J. Wachowski - In Plain View

Ainsley flashed me a look.

“Female?”

“Yeah,” Melton said.

“Rachel.” Ainsley said aloud what we were both thinking.

I was grinning like an idiot. I love these moments. “Got anything else for us, Mel?”

“Nothing really. The girl was shipped home. The guy was given some kind of write up. His employment record is sealed. I couldn’t get anything on how it impacted him at the fire station.”

“Your friend didn’t have anything to add about what happened with his shift buddies?” That seemed odd to me considering the gossip fest we’d had so far.

“Nope.” Melton shook his head. “He said it all blew over.”

“Except the guy killed himself a couple weeks later.”

“Yeah. Except that.”

1:03:11 p.m.

Fire station number six was out in the middle of nowhere. Couple of guys were giving a big red engine a bath on the driveway. Behind the station a three-story brick building with smoke smears around the windows sat alone in a parking lot. A training tower, maybe?

Several old junkers were lined up on the tarmac below the tower. We watched someone pull another barely drivable vehicle around and park it. The driver got out and walked toward us, your typical hulking, midwest beef-eater.

I opened my door and waved.

Ainsley followed me out of the van but didn’t make a move to pull a camera. “These guys aren’t gonna tell us anything.”

“Why do you think it’s not worth trying?” I pulled off my sunglasses before delivering the bad news. “Listen, College, if I gave up every time I thought I wouldn’t get an interview, I’d be selling Mary Kay cosmetics right now. You want to sell cosmetics, leave the camera in the van.”

Ainsley shook his head, his lips tight.

Stories always feel like something at the start-a texture, a shape, even a temperature. Once I recognize it, the whole thing falls together quickly. Occasionally, I get a story I don’t understand right away. I have to back up and feel my way around the edges. Crack it open. Stick my hands in deep, take hold and turn it around a few times. Those messy, ambiguous stories are the ones that don’t come easy. They’re also the ones that keep me coming back for more.

Two days ago, I thought this was going to be a straight salacious sex-death; the kind of story that reveals in intimate detail exactly how strange your neighbor is. With Melton’s research, on top of Amish oddities, and sheriff tantrums, I knew things were about to get messy in a very good way.

“Relax, College. This is the fun part. We’re living the dream. Right now.” I smiled at the guy with the soapy sponge.

He smiled back, until I flashed my credential and said my name. “I’ll get the captain. Hang on.” He disappeared into the station without another word.

“What do you want?” the beefy one asked. Up close, he was ruddy-skinned. Bright-eyed. Good looking. And young.

Lately, I’ve noticed there seem to be a lot of near-children doing grown-up jobs like fighting fires.

I tried casual. “We’d like to talk to someone about Tom Jost. He worked here, right?”

“Yeah.” He pulled off a pair of work gloves and tucked them in his back pocket. The patch on his shirt was embroidered with the slogan Prevent & Protect .

“Did you know him?”

The guy folded his arms over his chest, looked at Ainsley, looked back at me. “Yeah. I knew Tom.”

“You all work together pretty closely, know each other pretty well, don’t you? Did he have any family? Girlfriend, maybe?”

“Tommy was a loner,” he mumbled. He stared at me, willing me to shut up and go away.

“I’ve heard it’s like having another family when you work for fire service.”

His eyes narrowed, suspiciously. Yeah.

“Maybe the guys on his shift were like his family?” I asked.

The eye contact I got for that question crossed over from annoyed to odd. Maybe the guy had issues with family.

“Maybe,” was all he had to say.

“Was it like losing a brother when he died?” Ainsley asked.

The guy spun around to stare at Ainsley now, as if some kind of insult had been implied. He looked down at his hands, out to the street, everywhere but at us.

“What’s going on here?” A big fella with a respectable gut came out from around the fire trucks in the garage.

“Hey, Captain. We’ve got a TV reporter here, asking questions about Tom.”

“Thanks, Pat. I’ll handle it from here,” the captain replied.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell with men and their patented empty-expressions, but the captain seemed genuinely concerned. He gave the younger man a bracing upper arm squeeze and sent him inside.

“Just a few routine questions. We’re looking for background mainly.”

“Sure. Sure.”

Ainsley got the camera rolling. The captain re-tucked his shirt. You don’t usually get the top job unless you can talk the talk. The incident with Jost was a “tragedy.” They were all “saddened.” Employment records were “of course, private.”

“We have a letter written by a police officer documenting some trouble that Mr. Jost got into with a minor.” I threw that fact out there, fishing. “Do you think the situation contributed to his state of mind before the suicide?”

“Son of a… how the…? Never mind.” The man winced and rubbed one hand across his bald head. “No way. No more questions.”

I had so little to go on, I nodded to Ainsley. He took the camera off his shoulder.

“Off the record?” I smiled. “I don’t want to bring it up, if it doesn’t matter.”

The smile always helps. “That letter should never have been written. Cop was out of line.” The captain pointed his finger at me. “I had to talk to Tom about it. Had to. We weren’t going to fire him or anything. We couldn’t have, legally.”

“How did Jost react?”

“Deer in the headlights. He seemed stunned. Oh, he was pissed, I could tell. But Tommy wasn’t the kind to just blow off steam. He held it in, you know? I told him the whole situation would pass if he’d put it behind him. Forget about it.” He waved the whole thing away with both hands. “The kid needed to get out more. I offered to take him out myself to a real bar. Meet some women. Set him on the right track, so to speak. That’s how much I respected him. As a firefighter, of course. The kid had stones.”

“Did he catch flack from the other firefighters about the letter, or the incident?”

“Probably.” Captain shrugged. “The boys give each other grief for farting on the toilet.”

“And Tom was just one of the boys before the trouble. Got along with everyone?”

“I wouldn’t say that-exactly.” Captain puckered up with consideration. “Tommy was different. He had his ways, you know.”

“Because of the Amish background?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t watch TV. Except the Weather Channel. Always had to take a moment, you know, when he sat down to eat. Praying and shit. Me, I got no problem with that. Doesn’t bother me. Some of the other guys, it took ’em a while getting used to that kinda thing. Vegas helped him fit in.” The captain tipped his head in the direction he’d dismissed the younger man.

“The other man we were talking with, he was a friend of Tom’s?”

“More than a friend. They partnered on the ambulance.”

Maybe that explained the odd expression when I’d mentioned family. Tom’s partner was definitely someone we would want to speak with again.

“Pat’s last name is Vegas?”

“No.” The chief shook his head. “Vegas is his nickname. Everybody in the station’s got one.”

“He’s a Las Vegas fan?”

“Doubt he’s ever been there. Pat’s a dealer.” The captain snorted a little chuckle. “Always got something going on, you know?”