Chapter 3 - THE FIRE BEHIND THE DRYERS
Big Pete’s phone light shifted toward the voice.
For half a second, I saw a figure standing near the storage-room entrance. He wore dark pants, a utility jacket, and a black cap pulled low over his forehead. One hand was raised in front of him.
The other held a red plastic gasoline container.
Detective Reyes drew his weapon.
“Police. Put the container down and show me both hands.”
The man threw it instead.
Gasoline splashed across the floor between the dryers. The container bounced once, struck a metal cart, and rolled beneath a folding table.
Then the man ran through the rear door.
Reyes went after him.
Curtis grabbed the container while Ronnie and Pete began pushing people toward the front exit.
“Everybody out!” I shouted.
Lily caught my arm.
“The copy.”
“Forget it.”
“If they burn it, there’s nothing left.”
“You are bleeding, barefoot, and being hunted by people who set buildings on fire. You are leaving.”
She pulled away and ran toward the detergent vending machine.
I swore and followed her.
The emergency lights flickered on, casting the laundromat in a weak red glow. Gasoline had spread beneath two rows of machines, and the fumes burned the back of my throat.
Curtis pried at the vending-machine panel with his screwdriver.
“It’s bolted.”
“Break it,” Lily said.
“That will set off the internal lock.”
“Then break the wall.”
Outside, Officer Cole was yelling that everyone needed to move away from the building. The ambulance crew guided customers toward the far side of the parking lot.
Cole did not come inside to help us.
That did not surprise me.
Pete returned carrying the tire iron.
He struck the side of the machine once.
The metal buckled.
He hit it again.
The lower panel snapped away, spilling small detergent boxes across the floor.
Lily dropped to her knees.
“There.”
She reached into the narrow space beneath the coin mechanism and pulled out a blue plastic memory card no larger than her thumbnail.
The first flame appeared behind us.
It crawled from beneath Dryer Fourteen, thin and bright, tracing the line of gasoline along the floor.
“Move!” Curtis shouted.
Pete grabbed Lily under one arm. I seized the back of her borrowed sweatshirt, and we ran.
The flame reached the spilled gasoline.
A sheet of fire rushed across the aisle.
Heat struck my back as we stumbled through the front door.
The windows flashed orange behind us.
Fire alarms finally began screaming, several seconds too late.
People scattered across the parking lot. The paramedics dragged a hose from the ambulance, but it was too small to control the flames spreading beneath the machines.
Curtis reached for the door.
“My tools are inside.”
Donna grabbed his belt.
“Your tools are insured.”
“My father’s toolbox isn’t.”
“Then honor your father by staying alive.”
The fire department arrived within four minutes, although it felt much longer. Firefighters shattered the upper glass panels, forced open the rear service gate, and attacked the flames from both sides.
I stood beside Lily beneath a cold drizzle, watching nineteen years of my life fill with black smoke.
Bright Day Laundry had survived recessions, floods, a robbery, broken pipes, and the arrival of three competing chains. I had spent nearly every dollar from my nursing pension replacing the machines five years earlier.
Now flames rolled behind the windows because I had refused to hand a terrified woman back to the man chasing her.
I should have been devastated.
Instead, I felt strangely calm.
There are moments when life shows you the price of doing the right thing.
You either pay it or spend the rest of your life explaining why you did not.
Lily stood beside me, gripping the memory card in her bloody hand.
“This is my fault.”
“No.”
“If I hadn’t come here—”
“The man who poured gasoline inside my business is responsible for the fire.”
“He came because of me.”
“He came because Nolan Pierce sent him.”
Lily looked at the burning laundromat.
“What if someone had been trapped?”
“They weren’t.”
“But they could have been.”
I turned her toward me.
“That fear is exactly what people like Nolan depend on. They want you to blame yourself for whatever they choose to do next.”
Her lower lip trembled.
“You don’t even know me.”
“I knew enough when you came through the door.”
Detective Reyes emerged from the alley, breathing hard.
“He got into a dark sedan two blocks over. No plates.”
Officer Cole approached.
“Convenient.”
Reyes looked at him.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You arrived unexpectedly, then a suspect entered through an unsecured exit.”
“The exit was locked,” I said.
Cole ignored me.
Reyes’s gaze moved to the memory card in Lily’s hand.
“We need to secure that.”
Lily closed her fingers around it.
“You said the same thing about me.”
“I am trying to protect both.”
“Can you guarantee Officer Cole won’t touch it?”
Cole stepped forward.
“I’m getting tired of the accusations.”
Donna positioned herself beside Lily.
“You should become more trustworthy.”
Cole pointed at her.
“You are interfering with an active investigation.”
Donna smiled without humor.
“I spent three decades filing the paperwork for active investigations. Show me the warrant authorizing you to seize property from a victim who has not consented to your search.”
Cole’s face darkened.
Reyes held up one hand.
“Enough. Lily can retain possession until we arrange a forensic copy in her presence.”
Cole turned toward him.
“You do not have authority to make that decision.”
“Neither do you.”
A fire captain approached and removed his helmet.
“The main fire is contained. Damage is concentrated in the rear row, but there’s smoke and water throughout the building.”
“Was it accidental?” Cole asked.
The captain looked at the empty gasoline container lying near the entrance.
“No.”
Cole’s mouth tightened.
The paramedics insisted Lily go to the hospital. She refused until Donna agreed to accompany her and Reyes promised that Cole would not be allowed inside her treatment room.
I remained behind with Curtis and Pete to speak with the fire marshal.
By midnight, the rain had stopped.
The laundromat windows were broken, the walls were blackened, and water covered the floor. Five machines were destroyed. The rest looked as though they had spent a year beneath the ocean.
The security recorder had melted.
Fortunately, I had installed cloud backup after the robbery three summers earlier.
The fire marshal used my tablet to review the footage. The rear camera showed the masked man cutting power at the service panel, entering with a copied key, and pouring gasoline behind the dryers.
He knew exactly where the cameras were.
He kept his face turned away from all of them.
“How would he have a key?” the marshal asked.
“I don’t know.”
I did not like the answer.
Only employees and two long-term customers had copies. One belonged to Curtis, who repaired the machines. The other belonged to Reggie Mills, a seventy-year-old widower who opened the store for me on Sunday mornings.
Reggie had been among the nine people inside when Lily arrived.
He had also disappeared during the confusion.
At one in the morning, Donna called from the hospital.
“Lily needed eight stitches. No concussion, but she has bruising around her ribs and wrists.”
“Is she safe?”
“For the moment. Reyes arranged for a female officer from another district.”
“Where is Cole?”
“Gone.”
That should have comforted me.
It did not.
“What about the memory card?”
“Still with Lily. She will only unlock it if we are present.”
“Why us?”
“Because she trusts the people who stood in front of the door.”
Two hours later, we gathered in a private hospital conference room: Lily, Donna, Pete, Curtis, Ronnie, Detective Reyes, and me.
Reyes brought a computer specialist from the state attorney general’s office named Tasha Green. Lily inserted the memory card into an isolated laptop and entered a sixteen-character password.
Folders filled the screen.
Property records.
Insurance claims.
Payments routed through shell corporations.
Emails between executives, inspectors, and police officers.
A spreadsheet listed addresses beside dates and financial amounts.
Six addresses had burned.
Four more had not.
Bright Day Laundry was third on the unfinished list.
Beside my address was a planned date.
The following Friday.
“They were going to burn it anyway,” Lily whispered.
Reyes leaned closer to the screen.
Another file contained photographs of buildings taken before each fire. A final folder was marked HART, FRANKLIN.
Lily stopped breathing.
“That was my father’s name.”
She opened it.
Inside were scanned inspection reports signed by Franklin Hart, a former municipal building inspector. Each report had rejected permits connected to Pierce Development.
The last document was a photograph of Lily’s father standing beside his city vehicle.
Someone had written two words across the image.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
Lily began crying without making a sound.
“My father died in a car accident seven years ago.”
Reyes stared at the screen.
“Maybe it wasn’t an accident.”
The conference-room door opened.
Everyone turned.
The female officer stood outside, but no one was beside her.
“My mistake,” she said. “I thought someone knocked.”
The hallway was empty.
Then Lily’s replacement phone vibrated on the table.
Only Reyes and the hospital staff had been given the number.
A text message appeared from an unknown sender.
Lily read it aloud.
“I’m alive. I have the recording your father died for. Do not trust Detective Reyes.”
Beneath the message was a name Lily had not spoken all night.
Tessa.
Lily looked across the table at Reyes.
May you like
Then his phone began ringing.
The caller identification read OFFICER TRAVIS COLE.
