“It’s not much,” Gary Manville told me when I called him Thursday afternoon.
He’d walked over to my office to look at the videos and photos, and he’d read through the reports concerning the fire at Herkimer’s. Then we headed for Z Café, which was located in an old auto showroom at Broadway and Twenty-seventh.
“I agree, it’s not.” I scooped up another forkful of grilled salmon and basmati rice. “But from what I overheard earlier today, Slade is angry with his stepfather, angry enough to ‘fix that son of a bitch,’ as he said. And Marsh suggested getting even. My investigation suggests that Slade likes to get even by setting fires. Those two are going to start a fire. I’d like to prevent that from happening.”
Gary was tucking into a homey-looking plate of meatloaf, replete with garlic mashed potatoes and gravy. “How are you going to do that?”
“I can talk with Sid Vernon.”
“The guy from the Oakland PD? You know him?”
“We have some history.” I didn’t add that Sid and I had once been married. Gary didn’t need to know that. “If you were going to start a fire tonight, which site would you pick?”
“Tonight?” Gary grimaced and looked out the window. It was twilight, getting dark, and neither of us wanted to think about what could happen when the sun went down. He gestured in the direction of Twenty-seventh Street, where the First Presbyterian Church had stood for decades. “That site on Twenty-sixth is too close to the church. A lot of businesses there, and also a lot of apartment buildings. Too many people around.”
“That didn’t stop whoever torched that site on San Pablo. That’s a very busy street.”
“You’ve got a point,” Gary said. “The site at Webster and Thirtieth is a possibility. So is the one at Brook Street. A few houses and apartment buildings farther down, but where the building is going up, there are a bunch of auto businesses, and they’re closed at night.”
“So, how do we deal with this?”
“I’ve already got guards on those sites twenty-four hours a day,” he said. “I’ll add people. Better to be safe than sorry.”
I did call Sid. He had the same skeptical reaction that Gary had. My conclusions, drawn from the Herkimer’s tapes and my observations of Slade and Marsh, weren’t concrete evidence. More proof, he said.
I hoped we would get some. I also hoped we’d prevent a fire.
Nothing happened Thursday night on any of the three Bay Oak Development sites. That was fine by me. I wanted my theory about a revenge fire to be wrong. But I still had the feeling that something was going to happen—and soon.
Gary had put extra employees on each of the Bay Oak construction sites, the numbers of guards depending on the size of the site. This was stretching his available staff to the limit. The extra workers included Nathan Dupree, who was back on the job after recuperating from his minor injuries in the fire a couple of weeks earlier. In addition, Gary and I had decided that he and I would rotate between sites again tonight, moving from Twenty-sixth, to Webster and then up to Brook Street, keeping an eye out for anything unusual.
Gary and I crossed paths about eleven-thirty, at the site on Twenty-sixth Street. Gary’s guards worked in three shifts, and the night watch had just started, scheduled from eleven till seven the next morning. We stood together on the sidewalk, near his silver SUV.
“I was just over at Brook Street,” he said. “All quiet, nothing happening.”
“Same at Webster and Thirtieth.” Both of us carried coffee in insulated mugs. I took a sip from mine, listening to the late-night traffic noise from Broadway, a block away. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m misreading the signs.”
“And maybe you’re not.” Gary raised his mug and swallowed more coffee. “I’d rather spend a few nights out here patrolling than run the risk of another fire.”
“Okay. If nothing happens tonight, we can reassess the situation in the morning.”
We talked for a while longer, as we walked the perimeter of the construction site. Then I headed for my car. I drove up Broadway and made a right turn onto Brook Street. It was a short, hidden street, like many that one encounters in Oakland, slanting at a sharp right-hand angle where it intersected Broadway, then turning right again, so that it almost paralleled Broadway as it ran one long block past the auto repair businesses, houses and apartment buildings. Brook ended at Thirtieth Street.
When I arrived, everything looked quiet. The street was dark at the residential end, but the construction site was illuminated by powerful lights. I drove past a closed-for-the-night transmission repair shop and a shop that sold brake pads and linings, then past the construction site itself. It was long and narrow, backing up to a wooded area that separated Brook from another residential street, Richmond Avenue. The site faced the back sides of the businesses that fronted on Broadway, red brick walls, stucco surfaces and metal doors covered with colorful graffiti, sidewalks with weeds poking through the cracks.
I found a parking space farther down the block, in front of an apartment building, got out of my car and walked up the street, along the perimeter. When I reached the gate leading into the site, I saw Nathan Dupree and two other guards, standing just inside the partly constructed building. One of the men turned and disappeared inside the structure, while the other man strode purposefully along the inside of the chain-link fence, heading toward the Broadway end of the site.
Nathan walked toward me. “Hey, Jeri. All quiet here. I sure hope it stays that way.”
“You and me both. It’s almost midnight. That other fire, the one where you got hurt, that started just after midnight.”
Nathan nodded. “Yeah. Maybe twenty minutes after.”
And the fire at Herkimer’s had started just before ten o’clock. It didn’t seem the arsonist—or arsonists, assuming that I was right and they were Slade and Marsh—were sticking to any pattern.
I’d left my coffee mug in my car. It was just as well. I was overloaded on caffeine, which meant getting any rest would be difficult when I got home. Nathan and I talked for a moment, then he began another walk around the building. I decided to walk around the outside of the site before heading to my next stop, the project that was going up at Webster and Thirtieth. I had a flashlight stuck in my pocket, but there was enough light from the overhead fixtures for me to pick my way along the fence. An area about three feet wide, scraped clean down to the dirt, extended beyond the fence that encompassed the construction site. Beyond this bare perimeter was a thicket of what looked like blackberry brambles. On the other side of the dense vegetation was the back of a stucco apartment building that faced Richmond Avenue, with a house on either side, one a two-story wood-frame and the other stucco.
As I made my way along the back of the construction site, I heard a noise coming from the darkness beyond the spill of light. My nerves went on alert. I pulled the flashlight from my pocket and shined it toward the brambles. A pair of eyes stared back at me from a black mask on a gray-and-white face. I saw pointed ears and snout, large canines visible as the raccoon opened its mouth and hissed, warning me not to get any closer. It gave me a once-over and turned, disappearing into the bushes. Looking for a trash can to raid, I thought.
I stuck the flashlight into my pocket and continued walking along the back fence, turning the corner and heading back toward Brook Street, with the security fence to my right and a small apartment building to my left. Here the path was narrow, with the building’s driveway and Dumpster separated from the construction site by a low fence and a couple of feet. I saw movement inside the construction site and made out a uniform jacket. It was one of the security guards. Then I heard a crash, coming from the street, followed by loud voices. The security guard inside the site started running toward the gate. I rounded the corner onto Brook Street and headed the same way.
There was some sort of altercation taking place in front of the gate leading into the construction site. A man wearing layers of ragged clothing was reeling against the fence. He appeared to be drunk, and belligerent. He was cursing loudly as he reached into a bag and took out a glass bottle. Then he threw it at the fence. The glass broke. It wasn’t the first bottle he’d lobbed. The sidewalk was littered with shards.
All three of the security guards had gathered just inside the fence and Nathan was talking, his voice steady.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“This homeless guy just showed up a few minutes ago,” Nathan said. “He’s drunk, throwing bottles and cussing a blue streak. Hey, man. Give it a rest. Move along.”
The man with the sack of bottles lurched toward me and I backed away. He was muttering curses. Then I caught a glimpse of the man’s face. He didn’t look drunk, I though suddenly. In fact, he looked as though things were going just the way he’d planned.
Why would he—? I was already moving as I shouted, “Nathan! It’s a diversion.”
Nathan let loose with an expletive and began running along the inside of the fence, between the chain-link and the structure. I headed down Brook Street on the outside of the security fence, reaching the corner I had turned a few minutes ago. I turned and ran up the path between the security fence and the driveway of the apartment building. I spotted two men, in dark clothes and hoodies. They’d shoved the apartment building’s Dumpster close to the fence and now they were using it to climb over the top. They jumped down, inside the construction site, illuminated by the overhead lights. As I pulled out my cell phone they ran into the partially constructed building.
After I dialed 911 and reported the incident, I called Gary. “Brook Street,” I yelled.
“On my way!”
So was the fire department. Already I could hear sirens in the distance.
Nathan came running up on the inside of the fence. “You were right. The homeless guy took off running as soon as you hollered. My guys have seen him around before, though. We can find him. You see anything?”
“Two men. They ran into the building. Over that way.” As I pointed, flames flickered to life, deep inside the structure.
Then came an explosion, loud, deafening. A flash lit up the shadows inside the structure. It caught me by surprise. I’d expected a slow burn, similar to the other arson fires, especially since Sid had told me some of them had been started with timing devices.
But this had the force of a bomb. Nathan backed away from the blaze as the other security guards came running. Then I saw a figure wearing a hoodie streak out of the burning building. Nathan and the other guards moved to intercept him, but he dodged past them with agility born of fear, or panic. He sprang at the fence and was up and over it, falling onto the Dumpster with a thud. He seemed momentarily stunned. As I ran toward the Dumpster he scrambled to his feet and jumped down onto the apartment building driveway, shoving me aside. I stumbled, then regained my feet, running after him as he pounded down the street.
He had almost reached the end of Brook Street, where it met Thirtieth, when he changed direction to dodge a car. I recognized the vehicle. Gary Manville’s SUV screeched to a halt and he got out, joining me in pursuit, trying to cut off the running figure. The man in the hoodie sidestepped Gary, got away from me, and cut away from the street, heading up the driveway between two houses. He put on a burst of speed. So did I.
I overtook him and tackled him in the driveway. A couple of dogs in the house’s fenced backyard rushed and jumped against the chain-link barrier, providing a counterpoint of serious, intruder-alert barking. Gary appeared beside me, adding his own weight as we held down the struggling figure in the black hoodie. A light went on above the back porch and the homeowner, a middle-aged man swathed in a bathrobe, opened his back door, yelling, “What the hell is going on out there?”
I reached up and tugged the hood from the head of the man we’d caught. “Hello, Slade.”