CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - LUKE
“I want the minutes from this meeting forwarded to the band’s manager as soon as we’re finished,” I said to my assistant as he hurried after my long strides down the pristine hallways of the Sentry’s offices.
“Shouldn’t I forward them to Zane first to make sure—” she started, but she trailed off as I shook my head preemptively.
“No, send them no matter what. I want complete transparency with the band at all stages of this, because the clearer we are about trying to make things right on our end, the easier it will be to negotiate with them when things get hairy.”
“What does ‘get hairy’ mean?” she asked. My assistant was a young woman named Laura, who reminded me a lot of myself at her age.
“Meaning we almost certainly have a lawsuit on our hands no matter what happens,” I said in a low tone as we neared the conference room door. “With that in mind, anything that looks like we’re trying to hide could be used against us very easily.”
“Understood,” she said with a quick nod.
“Good,” I said. “Ready for this?”
I put my hand on the door handle of the conference room, and Laura nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
I pushed open the door and strode inside with all the confidence of someone who owned the casino, and I was greeted by many anxious-looking faces.
This was a meeting with the technicians who set up the pyrotechnics equipment and the engineers who designed them. None of the Sentry’s four owners were present this time—it was all me and our lawyers. Rodney was already in the room, and he nodded to me as Laura and I made our way to the seats next to him.
“Thank you all for meeting me today,” I began, giving everyone in attendance a respectful nod. “I know we’ve all already communicated over email, so let’s get right down to it.”
“Gladly,” said the head technician. “I’ve outlined a few points I’d like to make on behalf of our entire staff but let me start off first and foremost with something that everyone on our team has urged me to say.”
I nodded to him, holding out my hand as if offering him the floor, so to speak.
“Right,” he said, looking resolutely at me. “We have conducted a very thorough inspection of the equipment plans and held our own interviews with our stage setup crew, and between that and the security footage the Sentry very kindly forwarded to us, my engineers and I are confident in saying that there was no reason we can tell that this accident happened.”
I stared at him for a few moments.
“I would certainly hope it’s never your goal to intentionally start a fire,” I said more calmly than I felt.
“That isn’t what I mean,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean that everything was set up to our exact specifications, and we’ve done much more elaborate and frankly ambitious pyrotechnic stunts like this at other shows, and nothing like this has ever happened. There was no oversight that we can find on either your or our end of things. Mr. Reynolds, this setup was perfect—there’s absolutely no reason this should have happened, objectively.”
I crossed my arms and stroked my chin thoughtfully, exchanging a glance with Rodney, who quirked an eyebrow.
“That would be a very convenient claim,” I said cautiously. “Saying that this was a freak accident would take the fault off all parties involved.”
“I’m not even willing to say that,” chimed in one of the other technicians. “I supervised the setup personally, Mr. Reynolds, and my techs worked to my exact specifications—the same specs we’ve run a hundred times or more at bigger venues.”
“Okay, so what would you call it?” I asked him, drumming my fingers on the table. This meeting was taking an unexpected turn very early on.
“We don’t know,” the first engineer said, looking around at his fellow workers. “We have a few thoughts that we’re not comfortable sharing until we have further proof. That’s why we want to offer to pay for an outside agent to come inspect everything. It isn’t just the Sentry’s reputation on the line, but ours as well. With your approval, we can get an outsider to run the same inspections and see if a third pair of eyes will serve us better.”
“That sounds reasonable to me,” I said. “Do you have the details of the setup available?”
“Of course,” he said, and he slid a large folder across the table to me. “Take your time—that includes the blueprints for the machines as well as the field checklists the workers use to sign off on what they’ve done, all set and backed up by the supervisors on site.”
“Excellent,” I said, and the people on my side of the table came closer so that we could begin reviewing the information.
An hour and a half of deliberations later, Laura and Rodney and I were walking out of the conference room shortly after the group of technicians. I had a throbbing headache after slogging through a mountain of technical data and manuals. Thankfully, if there was one thing I did learn well in school, it was how to digest new information quickly. Between my work and the engineers doing their best to explain what we were looking at, the three of us came to the agreement with the other team that we may well be looking at a freak accident.
“...and frankly, that would be the best-case scenario for us,” Rodney was saying as we took the elevator to the next floor up. “A freak accident has nobody to blame. The Devils’ Tongues might not use pyrotechnics in their shows anymore, but it’s as close to a get-out-of-jail-free card as we can get.”
“If the outside inspector pulls through for us,” Laura pointed out, and Rodney frowned, nodding.
I was slow to convince, because that seemed almost too convenient. My instinct was always to claim responsibility in some way—it was a hectic afternoon getting everything set up, so it wasn’t unreasonable that someone somewhere screwed up in a way that the engineers just weren’t able to pick up on.
A situation like that would cover our asses, but it wouldn’t do justice to the injured people, and that was what I wanted: the right thing for everyone.
But I wasn’t about to voice that in front of the two of them just yet.
“Well, save your theories for cocktail hour,” I said as the elevator reached the next floor. “We aren’t out of the woods with these meetings just yet.”
We headed for yet another conference room where someone else was waiting for us. This time, we had to deal with the band itself and its manager. I wasn’t looking forward to this one nearly as much as the previous meeting.
Because as soon as we walked through those doors, I knew we were going to get hit with a lawsuit. Rodney knew it too, which was why he stiffened as we made our way in.
The band was sitting just like it was a few weeks ago, when everything seemed so bright and hopeful for the concert. I hated that this would definitely give me a bitter taste for the Devils’ Tongues, but that was just how things went in this business sometimes.
“Mr. Reynolds, good to see you—all of you,” the band’s manager greeted us as we stepped inside and closed the door behind us. We all took our seats and exchanged polite nods with the others.
“Thank you all for meeting us,” I said. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to see the rest of the band here as well—most of you, at least. You’re missing one, it looks like.”
“Yeah,” said the singer, crossing his arms. “Scott’s still in the hospital.”
“That’s the band’s bassist,” the manager explained, and I held a straight face, but I was cringing on the inside. That spelled bad news.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said. “Please, give him my best wishes when you see him next time.”
“Oh, don’t worry, he’s got more bouquets of flowers to deal with than he knows how to handle,” the drummer laughed, and I smiled.
“That’s good to hear,” I said, turning to the manager. “On that subject, am I right to presume that we’re here to discuss damages for the injuries that you would like the Sentry to claim liability for?” In other words, I was asking if the manager was here to sue for their hospital bills, along with any emotional damages.
“That would make our cheerfulness a little sinister, wouldn’t it?” the manager said with a gruff smile. He was a short, balding man in a cheaper suit than I would have expected, but he had a down-to-earth charm about him that I appreciated. “On the contrary, Mr. Reynolds, we wanted to talk to you about something interesting that Sue here has pointed out to us. It’s about the starting of the fire itself.”
I raised an eyebrow, and Rodney gave me a concerned look.
“We’re all ears,” I said, turning to Sue, the drummer, who leaned forward and put her fists on the table. “We just got out of a meeting with the engineers, actually, and we’re planning on running another inspection by hiring a third party.”
“Right,” she said. “That’s fine or whatever but hear me out on this. The techs ran a test of the flames before we actually got the show started, and it didn’t do all the crazy shit it did when it started the fire.”
I leaned forward, nodding.
“So,” she went on, “I’m no expert, and it’s hard to see from the stage because of how the lighting setup works, but I could have sworn I saw people closer to the edge of the stage than they were supposed to be. Especially right before the fire started.”
“Exactly,” the manager said, nodding as I looked to my other two employees with eyes lighting up. “And that’s what makes this kind of a strange situation, from a legal point of view. Sue thinks—”
“I’m positive,” Sue interjected.
“Sue is positive,” the manager corrected himself, “that someone in the audience fooled with the equipment and caused the issue that started the fire.”
“It would take a lot of interference to cause a malfunction that intense,” I pointed out, narrowing my eyes.
“I know,” the manager said. “That was my first reaction. This isn’t the kind of malfunction that you can cause by, say, bumping into the machinery.”
“Are you suggesting this might have been deliberate?” Rodney said, leaning forward and stroking his chin.
The band and the manager all exchanged glances with expressions that were hard to read.
“We don’t want to say anything like that just yet,” the manager said deliberately slow. “All I want to say for now is what Sue suspects, and that we would be willing to corroborate any testimony that we need to in that regard. If that helps your investigation over the next few weeks, then take it or leave it.”
“We also want to say that we’re not suing for any damages,” the vocalist added, and the rest nodded in agreement. “At worst, this was an accident, and at best, someone in the audience was trying to set us on fire. None of that is your fault or the technicians’ fault, unless it was one of your security guards.”
“Have Bart interview everyone who was on security that night once more,” I said quickly to Laura, who was already nodding and writing up the email on her tablet. I turned back to the band and stood up, smiling.
“We want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do,” the manager said, “but we want to be clear that there’s no bad blood between us. We’re happy to have performed, and we want to do what we can to make this investigation go well for all of us.”
“Then I appreciate your cooperation, everyone,” I said, and we all got up to begin shaking hands as the feeling of relief washed over all three of us. “We’ll keep you posted on the investigation as it unfolds.”
“Do that,” Sue said after giving me a firm handshake. “If someone was fucking with our stuff, I want to make sure it never happens again.”
“Believe me, I do too,” I said.
“And by the way,” the vocalist said, “I heard someone from the audience happened to be a fireman—really helped a lot of people pull out of that alright, is that true?”
I smiled the first sincere smile of the day at the thought of Casey—my Casey—and I nodded. “Yes, it is. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him, in fact.” I thought it better to not give them all the gory details.
“Put us in touch with him, will you?” the vocalist said with a grin, handing me his card. “I want to make that guy’s day sometime soon.”
“I think he’ll appreciate that,” I said, grinning in return.
“That should be everything, then,” the manager said. “Thank you again, Mr. Reynolds. We’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you,” I said as the band left. As the door closed behind them, all three of us let out deep sighs of relief, and I looked to the two of them.
“Before you say anything,” I told them, “don’t count your blessings yet—we have a lot of work ahead of us. Because if someone did tamper with the equipment maliciously…” I clenched my fist at the thought of someone intentionally causing harm to Casey. “I want to see their head roll.”