Chapter Twenty-Three – Carter

 

Lucy and I couldn’t wait for the elevator, and we nearly sprinted up three flights of stairs, to where the fire investigation office was crowded in with a host of other municipal services.

“Can’t right now, Bernadine,” Lucy, not even breathing hard after the three floors we’d just climbed, said as we brushed past a light-haired woman who looked to be in her early fifties, a birthday card and pen brandished in front of her like an offering as she wandered through the cubicle farm.

“But it’s for the mayor!” Bernadine called after us as we headed for the back of the office. “For his birthday!”

I followed after like a soldier following his commander into battle. She was a born leader, I could tell. And it just made me more attracted to her.

Something about her determination, her confidence, was just sexy. Like she’d been born for this kind of work, for investigating fires. But also for my kind of work. Investigating possible paranormal disturbances, the kinds of creatures that would prey on innocent humans.

Once we left behind the cubicles and other workers, we quickly entered an area that was nearly deserted, with several of the overhead fluorescent lights burned out and forgotten about.

“We keep all the old files back here,” Lucy explained as she pulled out a Shamrock city employee badge and swiped it down a card reader on the wall, triggering a magnetic lock to release. One of the bulbs overheard hummed and flickered, making the pale light seem to vibrate on her face like a poor imitation of a strobe. “Well, most. There’s a state repository for all the really old stuff, but this goes back four, maybe five years.”

“Think we’ll be able to find it?” I asked as she pushed open the door and led me inside.

“In all this?” she asked, gesturing to the legal boxes piled high on one side of the room, opposite a wall of file cabinets for what I assumed were current cases. “Probably. At least it’s not as bad as Shamrock PD’s. More incidents, more crime. This is just our fire stuff.”

I looked around at the stacks, trying to mentally calculate how many reams of paper must be contained within each of the white cardboard bricks in this bureaucratic wall. The math inside my head quickly fell apart, though, as I tried to carry the ones. “All of these are arson investigations?”

She shook her head as she went over to a spot in the stacks. “No, these are all files on everything fire-related. Inspections, certificates of occupancy, sprinkler tests, brush fires, home fires. Everything. That’s most of what I do, actually. Just inspect new businesses, re-certify old ones.” As she spoke, she bent over and began to go through the structure, her index finger guiding her eyes as she examined the black, red, and green dates, numbers, and letters scrawled over their sides.

“Sounds glamorous.”

“You know it,” she said. “But, you know the saying, an ounce of prevention—”

“Is worth a pound of cure,” I finished.

“Exactly,” she replied as she shifted to the next stack and started at the top, beginning to move quickly down through the stack of boxes. “The newer stuff is in those file cabinets, and a hell of a lot easier to access. Generally, we don’t have to go into these unless there’s some kind of court case where everything gets subpoenaed for discovery purposes.”

“You know which one it is?” I asked, moving a little closer to see what she was doing.

“No, but I know the date. The exact date. November 15th.” She paused, looked back over her shoulder at me, craning her neck a little so she could look into my eyes from where she was squatted down in front of the boxes. “Might say it’s burned into my memory.”

I didn’t smirk or smile, despite the joke.

“That’s weird,” she said, rocking back on her heels a little, a note of surprise entering her voice.

“What?”

“The box isn’t here.” She looked back at me again, but all I could do was shrug. It wasn’t like I understood their filing system. She turned back, shook her head a little, then glanced up higher and to the right on the stack. “Wait, there it is.”

“This one?” I asked, grabbing the box I thought she’d been looking at.

“One higher,” she said. “Weird these are out of order.”

I pulled the box down easily, the box as light as a feather despite all the files and folders contained within. “Where do you want it?”

“Just on the floor, here.”

I set it down in front of her, and she immediately knelt down by it, her fingers flying to the string and button ties on the sides. She grumbled a little bit as she realized it had already been opened, before unfolding the cardboard leaves that enclosed the top and opening it up to the air. She thumbed through the files as I hovered over her, trying to get a look inside.

“Here we go,” she said, as she drew the monstrous file out and opened it on top of the other files. “November 15th, Christmas Tree Lighting.”

“Well?”

“Gimme a second,” she said, already flipping through the pages fastened inside with brads shoved through hole punches at the top. She growled a little, a primal noise deep in her throat.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, crouching down next to her, my knee brushing against hers.

“Oh, this file’s just…wrong. There’s stuff missing from here.”

“Like what?”

She glanced up at me, her big eyes boring into mine for a fraction of a moment. We were crouched so close together, I could feel the heat coming off her body. Could smell her as clearly as the first time we’d met. “The victim’s list, first of all. Some of the other details, as well, like parts of a witness statement.”

I frowned a little bit as she returned her attention to the file.

“Aha!” she said. “Here it is.”

“The victims?”

“Yep.” Quickly followed by a sigh and a groan. “Son of a bitch.”

I crowded in next to her, had to put my hand on her lower back and practically press the side of my face against hers so I could see down at the page in front of her.

“Marissa Hawkins,” I whispered as I read over the carefully typed page. “Kent Marten, Sandy Jenkins.”

“Down here, too,” she said, pointing out Dan Cassidy’s name on the list. “First responder injuries.”

“Shit,” I whispered. “You were right.”

“They were all there. They were all injured in that same damn fire. Only one name not on that list, though.”

“So what happened that night?” I asked. “There had to have been something outside the official file. Someone must have seen something. Weird people hanging around, before or after. Creatures, something. Demonic possessions this weird don’t just happen out of the blue. There’s something else going on here.”

She sat back on her heels again, looked at me as she bit her lower lip. “Well, there’s nothing here in the witness reports. Not anything out of the ordinary.” She glanced back to the file in front of her. “I mean, it was just an electrical short in one of the strings of lights, Carter, which caused a spark onto dry needles. A fire just waiting…to happen.”

“What?” I asked, looking from her face down to the file in front of her as her lips silently mouthed something I couldn’t discern. “What’s wrong?”

“Franklin Bunk,” she said. “He’s the one who investigated this fucking thing.”

“Who’s he?”

“My boss,” she said, her words dripping with venom. “The one who’s trying to shut down my investigation right now. The one who gave me twenty-four hours to explain this thing, or he was going to take over and finds reasons for the fire on his own.”

“Well?” I asked. “What do you want to do? Go down to the scene?”

“Nuts to that,” she said, slamming the file closed with the sound of paper slapping paper, and quickly rising to her feet. “We’re going to find out what in the hell Bunk’s not telling us. And why.”