Trial by Fire Read online

  “Over here!” he yelled. “I’ve got a victim!”

  He saw the fluorescent stripes of two turnout coats as firemen headed toward him, but he couldn’t make out their faces through their masks. “Unconscious, unresponsive!” he yelled.

  “Is he alive?”

  He bent to check, but another beam fell, cracking around them and spreading across the carpet.

  He turned the victim over to lift him, but froze when he saw his face. “Aw, no…”

  Another beam dropped, just missing the four of them. “We gotta get outta here!” George Broussard said.

  Nick slung the victim over his shoulder as George and Cale headed out. A beam cracked overhead, and the front half of the flaming roof caved in. Nick screamed as beams and sheet rock knocked him to his back, the victim on top of him. Pain shot through his chest and legs, and he fought to throw off the beams that lay across them both. The tanks under his back must have been damaged, and his mask had been knocked askew, so he could no longer get the air that they had provided. He managed to move one of the beams from his chest, but one on his shins was flaming, burning through his fireproof clothes, melting his skin…

  He tried to kick it free, but his legs were trapped.

  More of the roof caved and bounced on the floor behind him. He’d have to get out of here on his own. No one could come in after him. Smoke seeped under his mask and filtered through his lungs.

  With one adrenaline-filled, panic-driven kick, he got the flaming beam off his legs, and wincing at the pain, tried to get up with the victim. But he couldn’t do it. Collapsing in a fit of coughing, he fell back.

  When Ray saw George and Cale emerge without Nick, then saw the roof cave in, he broke into a run, Mark was right behind him.

  They heard muffled screaming, and behind them, Dan came in with the hose, spraying a path through the flames, George and Cale followed on their heels. “Where’s Nick?” Dan shouted.

  “He was right behind us when the roof caved!” Cale shouted.

  “He found somebody hurt,” George said. “I couldn’t see ’im in all the smoke.”

  Ray yelled, “Broussard, Larkins, go out and surround and drown. The fewer of us in here, the better.” George and Cale hesitated, obviously reluctant to leave Nick again.

  “Nick!” Mark yelled.

  “Over here!” they heard, then coughing, and they fought their way to where Nick lay.

  Cale threw off his mask and shrugged out of his tanks, handed the gear to George, then ran out, holding his breath until he was in fresh air.

  Ray saw from the soot around Nick’s nose that he was breathing smoke instead of oxygen, and it was clear from the scald marks on his torn turnout legs and boots that he had been burned. Mark got on his knees, and working fast, threw off Nick’s dysfunctional mask and replaced it with Cale’s. “Help me get him!”

  They got Nick to his feet and threw him over Mark’s shoulder, knowing he could be doing terrible injury to his spine if there was a break, but there was no time to hesitate. They would all be dead if more of the roof fell.

  But Nick yelled something incoherent, then pointed frantically toward the pile of flaming beams. Dan soaked it down, temporarily extinguishing the flames, until they could see the victim lying under them.

  Ray and George attacked the beams. Ray managed to lift the victim, but the smoke was so thick that he couldn’t see his face. “Outta here!” Ray cried. “Everybody! Now!”

  As they burst out into clear air, Ray checked the victim for a pulse. He couldn’t find one.

  He put him down to try again, and only then saw his soot-covered face.

  It was Ben, Ray’s only son.

  The sound that shrieked out of Ray’s mouth seemed unnatural and foreign. Life seemed to screech into slow motion as Ray took his son from George and carried him further from the flames and the smoke and the yelling firefighters and the tumbling, fiery roof, to the paramedics waiting just out of the perimeter of the smoke. It was as if his spirit stood back in shock and looked on, helpless to save his child’s life. But his body continued to do as it would do for anyone they had found in a fire, and his mind ran through practical facts about Ben’s condition. He was burned badly on his legs and back, worse on his hands. His legs looked broken where the beams had crushed him. The smoke alone would have been enough to kill him, and Ray knew he had probably been inhaling it from the beginning. The paramedic pushed him out of the way and fell to Ben’s side, urgently searching for a pulse.

  And then he saw the worst injury of all, the one that made all the others seem like nothing at all…

  “Noooo!” he shouted. “His head!” he wailed. “A bullet hole. Somebody put a bullet into my boy!”

  Not able to accept the verdict Issie Mattreaux was about to declare, Ray threw off his mask and fought his way back to his son. His face dripped with sweat as he pressed a finger against his neck, waiting for some hope, any hope at all. “Please, God,” he whispered, “please…”

  When he felt nothing, he shook his son, then gritted his teeth. “You listen to me, Ben Ford. You better not be goin’ nowhere! You listen to me!”

  Issie tore open Ben’s shirt. “We need to defibrillate, stat!” she yelled, and opened the megaduffel to hand Steve an oxygen cylinder. “Ray, do compressions while I get the defibrillator!” she ordered, and Ray began compressing his son’s chest, desperately trying to force his heart to beat. As Ray worked, Steve put an oral airway down Ben’s throat, then pressed the mask against Ben’s face and began administering pure oxygen.

  Issie pulled the two pads out and peeled off the backing. She attached one at his ribs and another under his collarbone. She looked at the small screen of the monitor and yelled, “Stop!”

  Ray rested a moment, streams of sweat and tears dripping into his eyes. He heard the whine of the machine charging, then the automated voice, “Press to shock.”

  “Clear!” Issie yelled. Steve and Ray got back, and she pressed the button. A 200-joule jolt shook through Ben, and Ray held his breath, praying for a pulse. But there was none.

  The machine whined again, recharging, and they repeated the process. “Come on, Ben!” he shouted through his teeth, his eyes as hot as the flames swallowing the building. Issie pressed the button to shock him again. “Fight! Don’t leave me, son!” But, again, there was no pulse. Someone behind him pulled Ray away as Steve and Issie made last-ditch attempts to revive him. Ray was shaking and could hardly stand on his legs. He felt as if his knees would buckle and he would collapse like a marionette. He thought he might throw up.

  “Nooooooo!” The word ripped out of his heart with the same violence as if he’d torn off a part of his body.

  Chapter Three

  Nick threw his hands over his face, elbows in the air, as Ray’s anguished cry told him all he needed to know about Ben’s condition. Ray’s firstborn child and only son was dead.

  He wailed out his own lament, oblivious to Karen and Bob, the paramedics who worked quickly to swap Cale’s tank for their own oxygen mask. He sat up, clutching the mask, straining to see the boy.

  He saw Ray fall onto his son’s body and lift him up, as if by holding him he could bring him back to life. Issie’s smoke-stained face twisted with momentary despair. Then, wiping her tears, as if rolling up her sleeves, she abandoned the body and ran over to Nick.

  “Is he all right?” she asked Karen, as if Nick couldn’t speak for himself.

  “Smoke inhalation,” Karen said. “Airway doesn’t seem patent. Nasal hairs are singed. Carbonaceous residue in the nose and mouth. He needs immediate transport. Also several pretty bad abrasions…Second-degree burns on the legs…”

  “Let us take him,” Issie said. “Nick’s a friend of mine. You take care of Ben.”

  Nick couldn’t take his eyes from Ben, limp in his father’s arms. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Nick managed to croak out.

  She seemed to ignore him as they lifted his gurney into the ambulance. “There was nothing we could
do,” she said in a dull monotone, as if he hadn’t already seen the tears streaking through the smoke stains on her face. “He was probably dead before the fire.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a bullet hole through his head.”

  “Bullet hole?” Nick tried to sit up again. He hadn’t seen a bullet hole, not with all the smoke and soot and rubble covering Ben. He wanted to ask where it was, but he couldn’t make his voice function, and as Issie hung the bag and began to examine his legs, pain shot through him, clearing his mind of anything but that.

  Steve Winder jumped into the unit. “Ready to go?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Radio in, Steve. I need permission to intubate before the airway closes.”

  “Intubate?” Nick choked. “No, I don’t—”

  “Nick, let me be the medic, okay?” Issie said. “I have to do it to keep it open, or it’ll be so edematous that I can’t get a tube in. But I’ll do the nasotracheal.”

  He heard Steve talking to the receiving physician, and the doctor giving them the go-ahead. He tried to hold himself still as Issie threaded the painful tube into his nose and down his trachea. “I know it hurts,” she said as she worked rapidly. “But I have to use as big a tube as I can get in, just to keep the way open. That’s good. Don’t try to talk.”

  But Nick had so many questions. If Ben had a bullet hole through his head, who had shot him? Had Ben started the fire, or had the killer?

  He arched at the pain as she checked his burns again.

  “Second degree, partial thickness, Steve. Eight percent. He feels it, all right.”

  As Steve radioed that into the receiving physician, Nick tried to remove his mind from the pain. She opened his clothes carefully, trying not to peel any cloth from the burns. “Nick, where else are you in pain? I only see burns on your legs.”

  He pointed to his right side. She began to palpate him. “Feels like broken ribs,” she yelled to Steve. “Possible internal injuries.”

  But Nick’s mind wandered from his own injuries to the fire chief and deacon in his church, who had just encountered one of the worst tragedies of his life.

  Chapter Four

  Susan Ford ran two stop signs and a red light, then screeched around a corner. The smoke billowing above the trees on Antoinette Boulevard was her target. She didn’t know who had called to tell her that her son had been found in the fire. She couldn’t remember if the caller was a man or a woman, or whether it had been someone she knew. All she remembered were the words, hitting her like a cruel blast of evil.

  She heard a siren and saw an ambulance heading the opposite direction, and her mother’s heart almost made her turn around and follow. But something told her that wasn’t Ben.

  Maybe it was the voice on the phone, the finality of the tone, the very words they had chosen…It’s too late, isn’t it, Lord? Don’t let it be too late.

  Her brown hands trembled as she punched on the scanner that Ray kept in the car. She tried to tune to the police frequency for information, but all she got was static.

  She ran another red light, then peeled around a corner. The church came into view and she saw the flames that had devoured it, saw the firefighters still spraying it, saw the emergency vehicles parked in haphazard fashion wherever they had found a place on the street.

  Paying no regard to the yellow tape blocking off the road, she drove right through it and came to a halt in front of the pumper truck.

  She threw the door open and bolted out of the car. Another ambulance was parked at the curb, but there was no light flashing and no siren blaring. The paramedics were not hurrying.

  She looked around for someone who could help her, then screamed, “Ray!”

  Mark surrendered the hose to another firefighter, then jogged to be at her side. She didn’t like the look on his face. “Susan…”

  “Where’s Ray?” she demanded, unable to ask where her son was. She didn’t want to know yet, didn’t want to hear the words. Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, she already knew.

  “He’s in the ambulance,” he said, “with Ben.”

  Something about the way he said that gave her hope. She turned and ran to the ambulance, tried to get the door open. When she couldn’t, she just banged on it, screaming, “Ray! Ray, let me in!”

  The door came open, and she looked up and saw her husband slumped inside.

  And next to him she saw a body with a sheet over it.

  Her head was suddenly cloudy, her vision blurred, and she collapsed onto the asphalt. Ray leaped out of the rescue unit and gathered her back up.

  “My baby.” Her words, couched in pain and brokenness, were barely audible.

  “He’s gone,” Ray said. “Shhh. He’s gone.” His voice was hoarse, high pitched, and she could feel the pain coursing through him as he held her.

  “What was he doin’ here?” she asked through her teeth.

  “Nobody knows.”

  Not satisfied with that answer, Susan pulled out of Ray’s arms, straightened with determination, and climbed into the rescue unit. She went to the body, grabbed the sheet and pulled it back, saw his face and his charred arms, the hair singed on his scalp…

  Then she saw the hole through his forehead. Another anguished scream ripped out of her. “He was shot! Ray, he was shot!”

  Ray nodded, but couldn’t manage to speak a word.

  “Who shot him?” she screamed. “Who shot my baby?”

  He tried to guide her away from the body. She wailed in rage and despair, as if her very cries could bring him back from the dead.

  Outside the ambulance, Mark and the other firefighters began to realize the hopelessness of the situation. Already, most of the building had been consumed, and it was obvious that nothing was going to be salvageable. The roof had continued to cave in, little by little, and now some of the walls were beginning to crumble. Whoever was responsible for this had done a thorough job.

  Mark ran to the truck to switch air tanks. Dan was already there doing the same.

  “It’s gone, man,” he said. “The church is history.”

  Mark shook his head and stared back at it. “I can’t believe it. In the blink of an eye it’s totally gone.”

  He didn’t have the heart to fight the fire anymore, but still he put his mask back on and plunged back into the smoke. He had a job to do whether it looked possible or not, but he knew as soon as the fire was put out, the real work would begin.

  Chapter Five

  Issie couldn’t get Nick off her mind as she finished her shift that afternoon. In an uncharacteristically busy day, she had transported another fireman for smoke inhalation, then Miller Henderson over on Spencer Circle had gone into cardiac arrest. Apparently, he had been the carpenter who’d made the pews and pulpit for the church, and had keeled over at the thought that his work had all been destroyed. She’d revived him before she had gotten him into the ambulance, and the last word was that he was stable. Then there’d been a wreck over on the highway, and a teenaged boy escaped with his life.

  It had been one of those days. But it was precisely because of the busyness of the afternoon that Issie found herself too tense to rest now. She was filled with nervous energy, and her thoughts kept gravitating back to the preacher. Nick had been diagnosed with smoke inhalation, bruised ribs, and second-degree burns that would keep him in the hospital overnight. The receiving physician had dealt with his airway first. Because both sides of his lungs sounded good, he was able to rule out a collapsed lung and determined that he was ventilating and oxygenating properly. He rushed him into the X-ray room and saw that there was no significant damage to the lungs. He had decided to take the tube out and administer oxygen through a mask. The medics had done the right thing, he told them in a rare compliment passed from doctor to paramedic. The chances of his airway closing en route had been high.

  Because the doctor seemed reasonable, she had bucked protocol and stayed with Nick while he debrided the top, blistery layer of his burned s
kin. She’d made sure they gave him pain medication before they started the excruciating scrub-down with the antibacterial solution. He’d clung to her hand, his grip almost crushing her fingers, and yelled without inhibition as they ministered to his wounds. She had stayed, talking him through it like a Lamaze coach, until they applied the Silvadene, an antibiotic ointment which gave some relief. She had left him as they were dressing the wounds, knowing that someone back in Newpointe might need her again.

  All the way back, she and Steve had been quiet. They’d kept the usually loud radio station off, and had both been lost in their thoughts. She couldn’t get Ray and Ben out of her mind. Daily, they witnessed tragedy, sometimes were active players in it. It rarely made sense, and this made the least sense of all. Tragedy and death were no respecters of persons. They happened to good and bad people alike. Living the “good life” was no protection against life’s blows, she thought, so what was the point in walking the straight lines?

  She wasn’t hungry enough to eat when she got off duty, and it was too early to go to Joe’s Place, the bar where so many of the protective services employees hung out, so she decided to go back to the hospital in Slidell to see how Nick was doing. She donned a pair of blue jeans and a pink blouse. Her uniform was so colorless and bland that she tried to wear bright things as often as possible when she wasn’t on duty.

  As she took her hair out of its binding and shook it out, she wondered why she was making such a fuss. It wasn’t like she was trying to impress Nick Foster, of all people. He was as different from her as the east was from the west. That was a quote from the Bible, she thought with a smirk, though she had no idea of the context. She doubted it had anything to do with personalities.

  She touched up her makeup and applied lipstick to match her blouse, then stood back and took a look. She was still a pretty woman. She knew that because men’s heads turned wherever she went. Only recently had she realized that was not necessarily a good thing.