Into The Inferno Part 16

My personal theory was that, under the influence of prescription medication and alcohol, Caputo had left food burning on the stove. After all, his mother had been in the process of bringing over part of a meal. I figured the dog had gotten into rat poison or eaten some tainted roadkill. The ammonium nitrate, which Caputo probably kept around for removing stumps, had been stored inside and premixed with the fuel oil, although I didn't recall seeing it yesterday when we were cleaning up. The fire set it off. My theory held water until Caputo's mother insisted Max had never blasted a stump in his life.

Oddly enough, a volunteer had parked his extended-cab pickup truck in front of my new Lexus, so that the Lexus received no damage whatsoever, while the volunteer's truck lost three windows, a tire, and most of the grille. I put my bunking clothes in the trunk and left my knee-high rubber boots on. My civilian shoes had disappeared along with everything else on Engine 1. Either that or they were in a tree with Caputo's head.

28. GOING TO THE BANK IN A DIAPER.

As I drove the four of us back into town, I couldn't help thinking about Charlie Drago's warning that we would be blown to smithereens. Had to be a coincidence. Charlie Drago was paranoid. Our explosion had been caused by Caputo, who'd been one of our resident nutcases ever since I was in the department. The only thing that bothered me was the dog. Caputo loved those dogs. He would never have hurt one of them, much less throw one into the blackberries. Even harder to believe that the mutt just happened to get into rat poison the day Caputo blew himself to h.e.l.l. That part bothered me. It bothered me a lot. Everything about the explosion bothered me.

Sure, fire departments handled explosions, along with fires, car wrecks, first-aid calls, broken water heaters, you name it, but the last time North Bend had faced an explosion had been . . . I couldn't even remember the last time. Probably never. Certainly never during my tenure. They weren't that common.

"You girls like to see your grandfather?" I said as we drove back to town.

Britney was sitting beside me, Allyson and Morgan in back. "I'm hungry," Britney said.

Allyson leaned forward and looked at me suspiciously. "Which grampa?"

"Swope. Grandpa Swope. My father."

"I thought he moved away."

"He's living a few blocks from here. You want to see him?"

"Are you going to?"

"I thought I would."

"I want to see Grampa," Britney said. "I want to see him!"

Allyson nodded. I didn't know how to prepare them. After the explosion I didn't have the mental energy to come up with anything.

"Grandpa's been experiencing poor health," I said lamely.

"What's poor health?" Britney asked.

"Means he's sick," Allyson said.

"He's in a nursing home," I added. "He won't be able to talk, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love you."

"If he can't say it, how do we know he loves us?" Britney asked.

" 'Cause we're little girls," Allyson said sarcastically. "We're adorable. Everybody loves little girls."

"He's always loved you," I said. "Nothing has come along to change that."

My girls were were adorable and funny and smart and always buzzing with plans. I would miss watching them grow up. Thinking about it brought a wave of sorrow over me as powerful as anything I'd felt since Lorie left. It hit me like the shock wave back at the trailer. I came close to bursting into tears right there in the car. adorable and funny and smart and always buzzing with plans. I would miss watching them grow up. Thinking about it brought a wave of sorrow over me as powerful as anything I'd felt since Lorie left. It hit me like the shock wave back at the trailer. I came close to bursting into tears right there in the car.

We parked outside Alpine Estates, and as we got out, Britney said, "I'm hungry."

"We won't be long, sweetie."

"But I'm hungry."

"Quiet up, Brit," Allyson said. "I want to see Grandpa."

"You don't mind, do you?" I asked Morgan.

"I'll wait out here if that's all right." I tossed her the keys so she could listen to the radio.

"Try that Andy Williams CD," Britney said. "It's smooth."

As I opened the door for them, I realized everything I felt toward my girls had been amplified a thousand times by the near miss up the hill. My health situation had already been having that effect, but the fire and explosion had magnified it even more. I wanted every minute to stretch into a week, found myself memorizing every move they made. It was as if I were seeing them for the first time, as if I'd been blind.

Or would be soon.

I'd been feeling it since I got home the night before, that my senses were sharpening. That I was saving up images and feelings to take with me into diaperland.

As we walked into the nursing home, I knew these were my last days with my daughters, my last hours to enjoy their innocence and spontaneity, their quick-witted banter. What hurt was that I couldn't give them all of my time, that I simply didn't dare stop searching for a cure, not while there was the least chance I might beat this monkey. I'd been deserted by Stephanie Riggs, trivialized and politicized by the committee, lied to by Jane's California Propulsion, outmaneuvered by Mayor Haston, and essentially left to face this alone.

Moving to North Bend after the death of his third wife, my father had been an immediate hit with the girls, two and four years old then. They'd adored him, and at this late date I could admit their adoration had bothered me. Grandpa had poured all the affection he'd never given me onto them, and they'd reveled in it.

It had been petty beyond reason to keep them from their grandfather, to withhold my own visits because of slights or things not done twenty-six years ago, to hold my mother's actions and his reaction to them against him for so long, as if it were somehow his fault she had left when I was eight. Oddly, now that I thought about it, both of us had been abandoned and left with small children. I knew my father was a decent man who wanted above all to do right. Or at least that's what he'd wanted when he had a will.

We found him in a wheelchair in the hallway outside his room, head lolled to one side.

Exuding the brutal honesty of the very young, Britney let out an "Ugghh!" Her sister elbowed her and put her index finger to her lips. Both girls looked to me for signals.

I took a breath and said, "It's a little like he's asleep. You would still love me if I was asleep, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, we love you, Grampa," Britney said. "Don't we, Allyson?"

"You sure that's Grandpa?"

Neither of them had gotten close, standing like tin soldiers with their feet together and their arms at their sides. A thoughtful nurse's aide who'd been eyeing us showed up with a box of crayons and some scratch paper. We all went into the room, the nurse's aide wheeling my father in behind us.

"He doing okay?" I asked.

She was a diminutive Asian woman, no more than ninety pounds, with long, l.u.s.trous black hair wrapped behind her head. "He do jus' fine. I go every day a' four, but he do jus' fine. Every day. You from out of state?"

"No."

"Have nice visit." Smiling and nodding, she left the room.

"He ever talk?" Britney asked.

"No."

"If I throw him a ball will he catch it?"

"Why don't you throw him a rock?" Allyson said. "Don't be stupid. Of course he won't catch it. Look at him. Let's draw something. Like that stuff we mailed Mommy."

"I can't do that that many pictures," Britney complained. many pictures," Britney complained.

"Even one picture would be nice," I said.

Twenty minutes later, a bored Morgan wandered in and waited as the girls colored. A moment later, when I saw Dr. Brashears walking past the door, I called out. He came back, smiling quietly, eyes filled with my fate.

"What are you doing here?" Brashears asked.

I gestured toward the room. "My father."

"I just went over Jackie's records. She conformed to your list of symptoms even more closely than I thought. By the way, I called Tacoma General. Got some doctor named Philbert. Holly Riggs and Jackie? Their symptoms match perfectly."

"And neither one is coming out of it?"

"Doctors aren't G.o.d, but I don't think so."

When the girls finished their drawings, we tacked them up on the bulletin board on the end wall in my father's room next to the newspaper clipping about me. I gave Morgan some cash and sent the three of them over to North Bend Way to Scott's Dairy Freeze. The pictures were directly under a note that said: There is banking and cigarettes at the floor dayroom every Mon & Wed & Fri at 10:00 a.m. There is banking and cigarettes at the floor dayroom every Mon & Wed & Fri at 10:00 a.m.

As if my father was going to be doing any banking. Or smoking.

Alone in the room with him, I pulled up a chair and held his hand. He'd been a poor father some of the time, but then I'd been a poor son some of the time. h.e.l.l, he was human. Just like me. Like most of us, he'd done the best he knew. The princely manner with which he'd treated my daughters was a hint of how badly his own demons had tortured him in the years when he'd been raising me.

After a while, I called the fire station to see whether anybody had left any messages. No one had. I took a calling card out of my wallet and called JCP, Inc., in San Jose, asked for Mr. Gray in their administrative offices. It took a while to reach him.

Once I had him on the line, I went through the whole thing again, the accident, our health problems since the accident. I mentioned Mr. Stuart's denial that their company had been s.h.i.+pping anything in February. "I've got the s.h.i.+pping company's manifest right here in my hand," I said. "You guys s.h.i.+pped three packages, and they were involved in a serious accident."

"I'm sorry you and Mr. Stuart got off on the wrong foot," Gray said.

"There was no wrong foot about it. He said you guys don't s.h.i.+p in February. I have a copy of the manifest right here in front of me that says you did."

"Stuart is very well thought of around here. If he said we weren't s.h.i.+pping in February, then that's what he honestly believed. Now, I'm not even sure that we were were s.h.i.+pping last winter. I'd have to check the records myself." s.h.i.+pping last winter. I'd have to check the records myself."

"What we have is, we have a couple of dead firefighters up here."

"Dead?"

"A couple more who are brain-dead."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean their central nervous systems are shot. They can't walk, talk, or feed themselves. They're incontinent."

"I can a.s.sure you, Lieutenant . . ."

"Swope."

"Lieutenant Swope . . . that Jane's does not manufacture or s.h.i.+p anything that would cause symptoms like the ones you're describing."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. Just out of curiosity, what symptoms were your people showing? I mean early on."

"Why do you want to know, if you don't s.h.i.+p anything that might cause a problem?"

"Just thinking out loud. Let me get back to you. I've got a meeting I'm late for."

I gave him the phone number at the station.

I was helping the nurse's aide change my father's diaper, a messy business at best, as well as a benchmark I was determined to get past, when a woman's voice called, "Jim?"

I turned around and found Stephanie Riggs staring at me from the doorway.

29. ALL THE WOMEN IN MY LIFE.

We'd been pulling his trousers back on, were in the process of sitting him up, feats the diminutive nurse was ill-equipped to accomplish alone. Stephanie rushed in to help situate him in his wheelchair, then watched as the nurse left the room carrying a plastic sack. The odor of human s.h.i.+t lingered long after I found a citrus spray bottle in the bathroom and misted the room.

"I left messages, but you never got back to me."

"I didn't get them. I drove up, but I couldn't find anybody in the station. Finally a volunteer who was hanging around said somebody saw you over here. He also said somebody died at a fire today? Not another firefighter I hope."

"A civilian. By the way. Phone tag is something you play with people who have more than four days to live."

"I was working on your problem. I didn't think you needed the rea.s.surance of knowing that."

"It looks like I did."

"I'm here now. I'm here for you. I'm sorry that wasn't clear."

I was annoyed that Max Caputo's bizarre death had stolen so much time from my own impending finish. I was annoyed also that Stephanie hadn't hooked up with me sooner, as promised. Or maybe I was just annoyed. "What did my tests show?" Stephanie took a deep breath and looked down at my father. It took me a minute to realize she wasn't going to reply, at least not right away. "Dad, this is Stephanie Riggs. Stephanie, my father, James Swope, Sr."

"CVA?"

"Little over two years ago."

"Same condition as Holly."

"The thought has occurred to me."

"You're a good son."

"That's one thing I'm not."

"No, you are. I saw you working with the nurse before you knew I was here. And you've kept him close to home. A lot of people would just s.h.i.+p someone in his condition out and never think twice about it."

That was exactly what I'd done and I felt lower than whale s.h.i.+t because of it, yet I could hardly point out my crimes to Stephanie. She already hated me.