Reuben Tabula Rasa

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9662868-7-8
Verlag: Bernard Street Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 237 Seiten

A tragic house fire puts arson investigator Billy Nightingale and state trooper Sebastian Bly on the trail of an unusual killer. While investigating the clues at the fire scene - and taking care of the mysterious baby who survived - they discover a dangerous and determined arsonist. But despite her new family's efforts to protect her, the young survivor must confront her horrifying past in a chilling showdown with a murderous mother determined to finish what she started.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Reuben, Shelly

Leseproben

CHAPTER 3
DELMORE O’SHAUGHNESSY had only been out of New York City twice since the war. Once, to give a lecture on pathological fire setters at an International Association of Arson Investigators convention in Atlantic City, and again to attend his sister’s wedding in Poughkeepsie, New York. In order to visit his old war buddy in Elk Mountain, he had to fly direct from LaGuardia to Denver and change planes there for the short hop to Laramie. From the window of his plane, Delmore O’Shaughnessy, whose idea of the west had never extended beyond New Jersey, saw spacious skies and amber waves of grain; he saw majestic purple mountains and vast fruited plains. And this child of the Lower East Side—this man who had fought and investigated fires in Manhattan’s claustrophobic tenements and cramped luxury skyscrapers—was dumbstruck by the realization that this country, his country, was so big, so formidable, and so very much like the words of the song. O’Shaughnessy was even more amazed after he arrived at the Laramie airport. He stood at the door of the plane, looked up, and saw how the sky sprung from horizon to horizon like some wild and crazy war hoop. Never before had he seen a sky so unencumbered by either skyscrapers or enemy aircraft. “God damn gorgeous,” he said, his eyes glued to the heavens as he started down the stairs. His friend Mortimer Nightingale was waiting for him there when his foot hit the tarmac. They collected his luggage, and as they walked to Mort’s truck, they spoke softly of years gone by and of different skies … ones from which bombs had fallen. Two hours into the trip from Laramie to Elk Mountain, they had finished with the past and were discussing the fire in the Nightingale barn and why Mortimer had asked his old friend to come. DELMORE O’SHAUGHNESSY was a man of middle height, middle age, and middle weight. He had blue-gray eyes, thick white, southern-senator hair, and big calloused hands. He chain-smoked menthol cigarettes, carelessly tossing his stubs wherever he was standing, and talked non-stop, particularly when he was inspecting a fire scene. Occasionally, he interjected Yiddish phrases into his monologues to make a point, a habit he had picked up when he was sixteen and worked for a pickle vendor at the Essex Street Market. When Delmore O’Shaughnessy looked at people or objects, his eyes latched onto them like suction cups on a window pane. As he was being introduced to Billy, the fifteen-year-old felt those eyes latch right onto him. “Come here, kid,” the older man commanded. The youngster stepped forward. He was, O’Shaughnessy noticed, tall, gawky, angular, and eager. His face was full of freckles, there was dirt under his fingernails, and his hair was the color of dandelions. All of which confused Delmore O’Shaughnessy. He had no trouble understanding or anticipating the moves of fifteen-year-old boys who carried lead pipes and used switchblade knives. Ones who wore farm overalls, sheared sheep, and drove tractors, however, were as foreign to him as creatures from another planet. “So you’re the alleged perpetrator,” the older man said gruffly, wondering if teenagers in Wyoming spoke English. Billy looked down at his shoes. “Some schlimazel in Connecticut thinks you burned down the barn because a year ago … maybe less … you burned down something else. A smoke house. An outhouse. Some house.” Billy’s head jerked up quickly. “That was an accident. I was conducting an experiment and…” “Yeah. Yeah. Tell it to the judge. Anyway, past history doesn’t equal motive, and even if it did, motive doesn’t tell you bubkas about how a building burned down. Only a putz investigates a fire by looking at a suspect’s past.” Billy gave a quizzical look. “Is that good?” He hadn’t understood a word that O’Shaughnessy had said. The fire investigator laughed. “Well, kid. It isn’t good, and it isn’t bad. It just is.” He craned his head to peer through the barn door. “Tell you the truth, I never did a barn fire before. We don’t get a big call for cattle-ranch investigations on the Upper East Side. Not that it matters, because a building is a building, and fire doesn’t care if it’s taking down a Burger King or the Taj Mahal. It does what it’s going to do no matter what you, some meschugana insurance agent, or Smokey the Bear has to say about it.” O’Shaughnessy looked down at his young companion for a response, but Billy’s face had gone completely blank. “Hey. Kid. Am I boring you?” “No, sir.” Billy said fervently, too nervous to know what to say or how to react. “All right, then. Follow me.” Deputy Chief O’Shaughnessy led his friend’s son into the same old barn that Billy had known his whole life, familiar in terms of size and shape, but alien because of the dampness, the darkness, the haze of smoke, the charred wood, and the strange smells. “See this,” O’Shaughnessy said, pointing to an accumulation of burned boards on the floor. “It’s drop down fire. Probably part of the ladder to the loft.” He walked to a tatter of fabric hanging from a nail on a wall. “And this schmatte here is what’s left of a blanket.” He flipped it over. “See. Red. Green. And some fuzz left on the other side.” He led Billy to the office at the front of the barn, turned the knob and pulled the door forward. “If it had been opened at the time of the fire,” he ran a finger along the clean edge where the door had hugged the frame, “all this would be black.” He turned to Billy. “Are you getting it, kid?” Billy opened his mouth to answer, but hesitated when he realized that he still didn’t know what to say. O’Shaughnessy crossed his arms over his chest, stared, and waited. Finally, Billy stuttered, “Geee…getting what?” “Getting that what I’m doing here has a purpose. It’s what I get paid for. What do you think that purpose might be?” “To help me and my dad?” “The taxpayers of the City of New York wouldn’t pay me a penny to help you and your dad. Try again.” “To … to … to look for stuff?” Billy offered without confidence. “Good guess. Where?” “At a fire?” “What kind of stuff am I looking for?” Billy shuffled his feet, bit his lip, and shrugged. “Listen, kid,” O’Shaughnessy said. “What I do is I’m a fire marshal. I investigate the origin and cause of a fire. It’s my job to find out where a fire started and figure out what set of circumstances were at play to make that fire happen. Farstaisch?” “Sort of.” “Sort of isn’t good enough. Come here.” Billy walked to where the fire marshal was standing. “Look down.” Billy looked down. “When you’re doing a fire, kid, the first thing you want to locate is the lowest point of burning. Why do you think that is?” The fifteen year old hunkered down and stared at the ground. For about a minute he didn’t say anything, but his hands did a pantomime of opening a matchbook, striking a match, and holding it out in front of him. After he did this twice, he shifted his eyes up to Delmore O’Shaughnessy and said, “When you start a fire in a burn barrel or fireplace … no matter where you start it, after you strike the match, the flames burn up from there.” “Yeah. Go on.” “Okay.” Billy squinted around the thought forming in his mind. “Fire starts at the bottom of wherever it is, like at the bottom of a match. And it climbs. So, maybe that’s why you look for the lowest point of … what did you call it?” “The lowest point of burning. And excellent, Billy. You nailed it. Fire burns up and out. I know you were imagining striking a match just now. Think how it flares out from the bottom in more or less the shape of a V. The lowest point of that V is the lowest point of burning. Got it?” “Yes, sir.” They moved deeper into the barn. “What you’re looking for at any fire scene are burn patterns. emember those two words, kid. Burn patterns. They’re the diary the fire writes in the floors, walls, and ceiling of a room. Without them, all the charred wood and collapsed beams in the world don’t mean a thing. With them, you can figure out where a fire started and how. Sometimes, you can even figure out why.” Although Chief Warren Puffer had identified the area of origin right after he had helped to extinguish the fire in the Nightingale barn, the how and why of the fire had eluded him. The fire chief had showed Mortimer the stall where the fire had started and pointed out that there was nothing over, under, next to, or around the area of origin that could have been the ignition source. No electrical outlets. No frayed wires. No appliances. No fixtures. No equipment. No machinery. And no carelessly discarded cigarettes, despite the trail of them that the fire marshal was now leaving in his path. Just clumps of hay in the middle of an empty stall. Delmore O’Shaughnessy entered that same stall, knelt beside the same shallow depression in the floor, and beckoned Billy over. “See this?” He fingered a few fragile stems of ash. “This is where it started. Right here on the floor. The hay caught fire first, burned for a while, and set fire to the wood framing here. After these boards and beams got underway, the flames shot right up the wall to the hayloft. From there the fire communicated to the...