Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (Spenser, #44)(43)

“Arson already went through our video,” she said. “I figured if they’d found something, they’d have asked for copies. They were here for a few hours and then didn’t come back.”

“Maybe I’ll see something they didn’t,” I said. “I do have a keen, appraising eye.”

“Knock yourself out,” she said. “I can get you a private room to watch the raw footage.”

“You mind if I sleep there, too?”

“I’m sure Susan won’t place a time limit on you,” she said. “But if she does, I know Rita would make room in her bed.”

“You know, she’s only bluffing.”

“You really believe that?” Hank raised her eyebrows again. We stood and shook hands, and she walked off without saying good-bye.





37


Although he wouldn’t remain under my tutelage for long, I knew watching endless hours of video was the perfect training exercise for Z. At first, he seemed skeptical. But I enticed him with the promise of grinders from Quincy Market and free coffee from the TV station canteen.

“Yippee,” he said.

“A dream come true.”

“You think it’ll be more glamorous in Los Angeles?”

“City of Angels,” I said. “What do you think? It’s probably a law you get a massage on a stakeout. Herbal tea during a car chase.”

“I’ve heard the rumors,” he said. “They must be true.”

“How many hours have we logged?” I said. The room was dark and cold. It seemed as if we’d been there since the early 1970s. I had not seen Hank, but one of her producers had checked on us twice. One brought coffee. Another donuts. God bless them.

“Eighteen fires,” he said. “We’ve been here for six hours.”

“Keep track of time for your invoices.”

“Are you invoicing Jack McGee?” Z said.

I shrugged, took a sip of coffee, and asked him to continue on with the video. Even though it wasn’t tape anymore, it was a digital image housed on a TV station server. I was a long way from watching Super 8 with my football coach and the whir and click of the machine. Z worked a mouse to stop, freeze, and zoom in. After a while, everything looked the same. Not every fire had been filmed by WHDH, only the nastiest ones. Most of the footage showed the firefighters doing their thing and then a standup from the public-information guy, Steve MacDonald. Sometimes Commissioner Foley would take questions from reporters. We fast-forwarded through all the talk. We were looking at the onlookers. I hoped that somewhere the arsonist would show his face and return to do so again. If we could spot a face in the crowd more than once, we might just have a pattern.

“That guy,” Z said. “I saw him from an earlier fire. Tall, goofy guy. Kind of balding.”

He backed up the video. It was Rob Featherstone.

“He’s dead,” I said. “But let’s see who he’s with.”

Z ran it for several seconds and then froze the frame. I asked Z to make a screen grab of the image. It was Featherstone and two other men handing out bottles of water. Featherstone and other men who must have been Sparks appeared at several of the fires. At first glance, they would have been dismissed by anyone familiar with fire scenes. But now, with Featherstone dead, it was worth taking another look at the company he kept.

“So they are like fans,” Z said, “only for firemen?”

“Yep.”

“And they go to fires and try to assist.”

“Yep.”

“When I played football, we had many women who wanted to assist us.”

“I bet.”

“My girlfriend wanted to assist me morning and night until I got benched,” he said. “And then she wanted to assist someone else.”

“That’s why sometimes one must assist oneself.”

“Are you always filled with such wisdom?”

“How will you make it without me?”

The video moved ahead, showing a warehouse in flames and firefighters shooting water into the guts of the building. Z clicked on another thumbnail image for an apartment fire from March. He let the unedited video run. He skipped through the standup and moved on from the tight footage of the burning building, firefighters, and EMTs. Nothing new. We skipped a couple fires, as they did not match those suspected by Cahill. I wanted to see only fires considered for arson. Several fires, including one where six people died, were accidental. If we didn’t get what we needed, we could go back and look at those, too.

I got up and stretched. Z and I walked over to Quincy Market for some coffee and grinders. The donut talk had really gotten our appetites going. We watched another three hours of footage, walked to the Harbor Health Club, and worked out on the heavy bag and with mitts.

I drove back home and had dinner with Susan.

The next morning, we were at it again.

An hour into the last several months, Z stopped a quick pan to a crowd. The shot was only two or three seconds. But with the digital video, we could zoom in tight. Z stood up and stretched and pointed at the large computer monitor. “You see that?”

“See what?”

“The man pointed a gun in the air.”

I looked closer and saw just the glint of a metallic object flash and then disappear. Z pressed slow forward and it became clear it was a gun. A man brandished a pistol for a second, a large smile crossing his face. It appeared the two men with him were laughing and smiling.