Free Christmas Carol Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery) by Leslie Meier Page A

was clearly set up for an important event: a large video screen stood behind a long table equipped with microphones, and chairs had been set out for at least fifty people. Lucy took a seat next to Bob Mayes, who was a stringer for the Boston Globe .
    When state fire marshal Sam Carey took his seat, along with three or four others, he was obviously disappointed at the lack of interest. “This has been a remarkably successful investigation, and was conducted in record time,” he announced. “I’m a big believer in giving credit where credit is due, and a good deal of credit goes to the Tinker’s Cove Fire Department, which provided important evidence.” He gave a nod to Buzz Bresnahan, the Tinker’s Cove fire chief, who was seated at the end of the table.
    Lucy caught Buzz’s eye and gave him a little wave as she copied the quote in her long, narrow, spiral-bound reporter’s notebook.
    “I’m going to pass this over to Phil Simmons, the fire investigator who led the investigation into the fatal Tinker’s Cove fire,” Carey said, passing the mic to a large, heavy man with curly brown hair and a thick beard.
    “Let me begin by saying this investigation was considerably simplified by the fact we knew the fire originated with an explosion. We have the incident records from the TCFD, which responded to a loud explosive blast at precisely oh-nine-one-six hours on November twenty-third. According to this report, the structure at Thirty-five Parallel Street was close to flashover point when the first engine arrived at oh-nine-twenty hours. This is consistent with observed test fire patterns in which a temperature of six hundred degrees was reached between one hundred seventy-three and two hundred fifty-six seconds.”
    Lucy did a quick computation, discovering that it only took a little more than four minutes for a fire to grow out of control.
    “Response was hampered by the fact that the home owner was a hoarder and access to the home was blocked by falling debris. The fire was also fed by this debris, which included a large amount of newspaper. Responders had no choice but to allow the fire to burn and concentrated their efforts on protecting adjacent homes.
    “I’ll hand this over to Chief Bresnahan now, and he can give you his personal response to the situation.”
    Buzz Bresnahan was dressed in his official fire chief suit, the one he wore to all the funerals, and all that navy blue and gleaming brass made him look a lot more impressive than the plaid shirt and jeans he usually wore. He squared his shoulders and leaned forward to speak into the mic.
    “The heat from the fire was already quite intense when we arrived and flashover occurred before we got any hoses operational. Access to the structure was blocked, but the initial explosion had blown out a couple of windows in the kitchen area, which allowed oxygen to feed the fire. This abnormally high fuel load along with the abundant oxygen made for a very hot fire. Added to this was the heavy load of hoarded materials on the second floor, which caused the second story to collapse.” He paused. “I’ve been criticized for not taking a more aggressive approach to this fire but my first responsibility is to the firefighters and I was not about to endanger their lives. It was only a matter of minutes before that fire reached at least a thousand degrees and it would have been suicide for anyone to attempt to enter the structure.”
    Lucy wrote it down: a thousand degrees . She couldn’t imagine such heat. Her oven went to five hundred degrees, tops. A thousand degrees would be twice as hot. No wonder the fire had been so destructive.
    “I made the decision to let the fire burn itself out and then to do everything I could to recover what evidence we could for the state crime lab to analyze,” he concluded.
    “That brings us to the next stage of the investigation,” Phil Simmons said. “Jim Cronin is with the Fire Debris Analysis Unit and he’ll tell us what