Playing With Fire (5 page)

A
t five thirty I arrived at the Boardwalk Café. I parked my car at the front of the restaurant and got out. Kayla waited for me in her green winter coat. “So what’s the plan?” she asked me.

“We go around back,” I said. “No one can see the back of the café from the road.”

“And if he’s there?”

I held up my camera. “I get my photographs and phone the fire chief.” I zipped my jacket against the cold. “Let’s get this over with.”

We circled the restaurant to the alley behind it. I held up my hand to stop Kayla and peeked around the corner. “Shit,” I said. “There he is.”

Trevor bashed the side of the building with an ax. He stuffed the hole with newspaper and dowsed the paper with gas from a jerry can. He wore gloves so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints. Trevor was the firebug. Even as I watched him preparing to start that fire, I didn’t want to believe it.

“He’s not just messing around with the garbage bin this time,” I told Kayla. “He really means to burn this place.”

“There are people in there,” said Kayla.

“I know. We’ve got to get a fire truck here, now.” I pulled out my cell and phoned the chief. “I’ve caught the firebug,” I told him.

“Who?” he asked.

“You have to see it to believe it.” I said Then I described to him where we were. “Come quickly. He’s about to start the fire.”

“You said you want me to try to stop him,” Kayla said when I finished the call.

“I have to get a clear photo of him starting that fire. Talk to him. Get him to look in my direction. I can’t face him directly. If he sees me, he may try to stop me from taking pictures.”

“Okay, I can do this.” Kayla took a deep breath and turned the corner to confront Trevor. I aimed the camera around the edge of the building, hiding as I took photo after photo. With Kayla distracting him, I hoped Trevor wouldn’t see me until I got my clear shot.

“Trevor,” Kayla called. “Don’t.”

Trevor heard her. Even so, he struck a match and threw it into the paper before he turned. Fueled by gas, the flames burst to life behind him. “I knew you’d try to stop me again,” he told Kayla. “I was counting on it, in fact.”

“What are you talking about?” said Kayla.

“I won’t let Devon take the rap for this.”

“You’re trying to frame me.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to take the jerry can from me at the hardware store. Your fingerprints were all over it. Now I’ll tell the chief I saw you starting this fire.”

“You won’t get away with this.”

“Who do you think the cops are going to believe? A teen with fake red hair or a firefighter?”

“They’ll believe me,” I said. I stepped forward and held up my camera. “Or more to the point, they’ll believe what they see with their own eyes. I just took photos of you setting that fire.”

“Claire! What are you doing here?”

“We had a date, remember? The question is, what are
you
doing?” The fire now licked the wall. “Trevor, why?” I asked. “Why you, of all people?”

He put out his hand, defending himself. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“I confronted Devon,” I told him. “He confirmed my suspicions that you’ve been setting these fires.”

“Devon told you that?” Trevor looked stricken for a moment, then straightened. “He’s confused. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“He didn’t point the finger at you,” I said. “He was ready to go to jail for you. But he told me enough that I figured it out.”

“Devon thought if he took the heat for the fires, you would come clean,” said Kayla. “He was sure you would admit to setting the fires, to save him from going to jail. Looks like he was wrong.”

I held up my camera. “He won’t be charged now,” I said. “I have proof that you did it.”

Trevor took a swift step forward and made a swipe for my camera. “Give me that!”

I ducked out of his way. “It’s no use, Trevor,” I told him. “I already emailed several photos to my editor. It’s over.”

In the near distance, the fire truck howled. The chief and his team of firefighters were on their way. The scream of the siren seemed to take the fight out of Trevor. He slumped, looking at his large feet like a kid who knew he’d be grounded.

“I just want to understand why you did it,” I said. “Why did you set all those fires?”

Trevor stared at the fire a moment before trying to explain himself. “The sheds were all buildings that should have been torn down and burned anyway. At first I was testing my skills. Proving myself.”

“At
first
,” I said.

“Then…I don’t know. Things got out of hand.”

“You liked the attention,” I said.

He looked up at me. “Yes,” he said, as if he only just understood this about himself.
“When the crowd clapped for me at the pet-store fire, I felt great. I liked the way you looked at me then. A celebrity thought I was the hero.”

“A celebrity?” I said. I didn’t think of myself like that.

“Everyone knows you. You’re a
reporter
.”

His comment hit like a fist to the stomach. He hadn’t gone out with me because he liked
me
. He dated me because he thought I was a local celebrity. I guess I deserved that. I had dated him because he was a firefighter.

“So
you
set the fire in that garbage bin, when I was on my date with Matt.”

“I wanted to break up your date. I knew I was losing you to him.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You set this fire so you could be the hero again—on our date.”

“And so you’d see Kayla here and think she was the firebug. Like I said, I knew she’d try to stop me. She always does.”

“What scares me most is that your plan almost worked,” I told him.

“Devon and I used to look up to you,” Kayla said to Trevor. “Devon wanted to be just like you.” Kayla glanced back at the fire. “And then you started all this shit.”

Trevor turned his back on us. He watched the flames but did nothing to put them out.

Fire Chief Wallis and his team arrived in the fire truck and quickly set up the hoses. Within minutes they had the fire under control.

I held up my camera to get Jim’s attention and, as his crew worked, the chief approached me. “Who is it?” he asked. “Who set this fire?” He glanced at Kayla, but I shook my head. I showed him the photos on my camera, of Trevor starting the fire. I didn’t have to say a word.

Anger reddened the chief ’s face as he stared Trevor down. When Trevor finally looked away, Jim took him by the arm and
pulled him aside. Trevor didn’t try to run or defend himself as the chief gave him hell. For a moment he almost appeared relieved that he had been caught. Perhaps he was.

Kayla, on the other hand, looked just as heartbroken as the chief. “I don’t think Devon will ever forgive me,” she told me. “Trevor will go to jail. It’s my fault.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” I said. “You did the right thing. Someone had to stop Trevor. Devon will understand. The chief will help him understand.”

Trevor was now in tears. Suddenly, I felt bad for him. His first impulse had been to do the right thing. He had wanted to build his firefighting skills. But now he had lost everything—the respect of his team and his community.

I walked over and put my hand on his muscled upper arm to comfort him. “You will get through this,” I assured him.

He shook me off. “We’re done,” he said.

I realized at that point he was angry. He was angry at me, his brother and Kayla. The thing is, he wasn’t angry at himself. Matt was right. Devon was more mature than his big brother. Trevor acted like a lost teen, not a grown man.

I stepped back and looked him over. He didn’t seem so attractive anymore. “You’re right,” I said finally. “We are done.”

F
irst thing the next morning, I stopped in at Tommy’s Café. My excuse was to pick up coffee, but I was really there to see Fire Chief Wallis and, more important, Matt. They were sitting together at the counter, as I knew they would be.

“Claire,” said Matt, nodding at me. He didn’t look too pleased with me.

“Matt,” I said.

“I guess congratulations are in order,” the chief said. “You caught the real firebug.”

“I certainly don’t feel like celebrating,” I said.

Jim grunted. “Me neither.”

“So what happens to Trevor now?” I asked the chief. “Jail time, I expect.”

“We’ve suspended him from service at the fire department, obviously,” Jim told me. “He’s been charged on seven counts of arson. I suspect he was responsible for many more fires than we know about. Remember all those garbage can and dumpster fires over the last three years?”

“I thought those were started by some dumb kid,” Matt said.

“We all did,” said Jim.

“I still don’t get why Trevor did it,” I said. “I dated the guy for nearly a month, but it’s like I didn’t know anything about him. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I never would have believed he started those fires.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” said Jim. “Trevor had us all fooled.”

“Did Trevor have a history of setting fires?” I asked the chief. “Did he burn things as a kid?”

Jim shook his head. “Not as far as we can tell. He told the cops he started setting the fires only after he became a firefighter. His brother said the same thing.”

“He said at first he set those fires because he wanted to train himself,” I told Jim. “He wanted to be a better firefighter.”

“The funny thing is, I believe him,” said Jim. “I never saw a more dedicated firefighter. He loved his job. He wanted to be the best.” He paused. “He
was
the best. He could have gone pro, got a job as a professional firefighter in the city.”

“So why did he do it?” I asked. “Why did he set those fires? Even after he tried to explain it to me, I still can’t make sense of it.”

“I can tell you why,” said Matt.

The chief and I both turned to look at him.

“When I get a call that someone is missing, I feel a thrill,” Matt told us. “I’m worried, of course. I hate to see anyone lost, but I still feel that rush of excitement. Very often the missing person is found right away, and there is no search. I actually feel disappointment then. I go home and don’t know what to do with myself.”

The chief nodded in agreement. “As firefighters, we spend most of our volunteer time fixing equipment or washing the truck,” he said. “The men are
wishing
for a fire so they can do something.”

“So Trevor set the fires to release that tension,” I said.

The chief sighed. “I’m going to sit down with my fire crew and have a long talk. We’ll have to come up with ways for them to deal with those feelings. I won’t let this happen again.”

“Trevor also liked being the hero,” I said.

“We all do,” said Matt.

I tucked my arm through his. “Listen, Matt, I’m really sorry about the way I acted this past week. I guess I got a kick out of you and Trevor fighting over me. I liked the attention.”

“I understand.”

“The thing is, I never really liked Trevor,” I said. “I just liked the
idea
of Trevor, that a firefighter wanted me.” I paused. “I’ve always been interested in you.”

“I know,” he said.

“You knew?”

“I could tell from that smoldering look you give me.”

I snuggled closer to him and gave him another one of those smoldering looks. “Are you saying I was on fire for you?”

Matt grinned back at me. “Hey, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

By the age of eighteen,
GAIL ANDERSON-DARGATZ
knew she wanted to write about women in rural settings. Today, Gail is a bestselling author.
A Recipe for Bees
and
The Cure for Death by Lightning
were finalists for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She also teaches other authors how to write fiction. Gail lives in the Shuswap region of British Columbia, the landscape found in so much of her writing.

Playing with Fire
is the follow-up to
Search and Rescue
. Her next Claire Abbott mystery will be published in 2016. For more information, visit
www.gailanderson-dargatz.ca
.