Chapter 9
MATTHEW FINDS PRUETT on a Wednesday, and what he finds isn’t what we expected.
We’re at the Hatcher coffee shop again, same back table, and Matthew sets his phone between the coffees with a photo on the screen. A man in his late sixties standing in the gravel lot of an RV park in Lakeview, Oregon, three hours south, holding a tackle box. He didn’t want to be found.
“He retired in September,” Matthew says. “Sold his house in Ashland in October. Moved to a fifth-wheel at the Lakeview KOA. No forwarding address, no phone listing, and no active professional memberships. He canceled everything.”
“You talked to him?”
“I drove to Lakeview and knocked on his door.” Matthew picks up his coffee.
“He didn’t want to open it. He opened it because I showed him my credentials and told him I was investigating the fire that killed my sister.
He stood in the doorway of his RV in slippers, looking at me like I was the thing he’d been waiting months to walk up his steps. ”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I was wondering when somebody would come.’” Matthew sets the coffee down.
“Pruett didn’t forge the reports. They were forged using his name after he submitted them.
He found out because a contractor on the Eagle Point job called him to ask about a recommendation in his structural assessment that he’d never made, a line about accelerant-consistent charring that recommended immediate demolition.
He pulled his original from his own files.
It didn’t match what the county had on record. ”
I know the next part before Matthew says it.
“He went to Rick. He went to Rick because Rick was the origin investigator on Eagle Point, and Pruett thought Rick would want to know that somebody had altered a structural report on one of his fires. He trusted Rick because everybody trusts Rick.”
“And Rick handled it.”
“Rick told Pruett it was probably a clerical error and he’d look into it.
A week later, Pruett got a call from Cascade Mutual, from Shanna, telling him that a review of his recent work had turned up inconsistencies, and the carrier was considering a formal complaint to the licensing board.
Shanna told him if he retired quietly and stopped pulling files, the complaint would go away.
” Matthew looks at me. “Sound familiar?”
The same play. The same document, the identical pressure, and the same off-ramp.
Sign here and it goes away. Retire and it goes away.
Stop looking and it goes away. They ran it on Pruett a year before they ran it on me, and Pruett, who was sixty-seven, tired, and didn’t have a dead firefighter’s brother standing in his kitchen telling him the stakes, took the exit.
I don’t blame him. I want to, because blaming Pruett would be easier than sitting with the fact that a good engineer looked at a problem he’d measured correctly his entire career and decided the measurement wasn’t worth what it would cost him.
He was alone, and Shanna’s voice on the phone was the same warm, sorry voice I heard in my mother’s kitchen, the voice that says I’m trying to protect you and means I’m trying to bury you.
Pruett didn’t have anyone standing next to him saying that voice is the trap.
I had Matthew. That’s the difference between Pruett’s story and mine. Not courage. Company.
“He’ll talk?” I ask.
“He already did. I recorded it with his permission. He has his original reports, the ones he submitted, on a laptop in his RV. Timestamped. The originals don’t match what the county has, and Pruett can testify under oath that he didn’t write the versions on file.”
“That’s not enough for intent.” I pull the spreadsheet up on my laptop and turn it toward him. “Eleven fires, three years. The pattern’s there, the money’s there, and Pruett proves the reports were altered. All of it says fraud. None of it says murder.”
“It says murder if we can prove they set Bram Hollow on purpose and manufactured the dispatch call that put Hallie inside.”
I nod. “Then we need the operational records. Purchase orders, accelerant receipts, and timing schedules. If Trentham’s the operation’s contractor arm, Trentham has them.”
Matthew sits back. “Trentham’s storage yard is on Route 234, outside Eagle Point. It has a locked gate, in a prefab warehouse, surrounded by shipping containers.” He’s obviously already done reconnaissance. “If the records are anywhere, they’re there.”
“We can’t walk in. My license is suspended, and your authority doesn’t extend to a private contractor’s site. We need a warrant.”
“I’ve been talking to Lieutenant Ando at OSP.” Oregon State Police, arson division. “She’s interested. She’s cautious, because the complaint against you muddies the water, but she’s interested. I sent her the dispatch-log discrepancy and the financial pattern, and she didn’t dismiss it.”
“How long for a warrant?”
“If she moves on it, two to three weeks. She has to get sign-off from her bureau chief. The bureau chief has to be convinced this isn’t a grieving brother and a suspended engineer running a vendetta.”
“A grieving brother and a suspended engineer.” I let the phrase sit between us.
“That’s what we are on paper. Every legitimate thing about us has been taken away or discredited, and the only things we have left are public records, a retired engineer in a fifth-wheel, and each other.
If this were a case file that landed on my desk, I’d tell the people bringing it to get more before they came back. ”
“We have more. We have the dispatch logs, the financial pattern, eleven fires, and Pruett’s testimony. The problem isn’t that we’re weak. The problem is that the people we’re accusing are the people the system trusts.”
“Then we need the system to stop trusting them before they know we’ve asked it to.”
Three weeks. I look at the spreadsheet, the eleven fires in three years, and I think about Rick going quiet.
He hasn’t texted in two days. The patient, reasonable texts stopped, and I don’t know whether that means he’s given up performing for me or if it means he’s decided performance is no longer the tool he needs.
“Rick’s gone quiet,” I say.
Matthew doesn’t react to small talk. He looks thoughtful, the investigator coming back over the grief, and he looks at me the same way he looked at the Bram Hollow slab. “How quiet?”
“Two days. No texts, no drive-bys, and no concerned messages through my mother. He was performing worried husband three times a day, and then he stopped.”
“Rick doesn’t stop because he’s lost interest. He stops because he’s decided to do something else.
” Matthew closes the laptop. “If he knows about Pruett, or if Shanna told him you didn’t sign, or if the eleven fires are showing movement he can track, he’ll move on the storage site before we can get a warrant near it. ”
“Then we need to make sure he doesn’t know what we know.”
“You need to make sure he thinks you’ve stopped.” Matthew says it without drama. “Text him back. Tell him you’re ready to talk. Buy us the three weeks.”
I sit with that. The coffee is cold. The shop is filling with the morning regulars. The barista has already asked us if we want refills twice. Matthew is asking me to perform for Rick the same way he’s been performing for me, and the irony of that almost hurts.
“I can do it,” I say. “I can be the wife who’s coming around. I did it for seventeen years without knowing I was doing it. Doing it on purpose might actually be easier.”
He looks guilty for what he’s asking of me. “Don’t go back to the house.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I know you’re not. I’m saying it because I want you to hear me say it.” He holds my look for a second longer than the conversation needs. “Don’t go back to that house.”
I text Rick from the parking lot of the coffee shop. I keep it short and I soft. I’ve been thinking. I want to talk. Maybe this weekend. Can we meet somewhere neutral? He responds in four minutes, faster than he’s responded to anything in two weeks, and the speed tells me more than the words do.
The words say what Rick always says. Of course. Whenever you’re ready. I’m here.
Then, ninety seconds later, he sends a second text. I’ve missed you, Til. We can fix this.
I snort. We can fix this. The man whose consulting checks come from a company that demolishes the buildings I condemn. The man whose origin reports require forged structural assessments to hold together. The man who burned a retired engineer’s career to keep the machine running with Shanna’s help.
We can fix this.
As if the marriage is a kitchen fire that got a little out of hand.
I put the phone in my pocket and drive back to my mother’s house.
The whole way, I rehearse the voice I’ll use Saturday.
The Tilly who’s tired, lonely, and ready to come home.
The Tilly who misses the lamp they argued about, the Sunday-morning routine, and the man who used to get her food from Marisol’s.
By the time I pull into my mother’s driveway, I’ve found that version of me.
She’s convincing. The only difference between her and the real me is that I know who he is and what he’s capable of now.