'Sure. When we finish up here, we'll have a beer, if we can find an open bar out here in the sticks,' she replied as the wind blew harder.

'I don't care how late it is,' I added.

'Here goes,' Lucy muttered with a sigh as we approached the tent. 'Hey gang,' she called out. 'Where's the party?'

'You're looking at it.'

'Doc, you making house calls these days?'

'Naw, she's babysitting Lucy.'

In addition to Marino and me, NRT on this call-out were nine men, two women, including team leader McGovern. All of us were dressed alike in the familiar dark blue fatigues, which were worn and patched and supple like our boots. Agents were restless and boisterous around the back of the open tailgate of the supertruck with its shiny aluminum interior divided into shelves and jump seats, and its outside compartments packed with reels of yellow crime-scene tape, and dustpans, picks, floodlights, whisk brooms, wrecking bars, and chop saws.

Our mobile headquarters was also equipped with computers, a photocopier and fax machine, and the hydraulic spreader, ram, hammer, and cutter used to deconstruct a scene or save a human life. In fact, I could not think of much the truck did not have except, perhaps, a chef, and more importantly, a toilet.

Some agents had begun decontaminating boots, rakes, and shovels in plastic tubs filled with soapy water. It was a never-ending effort, and in brisk weather, hands and feet never dried or thawed. Even exhaust pipes were swabbed for petroleum residues, and all power tools were run by electricity or hydraulic fluid instead of gasoline, preparing for that day in court when all would be questioned and judged.

McGovern was sitting on a table inside the tent, her boots unzipped, and a clipboard on her knee.

'All right,' she addressed her team. 'We've been through most of this already at the fire station, where you guys missed good coffee and donuts,' she added for the benefit of those of us who had just gotten here. 'But listen up again. What we know so far is the fire is believed to have started day before yesterday, on the evening of the seventh at twenty hundred hours.'