Free Village of the Ghost Bears by Stan Jones

or something outside the door he could have anchored the wire to so nobody inside could get the door open and, after everything burned up, all we’d have is this little piece of wire?”
    Active thought for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t remember anything like that. But I might not have noticed.” He shrugged. “You know how it is. You don’t see things after four or five times. You didn’t find anything like a hook in the debris?”
    Barnes shook his head. “Nope. Just the wire.”
    “Didn’t that place used to be the Air Guard Armory before they built the new one?” Carnaby asked.
    “I think I did hear that,” Active said.
    Carnaby looked at Barnes. “The wire might not mean anything, Ronnie. It could have been lying around ever since the Guard was in there. Maybe the door jammed by itself. From the heat. Or maybe those guys panicked and jammed it trying to get out.”
    Barnes gave his head a slow wag, reflecting. “Anything’s possible. But I don’t think so.”
    “Is there any other sign of arson?” Active asked. “Other than the wire?”
    “I can’t say it’s unambiguous,” Barnes said. “The fire appears to have started in the southeast corner of the building. That’s where the furnace and the water heater were, right?”
    Active nodded. “I think so. I know there was some kind of utility room at the back of the building, right behind the men’s locker room. You could hear equipment running in there a lot of the time. Especially when all the showers were on and using hot water.”
    “And that was a forced-air heating system?”
    “And that was a forced-Active nodded again.
    “Mm-hmm,” Barnes said. “That explains why the fire seems to have broken out in several other places in the building as well. As the fire built up in that utility room, the ductwork would have carried superheated air all over the building until the fan overheated and quit. That old wood was probably bone-dry, and that was that.”
    “But you think the utility room was the original source?” Carnaby asked.
    Barnes rubbed his face again, moving some grime from his moustache to his cheekbones. “There was a big heat trail in there. It ran—”
    “A heat trail,” Carnaby echoed. “You mean—”
    “The floor was saturated with an accelerant,” Barnes said. “Something set it off and the scorch mark still shows on what’s left of the floor. It probably only took two or three minutes before the situation was out of control.” He made an erupting gesture with his fingers. “Whoosh!”
    Carnaby was taking notes now.
    “Anyway,” Barnes continued, “this heat trail ran from under a fuel pipe on an exterior wall, across the floor, and to the base of the wall between the furnace room and the men’s locker room. Seems like the floor kind of sagged there along that wall?”
    “A lot of the old buildings around here are like that,” Carnaby said. “They heat up the permafrost, it melts, and they start to settle. The middle’s the warmest, so it settles fastest.”
    “Mm-hmm, we get that in Fairbanks too,” Barnes said. “So if you pour something on the floor at an outside wall, it’s naturally gonna run to the middle. My guess would be, the base of that common wall was pretty well saturated with stove oil. That locker room probably became an inferno almost instantly.”
    “So they all headed for the door,” Active said.
    “Only to find it wired shut,” Barnes said.
    “Maybe,” Carnaby said. “Let’s hear about the fuel pipe.”
    “There’s your ambiguity,” Barnes said. “That pipe brought in stove oil from those tanks back of the building. Just inside the wall was a ‘T’ fitting, with one pipe going to the furnace and another one to the water heater.”
    The other two men nodded.
    “Well, one of the couplings in that fitting was loose, and there was still oil dripping out of it when I got there.”
    “Shit,” Carnaby said. “You stop it?”
    “Uh-huh. I closed the valve