Текст книги "Solitude Creek"

Автор книги: Jeffery Daeaver

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

CHAPTER 7

‘First, this is interesting – there was no fire.’

‘No fire?’ Dance asked. She was standing in front of the Solitude Creek club, which was encircled with yellow police tape. The man in front of her was stocky, forties, with an odd patch on his face; it looked like a birthmark but, she knew, was a scar from a blaze years ago that had attacked the newly commissioned firefighter before he snuffed it dead.

She’d worked with Monterey County fire marshal Robert Holly several times and found him low-key, smart, reasonable.

He continued, ‘Well, there was, technically. Only it was outside. The club itself was never on fire. There, that oil drum.’

Dance noted the rusty fifty-five-gallon vessel, the sort used to collect trash in parking lots and behind stores and restaurants. It rested near the club’s air-conditioning unit.

‘We ran a prelim. Discarded cigarette in the drum, along with some rags soaked in motor oil and gasoline. That was all it took.’

‘Accelerant, then,’ Dance said. ‘The oil and gas.’

‘That was the effect, though there’s no evidence it was intentional.’

‘So people thought there was a fire. Smelled smoke.’

‘And headed to the fire exits. And that was the problem. They were blocked.’

‘Locked? The doors were locked?’

‘No, blocked. The truck?’

He pointed to a large tractor-trailer parked against the west side of the club. It, too, was encircled with yellow tape. ‘It’s owned by that company there. Henderson Jobbing and Warehouse.’ Dance regarded the one-story sprawling structure. There were a half-dozen similar tractor-trailers sitting at the loading dock and nearby. Several men and women, in work clothes, a few in suits, stood on the dock or in front of the office and looked over at the club, as if staring at a beached whale.

‘The driver parked it there?’

‘Claims he didn’t. But what’s he going to say? There’ve been other incidents of trucks blocking the roadhouse parking lot. Never a fire exit.’

‘Is he here today?’

‘He’ll be in soon. I called him at home. He’s pretty upset. But he agreed to come in.’

‘Why would he park there, though? Anybody can see the signs: “No Parking, Fire Exit”. Tell me the scenario. What happened exactly?’

‘Come on inside.’

Dance followed the burly man into the club. The place had apparently not been straightened up after the tragedy. Chairs and tables – lowand high-tops – were scattered everywhere, broken glasses, bottles, scraps of cloth, snapped bracelets, shoes. Musical instruments lay on the stage. One acoustic guitar was in pieces. A Martin D-28, Dance observed. An old one. Two thousand dollars’ worth of former resonance.

There were many smears of old blood on the floor, brown footsteps too.

Dance had been there dozens of times. Everybody on the Peninsula knew Solitude Creek. The club was owned by a balding, earringed restaurateur and former hippie from (where else?) Haight-Ashbury named Sam Cohen, who had been to the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67 and reportedly not slept for three days. So moved by the show had the young man been that he had devoted his early life to promoting rock concerts, not so successfully, then given up and opened a steakhouse near the Presidio. He’d sold it for a profit and pocketed enough to buy an abandoned seafood restaurant on the small tributary that had become the club’s name.

Solitude Creek was a vein of gray-brown water running to the nearby Salinas River. It was navigable by any vessel with a draft no deeper than two or three feet, which left it mostly for small boats, though there wasn’t much reason to sail that way. The club squatted in a large parking lot between the creek and the trucking company, north of Monterey, off Highway One, the same route that wound through majestic Big Sur; the views were very different, there and here.

‘How many deaths?’

‘Three. Two female, one male. Compressive asphyxia in two cases – crushed to death. One had her throat closed up. Somebody stepped on it. Dozens of badly injured. Bone breaks, ribs piercing lungs. Like people were stuck in a huge vise.’

Dance couldn’t imagine the pain and panic and horror.

Holly said, ‘The club was pretty full but it was under the limit. We checked, first thing. Occupancy is two hundred, most owners pretend that means two-twenty. But Sam’s always been buttoned up about that. Doesn’t fool around. Everything looked in order, all the county documentation – that’s the safety issues. I saw the tax– and insurance-compliance certs on file in the office. They’re current too. That’s what Charles said you were here about.’

‘That’s right. I’ll need copies.’

‘Sure.’ Holly continued, ‘Fire inspector gave him a clean bill of health last month and Sam’s own insurance company inspected the place a couple of days ago and gave it an A-plus. Extinguishers, sprinklers, lights, alarms and exits.’

Except the exits hadn’t opened.

‘So, crowded but up to code.’

‘Right,’ Holly said. ‘Just after the show started – eight, little after – the fire broke out in the oil drum. The smoke got sucked into the HVAC system and spread throughout the club. Wasn’t real thick but you could smell it. Wood and oil smoke, you know, that’s particularly scary. People went for the closest doors – most, of course, for the exits along the east wall. They opened a little – you can see the truck’s about a foot away so nobody could fit through. Worse, some people reached out through the opening. Their arms or hands got stuck and … well, the crowd kept moving. Three or four arms and shoulders were shattered. Two arms had to be amputated.’ His voice grew distant. ‘Then there was this young woman, nineteen or so. It more or less got torn off. Her arm.’ He was looking down. ‘I heard later she was studying classical piano. Really talented. God.’

‘What happened when they realized the doors wouldn’t open?’

‘Everybody in the front was pressed against the doors, screaming for the people behind them to turn around. But nobody heard. Or if they did they didn’t listen. Panic. Pure panic. They should’ve gone back toward the other exits, the front, the stage door. Hell, the kitchen had a double door. But for some reason everybody ran the other way – toward the fire doors, the blocked ones. I guess they saw the exit signs and just headed for them.’

‘Not much smoke, you said. But visibility?’

‘Somebody hit the house lights and people could see everything fine.’

Sam Cohen appeared in the doorway. In his sixties, dressed in filthy jeans and a torn work shirt, blue. His remaining curly gray hair was a mess, and he had not slept that night, Dance estimated. He walked through the club slowly, picking up items from the floor, putting them into a battered cardboard box.

‘Mr Cohen.’

The owner of Solitude Creek made his way unsteadily toward Dance and Holly. His eyes were red: he’d been crying. He walked up, noting a smear of blood on the floor; cruelly, it was in the shape of a heart.

‘I’m Kathryn Dance, Bureau of Investigation.’

Cohen looked at, without seeing, the ID card. She slipped it away. He said to no one, ‘I just called the hospital again. They’ve released three. The critical ones – there were four of those – are unchanged. One’s in a coma. They’ll probably live. But the hospitals, the doctors don’t tell you much. The nurses never do. Why’s that a rule? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Can I ask you a few questions, Mr Cohen?’

‘Bureau of Investigation? FBI?’

‘California.’

‘Oh. You said that. Is this … I mean, is it a crime?’

Holly said, ‘We’re still doing the preliminary, Sam.’

Dance said, ‘I’m not a criminal investigator. I’m in the Civil Division.’

Cohen looked around, breathing heavily. His shoulders sagged. ‘Everything …’ he said, in a whisper.

Dance had no idea what he’d been about to say. She was looking at a face marred by indelible sorrow. ‘Could you tell me what you recall about last night, sir?’ She asked this automatically. Then, remembering the fire marshal was in charge, ‘Okay with you, Bob?’

‘You can help me out anytime you want, Kathryn.’

She wondered why she was even asking these questions. This wasn’t her job. But sometimes you just can’t leash yourself.

Cohen didn’t answer.

‘Mr Cohen?’ She repeated the question.

‘Sorry.’ Whispering. ‘I was at the front door, checking receipts. I heard the music start. I smelled smoke, pretty strong, and I freaked out. The band stopped in the middle of a tune. Just then I got a call. Somebody was in the parking lot and they said there was a fire in the kitchen. Or backstage. They weren’t sure. They must’ve seen the smoke and thought it was worse than it was. I didn’t check. I just thought, Get everybody out. So I made the announcement. Then I could hear voices. Swelling. The voices, I mean, getting louder and louder. Then a scream. And I smelled more smoke. I thought, No, no, not a fire. I was thinking of the Station in Rhode Island a few years ago. They had fireworks. Illegal ones. But in, like, six minutes the entire club was engulfed. A hundred people died.’

Choking. Tears. ‘I went into the club itself. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was like they weren’t people at all – it was just one big creature, staggering around, squeezing toward the doors. But they weren’t opening. And there were no flames. Anywhere. Not even very thick smoke. Like in the fall, when I was growing up. People burning leaves. Where I grew up. New York.’

Dance had spotted a security camera. ‘Was there video? Security video?’

‘Nothing outside. Inside, yes, there’s a camera.’

‘Could I see it, please?

This was her Crim-Div mind working.

Sometimes you can’t leash yourself …

Cohen cast a last look around the room, then stepped into the lobby, clutching the box of survivors’ tokens he’d collected. He held it gingerly, as if a tight grip would mean bad luck for the hospitalized owners. She saw wallets, keys, shoes, a business card in his grasp.

Dance followed, Holly behind. Cohen’s office was decorated with posters about the appearances of obscure performers – and many from the Monterey Pop Festival – and was cluttered with the flotsam of a small entertaining venue: crates of beer, stacks of invoices, souvenirs (T-shirts, cowboy hats, boots, a stuffed rattlesnake, dozens of mugs given away by radio stations). So many items. The accumulation set Dance’s nerves vibrating.

Cohen went to the computer and sat down. He stared at the desk for a moment, a piece of paper; she couldn’t see what was written on it. She positioned herself in front of the monitor. She steeled herself. In her job as investigator with the CBI, most of her work was backroom. She talked to suspects after the deeds had been done. She was rarely in the field and never tactical. Yes, one could analyze the posture of a dead body and derive forensic insights but Dance had rarely been called on to do so. Most of her work involved the living. She wondered what her reaction to the video would be.

It wasn’t good.

The quality of the tape was so-so and a pillar obscured a portion of the image. She recalled the camera and thought it had been positioned differently but apparently not. At first she was looking at a wide-angle slice of tables and chairs and patrons, servers with trays. Then the lights dimmed, though there was still enough light to see the room.

There was no sound. Dance was grateful for that.

At 8:11:11 on the time stamp, people began to move. Standing up, looking around. Pulling out phones. At that point the majority of the patrons were concerned, that was obvious, but their facial expressions and body language revealed only that. No panic.

But at 8:11:17, everything changed. Merely six seconds later. As if they’d all been programed to act at the same instant, the patrons surged en masse toward the doors. Dance couldn’t see the exits: they were behind the camera, out of the frame. She could, however, see people slamming against each other and the wall, desperate to escape from the unspeakable fate of burning to death. Pressing against each other, harder, harder, in a twisting mass, spiraling like a slow-moving hurricane. Dance understood: those at the front were struggling to move clockwise to get away from the people behind them. But there was no place to go.

‘My,’ Bob Holly, the fire marshal, whispered.

Then, to Dance’s surprise, the frenzy ended fast. It seemed that sanity returned, as if a spell had been sloughed off. The masses broke up and patrons headed for the accessible exits – this would be the front lobby, the stage and the kitchen.

Two bodies were visible on the floor, people huddled over them. Trying pathetically ineffective revival techniques. You can hardly use CPR to save someone whose chest has been crushed, their heart and lungs pierced.

Dance noted the time stamp.

8:18:29.

Seven minutes. Start to finish. Life to death.

Then a figure stumbled back into view.

‘That’s her,’ Bob Holly whispered. ‘The music student.’

A young woman, blonde and extraordinarily beautiful, gripped her right arm, which ended at her elbow. She staggered back toward one of the partially open doors, perhaps looking for the severed limb. She got about ten feet into view, then dropped to her knees. A couple ran to her, the man pulling his belt off, and together they improvised a tourniquet.

Without a word, Sam Cohen stood and walked back to the doorway of his office. He paused there. Looked out over the debris-strewn club, realized he was holding a Hello Kitty phone and put it in his pocket. He said, to no one, ‘It’s over with, you know. My life’s over. It’s gone. Everything … You never recover from something like this. Ever.’

CHAPTER 8

Outside the club, Dance slipped the copies of the up-to-date tax– and insurance-compliance certificates into her purse, effectively ending her assignment there.

Time to leave. Get back to the office.

But she chose not to.

Unleashed …

Kathryn Dance decided to stick around Solitude Creek and ask some questions of her own.

She made the rounds of the three dozen people there, about half of whom had been patrons that night, she learned. They’d returned to leave flowers, to leave cards. And to get answers. Most asked her more questions than she did them.

‘How the hell did it happen?’

‘Where did the smoke come from?’

‘Was it a terrorist?’

‘Who parked the truck there?’

‘Has anybody been arrested?’

Some of those people were edgy, suspicious. Some were raggedly hostile.

As always, Dance deferred responding, saying it was an ongoing investigation. This group – the survivors and relatives, rather than the merely curious, at least – seemed aggressively dissatisfied with her words. One blonde, bandaged on the face, said her fiancé was in critical care. ‘You know where he got injured? His balls. Somebody trampled him, trying to get out. They’re saying we may never have kids now!’

Dance offered genuine sympathy and asked her few questions. The woman was in no mood to answer.

She spotted a couple of men in suits circulating, one white, one Latino, each chatting away with people from their respective language pools, handing out business cards. Nothing she could do about it. First Amendment – if that was the law that protected the right of scummy lawyers to solicit clients. A glare to the chubby white man, dusty suit, was returned with a slick smile. As if he’d given her the finger.

Everything that those who’d returned here told her echoed what she’d learned from Holly and Cohen. It was the same story from different angles, the constant being how shockingly fast a group of relaxed folks in a concert snapped and turned into wild animals, their minds possessed by panic.

She examined the oil drum where the fire had started. It was about twenty feet from the back of the roadhouse, near the air-conditioning unit. Inside, as Holly had described, were ash and bits of half-burned trash.

Dance then turned to what would be the crux of the county’s investigation: the truck blocking the doors. The cab was a red Peterbilt, an older model, battered and decorated with bug dots, white and yellow and green. The trailer it hauled was about thirty feet long and, with the tractor, it effectively blocked all three emergency-exit doors. The right front fender rested an inch from the wall of the Solitude Creek club; the rear right end of the trailer was about ten inches away. The angle allowed two exit doors to open a bit but not enough for anyone to get out. On the ground beside one door Dance could see smears of blood. Perhaps that was where the pretty girl’s arm had been sheared off.

She tried to get an idea of how the truck had ended up there. The club and the warehouse shared a parking lot, though signs clearly marked which areas were for patrons of Solitude Creek and which for the trucks and employees of Henderson Jobbing. Red signs warned about ‘towing at owner’s expense’ but seemed a lethargic threat, so faded and rusty were they.

No, it didn’t make any sense for the driver to leave the truck there. The portion of the parking space where the tractors and trailers rested was half full; there was plenty of room for the driver to park the rig anywhere in that area. Why here?

More likely the vehicle had rolled and come to rest where it had; the warehouse, to the south of the club, was a higher elevation and the lot sloped downward to here, where it leveled out. The heavy truck had got as far as the side wall and slowed to a stop.

Dance walked to the warehouse now, a hundred feet away, where the office door was marked with a handmade sign: ‘Closed’. The people she’d seen moments ago were now gone.

She gripped the knob and pulled. Locked – though lights were visible inside through a tear in a window shade, and she could see movement.

A loud rap on the glass. ‘Bureau of Investigation. Please open the door.’

Nothing.

Another rap, harder.

The shade moved aside; a middle-aged man, unruly brown hair, glared at her. His eyes scanned her ID and he let her in.

The lobby was what one would expect of a mid-size transport company squatting off a secondary highway. Scuffed, functional, filled with Sears and Office Depot furniture, black and chrome and gray. Scheduling boards, posted government regulations. Lots of paper. The smell of diesel fumes or grease was prominent.

Dance introduced herself. The man, Henderson, was the owner. A woman, who appeared to be an assistant or secretary, and two other men, in work clothing, gazed at her uneasily. Bob Holly had said the truck’s driver was coming in: was he one of these men?

She asked but was told, no, Billy hadn’t arrived yet. She then asked if the warehouse had been open at the time of the incident.

The owner said quickly, ‘We have rules. You can see them there.’

A sign on the wall nearby reminded, with the inexplicable capitalization of corporate culture:

Remember your Passports for International trips!

The sign he was referring to was beneath it:

Set your Brake and leave your Rig in gear!

Interrogators are always alert to subjects answering questions they haven’t been asked. Nothing illustrates what’s been going on in their minds better than that.

She’d get to the matter of brakes and gears in a moment. ‘Yessir, but about the hours?’

‘We close at five. We’re open seven to five.’

‘But trucks arrive later, right? Sometimes?’

‘That rig came in at seven.’ He looked at a sheet of paper – which of course he’d found and memorized the minute he’d heard about the tragedy. ‘Seven ten. Empty from Fresno.’

‘And the driver parked in a usual space?’

‘Any space that’s free,’ the worker piped up. ‘The top of the hill.’ He bore a resemblance to Henderson. Nephew, son, Dance guessed. Noting he’d mentioned the incline. They’d already discussed scapegoating the driver and had planned his public crucifixion.

‘Would the driver have parked the truck there intentionally, beside the club?’ Dance asked.

This caught them off guard. ‘Well, no. That wouldn’t make sense.’ The hesitation told her that they wished they’d thought about this scenario. But they’d already decided to sell the driver out by implying he hadn’t set the brake.

The top of the hill …

The third man, brawny, soiled hands, realized his cue. ‘These rigs’re heavy. But they’ll roll.’

Dance asked, ‘Where was it parked before it ended up beside the club?’

‘One of the spots,’ Henderson Lite offered.

‘Gathered that. Which one?’

‘Do I need a lawyer?’ the owner asked.

‘I’m just trying to find out what happened. This isn’t a criminal investigation.’ And she added, as she knew she should: ‘At this point.’

‘Do I have to talk to you?’ Henderson asked the tax– and insurance-certification lady.

She said evenly, as if concerned for him, ‘It will be a lot better for you if you cooperate.’

Henderson gave a calculated shrug and directed her outside, then pointed to the spot that was, not surprisingly, directly uphill from the club. The truck seemed to have rolled in almost a straight line to where it rested. A slight bevel of the asphalt would have accounted for the vehicle’s angle with respect to the building: it had veered slightly to the left.

Henderson: ‘So we don’t know what happened.’

Meaning: Take the driver. Fuck him. It’s his fault, not ours. We posted the rules.

Dance looked around. ‘How does it work? A driver comes in after hours, he leaves the key somewhere here or he keeps it?’

‘Leaves it.’ Henderson pointed. A drop-box.

A white pickup pulled into the lot and approached them and squealed to a stop nearby. A slim man of about thirty-five, jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt stepped out of it. He pulled on a leather jacket, straightened his slicked-back blond hair, fringy at the ends. His face was etched with parentheses around his mouth, his brow permanently furrowed. He was white but his skin was leather-tanned.

‘Well,’ Henderson said, ‘here he is now.’

The sheepish man stepped up to his boss. ‘Mr Henderson.’

‘Billy,’ the owner said. ‘This’s …’

‘I’m Kathryn Dance, CBI.’ Her ID rose.

‘Billy Culp,’ the young man said absently, staring at her ID. Eyes wide, perhaps seeing an opening door to a jail cell.

She ushered him away from the others.

The owner sighed, hitched up his belt, gave it a moment more, then vanished inside. His blood kin joined him.

‘Could you tell me about parking the truck here last night?’

The young man’s eyes shifted to the club. ‘I came back this morning to help. I was thinking maybe I could do something. But there wasn’t anything.’ A faint smile, a hollow smile. ‘I wanted to help.’

‘Mr Culp?’

‘Sure, sure. I had a run to Fresno, came in empty about seven. Parked there. Spot ten. You can’t see clear. The paint’s gone mostly. Wrote down the mileage and diesel level on my log and slipped it through the slot in the door, put the keys in the drop-box, there. Call me “Billy”. “Mr Culp”, I start looking for my father.’

Dance smiled. ‘You parked there and set the brake and put the truck in gear.’

‘I always do, ma’am. The brake, the gears.’ Then he swallowed. ‘But, fact is, I was tired. I admit. Real tired. Bakersfield, Fresno, here.’ His voice was unsteady. He’d been debating about coming clean. ‘I’m pretty sure I took care of things. But to swear a hundred percent? I don’t know.’

‘Thanks for being honest, Billy.’

He sighed. ‘I’ll lose my job, whatever happens. Will I go to jail?’

‘We’re just investigating at this point.’ He wore a wedding band. She guessed children too. He was of that age. ‘You ever forgotten? Gears and brake?’

‘Forgotten to lock up once. Lost my CB. My radio, you know. But, no.’ A shake of his head. ‘Always set the brake. Never drive my personal car I’ve had a single beer. Don’t cruise through yellow lights. I’m not really smart and I’m not really talented at a lot of stuff. I’m a good driver, though, Officer Dance. No citations, no accidents were my fault.’ He shrugged. ‘But, truth is, yes, I was tired, ma’am. Officer.’

‘Jesus, look out!’ Henderson shouted, calling through the open office door.

Billy and Dance glanced back and ducked as something zipped over their heads. The rock bounded over the asphalt and whacked the tire of another rig.

‘You fucking son of a bitch!’ the man who’d thrown the projectile shouted.

A group of a dozen people – mostly men – were walking fast up the incline from the direction of the club. Another flung a second rock. Dance and Billy dodged. The throw was wide but if it had hit it would have cracked a skull. She was surprised to note that these were people who were well dressed. They seemed middle class. Not bikers or thugs. But their expressions were chilling: they were out for blood.

‘Get him!’

‘Fucker!’

‘You’re the fucking driver, aren’t you?’

‘Look! Over there! It’s the driver!’

‘Police,’ Dance said, holding up her ID, not bothering with specific authentication. ‘Stop right there.’

Nobody paid the least attention to her.

‘You asshole! Killer.’

‘No,’ Billy said, his voice choking. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

Suddenly the group was joined by others striding fast from the impromptu memorial site near the roadhouse. Some started running. Pointing. They numbered about twenty now. Faces red with anger, shouting. Dance had her mobile out and was dialing 911. Dispatch would have taken too long.

She heard: ‘Police and fire emergen—’

Dance gasped as a tire iron spiraled straight for her face.