Jeffery Deaver: Solitude Creek

‘The driver parked it there?’

‘Claims he didn’t. But what’s he going to say? There’ve been other incidents of trucks blocking the roadhouse parking lot. Never a fire exit.’

‘Is he here today?’

‘He’ll be in soon. I called him at home. He’s pretty upset. But he agreed to come in.’

‘Why would he park there, though? Anybody can see the signs: “No Parking, Fire Exit”. Tell me the scenario. What happened exactly?’

‘Come on inside.’

Dance followed the burly man into the club. The place had apparently not been straightened up after the tragedy. Chairs and tables — lowand high-tops — were scattered everywhere, broken glasses, bottles, scraps of cloth, snapped bracelets, shoes. Musical instruments lay on the stage. One acoustic guitar was in pieces. A Martin D-28, Dance observed. An old one. Two thousand dollars’ worth of former resonance.

There were many smears of old blood on the floor, brown footsteps too.

Dance had been there dozens of times. Everybody on the Peninsula knew Solitude Creek. The club was owned by a balding, earringed restaurateur and former hippie from (where else?) Haight-Ashbury named Sam Cohen, who had been to the Monterey Pop Festival in ’67 and reportedly not slept for three days. So moved by the show had the young man been that he had devoted his early life to promoting rock concerts, not so successfully, then given up and opened a steakhouse near the Presidio. He’d sold it for a profit and pocketed enough to buy an abandoned seafood restaurant on the small tributary that had become the club’s name.

Solitude Creek was a vein of gray-brown water running to the nearby Salinas River. It was navigable by any vessel with a draft no deeper than two or three feet, which left it mostly for small boats, though there wasn’t much reason to sail that way. The club squatted in a large parking lot between the creek and the trucking company, north of Monterey, off Highway One, the same route that wound through majestic Big Sur; the views were very different, there and here.

‘How many deaths?’

‘Three. Two female, one male. Compressive asphyxia in two cases — crushed to death. One had her throat closed up. Somebody stepped on it. Dozens of badly injured. Bone breaks, ribs piercing lungs. Like people were stuck in a huge vise.’

Dance couldn’t imagine the pain and panic and horror.

Holly said, ‘The club was pretty full but it was under the limit. We checked, first thing. Occupancy is two hundred, most owners pretend that means two-twenty. But Sam’s always been buttoned up about that. Doesn’t fool around. Everything looked in order, all the county documentation — that’s the safety issues. I saw the tax- and insurance-compliance certs on file in the office. They’re current too. That’s what Charles said you were here about.’

‘That’s right. I’ll need copies.’

‘Sure.’ Holly continued, ‘Fire inspector gave him a clean bill of health last month and Sam’s own insurance company inspected the place a couple of days ago and gave it an A-plus. Extinguishers, sprinklers, lights, alarms and exits.’

Except the exits hadn’t opened.

‘So, crowded but up to code.’

‘Right,’ Holly said. ‘Just after the show started — eight, little after — the fire broke out in the oil drum. The smoke got sucked into the HVAC system and spread throughout the club. Wasn’t real thick but you could smell it. Wood and oil smoke, you know, that’s particularly scary. People went for the closest doors — most, of course, for the exits along the east wall. They opened a little — you can see the truck’s about a foot away so nobody could fit through. Worse, some people reached out through the opening. Their arms or hands got stuck and... well, the crowd kept moving. Three or four arms and shoulders were shattered. Two arms had to be amputated.’ His voice grew distant. ‘Then there was this young woman, nineteen or so. It more or less got torn off. Her arm.’ He was looking down. ‘I heard later she was studying classical piano. Really talented. God.’

‘What happened when they realized the doors wouldn’t open?’

‘Everybody in the front was pressed against the doors, screaming for the people behind them to turn around. But nobody heard. Or if they did they didn’t listen. Panic. Pure panic. They should’ve gone back toward the other exits, the front, the stage door. Hell, the kitchen had a double door. But for some reason everybody ran the other way — toward the fire doors, the blocked ones. I guess they saw the exit signs and just headed for them.’

‘Not much smoke, you said. But visibility?’

‘Somebody hit the house lights and people could see everything fine.’

Sam Cohen appeared in the doorway. In his sixties, dressed in filthy jeans and a torn work shirt, blue. His remaining curly gray hair was a mess, and he had not slept that night, Dance estimated. He walked through the club slowly, picking up items from the floor, putting them into a battered cardboard box.

‘Mr Cohen.’

The owner of Solitude Creek made his way unsteadily toward Dance and Holly. His eyes were red: he’d been crying. He walked up, noting a smear of blood on the floor; cruelly, it was in the shape of a heart.

‘I’m Kathryn Dance, Bureau of Investigation.’

Cohen looked at, without seeing, the ID card. She slipped it away. He said to no one, ‘I just called the hospital again. They’ve released three. The critical ones — there were four of those — are unchanged. One’s in a coma. They’ll probably live. But the hospitals, the doctors don’t tell you much. The nurses never do. Why’s that a rule? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Can I ask you a few questions, Mr Cohen?’

‘Bureau of Investigation? FBI?’

‘California.’

‘Oh. You said that. Is this... I mean, is it a crime?’

Holly said, ‘We’re still doing the preliminary, Sam.’

Dance said, ‘I’m not a criminal investigator. I’m in the Civil Division.’

Cohen looked around, breathing heavily. His shoulders sagged. ‘Everything...’ he said, in a whisper.

Dance had no idea what he’d been about to say. She was looking at a face marred by indelible sorrow. ‘Could you tell me what you recall about last night, sir?’ She asked this automatically. Then, remembering the fire marshal was in charge, ‘Okay with you, Bob?’

‘You can help me out anytime you want, Kathryn.’

She wondered why she was even asking these questions. This wasn’t her job. But sometimes you just can’t leash yourself.

Cohen didn’t answer.

‘Mr Cohen?’ She repeated the question.

‘Sorry.’ Whispering. ‘I was at the front door, checking receipts. I heard the music start. I smelled smoke, pretty strong, and I freaked out. The band stopped in the middle of a tune. Just then I got a call. Somebody was in the parking lot and they said there was a fire in the kitchen. Or backstage. They weren’t sure. They must’ve seen the smoke and thought it was worse than it was. I didn’t check. I just thought, Get everybody out. So I made the announcement. Then I could hear voices. Swelling. The voices, I mean, getting louder and louder. Then a scream. And I smelled more smoke. I thought, No, no, not a fire. I was thinking of the Station in Rhode Island a few years ago. They had fireworks. Illegal ones. But in, like, six minutes the entire club was engulfed. A hundred people died.’

Choking. Tears. ‘I went into the club itself. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was like they weren’t people at all — it was just one big creature, staggering around, squeezing toward the doors. But they weren’t opening. And there were no flames. Anywhere. Not even very thick smoke. Like in the fall, when I was growing up. People burning leaves. Where I grew up. New York.’