Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning, Dame went into work early and made a call from the office landline. After the third ring, a young man picked up and said, “Howlett Entertainment, how may I direct your call?”
“Oh, hi.” She fried her vocals a little, tried to sound younger, hipper. “Yeah, could you put me through to, uh, Hugo?”
“Is Mr. Howlett expecting your call?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I think one of my people talked to one of your people at some point? I work for eightysomething?”
An unimpressed silence hung on the other line.
“The YouTube channel? We profile, like, eighties TV stuff? We just hit two million subscribers. You should really check us out.”
“Mr. Howlett isn’t available right now, but if you’d like to leave a message —”
“Actually, if it’s cool,” Dame said, “I was kind of hoping to arrange an interview.”
“An interview?”
“Yeah, we were thinking about doing a thing on one of his older productions, School Colours?”
There was a pause. Dame could hear the sound of a keyboard hard at work. “Would you mind if I put you on hold for a moment?”
The moment turned out to be a good six minutes, but when he returned, the man on the phone sounded marginally friendlier. “So, Mr. Howlett is available next Wednesday —”
“Aw, yeah. Sorry. That’s not going to work for us. I’ve got, you know, deadlines.”
More keyboard clacking. “Well, his twelve o’clock just cancelled. I could squeeze you in for lunch today. Would that work?”
“Today?” Dame tried to suppress her enthusiasm. “I guess I could make that work.”
“Great. And could I get your contact information, Ms. —?”
“Highsmith,” she said. “Agatha Highsmith.”
Dame ended the call, and then realized she needed to do a little market research. As she sipped on her Lemon Zinger, she powered through a series of YouTube videos. She scrolled, and clicked, and found herself in a loud wasteland of gaming channels and makeup tutorials. Dame was in the middle of a video depicting teenagers trying to use a rotary phone when her colleagues walked into the office. Lewis was stone-faced. Meera collapsed into her chair. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun.
“What’s wrong?”
Meera looked up at Lewis.
“Ah, shit. You haven’t heard?”
“Constructed in 1844, Good Shepherd was one of Toronto’s first Anglican churches.”
The little plaque was fixed to a boulder on the corner of the lot. Lewis kept reading. “In 1977, the Monarchist League of Canada planted a Silver Jubilee Rose Garden on the property. While the church has undergone a number of renovations, the bell tower remains an outstanding example of Early English Gothic architecture.”
“Welp.” Lewis kicked at a little chunk of rubble that had found its way under the yellow tape. “Not any more it doesn’t.”
Dame shook her head. “How does this happen twice in one week?”
The three of them stood amid a small crowd, staring up at the remains of the west end church. Two of the pump trucks had left, but one remained, and a couple of firefighters were handling the hose. The walls of the bell tower were still standing, but the roof had collapsed, and through the open eyes of the glassless windows, Dame could see a hard blue sky.
“What do you think?” Dame asked Meera.
“The place barely survived a fire in the fifties. Only the tower and the parish hall are actually original, but none of that’s salvageable now.”
“Who owns it?” Lewis asked.
“The Anglicans sold it to the Neos Group about four years ago,” Meera said. “They tried to turn it into condos last year, but the city wouldn’t let it happen. Then they tried to sell it and couldn’t find a buyer.”
“So, Neos burned it down for the insurance money,” Lewis decided.
“I don’t know,” Dame said. “Doesn’t it seem a little weird that two heritage buildings owned by two different developers would burn down in one week?”
“Here’s another interesting fact,” Meera said. “The church has a list of their former donors on its website. One of their biggest contributors was a guy named Dr. Ichiro Miyamoto.”
“Think he’s related to Aki Miyamoto?”
“Could be.”
There was a sound like someone bowled a strike, and Dame looked up in time to see the bricks of the tower collapsing. One of the cops on crowd control took it as a sign.
“Okay, people!” he shouted at everyone and no one. “We’re going to need you to move along. Let the firefighters do their job.” The cop was baggy-eyed and looked too old for the crisp enthusiasm of his uniform.
“We should probably get back to the office,” Meera said.
“You guys go ahead.” Dame looked back up at the church. “I’m going to take a poke around.”
Good Shepherd was built on a corner lot, but when she arrived at the back of the parish hall, Dame was surprised to see how little damage there was. The brick of the rear wall looked sturdy and unscorched. The wind had carried most of the soot and debris in the opposite direction, and from where she stood, she could even make out a little grass, flat and brutalized by the heat of the fire and the early cold of the weather. In that little patch of brown, she saw something: a cigarette butt with blue-green maple leaves above the filter. A Dominion cigarette. She stared at it for a moment, her fingers catching and releasing the yellow tape that stretched and zagged in the wind. She didn’t notice Carol January until she was almost right beside her.
“They used gasoline, didn’t they?” Dame said.
“How can you tell?”
“Saw some footage of the fire online. Yellow flame and white smoke. Always a dead giveaway.”
“Pretty observant” — Carol took out a pack of Player’s and lit one — “for a City Hall employee.”
“I’m willing to bet you found traces of gas at Loyalist Collegiate, too.”
The Fire Marshal shrugged. “Doesn’t mean much. Gasoline is a pretty common accelerant.”
Dame shook her head. “Peter Dinsdale used paraffin. Raymond Lee Oyler used a Marlboro. John Orr — the ‘Pillow Pyro’ — used bedding. They figured he set nearly two thousand fires that way.”
“I’m familiar with John Orr, Dame. What’s your point?”
“My point is, guys like this usually have some kind of tell.”
“Guys like what?”
“Serial arsonists.”
“Two fires in one week is a coincidence, not a pattern. We don’t even know if they’re connected.”
“Then why are you here? Sharon Fischer on your ass again?”
“Actually,” Carol said, scratching the corner of her eye, “Fischer contacted the office this morning and tried to convince us to drop the investigation.”
“Drop it?”
“Said it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. She called right after the news about Good Shepherd broke.”
“What’d you say?”
“Well, we can’t drop it now. There’s too much evidence.”
“So, you do think it’s arson.”
Carol nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“And you think Fischer’s involved somehow?”
“I’m starting to think you do.” Carol took another drag and squinted at Dame. “You know, our security cameras have footage of someone trespassing at that old high school Monday night.” She let the smoke hang in her mouth a moment before she breathed it out. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Couldn’t make out his face?”
“Her face. And no. Too blurry.”
“You guys can’t ‘zoom in and enhance’?” Dame framed the imaginary footage with her thumbs and forefingers. “You know, like they do on CSI?”
Carol shook her head.
“Seems like you might need some better security cameras.”
“Seems like.” Carol flicked her cigarette into the street beside them. She shoved her hand into the pocket of her old firefighter’s coat and pulled out what looked to be a business card. “Here,” she said, handing it to Dame. “That’s my direct number. If you have any more bright ideas about doing my job, call me instead. In the meantime, I want you to stay away from burning buildings.” The tall woman bent over and put her face in Dame’s. Smoke seemed to leak from the pores of her skin. “I get that you’re as smart as Dodge. Just don’t be as reckless as he was, okay?” She stood up to her full height. “Next time, we might have those good cameras.”
“CSI cameras?”
“Uh-huh.”
Dame started to walk away, but the Fire Marshal called out to her. “Polycarbonate,” she said.
Dame paused. “Polycarbonate?”
“Kind of plastic. Usually used in construction and car parts. They found significant traces of it near the point of origin at Loyalist Collegiate.”
“Okay?”
“Thought it might be from the jerry can, but they make those out of high density polyethylene. You got any thoughts?”
“Polycarbonate.” Dame said the word again and shook her head. “No. Sorry.”
But when she started walking again, she moved a little faster.