It took me about five seconds. Just long enough for him to have turned around and walked out of the doorway.
I chased after him.
“Chief!”
He turned, an expectant look on his friendly features.
I could feel my neck heating again, and I was glad I had facial hair to hide the flush in my cheeks.
“I’m in,” I said.
He grinned, showing me those too-sharp teeth. “I’ll see you Saturday.”
Ziemer must have toldsomebody to contact me, because when I got home from picking up dinner-groceries, I had an email from someone named Betty Kramer with instructions about what to wear, what I would need to bring with me, and how to get to a facility in Green Bay where I would start learning about arson investigation.
For the next two years. Also, I’d have to go through regular fire-fighter training.
I blinked.
Did I want to actually spend that long doing this?
I was honestly surprised when my gut saidyes. I did want to do this.
I followed the links in the email to get myself set up, to register for the first day, and to upload a picture of my EMT certification. I’d never actually worked as an EMT, but as someone who might end up being at an accident scene, they really liked it if you could be potentially useful to any surviving victims. There had been one accident I’d actually witnessed where I had gotten some use out of the first aid training, but I’d never actually needed it at work.
I did need it for this, so I was glad I’d kept on top of my re-certifications.
The more I read, the more excited I got—from what Ziemer had said, I’d keep working this job, but I’d start doing other training on my days off. The fire-fighter training and the CFI—Certified Fire Investigation—training.
They would let me work with other arson investigators while I was in training, and then, when I finished and passed the exam, I’d be able to work on my own. Well, with the Sheriff’s Office, of course. And the CSI team. But it was a way for me to be valuable. To contribute something that was important. Something that was mine.
It’s funny how you think you have everything figured out, and then it all goes to shit, andthensomething happens that makes you realize that you’ve just been coasting along and waiting for the right thing to fall into your lap—and it very much just might have.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think that doing this—for the next two years—was going to solve all of my issues. I was going to have to find the money to pay for it, I was going to have to give up my weekends, and I was going to go back to being the guy who didn’t know shit.
But I liked learning. And I liked the idea that I was going to be able to do something that my job needed, instead of being just one-of-three. It meant that I personally had a skill set that brought something to the table.
Maybe it’s because my parents had raised us to think of ourselves as sinful, corrupt, and inadequate, but I’d always had a hard time thinking of myself as belonging anywhere. Of deserving anything more than I got, and sometimes not even that.
I was under no illusions that I was the only person who could do arson investigation—but it seemed like I was the only one who wanted to. And that counted for something.
It would be my thing. My thing that I chose, that I worked for.
All by myself.
I sounded like an overgrown six-year-old, even in my own head.
Look at me! I put on my own pants!
I snorted to myself, then got up to take my dirty dishes all the way across the tiny room to the sink, where I washed them like a responsible adult.
I’d never been big into immediate dish-washing, but once I could smell the food left on the plates, the stench drove me to become a much neater person.
I set my plate and mug in the drying rack, then proceeded to attempt to distract myself so that my brain would slow down, but all I succeeded in doing was shifting from arson to Elliot.
It wasn’t an improvement.
14
