Work Text:
Captain Salan Rook, fire chief of Ladder 8 of Upper Coruscant City, exhaled slowly, wiping at the soot that caked his sweating face. His other hand was resting somewhat awkwardly on the shoulder of a thin-built boy who was sitting in the back of an ambulance, hyperventilating.
“I – I swear, I didn’t do anything! I didn’t mean anything to happen!” The thin shoulder trembled. “Y’gotta believe me, I love that place! The last thing I’d ever do –”
“– Easy son. Just take it easy. Breathe.”
Salan looked up to see a figure carrying an oxygen mask hovering in the rear of the ambulance. He looked down at the young man sitting forlornly on the bumper, gauged the color in his face and his breathing, and quickly shook his head. The kid looked all right, seemed all right, as long as he didn’t go off into his babbling.
“You need the mask, son?”
The boy shook his head slowly and the figure with the oxygen apparatus retreated into the darkness.
Rook studied the bent head of the youth for a moment, saw the white bandage that covered the kid’s right hand from fingertips to wrist, and winced in spite of himself. He hoped the kid was a southpaw – that right hand wasn’t going to be doing anything except hanging limp for the next three weeks, if he was lucky.
The young man, outfitted in jeans and a blue uniform shirt, was, in many ways, almost indistinguishable from the mass of people who populated the town, all of whom seemed to have come out to mill around and gaze uselessly at the burned ruins of JAVA JAMBOREE. Police had cordoned off the building, and what was left standing didn’t present a risk to anyone – there wasn’t enough left of the place to present a risk of anything. But a crowd had still gathered, as if expecting something exciting to be unearthed from the depths of the smoldering wreckage. It was a small town, but there were plenty of things to do other than gawk at a burned building. Maybe these people were on their coffee break.
Rook bit back a bitter laugh. No time for jokes.
“Now, son, you said you had some people in the shop? People who can, uh, corroborate your whereabouts?”
For almost the first time, the young man looked up. There was a hopeful gleam in his glassy eyes and his cheeks pinkened.
“Yes – yes … they were right there … a girl, she comes in a lot, and a guy – I never saw him before, but he might come in when I’m off shift. They were right there. They can tell you that I –”
“OK, fine. We know the people you mean. We’ve asked them to stick around.”
Rook glanced over his shoulder. The young man and woman who Lt. Marjam Erso-Andor had escorted to the side of a police cruiser were still standing there. The young woman had a large-ish white bandage on her wrist, and the skin around it was shiny with burn salve. The young man didn’t have any injuries that Rook could see.
They were chatting easily, and Rook’s brow furrowed. When he’d left him to talk to Java Jamboree’s barista, the two had been standing awkwardly together, making stilted small talk. It had been obvious to him that the two didn’t know each other. Yet now they seemed like old friends. He supposed that escaping a conflagration at the neighborhood coffeeshop could be considered a bonding experience.
“Lieutenant Erso-Andor will be over in a little while to talk with you further,” Rook said, turning back to the young man. “It won’t be too much longer, and if you change your mind about going to the hospital –”
“No, no I’ll be all right.” The boy swallowed hard. “I just … I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t my fault. Mr. Dameron’s gonna kill me, and it wasn’t my fault, I swear –”
“Relax, son.” Salan gave him another awkward shoulder pat. “I’m going to talk to those witnesses and I’ll check back with you. Just hang loose for a few minutes, okay?”
Rook walked off without waiting for an answer, focusing on the two figures that stood just outside one end of the caution tape. They were still conversing, with the young man chuckling at something the woman said.
Salan glanced at the girl’s injured arm and considered a moment. He felt he had a decent intuition about these sort of things, and his spider sense was telling him that the fire at Java Jamboree was an accident, but he had to be absolutely sure. The sudden chumminess of the two witnesses gave him pause. Just a bit.
“Hello.” He nodded at the pair when he got within distance. “Thank you for sticking around. Hope not to keep you too long. I’m Captain Rook of Ladder 8. Just wanted to talk with you about what you saw inside the coffeeshop this morning. The barista said that you were both in the shop right before the store became, uh, engulfed?”
The young woman nodded. “It was like something out of a movie. Everything calm and then chaos.”
“Seriously.” That from the young man. “It’s a good thing there weren’t more people inside. There wasn’t anyone hurt badly, was there? How’s the barista doing?”
“Burned the heck out of his hand, but no major injuries other than that.” Rook studied the girl’s hurt arm for a moment. “You need to head to a hospital, miss?”
“Hmm?” She looked startled. “Oh, my arm, you mean? No, I’m fine. This wasn’t from the fire. This is from coffee that spilled on my arm. It hurt at first but now it’s sort of just stinging. I’m fine, though, really.”
“Ah.”
Rook unearthed his notebook to jot down a few notes. The young woman was Rey Skywalker, 23, a grad student at Coruscant Tech. The young man was Finn Prince, also 23, a law student at the University of Coruscant, and a writer who worked out of his home, which was three blocks from Java Jamboree.
“Ms. Skywalker, the barista said you’re a regular at this location, but you don’t live in the area?”
“No, I don’t,” said the young woman. “But I work in the Antilles Tower.” She gestured toward a gray wedding-cake of a building that sat almost directly across the street from the coffeeshop. “I go to Java Jamboree every day at the end of my shift.”
“At the end of your shift?” echoed Rook, raising an eyebrow. “I was made to understand you visit this location in the morning.”
“I do,” she said. “I work third shift, so I get off at 7.”
Finn seemed surprised. “You get coffee when you’re getting off work? Don’t you want to get some sleep?”
Rey shrugged. “Caffeine doesn’t really affect me that way. It helps me unwind more than anything else.”
“Huh.” Finn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe I should suggest something like that to my editor the next time he chews me out for missing deadline.”
Rey laughed and Rook had to bite his cheek from smiling. Now he understood the burst of friendliness that had sprung up between the two in the long moments that they’d been sequestered. He supposed there were worse places to chat up someone.
“The barista mentioned that you both had a good view as to what happened,” said Rook. “I just want to know what you saw this morning and make sure we’re all on the same page. You were both in the shop at the same time?”
“Well, eventually,” said Rey, “but I was in there first. Like I said, I come here pretty much every morning – during the week, anyway – it’s usually pretty quiet. They open at 6:30 and since there’s a Starbucks down the block that opens at 5 and is right next to the train, Java Jamboree doesn’t get going until a little later in the morning. I think their coffee is a ton better. I’m going to miss it.”
She smiled sadly. “Plus, they know me. The barista who was hurt – I think his name is Slip? I’ve heard people call him that – is usually there with another barista, a red-haired woman. They know my order and as soon as they see me, they’ll ask me if I want my usual and we’ll just chat for a little bit while they’re ringing me up.”
“Uh huh.” Rook’s pencil scratched busily. “And so today was the same routine then?”
“Actually, no.” Rey’s brow furrowed. “I came in the usual time, and Slip was at the register, but the red-haired girl wasn’t there. Slip was by himself.”
Rook’s eyebrows rose. “That’s unusual?”
“I don’t remember any less than two baristas in there, at least not anytime I’ve ever been,” said Rey. “Slip seemed kind of dazed. He asked me what I was having and then sort of caught himself. He told me that they were out of half-and-half and the redhead had gone to KwikMart to pick some up. He sounded annoyed at being left alone with the morning rush about to start. He seemed really out of it. I asked him if it had been busy or something and he said no, but that ever since he’d gotten in that morning, he had a weird feeling.”
Salan stopped writing. “A ‘weird feeling’? That’s what he said?”
Rey nodded. “Then he asked me if I smelled something strange. He said he’d been smelling something … off ever since he got in that morning, but he couldn’t place it. I really couldn’t – I have bad allergies and since the pills I take make me sleepy, I wait until I’m home to take them. Slip kind of shrugged it off, and went about making my drink, but he seemed preoccupied. But then Finn came in just as he was handing it to me …”
Rey looked toward Finn. Rook followed her gaze, nodding at the young man.
“This barista – Slip? – said you didn’t look familiar to him, Mr. Prince, but that you might have been in at a time where he wasn’t working,” said Rook. “Is this a regular stop for you, later in the day, perhaps?”
“No. I just moved to the neighborhood,” said Finn. “I’ve passed it a few times wanting to go in, but not really having the time. This morning, I was waiting for someone I need to interview for a story to get back to me. I guess I felt a little restless because I wanted to get some air and not just stare at my apartment walls all morning.”
“You live alone?” Rook couldn’t help a glance at Rey, noticing that she seemed incredibly interested in the answer to that particular question.
Finn nodded. “It’s a small place, but this is my first year of law school and I really couldn’t deal with the cattle call in the student apartments. Even the grad apartments are kind of wild.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Rey. “One of my roommates is there almost every weekend.”
“But not you?” asked Finn.
“Not really. I have such strange hours,” she said vaguely. “And I’m not really a party person, anyway.”
“Me either,” said Finn, and the two smiled at each other. Rook pretended to write until his lips stopped threatening to turn up into a smile. If someone had been badly hurt or killed in the fire, it all would have been completely inappropriate, but since nothing of the sort had happened, he figured that he could somewhat overlook the flirting and that it wasn’t too out of the way to think it was kind of adorable.
“You were saying, Mr. Prince?” Salan looked up. “You hadn’t gone into Java Jamboree before today?”
“Right,” Finn answered. “I was passing by and saw it wasn’t crowded, unlike Starbucks up the street, so I decided to go in. Right away I smelled like something was burning, sort of.”
“Really?” Rook pondered that a moment. “But you didn’t see any smoke or anything like that?”
“No, sir. But it hit me as soon as I got in the door,” said Finn. “It was like … I guess if you’ve ever put coffee in a coffee maker, turned it on, but forgot the water? It smelled like that, only more powerful. I thought that maybe they’d burned a pot of coffee and the place hadn’t aired out yet. But then I heard the barista ask Rey if she smelled something strange. When she said she really couldn’t smell anything, I said to the dude, ‘Uh, actually it does smell like some burned coffee or something in here, man.’”
“I noticed Finn when he came in, but just figured he was going to get his coffee and leave,” said Rey, and Rook was quietly amused to see her cheeks go slightly red. “I still couldn’t really smell anything though, but when he said that he smelled something like burning coffee, I turned around and told him that Java Jamboree roasts its own coffee beans, and that’s what makes the coffee so good. They roast batches right before grinding them. They have a huge, antique coffee bean roaster in the basement.”
Finn nodded. “And as soon as Rey said ‘coffee bean roaster,’ the barista dropped the cup of coffee he was handing to Rey on her arm, and shouts, ‘Fuck! The roaster!’ and rushed into another room. I thought he’d lost his mind, plus Rey was in pain from where the hot coffee spilled on her arm, so I was helping her clean it up and trying to see if she needed to go to a clinic or something. Then we heard dude scream and there was this whoosh sound and the whole place filled up with smoke and we saw flames coming out of the kitchen area.”
“There were people coming in,” said Rey, “and Slip yelled at everyone to get out, there was a fire in the basement. Everyone rushed out, and I was concerned that Slip might stay there and try to fight the fire himself. He was looking for a fire extinguisher in the main part of the store and you could barely see your hand in front of your face from all the smoke. I think one of the customers who had been about to come in called the fire department, and Finn and I managed to grab Slip by his apron and drag him out of the building.”
“Aha.” Rook chewed his lip. “And did Slip’s partner – the red-headed barista – ever show up?”
“Yeah, maybe about five minutes later,” said Rey. “As soon as she came up she dropped the bag she was holding. Half-and-half spilled everywhere. Slip yelled something like ‘I told Mr. Dameron the roaster was acting weird!’ and she said she was going to tell him what happened and took off running. I guess Mr. Dameron is the shift manager or something?”
“He actually owns – well, owned – Java Jamboree,” said Rook, stealing a glance at the smoldering ruins of the shop. “We have his address as 2187 Artoo Drive, which is just a block up. He used to live right over the shop. Good thing he wasn’t still there. The fire exits leave a lot to be desired.”
Salan contemplated his notes and absently scratched his chin.
“So if I have this correctly, Ms. Skywalker, Slip seemed uneasy when she saw him, and Mr. Prince, he seemed agitated when he discovered that the coffee roaster might be malfunctioning?”
Both nodded and Rook sighed. “Well, that pretty much jibes with what we found. Apparently, the night manager flipped on the roaster, as usual, before leaving the shop for the night. It looks as if the issues that Slip noticed included a short in the cord of the machine. Overnight, that short sparked into a fire and it reached critical mass early this morning. It’s deserted in this area at night, so it seems the fire was on a slow burn until the two of you came into the shop.”
Finn and Rey glanced at each other.
“That’s a real shame. Sort of makes it seem like we’re bad luck.” Finn’s smile was lopsided. “Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve come in.”
“Oh, no!” Rey looked scandalized at the idea. “I mean, I don’t know if I would have been able to pull Slip out alone, he was thrashing around so much.”
“Yeah, he was panicking. Probably in shock, too.”
“He’ll be all right. Physically he seems fine, thanks in large part to you both,” said Rook. “And when it sinks in that the dire wasn’t his fault, I’m sure he’ll feel even better.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Finn glanced over at where Slip still sat, disconsolate, in the back of the ambulance. “But now he’s out of a job, isn’t he?”
“There’s that,” conceded Salan, lifting his shoulders. “But something tells me that we haven’t seen the last of Jamba Jamboree. And in the meantime, there are other coffeehouses in this town. In fact, a friend of mine runs one a few blocks from here.”
“Yeah?” Rey looked interested. “An indie shop, not a chain?”
“Not a chain,” said Salan. “Onderon Libations, on Dendup Ave. Ask for Saw. He's about a billion years old, but don't be fooled by the old curmudgeon act. And don’t let him talk you into getting a Jedha Blackout unless you’re planning to stay awake for five days.”
“Might work during exam time,” said Finn with a smile. He turned to Rey. “Uh … you want to head over there? You never did get your coffee. Uh, unless you wanted to just head back home and sleep – I mean, you heading there, not me. Um, not us –”
Rey’s smile was radiant. “I would love to get coffee. My arm is fine, really. And I don’t usually get to sleep for a few hours after I get off work.”
“Saw makes a mean breakfast sandwich,” said Rook, biting his lip to hold back a grin. “If you two hurry, you might get the window seat that looks out onto the Falls.”
“Are you sure you don’t need us for anything else?”
“Nope. But if I do, I know where to reach you." Salan held up his notebook. "Thanks for your cooperation. You folks take care. And tell Saw that Bodhi's youngest boy was asking after him."
They gave him a quiet goodbye before turning up the street, completely absorbed in each other. When they reached the corner, Rook saw them brush not-quite-accidentally against each other before turning and disappearing from view.
Salan breathed out slowly, wiping ineffectually at the muck at his face. He heard soft footfalls and in his periphery, saw Marjam Erso-Andor standing by, mopping her sweating face with a smudged towel.
"Well? What's the verdict?"
"Clean," said Rook, turning toward her. "Like we reckoned. Short in the cord started the fire. Hope Dameron's got a good insurance policy. One of those freak accidents that could've turned tragic if not for some quick thinking."
Marjam looked at the smoking remains of the building and shook her head sadly. "A real shame, too. It's a complete loss."
A small smile lifted Salan Rook's lips as he glanced at the place where he'd last seen Finn Prince and Rey Skywalker.
"Well, maybe not everything, Marj," he said, ignoring her quizzical look for as he walked slowly back to where the rest of his team was gathered and waiting.
ende