Authors: Cathy Pickens
“Anything at all that you could think of, it’d certainly help us in our investigation, Mr. Garnet. Any disgruntled employees? Any threats? Anybody with business or money problems who would benefit?”
Something in Simms’s unbroken stare telepathed the message he wasn’t willing to speak:
Any reason you’d torch your own building?
But Harrison Garnet apparently didn’t hear the unspoken message. “No,” he said slowly, staring at what was left of his building.
Simms’s expression was too guarded to reveal whether he believed Garnet as he turned his attention to me. “Well, Ms. Andrews. Would you like a closer look?”
The challenge in his voice squelched any reservations I might have expressed. “Certainly, Mr. Simms.”
He studied me, all the way down to my feet. I noticed that he didn’t wear the protective coveralls the other investigators had on, but he did have on thick
soled work boots that looked much more substantial than my leather flats.
“We’ll confine ourselves to the open areas,” he said. “Watch your step here.” He pointed to the jumble of brick scattered over what had been the front walk.
“The parapet—the brick facing—collapsed here, which would be expected in a fire in this type of brick-and-wood joint construction. The plant itself,” he pointed to the adjoining manufacturing area, largely untouched by the fire, “is the old heavy timber construction often used in textile mills a hundred years ago. Thanks to those thick beams and the sprinkler system, that sustained almost no damage.”
“So they should be able to get people back to work soon.”
He shrugged. “That would be up to Garnet. Step carefully. Those shoes of yours won’t protect you from exposed nails or hot spots.”
We stood just inside what had been the reception area. “See the distance the brick rubble has fallen from the front of the building?” He pointed out to-ward the sunlight. The sparse lawn between the building and the sidewalk lay buried under rubble. A few bricks had scattered across the rough asphalt of the parking lot.
“The normal collapse pattern of a brick parapet would’ve been up to the full distance of the height of the wall. The parapet began just above the lintel that ran over the front windows here.” He pointed overhead to a smudged steel beam. “The windows here were constructed like those in a storefront, with
the beam over the windows and a freestanding wall overhead.”
I remembered the line of old-fashioned metal-framed windows, like those of an old elementary school, stuck in the brick face of the building. Only buckled metal bands and glass shards remained.
“The distance those bricks flew indicates an explosion, rather than a simple collapse of the building as a result of the fire.”
I nodded but said nothing. After he pointed it out, the wide scatter-pattern of rubble became clear, though I certainly would’ve made nothing of the jumbled bricks without his explanation.
We moved farther into the building. Simms pulled a flashlight from his pocket and, even though he wore heavy work boots, he chose his steps as carefully as I chose mine. The water on the floor glistened in black pools and began to seep in the edges of my shoes.
“The space heater sat here, apparently to supply additional heat to the ladies working at these desks.” His wandering flashlight beam picked out the shell of the small heater box and the skeletons of office furniture, including fire-blackened filing cabinets and the metal legs of office chairs.
I became acutely aware of the constant sound of dripping water throughout the cavernous room. The air felt noticeably colder than the sunlit air outside. Somehow, I hadn’t expected so much cold and water, the muffled wet sounds, and the overpowering, nose-eating stench of burned wood.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to discern what damage has been caused by the streams of water used to fight the fire and what has been caused by an explosive incident that preceded the fire.”
Simms obviously enjoyed his role as fire scene tour guide, a magician who liked to amaze his audience. Despite the mucky water squishing in my shoes with each step, I found the view through his eyes fascinating.
“The alligatoring of the wood here,” he pointed to an interior wall joist blistered into charred squares, “indicates the bum pattern, up from this section of pipe. From the pattern and depth of charring, we know we had a gas jet bum here. See the V pattern?”
He motioned with both hands, indicating an area of more severe damage radiating up the inside wall. “That’s something we always look for, to indicate the site of origin.”
Cops—and apparently fire investigators—always use such arcane language. Surely there was a casual way to say this stuff without sounding like a military manual.
“The explosion likely didn’t do the damage the bug expected it to. Most folks don’t realize how hard it is to get materials—even paper—to bum. But this guy had enough experience to know that he’d have to help it along.”
He took a couple of steps toward the remains of an office desk. After a brief mental calculation, I realized this would have been Rita Wilkes’s desk. The
sodden jumble on top was almost unrecognizable. Something that looked like a picture frame, twisted and black, glass shards around it, lay facedown on the floor.
“He knew enough to add fuel to his fire, so to speak. Due to the absence of pooling, I imagine he used something like a garden sprayer to mist fuel around the room. Saw a case like that in a tobacco warehouse downstate a couple of years ago. Fella there damned near blew himself up—filled the place with fumes, then threw a match. ’Bout burned his own pants legs off, with him in ’em.” He shook his head, allowing himself a tight smile at the memory.
“Our bug here proved a bit more sophisticated. Haven’t personally seen one with this MO, but that’s okay. Somebody will have heard of somebody who set something this way before. They learn as they go.”
He pointed to a V-shaped piece of metal lying in a puddle, about where the door to Harrison Garnet’s office once stood. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s the transformer from a neon sign.”
I raised my eyebrows but refrained from asking,
Huh?
He continued explaining the puzzle pieces. “Igniting flammable vapors, such as a concentration of natural gas, propane, even gasoline fumes, is tricky. The air has to contain a certain ratio of air to gas, since a fire requires oxygen in order to sustain itself. You can’t just toss a match and walk off by the light of it without risking blowing your own eyebrows off. On the other hand, setting a delayed-ignition device
is tricky. If it sparks too soon, before enough vapor is present, no go. If it ignites after too much vapor is concentrated in the subject space, no go.
“Our boy genius used a continuous spark. A horn gap. Something like you’d see in Frankenstein’s basement, with an electric arc crawling up between two metal prongs.”
Understanding must have registered on my face, because he continued. “I’ve heard about that type of ignitor but, to be honest, it’s the first time I’ve seen one. I’ve seen articles in those underground anarchists’ publications on how to prepare a bomb shelter and blow up your own neighborhood.”
“That’s scary.”
“You can say that again. It’s particularly scary if you’re the firefighter called to the scene at a creaking old hull like this. Who knows which way a piece of junk like this will fall when it goes?”
He stared upward, where part of the roof had disappeared, either in the explosion or in the fire. The creaks and drips took on a more ominous meaning for me. I couldn’t quite decipher the sounds in the cavelike darkness. The sunlight, visible through the missing roof sections, couldn’t penetrate the gloom.
“Fortunately, no one tried to be a hero here. Give me a fire in a sturdy old bam like that any day.” He nodded in the direction of the factory building. “Those heavy old timbers hold until they’re too hot to get close to. You don’t have to worry about them coming down on your head.
“Of course, with so much evidence left behind,
we gotta wonder who’s desperate enough to do something this stupid. And this dangerous.”
He fixed his stare on me. I stared back. How had he gotten a smudge of soot across his forehead? He hadn’t even touched anything, that I had seen.
When he saw I wasn’t going to respond, he nodded toward the remains of Rita Wilkes’s desk. “This is where things get really interesting. Don’t touch anything.” He held his arm out as if I might lunge toward the smelly mess on the desk. “See those tented items?”
Once he pointed them out, I saw quite clearly what they were. Along the top of the desk, someone had propped heavy books open facedown on the desk, three or four spines forming jutting peaks.
“Classic pattern,” he said. “It’s one of the first things an arson investigator looks for in a commercial enterprise.”
His tour had changed directions, and his tone told me I wouldn’t like the direction we were headed.
“Records, particularly ledgers and other bound materials, are amazingly hardy, extremely difficult to ignite. Smart bugs—or those who think they’re smart—make sure the filing cabinet drawers are open and the ledger sheets are exposed and ready to bum.”
I glanced back at the misshapen outlines of the filing cabinets standing sentinel a few feet away. All four drawers on all three cabinets stood at least partially open.
“You can see why the insurance investigator has
requested SLED’s document examiner come gather up what he can. They do amazing work getting ashes to talk to them. What they can’t handle in Columbia, they’ll send to the FBI lab in D.C.”
“That’s—very interesting, Mr. Simms,” I said after an uncomfortably long pause, which he refused to fill. “Have you discussed any of this with Mr. Garnet?”
“Briefly. He maintains that he has no idea who would’ve had any reason to do such a thing.” Water dripped in the background. “Perhaps, Ms. Andrews, you can discuss this further with your client. Once we get this material into the lab, it will have a lot to tell us. Much more than you might expect. And it’ll speak loud and clear to the FBI and the environmental guys.”
My surprise didn’t escape his notice. “Oh, yes. They showed up bright and early this morning, only a few hours after the investigator from Mr. Garnet’s insurance carrier arrived. This is the kind of feast they really enjoy.”
I refused to acknowledge his threats, preferring to keep up the pretense that this was a purely informational tour. “The body you all discovered in here? Any indication who it might be?”
“They discovered the body there, in what apparendy served as a small storage room.” In the small room lay a mass of twisted wire, the innards of a coil mattress.
“From what you’ve said, you don’t think he’s a suspect.”
“Extremely doubtful that he set the fire, if that’s what you mean. A bug caught in his own trap wouldn’t have been lying peacefully asleep in bed when his rig exploded. The body was partially burned, charred into the fetal position we commonly find in fire death.”
“Who was he?”
He shrugged. “Hasn’t been identified yet.”
He watched me closely for my reaction to the twisted metal and the stench. “As Mr. Garnet’s counsel, you should advise him of the provisions in the
South Carolina Code
under which an explosion or fire causing death or serious bodily injury moves the charges from third-degree arson to first-degree arson. He should be aware there’s no difference between the guy who set it and the guy who hired him. The good news is that the maximum penalty for first-degree is only twenty-five years.”
He was goading me for a reaction. I didn’t give him one. The more he talked, the more I learned. “An autopsy should be able to show how he died,” I said.
“If he died of smoke inhalation, that’s one thing. But,” he said, “if anyone harmed the guy before he crisped, that would add to the charges. Fire damages the outside of the body, but evidence of internal trauma is still visible at autopsy. And the organs, even the vitreous fluid in the eyeball, can usually give them a blood alcohol content. They can learn a lot from what’s left of that body.”
I kept my voice steady. “The more information, the quicker you can get to the bottom of this whole tragic incident.” I wasn’t certain enough of my
client—or my relationship with him—to venture a more aggressive defense at this point.
Simms’s jaw muscles bunched tightly as he clenched his teeth. “You can fill Garnet in on all this,” he said, then turned toward the building’s missing front wall. Picking our way back through the rubble proved easier with the sunlight in front of us high-lighting the puddled water and blackened obstacles.
After a curt farewell, Simms rejoined the guys in jumpsuits near the red van. I walked over to Harrison Garnet.
“Well?” He held his hands loosely entwined, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair.
“As he said, there’s every indication someone deliberately set the fire using a gas buildup and a delay device. Business records were deliberately burned. This wasn’t done by a bunch of high school kids with a book of matches.”
He gave no sign he heard me. His gaze was fixed on the charred building.
“They’re looking for similarities with other fires, trying to discover any link or pattern that could lead them to who started this. And they’ll perform an autopsy on the body they found inside.”
He started to say something, looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t think of the words, then shrugged his shoulders. “We’ll deal with that when we need to. We’ve got some more immediate problems.” He nodded, indicating somewhere behind the factory. “There’re fellas back there. They showed up this morning waving a search warrant and asking a bunch of questions.”
“Search warrant?”
“That little environmental boy brought some of his friends. His hard-ass supervisor and a fella in an FBI windbreaker.”
“They’re here now?”
He nodded. “Since early this morning, when they served that search warrant you seemed so anxious for them to get. Seems they showed up with chips on their shoulders and suspicious minds. I’ve always found you gotta be very careful around suspicious minds, Avery. People have a way of seeing what they think they’ll see.”