Trial by Fire Read online

  “Yes, of course,” Ali said. She was already kicking off her slippers and shedding her jeans. On her first media relations on-camera appearance, she couldn’t risk showing up looking Friday casual.

  “Do you need directions?” Frances was asking.

  “Just give me the address,” Ali said. “The GPS should be able to find it.”

  “Probably not,” Frances replied. “Verde View Estates is a new development. The fire hydrants aren’t hooked up yet. They’re having to truck water to the fires in Camp Verde’s old pumpers.”

  Fires, Ali thought. As in more than one. “Directions then, please,” she said aloud.

  “Take the General Crook exit,” Frances said. “Cross under the freeway, then turn north on the frontage road.”

  “Got it,” Ali said. “General Crook exit, north on the frontage road.”

  Her Kevlar vest was now an essential piece of daily attire. She needed to be safe, but she also needed clothing that made her look businesslike. Finding blouses and blazers that worked with the vest was a challenge.

  As Ali dressed, she noticed her hands were shaking. She wasn’t sure if that was from fear or stage fright or a combination of the two, but it made buttoning the last button on her blouse particularly challenging. She grabbed a navy blue pantsuit out of her closet, remembering Aunt Evie’s advice as she did so.

  “You have to dress the part,” her always fashionably dressed aunt Evelyn had often told her niece. “You only have one chance to make a good first impression.”

  Expecting uneven footing, Ali opted for penny loafers instead of heels. Then she spent a few seconds in her bathroom retouching her makeup. On her way out of the bedroom she paused for a quick examination of her reflection in front of a full-length mirror.

  Maybe not ready for prime time in L.A., she told herself critically, but good enough for late-night Yavapai County.

  Out in the garage, she stuck the blue emergency bubble light on top of the Cayenne and headed out. Even with the flashing light encouraging other drivers to get out of the way, it seemed to take forever to get through the construction zone and out to I-17.

  Driving south, Ali caught sight of the fire from several miles away across the Verde Valley. At first glance it appeared as little more than a pinprick of light, but as she came closer, that one pinprick became two separate ones. Both blazes roared skyward, and surrounding them on all sides were the flashing lights from clots of emergency vehicles. Clouds of smoke, dotted with flaming embers, billowed skyward as well. It was dark, but as Ali approached, she noticed that the once black smoke was now a lighter smudge against a much darker sky. She knew enough about fires to understand that if the color of the smoke was changing from black to gray or even white, the fire crews must be making some headway in their fight against the two separate blazes.

  As Frances Lawless had directed, Ali took the General Crook Trail exit and drove under the freeway. Signaling for the left turn onto the frontage road, she caught sight of an ambulance speeding toward her with red lights flashing and siren blaring.

  Someone’s hurt, she thought. Is it a firefighter, or is it someone else?

  Pulling over onto the shoulder, Ali stayed out of the way until the lumbering emergency vehicle roared around the corner and under the freeway. Once there, the ambulance turned south toward Phoenix, with its big urban hospitals and specialized medical practices. That probably meant bad news for the person inside, someone who was right that minute strapped on a stretcher and being rushed headlong through some kind of medical maelstrom.

  Ali was about to move back into the roadway but she again had to wait for oncoming traffic as an arriving fire truck came roaring up behind her with its lights flashing. As it sped past, she noticed the City of Sedona decal on the passenger door.

  Ali wasn’t surprised to see a Sedona-based fire crew so far outside the city limits. If the now four-alarm fire managed to spread from the burning structures to surrounding grass and brush, it would pose far more of a hazard to life and property, especially to the town of Camp Verde, itself a little to the north. That was no doubt why crews from other fire districts had been called in to supplement the locals.

  With the GPS firmly telling her that the frontage road she was driving didn’t exist and that she was Off Road, Ali drove to the scene. At the first police barricade, Ali flashed the credentials she had been issued by the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department. The officer examined her ID. Then, after directing her to an appropriate place to park, he stepped aside and let her through. Ali was relieved to see there were no reporters or cameras milling around so far. She had beaten them to the scene by arriving while emergency equipment was still en route. They would be coming soon, however, and Ali needed to be ready.

  Turning off the Cayenne’s engine, Ali opened the door and stepped out into a world of noisy, smoke-filled chaos. Shouted orders flew back and forth over the roar of the flames. Pulsing strobelike flashes from emergency lights punctuated the darkness, while bright beams directed at the fires helped the firefighters who were battling the two separate blazes to see what they were doing.

  Ali removed the blue emergency beacon from the top of the car, switched it off, and then stood for a moment, taking in the scene. Both houses appeared to be completely engulfed. In fact, just as she shut her car door, the burning roof of one of the houses collapsed in a loud whoosh, sending another cloud of embers skyward like a dangerous volley of Fourth of July fireworks. Firefighters hurried after the glowing trail of embers, trying to find and extinguish them before they set fire to something else.

  Even without the roof, one wall of the collapsed building was still standing. Peering through the eye-watering smoke, Ali was able to make out one chilling detail. Scrawled in yard-tall spray-painted letters on the plywood walls were three letters—ELF.

  The Earth Liberation Front, Ali thought. America’s own special brand of homegrown terrorists.

  Dave Holman came up behind her just then. “Hey, Ali,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Nothing like a trial by fire for your first time out,” he added.

  “An ambulance was leaving just as I got here,” she said. “Was someone hurt?”

  Dave nodded. “Since the houses were under construction, no one expected them to be occupied, but then one of the Camp Verde firefighters heard her screaming. He went in and brought her out.”

  “Her,” Ali confirmed. “A woman? Who is she? What was she doing there?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What’s her condition, and where are they taking her?” Ali asked. When reporters arrived on the scene, those were some of the details they would want to know. Ali would need to have answers at the ready.

  “She’s evidently badly hurt,” Dave answered, “but I have no idea where they’re taking her.”

  “Do you know the name of the firefighter who rescued her?”

  “Nope,” Dave said. “Sorry. For that you’ll need to check with the Camp Verde Fire Department.”

  Someone summoned Dave and he was gone, disappearing into the smoke-filled night.

  Squaring her shoulders, Ali followed Dave’s lead and set off to gather as much information as possible. She knew that in an hour or so, when she found herself standing in front of an assembled group of reporters for the very first time, they’d be looking to her for all available information—for answers to those pesky who, what, where, and why questions that were the news media’s real bread and butter.

  One bit at a time Ali gathered the necessary information. The first 9-1-1 call had come in at eight twenty-nine. Arriving on the scene, the Camp Verde Volunteer Fire Department had assessed the situation and had radioed to request additional help, some of which had arrived at almost the same time Ali did.

  Following the chain of command upward, she finally located Captain Carlos Figueroa of the Camp Verde Fire Department, who was directing the action from a vehicle parked across the street. He wasn’t thrilled when Ali
introduced herself, but he grudgingly agreed to answer her questions.

  “Lieutenant Caleb Moore is the guy who dragged her out of there,” Figueroa said. “He never should have gone in—too dangerous—but he did. I’ll have some serious words with him about that once we get him back from the hospital.”

  “He’s hurt then, too?” Ali asked.

  Figueroa nodded. “Not too bad, I hope, but he swallowed enough smoke that we need to have him checked out.”

  “What about the woman?” Ali asked.

  Captain Figueroa shrugged. “Who knows?” he returned. “Maybe she’ll make it; maybe she won’t.”

  Just then a firefighter raced up to the car, dragged along by an immense German shepherd. “We got a hit, Captain,” he said. “Out here on the street, between the two houses.”

  “What kind of hit?” Ali asked.

  “You didn’t hear that,” Figueroa said. “But the dog is Sparks, our accelerant-sniffing dog. The guy with him is his handler. Sparks doesn’t need to wait for the fire to cool down to investigate if the perp was dumb enough to leave tracks for him outside on the street.”

  “So it is arson, then?” Ali asked.

  “Most likely,” Figueroa said, “but don’t quote me on that. It’s not for public consumption at this time.”

  Ali’s cell phone rang at ten forty-five. “I understand there’s a whole slew of reporters waiting just inside the entrance to Verde View Estates,” Frances Lawless from Dispatch told her. “Any idea when you’ll be there to brief them?”

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” Ali said.

  She went back to the Cayenne, grabbed her computer, and spent the next ten minutes typing up a brief summary of everything she had learned. She’d be able to cover more ground if she started with a prepared statement before opening up for questions. Finally she closed her computer and headed back down the hill.

  Don’t be nervous, she told herself on the way. They’re doing their jobs. All you have to do is yours.

  When she reached the first van-cam, she stuck the Cayenne in park, turned it off, and then went to face the milling group of reporters, who immediately clustered around her, shouting questions at her and vying for her attention. She felt a momentary glitch in her gut. Once she had been one of the yellers. Now she was their target.

  “All right,” she said, fixing a steady smile on her face and shouting back in order to be heard over the din. “Good evening, everyone. Could I have your attention, please? I am Alison Reynolds, public information consultant for the Yavapai County Sherrif’s Department. Hold on. I’ll give you what information I can.”

  She opened her computer and said, “A call came in to the 9-1-1 emergency operators in Prescott at eight twenty-nine p.m. reporting a house fire at Verde View Estates. Firefighters from the Camp Verde Volunteer Fire Department responded with two trucks. When they realized that they were dealing with two separate house fires rather than just one, they requested further assistance. Two additional fire trucks and crews were dispatched to the scene from the City of Sedona. Because Verde View Estates is located on unincorporated land, several officers from the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department were dispatched to the scene as well and will be part of the ongoing investigation. It appears that both structures are a total loss.

  “The houses were under construction and were thought to be vacant. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. Soon after the first Camp Verde fire crew arrived, a firefighter, Lieutenant Caleb Moore, a six-year veteran of the Camp Verde Volunteer Fire Department, entered one of the burning buildings, where he located and rescued one person. The victim, an unidentified female, is in the process of being transported to a Phoenix-area hospital. Lieutenant Moore was also injured, but it’s my understanding that his injuries are not considered life-threatening.

  “The fires are currently considered to be contained if not controlled, but crews expect to remain on the scene through the night, extinguishing hot spots and making sure smoldering embers from the affected houses don’t spread to any other structures or to the surrounding grass and brush. Now, are there any questions?”

  Ali paused and tried to look around. Blinded by the lights from the cameras, she found it impossible to tell how many people were there. From the noise they made it could have been a dozen or more.

  “Is this arson?”

  “That would be pure speculation at this time.” Ali answered carefully, remembering Captain Figueroa’s cautioning words. “No determination on that can occur until after the fire cools down and a full investigation can be mounted.”

  She herself had seen the blaring, bright red ELF tag that had been sprayed on one wall. It seemed clear enough that if the Earth Liberation Front was claiming responsibility for this incident, the cause of the fires would most likely turn out to be arson. Still, her on-the-scene comments had to be circumspect. Captain Figueroa had told her that, and so had Sheriff Maxwell.

  “When it comes to ongoing investigations, don’t give away anything you don’t have to,” Maxwell had told her. “What the media people want to know and what we can tell them are two different things.”

  “You said an unidentified victim left here by ambulance,” a male reporter observed. “Is that person suspected of starting the fire?”

  Ali had clearly said that it was too soon to suspect arson, but some of the reporters, and this one in particular, were already presupposing arson to be the cause. They would no doubt couch their stories in that same fashion. For now, Ali needed to steer them away from arson.

  “As I said earlier,” she told them, “we have no word as to the identity of the victim or what relationship she might have to either the fire or Verde View Estates. She could have been a member of a work crew. She might also be someone who is in the process of purchasing one of the homes.”

  “What about someone who’s homeless?” another reporter asked. “Is it possible a bum broke in after the workmen left, looking for a place to stay?”

  “Anything is possible,” Ali said.

  “What’s the median price tag on homes here?” another voice asked. “I heard some of the firefighters talking about ELF. Don’t they usually target more upscale places?”

  Ali wished she knew which of the firefighters were blabbing to reporters. As for the reporters? She also wished she could see the faces of her questioners. She needed to have some idea of who they were and where they came from. Once she had a personal connection with some of them, this would be easier, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight.

  It’s like dealing with recalcitrant two-year-olds, Ali told herself. You have to say the same thing over and over. Was I this dim when I was a reporter? Was I this rude?

  “As I said before,” she told them firmly, “it’s too early in the investigation to declare this incident to be arson. It will be some time before we can determine the cause of the fire.”

  “What about the victim? Was it a man or woman?”

  “A woman.”

  “How old is she?”

  “No word on that at this time.”

  “Do you know where the victim was taken?”

  “She was taken by ambulance to a private airstrip east of Camp Verde. Once there, she was transferred to a medevac helicopter and flown to a Phoenix-area hospital.”

  “To the burn unit at Saint Gregory’s?”

  Since the burn unit at Saint Gregory’s Hospital on Camelback treated burn victims from all over the region, that was a reasonable guess, but it wasn’t something Ali could confirm.

  “That I don’t know,” she told them.

  “Wasn’t the last ELF fire in the area up near Prescott a couple of years ago?”

  Ali recognized the voice. It was the same male reporter who had posed the earlier ELF question, but this one stumped her.

  “I personally have no knowledge about any other incident, so you’ve got me there,” she answered. “As I said earlier, there has not yet been a determination as to the cause of this fire. Attributing it to any one i
ndividual or group of individuals at this time would be premature.”

  Behind her, the engine of one of the fire trucks rumbled down the road. As it went past, she saw that it was one of the crews from Sedona. If the crew was returning to base, that probably meant that the fire situation here was considered fairly well under control.

  Once again Ali addressed the reporters. “As you can see, some of the crews here are being released. When we have word on the progress of the investigation, I’m sure Sheriff Maxwell will let you know, or you can contact me. My contact information is on the Web site for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department, listed under Media Relations. When any additional media briefings are scheduled, I’ll send out announcements to the contact list I have. I’ll also post that information on the Web site. If I don’t have your contact information and you want to be on the list, please let me know before you leave. Now, is there anything else?”

  “Hey, Ali,” someone called. “This is a new gig for you. How does it feel to be on the wrong side of the cameras?”

  She knew the assembled reporters were taking her measure, just as fellow employees in the department were doing. To do her media relations job effectively, Ali had to walk a fine line between serious and not so serious. She couldn’t afford to be seen as a lightweight, but if she tried too hard, everyone would know it, and so would she.

  “First off,” Ali said, “cameras don’t have wrong sides. People on both sides of them—the ones pointing them and the ones being photographed—have work to do. When people turn on their radios and television sets or pick up a newspaper in the morning, they’re going to want to know what went on here tonight. It’s our job to tell them.

  “Yes, this is a new gig, as you call it. I can tell you right now that in a news studio, the lighting is a lot better. Makeup and wardrobe are better, too. I always got to choose which side of the news desk to sit on, and guess what? I always chose to have my good side face the camera. Out here you’re going to have to take me lumps and all. Anything else?”

  “Are you glad to be back home in Arizona?”