Maria let her phone fall to her side. She stood outside the mailroom, her face and eyes covered with mask and goggles. While the desks and remaining furniture remained intact, the various forms of paper that clog every nook and cranny was now clogging the same areas with ashen remains. Extra flakes snowed out of the room and into the adjacent hall.
She stood there as though in a daze. In reality, her mind was running at full tilt, analyzing every detail of the room and the details she had received on her way there.
A little after lunch, the fire alarm rang. Thinking it was a routine drill, most members left, grumbling but without any other fuss. Maria was a bit delayed from leaving right away since she needed to check on where all her reports were that day. Everyone present had texted her about leaving except for Brandi.
Maria went to go find her. When Brandi’s office proved to be empty, Maria tried a direct call instead.
No response.
Brandi had only left a few minutes prior to the alarm to retrieve a package. Maria veered in that direction just in case and encountered those first signs of smoke.
“Brandi!” Maria called out.
“Here!” came a familiar but coughing voice. Maria covered her mouth as best she could and raced around the corner. Three huddled figures were scattered about the room, scrambling to fill their arms with papers. One figure was down on her knees, hugging an enormous pile of folders.
“What are you doing?!” Maria barked.
The figure on her knees looked up. It was Brandi, her eyes welling with tears.
“Get out of here!”
“But – ”
“No buts!” Maria yanked at her and the others. Brandi barely resisted before getting to her feet to follow. “Move!”
The group moved out of the mailroom and started dropping papers. One of the mailroom employees attempted to retrieve it, but Maria blocked the worker.
“Leave it!”
“But – ”
“I said, ‘Leave it!’ Now move!”
Maria bit her lip when recalling this. What made everyone there suddenly feel as though those papers were more important than their lives? And not only that…
Maria scanned the room before her. No sign of a fire extinguisher. Looking up, she noted the unaffected sprinklers in the ceiling.
She bit her lip again. Where did the fire extinguisher go? And how were the sprinklers not working? Is it possible for the sprinklers to be working but not be affect by the fire? The only way she could think of that happening was if the fire was at a low temperature, but seemed far too much of a stretch.
She shook her head and resumed stepping through the events of the afternoon.
The group made it outside just as the fire department arrived. Brandi had dropped her entire pile on the way out, while the others had lost approximately half of their burdens.
Once everyone was accounted for, Brandi and the others recounted the events leading up to and after the fire started.
A number of packages came in as usual with one hefty bundle addressed to Brandi. Thinking that there might be an additional package inside, she took the bundle to the back room to use the tools there to open it. As there was indeed an additional package, she opened it partway before being drawn into a short conversation with the workers in the front room. A few minutes later, the group began to smell smoke. Well, most of the group. One of the mailroom workers had no sense of smell and, as a result, wasn’t aware until Brandi insisted on pulling away from the conversation and found smoke flowing out of the back room. At this time, the alarm went off. Everyone attempted to find the fire extinguisher, but its hook was empty. The smoke was light, so the group thought to grab some items before leaving the building, except there was a lot of confidential correspondence that day. Not sure what needed saving and what didn’t, the group had started grabbing whatever looked possibly important. One member also struggled to find the key to the room.
“The key?”
“Yes, to lock up … oh …”
Maria face-palmed at this point.
The mailroom head came less than a minute later. After having the events reiterated for her, she smacked both of her reports upside the head. She then turned to Maria. “I don’t care if you report me to ethics for that. They could have died.” She then turned to her reports. “You could have died! And all for,” she snatched one of the saved documents, “a receipt for an order of chamomile tea?!”
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“The confidential –”
“That can always be resent!” The mailroom head continued scolding her reports, throwing the receipt to the ground. As she did so, Maria glanced at Brandi. She stood hunched over, staring at the asphalt pavement with red, swollen eyes. Maria placed her arm across her shoulder and gingerly led her away from the raging mailroom head. “No amount of chamomile is going to fix the stress from damaged lungs or worse!”
Once they were far enough for a quiet conversation Maria stopped and turned towards Brandi.
“How are you feeling?” she gently started.
Brandi pouted. “Pretty crummy.”
“Do you want to talk about it? Or perhaps focus on something else for a moment?”
Brandi’s expression showed signs of mulling over the options, but stayed quiet.
“How about we go to Safina’s,” Maria offered, “since we can’t go back in at the moment, anyway.”
Brandi started.
“Something up? Would you rather go home. That’s an option, too."
Brandi shook her head. “I don’t want to go home. At least not yet.”
“Safina’s then?”
Her report nodded and they made their way towards the mass of spectators that had quickly developed.
They initially walked in silence. That is until, until Brandi started mumbling.
“I … I …”
Maria said nothing in response.
Brandi looked up. “I don’t know how it started. There was no fire in the back and then there was.”
At this point they were just past the crowd.
“I smelled the smoke, but one of the others said that she didn’t. I didn’t know that she had no sense of smell!”
She started choking up.
“It’s gonna look it I did it –”
“No,” Maria quickly corrected. “It’s not your fault.”
They paused for a moment. Before them stood the wide, windows of a café, decorated with drawn flowers over every window. ‘Safina’s’ was scrawled in large cursive letters above the windows. Behind them, the crowd of onlookers remained, their backs turned against the cheery café, preferring morbid entertainment.
“Let’s head inside.”
Brandi nodded and they silently went in. The café was empty, possibly from the draw of excitement from outside, so they were able to place their orders and find a quiet table with ease.
After the drinks arrived, Maria ventured to switch topics. “Would it be alright to discuss your graphite case?”
Brandi nodded. “Yeah … Okay.”
“Okay. Then, let’s review first.”
Brandi began to straighten up.
“Your client ordered a large supply of graphite for who knows what reason.”
“That’s right.”
“And he was suspicious that the graphite was of poor quality or contaminated, was it?”
“Yes. The assay showed contamination from various other elements.”
“And that was a problem?”
“He was pretty upset about it.”
“Okay. And then he contacted the supply company.”
“Um-hum. The supply company contested the assay results.”
“And then?”
“The supply company sent their own assay results and then sent a sample to me to have analyzed as well.”
“And that second assay turned out to have very low contamination, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So, what exactly is the state of things, now?”
“My client and the supply company are at odds about the graphite and how it got contaminated. The client now wants me to figure out where the contamination came from and who fault it really is.”
“Any leads on that?”
“Not really. Or yet. I sent in another sample to be analyzed. The contamination could have been present on one section of the graphite but not the rest. I also asked for some documents from the client. That was …” She started choking.
“Brandi?”
She took a deep breath. “That’s what I was expecting from the mailroom. Documents outlining everything to do with the graphite order, from the initial order form to the shipping documentation to how the client had it stored.”
Maria bit her lip. “And that’s what that package was?”
“Yes…” she looked up confused at Maria’s expression. “Maria, what is it?”
She continued to chew on her lip. “Brandi, you still have a number of different mineral samples littered around your office, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say littered…”
“Are any of those combustible?”
“Not while laying around in my office, no.”
“Could they be made combustible?”
“Um, I don’t know about combustible, but maybe flammable or corrosive, if the right conditions were met … Maria? Why are you making that face?”
Maria glared at her tea.
“Maria, you really don’t think … There’s no way, right? Maria?”
Back in the present, Maria glared towards the back room. A police officer came out. She immediate stopped him.
“Excuse me,” she started.
“Pardon me, ma’am, but I need to get these samples to the lab –”
“I also want samples.”
“Huh?”
“We have laboratory facilities here. I want samples to analyze, too.”
“Ma’am, I can’t just –”
“Then tell me where you took the samples. I’ll take my own once you’re done.”
The officer thought it over and then pulled out his notes. The notes included a diagram of the two rooms. “Since the fire started in the back room, all of the samples were taken there.” He pointed at the various x’s on the back room part of the diagram. “There doesn’t seem to be a particular hot spot suggesting where the fire started, so samples were taken all over the place.”
She studied the diagram. “Were there any large stacks towards the middle here?” She pointed towards the back table.
“It was all filled with burnt large stacks.”
“Thank you. When do you think I can get in?”
The officer looked exasperated. “I’ll check with the detective.”
She thanked him again and let him go.
The officer turned back, unsure of making his suggestion. “The detective is just down the hall. You can ask him right there.”
“No, thank you. I would prefer to stay right here until I can get some samples.”
The officer shrugged and left.
Maria glared back into the mailroom, phone at the ready and tiny test tubes in her pocket.
A few minutes later, she was granted access. Upon hearing so, she barged into the mailroom, taking pictures wherever she went. Test tubes were pulled from one pocket, filled, labeled and then placed in the other pocket. She started at the front and moved around the entirety of the mailroom in a clockwise fashion. At the back table in the back room, she found several large stacks of burned papers, just as the officer had stated. Carefully nudging some of the papers, she took several photos of the different piles, taking a sample of each one as well. Most of the piles had some part the was sufficiently salvaged to make out a phrase here and there. Brandi said that her package was set at the dead center of the table, so Maria took extra care there to find and photograph any writing there. The approximate top half of the pile slid away, revealing an undamaged half page.
Huh?
She took a closer look at that page and the next and the next. Photos of dresses and articles showed one after the next.
Is this a fashion magazine?
She scratched her head.
Is this the right pile?
She took more samples.