Trial by Fire Read online

  The men who turned her head were nothing but trouble. For years that hadn’t bothered her. The more trouble the better, as far as she was concerned. If they were married or ex-cons or escaped cons, or drinkers or druggies, or daredevils, or irreverently charming or roguish, they were her type.

  But it was only lately that she realized the domino effect her own behavior had on other lives. She didn’t live in a vacuum, and nothing she did affected her life only. There were wives and children, jobs at stake, even her own physical well-being…and she had found lately that she was known by the company she kept.

  She wondered why it was that once you got on the wrong track it was so hard to get off. You just kept going, hoping somewhere the road would turn. But it never did.

  She tugged herself away from the mirror, telling herself that she didn’t need to stroll down this dark lane where she started hating herself and counting regrets.

  She hurried out of her apartment as if fleeing from the thoughts pressing down on her, and dashed out to her car. She turned the radio on as loud as she could stand it. All the way to Slidell, she listened to blaring rock music, as if the volume could chase any random thought from her mind. The music kept her from thinking too hard about herself and her regrets. It always worked. If she just drove fast and kept busy, stopped thinking, hummed along to the music, she would eventually forget those thoughts that haunted her, and get back to living her life, without indictment, guilt, or apprehension. By the time she got to Joe’s Place tonight, she’d have a clear mind and be able to start all over again, drinking what she liked, meeting whom she wanted, going home with whomever caught her eye.

  The other paramedics would arrive there with various degrees of fatigue, ready to swap stories about their medical adventures that day…whose lives they’d saved, whose they’d lost, disgusting things they had dealt with, funny things patients had said…And then there were always the stories about the hospital personnel—young doctors who didn’t even know how to properly intubate a patient, grumpy nurses who treated the medics like inferiors. Tonight she would tell of the doctor who’d admitted Nick, and how he’d treated her like someone who knew what she was doing. He was rare enough to make a good story.

  They were her family, even more than her own family had ever been. Her mother had died two years earlier, but she hadn’t grieved, for the woman had left her to fend for herself long before it was civil to do so. She had worked at a bar in Slidell until the day she died, chain-smoked, and never rebleached her hair until the black roots were two inches long. Issie had been ashamed of her.

  When she’d needed a woman’s ear, Issie had turned instead to Karen Insminger, the thirty-year-old medic they considered something of a matriarch in a young profession. She had a lot more miles on her than her age would suggest, and had managed to keep from burning out like so many other paramedics did. She thrived on the thrill of saving lives, of leaping giant obstacles, of doing what others could not do. She had seen things that normal humans should never see, had patched up gore and prolonged both life and death. She always had a story to tell.

  When Issie couldn’t talk to her father, an alcoholic who had abandoned her and moved to Las Vegas to strike it rich when she was eight years old, she talked to Steve Winder, her wiser, married, slightly older partner who shot straight with her. He dispensed advice to her, welcome or unwelcome, like he dispensed IV bags and epinephrine, and didn’t mind telling her if she was stupid when, in fact, she was. He had never shown a romantic interest in her, which was why they worked well together. Instead, he seemed slightly amused and a little disgusted at her life, though his didn’t seem that appealing to her, either. Since he left his wife at home with the kids while he hung out at Joe’s Place almost every night, she figured his credibility was slightly impaired. Yes, he was like her father in many ways, except that Steve did occasionally show interest in Issie’s life.

  And then there was Bob Sigrest, the jokester of the group, who turned every horrible, ugly call into a stand-up routine, and had them laughing over their beer when they could just as easily have been crying. He was the great stress-reliever, the one who helped them keep things in perspective. He was the one who forced them to stop dwelling on death and gore, and kept them functioning. The two of them had shared a couple of trysts over the last couple of years, when night bled into morning and the alcohol had properly dulled their good sense. It usually took weeks for their friendship to recover, but eventually, it always had. The times following those “mistakes,” as she called them, were some of the loneliest she had ever spent. There was nothing worse than having to avoid someone’s eyes because you’d done things in the dark that you would never have done in the light. If the lights could just stay perpetually off, if she never had to look in the mirror in daylight, her life might be easier to live.

  But regardless of their past, she still enjoyed being around Bob, and Frenchy, and Twila (built like a linebacker and able to restrain the most combative patients, though her name made her sound like a petite blonde), and all the medics who showed up at Joe’s Place every night. Sometimes a couple of firemen or cops would join them, and they’d try to outdo each other, implying that the other occupation was for wimps and old ladies, and that only theirs was the noble profession of heroes and champions.

  They were a family, all right, not always a happy one, but they served their purpose much better than her real family did. Issie didn’t waste her time trying to explain that relationship, or her need to spend each evening at the bar, to people who judged her. No one but another medic could really understand. She supposed firefighters and cops had the same relationship, that they, too, suffered stress unequaled in regular jobs.

  She didn’t know how Nick Foster managed to get through an ordinary night without a stiff drink and comrades who’d seen what he’d seen that day. Mark and Dan, she could understand. Being married, they had companions waiting at home, though she couldn’t imagine how Allie had any understanding at all of Mark’s job, when she did nothing more dangerous than pricking her finger on a rose thorn at the florist. Jill, Dan’s wife, was a lawyer, so she wasn’t exactly sheltered from the things they encountered. But it still wasn’t the same. That was why, for a while, Mark had come to Joe’s Place at night to sit around the table and swap stories and insults. As the alcohol filled their bloodstreams, the talk inevitably grew more serious, until Issie and Mark would be left there alone, in deep conversation about his marriage and her singleness.

  But Allie had straightened him out somehow, and now he avoided both Joe’s Place and Issie, as though either of them had the power to cast a spell on him that would lead him right back to destruction.

  Or maybe it was Nick casting the spells. The preacher did seem to have a strong influence on those who attended his church. Like the pied piper, he had a charisma that she didn’t understand, charisma that led people to do as he said. She wondered if it had anything to do with his blue eyes under those glasses he always hid behind, or his teddy bear look that made women want to hug him. He seemed harmless enough, yet he sure kept his people marching straight.

  She got to the hospital in Slidell, got his room number from information, and headed up. His door was wide open, and she stepped over the threshold. Nick lay in bed with an oxygen mask over his face. He was attached to an IV replacing critical fluids in his body, and he lay staring out the window overlooking the parking lot. She rapped lightly on the door.

  He turned, and she saw the shadows under his eyes. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and it was clear from the strained look on his face that he was in a lot of pain. He pulled the mask down. “Issie,” he said, but his voice was damaged. He wouldn’t be singing tenor for a while.

  She grinned and came inside. “I’ve been upset all day that they undid my hard work and took the tube out, so I came by to put it back in.”

  He smiled weakly and held out a hand to stop her. “Don’t come near me with any tubes.”

  She laughed and came to the bed
. “You’re not mad, are you?”

  He shook his head. “I owe you a big one. You looked out for me. Thanks.”

  She shrugged off the gratitude. “I sure wouldn’t recognize that voice over the phone. I’m surprised you’re not worse off. Smoke inhalation can be deadly. Your nasal hairs were singed, you know. That’s a bad sign.”

  “It was only seconds between my tanks failing and the guys bringing me oxygen. Seemed like a long time, but I still had my mask on and had that little pocket of air. I wasn’t inhaling any more than I had to.”

  His voice just about cut out. Issie saw the ice chips on his table and offered him some. He lifted his mask and let her feed him.

  “Thanks,” he whispered when his throat was wet again. “I don’t even know why they’re keeping me here overnight. I’m fine. I have too much to do to be stuck here.”

  Issie dropped her purse on a chair and set her hands on her hips. “Don’t kid me, Nick. Smoke inhalation, second-degree burns, bruised ribs. They have to keep you on this IV at least overnight, and get you set up on the dressing care program. In the morning, they’ll probably get you to physical therapy for a whirlpool cleansing of the burn. And you know, you could still have internal bleeding. They have to watch you and make sure your stomach doesn’t start swelling up and that you keep breathing normally. Not to scare you or anything.”

  “Thanks,” he whispered. “You give me great peace.”

  “Hey, medics don’t do peace. We give great pre-hospital care, but peace is where we draw the line.” He smiled, and she turned her attention to the bandages on his legs. “So how are these feeling?”

  “Ever been fried in a cauldron of hot oil?” he asked.

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Well, it’s something like that.”

  “Ouch,” she said. “That’s gotta hurt. So are you using the painkillers?”

  “Morphine.” He held up the pump. “I just click here if I need a dose. I’m trying to use it as little as possible. Don’t want to get hooked.”

  “Use it if you need it, Nick. You won’t get hooked.”

  “My point is, I can hurt just as easily at home as here. Except for the fact that they haven’t finished torturing my legs yet, and the infernal internal bleeding…”

  She grinned again. “At least your sense of humor is holding up better than your voice. So why are you in such a hurry to go home?”

  “I have to take care of things with the church,” he said. “It’s gone, you know. The whole building…gone.”

  She knew, for she had gone back by the site several times during the day. There was nothing left of the building. They would have to clear the land and start completely over.

  “You’ll rebuild,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Don’t know if I’ve got it in me.”

  Issie pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down, trying to look relaxed. But she didn’t feel relaxed. “Come on, Nick. Where’s your faith?”

  He grinned then. “My faith?” he asked. “Coming from you…”

  “Yeah, kind of a left-field question, huh?” she asked. “I just thought I’d throw you off guard a little.”

  He smiled again, and this time the smile made it to his eyes. He looked at her for a minute, and she realized that he was seeing her, not as a colleague who’d just shown up at the hospital, but as a pretty woman sitting in his room.

  Something about that satisfied her. Yes, she still had it. She could turn men’s heads, even if they were preachers. “But really,” she said finally. “There’s not much you can do for the church tonight.”

  “I have people to see,” he told her. “I need to talk to my church members, maybe call a meeting.”

  “Where would you meet?” she asked.

  “That’s another thing,” he said. “I’ve got to find a place to hold services. And there’s a funeral coming up.” His voice cracked, and he put his hand over his face. “Susan and Ray…have to…bury their child. Got to figure out where to hold the service. Got to talk to them, got to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” Issie asked. “For what, Nick? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He turned his head and looked out the window again. “I left the church unlocked. I thought we should have an open-door policy, twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t know somebody would die—”

  Issie reached out to touch his shoulder, but stopped her hand before it made contact. “Nick, there’s more to this story than we know,” she said softly. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “I don’t know that for sure,” he said. “If I’d listened to the deacons and locked the church, maybe it would have never been burned. Maybe Ben would be alive. Maybe none of this—”

  “Stop it,” she said.

  He turned around and looked in her eyes. She hadn’t seen him without his glasses very often, if ever, and she hadn’t realized his eyes were quite that blue. They glistened with moisture from the pain he had endured today. She could still smell the smoke in his hair.

  “You can’t do this to yourself,” she said. “You and I, we rescue people all the time. For every life we’ve lost, there’s a hundred that we’ve saved. Some things just happen, Nick. We can’t control them.”

  “Have you talked to Ray and Susan?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Susan and I aren’t very close, and I figured Ray didn’t want anybody around. Word is he’s taking it really hard.”

  “’Course he is,” Nick said. He closed his eyes. “Ben had just been home from LSU for the summer. A friend of his, who was spending the summer on a special job in London, had offered him his apartment while he was gone. Ben had gotten a job and was doing construction work for the summer. Even though he’d eaten almost every night at home, he’d seemed to enjoy having his own place. He was happy. Right on the cusp of so many things.”

  His voice broke, and he cleared his throat, reached for the ice chips again.

  Issie sat there for a moment, silence hovering between them. He was, after all, the kindest man she knew, and it didn’t seem right for kind, gentle men to suffer so much guilt. Before she realized what she was doing, she touched his shoulder.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “I failed the church,” he said. “It was under my care.”

  His guilt made her angry. “Nick, look at me.”

  He met her eyes. His were red, tired.

  “You didn’t fail that church. In fact, you’re probably the only one who’s going to hold it together.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” he said. “Now that we don’t have a building, the church could just disperse and go to other congregations where their preacher isn’t so distracted with fires and shootings and domestic quarrels.”

  “Oh, so now you’re beating yourself up because you’re bivocational? Like that’s your fault? You’re right, Nick,” she said with sarcasm. “If you’d been demanding a full-time salary, none of this would have happened.”

  “I might have been in the church when it happened,” he said. “I might have been there when Ben needed somebody.”

  “Even if you were full-time, you wouldn’t have been there all night. It’s not your fault. I want you to say that after me. ‘It’s not my fault.’”

  Nick couldn’t say it. He just turned back to the window.

  A knock sounded on the door, and Issie turned to see Stan Shepherd leaning in. He nodded at her, then moved closer to the bed. Nick took a deep breath and wiped his eyes. He grabbed his glasses from the night table and shoved them back on. “Hey, Stan,” he said in a rasp. “How’s it going, man?”

  Clearly, Stan couldn’t make light of such a horrible day. “Been better,” he said. “I hear you’ve been better too.”

  “Me? I’m fine,” Nick said. “I oughta be home.” He studied Stan’s face for a moment. “Have you talked to Ray and Susan?”

  “Briefly.”

  “How are they taking it?”

  “Just as you’d expect.” Stan took a chair across th
e room and sat down with his elbows on his knees. “Nick, I’ve got to crack this case before anything else happens.”

  Nick started to sit up, then remembered his bruised ribs and dropped back. “Something else?”

  Stan stood up and paced across the floor, his head down, then stopped and turned back to Nick and Issie. “If you want to know the truth, my gut feeling is that this was some sort of hate crime, racially motivated.”

  Nick’s mouth fell open. “No way.”

  “Think about it,” Stan said. “Our congregation is mixed. We have blacks, whites, Creoles, Indians, Chinese, Hispanics. We never discouraged anybody from walking through our doors. We’re right at the beginning of this investigation, but I got to tell you, Nick. It’s all pointing to that.”

  “But who?” Nick asked.

  Issie shook her head. “Does Newpointe really have people like that? People who are hateful enough to destroy the building people worship in because their skin is a different color?”

  “The KKK group in Newpointe has been quiet for several years. But you can bet I’m gonna be all over them to get as much information as I can.”

  Nick looked thoughtfully at Stan for a moment. “It could very well be what you think,” Nick said. “But a thought keeps nagging me, and I can’t let it go.”

  “What thought?”

  “Remember that kid who was coming to our youth group, stirring things up? Him and his sister?”

  “Yeah. Cruz and Jennifer Somebody.”

  “Well, just a few weeks ago, when I broke up his party at that gay ball at Mardi Gras, he threatened to get even.”

  Stan got to his feet and began to pace as he rubbed his chin. “I had forgotten all about that.”

  “What?” Issie asked. “Who is this kid?”

  “Well, it’s kind of a long story,” Nick said. “See, back around the first of the year, he and his twin sister started coming to church. Everybody called this kid Cruz. They were eighteen, pretty popular, instantly likeable. Seemed like good kids. Claimed to be Christians. They seemed real interested in our doctrine, but they started challenging the Sunday school teachers. The teachers got frustrated and asked me to talk to them. So I did. I went out to their house, hoping to answer some of their questions so they wouldn’t have to keep interrupting their teachers. But as soon as I got them alone, I started to realize they weren’t quite the upstanding, likeable kids I thought. They had an authority problem and didn’t think I had a thing in the world to teach them. Their mother was just as much of a smart aleck as they were. Said they knew the Bible inside out and didn’t need the likes of me snooping around trying to change their thinking. I left there kind of baffled.