The helicopter returns, landing a quarter mile from the fire’s origin as directed and raising a maelstrom of ash and grain-sized pieces of charcoal that blast my face, settle under my collar and drift down my back. At the edge of the cutblock, a large spruce snag, like an immense black bottlebrush, sways from the impact of rotorwash and surrenders to gravity. Three men exit the helicopter and run, crouching, toward me. A minute later, the helicopter flies off into the smoke and we blink away ash, tears running down our faces. One of the men — Phil Berton, the fire behaviour specialist on the team — I know. He introduces the others.
“Porter, this is Cam Huspiel, the fire boss —”
Huspiel is tall and so thin his yellow coveralls hang on him like a bedsheet over a cross. His equipment belt, with radio, water bottle and first aid kit, sags lopsided from his waist, despite having been cinched as tight as possible. He offers a sooty hand. “Well, used to be,” he says, looking around. “I was initial attack but the overhead team has arrived.”
“Aagh,” I say, knowing how he feels. First on the fire, you call the shots, make the big decisions, get everything moving, then a team of more senior people arrive, take over and you’re relegated to some minor role. Like briefing the fire dicks. “My condolences.”
He grins. “It’s their screw-up now.”
Berton has been waiting politely. He interjects. “This is Darvon Malostic.”
I shake another hand, a much cleaner one.
“Darvon is the new investigator on the team.”
I smile. Malostic smiles back. He’s short, seems too young and disgustingly well-groomed — with a sort of soap opera presence that doesn’t quite fit with the setting. Maybe it’s because he’s the only one out here not wearing grimy coveralls. Maybe it’s just because I’m not crazy about the change. “Really,” I say. “What happened to Bill?”
“Heart problems,” says Berton. “Doctor told him to stay away from stressful situations.”
“He’s got teenage kids,” I say. “He came here to relax.”
“Yeah, but the doc said to quit boozing and smoking. So he’s avoiding smoke.”
I nod, think about Bill Star: overweight, outspoken and a hell of a good guy. I can’t see myself having long, philosophical discussions at base camp over a pack of beers with Malostic. But maybe I’m just getting old, set in my ways. Never trust anyone over 30 has been replaced by never trust anyone under 30. I’ve crossed the grand divide.
“So what’s the situation?” asks Malostic.
I look around. “Well, we seem to have a process of rapid oxidation, accompanied by heat and light, compounded in severity by significant air movement.”
Malostic blinks, looks confused. I keep a straight face. Sometimes jargon is fun. He looks over at Berton, who tries not to smile. “Porter is saying we have a fire, driven by wind.”
It takes Malostic a few more seconds to realize we’re poking fun at him, then he looks indignant. “What I meant was, do we have any indication how this started?”
“Follow me.”
I had the helicopter land a quarter mile from the origin so the rotorwash wouldn’t further disturb the site. We walk along the road to the crater with the pan.
I point. “It started here.”
“Right here?” says Malostic.
“That’s the point of origin.”
Malostic frowns. “You disturbed it.”
“A little. I didn’t know it was there.”
“You’re not supposed to move anything until I get here.”
Not entirely true. Malostic’s job is questioning witnesses, liaising with the police and following up leads while Phil and I locate and document the origin, collect the evidence. But it’s standard operating procedure not to disturb anything until the evidence search and documentation is complete. “It was concealed by ash,” I say. “I needed to confirm it was the origin.”
Malostic sneezes, pulls a Kleenex from his pocket, blows his nose. “You really shouldn’t touch anything,” he says, shaking his head. “There might have been some residue in the pan we could have analysed. Next time, just wait. Or bring a metal detector.”
Berton and I exchange glances. “Good point,” says Berton. “We’ll add one to our kit.”
Malostic nods, looks vindicated. “So, why did he start it here?”
“He used the brush pile to assure ignition,” says Berton, staring at the crater and rubbing his chin. Berton is short, balding, trim and tidy. With his glasses, he looks like a high school math teacher. But he’s been on more fires than I’ll ever see.“He probably used an accelerant like diesel to start the pile. Once the heavy slash in the pile was burning, it threw embers into the block and ignited the logging slash. With a bit of wind, this would produce maximum fire intensity by the time it hit the standing timber, where it crowned out.”
“Crowned out?” says Malostic.
I’m not encouraged. “What do you know about wildfire?”
“I’ve done some research.”
“Research?” As usual, it looks like the Forest Service picked the lowest bidder.
Malostic looks injured.“There’s some excellent material available.”
“I hope so.”
“Crowning is when the fire gets into the tops of the trees,” Berton explains. “To crown the fire needs wind, ladder fuels and sufficiently dry conditions. When it gets rolling, a crown fire is the most difficult sort of fire to fight.”
Malostic is taking notes. “You think the perpetrator knew this?”
“He knew what he was doing.”
Malostic sneezes again, reaches for another Kleenex. “Sorry. Allergies.”
“You’re allergic to smoke?”
He ignores my question. “Why do you think he used diesel to start the fire?”
“Well,the cake pan was used for a reason,”says Berton.“Probably to contain a fluid. So the question has to be asked — why use a pan at all when he could have simply sloshed some gas on the pile, tossed a match and run like hell?”
“Time delay?” says Malostic.
“Exactly,” says Berton. “But you couldn’t use gasoline for any sort of time delay involving an open flame or spark, so he probably used diesel, which isn’t as volatile as gasoline and won’t ignite until it actually contacts a flame. He probably put a candle in the diesel, which would give him plenty of time to get away from the area before the fire started.”
“Makes sense,” says Malostic. “Except it wasn’t a candle.”
Berton and I look at each other. “Why not?”
“The diesel would dissolve the candle,” Malostic says. “You see, paraffin is a heavy fraction of crude oil. During the refining process the lighter components are distilled off, leaving behind the heavier components such as paraffin. When recombined, the diesel would act as a solvent.”
“A chemist in our midst.”
“It was just a minor,” Malostic says modestly.
“So it had to be something else,” says Berton.
“Sure,” says Malostic. “It could still be diesel, but with a different igniter.”
Malostic is scribbling in his little notebook. I reach over, use my fingers to smear a bit of soot on his cheek. Now he fits in better. He looks at me, alarmed.
“Mosquito,” I say.
He returns to taking notes. I unload my backpack, put on fresh gloves. Berton and I use string and pins to cover the origin area with a grid, then take pictures, make sketches and take notes of our own. We squat and sift through the ash, use magnets to look for metal debris, one section of the grid at a time. We make it to the cake pan without finding more evidence.
More pictures, then I carefully tip over the pan, right side up, examine ash I’ve inadvertently dumped out. Wood ash from the slash pile, but this time there’s something new. Because the pan was tipped over the residue at the bottom is now on top and there’s a small smooth black wafer the size of a dollar coin. I photograph and measure this, use tweezers to place the wafer in a plastic container padded inside with cotton. The remainder of the ash from the pan looks unremarkable and I turn my attention to the pan, black and warped, the bottom discolored by heat, hues of purple and blue visible through a coat of char. There’s no brand stamped on the pan but it’s the same type used in the other fires, which I remark on to Berton.
“You’ve had this happen before?” asks Malostic.
I pause, look at Berton, who shrugs. “Are you serious?”
Malostic frowns. “You didn’t read the files?” I ask, incredulous. “Or talk to Bill?”
Malostic’s frown deepens. “I came on short notice.”
“Well,” I say. “This fire is number five.”
Base camp is pandemonium. Helicopters land, refuel and take off. Piles of equipment — groceries, fire hose, chainsaws and pumps — are everywhere. Hastily erected wall tents occupy the forest along the edge of the clearing. A Caterpillar dozer is pushing over trees to make more room. Trucks and vans clog freshly scraped earth and men in orange coveralls and red hardhats scurry back and forth. Two office trailers have been dragged in for the overhead team. One of the trailer doors opens and a tall Ranger in uniform steps out, scans the chaos. He has grey hair, is wearing a green ball cap, and is looking for something. As soon as I recognize him, I swear.
Berton looks up from where we’re sitting at a picnic table, reviewing our notes. He looks past Malostic, who’s sitting at the other side of the table, then over at me. The man in the ball cap is coming our way, an intent look on his face.
Berton sighs heavily. “Uh-oh.”
Malostic looks up. “What?”
“You’re about to meet the new fire boss.”
By the time Malostic turns to look, the man in the ball cap is standing behind him, glaring at me. Malostic extends a hand.
“What the fuck are you doing here Cassel?”
Arthur Pirelli, 55 years old and chief ranger of the Fort Termination Ranger District, he used to be my boss back when I too was a full-time ranger. We’ve had what you could euphemistically call a falling out since then. Right now, he’s dangerously close to a stroke.
“I’m investigating this little fire you have here, Arthur.” Malostic finally gets the impression that his hand will not be shaken, and withdraws his offer.
Pirelli grinds his teeth. “You’ve got about two fucking minutes to get off my fire.”
I smile, as professionally as possible. “Well, we’re not quite done here, Arthur.”
“Two minutes,” he says. “Before I rip you a new asshole.”
Then he’s gone, stomping back to the trailer. Malostic looks like a fish pulled suddenly from deep water. “What was that all about?”
I don’t want to talk about it. “Arthur and I don’t get along.”
Malostic means to pry and asks why. I swallow, look away. “He has this crazy idea I killed his daughter.”
2
THE PAST HAS a way of trespassing on the present. You can try to forget it but sometimes it doesn’t want to forget you. For me, Arthur Pirelli is the past that won’t forget. Not that he doesn’t have good reason. At the end of the fire season one year, he threw a party at his acreage to show his appreciation to the staff for a job well done. His daughter Nina was home. She was tall, slim, black-haired and mysterious. While the other guys were busy draining a keg of beer donated by a local helicopter company, I was talking with Nina, drawn by something deeper than pure physical attraction. She had just dropped out of university — business and finance, didn’t want to spend her life in an office cubicle, wanted to take journalism instead, work in a field for which she had passion. I told her I knew how she felt; I’d dropped instrumentation in favour of forestry for roughly the same reasons.
Kindred spirits, we began to see each other on a regular basis, but Arthur had plans for his daughter. Hanging around with a member of his staff, ten years her senior, was no way to get ahead. He talked to the university, convinced them to let Nina return, but her reluctance had increased. We had secretly become engaged. Arthur knew little of what was going on and it was exciting, sneaking around, sharing clandestine hours together in my trailer or at a campfire by the river. But it was also frustrating, and one day, dressed in a spare uniform, she came to work with me. We avoided the office, went together on a timber harvest inspection. I was to pass her off as a visiting ranger. A little harmless fun. A way to spend the day together.
Turned out, it wasn’t so harmless.
At the logging camp, I parked the truck out of sight next to an idle feller-buncher. The logging foreman knew Arthur, so Nina remained in the truck while I went into the office trailer. Events after that are a little blurry. There was a loud thump from outside and someone came into the trailer, yelling about an explosion. I ran outside, expecting someone had been smoking too close to a fuel tank, but that wasn’t it. The feller-buncher next to my truck was on fire, flames shooting from severed fuel lines and hydraulic hoses, engine compartment peeled open. Through smoke and rippling heat, I could see Nina sitting in the truck as if nothing had happened. I assumed she was in shock, stunned by the explosion, as the truck was only yards from the burning machine. I had to get her out but couldn’t get close enough. Men were dancing around, spraying with small fire extinguishers from their trucks. Finally, one of the men ran across the yard, started up a big loader and pushed my truck safely past the burning machine.
I was the first one to the truck. The driver-side window was shattered, glass tinkling as I wrenched open the door, and I remember asking Nina if she was okay — her eyes were open but not moving. Then I noticed the back of her head was soaked with blood, matting in her dark hair.
“Just hold still,” I told her. “You’re going to be fine.”
After the autopsy, they told me she was killed by a tiny piece of metal no larger than a pencil eraser. A bomb had destroyed the feller-buncher, planted by an ecoterrorist who called himself the Lorax. He’d been in the papers for years, bombing logging equipment apparently at random, but had never killed anyone. Not until that day, three years ago.
That was his last bomb. They never caught him.
As for me, I resigned, moved my office to a bar in Edmonton until my savings expired. My sister took me in, cleaned me up, told me to get a job. An old friend in the Forest Service took pity on me and I became a seasonal fire investigator. The dress code was casual — coveralls but no uniform.
Now, the last thing I need is a reminder from Arthur Pirelli.