Page 32 of Run for Her Life
“And David was the operator that night?” Something didn’t sit well with Zoe. An uneasy feeling spread through her. She glanced at Lisa, sitting on the armchair, her knee bobbing incessantly. “You all right?”
Lisa pulled free of her racing thoughts. “Yeah… yeah… the warrant came through to seize Annabelle’s computer at work.”
“That’s good news,” Zoe said in a measured voice. “Isn’t it?”
Lisa swallowed hard and nodded. She glanced at Aiden, who was watching a nervous Lisa bite her nails. Perhaps it was how rich the Harringtons were. A small town like Pineview Falls couldn’t afford the wrath of a family that employed so many residents. Or perhaps Lisa was truly out of her depth. Zoe imagined what the sheriff’s life was like—simple and predictable. A friend of the locals, she was more used to family feuds androwdy men at the bar, not ruffling feathers of people who were way above her pay grade.
Dawn marched into the room, with David at her heels. “How can I help you? Lisa, what’s going on?”
“Mrs. Harrington, we just have a few questions.” Lisa got to her feet and sat down again after Dawn took a seat.
Dawn reminded Zoe of what Rachel would have been like had she not been killed. A sturdy woman in a flannel shirt and pants with a perpetual busy look on her face like she was juggling a gazillion things. Behind her David sank onto a barstool, his arms crossed.
“We want to talk about the fire.” Zoe came straight to the point.
Silence. Dawn’s face froze and so did the frenzy in her eyes. David threw his head back and closed his eyes, his shoulders visibly tensing. Zoe knew that she’d given voice to something that wasnevertalked about in this house.
“What about it?” Dawn said, rather too quickly.
“David, you were the operator that night,” Aiden said. “What happened?”
“We don’t talk about that.” David’s voice was thick. “Tread carefully, detectives.”
“It’s important,” Zoe insisted.
“Why?” His voice climbed an octave. “Don’t you have bigger things on your plate like Annabelle and Jackie?” He stopped abruptly.
Zoe leaned forward, as she glanced at Lisa. “How do you know about Jackie? We never alerted the media.”
“It was Adam,” Dawn declared and poured herself a stiff drink. “He’s been pathetically trying to link our company to the murder, so he wanted to get a quote from us.”
“It seems that he’s onto something. Jackie was working as a freelancer for you,” Zoe said. “A video game tester.”
Dawn stiffened before gulping down her drink. “I’m not privy to the identity of every employee, Agent Storm. Besides, it’s only a coincidence. Adam wants more eyeballs on his articles, which is why he’s using our status and company. This murder has nothing to do with us.”
“David, what happened on the night of the fire?” Aiden repeated his question.
David avoided his eyes, his mouth a flat line. “Our family was destroyed that night. Do you really want to put to my mother through hell again by forcing me to rehash the events?”
“It’s okay, David.” Dawn squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll find Pineview Falls to be an interesting study, Dr. Wesley. We never talk about the fire but it’s always there, smoldering inside each of us. Even thirty years later.”
David looked pleadingly at the faces waiting patiently for him to talk. His shoulders sagged as he gave up. “I was working there on the weekends to make extra cash. I was new to the job. I had a five-hour shift. All I had to do was push a few buttons and recite the same warnings to every new group of kids who got their rocks off by getting scared. Hayley showed up with a couple of her friends.” His eyes glistened with tears. “She’d been to Fun House before but wanted to experience it again. I let them in, gave them the whole spiel, and then clicked those same buttons like I was on autopilot. After around ten minutes later, I got… distracted.”
“Distracted?” Zoe raised an eyebrow.
He rubbed the back of his neck as a blush began creeping up. Next to him, Dawn’s nostrils ballooned and she took another swig of her drink. “By a woman. I was nineteen and this beautiful older woman started chatting me up. I couldn’t help myself. There was almost still an hour to go before the haunted house experience would be over. I checked that everything looked fine and thought just going across to get a hot chocolate wouldn’thurt anyone.” He struggled to get the words out. “I got back thirty minutes later. I didn’t realize how much time had gone by. That’s when I knew something was wrong. For some reason none of the fire alarms had gone off. When I finally forced my way into the haunted house…” His voice trailed off. “It was all over. Fire everywhere. Everything was burning to the ground.”
His words bled into a suffocating silence. Zoe desperately searched for something to latch on to, to avoid thinking about the grim picture David’s words had painted. But it was impossible to avoid the haunting pain in Dawn’s eyes. She stared past Zoe at the picture behind her.
“Why does it say that your shift ended before this incident and that the person on duty after you never showed up?” Zoe asked. “Nothing you’ve told us was in the case file.”
Dawn took a shuddering breath, bracing herself. “Because I called in a favor to keep David out of it.”
“Why?” Aiden was appalled.
“Because I wanted to avoid a lawsuit. There were five other kids who died in that fire. If their families found out that a Harrington was negligent, they would have jumped at the opportunity to milk whatever money they could out of us.”
Zoe flinched at her ruthlessness. “You lost a daughter in that fire.”
