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Chapter70
THE CALL CAME INat one in the morning. Smoke coming from the American Grill. A fire, apparently. Two fire companies responded, along with the police.
Decker, Mars, and Lancaster followed on the heels of the arson squad as they approached the smoke-engulfed restaurant. The firefighters reported that it was only smoke and no fire.
That made sense, because the smoke bombs that had been placed earlier on the roof of the Grill and in the Dumpster in the rear could produce no flames.
Decker looked at the arson boss, Chuck Walters. “That’s very suspicious, Chuck. I think we need to look inside for a point of origin. This might be some sort of feint, with the real fire to come once we leave.”
The notion was fairly nonsensical, but Chuck nodded and said, “I think that’s a good idea. Never know what might be on the inside.”
“Never know,” agreed Decker.
But hopefully we’re about to find out.
They forced open the front door of the restaurant, which immediately set off the alarm. One of the firefighters hastened to turn it off using a special code he inputted into the alarm panel.
“A call will go out to whoever’s on the notification list,” said Lancaster.
“What I’m hoping for,” replied Decker.
The firefighters went in first and gave the all-clear about twenty minutes later.
“Okay,” said Decker, turning on the lights. “We need to search this place for possible arson materials. No stone unturned. Let’s hit it.”
The officers fanned out.
Decker immediately went into the kitchen area, followed by Lancaster and Mars.
The kitchen was spacious, scrupulously clean and organized, and virtually everything in the place looked made of stainless steel. They spent an hour going over every inch of it.
Afterward, Decker leaned against one of the counters and looked around, his thick arms folded over his chest.
“They’re not making this easy,” said Lancaster.
“Lots of people come in and out of this kitchen, including people who have no connection to any of this. So it can’t be apparent. But even so, it has to be somewhat accessible.”
Lancaster looked around. “I don’t see anything that fits the bill unless we’re talking a trapdoor in the floor.”
Mars looked down. “It’s tiled. With no breaks. A trapdoor would be pretty obvious.”
Decker pushed off the counter and went back into the large freezer room. It was about ten feet deep and eight feet across. He shivered slightly as he moved around the space, examining all the shelves and food stacked on them. He came back out and looked at the outside of the freezer compartment.
“Anybody got a tape measure?” he asked.
Neither Lancaster nor Mars did, but one of the cops had a rolling distance tracker in his trunk. He used it to measure distances during traffic accident reconstructions.
Decker took the roller and paced off the depth of the freezer, going in between the shelving at the rear to tap his wheel against the back wall. Then he measured the width.
He checked the measurement and then went outside the freezer and measured the distance from the front of the freezer to the back wall of the kitchen. And then from the side of the freezer to the far wall.
He checked the measurement. “I’m two feet short. This wall is two feet longer on the outside than the depth of the freezer on the inside. And the width is off by over eighteen inches.”
“How could that be?” asked Lancaster. “Maybe a load-bearing wall at the back or the side?”
“Why would it just be in the freezer and not out here?” said Mars.
Decker hustled into the freezer, followed by Mars and Lancaster. He went straight to the back.
