Fire Born (Firehouse 343) Read Online Free Page A

“Nothing we tried slowed it, let alone stopped it —not even surgical decompression . Because his skull was not large enough to encompass the greater mass , his brain cells began dying and his body responded by shutting his organs down one by one. I am truly sorry for your loss. I can see that Captain Maynard was cared about very much.”
    Chris nodded. “Yes he was, Doctor. Yes he was.”
     
    ***
     
    Martine Liotta stepped into her boss’s office, shut ting the door behind her quietly when she saw that he was on the phone. Graham Henderson held up a finger, indicating he needed a minute, and she nodded.
    “Yes,” he said into the receiver. “I’m about to put my best person on it, Bob. Martie will find the SOB, I guarantee it.”
    Martie raised one of her arched eyebrows. It wasn’t the first time the Deputy Director of the Montana Bureau of Fire Safety had referred to her as his “best person”—she’d certainly earned the moniker with her impressive closure record—but it was perhaps the first time she’d ever heard him refer to anyone as a son of a bitch. Graham was a devout Christian and rarely, if ever, used foul language.
    A rarity for a man in politics.
    Okay, technically he hadn’t actually sounded it out as she had in her mind, but Martie was counting his use of “SOB” as a curse. She was still fighting a smile as Graham hung up the phone and motioned her forward.
    “I have a new case for you, Martie,” he said as she sat in one of the two visitor chairs in front of his desk.
    Martie crossed shapely legs as she tucked a lock of her black hair behind an ear. “Sir, I’m still working an angle on the Breckon case,” she told him.
    “This actually involves that little twerp,” Graham said with a snort, causing both of Martie’s eyebrows to rise this time.
    “Oh really?” s he queried, her interest piquing. Trevor Breckon was a young, ambitious real estate develope r who had found himself on the BFS radar two months ago, when a second property of his had caught fire under mysterious circumstances. The c ase had been assigned to Martie—one of the Bureau’s arson investigators— who , after conducting an initial series of interviews , strongly suspected insurance fraud. But she had yet to pin it on him, a fact that soured her stomach daily.
    “Yeah,” Graham was saying. “We’ve got a third property that’s gone up with his name on it. B reckon Apartments, a fifty-year- old three-story office building that was converted—cheaply, if the pattern holds true—into efficiency apartments. Located in Gracechurch.”
    “Gracechurch is where they’re building that tribute firehouse, right?”
    “Bay doors open in just under six weeks,” Graham confirmed. “But the opening’s tainted now. The fireman who was set to command the station died this morning , as a result of injuries sustained in the Breckon Apartments fire.”
    Martie closed her eyes, whispering “ Santa Madre, abbi pietà ,” under her breath.
    “As you know, the first fire was in an empty warehouse belonging to Breckon Management Holdings,” her boss went on. “The second was a Mom-and-Pop store that was closed when the fire started.”
    “Both of which had shoddy maintenance records,” Martie reminded him. “Julio Andropoulis , the store manager, said he’d made numerous complaints to the management company about wiring problems and the circuit breaker tripping, causing loss of product.”
    “Which Breckon could then write off on his taxes,” Graham added. “I already want to bust him for fraud, Martie, but if he’s at fault for a fire that led to a man’s death, it’s a whole new ball game. I don’t think I have to tell you to do this buy the book. I wouldn’t want that slimy serpent to slither out of his well-deserved shackles on a technicality.”
    No, she mused, it was not necessary for him to remind her. Every step of her investigation thus far, all her interviews and research into Trevor Breckon