Colleen pushed the cyclone fence gates shut after the last SFFD engine backed out, the fire marshal’s red Crown Victoria following it. Morning light struggled to break through the rain gray sky. Threading the chains back through the gates, she padlocked them, then walked over to reexamine the corner of the property by the street. A good-sized flap had been cut, big enough for a fat man to get through. A mix of emotions swirled through her—a little apprehension, a lot of exhaustion, but most of all, anger.
She had called SFPD, figuring she pretty much had to. She would also need reports for the building’s owners, for insurance purposes. When SFPD arrived, they insisted on calling the fire department, since this was arson. The firefighters had broken a window to get their equipment into the building and hosed down the offending area to a fare-thee-well, leaving a pond of ashy muck that covered most of the factory floor.
She’d caught the fire early. And, thankfully, Ramon had been there to help put it out. But a burnt wet stench hung in the air.
The police officers who arrived were less than courteous as they logged Colleen’s statement.
“How did you manage to put a fire like that out by yourself?” A serious young female officer with a blond ponytail and a squarish jaw had her pen posed over a notebook while her partner strolled around the sodden plant, hands in his pockets.
“I was lucky enough to catch them in the act,” Colleen said.
“Seems so,” her partner said, tapping an empty fire extinguisher with his toe. “I count six empty extinguishers.”
Six included the dud that hadn’t fired. But Colleen knew what they were thinking. She wouldn’t be the first security guard to start a fire, then put it out, saving the day, and providing a little job security. But she wasn’t about to tell them about Ramon. The last thing an illegal needed was attention from the police.
“Did you get my description of the two arsonists?” she said.
The blond cop flipped a page, checked her notes. “Right here.” She looked Colleen in the face. “And you have no idea who the two men were?” She didn’t attempt to mask her suspicion.
Colleen thought about telling her that she’d bet everything she had that at least one was a cop, or an ex-cop. But the tone of the woman’s voice and the fact that she was SFPD prevented her.
She shook her head.
“No idea at all?” the woman asked.
“Just the way I described them.”
“And you didn’t see them getting away?”
“They ran out that door,” Colleen said, nodding at the door with the broken glass. “I was kind of busy putting the fire out to chase them down. I did clock one with a piece of rebar.”
The officer checked her notes. “Do you have any enemies?”
Colleen wasn’t about to say. Not yet.
She watched the police leave, knowing they didn’t quite believe her.
Ramon told her that he had seen the heavy man exiting the hole in the fence to a pickup truck, where a driver had pulled up and the young guy was getting in. The truck took off as the fat guy scrambled to get in.
“What kind of truck?” Colleen asked, an idea of one already forming in her mind. But she didn’t want to put suggestions into Ramon’s head.
A Chevy C10.
Her nerves tightened.
“A C10,” Colleen repeated. “You’re sure of that, Ramon?”
“Si.”
“How can you be? It was dark at the time.”
“It’s the best truck you can buy. If had a million dollars—and a green card—I’d buy a Chevy C10.”
“And what color was this one?”
Ramon shrugged his broad shoulders as he thought. “Dark blue or black—something like that.”
“License plate?”
He shook his head no. “I only just saw the side of the truck from where I was. Before I came in to help you.”
“Get a look at the driver?”
Ramon blinked his thick lashes in thought. Again, he shook his head. “A big man in a baseball cap.”
She thought of the truck she had seen parked outside Jim Davis’s house. And the driver. There was more than one dark Chevy C10 in San Francisco—and more than one driver in a ball cap. But she didn’t need any more to know who’d tried to burn the plant down. And scare her off.
Frank Madrid. The ex-cop who’d taken the initial report on Margaret Copeland—according to Larry the maintenance man at Stow Lake. The same one giving her grief at Dizzy’s, telling her to “mind her own business.”
Did Frank Madrid have something to do with Jim Davis’s disappearance? She’d need proof—absolute proof—before she fingered SFPD.
She stood in the morning light, her heart pulsing hard. She knew more than she did before. But she’d have to watch her back from now on.
Taking a cue from the arsonists, she dragged half a dozen pallets over to the flap they had cut in the corner of the fence and leaned them up to cover the hole, positioning them so that the weight was on the corner fence pole. It wasn’t much but it would have to do for the short term.
Puffing, Colleen slogged up the outside stairwell, holding onto the handrail. In the office, reeking of smoke, she climbed up on the desk, reached into the pocket of her jacket, and pulled out the Colt Detective Special she had picked up from the warehouse floor, wrapped in a blue handkerchief. She uncovered it. It had a snub nose and a good-sized chip knocked out of the wooden grip, probably from where it had landed after she had smacked it out of the older arsonist’s hand. Low velocity. Keeping it swathed in the handkerchief, she thumbed the cylinder release hatch, flipped it open. A whiff reminiscent of sulfur drifted up, acrid and sour. Four rounds left. She left the two empty shell casings in the gun and snapped it shut with a flick of her wrist. Over her head she pushed one of the asbestos ceiling tiles up from the hanging frame and hid the gun on the right adjacent tile. Resetting the original tile back in its slot, she squatted down on the desk for a moment, selected a pencil out of the Giants pencil cup, stood up, punched a small hole in the corner of the tile to mark it. She climbed back down from the desk and settled back in the manager’s chair. Hands crossed over her stomach, she leaned back in the chair, looking up. She could make out the little pencil hole in the tile, right over the corner of the desk. The gun was evidence. She might even need it for protection. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose, trying to relax. Smoke had saturated her hair and skin.
A fresh bout of rain pattered the windows. She was exhausted. But she had plenty to do today. It was still early.
She’d rest for a moment, make coffee, take a shower.
She had made an enemy. But she knew who he was.
She’d call that progress.