SHE WASN’T HOME. I got on my cell phone and called Frank Rizzo, an old friend and former arson investigator who had served five years as a superintendent with the New Orleans Fire Department. “Bailey Ribbons?” he said. “Yeah, that clangs bells. You say a schoolhouse in Holy Cross?”
“Yeah, in the Lower Ninth.”
“Can you give me a date?”
“No.” I hated to tell him I had torn up the document that contained the information we needed.
“I’ll get on it. You need it right away? It’s the weekend.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Two hours later, he called back. “It was twenty-one years ago, after school. Some Girl Scouts were holding a meeting there. One of them said she had learned how to make a fire with flint and kindling. But she couldn’t get the fire started. The other girls lost interest and went outside. A few minutes later, the curtains were burning.”
“Who was doing the demonstration with the flint and kindling?”
“Bailey Ribbons. She was thirteen.”
“So it was an accident?” I said.
“This is where it gets sticky. She denied starting the fire. There was a hot plate in the room. She claimed one of the other girls had left it on and a coat had fallen off a wall hook on top of the coil. Except there were match heads in the kindling. It was obvious she wanted to impress the other girls and had set up the demonstration before she got there.”
“What was the conclusion on the report?”
“Maybe the coat did fall on the hot plate. A social worker and the school counselor said the girl had problems. The mother was a drunk, the father gone. The mother and daughter lived on food stamps and church charity. We gave the girl a lecture and dropped it. It was a judgment call, the kind you want to forget.”
I could hear a sound in my ears like wind blowing in a seashell. “Why did you want to forget it?”
“When you train as an arson investigator, you try to learn what goes on in the head of a firebug. It’s about power and control. That little girl had every warning sign on her. Has this woman done something I should know about?”
I felt my throat tighten. “Her jacket is clean. A guy was trying to spread some dirt on her.”
“You doing a background check for the department?”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Glad to hear everything worked out.”
“Yeah,” I said meaninglessly.
“It can go the other way sometimes.”
“Pardon?”
“You know, you err on the side of compassion. Then ten years down the line, you find out the person you let go fried a bunch of people.”
After I hung up, my knees were so weak I had to sit down.
• • •
THAT EVENING A squall blew through the parish, knocking down branches on power lines and flooding the storm sewers and gutters on East Main. I had no idea where Bailey was. I wondered if I had been played, or if I was dealing with a sociopath or a pyromaniac. But that’s the nature of gossip and lies or half-truths or incomplete information. Suspicion begins with a fine crack and grows into a chasm. I fed Snuggs and Mon Tee Coon in the kitchen and tried to take comfort in their company.
“How are you guys doing?” I said.
I got a tail swish from Mon Tee Coon.
“Let me make a confession to you,” I said. “I think the world would be a better place if we turned it over to you and the rest of us got off the planet.”
They continued eating, noncommittal. I heard Alafair pull into the drive and get out and run through the puddles into the house. She got a towel out of the bathroom and came into the kitchen, wiping her face. “All the traffic lights are knocked out. What a mess.”