Chapter 1– A New Year
Roy DeSoto was whistling when he strolled around the corner into the locker room. His paramedic partner, John Gage, looked up and smiled. Relaxed Roy was a good thing; it boded well for the whole shift. John could tell several things about Roy's holiday break just by quick observation: the slightly ruddy face meant Roy and Joanne had been able to spend some time at the beach with the kids; the absence of stress lines around his eyes meant that his mother-in-law had not accompanied them there. And then there was the small, round, red mark at the juncture of Roy's neck and shoulder: a nice Monday morning send-off, then. "Morning, Pally," John said innocently. "And happy New Year."
"To you, too, Junior. How was your holiday?" Roy sat and began to change into his uniform.
"Eh, did a lot of overtime in addition to my regular shifts, so it wasn't much of a break," John replied in a slightly raspy voice, "but my bank account's pretty happy, so . . ." He turned his head away from Roy and stifled a cough.
It did not escape Roy's notice. "Eat some smoke, did you?"
John shrugged. "I wish people would learn that you can't get rid of your boxes and wrapping paper by stuffing it all into your fireplace and lighting it up." Another cough escaped. "And that you shouldn't help it along with kerosene."
Roy shook his head, picturing the damage. "That's a hard lesson to learn."
"Mmm," John said, "well, the homeowner will have a good long time in the hospital to think about it, unfortunately." He popped a lozenge discreetly into his mouth and tried not to think about the endless minutes searching that engulfed house after the chimney blew apart the living room, guided only by the victim's agonized screams. "Cap's back this shift, right?" John really hoped so; after the hellish New Year's Eve that capped off a double shift with Hookrader two days ago, he'd be willing to endure twenty-four hours of latrine duty and every mellow dressing down from Hank Stanley, no matter how minor the offense.
Roy straightened. "Yeah, gang's all here today." He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. John appeared in the reflection beside him. When Roy looked up, John tugged his own collar gently, and gestured with his chin. Roy's slightly sunburned face got a degree redder as he tried in vain to hide his hickey. John grinned and left to get coffee.
Most of 51's A-Shift had taken some extra time off in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day to spend with family, and they were comparing notes, mostly Chet Kelly and Marco Lopez one-upping each other with war stories involving their giant extended families. John had nothing to add on that front, so he skirted the two sets of gesturing hands and headed for the coffee pot. "Morning, Gumby," he said to the Station's (and the Department's) lone black female lineman, Evvy Wayfair, who was morosely studying the depths of her cup. Like John, she had worked all of her shifts during the holiday week, and had also picked up some overtime days, one at 8s, and one on C shift at 51s.
"Morning, Pretty," she answered without looking up.
John glanced over at Mike Stoker. "What's with her?"
"Her mother's coming to visit this week," Stoker answered laconically, not looking up from the paper.
"Oh, right," John said. "Is she staying with you?"
"Three days and three nights, in my very small apartment," Evvy answered, in a tone that made it sound like a six-month prison sentence, "and then she's going to stay with my cousin in Santa Barbara for the balance of the week." She paused. "My cousin with the big house, the pool, the CPA husband, and the two perfect little girls, in Santa Barbara." She let out a put-upon sigh.
John slid into the chair next to her with his coffee and nudged her elbow. "Give any more thought to bringing her by the Station to say hi?"
She side-eyed him. "Yup."
"And?" Another nudge.
"Nope."
"Never thought I'd see that day when John Gage is anxious to meet some girl's mom," Chet put in from the couch. "Anything we should know about, Gage?"
Evvy and John exchanged glances. "Nope," they both said.
"I'm just sayin'," Chet added, shaking his head.
"Shut up, Chet," John snapped without heat. To Evvy, he said, "How did C shift go?"
Evvy rolled her eyes. "Uneventful, mostly. Although if I took a drink every time one of the guys called me 'babe' over the course of twenty-four hours, I would be face down in a gutter somewhere."
Marco snorted. "Babe? Chet calls everybody 'babe,' what's the big deal?"
She shot him a wry, humourless smile and a shrug. "Chet doesn't put his hand on my butt when he does it, though." She went back to studying her coffee.
Roy cruised into the kitchen and in one smooth move, snagged the cup of coffee John was just raising to his mouth. "Morning, Evvy," he said, ignoring John's grunt of annoyance, "I heard you had your first shift with Brice. Survived it okay?" Firefighter/Paramedic Craig Brice was notorious for his by-the-book approach, which was surpassed only by his my-way-or-the-highway attitude. As Evvy was the newest and most junior member of 51's crew, it was a sure bet that Brice would have evaluated and suggested improvements on her every move. John had a hot-and-cold professional relationship with him; one moment Brice's slavish adherence to the Manual made John want to push him out of the moving Squad, the next, Brice's skills impressed the hell out of him and all was forgiven. John usually ended up with a mild headache after a shift with Brice.
"Please never take another vacation day, Roy," Evvy begged sincerely. Roy snickered. "Brice has lots of opinions about lots of things," she added, rolling her eyes again. "Lots."
"I bet The World's Perfect Paramedic had a thing or two to teach Gage, too, right?" Chet put in slyly, trying to get something going. "Locking the Squad, alphabetizing the drug box, not roaming the hospital corridors looking for fresh new nurses to pounce on. . ."
John slammed his new cup of coffee on the table. "Seriously, shut up, Chet."
Marco changed the subject, because it was just too damn early for the sniping to begin, and everyone was still in a good, post-extended-break mood. "Hey, Evvy, we're taking Chet out for his birthday on Saturday night, beer and pool and pizza at The Paper Tiger. You're welcome to come."
"Thanks," Evvy replied noncommittally. She never accepted social invitations, so chances were low she'd show up this time.
"Yeah," John added, rolling his eyes, "it's the only way we can keep him from whining about how hard it is to have a birthday just after Christmas."
"You only get half as many presents . . .," Chet started, but was cut off by the tones.
Station Fifty-one, alarm at Weller High School, 1551 Vinson Street, 1-5-5-1 Vinson, cross street Alvarado, time out eight-sixteen.
Roy was in the driver's seat of the Squad by the time John gulped back the rest of his coffee and swung around the corner. He took the incident slip without comment. The Squad pulled out of the bay ahead of the Engine, headed for one of the newer high schools in Carson.
An LAPD cruiser was just pulling up to the administration building of the high school when the Engine and the Squad arrived. Captain Hank Stanley jumped down from the Engine and eyed the area. There were no flames or smoke visible from any of the three connected buildings, but that did not necessarily mean it was a false alarm. He ordered inch-and-a-halfs pulled as a precaution.
The officer ambled over to Cap. "There aren't any students around, they don't get back from break until tomorrow. Might be some faculty or staff inside, though." Nobody had come out of the building yet, but that didn't mean that people weren't ignoring the whooping alarm, trying to get just one more thing done before evacuating.
"Any reason to think it's just a malfunction?" Cap asked.
"We've been in contact with the school facilities manager. He's on his way. It's a pretty new school, opened last year, and a new alarm system. It's possible." The officer pointed to the three-story building on the left. "That's got science labs—chemistry, physics, and biology. The one in the middle is just offices. And the one on the right is classrooms, cafeteria, and the library." The buildings were connected by breezeways.
Cap grimaced. Science labs meant Bunsen burners, stored chemicals, and specimens preserved in formaldehyde. "Okay, thanks, we'll start there. Marco, Evvy, take a line and clear the labs. Wear your SCBAs, might have some stored compounds in there. John, Roy, take the administration building. If there's anybody here, they're most likely admin staff. Chet, you and I will take the classrooms." Stoker would monitor the HTs and be ready to charge the lines, if necessary.
Evvy shrugged into her gear, leaving her face mask dangling. Marco eyed her up and down, making sure she was set, then headed off toward the building. Usually, Evvy was paired with Chet, for brute force hose support, and over the six months of her assignment at 51's, they had begun to develop a rapport. She rarely worked directly with Marco, who specialized in electrical matters, and he remained a bit of a cypher to her. She followed him in, grasping the uncharged line.
The building had an odd design: three flights of staircases on either end of long hallways lined on each side with labs and classrooms. She could see straight down the hall to the opposite set of stairs. The floors were polished and gleaming, and although the visual fire alarm bounced its white light off the walls in a staccato rhythm, there was no sign of smoke. They laid the hose at the top of the first flight of stairs for easy access, then carefully made their way down the first floor corridor, Marco taking the rooms on the left, Evvy the right. All of the doors were propped open, and the lecture rooms were unoccupied and clean.
"Nothing?" Marco confirmed with Evvy, and she answered, "Nothing." They backtracked, picked up the hose, and proceeded to the second floor. Here, there were labs full of high black work benches, where the students conducted their chemistry experiments. The door to the first classroom on the left was shut tight. Marco paused and held up a hand, halting Evvy at the top of the stairs. "Hang on," he said, "this door's closed. There might be something in here." He pulled off his glove and felt the door and its metal handle with his bare palm. "No heat," he said, half to himself.
Evvy approached cautiously and peered through the window into the dim lab. "I don't smell anything, but maybe a leak from those Bunsen burners triggered the alarm?"
"Mmm," said Marco thoughtfully. He grasped the doorknob and opened the door slowly. There was a soft rasp as something on the edge of the door scraped against the frame, and Marco's instinct, finely honed from years of experience, registered the danger before his brain specifically identified it. "Move!" he yelled, and dived for Evvy.
His momentum took her flying down the flight of stairs, covered by the lineman in what would otherwise be an intimate embrace. In the same instant that she landed, hard, on her back at the bottom of the staircase, a ball of flame whooshed out from the lab, and lit up the entire corridor. Evvy was several seconds behind Marco as he scrambled to his feet and pulled the HT from his pocket. "Engine 51, this is Lopez. Charge the line, we are fully involved on the second floor." A moment later, the hose came to life and Evvy and Marco, now masked, fell into the familiar sweeping rhythm of water against flame, both of them pushing aside for the moment the strange behaviour of the fire.
Both of the other buildings were eventually given the all clear, and the crew made short work of the blaze that was limited to the second floor. The charred remains of the chemistry lab and the hallway made it a certainty that the students would not be returning on schedule after their holiday break.
Stoker backed the Engine into its accustomed spot next to the Squad in the bay. The linemen and paramedics climbed out of their respective vehicles, minds on the morning's interrupted caffeine infusion, and began to stow their gear. There hadn't been much overhaul required at the high school once the fire was out, but Evvy's back and shoulders were aching and twinge-ing from her trip down the stairs. She groaned softly as she struggled to work her left arm slowly out of the heavy sleeve of her turnout. Cap stopped abruptly at the sound and turned, eyes sharp.
"Something the matter, Wayfair?" Man, he didn't miss a thing. Lopez and Kelly paused in their tracks.
"I'm . . .a little sore," Evvy admitted, minimizing but not outright lying to her captain.
Cap's eyes narrowed. "What happened."
She tried for humour. "Marco threw me down a flight of stairs," she deadpanned. Cap's bushy eyebrows rose, and his gaze slid to Lopez for an explanation.
Marco shrugged. "She was getting sassy," he said, understanding that the last thing Evvy wanted was to make a big deal out of her discomfort.
Cap's brows rose higher. He called softly, "John, Roy?" The paramedics about-faced from their single-minded mission to obtain coffee and sauntered around the back of the Squad. To Evvy he said, "Have John and Roy check you out." There was no suggestion that this was up for debate.
She tried anyway. "It's fine, really."
Cap's lips turned up slightly in a tiny smile that would make a sociopath shiver. "Well, you can go in the locker room and have the paramedics check you out, or you can take a little field trip down to Rampart Emergency. Your choice."
Evvy understood that this was no choice at all. Her shoulders slumped. "Yes, Cap," she muttered, and turned toward the locker room. "Good girl," she heard him say.
In the locker room, she hoped against hope that Roy would just run an eye over her and let her go on her way. Instead, he gestured to her and said, "You, uh, wanna take off your shirt?" Evvy stifled a sigh and reluctantly began to undo the buttons. John just leaned back against the sink and folded his arms, observing quietly. She placed her uniform shirt carefully on the bench, then straddled the seat with her back to Roy. Crossing her arms and grasping the hem of her white t-shirt, she pulled it up over her head in one smooth motion, grimacing as she did so.
"Hmm, I guess you fell right on your air bottle, huh?" Roy remarked. He gently pressed his fingertips across her shoulders and then down her spine from the nape of her neck to the top of her trousers. Without speaking, he unclasped her brassiere to get a better look underneath the horizontal strap of that garment. Evvy prayed for an indoor lightning strike and tried not to flinch, clutching the front of the brassiere close to her chest. "That tender?" Roy asked, and she nodded sharply. "Well, there's definitely going to be some deep bruising," he concluded, "but I don't feel any deformities. Should feel better in a day or so." Cheeks burning, she murmured an embarrassed "thanks," and avoided eye contact with John. She knew that she would be the object of mild teasing by the distraction-starved crew for the rest of the day, and John would likely egg them on, relieved not to be the designated disaster of the shift for once.
"You need some aspirin?" Roy asked.
She shook her head. "No, thanks, I've got some stuff in my locker." She waited until the two men left the room, then re-fastened her bra and pulled her shirts back on. Did it never occur to the all-male paramedic corps that their examinations, however professionally and clinically performed, could make a woman feel vulnerable and exposed? Maybe the nurses at Rampart could give them a few pointers one day.
As expected, for the rest of the day, the men went out of their way to emphasize safety where Evvy was concerned, in the most obnoxious ways possible. Marco placed pillows on her chair when lunch was served. Chet poured her a lukewarm cup of tea and wrapped the mug in a dish towel, so she wouldn't burn herself, and even Cap wordlessly plucked the sharp knife out of her hand just as she was about to dig into one of Stoker's tough, overcooked pork chops (why he didn't just stick to the two dishes—spaghetti and fried chicken—that he did really well, she would never know) and replaced it with a dull plastic one he had discovered in the junk drawer. Even Roy, her usual ally, genially placed a Band-aid next to her hand as she leafed through a magazine, "in case of a paper cut." She seriously began to look forward to her days off, even if it meant spending them with her mother.
Still, it was all in good fun, and miles away from the abuse she had endured during her probie year and in the first five and a half months of her assignment to Station 51. While A-Shift had treated her with respect (and a little distance) from the beginning, the other two shifts had constantly left racist and sexist objects and graffiti in her locker, and had even destroyed her personal property, until her crewmates had read them the riot act on her behalf. Thankfully, her holiday overtime had included only one 24-hour with C shift, and Hookrader was not the kind of captain to put up with active harassment from his crew, so that day and night had passed with only minor incidents, like her "babe" nickname and its attendant handsy-ness. On the other hand, she had worked Christmas Day out of 8s, and it seemed like she'd earned a measure of acceptance from that crew, so there was progress.
As she brushed her teeth before lights out, having cleared approximately five hundred American Red Cross safety flyers out of her locker-–which could only have been stuffed in there by John or Roy after one of their runs, since nobody else was out of her sight all day—Marco approached her quietly and studied her reflection in the mirror. He held a large soft-cover book in his hand. She rinsed her mouth and waited.
"What did you notice about the fire this morning at the school?" he asked abruptly, taking her by surprise. Marco wasn't a big conversationalist, at least not with her, and certainly not without his Irish sidekick present.
"Besides the fact that gravity still works?" She thought for a moment, then mused, "There was no spark. Even if there was static electricity in the air, you would have discharged it when you touched the door handle with your bare hand." Marco nodded for her to continue. "And it wasn't until you actually opened the door that the gas ignited." But that didn't make any sense, since contact between the wooden door and its frame would not produce a spark. "And," she went on, "the flame tracked right along the floor . . ." She frowned.
"Indicating?" Marco prompted.
Her eyes widened. "Accelerant."
The lineman nodded grimly. "Yeah. Definitely arson. I bet we get a visit from the Fire Investigator soon. They're gonna want to know every detail you can remember. Even smells." He handed her the book, a reference manual of flammable materials. "See if anything in here rings any bells." She took the book with a sinking feeling. Except for insurance fraud cases, arson was usually not a one-off event. "If you think of anything," Marco added, "come see me or Cap."
But when the Investigator called her at home on her off day that week, Evvy had nothing enlightening to tell him, despite having studied every page of that book.
