Where There's Smoke

Chapter One

It was beyond him how so much paperwork could stack up in such a short time. Nick Trask stared balefully at the forms piled up on his desk and sighed. He’d joined the fire department to battle fires, not to generate his own personal fire hazard.

When people asked him why he loved firefighting, he usually shrugged and said it was rewarding. It was true, that much of it, but there was more he didn’t say. He didn’t tell them of the fierce pleasure of firefighting, the euphoria of saving a life or the way the adrenaline blasted through him as he risked everything against the ravening beast of the flames.

Those were the moments that made it all worthwhile. Those were the times that made up for days like this one, he thought, raking an impatient hand through his cropped hair. It had been crazy from the get-go. They’d hardly had time to go over the morning announcements at the start of shift when the bells had sounded for a house fire in a triple-decker just blocks away. Climbing to the roof to ventilate the blaze, hands full with a chainsaw, Bruce Jackson had found out the twenty-foot ladder had a bad rung. The hard way. All things considered, it was a lucky thing he’d only fallen eight feet—if you could call a broken collarbone lucky.

And the day had just gone downhill from there.

Accident reports, damaged property reports, defective equipment reports…Nick was tempted to put a lump of coal underneath them and see if he could make a diamond. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for the rescue call, the inspections and the car fire. Not to mention the medical aid calls. Three of them. Even after spending every moment in between calls filling out forms and cursing the department for not having it all online, he was only a little over half done, and everything had to be shipshape by the time they made the shift change.

Nick shook his head and glanced at the books he’d optimistically spread out, hoping to study for the promotional exam. His chances of getting any time to look at them this shift were about as good as his chances of winning Powerball.

“Yo, cap, give me a hand for a minute?” The question was shouted up from the garage area below, rising above the sounds of rock music on the radio. If he craned his neck, Nick could see out the open door of his office and through the stair railing to the long, gleaming red shapes of the fire engine and ladder truck, massive yet oddly sleek under the fluorescent lights of the cavernous garage. Something of the boy in him smiled then, something of the man felt a swelling pride, underlain by a breath of challenge, a taste of danger.

Firefighting was his life. It touched the essence of him in a way nothing else ever had.

Feet thumped up the stairs. “El capitan?” A burly, middle-aged firefighter with a blunt-featured face leaned into the office. From behind him came the sound of U2 singing about a beautiful day.

Nick put down his pen. “Still stuck on these reports, O’Hanlan, sorry.”

“Remember the other day when you were asking me why I didn’t want to take the exam to move up? ’Nuff said. You officer types, you gotta love paperwork. Me, I’m an action guy.”

A corner of Nick’s mouth quirked as he looked at O’Hanlan’s florid face. “An action guy, huh?”

“Every minute of every day.”

“No wonder your wife looks scared. Look, I’ve got to keep working on this pile if I’m going to get through it by shift change, so if someone else can help you, go for it.”

“No problem. I understand. Some people are born bureaucrats. But if your hand starts getting tired and you want to be reminded what the apparatus looks like…”

Nick stopped and considered, tapping forms-in-triplicate with his pen and eyeing the door where O’Hanlan beckoned.

“Were you ever in sales, O’Hanlan?”

“Just pointing out your options.” He tipped his head in the direction of the apparatus floor, wagging his eyebrows.

It was Nick’s duty as captain to take care of any problems, and God knew he could use a break from the endless writing. Nick grinned and tossed down his pen. “All right, you got me.”

“Cap.” Todd Beaulieu, compact and dark-haired, met them on the stairs, a slip of paper in his hand. “I just found this note by the phone. Looks like you got a call sometime yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“I guess the other shift forgot to tell you.” Beaulieu squinted at the paper. “Jeez, O’Hanlan, this writing looks as bad as yours.”

“Hey, I’ve won awards for my handwriting, I’ll have you know,” O’Hanlan protested.

“Probably for cryptography,” Beaulieu shot back.

Nick reached out for the message. “Eq tes tom?” he asked squinting at the scribbles. “Anybody want to guess?”

O’Hanlan considered. “Abusing a cat?”

“Leave your personal life out of this,” Beaulieu told him.

Nick struggled for a moment to make sense of the hasty scrawl. “Looks like someone’s doing something tomorrow. Which means today. I guess we’ll find out eventually.” He shrugged and turned to the stairs. “What did you break this time, O’Hanlan?”

Down on the garage floor, Nick and O’Hanlan threaded their way around the pumper to the ladder truck. The music on the radio segued into a no-nonsense woman’s voice reading the morning news.

“In Dorchester, Councilman Donald Ayre, running for reelection next month, spoke again about his new safety plan for Boston firefighters.”

“We can’t have fire safety in Boston until our firefighters are safe,” Ayre said self-importantly. “That’s my mission, and that’s why I’m looking for reelection.”

O’Hanlan rolled his eyes at the sound bite. “Looks like old Hot Ayre is at it again,” he said, climbing on top of the ladder truck. “Funny, the last time he got yapping about firefighters it was an election year, too.”

“And the time before that, I think,” Nick said, following him. “’Course, he doesn’t talk about how he pushed for department budget cuts once the voting was over, does he?”

“He’s probably shy about his accomplishments,” O’Hanlan guessed. “Besides, if the equipment was good enough for our great-grandfathers, it’s good enough for us, right?”

“Sure. Just ask Jackson.” Nick’s lip curled. “Twenty bucks says that inside of two weeks we’ve got our illustrious councilman in a photo op with some high-tech gizmo the department will buy one of for tests and never use.”

“C’mon, how’s he supposed to enjoy the budget cuts unless he cleans out the miscellaneous fund, too? Cut him some slack.”

“I’d like to cut him something.” Nick shook his head in disgust. “If we don’t give them something to yap about on the campaign trail, we don’t exist for those guys.”

“Cushy life, though. Think about it: nice, soft chair in the City Council meetings, free parking anywhere in town. Free lunches, too.” O’Hanlan’s eyes brightened. “Maybe I should go into politics.”

Nick looked him up and down. “I’m not sure you could handle any more lunches, O’Hanlan.”

“That?” O’Hanlan slapped his comfortable belly. “That’s muscle, sonny boy, and don’t you forget it.”

“I’ll work on it. So what’s the problem that you had to drag me all the way down here for, anyway?”

O’Hanlan bent down to the giant aerial ladder that lay folded up in sections on top of the truck. “The ladder felt sticky at that last fire. She didn’t open up like she should have. I took a look and this bolt right here is loose and partly sheared.” He pulled at the ladder and the bolt rattled in its hole. “I think it’ll be okay if we just switch it, but with these mitts of mine I can’t get at it.”

Nick glanced at it briefly, then at his watch. “Why don’t I write it up for repair?”

“Because”—O’Hanlan made a futile attempt to reach the back of the bolt—“you write it up, the motor squad’ll take a month to get to it and a month to fix it. Or we’ll get stuck working with one of those Civil War relics they keep around.”

“I’d think an action guy would want the challenge.”

“I have to save my valuable strength for firefighting, not for pushing the truck to the scene.” O’Hanlan’s voice was aggrieved. “Here I’m trying to save you some writing and you’re not even appreciating it, ya bureaucrat.”

“That’s the trouble with you, O’Hanlan, always thinking of others first.” Nick squatted down to get a better view. “Give me a wrench.”

Sloane Hillyard strode down the sidewalk toward Firehouse 67, narrowing her eyes against the glare of the October sun, wishing she’d remembered her sunglasses. A group of teenaged boys hanging out on the corner turned to watch her pass.

“Yo, baby, what you in such a hurry for?” the boldest of them called. “Y’oughta stop and be more sociable.” He trailed after her a few steps, while his buddies nudged one another and laughed. “C’mon, baby, stop. I’ll show you God.”