One Careless Moment Page 8

  “Quite a zoo you got going here,” says Noble, looking back.

  “Yeah. I had to run from one of them earlier.”

  Noble looks concerned. He’s chunky, balding, and sunburned. “You tell them anything?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good,” he says. “This is a sensitive situation. We don’t have many arson-related fireline fatalities, and even fewer investigations involving out-of-country service people. In fact, I’d have to say this is a rather unique situation.” He loosens his tie as he talks. He’s got a big neck and a few more chins pop out. “The plan for the next few days is to set you up out of town, where you’ll be away from prying eyes. We’ll be set up close by as well. We may need to speak with you on a fairly regular basis, until the circumstances are clear in everyone’s mind.”

  I thought they were already clear — I screwed up and someone got killed.

  “How does this all fit together?” I ask. “The different jurisdictions?”

  “I operate out of Washington,” Noble says, in case I didn’t catch this the first time. “Our organization is a little different from the Canadian model. The US Forest Service has an autonomous law enforcement branch. We handle most criminal violations occurring in national forests, and arson is certainly one of them. But we don’t handle crimes against people — that’s the jurisdiction of the local sheriff ’s department. In this case, the fatality does complicate things. We’re looking at a potential homicide now, and this is where Mr. Castellino and Mr. Haines become involved. They’ll be the leads from the sheriff’s department.”

  “Is the Forest Service conducting their own arson investigation?”

  Noble frowns. “That hasn’t been entirely worked out yet. Because the arson is essentially the homicide, the Forest Service likely won’t conduct a separate investigation into the cause of the fire. We’ll function as an attachment to the sheriff ’s team, provide some expert advice.”

  I glance over at Haines. “Have you investigated wildfire arson before?”

  Haines shakes his head. He’s pale, with a long face and thin sandy-blond hair. “Just structure arsons, but the concepts are the same.”

  I nod, thinking this could be an awkward arrangement.

  Noble gives me an appraising look. “I understand you’re a wildfire investigator as well.”

  “I do a little work with the Forest Service in Alberta.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about you,” he says ambiguously, which makes me a little nervous. “I’ll be interested in your observations regarding the origin, since there doesn’t seem to be any physical evidence remaining.”

  It sounds vaguely like an accusation but I let it slide.

  “What about the burnover itself?” I ask. “How is that investigated?”

  “There’ll be an entrapment investigation team,” Noble says, craning his neck — he’s getting a kink from looking over his shoulder. “They’ll try to determine exactly what happened; identify the contributing factors. I’ll serve as liaison, but Mr. Grey here will be the lead.”

  Grey doesn’t say anything and we ride in silence for a few minutes.

  “Have you had any contact with the Forest Service in Alberta?” I ask Noble.

  He nods. “Our director called your director.”

  I think about Gil Patton, Provincial Director of Forest Protection. With his blood pressure, this might kill him — I’d have two bodies on my hands. Maybe by the time I return, he’ll have calmed down. Maybe I’ll just move to the Caribbean and sell T-shirts on the beach.

  We turn off the highway onto a secondary road, pass a log-building company with several partially constructed houses in their yard, and a small sawmill. We turn down another narrower road where a sign announces Lakeside Estates. Carson Lake flashes through the trees as we pull into a meandering driveway. Log cabins are set amid towering ponderosa. Lawns are manicured and there’s a private beach. This is definitely a step up from the Paradise Gateway Motel. We park in front of a cabin, beside another unmarked minivan and a sheriff ’s blackand-white.

  Inside, it’s obvious the cabin is being used as an operations centre. Maps are tacked to the walls, the fire boundary, origin, and fatality site marked. Photographs are pinned to a portable corkboard, images I’d just as soon forget — a bit of a contrast to the homey, fishing-lodge atmosphere of the room. We pull out chairs around a wide dining-room table. The chandelier is made of artfully interlaced elk horns. Paintings of serene mountains hang on the walls. The domestic splendour does little to quell my nervousness as we sit down.

  “We’ve got a few things to discuss,” says Castellino. “We’ll try to keep this informal.”

  He pulls a mini-cassette recorder from an inside suit pocket, sets it on the table, the microphone pointing at me. Noble, Haines, and Grey all have pads of paper in front of them, pens poised to take notes. It looks like Castellino will be the ringleader.

  “Let’s start with the origin,” he says. “What was your first indication this was an arson?”

  “I found a fusee cap,” I say, staring at the tiny recorder.“It was along the road, a short distance into the trees, as though someone tossed it as they ran to their vehicle.”

  “Did you encounter any vehicles on your way in?”

  “Nothing after we left the highway.”

  “What about vehicle tracks?”

  I shake my head. “The road surface was very hard. And our own vehicles didn’t help.”

  Castellino frowns. He’s short and swarthy, with black hair going grey, receding at the temples, and a thin, fifties-style moustache.

  “Did you search further up the trail?”

  “No. I was a little busy.”

  Noble looks at Grey. “Where does that road lead?”

  “Goes another ten or fifteen miles, then dead-ends.”

  “Someone said there were people living up there.”

  Grey doesn’t look terribly impressed. “Bunch of old hippies.”

  “Do they have a lease or something?”

  “Yeah, right,” Grey snorts.

  “You’re just letting them squat up there, on government land?”

  “They dragged a couple of beat-up trailers onto an old wellsite,” says Grey. “Land belongs to the Bureau of Land Management, and the wellsite is still under some company’s name. I think there’s even a wellhead there. Either way, it’s not really our concern. They’ll stay until winter, grow their organic vegetables, or whatever the hell it is they grow, then give up when it gets cold and move on.”

  “You ever have a problem with them?”

  Grey looks thoughtful, shakes his head. Castellino and Haines exchange glances. “Nothing substantial from our end,” says Castellino. “You see them in town once in a while, buying groceries, but they pretty much keep to themselves.”

  “What do you know about them?” says Noble.

  “Nothing really,” admits Castellino. “They’ve only been there since spring.”

  “Could they have started the fire?”

  “I doubt it. They’re not crazy about drawing attention to themselves.”

  “Could someone be trying to get rid of them?” I ask.

  “Not that we know of,” says Castellino. “But anything is possible.”

  “Seems unlikely,” says Grey. “They’re quite a bit north of the canyon, on the far side of a ridge.”

  “Doesn’t take a fire long to cross a ridge,” says Noble, giving me a critical look. There’s a brief, uncomfortable silence during which everyone does a remarkable job of not looking at me.

  “Have there been other fires like this?”

  More silence. No one seems eager to answer my question. Castellino thoughtfully rubs his chin. Haines is redesigning a paperclip. Grey is twisting the end of his moustache. He glances around when my eyes reach him, seems to accept that he’ll have to answer. “It’s been a few years since we had anything we could say for certain was arson. Last time, it was some guy using homemade napalm. Glue and gaso
line. He’d slosh the stuff around on the trees, then stand in one spot, throwing matches until one caught. We nabbed him at the hospital after his leg caught fire. Burned himself pretty good.”

  “Could that be related?”

  “I doubt it,” says Grey. “He’s in the loony bin now.”

  “What about motive? What’s the employment situation like?”

  Grey shakes his head. “Our crews are on all summer, and they’ve been busy.”

  “Any contentious timber sales or land developments?”

  “Not in that area,” says Grey. “Too rugged.”

  Haines scribbles in his notepad. Castellino realizes I’ve been asking more questions than him and frowns. “Let’s get back to this fusee cap you found near the road. What did you do with it?”

  “I bagged it, to preserve any prints, and locked it in the truck.”

  Castellino glances at Grey. “We’ll have to get that cap to the lab right away.”

  Grey nods, makes a note of this. “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “What?” Castellino gives me a dark look. “Why not?”

  “It was in the Forest Service truck behind the ridge.”

  “The vehicle that was incinerated?”

  “That’s the one. I told this to Aslund. It’s probably in his report.”

  “Did you mark the spot where you found this cap?”

  I hesitate. “No.”

  “Can you identify the location?”

  “Sure. Unfortunately, the location has been disturbed.”

  Noble looks irritated. “Like everything else.”

  “What sort of disturbance?” asks Haines, his knobby fingers laced together.

  “The D8 type of disturbance,” I tell them. “The area is now a parking lot.”

  Noble stands, goes to a wall map printed on orthophotography — aerial photos corrected for scale so measurements can be taken from the image. The photo is a few years old but, other than the fire, little has changed. He taps a pen at a spot where the perimeter of the fire, marked with a heavy black line, approaches the main trail.

  “Can you mark where you found the fusee cap?”

  I oblige, put a red dot about where I think I found the cap.

  “About a hundred and twenty yards from the origin,” says Noble. He tugs at his tie, still too tight for his thick neck. He mops his forehead with a kerchief pulled from a pants pocket and looks at me.

  “Could you show me how you traced the fire back to the origin?”

  Using the red marker as a pointer, I relate where I entered the fire, what signs I noted. Haines and Castellino join us at the map. Castellino has the recorder in hand, pointing it at me like a reporter. Noble frowns when I tell them about the mixed char patterns, how I used the fire spread rate and game trail to locate the origin.

  “So, I wouldn’t necessarily find the same origin,” he says.

  It’s my turn to frown. “What do you mean?”

  He points to the origin marked on the map. “If I relied on char patterns, and other traditional indications of fire spread, I could easily draw a different conclusion.”

  “Maybe,” I say slowly, wondering where he’s going with this. “But I doubt it.”

  “Why might that be?”

  “Have you been out there?”

  “This morning,” he says. “First light. But indulge me.”

  “Okay. Like I said, the char patterns are multidirectional, indicating variable winds and correspondingly variable directions of fire spread; no doubt a result of complex terrain patterns. Unless you know something I don’t, you’d have to rely on the same indicators — the rate of fire spread and the likely route of access into the origin area. What was your conclusion?”

  “Based on what I found, I couldn’t draw a conclusion.”

  “You couldn’t draw a conclusion?”

  He shakes his head and I get an uncomfortable feeling he doesn’t believe me.

  “Are you questioning my origin?”

  “Not at all,” Noble says hastily, raising his hands. “I didn’t have the benefit of the physical evidence you found, or your early arrival at the fire. I was merely curious how you determined the origin. Given the char patterns, you did a hell of a job.”

  There’s a silence. Haines and Castellino study the map. Grey leans back in his chair, looking critical. Despite Noble’s assurances, I can’t help wondering if he doubts I found the origin at all, and it’s making me a little defensive.

  “I did find the origin,” I say. “And there was fusee slag there.”

  “No one is questioning whether you found the origin,” says Noble. “You were there; we weren’t. As for the contamination, it’s not that uncommon. First priority is knocking down the flames. People tend to forget about the subsequent investigation, and its requirements.”

  Haines is nodding.“I can’t tell you how many times that’s happened.”

  There’s an awkward pause, filled with the sound of a dripping coffee machine.

  “You mentioned fusee slag,” Castellino says quietly. “Was there anything else?”

  “I didn’t dig around looking for a nail or the end of the fusee. I didn’t have the time to do a thorough crime scene investigation, so I didn’t want to disturb the site any more than necessary.”

  “Understandable,” says Haines. “You were there as the incident commander, not a forensic specialist.”

  “But you are a wildfire investigator,” says Noble.

  “We’ve established that,” I say flatly. “Did you find anything further this morning?”

  “Nothing,” says Noble.

  “No droplets or small blobs of slag?”

  “Not yet, but they’re still looking.”

  “What about soil and ash samples? There should be traces.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be taking soil samples,” says Noble. “Too expensive. Even if we knew exactly where to look, which we don’t, we’d have a lot of material to analyze. We’d have to move truckloads of dirt just to look for a few microscopic castoffs.”

  “But it would give you some physical evidence.”

  “We had physical evidence,” Grey mumbles under his breath. I give him a look he pretends not to notice. Castellino catches this little exchange, fixes me with a stern look. He has the expression of a man used to asking uncomfortable questions.

  “Tell me about the ribbon,” he says.

  “I marked the site with pink ribbon and notified the crew leaders.”

  “Did you consider posting a guard?”

  Here it comes. “We were pretty short-handed.”

  Given what happened, it’s a lame excuse. A moment of carelessness. Nobody says anything, which makes it worse. I try to look as though it doesn’t bother me, my statement hanging in the air like an accusation. “Anyway,” Castellino says charitably, “at least you marked it. I understand you did a search of the firefighters before releasing them from the site.”

  I nod, thinking about Bickenham and his panties.

  “How did that go?”

  “No one had any pink ribbon.”

  “Did you search all the firefighters?”

  “No. We missed the smokejumpers.”

  “You gotta be careful about that,” says Noble. “Searches are tricky legal ground.”

  There’s a pause as the investigators refer to their notes. I think about Noble’s earlier comments regarding my identification of the origin, Castellino’s question about guarding the site, the complete lack of physical evidence to support my claims. Searches may not be the only tricky ground.

  Castellino gives me a dismissive nod. “Thanks for your time, Cassel.”

  I settle into my cozy little log cabin; this takes about two minutes after Deputy Compton drops off my bedroll. Then I’m left wondering what to do. I’m supposed to stay out of sight; avoid the road and don’t leave the grounds. I wander through the ponderosa, inspecting my cage. There’s a razor-topped wire fence hidden in the greenery. Minimum security �
�� all that’s missing are a few guard towers. I check out the beach, wade up to my ankles, kick pebbles into the water, but I’m not really in the mood. So I sit in the shade, whittle a round stick into a smaller round stick. I call Telson’s cellphone but there’s no answer, so I leave a message. I call my sister, talk for an hour, run up the Forest Service phone bill.

  I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, but suddenly it’s morning.

  Breakfast. Then I’m wandering the compound again, standing on the dock overlooking the calm waters of the lake. Despite the tranquil setting, there’s a storm raging in my head. I need another look at the fire. There must be something left at the origin; some clue in the vicinity. But they’ve left me without transportation and it’s a long walk back to town — longer to the fire. I stand at the gate, contemplate the road. I’m about to hitchhike when a Forest Service truck rattles around a bend. The driver sees me and brake lights flash. It’s Grey. He looks strained, the lines in his face a little deeper. The truck stops in a cloud of dust and he rolls down the window.

  “Going somewhere?” he says.

  “Just looking over the fence, Warden.”

  Grey looks worried. “You just take it easy for a day or two — you’ve been through quite an ordeal. I’ll get someone to bring you back to town. Hell, I’ll do it myself. Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” I tell him. “I just need a truck.”

  6

  •

  THE ROAD TO the fire has improved considerably. A grader has been hard at work, smoothing over ruts and filling potholes. A steady stream of water trucks and service vehicles rumble in both directions. A few minutes later, I arrive at the toe of the south ridge and stop for a moment — the same location where I stopped with Brashaw.

  Smoke hangs in the air, thick and pungent, obscuring the northern ridge. The canyon is a dark trough filled with branchless trees. The southern ridge where BB died rises beside me like a great, ashy monument. Helicopters circle through the haze, audible over the thrum of the truck’s engine. No problem getting aerial resources now. In a fresh clearing at the tail of the fire, a city of tents has sprung up. Base camp. The radio blares, announcing a wide load coming up behind me, and I ease down the toe of the ridge, create a parking space next to a grumbling generator. A sign announces all visitors must check in at the Service Tent.