Consumed (Firefighters #1)(71)

See, this was the problem, he thought. He hadn’t understood as he’d driven across town why he was showing up. For a highly decisive person like himself, that was an anomaly, and a sign he needed to back off.

Mirroring her pose, he crossed his arms, too. “I guess I misread you,” he muttered in a bored tone.

“You know, you’ve got a problem, Chief Ashburn.”

“Do I.”

“You have a reputation around town for being inflexible and closed-minded. No one can argue how you run the department and its equipment and facilities, but you are very difficult to get along with and people are forced to work around you.”

“You know, it’s strange. I thought my job was to run the fire department for the city and that includes its equipment and facilities.”

“It is.”

“So I’m knockin’ it out of the park.”

“Not really. Compared to national standards, you have among the highest levels of personnel dissatisfaction and burnout. Your men and women feel disempowered to make changes in procedures, they’re frustrated by a lack of support from management, and they’re worried about their futures. You are the head of a very unstable foundation, Chief.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t think your union is on the pulse of its membership?”

Brent, you fucker, he thought.

“What I see,” Tom ground out, “is a group of people fighting fires with equipment that is aging in facilities that need renovation, and your buddy Ripkin’s ‘donation’ was more a showpiece for his name than a gift designed to help the department. Before you harp on me about a bunch of intangibles, maybe you should look at our resources.”

“Personnel are your resources. And they’re hurting. Your people need support—”

“Don’t talk to me about what I need. You don’t know the first thing about what our lives are like.”

“If I don’t tell you, no one will.”

“Why, because you’re so special? Don’t believe everything your daddy tells you.”

“No,” she snapped, “it’s because I’m your boss. I’m the mayor of this town and that means you work for me, you answer to me—and I have no trouble firing you if you don’t realign your attitude and realize you are part of a very serious problem in this city’s fire service.”

In the silence that followed, Tom knew he had to leave before he said something he really regretted.

Leaning in, he said in a low voice, “Stay out of my business.”

“Do you hear yourself? Seriously. I tell you you’ve got a problem in the department and your only response is about you. You’re not even open to hearing it or considering your own behavior. All you want to do is get territorial and shut off the noise. That’s not a leader, Tom. That’s a despot.”

“Don’t call me by my first name. I’m Chief Ashburn to you. And when I watch Barrington whip your ass on election night, please picture me smiling from ear to ear, will you? It’ll add to my satisfaction.”

On that happy little note, he left the boardroom. As Perry came out of nowhere again and started to run after him, Tom nearly grabbed the guy by the throat and threw him across the lobby.

“Not now, Perry.”

“But I just want to put a bug in your—”

Tom wheeled around. “Stay away from me right now. Or you will not like what happens next.”

Apparently, the guy had basic survival skills in addition to all his ambition because he backed the fuck off like he had a gun pointed at him.

Smart. Real smart.





chapter




32



On Saturday morning, Anne walked up to a three-story apartment building that had about thirty units. On the second floor, its brick exterior was stained with black streaks and plywood panels had been nailed over a line of windows that had been broken. A tree close to the corner had sustained loss, its gumdrop shape given a heat shear on one side.

The crime scene investigators were on-site, two of their boxy vehicles parked in front, and there were a couple of marked NBPD cars behind them. Television crews from the local stations were parked across the way, a uniformed cop staring at the made-up reporters and the casually dressed cameramen like he expected them to try to get into the place and was prepared to cut ’em off at the knees to keep them out.

The media’s interest had been intense ever since the details had started coming out the night before. The murder of one of the residents, supposedly by her grandson, and the subsequent fire that had started in the kitchen, were so sensational that the crime had been sucked into the vortex of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, click bait to be served up as the Internet’s newest fast-food meal.

She’d already seen two memes with something cooking in a cast-iron pan.

Grandma. It’s what’s for dinner.

Grandma. The other white meat.

Bastards.

After flashing her ID to the uni at the door, she went up the four flights of stairs, and the nuances of the fading smell of a contents fire confirmed on an olfactory basis that they were indeed some twenty-four hours out: the acrid stench had dissipated some, but it was still strong enough that she could catch the plastic high notes.