that would see to them, and because from the chapel they could hear that screaming, thin and animalistic, familiar to Renee only from training videos. In person, it curdled her lunch to a cold bolus at the base of her throat.
“Your dad said into the radio, ‘Ladder Nineteen is on scene at the corner of Winchester and York Boulevard, a single-story stone church with visible fire and smoke showing.’ And the dispatcher acknowledged, and she sounded bored, the way they always do. Jamie said, ‘Ladder Nineteen will begin search-and-rescue operations. The first due engine should begin fire attack. We have people trapped inside. Children.’ ” For children, my father always said (although he was never vulgar), it was balls to the wall. You did things you wouldn’t do otherwise. Renee said that my father sent McAvoy and Tillett to do a 360 and told Renee, “Rook, come on.” They put on their oxygen tanks. That gave them twelve minutes. They were the last words she would hear my father say.
“Then the boys …” Renee said.
“Joey. And his brother.”
“Yeah. I knew the LaVoys, of course. Just like you. They ran up to me and said they tried to crawl in through the priest’s entrance at the back but couldn’t make it,” Renee said. This is one way I’ve since learned to tell that people have committed a crime or done something wrong: They answer questions before you ask them.
“I didn’t know the bigger kid. Neal. He ran away down the street, yelling to everyone who was out on their stoops,” Renee said.
Renee had testified at the inquest, and she knew that I knew that there was a finding of no fault. Whoever sets a fire is responsible for whatever it burns, by law, even if there is no intent. But Neal was not quite thirteen years old—and he was truly repentant. The news reports said only that there had been an inquiry and that a man who had been, at the time, a juvenile had admitted setting the fire. A brief resurgence of magazine stories and retrospectives, local and national, resulted, with speculation about who and how and with what. I’d received a few calls and answered not one.
“Did you think it was a set fire, Renee? Back then?”
“No. Neither did the fire inspector. There was no puddle pattern, no trail that would have been present if there had been gasoline or any accelerant used. As for the candles, Sicily, there were enough candles in that chapel at that time of year to light séances or Halloween pumpkins for the next ten years. And the little votive jars where candles are lit by people making a novena or whatever? They were all over the place. Kids ran into the stand and some of the candles were burned and others weren’t,” Renee said, and stopped to drink her coffee. She looked up at me, her lips compressed. “It’s worse for me knowing it was an arson fire and it didn’t have to happen. So it’s a hundred times worse for you.” She went on to tell me more about the moments before the engine arrived. “We were supposed to make sure that each of the kids was laid down at a distance one and a half times the height of the building, but we didn’t. Cap went straight in. I kept dragging kids out. When I finally got inside, I saw the pileup of kids behind that big door.” Time for Renee had slowed down from words to whole pages contained in the passage of a second. In the circle of her light, she saw more kids, stuck behind the locked side of the door that she could not kick open. Some of the kids were already PBN. Renee could tell that two of the boys would never top five feet five or grow a beard or kiss a girl, and she thought that two of the girls who would never run down the stairs to tear open their first high-heeled boots or their last Collector Barbies. It was not the first time she’d seen a dead person, but it was the first time she’d seen a dead person she could have saved. She heard a medic’s victory cry when a few puffs got one of them breathing. She began to
“Your dad said into the radio, ‘Ladder Nineteen is on scene at the corner of Winchester and York Boulevard, a single-story stone church with visible fire and smoke showing.’ And the dispatcher acknowledged, and she sounded bored, the way they always do. Jamie said, ‘Ladder Nineteen will begin search-and-rescue operations. The first due engine should begin fire attack. We have people trapped inside. Children.’ ” For children, my father always said (although he was never vulgar), it was balls to the wall. You did things you wouldn’t do otherwise. Renee said that my father sent McAvoy and Tillett to do a 360 and told Renee, “Rook, come on.” They put on their oxygen tanks. That gave them twelve minutes. They were the last words she would hear my father say.
“Then the boys …” Renee said.
“Joey. And his brother.”
“Yeah. I knew the LaVoys, of course. Just like you. They ran up to me and said they tried to crawl in through the priest’s entrance at the back but couldn’t make it,” Renee said. This is one way I’ve since learned to tell that people have committed a crime or done something wrong: They answer questions before you ask them.
“I didn’t know the bigger kid. Neal. He ran away down the street, yelling to everyone who was out on their stoops,” Renee said.
Renee had testified at the inquest, and she knew that I knew that there was a finding of no fault. Whoever sets a fire is responsible for whatever it burns, by law, even if there is no intent. But Neal was not quite thirteen years old—and he was truly repentant. The news reports said only that there had been an inquiry and that a man who had been, at the time, a juvenile had admitted setting the fire. A brief resurgence of magazine stories and retrospectives, local and national, resulted, with speculation about who and how and with what. I’d received a few calls and answered not one.
“Did you think it was a set fire, Renee? Back then?”
“No. Neither did the fire inspector. There was no puddle pattern, no trail that would have been present if there had been gasoline or any accelerant used. As for the candles, Sicily, there were enough candles in that chapel at that time of year to light séances or Halloween pumpkins for the next ten years. And the little votive jars where candles are lit by people making a novena or whatever? They were all over the place. Kids ran into the stand and some of the candles were burned and others weren’t,” Renee said, and stopped to drink her coffee. She looked up at me, her lips compressed. “It’s worse for me knowing it was an arson fire and it didn’t have to happen. So it’s a hundred times worse for you.” She went on to tell me more about the moments before the engine arrived. “We were supposed to make sure that each of the kids was laid down at a distance one and a half times the height of the building, but we didn’t. Cap went straight in. I kept dragging kids out. When I finally got inside, I saw the pileup of kids behind that big door.” Time for Renee had slowed down from words to whole pages contained in the passage of a second. In the circle of her light, she saw more kids, stuck behind the locked side of the door that she could not kick open. Some of the kids were already PBN. Renee could tell that two of the boys would never top five feet five or grow a beard or kiss a girl, and she thought that two of the girls who would never run down the stairs to tear open their first high-heeled boots or their last Collector Barbies. It was not the first time she’d seen a dead person, but it was the first time she’d seen a dead person she could have saved. She heard a medic’s victory cry when a few puffs got one of them breathing. She began to
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