Chapter One – Lucy

 

John’s Grocery’s parking lot was still a mess when I pulled up to the scene. Sirens, flashing lights, news cameras, and paramedics off to the side with a kid who looked like an employee, maybe a bag boy, as they looked over the red and already-blistering burns on his arms. People milled around as firefighters wearing full bunker gear rushed in and out of the store, making sure that the fire had been safely extinguished.

I felt a twinge of regret at the thought that, this time last year, I would’ve been right beside them, too, lugging all that gear and oxygen with me as I searched for survivors.

I flashed my fire inspector’s ID to get through the collection of cops and first responders, and slipped beneath the yellow tape blocking civilians from the fire lane in front of the store.

Now, as an arson investigator, I was used to getting to a scene long after the flames had cooled down and the structure was safe to enter without any kind of protective gear. Arson investigator was about as bland of a job as you could get, especially when you were used to strapping on seventy pounds of gear every time you had to go to work. Tonight was an exception. With the third human fatality in a localized fire like this, I’d rushed down to the scene as soon as I heard about it over the radio.

It had been a while since I’d been so quick to a call, and my ears were already regretting that I’d forgotten ear plugs. My bare arms and shoulders, too, were protesting at the fact that I’d only worn a light cardigan to cover them against the damp chill that hung in the air. Fall was in full swing, with winter right around the corner, and the first snows predicted for later in the week. Or earlier.

“Skinner!” barked a familiar voice from over by a couple cops setting up barriers to keep out the rubberneckers.

I headed that way, the whole time searching for the source of the voice. The owner of the voice waved his fire helmet in the air, trying to flag me down.

Dan Cassidy, local firehouse chief. My former chief, in fact. A big, burly man, who loved his beer as much as his vodka, and was built like he was carrying a keg of the former for a gut. Cassidy was one of my dad’s old buddies, and one of the men responsible for getting me through probationary period and into the department. He’d pushed me on the arson investigation route, saying I had more brains than brawn, and that’s where I was needed. In his opinion, the only thing worse than losing someone to a fire, was a person getting away with setting one.

He stood there with an older woman in a blouse and work slacks, her hair frazzled and disheveled as she took in the mess of the parking lot, clearly dazed at the response from the local emergency services. I could tell her nerves had been frayed to the very end, and she looked like she was in desperate need of a stiff drink. Were I in her shoes, I’d probably feel the same. I was used to being around this much noise and light and action, and even I thought it was taxing.

I headed his direction, skirting around a small group of shaken-looking teenagers wearing the blue polo shirts and khaki pants of employees, the high heels of my boots clicking on the pavement, my evening bag clutched tightly in one hand.

“Well,” Chief Cassidy said as he looked me up and down at my approach, “didn’t need to get dressed up on my account.”

An evening dress wasn’t exactly acceptable for arriving on the scene for an arson investigation, but what’s a girl supposed to do when she’s got to ditch out on her blind date to go to a fire? Yeah, the guy had been pretty good-looking, and seemed intelligent and sweet enough. And I’d be the first to admit that I was in the middle of an epic dry spell.

But, and I knew this was petty, there was one problem with him: he had a beard.

My ex, Jason, had a beard, too. In fact, it had been the first thing I’d noticed about him. Good-looking guy, well built, dark hair, gleam in his hazel eyes. But boy, had Jason been a real piece of work.

Lying to me about living with his mom, hitting on my college roommate when I wasn’t around. I’m pretty sure he even once stole money out of my purse.

And, through it all, there’d been that beard.

In short, beards just were not my thing right now.

“You know it’s always a special occasion whenever I get to see you, Chief,” I said with fake cheer, grinning despite the gravity of the situation. One dead, one injured. Couldn’t get graver than that. “What do we have?”

He nodded to the older woman. “Skinner, meet Anne Forsythe, manager for John’s Grocery. Ms. Forsythe, meet Investigator Lucy Skinner. She’s going to be heading up the scene after we’re finished up here.”

“Ma’am,” I said, taking her hand.

She gave me a nod as we shook hands, a weary and worn look in her faded gray eyes mirroring my own as she looked me up and down. I couldn’t tell from that look if she was doubtful about me because of my age, or because of my makeup. Or both. “Thanks for coming out so quickly,” she said. “I know this is really serious, but we’d like to reopen the store as soon as possible. The sooner we can, the better.”

“Completely understand, Ms. Forsythe,” I said. “That said, we’re looking at forty-eight hours, and then we can get you back open, no problem.”

She blanched at my quoted time frame. “That long?” she asked, her voice cracking a little. She looked to Cassidy, like she was silently pleading for him to override me. When he didn’t budge, she looked back to me. “Two days? What’re we going to do in the meantime?”

“Well,” I replied, not needing to look to Cassidy to know he’d back me up, “you can work with your insurance. Normally, they have some sort of business disruption coverage for just this kind of event. But, if this was like either of the other recent cases, this is the scene of a pretty serious investigation. People don’t just catch fire in public places for no reason, ma’am. We need to find the source of the fire.”

“But, if this is like the other ones,” she replied, “you’re not going to find anything. That’s what the papers said, at least.”

“Well,” I said, the word slowly drawling out, “not everything about these cases is in the papers, ma’am. Those two are both part of an ongoing investigation, and we haven’t, as of yet, released even our preliminary findings.”

That was, unfortunately, a lie. She was right; we hadn’t found anything yet on the other two cases. Not a single piece of evidence at either incident scene had led us to a cause of the fire. Normally you had a spark, a cigarette or cigar. Something. Anything.

But these? Nothing.

“You know,” the manager said, clearly not buying my explanation as her eyes darted back and forth between mine and Cassidy’s, “when I’d heard people talking, and read the newspaper reports, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe something like that could happen in Shamrock. It’s so nice and quiet here, and so…normal. And then, poof, that poor woman just went up in the produce section right in front of my eyes. I just never believed we’d have whatever they call it…”

“Spontaneous human combustion?” Chief Cassidy supplied.

Yep. Spontaneous human combustion.

I’d always thought it was the subject of bad cable television and horror movies. Something that belonged in a book of urban legends. Poltergeists, or demonic possessions, or just plain evil thoughts from people. More importantly, though, I’d thought it was just a myth. A joke.

And here I was, about to start my third investigation—in as many weeks—on one. What a world!

On the one hand, the concept was intriguing. That people could just poof, like Anne had just said, and go up into flames. But, on the other, it was really just silly. Like perpetual motion machine silly. It defied physics and all logic. Flames didn’t just appear out of nothing, consume people down to the bones. There had to be something, anything. A spark, a chemical reaction that generated enough heat to combust surrounding fuel. Not nothing!

“I just wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” she continued. “Just, wow. I still don’t know what to think.”

As she spoke, I reached into my evening bag and searched for my investigator’s notepad. I could have sworn I’d put it in there when I left the house, but maybe I’d just been imagining things. Instead, I found a little notebook I used to keep lists in for when I actually bothered to go grocery shopping. It wasn’t official, but it was better than nothing under these circumstances.

Cassidy shot me a look, one eyebrow raised, when he saw the unicorn and the swirl of bright pinks and oranges on the front of my Lisa Frank-esque pad.

“Got a problem with my notebook, Chief?” I nearly growled.

“No, no,” he said, a look of feigned hurt on his face as he shook his head. “No problem. Why would I have a problem? Just checking to see if you needed a pen, that’s all.”

“Thanks for the offer,” I said, smiling as I produced a sparkly teal gel pen from the bag and waggled it in the air so I’d be sure he saw it. “But I got one.”

“Tell you what,” he said with that gruffness that always reminded me of my dad when he’d been alive, “why don’t you come find me inside when you’re finished interviewing Ms. Forsythe here?”

“Sure, Chief,” I said with a little smile, “I’ll meet you inside.”

Cassidy parted company with us and headed off into the store.

“Where should I begin, Investigator Skinner?”

“Just start at the beginning.”

As the chief hit the little overhang area that led up to the door, he paused and slapped his fire helmet down on top of his head, barking an order for one of the men to come over and help him with something.

“Well, I came in today at around three.”

The time was already nine o’clock. “Maybe not at the beginning,” I replied.

The firefighter came at a jog, heavy bunker coat open in front, his own fire helmet pushed back to reveal his broad features. Before he could even get there, the brusque and impatient chief was already headed inside the grocery store.

Ms. Forsythe said something, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. My attention was too focused on my old firehouse chief as he stood in the doorway, the automatic doors trying to close before reopening again when they detected an object in their path.

The chief stood there, his shoulders slumping forward, and looked from one side to the other as if in confusion. He reached up, mopping the back of his hand across his brow like he’d been out on a hot summer’s day.

“Chief?” asked the firefighter at his elbow. He grabbed hold of Cassidy’s shoulder and yanked his hand back as if he’d just put it on a stove. “Jesus! Hey, Chief, you okay?”

Something in the back of my mind began to scream, began to tell me there was a wrongness in the world. “Excuse me for just a moment,” I said, without even turning back to Anne Forsythe. I set off to see what was wrong.

“Chief,” the firefighter said. “Hey, Chief, we need you to sit down, okay? You don’t look so hot.”

“Cassidy? Hey Chief,” I called as I went rushing up as fast as my heels would allow. “You okay? What’s wrong with him?”

Still, Chief Cassidy just stood there, his body woozy and unstable-looking as he stumbled back a step, quickly catching himself. The firefighter was yelling at his unresponsive superior, trying to get him back to the truck.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked again as I came up to them. Immediately, I could feel the heat as it rolled off his body in waves. It was like standing next to a blast furnace with its doors open, testing to see if your eyebrows had the fortitude to last through the next flare of flames. “Chief?”

“Don’t!” the fireman said as I reached out to my father’s old friend, grabbing him by the arm to get his attention.

Too late. I snatched my hand back, just like the fireman beside me had.

His arm was nearly boiling, like he’d been left on the stove for too long. It reminded me of a time back when I’d first been living alone, when I’d left my mom’s old cast iron skillet in the oven when I’d turned it on. Like an idiot, I’d reached in and grabbed the handle. Just a split second on the two-hundred degree skillet was enough for me to spend the rest of the night with my hand in a bowl of lukewarm water and popping ibuprofen to keep the swelling down.

Cassidy looked down at me, his face reddening, his eyes bulging, the sweat dripping from him in buckets. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but all that came out was a plume of thick, gray smoke that billowed out to join the little streams coming from his ears.

“Cassidy,” I shouted. “Do something!”

“Do what?” the fireman shouted. “What can we do?”

“Get that coat off—we can use it to grab him!”

“And do what?” he asked, already frantically ripping his bunker coat off.

My eyes searched, and turned to the freezer just outside the front door, the kind that stored the bags of ice customers could buy by the bag. “Ice! Come on!”

With the fire jacket around Cassidy to protect our hands, we started to drag him over to the ice freezer. I wasn’t sure what was going on, or if it would do any good. But I had to do something. Anything!

The signs of this, the symptoms, were too familiar. Too damned similar to what I’d had described to me twice already in as many weeks. And, I knew, if I didn’t hurry, my old mentor would be the fourth.

“What’s going on? Is he okay?” Anne Forsythe asked as she came up. She stopped in her tracks when she got a good look at him, though. “Oh, God no! No no no no!”

“Get that damn freezer open!” I shouted at the frantic woman. “We need to cool him down or something! Anything!”

Suddenly, Chief Cassidy was dead weight. His legs stopped moving, and the heat emanating from him pushed through even the insulated jacket that was designed to withstand hundreds of degrees. The smoke coming off of him just grew and grew, his shirt smoldering beneath the coat. Together, the fireman and I dragged at the chief, struggling to get him to just move his damn feet, to give us a little bit of help as we tried to get him to the cooler.

The manager lady was at the cooler, fumbling with her keys, trying to get the little padlock on the outside undone. Other firefighters and one of the paramedics were coming over now, drawn by the smoke signals the chief had been sending off.

And still, he was burning up in my hands as we dragged him closer and closer.

Finally, though, his legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees.

We tried to lift him, to get him moving, even as one of the other firemen came running up and shoved Forsythe out of the way, taking an ax to the obstructing lock. “Move!” he shouted, even as another paramedic tried to take her away.

“It’s happening again!” she yelled, tears filling her choking voice. “It’s happening again! Just like that woman inside! Look!”

I felt them, the blue and orange flames, licking up from his body. From his stomach, from his arms, from his face. He bellowed, his body rupturing from the inside out as he seemed to become one with the idea of what flame could be.

Unable to hold on to the coat covering him, I fell back, my arms shielding my face as the most intense flame I’d ever felt in my life erupted from his body, singing the already sparse hair from my arms. “Cassidy! Chief!”

But it was too late. He was falling forward, a blackened husk, the flames licking up towards the small portico’s ceiling.

I ran towards him, screaming, tears already streaming down my face as I realized that I was too late. That he was gone, just like all the other men in my life. First my father, now him.

One of the paramedics on the scene wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me away as they came with fire extinguishers and began flocking around his motionless body, squashing and smothering the flames like he was nothing more than a grease fire.

And, as I sat there at the back of the ambulance, with one of the women looking over my reddened hand, I realized that a pillar of my life had just burned up in front of me, gone up in flames as I’d watched, and I’d been powerless to do anything. Even with my years of training as a firefighter, and my time as an investigator, I’d been useless. Worse than useless.

Because it was my job to have discovered what was causing this already. To find out what was hurting the people of Shamrock. First its citizens, and now one of its finest emergency response people. 

I might not know what was causing this, or know how to stop it. Now right now, at least. But dammit, I was going to find out. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to make sure that I found whatever was causing this. Whether it was chemicals in the air from a natural phenomenon, or something stranger, I was going to figure out the source of these fires. No matter how bizarre or unnatural, or whatever, I was going to find the cause.

And I was going to make damn sure it never happened again.

This stopped after tonight.

The only question, though, was whether or not I could find the source.