Chapter 4

Somewhere above, a window shoved open and a woman was sobbing.

"Help! The stairwell's full of smoke! I've got a kid in here!"

"There's an old man passed out on the eighth floor! The fire hose is dumped all over the stairwell, we can't get ourselves out!"

I answered every one of them through the bullhorn.

"Keep your doors shut! Do not open your door and run downstairs!"

"The fire trucks are already here. Go to your balcony and wave something bright so the firefighters can see where you are!"

Residents from Building Five started coming out to help, one after another.

Someone brought more flashlights. Someone else turned on their car headlights to light up the fire lane.

Others went down the list, calling relatives and neighbors in Building Six, waking up the people still asleep inside.

In under ten minutes the fire trucks finally roared into the complex, and I met them with Building Six's resident registry in hand.

The firefighters split into teams and went in at once.

An hour later, the blaze was finally under control.

The residents trapped on balconies and in bathrooms were brought down one by one.

Some had passed out from the smoke. Some had panicked, bolted into the stairwell, and come out burned head to foot.

But by some mercy, aside from the daughter-in-law Willow claimed was "in obstructed labor by the south gate," no fatalities had turned up yet.

When the firefighters checked unit 501, though, they found the place empty.

There were clear burn marks in the bedroom, and a smear of blood dragged across the floor from the room to the door.

I stared at that drag mark, and the cold in my chest kept spreading.

Right then, the power company crew that had been out repairing storm-damaged lines got the complex's electricity restored, and the lights in Building Six, dark for so long, finally came on window by window.

Everyone was so wrung out they just sank to the ground where they stood.

I thought we could finally breathe. Then a scream cut through the crowd.

"Clara Swanson! You're the killer they're talking about on the news! Did you start this fire tonight too?!"

A Building Six resident shoved a phone in my face.

On the screen was a live broadcast from the early-morning emergency news.

In a hospital corridor, Willow was crying so hard she looked ready to faint.

"My daughter-in-law was only twenty-six! Eight months pregnant, and her water broke all of a sudden. I begged the property company to get her to a hospital!"

"But that fire-control operator wouldn't help. She beat up our whole family instead!"

"She held us up a whole hour. By the time my daughter-in-law reached the hospital, she was already gone!"

Dominic knelt outside the emergency room, slapping himself across the face.

"It's all my fault, I'm useless! I can't even drive. Otherwise I'd never have begged her to save my wife in a storm like that, and she told us worthless owners like us deserved to die!"

The camera cut, and there was Anthony, of all people, sitting on a hospital bench.

His face was bruised and swollen, his eyes blank.

A reporter held a microphone up to him.

"Supervisor Whitney, did Clara Swanson refuse to help the pregnant woman?"

Anthony went quiet for a few seconds, then said in a low voice.

"I did tell her to get the person to a hospital first. But she refused, and she kept stalling while we tried to bring the mother in for treatment."

"She hit us too, then walked off the fire-control room on her own."

The comments under the broadcast scrolled by like wildfire.

【Lets people die and beats them up on top of it. How does someone like that get a fire-control job?】

【No wonder the fire got that big before anyone noticed. The operator was definitely hiding somewhere playing games!】

【Not one alarm in the whole building went off. Maybe she just switched them off because they annoyed her!】

【A pregnant woman and a baby, two lives. She has to go to prison!】

The residents who'd just been rescued closed in around me too.

"The fire was already up to the eighth floor before you noticed. What were you even doing all night?"

"We pay all those property fees every month just to feed someone like you?"

"If you hadn't shut off the alarms, we wouldn't have nearly died in our own homes!"

Someone chucked a water bottle at me. Someone else aimed a phone at my face, livestreaming.

"Everyone look! The woman killer from the news is right here!"

"She's the one who slacked off and nearly burned Building Six to the ground!"

I didn't have the strength to explain anymore. I pulled up the local footage from Building Six's underground equipment room and exported both surveillance clips.

I sent them first to the police station beside the complex, then handed them to the fire investigators still on scene.

"This is the footage from before the backup batteries for Building Six's fire alarms and fire monitoring were stolen."

"And here's the whole thing, them stopping me from calling 911 and forcing me off my post."

The fire investigator's face darkened.

"Good. We'll seal it and open a joint investigation with the police right away."

I'd just finished handing off the video when Willow's shrill wailing came from outside the complex.

"Clara Swanson! Get out here!"

She and Dominic had actually come charging back from the hospital.

Trailing behind them were several reporters livestreaming on their phones.

The second she saw me, Willow lunged and started tearing at my clothes.

"You killer! It wasn't enough to get my daughter-in-law killed, now you've burned down our home too!"

Dominic jabbed a finger at Building Six and roared.

"Everything we own is gone! Our savings book, our gold, our furniture, all of it, gone!"

"This fire was caused by your property company's negligence! You'll pay for my wife's life, and you'll pay every last one of us for our losses!"

The residents, whipped up by them, packed in around me again.

Willow hung back in the crowd, and something like triumph flickered in her eyes.

She probably figured the news was already out and public opinion had swung to her side.

With a fire that big in Building Six, everyone would pin the blame on the fire-control operator who hadn't caught it in time.

Then sirens cut through from a distance, and several tactical vehicles pulled up outside the fire-control room.

The moment Willow saw the officers, her sobbing turned even more pitiful.

"Officers!"

"Hurry, arrest this killer!"

Two officers moved into the crowd, and just as everyone expected me to be the one hauled off in cuffs,

the lead officer held up an arrest warrant and sent the detectives behind him straight toward Willow and her son!