Mahu Fire (9 page)

THE FIRE INVESTIGATOR

I started toward Doc Takayama, but on the way I saw Steve Hart and detoured over to talk to him. He was a tall, skinny haole with slightly shaggy blond hair, recently promoted from patrolman to detective. He worked district one with me, though he was on the night shift so we hardly knew each other.

“Well, well, it’s the big hero,” he said. “Come to give me your side of the story?”

“Actually, I want to tell you I’m taking over the investigation.”

“What the fuck? You think I can’t handle this? Cause I just got my shield? Let me tell you, I’ve been working the streets for long enough, I know how to run an investigation.”

“I talked to Sampson…”

“So he doesn’t think I can handle this? Jesus Christ, they don’t even give you a chance here. I mean, I know I’ve got a lot of open investigations, but shit, everybody’s got them.” He looked at me. “I see your name up on the board a lot. You’re not short of work.” Then he closed his jaw tight and nodded. “I get it. This is some kind of gay thing, isn’t it? You think because I like girls I can’t relate to this.”

“Whoa!” I held up my hand. “Don’t get bent out of shape. This doesn’t have anything to do with you. Shit, I don’t know what kind of detective you are. I hardly fucking know you.” I held my thumb up, pointing back at the burned-out building. “But you know who was in there? My parents. My brothers. My best friends. I asked a friend to go with me to this thing, and he’s in the hospital now. Two other people I know are at Queen’s too, along with my dad. You know how crazy that makes me?”

“I can work this case,” he said. “I want you to know that. I know I’m green, but I’m a good detective.”

“I don’t care. You can be the best fucking detective on this force, but I’m not going to let this case go.” I pulled out my cell phone. “You want me to call Sampson, have him tell you himself?”

“You’re his pet, aren’t you? I know the deal—the department wanted to can your ass and Sampson pulled you in. Reach out to the gay community and all that shit.”

“Goddamn mother fucker!” I reached over and grabbed a piece of Hart’s shirt, startling the shit out of him. “This is not about who I choose to have sex with, you asshole. These people messed with my family and I’m gonna get them. And anybody who stands in my way gets run the fuck over. You understand?”

I finally got through to him. “All right,” he said, backing away a little as I let go of his shirt front. “You want the case, it’s yours.” He pointed over to a recessed storefront across from the Marriage Project offices. In the sheltered area a couple of uniforms were sitting at folding tables, taking statements from people in evening clothes. “You got some guys collecting over there. I got the street blocked off. I’ll leave all my paperwork on your desk. okay? Just don’t go crazy on me.”

I thought I heard him mutter the word “faggot” under his breath but I wasn’t sure. I said, “Yeah, right. Whatever,” and stalked over to Doc Takayama, who stood in consultation with a guy in a yellow fireproof jumpsuit. It was unzipped halfway down his chest, so I could see a white T-shirt and dark chest hair. Something about the hyper-masculinity of his fireman’s outfit gave me a little jolt. But I focused on Doc.

He looked at me with interest. “Didn’t expect to see you investigating, Kimo. I thought you were on the other side of this one.”

“Well, you could say I’ve got an inside perspective. This our illustrious Vice Mayor?”

Doc nodded and looked down. Wilson Shira’s head and shoulders were relatively undamaged, though smudged with smoke, though there was a place on the side of his head where the hair and skin had burned away, leaving an ugly piece of skull clearly visible. The rest of him, however, had not fared so well. His arms and torso were still recognizable, though blackened in places, while from the waist down he was a mere skeleton, just a few charred bones. It was obvious that extreme care had been taken to remove him from the fire.

Doc looked back up at me. “Kimo, you know Mike Riccardi from the Fire Department?”

The fireman stuck his hand out to me and I finally got a good look at him.

He was the handsome guy I’d seen the day before, in ballistics.

We shook, as Doc completed our introductions. “The detective’s reputation precedes him,” Riccardi said with a smile. “I got a whiff of some of his work Monday.”

He was a mixed-breed like me, a lot of haole and probably some Japanese or Korean in him, but he was movie-star handsome. He had a thick black mustache and wavy black hair that I was sure danced just short of any fire department regulations on length. I could not tell what color his eyes were, but there was a smudge of soot on his left cheek. I had a crazy impulse to wet my finger and reach over and clean him up, but fortunately I restrained myself. At that point, though, I couldn’t tell if the hammering in my heart and head were aftereffects of smoke inhalation, or if they came from looking at him—or from our hands touching when we exchanged business cards.

“So tell me what you think about the fire, Mike,” Doc said.

“Let me ask a few questions of the detective here,” he said, and there seemed to be a kind of condescension in his voice. It might have been that that I was still dressed in a grimy tuxedo and a pleated white shirt that was now torn and sooty, the ends of Gunter’s bow tie still dangling from my neck. I didn’t look like the cream of the Honolulu police department.

Then again, he’d said my reputation preceded me. It was possible that he, like most of the rest of metropolitan Honolulu, knew I was the gay cop. If he wanted a pissing contest, though, he’d learn soon enough that I didn’t have to sit down to enter. “What can I tell you that a trained fire investigator couldn’t figure out for himself?” I asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Eyewitness accounts are part of any investigation,” he said mildly. “Surely you know that, detective?”

“I’d like to get this guy back to the morgue sometime in this century,” Doc said. “If you two dogs could stop growling at each other long enough to get your business with my friend here out of the way.”

“Sorry, Doc,” I said. “It’s been a long day.” I turned to Riccardi. I gave him the same quick rundown I’d given Lieutenant Sampson, ending with me and Gunter standing outside the building, facing down the crowd. I left out the part about us holding hands.

“You heard one explosion?”

I nodded.

“Did the fall knock you out at all? Could there have been any other blasts you might not have heard?”

“I was stunned but I didn’t pass out until after I came out of the fire. There was only one explosion.”

“That was my guess based on the fire pattern. Now tell me exactly what it was like when you ran back into the building. Where was the fire? Was it all around you, or contained in one area?”

I took a moment to remember, and in that time I was surprised to see how many levels my mind was working on. Riccardi was talking just like a detective, asking the kind of clear, analytical questions I would have if I hadn’t been a witness. It was strange to be on the other side of an investigation, even if only for a few minutes. Another level of my brain was collecting memories of what it had been like when I burst into the first floor of the building. And the third level couldn’t help noticing how sexy Mike Riccardi was when he was serious.

“The front door wasn’t hot when I opened it, and I could see clear to the back. Robert, he’s the administrative assistant, he was coming in that way and I remember telling him to get out. He was determined to save some files, though. We kind of knocked past each other as I was heading for the stairs.”

“So the stairway was clear then?”

“Absolutely. The only fire was in the back corner, where the bathroom was.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture it. “I don’t think there were any walls left there. I just had the impression of flames.” When I opened my eyes again I saw he was taking notes on a secretary’s steno pad.

Suddenly I remembered the sweaty guy heading for the bathroom during Vic Ramos’s speech. “If the bomb was in the bathroom, I might have seen the guy who planted it.”

Riccardi’s eyebrows rose. “Yes?”

“Just an idea. I don’t know for sure. But this guy was sweating, looking like he was going to be sick. Could just have been nerves.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“Maybe. Like somebody I’ve seen before somewhere, but couldn’t put a name or a place to it. I’ll get with an artist as soon as I can and see if I can get a picture of him.”

“Good. So go on. You ran in the door of the building?”

“I ran up the stairs. There were two rooms up there, a big meeting room that faced the street and an office that overlooked the back lanai. I didn’t go into the front room; I went straight ahead, into the office. I remember I stopped short, almost fell over, because I saw a big chunk of the floor was missing.”

He wrote furiously. “Go on.”

“My friend Harry came up right behind me. His girlfriend’s baby was in there, on one of the desks, but the blast had knocked the kid to the ground. Harry went around to the left, toward the baby, and I went to the right. Sandra Guarino, she’s the executive director, she was slumped over a desk at the back of the room. I had to work my way around carefully because there was this big hole in the floor, and there were sparks jumping up out of the flames, crackling and catching on things, and it was very bright, from the fire, but also kind of dark, because of the smoke.”

I looked over at the Doc, who was listening intently. “It was like a picture in a Sunday school textbook of what hell was like.” I started to shiver a little.

“It’s all right, Kimo,” Riccardi said, and he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re almost done.”

I took a deep breath. “I made it around to Sandra and I felt for a pulse. She had one, but it was weak. I wrapped her in my jacket and put her over my shoulder—I guess you know what the fireman’s carry is—and I headed back for the door. Harry had already gotten the baby and gone out. The footing was harder going out because the floor was hotter, and every time I took a step I thought I was going to slip and go into that pit.”

My throat was dry and my lips were parched. Damn, reliving those moments was tough. This must be what victims felt like when I interviewed them.

I licked my lips, took a deep breath, and coughed. Riccardi waited patiently while I got my breath back. “I made it out to the stairway, but by then the walls were broiling hot and I was afraid the stairs were going to collapse under me. I wanted to go fast but I was afraid to put too much stress on the steps and it was hard to move with Sandra over my shoulder. By the time I got downstairs there were flames everywhere. I saw the door ahead of me and I just bulled my way through.”

I looked up at him and smiled. “The last thing I remember is bursting through the door, and my brother was right there, and I knew that he’d take care of things from there. Kind of silly, isn’t it?” I shrugged.

“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” Riccardi said. He turned to Doc. “Okay, that tallies with what I’ve seen so far. A single blast concentrated in the area of the rest room. Probably some kind of plastic explosive, one with a simple timer. Once we can go through the debris I’ll know more. Now, we know Shira was upstairs in the office. If the bomb had blown out the floor directly under him, he would have gone through the roof and he’d be in little bitsy pieces. My guess is that he and the woman were far enough away from the hole that they didn’t get blown up right away. He probably got knocked out, though, and then slid or fell downstairs.”

He looked over at me. “We recovered the body on the first floor, not on the second.”

“That would explain the pattern of the burns,” Doc said. “If he fell feet-first into the fire.”

“Do you think he burned to death?” I asked.

“I have to examine his lungs—or what’s left of them. Whatever I can. My guess is that he was knocked out by the blast and then the fire finished him off. I’ll get you the results as soon as possible.”

“Thanks. You know this is going to be a nasty one.”

“The folks at City Hall do tend to look up when one of their own gets killed,” Doc said. “So, you guys finished with me now? Can I take the body?”

I looked at Mike. “Fine with me,” he said, and I nodded along. “Thanks for your help, Kimo. It looks like things have cooled down a little, so I’m going to take a walk through the ashes. I’ll let you know what I find.”

“I’d like to come with you.”

He smiled. “You aren’t exactly dressed for it. I think you might be missing your smoking jacket.” There was that condescension again.

“This tux is beyond repair. I don’t care if it gets a little smokier.”

“It’s not that. You need special gear to walk around after a fire.” He looked at me. “You sure you’re up to this?”

“I’ve got a job to do. I’ll be up to it.”

He nodded. “All right. I’ve got an extra fire suit in my truck.”

“I heard that the Queen of England was touring Disneyland with Prince Charles when he was a little boy,” I said, as we walked together. “And he told his mother that he wanted a Mickey Mouse costume. So she bought him a fire suit.”

“Very funny,” Mike said, as we stopped in front of a black pickup with red and yellow flames in a stripe down the side.

“Guess you want the world to know you’re a fireman,” I said.