribble as fast as I can, trying to get every word. I glance over at the weekly reporter to see if he is getting all these great quotes, but he stands there holding a pen and nodding. I shoot him a glance with a raised eyebrow. He has no notebook.

I rummage in my bag and hand him one. He looks at it like he doesn't know what to do. I mimic scribbling notes on mine. Maybe this is what his dad means about becoming a real reporter?

When I get done interviewing the son and get his phone number, I see Rick Mason heading back toward where we are supposed to be waiting. I nudge the weekly reporter. “Let's go.”

He follows me back to the sidewalk where we are supposed to be waiting, but Mason turns and heads toward the house on fire instead of where we are standing.

Just then Lopez shows up, and I introduce him and Dillman to each other.

Dillman tries to give me my notebook back. It is open, and there isn't any writing on it. I give him another look. Come to think of it, I don't remember him scribbling notes during the interview.

I push it back at him. “Keep it,” I say, watching his reaction.

But Dillman isn't looking at me. He's watching Lopez. He blushes and quickly stammers to Lopez, “Thanks. I forgot my notebook.”

Lopez gives him a grin. “It's cool, man.”

Dillman's face only returns to its natural color after Lopez lopes across the street and starts shooting more pictures.

A few seconds later, Rick Mason comes to give us the information. For once Rick isn't smiling.

It's bad. A five-­year-­old girl dead. The same age as Grace.

I try to swallow, my throat suddenly dry. And it gets worse.

“The father was able to get his wife and three other kids out of the house, but no matter how many times he ran inside, he couldn't find the five-­year-­old. He went in several times until finally the smoke was too powerful for him to handle,” Mason says, his eyebrows knit together under the brim of his fire helmet. “When firefighters arrived, they found the girl. It took them a few times searching the house. She had been hiding from the fire under one of the beds.”

That poor girl must have been so frightened. And her father, how can he ever get over losing her? He tried so hard to save her. My eyes begin to water, and it has nothing to do with the billowing smoke that engulfs us every time the wind changes direction.

I shoot a glance at Dillman. He's listening intently but still not taking notes. The notebook is open and he holds a pen a few inches above it, but the page remains blank.

“You okay?” Dillman asks after Mason walks away.

“I've got a five-­year-­old daughter,” I say.

Dillman squats down to tie the shoe on his sneakers. “Oh man, that's rough. How can you cover the cops beat with a kid?”

I shake my head. “I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't. We were at Ocean Beach over the weekend, and when some guy came up to say hi, I totally freaked out. I'm so paranoid, I worry it's going to mess her up.” I start flipping through my notes to make sure I got everything I need.

Dillman stands up again and frowns. “No, you got to be careful nowadays. You never know who is okay and who is a creep. Sometimes the nicest guys end up being sickos and nobody who knows them even knew it.”

We sit there in silence for a second before he turns to leave. I touch his sleeve.

“I'm serious about calling me. I'll introduce you to the executive editor, Matt Kellogg. Get some clips ready to show him. Three to four of your best stories.” Remembering how he didn't take notes, I add, “Even if he's not ready to hire you right now, he probably will have some good advice on building a career as a reporter.”

“Thanks.” He nods and gulps.

“What are your strengths? What can I tell Kellogg?” I dig around in my bag for my pack of gum.

“I'm good at talking to ­people.” He nods as if he's trying to convince himself this is true.

“Okay. What else?” I offer him a piece of gum but he declines with a shake of his head.

“I got a photographic memory.”

I pop a stick of bubble gum in my mouth. “Yeah. Like what?”

“If I'm out at a scene, like this, you know. I can go back and see it exactly in my mind. Like in your notes.” He closes his eyes for a second. “Your third page said, ‘bottom of the stairs, stairway filled with flames.' ”

I flip through my notebook. It's there. “Fuckin' A.”

Red spreads across his cheeks and up to his ears.

“Is that why you didn't bring a notebook and didn't take notes?”

He nods sheepishly.

“You lucky son of a gun,” I say.

“I also can read upside down,” he says. “One time I was in the mayor's office sitting across from him asking him about some rumors he'd been paid off to approve a housing development. He kept trying to cover up a piece of paper on his desk, but I saw it. It was a check for thirty thousand dollars from H&B Housing.”

I blow a bubble and turn to him. “Wait? You're the one who wrote that story that got the mayor investigated?”

He nods.

“Wow. You need to talk to Kellogg. I'll set it up.”

“Thanks. Better run back and get this fire written up,” he says. “Just so happens tonight is our weekly deadline.”

After he rounds the corner, I give the scene one last look. A few houses away, a woman stands in her yard behind a fence. I introduce myself.

“I don't really know the family in the blue house,” the woman says. “When I came out, the mother was running up and down the street wailing, while her husband was inside trying to find their daughter. She had on a bathrobe and no shoes. I gave her a jacket and some boots. She didn't say anything, just kept shivering and keening. When the firefighter brought her daughter out, the little girl was limp, and the mother buckled onto her knees in the middle of the street. Was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen.”

As she tells the story, she covers her face, her shoulders heaving with sobs. I put my arm around her for a second and then hold out my pack of gum without saying a word. She takes it, wiping the tears off her face with the back of her hand. We sit and chew our gum silently, staring at the charred remains of the house across the street.