Page 31 of Run for Her Life
“Yes, yes.” He wasn’t surprised as he let them in. “What is it?”
She and Aiden looked at each other before stepping inside. The room was dusty and sparse, with an old television and someblack-and-white photographs hanging on the walls. The only polished thing was a gramophone by the window.
Ed fell into a sunken armchair with torn upholstery. “Which case is this regarding?”
“You get a lot of consults?” Zoe guessed.
“Every now and then. No other reason for anyone to visit an old guy like me.” His smile was tired.
“Yeah…” She cleared her throat. There was nothing old about Ed other than the wrinkles and gray in his hair. Under his clothes, he had bulging biceps and toned legs. Zoe wondered if he had a military background and then noticed some medals hanging on the wall.
“You were on the Pineview Falls incident case?” Aiden asked.
“Oh, yes.” He made anoofsound. “That was a nasty one.”
“You wrote some notes in the file that pointed at arson but then you erased them.”
He nodded. “That was my assessment but my superior came to a different conclusion and told me to erase my notes.”
“Was that an odd request?” Aiden asked.
“It certainly was. But you’re young, you’re new, you don’t ask too many questions. You assume your boss knows best. A couple years later, I joined the army.” He nodded toward an old picture of him with his buddies in uniform. “Didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.”
“Do you mind walking us through the pictures again?” Zoe handed him her phone. “We found deep charring in streaks across the floorboards. What does that tell you?”
He put on his glasses, which were taped together. “That’s a pour pattern. You see how the burn marks are concentrated in elongated streaks rather than a single point? That suggests an accelerant was used. Fire doesn’t naturally travel in lines like this. It spreads outward in a V pattern from a point of ignition. This? This is a liquid burn.”
“So someone poured something?”
“Likely a fast-burning accelerant—gasoline, lighter fluid, something volatile. You can also tell because of the depth of the charring. A natural fire wouldn’t eat through the wood that fast unless it was burning hotter than normal. I don’t remember now.” He frowned, his gaze looking out the window into the horizon. “I don’t think any samples were ever collected to check what accelerant it was.”
“You also mentioned finding ignition points in at least three separate locations,” Zoe said.
He leaned back. “That’s your biggest red flag right there. Accidental fires don’t start in multiple places at once. Electrical faults? They have a single origin and spread outward. A system failure? It might trigger a fire in one area, but not simultaneously across different rooms.”
“It was arson,” Aiden whispered. “Do you still believe that?”
“Yes,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t know why I was told my conclusions were incorrect.”
Zoe wouldn’t be surprised if Dawn had buried the evidence by pulling in some favors. Anything to keep her son’s name out of the scandal, even though her daughter had died in the fire. But if this was arson, then wouldn’t Dawn want to know who’d killed her daughter?
“If I remember correctly, then the operations panel had also been tampered with.” He skimmed through the pictures and zoomed in on one. “Here, you see that? That wire has been cut on purpose. It’s too neat. It’s why the fire suppression system didn’t trigger and why the safety mechanisms failed.”
“This was a thorough job,” Aiden noted. “Someone knew exactly what they were doing.”
Ed let out a low whistle. “Oh, yes. That was one of the bad cases. That’s why they call it a massacre even though it’s been officially deemed an accident.”
“You never said anything? To anyone?” Zoe asked.
Ed shrugged. “Over the years, this thing has become almost mythic. I bet half the town already believes it was sabotage. That half is called the conspiracy theorists. Setting up this whole thing would have taken some time too. I was surprised there were no witnesses.”
The operations panel had been tampered with and David was the operator on shift. Was David responsible for the fire?
TWENTY
It was sitting in the lavish home of Dawn Harrington and eating a delicious muffin that Zoe realized how looming an absence could be. A picture of a teenage girl hung in the living room above the fireplace. And every expensive piece of furniture, handwoven rug, and crystal fixture was coated with a sense of incompleteness.
Aiden made a face. “David’s sister was one of the victims.”
