Chapter 7 – Escalation
The Phantom always took pity on John after a bad run until the paramedic regained his normal equilibrium, so he had all the time in the world to focus on Evvy. As it was Evvy's turn to do the dinner dishes, the Phantom figured it was an excellent time to switch out the dish detergent with olive oil. One smashed plate later, and Evvy was eyeing the steak knives with new intent.
Stoker managed to keep Chet out of Evvy's flight path for the rest of the evening, and the fire gods allowed everyone to turn in early. The quiet didn't last.
The lights flashed on at two-twenty a.m., and the klaxon blasted the crew out of a sound sleep for a structure fire at 22311 Magnolia Street.
The address sounded familiar to Evvy, and she spent the journey trying to place it. It wasn't until Big Red pulled up in front of an old, empty hotel that she identified the nagging feeling. The Magnolia Hotel had been trendy and exclusive at the turn of the century, but had gradually fallen into disrepair, overtaken by bigger, more modern chain hotels. It had closed down eight years earlier, and the developers who intended to convert the condemned grand dame into apartments had been hung up in litigation for the past four years with the Historical Society, which had sued to preserve it as a landmark. Now, literally falling apart while the case wound its way through the courts, it was home to transients. It was also an acknowledged firetrap because of its age and the lack of fire codes when it was originally built. The fire poured out of the broken first and second story windows; 110's crew was trying to get it under control.
Captain Stanley consulted briefly with 110's captain, and walked briskly over to his crew. "Listen up," he said. "One-ten's already evacuated six people from the first floor, with injuries, but one of the bystanders said she saw someone walk by a window on the second, but she didn't see anyone else come out. John, Roy, I want you to do a sweep." The paramedics nodded as they pulled on their SCBAs. "Based on the arsonist's MO, this is one of the buildings on the potential target list. I want you to assume that it's booby-trapped and be careful. Evvy, Marco, take a line in through the front. Chet, make sure John and Roy have clear passage in and out." He handed Evvy an HT, which she slipped into her turnout coat pocket. "Keep your eyes open," Cap emphasized.
As Evvy followed Marco into the burning structure, she ticked through several factors in her mind. The fact that squatters used the building for shelter complicated things. There might be barrels of flammable material used to keep them warm through the winter nights, or they might be too impaired by drugs or alcohol to completely recognize the danger. And, she thought ruefully, remembering her building materials studies in college, the wooden bones of the old hotel had been drying out and rotting for a hundred years. The building may as well have been constructed of giant match sticks.
The two linemen quickly ascended the grand staircase to the inferno on second floor. The main entrance hall took up most of the first floor, with a high ceiling long since missing its signature giant crystal chandelier. It was surrounded on three sides by the individual hotel rooms, three stores high. A grand staircase, wide at the bottom and tapered at the top led to the second floor. The doors to the first few rooms on the second and third floors faced the open hallway, creating a balcony effect bordered by an ornately carved wooden railing, with an immediate view of the once ornate foyer below, before narrow corridors led off in opposite directions to the rest of the rooms.
At the top of the wide staircase, Evvy steadied the hose while Marco began his pattern of testing the doors for heat and opening up the rooms. The air was thick with dense smoke, and she quickly lost sight of the two paramedics as they made their way down the dark hallway to the left. At the third door, Marco paused, and Evvy sharpened her attention. Leaning her right shoulder against the wall for support, she watched as Marco reached for the glass doorknob. As he touched it, the door blasted outward off its hinges, taking Marco, airborne, with it. As his body crashed through the unstable wooden banister, Evvy lunged forward, dropping the line and grasping desperately for her crewmate.
The ornately carved railing gave way against the percussion of the explosion and Marco's sudden weight. He managed to catch himself on the very edge of the floor, before the twenty foot drop. His hands scrabbled frantically for purchase, holding precariously to the slight lip of the balcony. Evvy dove forward, grabbing, and felt his solid forearms in her still-charged hose twisted around her, its spray uncontrolled, before it tumbled back down the stairs to the first floor lobby. Evvy gritted her teeth, drenched, and held on to Marco's arms as tightly as she could through the thick sleeves of his turnout, afraid that he would slip out of the bottom of the coat to the floor below. She jammed her shoulder against one of the balustrades of the balcony railing to stop her own slide against gravity, praying that it would hold both of them.
Her HT was in her own turnout pocket, but it may as well have been a million miles away. She couldn't spare a hand to pull it out. She yelled as loud as she could for Roy or John or Chet, painfully aware that her voice was muffled by her mask and didn't carry far. Marco swung his legs once, but had no leverage to get a foot high enough to reach the balcony floor.
Evvy had no leverage either. All she could do was yell, "Roy! John! I need help here!" Marco's eyes behind his clear mask were fixed on hers, willing her to hold on, as if the veteran lineman knew that if he showed panic, all was lost. A thick line of blood trailed from his scalp. Please don't pass out, she begged him silently, as her hands began to sweat inside her heavy gloves.
From inside the hotel room just behind her, there was a sound she recognized as shattering glass, and the room's worn carpeting ignited. Evvy fought down an all-consuming fear as she realized that the room contained some sort of VOC, probably in glass jars or bottles, which had reached flash point and would spread the fire throughout this level in a matter of minutes. She felt the heat of the approaching flames through her bunker pants, and knew that she would be engulfed soon. She yelled some more.
In one part of her mind, she heard her mother's parting words, the soft voice saying, You be careful, Evelyn Grace. She wished she had had the courage to have just one honest conversation with her mother, to make her understand how much being a firefighter–even for this brief time–meant to her. Now, if she died in this inferno, her mother would always think that Evvy's choice of profession was foolish, risky, and rebellious, the I-told-you-so following her into eternity. She looked down again at Marco's sweating face and saw his lips moving slightly, praying for his life, probably. She added her desperate pleas to his.
Marco had started to slip from her cramping hands when she felt strong arms encircle her waist and pull her backwards. Roy's muted voice reached her ear, "Just hold on, I've got you." Her view of Marco's head was suddenly obstructed by a beige turnout, as Roy moved to kneel in front of her, reached over, and grabbed his crewmate. Evvy scooted back on her knees and toes, pulling as Roy heaved Marco to safety. The lineman staggered to his feet and swayed, disoriented.
"Move!" Roy shouted, pushing them both down the hall, away from the now-fully involved staircase. "We can't get out the front."
"Where are John and Chet?" Evvy yelled back, as the three of them hustled down the dark, smoky hallway toward the fire exit.
"Outside with a victim," Roy hollered. More explosions boomed from rooms as they passed, blowing the wooden doors to pieces. Marco began to slow down, his steps unsteady, and Evvy and Roy supported him between them, his arms slung across their shoulders. The interior of the old hotel was a bit of a maze, but Roy moved unerringly toward the stairwell that would lead down and out. The fire door was already open and they started down the pitch black, smoke-filled stairs, Roy in the lead, inching forward with his hand outstretched, and Evvy guiding Marco. She pulled the door shut behind them.
Evvy was still only halfway down when Roy stopped abruptly, tripping forward. He flicked on his flashlight and shone it on a large object. It was a man, unconscious or dead, Evvy couldn't tell, lying horizontally against the closed door. Roy reached down and felt for a carotid pulse. "Weak, but there," he reported, and the beam of light bobbed as he smoothly lifted the man onto his shoulder. "You got him?" he asked, indicating Marco, and Evvy nodded. Roy smashed his free hip against the exit bar, expecting the door to swing open. It did not budge. He tried again, harder. Aiming his light around the perimeter of the door, he let his shoulders slump.
"It's bolted from the outside."
Above them, the fire crackled closer, and the flashlight's beam barely penetrated the thick smoke in the stairwell. Evvy pulled out her HT with her left hand and pressed the mic. "HT51 to Engine 51."
"Engine 51," Cap's voice said, and the sheer calm and confidence of his tone shored her up.
"Cap we're on the," she closed her eyes to orient herself on her mental map, "we're on the west side of the building, first floor fire exit. It's locked from the outside. We need help. We have one Code I and one civilian."
"DeSoto and Lopez with you?" Cap asked.
"Affirmative," Evvy said.
"Hang on," Captain Stanley said. "ETA to your position, one minute."
Evvy had counted to forty-six when three loud bangs shook the fire door. Roy returned the signal. Even in that short time, the temperature in the stairwell had risen appreciably, and she could feel the waves of sweat rolling down her body.
A voice called out, "Stand back!" and Roy retreated with his unconscious burden up to the second step. Sparks flew in the darkness as the K-12 sliced through the steel rod blocking the door. Who deadbolts a fire door? Evvy wondered furiously. Seconds later, the heavy door swung outward, and the three firefighters stumbled into the cool, clear night air. Hands took hold of a heavy-limbed Marco and carried him away from the burning building. Evvy followed at a slightly slower pace, pulling her helmet and air mask off and taking deep breaths. She was dizzy and shaky from heat and dehydration, and started with surprise when she felt a hand on her elbow, steering her toward the Squad.
"Come on," Cap said, "let's get you checked out."
"I'm okay, I'm not hurt," Evvy replied.
Her captain studied her from his great height and observed mildly, "One of these days, Evvy, you will realize that it's not actually a suggestion when I say that."
Evvy let out a sharp, involuntary laugh, releasing the stress and fear of the past hour. "Yes, Cap," she said, grateful in her soul to have someone watching out for her.
Despite defibrillation and nearly forty minutes of CPR, Roy's victim could not be revived. The LAPD set about the task of identifying the one fatality from the Magnolia Hotel fire. What they found only generated more questions, and more investigation, until, five days later, Battalion Chief McConnike and LAPD Arson Detective Frank Graves appeared two hours into A shift and stood the station down for half an hour to conduct a debrief.
Six curious crew members and their equally curious captain lined up chairs, in classroom formation, in the dayroom, facing the chalkboard. Chief McConnike introduced Det. Graves, who took over the briefing.
"As you know, since early January," Det. Graves began, "suspicious fires bearing similar MO have been occurring in this part of the County. This Station and others have responded to several that fit the pattern, including the Magnolia Hotel last week. We've identified the arsonist—at this point, we are pretty sure he was working alone."
"Was?" Captain Stanley asked. "He's been arrested, then?"
Det. Graves shook his head. "'Was', as in, he's dead." The detective glanced over at the paramedics, seated side-by-side. "The smoke inhalation victim you brought out was identified as Richard Allen Shields, age twenty-nine, from here in L.A. We found his car about half a mile from the hotel, with multiple containers of various solvents, including ethyl alcohol, gasoline, and turpentine. He also had traces of those substances on his hands. When we searched his house, we found glass containers that corresponded to the fragments located at some of the suspected arson sites, which led us to connect Shields with at least eight of the suspicious fires."
"So, who was he?" Chet asked. "Just some random firebug?"
Chief McConnike cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Unfortunately, no. Shields was a former fire academy cadet." The crew looked at each other in shock. "He applied to the Department several times over the past five years, but didn't make it past the initial stage. Two years ago, he was finally accepted, but washed out of the program after seven weeks. It appears he had some . . . hard feelings about that."
"Which would explain him targeting firefighters," Cap said, his voice hard.
"That's the working theory," Det. Graves agreed. "We've been able to piece together some of his movements, talk to people who knew him. They generally describe him as bitter, and definitely angry at the 'state of the Fire Department,'" here, Graves used finger quotes. "That tracks with his MO, luring the fire department in before deploying secondary incendiary devices." Det. Graves looked sympathetically at Marco, who had twice been injured by Shields' activity. "All things considered, it could have been much, much worse." Everyone was quiet for a moment, thinking about their colleague from 129s who was still out on injured leave.
The silence was broken by Chet, ever curious. "Wait. If this Shields guy was at Academy two years ago, he would have been the same cadet class as Evvy . . ." Evvy, who had been studying her hands in her lap while she listened to the briefing, looked up to find all eyes on her. "Did you know this guy?"
Evvy wished she could sink into her chair and disappear under the scrutiny. Her time at Academy was not a period she wanted to revisit, even briefly. As the first and only black woman cadet, she had been subjected to a level of hazing and harassment, designed to drive her to quit the program, that, for her own sanity, she had buried in a deep place. It was not an understatement to say that she had not made any friends during her training. "I – the name doesn't sound familiar," she said quietly.
Chet, mercifully for once, let the matter drop.
Stoker wondered aloud, "How did Shields end up in that stairwell? It seemed like he was long gone every other time the companies arrived."
Graves nodded. "We think that, given the size of the hotel, he set a few different fires to make sure the whole place went up, and intended to escape out of the side fire exit door. I guess he didn't realize that the new owners had bolted some of the doors from the outside to try to keep out vagrants and he got trapped."
"Well," Chief McConnike said, "it seems he knew enough about the Fire Department to be dangerous, but not enough to be effective. I want to commend all of you for your skill and professionalism in dealing with this situation."
Captain Stanley rose and shook both men's hands. "We appreciate the briefing."
Det. Graves nodded and took a step toward the door, then paused. Looking at the still-seated crew, he remarked, "I don't suppose you guys hear this very often, but . . . thank you for the work that you do." He looked like he wanted to add something more, but then buttoned his suit jacket and said, "Take care." The Chief put his dress cap on his head and followed the detective out.
The quiet in the room lingered as the crew digested all the information – for all of fifteen seconds. Then the klaxon sounded, summoning the Station to a junkyard fire. As Evvy headed for the Engine, she heard Cap mutter, "Well, back to it."
