Four of a Kind Read online

  Four of a Kind

  A Firefighter Mystery Compendium

  by

  Philip Soletsky

  Four of a Kind by Philip Soletsky

  Cover Artwork: Rachel Carpenter Artworks

  Copyright © 2018 Philip Soletsky

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN-10: 1729043813

  ISBN-13: 978-1729043813

  Also by this Author

  Firefighter Mysteries

  Embers

  A Hard Rain

  Dirty Little Secrets

  Little Girl Lost

  Trail Blaze

  Night Calls

  Standalone Thrillers

  Avarice

  Praise for Embers

  (Firefighter Mystery Novel #1)

  “Riveting… fast-paced and vividly imagined.”

  New Hampshire Magazine

  “Intense… riveting… an unconventional first-time gumshoe with an intricate backstory.”

  KIRKUS Reviews

  “A lush read… I was sad to leave the town of Dunboro behind when the story was through, but I know I'll be returning again as soon as I can get hold of a copy of A Hard Rain.”

  Angela D’onofrio

  Author of From the Desk of Buster Haywood

  One Quick Note:

  The great advantage of being an independent author is the ability to write the books I want to write and publish the books I want to publish. There’s no marketing team telling me whether or not they think it will sell, and no publisher looking for return on investment. There’s just me. And in the case of this compilation of the first four firefighter mystery novels under one cover, it started with the feeling that the first four books constituted an important arc the lives of my lead characters, Jack and Valerie, and I wanted to see how that all built up into a single volume. I also had a really great cover art idea, and you can see the amazing job Rachel did with that. Finally, I had a desire to see what a 1,000-page book created with my own hands looked like, and I’m really happy with the result.

  If this is your entrance into the series, I hope you find it “riveting” as New Hampshire Magazine opined, and “intense” as claimed by the KIRKUS review, and I’d like to let you know that if you liked it, there are two more books in the series available as of this writing, and I’m hard at work on #7. Plus I’d like to offer my email ([email protected]) for any comments you have that you’d care to share with me, good, bad, or indifferent. Also, though I feel like I’m contributing to the downfall of civilization just by typing this, you can follow me on Facebook to get updates on new books releases and upcoming signings I’m doing in the region.

  Finally, if you enjoy this book, please tell someone. Word of mouth is my best advertising. And if, for some unfathomable reason, you don’t like this book: Shhhh! Tell no one. Keep that as a terrible secret tucked close to your heart.

  Thanks.

  Embers

  by

  Philip Soletsky

  One

  It all began with a call for an ordinary house fire, at least to those of us who consider house fires at two in the morning ordinary.

  “Fallon, tank up!” Russell Burtran, a grizzled forty-year veteran of the fire department shouted at me over his shoulder from the officer’s seat. “As soon as we get there, you’re with me on the hose line.”

  “Right.” I hooked my arms through the straps on the air tank built into the seatback and lifted it from the clips. Snapping my facemask onto the regulator, I tightened the straps so the tank rode snug against my back.

  Paul McNeil, a kid so new to the department that he wasn’t certified on the breathing gear yet, sat across from me, watching me with wide eyes as he struggled to close the spring clips on his jacket. “What should I be doing, Jack?”

  “Just get your gear on. Russell will tell you what to do when we get there.”

  He swallowed; I saw his Adam’s apple bob. His face was thin, his cheeks almost adolescently smooth. He was what, nineteen? If he stuck with it, he’d have forty years in the department someday. I had a moment’s doubt about the wisdom of joining the Dunboro volunteer fire department at the age of thirty-five.

  The house was a two-story colonial with grey clapboard siding, white trim and a hip roof. The right side of the first floor was fully involved. The front bay window and side patio door had both blown out and were pouring columns of thick dark smoke and occasional licks of orange fire into the night sky. So far the second floor appeared uninvolved. As we drove up we could hear the shrill of the smoke alarm going off inside the house. A blue Nissan was parked in the driveway. Russell relayed his observations of the fire scene into a handheld radio as he climbed down from Engine 2.

  I jumped out of the back and pulled out the speedlay line, 150 feet of hose and a nozzle folded up in a rack underneath the pump control panel for quick deployment. Running to the bottom of the front porch steps, I fed the line out as I went. Tom Schmitt, the driver, got down from the cab and climbed onto the back deck of the truck to activate the pumps.

  “Paul, get a ladder set up to that top window on the left and clean out the glass.” Russell pointed at it, “We find anyone in the house on the second floor we’re taking them out that window.”

  “Will do,” Paul nodded once and ran off around the side of the truck.

  “Tom, when Engine 3 gets here, I want them to get lines into the first floor.”

  “I’ll let them know,” Tom shouted over the throb of the big diesel engine.

  Russell joined me on the line just as the pumps started, water rushing down the hose at one hundred pounds per square inch. I spun the air tank valve with my facemask on and took my first breath of canned air – cool, dry, and tasting a little rubbery.

  We lifted the hose and dragged it up the three steps onto the porch and to the front door. It was like wrestling with a 150 foot boa constrictor.

  “We’ll hit the fire on the first floor and then head upstairs to look for people.” Russell exhaled with a hiss from the regulator reminding me of Darth Vader. I knew as well as Russell did that the presence of the car in the driveway indicated someone was home, most likely in bed at 2:15 in the morning, and possibly overcome by smoke.

  I put a hand on the doorknob but it wouldn’t turn. I rattled the knob and the door felt loose in its frame. It was probably only locked at the knob without a deadbolt.

  “Locked!” I shouted, putting my helmet against his to be heard over the roar of the fire.

  It took three tries with my shoulder before the door popped open. We both ducked down as flames rolled over our heads and puddled in the underside of the porch roof. I hit the nozzle while crouched and drove the fire back. Russell put a hand on my shoulder and pressed me forward against the force of the water. We duck-walked into the house.

  Even with my flashlight off, I could see well enough in the flickering orange light of the fire. To our left was a dining room with six chairs around a large oval table, bare except for a pair of crystal candlesticks which reflected the firelight onto the table surface. A china hutch stood against the far wall. To the right was the living room: sheets of flame instead of walls, burning couch, burning love seat, the entertainment center a small inferno, the television and stereo components already reduced to shapeless lumps of metal, plastic and glass.

  A large patch of the woven rug in front of the couch was burning, sluggishly, like a guttering candle. That struck me as peculiar and I filed the observation away for later. A stairway going up was in front of us. The shrill of the smoke alarm mounted directly over our heads was deafening.

  Russell pointed to my right, and I opened the nozzle all the way, throwing a few hundred gallons of water into the living room. The backwash of steam into our faces blinded us. I fumbled with my flashlight and turned it on.

  “Leave it for Engine 3,” Russell shouted in my ear. “Let’s get upstairs.”

  I closed the nozzle and put the hose down. We crawled up the stairs, the smoke becoming thicker with each step, until visibility at the top was reduced to nothing. When Paul took out the window we could get some ventilation and clear the smoke out. Of course, that might take too long to help anyone who was in the house. We pressed our faces to the floor and groped our way down the hallway.

  My questing fingers found a door on the left. It only opened partially, coming up against something solid. I squeezed my upper body through the opening and found a cardboard box wedged behind the door. I felt another half dozen boxes within arm’s reach; the room was full of them. Rather than search the room further I backed out, figuring I wouldn’t find anyone in a storage room in the middle of the night. I realized that wasn’t perfect deductive reasoning, but it was the best I could do since time wasn’t, as the Rolling Stones claimed, on my side.

  I heard the thump of Paul setting up the ladder against the house. I didn’t know what Russell was thinking, but I was wondering how we would get a victim past all the boxes to the ladder if it came to that.

  The next door along the hallway was open, and I crawled into the room with Russell right behind me. I bumped into a desk and a chair before finding the bed. I climbed on top and swept the surface looking for the telltale lump of a body, finding nothing but sheets. Russell crawled underneath– not an easy thing with a tank on his back– and also found nothing.

  I climbed off the bed and ran
a hand along the wall until I found the closet door. When caught in a house fire people have been known to become disoriented and crawl into the closet when they think they’re escaping the room. I opened it and reached in and discovered only a vacuum and bucket. We made our way back out and down the hallway.

  At the next room the flooring changed abruptly at the doorway from the rough carpeting of the hallway to the hard smoothness of tile.

  “Bathroom,” I shouted over my shoulder.

  I quickly swept across the tile floor and felt inside the tub. Instructors at firefighter training had told me that people in house fires will sometimes seek refuge in the tub, though I’ve never seen that happen and never personally known a firefighter who has. The homeowner I guess hadn’t either, because the tub was empty.

  I heard the shattering of glass. Paul had taken out the window. Perhaps it was my imagination but it seemed instantly the smoke was thinner. I could just make out the shape of my glove in front of my face.

  The last door on the hallway opened into a room that somehow felt large and open. The master bedroom. We had been crawling around in this house for more than five minutes on top of our response time plus whatever time it had taken for the fire to be called in. I was all too aware that the chances of someone surviving much longer in the smoke were slim.

  Quickly we found the bed. Russell scooted under, and I again took the top. Immediately my arms slid over a dead, no, make that inert, shape that could only be a person. My adrenaline level, already pretty high to begin with, shot through the roof.

  The person, a woman, was lying on her back, above the covers and even through my heavy gloves I could tell was completely naked. I heard myself panting rapidly into the respirator and fought to control my breathing.

  I patted Russell on the shoulder as he came out from under the bed. “I’ve got one!”

  Russell got on the radio. “We have a victim. Second floor, end of the hallway. We’ll be coming down the stairs. Have EMTs meet us on the lawn.” He moved away from me, vanishing into the smoke in less than a foot, probably towards the stairway to make certain our escape route was clear.

  I slid my arms underneath her and lifted, the body only coming up a couple of inches off the bed before she bowed backwards and I was forced to put her back down. I ran my hands up her body, a moment’s embarrassment as I brushed past her breasts, up her arms to her hands which were stretched over her head. I felt metal rings on her wrists, and a chain. She was handcuffed to the headboard! I grabbed the loop of chain in my gloved hands and heaved. The slats of the headboard creaked, but held firm. I let go and felt back down to her feet. Heavy links encircled her ankles and the solid wooden frame of the footboard.

  I rocked back on my heels to think for a second. I’d need a bolt cutter to get her loose, or maybe a chainsaw would be quicker. A hacksaw? An axe?

  Russell came back to my side and yelled over my shoulder. “What the hell are you waiting for, Fallon? Get her out of here!”

  “I, that is she, I’m going to need . . .”

  “What?”

  “She’s chained to the fucking bed!” I yelled.

  Two

  It was the next evening, and I was at the fire department working at the long steel table which rested against the back wall of the apparatus bay. I had the facemask off of my breathing gear and had been spending the last half an hour trying to clean it. Typically that’s not a big job; clean the sweat out of the inside and the soot off of the outside, rinse the filters, sanitize the whole package, and put it back together. Whatever I had gotten on the faceplate in the house fire wasn’t coming off. It was smearing around like some kind of heavy grease.

  Tom Schmitt had come up behind me while I was working on it. “What did you do to your mask?”

  “I don’t know. Something got on it in the fire last night.”

  “Let me see that.”

  I handed him the mask and he ran a thumb across it, then rubbed the residue between the ball of his thumb and his forefinger. He brought the fingers to his nose and sniffed. “It smells like tar.”

  “Tar? Where would I have gotten tar?”

  Then I remembered seeing the strange way the rug had been burning in the living room and felt an idea start to come together.

  Before it could fully form Max Deaks, the deputy fire Chief, called us from the doorway leading upstairs, “Guys, the Chief wants to talk to us.”

  Tom handed it back to me. “Good luck with that.”

  “Thanks.” I looked across the various cleaning supplies available to me on the shelving over the table. I couldn’t see anything that would take tar off without etching the plastic of the facemask rendering it worthless. Maybe I could call the manufacturer later and see if they had any ideas. In the meantime I wrapped the damaged mask in a plastic bag and set it aside and took a new mask from the storage locker, put it with my equipment, and then ran up the stairs.

  The meeting room was long and narrow, situated above the rear equipment bays. The blue-grey industrial carpeting on the flooring was clean but worn thin in spots, the room furnished with old plywood tables which swayed unsteadily on rickety legs. They were a good match for the battered folding chairs that we used. The furniture came out of the same budget as the rest of the equipment in the firehouse, so we bought what we could from salvage companies and garage sales, anything that could be had cheaply.

  Groups of firefighters clustered around each table, the electric buzz of their conversations filling the room. John Pederson, the Chief of the Dunboro Fire Department, stood at the front of the room talking with Max. John was tall and lean while Max was on the short side and rounded. Whenever I saw them next to one another I couldn’t help but think about Laurel and Hardy.

  I took an empty seat near Paul McNeil who looked a little green around the gills.

  “You feeling OK?” I asked him.

  He swallowed, “I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking about that woman.”

  “We did everything we could.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  “It’ll be alright,” I replied, but realized as I said it that it sounded asinine even to my own ears.

  “How is it going to be alright?” Paul whispered fiercely, “How?” He was clearly freaked by the whole thing.

  I didn’t have an answer for him, in no small part because he was saying exactly what I was feeling, only I guess I was better at hiding it.

  During my two plus years in the fire department I had already seen a couple of dead bodies, but both of those were car accidents. Not in any way to minimize how ghastly car accident fatalities can be. My very first was a pedestrian hit by a log hauling truck. After impacting the radiator grill he had been rolled and tumbled under the wheels down the entire length of the trailer, eighteen heavy-duty, deep-tread tires in all, his body parts and blood smeared down a quarter mile of asphalt. It was an image which still caused a shiver up my spine whenever it surfaced in my mind. My second fatality had been no more pleasant.

  But this woman, naked, chained to the bed, her wrists bloodied by her struggles, added an entirely new dimension to the horror.

  I hadn’t managed to sleep last night either.

  John put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, sharp and piercing, then shouted over the din, “Could everyone quiet down now? I’d like your attention.”

  The silence in the room was instantaneous and so complete that I could hear the slight rasp of Paul breathing through his mouth next to me.

  John began, “As you probably heard on the news this morning, the Sheriff believes the woman in the fire last night was murdered.”

  I heard Paul next to me make a ‘Heh’ sound, like someone had hit him in the stomach or he was thinking about throwing up. When I had heard the story on the news my response had been very similar in feeling, if not sound.

  “Did someone send Barney Fife a telegram?” a firefighter named Fiske called out from the back of the room.

  “Someone must have. I don’t think our esteemed Sheriff figured that out all by himself,” Russell Burtran muttered from his seat next to Fiske.