So Weeps the Willow - 19. Discovery 9

Discovery 9

Minneapolis Fire Department

Incident Report

Location: 7432 Beauford Avenue So., Richfield. Sunset Pawn

Date: October 13th, 20XX Time: 6:12 pm

Responding Personnel: Cadet, Senior Grade Brandon Freeman

Supervisor: Brenda Stangeland

Station Chief: Hal Kronenberg

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Narrative: [Officials must use full verbiage. This is an official document.]

Team Station 8 from Minneapolis was in the vicinity when the call went out. The team arrived on the scene at the storefront in the above location. Both emergency inspectors were outfitted with masks and oxygen tanks, given the reported danger. Cross-checks were accomplished and then personnel were ready to proceed. The following include the observations of the reporting firefighters:

Richfield Police officers were at the scene. A woman was being interviewed as the truck parked in the lot.

Freeman and Brenda Stangeland, decabbed the vehicle and proceeded to the police officers to ascertain the situation. Upon approach, fire personnel were informed a woman was still in the store trapped. Both inspectors then rapidly entered the building which was billowing with smoke and with visible flames behind the windows.

Freeman and Stangeland entered the storefront and found a woman crouched behind a counter. She was given a mask and then carried out of the front door. Other members of the team had suppressed the flames in the exit areas, allowing them to pass.

The victim, Charese Thompson, was given oxygen and then transported by ambulance to the Richfield Community hospital. The other victim, witness Marvel Smith, was uninjured and gave her statement.

The fire in the building was stilled at 6:49 pm. A survey was taken of the scene. There was extensive fire and smoke damage inside the structure including to the interior walls. The site of the fire was determined to be the back room. The source of the fire appeared to be centered around a kerosene heater in the corner of the room. The following actions were taken.

The heater was identified as a Rosemount 650 was secured within a bag and labeled. The entire surface of the heater was blackened and warped. Preliminary findings would suggest the heater was the cause of the fire. Additional tests will be conducted because inspectors also found traces of accelerant around heater which could have been from the tank exploding.

The investigation team exited the storefront. The pre-screened equipment was then tested for calibrations post-inspection. They were consistent within the protocols of the testing parameters.

Witness statements to follow.

***

Clay was being his usual self, annoying and endearing at the same time. “I need a few more dollars. After all, the science fair has concessions and if I’m going to buy D some food, I need money.”

“I’m not sure who this new guy is,” Rush answered as he pulled up to the curb. “I realize you are dating, that’s normal at your age, but why do you have to pay?”

The teen’s expression was memorable in its exaggeration. The eye rolling was epic. In fact, Rush had to admit the kid was a master as both expressionism and impressionism. The angst simply permeated the vehicle.

“Here is a fifty. I’m giving you this as a loan, though. I want you to admit it into this microphone. Admit, this money is a loan.” Rush held the phone up directed at the teen.

Clay looked at him, incredulous. “Are you kidding me? You want me to pay back my date money?”

Rush nodded. “I do,” he replied and waited.

Clay snorted. He then said overly loud, “I promise if my DATE is a fucking ASSHOLE, I’ll pay my annoying DAD back his money.” The teen shook his head. “Is that okay?”

“I’m good,” Rush said. He pointedly turned off the recorder on his phone.

“Are you serious?” Clay thundered. “You’re just pissed you didn’t get to date at my age and you’re punishing me. That’s what this is.”

Rush frowned, and then looked at Clay in his passenger seat. “I’m protecting you. I know this is new for you. But, Ben and I love you. We are looking out for you, and we worry.” After a lengthy pause, Clay collected himself, rubbed his nose and staying focused on the car ahead of him, he nodded.

“I know.”

Rush sighed, repeating himself, “Clay, Ben and I love you, so we look out for you. That means, we interfere with your life. We are making sure you’re not making bad choices. Okay?”

Clay heard a hitch in his voice. It was the absent sound that made his pulse slow. He’d felt worry and apprehension. There were times his mind raced, filling him with questions. Finally, his lungs deflated and his anxiety calmed. This wasn’t like before. This wasn’t like the people in his past. He could trust Rush. Finally he spoke.

“I like him.”

Clay sounded so hollow. It pierced Rush to the core. Those timbres were especially poignant, because they were honest, and painful.

“I know. I’m old and weird and so is Ben.” He stopped to breathe. “We are trying to protect you. It’s not easy.”

The teen cocked his head. He repeated, “I know.” Then he snorted his impatience.

With that, the young man leaped out of the car, but he didn’t slam his door. Rush could hear the firm, but soft click and impact. With teenagers, these sounds mattered. He worried. It consumed him sometimes. When a teen’s reactions were as measured as Clay’s, a person could breathe. These kinds of expressions were okay.

Rush pulled away from the curb and drove home thinking about the report. Naomi had sent it by email with a cryptic note. The body of the email had said; ‘Check this out. It could be connected to this case, by which we are truly fucked’.

The fire report was about another kerosene heater fire in the suburb just south of Minneapolis. At first glance, it appeared to be caused by the same brand that poisoned Jake Ogden. But he was used to reading official reports from police and fire, first responders of all kinds, sometimes left clues in the words. Whoever wrote that report had questions. Now he had questions and needed to find Naomi some answers, because two heater accidents in a month were a little suspicious and in several different ways.

***

“By the way, we got the report from the Minneapolis Fire Department today.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, sliding in next to Rush on the couch. “What did it say?”

“The report questions the police report and the initial assessment. I think we are seeing a heater that was tampered with. There is no evidence the heater failed. Instead, we are reading reports it was something different, maybe altered. I’m not sure.”

Rush continued, “But, there is another heater accident. That could complicate things.”

“Oh shit,” Ben said, looking alarmed.

“I’m not sure they’re connected. Something about it stinks.”

Ben’s face relaxed, and he chuckled. “The famous Rush Romer instinct is kicking in.”

“I don’t know about that,” the detective snorted. “They are the same brand, different models, but both of them have the client’s safety switch on them. Both of the switches failed, so it’s not good.”

“Maybe the client does have a faulty device.” Ben sighed. “Naomi must be out of her mind.”

“She’s worried. I’m going to speak with the firefighters who were at the scene.” The detective paused, thinking.

“What’s got you riled?” Ben asked.

“Probably nothing. Hand me the Ogden report.”

Ben grabbed it from the side table where Rush indicated. The detective scanned it briefly and then pulled out his laptop. He opened his email account and looked back at the report. Ben watched over his shoulder, trying to figure out what had his partner so excited.

“Look at that,” Rush said, pointing to the beginning of the fire report on his computer screen and then at the beginning of the printed pages in his hand. “What jumps out at you?”

“I’m not sure,” Ben said slowly, his eyes scanning the similar reports. “Both incidents had the same responding firefighters. Is that strange?”

“It is when they’re in different cities. Loring Park is nowhere near Richfield.”

Ben looked in surprise at Rush. “What do you think---?”

But Rush was furiously emailing someone.

***

The office was the same as it had been before. There was a lavishness to it. The staff were attractive and attentive. Twyla started to question her problems with the strategy the firm had taken. She didn’t know how these things worked. Obviously, considering the opulence of the space, they did. Her brother was dead. Someone was the negligent party. They needed to pay. It was that simple.

Yet, this line of thought felt a bit hollow. Jake was dead, and they knew he had a heater which poisoned him. Those were ideas that seemed quite obvious and conclusive. Of course, when you started to take it apart, the problems exploded. For example, how was the heater constructed? Did her brother know how to use it correctly? Why didn’t that safety device work? What if this wasn’t another person’s problem? Why did it seem more complex?

Goddamn it. This wasn’t fair. The world wasn’t fair, not to her or Jake or even to the idiots who invented this notion everything could be solved. She now stewed in her own anger. Several things began to make her leg twitch.

Not everything could be fixed. Steve was the perfect example. Her husband was now into the second month of chemotherapy and he was sick about half of the time. It hadn’t been going well for him. When they met with his doctor, the oncologist, the news hadn’t been good so far. The cancer wasn’t responding to the treatments. The oncologist had suggested doing some radiation treatment next, but what if that didn’t work? With all the advances in science and in society, some things couldn’t be fixed. Once broken, they were trashed.

What if that was true for Jake as well?

“Please, come with me,” the receptionist said, leaning through a doorway of glass, which was surrounded by polished wood gleaming and lush. Twyla’s mind was filled with anger and sadness, in equal parts. The beauty of the space annoyed her, for some reason she couldn’t fathom.

“One moment,” she responded. Slowly, Twyla grabbed the bags at her sides and stood. Breathing in deeply, she walked to the doorway. The other woman, she noticed, was young, slim, dark-skinned, and attractive, and it pissed her off. “I’m ready for him.”

They walked down the hall, passing by several doors and a few plants. Twyla couldn’t contain her sudden and unexpected fury.

“You know,” she remarked as she passed through the lintels of the doorway. “He shouldn’t have died. He was a happy guy that we all loved, and something terrible happened to him.”

The attendant didn’t answer. In fact, she seemed mesmerized by the remarks. Her mouth opened. Then she shut it, silently.

“He’s dead and he shouldn’t be,” Twyla repeated. The attractive woman smiled, and the look in her eyes conveyed something odd considering the situation. The expression was almost triumphant. Beaming. Knowing.

The other woman finally answered her after Twyla was seated at the conference table. “That’s where we can help. Big corporations don’t care about people. They make products all the time that have flaws and those things hurt people. Law firms like us make big corporations pay for their mistakes. Then when it gets too expensive, they fix their products. In a way,” she continued, still poised in the doorway, “We are making the world a better place.”

Twyla watched as the other woman finished her speech and left the room, closing the door softly with barely a click as it closed. She considered the woman’s words carefully. Her explanation made a lot of sense. There were a lot of shoddy products out there, things that were dangerous and didn’t need to be. Her brother was killed by a product that didn’t work right.

Maybe she was doing the world a service by suing. Her mother had said something similar, but with the kind of rabid vehemence that seemed unreasonable. Twyla remembered and winced.

“Those motherfucking assholes built a heater that killed your brother. We can’t get him back. That’s true. But we can make them pay. They should have to give up their goddamned evil profits off your brother’s death. These people are monsters. They are awful people who put money above people every time. We need to get paid for his death because they owe us.”

How alike the law firm’s argument was to her mother’s, yet her mother sounded like a money-hungry predator, while the woman sounded reasonable, practically rational and sensible. But, wasn’t it the same? Twyla opened her purse, pulled out her compact, and powdered her chin and cheeks lightly. Her lipstick looked a little spotty and thin, so she pulled out the tube of Robust Bloom and applied it carefully.

She heard the door open and quickly finished her ministrations. It was their attorney, Laura. She was dressed conservatively in a plaid business suit and her hair was up in a simple braid.

“Good afternoon. Thanks for coming by. I wanted to get you caught up in the latest developments. We have the answers from the defendants and our expert has prepared a report. There are depositions planned for the head of the heater company and for some of the parts suppliers. In particular, we are deposing the safety switch maker. Our expert believes it was his faulty product that essentially allowed the heater to spew carbon monoxide into your brother’s room, killing him.”

Laura had a file folder of papers in her hand. She sat down and opened it up. “First, let’s go over some of their answers.”

Twyla listened as her attorney droned on about denials by the companies they were suing about negligent parts or workmanship. The heater company itself was arguing that their warnings were sufficient and had sent along studies showing their instructions were tested and provided enough notice to any user. The other parts makers all were equally as adamant.

It made her head hurt, because she couldn’t figure out who was lying or not. Someone must be lying. Her brother was dead. Their products hadn’t worked, especially the one that made the safety switch, the one that should have tripped and turned off the heater.

“Our expert believes the switch was poorly made and so when your brother moved it from his storage space, the thing was so weak and flimsy, it broke. He tested the switch on a working heater, and it did what it was supposed to. The heater turned off when a certain level of carbon monoxide was present, but since the switch is so delicate, it broke on your brother’s heater.”

“The safety device was broken?” Twyla asked. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You mean the thing worked fine on others, but not on my brother’s?

“Our expert found the safety device is too sensitive and was damaged from normal wear and tear,” the attorney said. She patted a stapled thin stack of pages. “He found it should have turned it off, but didn’t.”

“Let me see that,” Twyla said. What she read astounded her. The expert laid it out carefully, and then in the end came up with a solution that didn’t really follow. He wrote the device was designed to turn off in the presence of either carbon monoxide or if disabled. Yet, it hadn’t done so. The expert didn’t really say why.

“Do we have other reports about this safety device?” Twyla asked. “This seems pretty important.”

“We only need one expert. These professional engineers are very expensive, so we don’t want to hire more than we need. As you read, the device clearly failed to work properly, which is why we are suing the safety switch manufacturer as well,” her attorney explained. For some reason, Laura’s eyes weren’t meeting Twyla’s. Her face was glancing away and her eyes darted about the room.

“Do the defendants have experts too?” Twyla asked, pointing at the file folder of papers.

Laura nodded. “As is usually the case, defense experts claim the plaintiff is at fault and not their product. It’s their normal argument. Blame the victim.”

“Can I see their expert report for a minute?”

Laura fidgeted for a minute, tapping her long, lacquered nails on the manila folder. “It’s very technical.”

“Let me read it,” Twyla demanded. She scowled at her attorney and the woman sighed and flipped open the folder. After looking through a few documents, she slid one from the middle of the papers.

Twyla looked at the top of the first page. It was emblazoned with the name of an engineering firm and the name of a person with a string of initials after his name. She started to read the report, right then and there.

“I can give you some time, if you’d like,” Laura said, softly. “Let me get you something to drink and you can read it at your leisure.”

Obviously, her attorney didn’t want to wait around in a conference room while she read this detailed report. Twyla thanked her and continued to read. It was riveting, and it made her heart sink.

Her mother was not going to be happy hearing this. Not at all.

***

Rush watched as Clay made the hit. On the screen, objects exploded creating loads of color that sprayed red on the screen. The image blinked as oozing blotches dripped down the monitor’s face. The teen turned and looked him in the eye, his excitement was addictive, and the detective grinned back. Buying this game console was worth every penny. Clay was already talking about having people over for gaming parties.

“Did you see that?” Clay shouted. “I fucking killed him.”

“You did,” Rush answered immediately. “That was so good.”

Clay turned and beamed. “It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”

Rush didn’t pause. “You got it down, my friend. That was fantastic.”

The teen returned to his game. The electronic flashes on the device lit the young man’s face. The colors were pink, blue, green, and purple. The flickering lights made his face look different stages of excited.

Rush sighed, again. This time with satisfaction.

The tinkle of his phone distracted him. Rush silenced it, and continued to watch as Clay played the game. He wanted to enjoy every minute of this. The kid was less than two years from going off to college. He felt like he’d missed so much time. He wouldn’t lose out on any more of it.

There was a sound of the front door opening and closing.

Rush’s phone rang again, this time with a sound of chimes ringing from a cathedral.

“Fuck,” he said, now fumbling for the buttons.

“Answer it,” Clay said without looking up. He continued punching buttons and jerking the joystick, his face bathed in yellow light, and swore again. “Goddamn it. Those fucking orcs are on the move.”

“Not now,” Rush said, trying to concentrate on Clay’s gameplaying.

“Answer them!” Clay shouted. “It could be important. Fucking-a” he yelled. “I can’t believe these people. I’m on their ass.”

Rush answered the phone and moved away from the teen, who was now writhing on the floor.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You need to stop ignoring me,” the voice said, and it was chilling.

Rush stepped quickly down the hall. He reached the door, opened it, and ran down the steps. “I’m not ignoring you,” he answered.

“We have another gay case going on. I’m not ready to deal with this shit,” the man responded. It was Rush’s old nemesis and colleague, the notorious police officer Hammond. The guy was a homophobic nightmare. Rush was annoyed by the sound of the guy’s voice.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“We need to talk. This isn’t a normal case.”

“I don’t’ know what you’re talking about,” Rush barked. He was about ready to hang up. Guys like Hammond were infuriating. They were no longer affiliated. Rush was a private citizen, and Hammond was a cop. Hammond’s behavior was ridiculous.

“You know I got fired,” Rush said. “I’m not with the BCA any longer, so why are you calling me? What do you want?”

“I need help.” The Minneapolis detective said. “You were instrumental in getting the killer in the Braun case. I never would have got the guy without your help. I think this might be similar, but I need your help.”

“What do you really want?” Rush asked again. With the mention of Kyle Braun, his interest was piqued. They had worked well together on that case. Hammond was an asshole, but he had connections which could be invaluable. Perhaps Hammond might have information Naomi could use. Rush knew how it worked. If he helped the detective, maybe he’d get something in return.

“Seriously, I’m really confused about the guy from the bridge.” Hammond sounded frustrated.

“Okay, I’ll help if I can. Start at the beginning,” Rush said.

Hammond didn’t.

“I don’t understand this. I’m reading a report and it’s not making much sense. Do gay guys usually date women and still advertise as gay?” The pause was considerable. Then, he continued. “I’m not sure there is a connection between the gay guy and the leather guy found last week. I think something is not right. Something seems off?”

Rush listened to the detective and began to understand. The detective’s descriptions, interviews, and the reports didn’t jibe. Things were very jumbled. Rush listened, transfixed.

Maybe, now there was a murder.

***

From Grindr:

Wily1

Bi WM looking for action, bb, Ds, FF, switch, mostly bottom here. SA, fit, must be discreet. Me in photo. Let’s get it on!