“That was almost a year ago,” Featherstone said. “Christ, Mr. Spenser. I don’t mean to be a jerk, but who thought you could do any better than the department?”
“If it was an accident,” I said, “I can’t help pinpoint the cause. But if it was something criminal, that’s in my line of work. It takes a while to find a pattern in some random acts.”
“Like I said, I don’t think it was set,” he said. “I know what arsons look like. We had like two dozen in the last couple of months. This was an old church and some wire crossed or some dumb bastard left a cigarette in that alley. I mean, who the hell would burn a church? You don’t go to confession for that kind of crap.”
The dispatcher advised of two minor injuries on Atlantic Avenue near the aquarium. Police were on scene and reported medical attention was needed. I leaned on the display case and looked down at some artifacts from the Cocoanut Grove fire of ’42. I studied the news clippings and a menu from the old nightclub.
Featherstone walked around the table and joined me at the display. He swiveled the toothpick in his mouth and made a sighing sound.
“I once met the man who thought he’d done it,” Featherstone said. “He’d been nothing but a kid, trying to change out a lightbulb. He lit a match to see what he was doing under a paper palm tree and whoosh. That fire burned hotter and faster than about anything in history. When the firemen got inside, they found people still sitting at their tables, cocktails in front of them. Bodies in perfect shape. Christ.”
I nodded and let him talk.
“I think he replayed that event in his mind every damn day.”
“From what you’ve heard, do you think there might’ve been two points of origin?”
“Boy, you don’t quit, do you?” Featherstone said. He smiled and thought about it before shaking his head. “I mean, I can’t be sure. When I got there it was mainly smoke. A lot of black smoke. Everything was coming from the basement and out that side alley. I didn’t see anything in the sanctuary. But after Dougherty, Bonnelli, Mulligan, and Grady went in, I could see the big stained-glass window lit up with the fire. The fire had burned its way upstairs and into the sanctuary. But as far as two fires, I can’t say. I guess we’ll really never know.”
“I hope that’s not the case.”
“I didn’t leave that church until maybe two or three the next day. I was there when Dougherty’s wife and two of his kids showed up. That’s something I didn’t want to see. You ever hear someone scream not out of fright but out of real animal pain? Stuff deep inside?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“That’s what it is,” Featherstone said. He walked back around from the counter. A thick-calved woman in a blue dress and a husky kid in a tricorne hat bounded into the museum. The husky kid tried to crawl under the velvet ropes and onto a horse-drawn pump. “Hold on.”
The husky kid made it as far as the wooden wheels before Featherstone told him to get back behind the ropes. Featherstone wandered back to me.
“I didn’t get real close,” he said. “Most of the fire I was working. I hate what happened to the guys. But shit, I’d do anything I could if some son of a bitch set it. But it’s just a sad day, nothing more. Life sometimes doesn’t make any sense.”
“But if something changes,” I said. I handed him my card.
“I promise,” he said.
Unlike John Grady, he didn’t toss it on the floor. Progress.
8
Five days later, Boston Fire marked the year anniversary that Dougherty, Bonnelli, and Mulligan had died inside Holy Innocents. Outside the blackened shell of what had been the church, the chaplain prayed and everyone dropped their heads. It started to rain. Except for a few politicians, nobody opened an umbrella during the service to the fallen firefighters.
The whole South End went quiet. You could hear the wind and rain hitting the street.
The fire radio clicked on and a dispatcher read the men’s names and time of the fire last year to the minute. Across Boston, sirens wailed. The skies then opened up and covered Shawmut Street in slanted sheets of water.
I pulled up the collar on my jacket and removed my hat. I stood back as the firefighters shook hands and hugged one another. Across the street, TV news trucks had set up, taking video from a respectable distance. After a few minutes, the fire trucks drove away. Dozens of firefighters lingered. A few of them were walking into a break in the fence line and going into the church.
“You making any progress?” McGee said.
“I interviewed four more first responders,” I said. “And a half a dozen people who watched the church burn.”
“Insurance?”
“Checked that out, too,” I said. “Only one to benefit would be the archdiocese.”
“They’ve done a helluva lot worse.”
“Sure,” I said. “But their payout wouldn’t be even touching the historic value.”