“I helped put out that Jacumba fire,” he said. “And when it was out enough to get in, I helped get the bodies onto stretchers. That was grim business, especially the two children. They were just ten and twelve. It looked like they’d asphyxiated on the gas, then been burned postmortem. When the coroner’s report came in, it confirmed that scenario.”
Sallis pet the cat slowly with a big gnarled hand. He clinked the ice in his glass and looked at it but didn’t drink.
“I talked to the first responders and got the narrative. When the place cooled off enough for me to start poking around, I took my time, went slow, took plenty of pictures. It was an older home, stick built, wood siding, a wood shake roof. No sprinkler system inside, no smoke alarms. It had been in the Draper family for twenty years, no changes of ownership or remodeling, so they were out of code.”
“And a cold night,” said Hood.
“Yes. Thirty-seven degrees that morning. The heater thermostat was set at sixty-two. It was a typical propane setup, with a hundred-gallon tank about fifty feet from the house and an underground line. The line came up in the laundry room for the clothes dryer and heater, then branched out to the kitchen, then to the hot water heater, which was located in a hallway closet.”
Lloyd Sallis sipped his bourbon, then sipped it again. His eyes had a distant look to them, reminding Hood of fifteen-year-old Coleman Draper’s in the newspaper photograph. The hummingbirds shot around the yard from feeder to feeder. Hood heard the cat purring.
“The line was brass, schedule C, to code, installed by a licensed plumber. The coupler was functional but it was loose. It was a standard gas line coupler, with two sets of opposing threads so you need two wrenches to tighten and loosen them. Well, here, you can see in the pictures.”
Lloyd set down his glass and picked up the grocery bag. The cat heard the rustle of the plastic sack and it sprang off and hustled away with its ears back. Lloyd watched the cat with gentle amusement and Hood had the thought that he used to do that to his wife. Lloyd pulled out a thick deck of photographs.
“I always shot digital and film back then,” he said. “Didn’t trust the digital to be there when I needed it. When I retired I made it a point to take these home with me.”
“Why?”
He looked at Hood but the distance in his eyes was gone. “Because I thought that someday a detective might sit across from me and ask questions about that fire. Move your chair over here next to mine. I can point out some things.”
There were pictures of the crew battling the flames, the big hoses blasting water against the house. There were shots of what remained of each room. Then there were dozens of close-ups: burned appliances, beds, electronics. The bodies were charred badly. Their positions and postures suggested that they died in sleep, not in struggle. Only the daughter had somehow gotten out of her bed. She was on the floor beside it.
“She woke up from the gas long enough to climb out of bed,” said Sallis. “Apparently that took all her energy. Looks like she fell back asleep when she hit the floor. Later, I got the propane company delivery receipts and I figured up roughly how much gas was in that tank before it started leaking. I came up with about forty gallons. Well, the tank was empty by the time the fire crew shut the valve off.”
“Forty gallons.”
“Give or take ten. You know that the gallons are liquid gallons, right? When the liquid is released to atmospheric pressure it expands as a gas. So forty liquid gallons under pressure can fill a volume many times greater when it enters a house.”
“Enough gas to asphyxiate four people?”
“More than enough. Much more.”
Hood looked at the pictures of the coupler. Sallis had done a good job with the camera-there were wider shots, tight-in and close-ups, all shot from different angles. The details in the closer shots were good and well lit: the dull brown brass tubing, the cross-hatching at both ends of the coupler where it could be loosened or tightened, the glint of brass where the cross-hatching had been disturbed.
“There’s fresh brass exposed on the coupler,” Hood said.
“You’re damned right there is.”
“Not you guys?”
“We didn’t touch that thing until long after these pictures were taken.”
“What did you make of that, Lloyd?”
“My first thought was the father. Gerald Draper, age forty-eight. Owned a local restaurant. He had a DUI when he was in his twenties, an assault and battery from a bar fight when he was in his thirties, but other than that he was clean. The San Diego Sheriffs did some background on the mother, too-Mary. She looked okay. Nobody had reported any domestic problems. The neighbors all said that the Drapers were normal, more or less happy. They ran a decent restaurant. So.”
“So you looked at Coleman, the survivor. And his buddy, Israel Castro.”
“Castro struck me as a fairly honest kid. I didn’t feel any meanness in him, nothing out of balance. Ballsy, sure. Arrogant, yes. Headed for trouble, likely. But to my eyes, Coleman was strange. He should have been in some kind of emotional shock, but I could not detect anything like shock. He was calm, lucid, never expanded or changed his story. He was controlled. He cried once and I swear it looked like an act to me. I had the feeling the first time I saw him, the first time I walked into the room where he was waiting, that he had prepared himself for that moment. I did not like or trust him. The sheriff’s investigators and the social workers had the opposite impression. They found him to be sensitive, communicative and helpful.”
“What did the detectives say about the coupler?”
“They said the fresh brass on the cross-hatching could have been exposed up to a year earlier. It takes that long for brass to discolor when it’s kept out of the sunlight like that coupler was. At least that’s what the FBI told them. I said if that was true why didn’t the damned house blow up a year earlier and they said well, because it didn’t. They weren’t eager for my help. They thought I was being overly suspicious of the boy.”
“Did you ask Coleman about that coupling?”
“Yes, I did. His response was interesting. He didn’t pretend to not understand what I was leading up to. He didn’t even give me a puzzled look, or a surprised look, not for one moment. All he said was that if he’d killed his family he would have used something to keep the coupler from being scratched by the wrench teeth-an old T-shirt, or a cloth.”
“Did you tell the investigators that, too?”
“Yes, yes. They were satisfied that the leak was an accident and the disturbed brass could have happened months ago. They found no motive for anyone to have loosened the connection. Coleman’s insurance benefit was modest and he wouldn’t get it for three years anyway. Case closed, a tragic accident. And then Coleman went off to live with Castro in Jacume. Why are you here?”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“That’s what I was always supposed to say, too.”
Sallis picked up his bourbon off the patio. They were sitting side by side, facing the backyard and the late afternoon sun and the trees with hummingbird feeders rocking slightly in the breeze. Hood thought of his father spending his declining days in an assisted living facility. His Alzheimer’s had come on almost suddenly, and it had progressed quickly. Two years ago he was present, owned his memories, had a future. Now he drifted aimlessly, like a boat without a rudder. His memory and his imagination were almost impossible to disentangle, and the concept of tomorrow seemed to have escaped him. He could not recognize Hood’s mother-his wife of nearly five decades-or any of his five children. When Hood looked at him he saw himself, and this terrified him.