Tahoe Blowup Read online

  Street and I sat by her fire in the living room. It was ironic that we could be comforted by the warmth and glow coming from the fireplace when a forest fire raged just a mile above us. Spot lay on the floor. Treasure sat next to his head and leaned her tiny jawbone on his neck. Treasure turned her ears when Mrs. Duchamp’s snoring rose above the volume of the Pretenders CD that Street put on.

  “Do you think the fire will get the houses of your neighborhood?” Street asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  “It must be snowing pretty hard up there now.”

  “From what I saw, the fire was hot enough that it won’t matter. Too much fuel, too dry for too long. What will matter is the wind. Either way we’ll know in the morning.”

  “Don’t you want to call Terry Drier and find out?”

  “Something tells me that a Fire Department Battalion Chief has more to do right now than talk to me about my cabin.” I got up and fetched a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from Street’s fridge. “I’ll call him in the morning. If it’s good news, great. If it’s bad news I’ll sleep better if I don’t know.” I put my hand on Street’s leg, feeling the curves of her thigh through the nightgown fabric. “Then again, there are other sleep aids.”

  Street looked at me. “How many fires do you think I can handle in one night?”

  “But this fire is easy to put out.”

  “So I recall,” she said, giggling, pushing me back on the couch.

  THREE

  Before I had a chance to call Terry Drier the next morning, he called me, waking me up.

  “You knew I was at Street’s?” I said after I had dragged the phone off the table next to the foldout couch. The clock on the living room wall said 6:15 a.m. Street was sprawled at a diagonal next to me. Mrs. Duchamp’s snore was still seeping through the cracks around Street’s bedroom door.

  “Logical guess,” Terry said. “I’m calling with fire news.”

  “I lost my home?”

  “No. Your cabin is fine. Singed, but fine. The fire went up the mountain just south of your house and took out most of the pines nearby. The fire went between yours and Duchamp’s. In fact, no structures were burned. But your area looks like hell.

  “As Incident Commander on this fire I didn’t want to take any chances. I called in every team I could and we worked through the night. It’s not contained yet, but with this snow, we’ll circle it by tonight.”

  I rolled toward the window and looked out at the dull gray of early dawn. A dark blanket of cloud covered all but the bottom of the mountain. Most of the fire path, including the area near my cabin, was obscured. There was only a dusting of white on the trees visible below the clouds. Which meant that my cabin probably had no more than a few inches. The storm had turned out to be all promise and little delivery. Enough to help slow a fire, but not enough to put it out.

  “Where is it burning now?” I asked Terry.

  “Up above your place, toward Genoa Peak. The fire is approaching the tree line and the snow has covered the brush above that. We’re concentrating on cutting fire breaks to the sides of the fire. If we can keep it from spreading sideways across the mountain, we’ll have it contained. It’s too steep to get our Douglas County vehicles in, so all we’ve got is Forest Service trucks and the chopper. Most of the work is on foot. Slow going.”

  “How do the Forest Service trucks get in where yours can’t? Are they smaller?”

  “Theirs are Type Three. Four-wheel-drive. Those jerks call our trucks Pavement Dollies. But I guess it’s true that our trucks aren’t much good in the woods.

  “What about the snow?” I asked. “Doesn’t it slow the fire down?”

  “Slows it maybe, but not much. Lot of wind last night. The snow didn’t accumulate in the pines. For awhile this was a crown fire, not a brush burner. It jumped from tree to tree. You could hear some of them exploding now and then. Sounds like the shells the highway boys shoot for avalanche control on the slopes above the passes. Anytime you get a crown fire, you worry about it exploding out of control like what happened in the Oakland Hills. Luckily, between our efforts and the snow, we got it settled down.”

  “How much has burned?” I asked.

  “About a thousand acres.”

  “Any houses in danger?”

  “Luckily, the fire stayed in the ravine until it got to your cabin. It was still burning in a narrow swath as it went between your cabin and Duchamp’s house. It spread out some when it got higher up, but as long as the wind doesn’t change and we can keep it from jumping the firebreaks, no houses will burn because they’re all off to the side and at lower elevations than yours.”

  “Any idea yet on how it started?”

  “That’s why I called you,” Terry said. “I wonder if you can come down to the station. Got something to show you.”

  “Sure. When do you want me?”

  “Now,” he said.

  “I’ll be right over.”

  I keep a razor in Street’s bathroom and while I shaved I scanned the enormous selection of bottles and jars that Street had lined up on the edge of the tub, in the medicine cabinet, and across a towel shelf. It always amazed me to see how many lotions and potions were required to maintain a female body.

  I put a note to Street and Mrs. Duchamp on Street’s fridge while water boiled for a mug of Street’s instant coffee. I gave Spot and Treasure a pet and was in my Jeep a minute later.

  Across the lake on the California side, the clouds were breaking up. The sky was turning bright cobalt blue and the snow-covered mountaintops were luminous with alpenglow from the first rays of sun. Mount Tallac was a sharp triangle of rock and snow and reminded me of the mountains in the Bierstadt painting.

  Terry Drier came out of the fire station as I pulled up. He was a hard, narrow, sinewy man who stood a half foot shorter than my six-six. But his slight frame belied an out-sized strength of both muscle and will. Terry Drier was afraid of nothing, bear or beach bully, avalanche or forest fire. He’d made Battalion Chief at the young age of thirty through intelligence and his ability to focus the efforts of other firefighters. That he would one day be Fire Chief seemed accepted knowledge in the department.

  We shook hands and went inside. “Chief Phillips wanted to be here,” Terry said. “But he’s got an early meeting. Said he didn’t want me to wait to call you.” We walked into Terry’s office. “Have a seat,” Terry said. “Coffee?”

  “Already tanked up, but thanks.” I sat in one of the white plastic deck chairs that Terry keeps in front of his desk. Terry thought nothing of submitting budgets for hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on fire-fighting equipment. But he didn’t waste a cent on office decor. He sat down behind a dented, gray metal desk and opened a file drawer.

  He pulled out a clear mylar sleeve containing a piece of paper. “We found this in our mail slot. It has no address or postage, so it was hand-delivered. Yesterday, this was a threat. Now it is evidence in a felony. Officials from seventeen agencies want to look at it. But Phillips wanted you to see it before we turned it over.” He handed it to me across the desk.

  The note was on standard white copy paper. The font looked like Helvetica.

  Tahoe is going to burn. This is punishment for years of crimes against the environment. The first fire will take only trees.

  There was nothing else on the note. I set it on Terry’s desk. “This was a warning for the fire that started last night.”

  “Yes,” Terry said.

  “What do you think?” I asked, gesturing at the note.

  “Can’t know for sure. But my guess is the arsonist just wants to make his crime sound fancy. I think this guy is like other firestarters. He likes to light fires. Turns him on.”

  “Why me?”

  Terry picked a mug up off his cluttered desk and slurped from it. “Because Chief Phillips and I consider all possibilities. Which means maybe I’m wrong and the firestarter really does have some terrorist agenda. If so, a standard search for the arsoni
st may not be productive. Maybe we’ll catch this guy ourselves, but what if we don’t?”

  Terry sipped more coffee. “Captain Mallory told me about a firestarter you caught in San Francisco back when you were on the force. The apartment building where the little girl burned up? Mallory said you nailed the guy two years later by tracking the source of the propane bottle he used to start the fire.”

  “Yeah, but I really don’t know much about arsonists.”

  “Look,” Terry said. “You are outside the system and that gives you a perspective that the local police and fire officials don’t have. You’ve solved every case you’ve had as far as I remember. And you caught a firestarter. In our book that makes you more qualified than Smoky Bear. So maybe you’re not a fire expert. You’re tenacious as hell and we need help.”

  Terry drained the rest of his coffee and put the mug down on his desk. “Will you? We’ve got some room in the budget. Put you on at least a couple weeks.”

  “Okay,” I said. I pointed at the note. “Guy says this is the first fire. Implies there’s going to be more. He also says the first one would only take trees. Which suggests the next one will take something else.”

  Terry shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You’ve called Diamond Martinez?”

  Terry nodded. “I guess you heard that the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department recently named Diamond the Fire Investigator for this area. We’ve told our people to give him anything he wants.” Terry leaned forward, elbows on his desk. “Diamond might know more about fire than anyone else in the Sheriff’s Department. But the truth is, none of us, Diamond included, have that much experience with arson.”

  “The few fires I was involved with in San Francisco were all buildings,” I said. “In each case the insurance company sent in a specialist which was a big help. But there’s no insurance with trees.”

  “Right,” Terry said.

  “We’ve got the warning note, but are we certain the fire actually was arson?”

  “There’s a meadow in the woods east of the highway down below your cabin. This guy was real bold. Struck a wooden kitchen match and tossed it into the dry grass. We found the charred match. The breeze was strong enough that the fire fanned out from the match and the match blew out. Made it easy to find. The arsonist didn’t want us to have to go to any effort to identify the source of ignition.”

  “Taunting you?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Or he just didn’t care that we figure out his method. Lights the match, drives away in his car and watches from a distance.”

  “And his prediction was accurate.”

  “About burning only trees? Pure luck,” Terry scoffed. “That fire started a half mile down the mountain from your house and ended up burning forty feet from your deck and a hundred feet from Mrs. Duchamp’s. Any shift of wind and both your houses would be ashes.”

  I fingered the letter in its mylar sleeve. “What do you think he means about crimes against the environment?”

  “Who knows? Could be one of those wacko environmentalists who thinks we shouldn’t be putting out fires in the woods. Those guys think burning Bambi to death is natural for chrissakes.” Terry’s disgust was heavy on his face. The circles under his eyes were as dark as his eyebrows.

  I looked at the warning note again. There were no markings on it. “If you get another note will you call me before the suits take it away?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  I thought about it a minute. “You got someone who can tell me the other side, the wacko environmentalist perspective?”

  Terry smiled. He returned the mylar sleeve to his file drawer. “One name in particular comes to mind. Arthur Jones Middleton the Sixth is a member of The League To Save Lake Tahoe. Mostly lives in San Francisco. Rich, old money, time on his hands. You know the type. An actual pocket watch in his vest pocket. His family’s money goes back to the gold rush. I guess they did that type of mining where they used a high pressure water cannon to wash away whole hillsides and flush out the gold.”

  “Real rape-the-wilderness stuff,” I said.

  “Right. Now Mr. Middleton is dealing with his environmental guilt by coming up to Tahoe and filing lawsuits to stop development. He and his make our lives miserable. You call Middleton if you want the latest environmental correctness.”

  “What about someone less narrow minded?”

  Terry paused in thought. “I’d talk to Linda Saronna. She’s with the Forest Service. Runs the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. She hears it from all sides and can give you a balanced view. I’ve got her number here somewhere.” Terry flipped through his address book and wrote it on a yellow Post-it note.

  “I’ll check around,” I said, “but it’s hard to see where I could add anything to what Diamond will give you. “

  Terry leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk. He spoke in a hushed voice. “You were once a cop. You know the constraints of playing by the rules. If Diamond wants to look around somewhere, he needs a search warrant. If he kicks someone’s butt, they suspend him while the citizen’s committee investigates.”

  “You think the laws don’t apply to me?” I said.

  “Maybe not so much, huh?” Terry said.

  FOUR

  I went back to Street’s condo. She’d left a note saying she was at her lab. I gathered up Mrs. Duchamp and the dogs and drove back up the mountain to inspect the damage.

  Mrs. Duchamp started emoting when her house came into view, although I couldn’t discern whether hers were tears of happiness that her house was unscathed or tears of sadness that the nearby trees were all burned to charred trunks. Nevertheless, she calmed when I got her inside and put her into her love seat with Treasure on her lap and a cup of hot tea by her side. I told her to call if she needed anything, then left.

  The snow was melting fast and making a mess as the slush combined with the ash from the burn. In addition, the firemen had showered our houses with their fire hoses. The torrent of water, while possibly saving everything we had, splashed ash and mud across our homes. It would be months before our houses looked normal, decades before the forest returned.

  When I let Spot out of the Jeep he immediately ran around, investigating the new snow and the strong smells coming from the burn. I carried my bags of art books back inside.

  The phone rang as I was poaching eggs for breakfast.

  “How bad is it up there?” Street asked.

  “My view has been expanded. All the trees that previously blocked my vista of Heavenly are gone. If I get a telescope this winter I’ll be able to watch the skiers trysting inside the gondolas.”

  “At least you’re putting a positive spin on things,” Street said.

  “Now that you say that, I realize the irony of the fire. Everything near my cabin burned up. That leaves me safer from fire than I’ve ever been.”

  “Tough way to achieve fire safety,” Street said. “But I’m glad my favorite little cabin is okay.”

  We said goodbye and I went back to my breakfast.

  Later, I went out and surveyed the burn. The landscape was as surreal as a Dali painting. I shoveled the ash-laden snow from my deck, then stopped and looked down the ravine where the fire had come up. The words on the note came back to me. The first fire will take only trees. I took my walking stick and eased my way down through the snow to the escarpment below my house. At the top of the cliff I moved laterally until I came to a more gradual incline. Spot came along and skidded his way down the slippery slope. Hazy plumes issued from smoldering tree trunks.

  A hundred yards below my cabin I stopped and looked down. The ravine had strong ridgelines at the sides and it arced down the mountain like a giant bobsled course. Before the fire, the trees had been thick in the center of the ravine and thinner at the edges. I wasn’t certain, but from where I stood it looked like any fire in the ravine would stay confined as if in a chimney. Unless, of course, there were strong cross winds. I remembered Terry’s conviction that it was pure luck that o
ur houses didn’t burn. But I was beginning to think that maybe the firestarter knew what he was doing.

  I climbed back up to my cabin and went inside to call the woman whose name I’d gotten from Terry Drier.

  “U.S. Forest Service,” a woman answered. Her voice was harried.

  “Linda Saronna, please,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, she’s busy. Would you like to leave a message on her voice mail?” Another phone was ringing in the background. “Hold on,” the woman said.

  When the secretary came back on I said, “This is Owen McKenna calling on behalf of the Douglas County Fire Department. I’ve been asked to look into the fire on the East Shore. I’d like to stop by and talk to Ms. Saronna. Will she be around this morning?”

  “Let me see. How about ten-thirty? Only I can’t promise. Linda is wearing three hats today. But I think it’ll be okay.”

  I told her I’d take my chances.

  I drove through South Lake Tahoe and pulled up at the Forest Service building on Emerald Bay Road at the appointed time.

  Linda Saronna saw me in her office. She was a tall redhead in her late forties wearing beige Forest Service slacks and shirt. Her impatience filled the room as she finished one phone call and answered another. She tapped a pen on a yellow pad as she talked. During a third call she got up and paced like a caged animal. “Look,” she said after she hung up and we exchanged names, “I’m really busy. Can’t this wait?”

  “Until the arsonist lights another fire?”

  Her eyes flashed with exasperation. She shut them for a moment, sat down, took a deep breath and leaned back in her desk chair. “Sorry,” she said at last. “We’ve had a lot of confusion around here. The phone hasn’t been quiet for thirty seconds all morning. I’ve talked to every agency in the Tahoe Basin at least twice. The fire is still burning up by Genoa Peak.”