Chapter 3
Marco
The café is still smoking when I pull up at six in the morning.
Not actual flames, just residual heat meeting cool air, creating wisps of gray that curl up from the blackened shell-like ghosts.
The fire department cleared out around three a.m., according to the report Cole texted me.
Structure’s compromised but stable enough for investigation.
I’ve got maybe four hours before the owner shows up, asking questions I don’t yet have answers to.
Phoebe’s already here, leaning against her sedan with two coffee cups and that expression she gets when she’s about to tell me things I won’t like. She’s wearing sensible shoes and her work jacket, brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that makes her round face look even younger than twenty-six.
“Morning, sunshine.” She hands me a cup. Black, no sugar. “You look like hell.”
“Didn’t sleep.”
“Obviously.” She pulls out her tablet. “Got the preliminary reports from the fire marshal, three points of origin, all in the storage room. Burn patterns suggest liquid accelerant, probably gasoline, based on the vapor residue samples. This wasn’t an accident.”
I take the tablet and scroll through the photos.
The V-shaped char marks on the walls tell the story plain enough.
The fire burned up through the floor, spreading quickly because someone wanted it to.
Three distinct pour patterns across the storage room floor, each one leading to a different section of the café.
Amateur work. No attempt to hide it, no sophistication in the execution. Whoever set this fire either didn’t care about getting caught or didn’t know how to cover their tracks.
“Any security footage?” I ask.
“Café doesn’t have cameras. The owner has been meaning to install them for two years, but never got around to it.
” Phoebe swipes to another screen. “I pulled the employee records. Rachel Morgan’s been a manager for three months.
Before that, the position was empty for six months after the previous manager retired and moved to Florida. ”
“Background on Morgan?”
“Clean. No criminal record, no financial red flags, no history of violence or arson. She’s twenty-eight, a single mother, and moved back from Portland three months ago after a breakup. Works forty-hour weeks, never missed a shift, customers love her according to Yelp reviews.”
I study Rachel Morgan’s employment photo on the screen: auburn hair and green eyes.
“What about the owners?”
“Doug and Linda Martinez. Married thirty-two years, owned the café for twenty. No debt beyond the standard business loan, insurance is up to date, no recent financial trouble.” Phoebe pulls up another file.
“They were in Seattle visiting their daughter when the fire started. Airline records confirm it. They couldn’t have set this. ”
“Could’ve hired someone.”
“Could’ve. But their insurance only covers actual value, not replacement cost. They’d lose money rebuilding even with a full payout.” She looks at me over the tablet. “Doesn’t make sense as insurance fraud.”
I drain half the coffee and hand the cup back to her. “Let’s walk the scene.”
The café’s front door is blocked by caution tape, so we go around to the service entrance.
The smell hits me first. Burnt wood, melted plastic, that acrid chemical stench that comes from synthetic materials going up in flames.
I’ve smelled it in warehouses, apartment buildings, and cars. It never gets easier.
Inside, the destruction is total. The dining room area is a black crater, tables and chairs fused into unrecognizable shapes. The kitchen is worse. Industrial equipment melted down to metal skeletons, floor tiles cracked from the heat, and the ceiling partially collapsed.
But it’s the storage room where the real story lives.
I crouch near the doorway and study the floor.
Three pour patterns, just like the photos showed.
Someone stood here, in this exact spot, and poured gasoline in deliberate lines across the floor.
Then they lit it and walked away while Rachel Morgan and her five-year-old kid were upstairs doing inventory.
“This is the fourth one?” Phoebe asks behind me.
“Fourth confirmed arson in six months.” I stand up and pull out my phone, scrolling through the case files. “Hardware store in March, yoga studio in May, antique shop in July.”
“Same perpetrator?”
“Different patterns. The hardware store was a single-point-of-origin, clean, and fast. The yoga studio had multiple origins but a more sophisticated execution. Antique shop was rage-fueled, burned hot enough to melt copper piping.” I look at the pour patterns in front of me.
“This one’s sloppy. Angry but not experienced. ”
“So maybe a copycat? Someone who heard about the other fires and decided to try their hand?”
“Maybe.” I take photos of each pour pattern from multiple angles. “Or someone who wanted it to look like part of the pattern but doesn’t actually know what they’re doing.”
Phoebe makes notes on her tablet while I work. We’ve been partners for three years, since she transferred from the state fire marshal’s office seeking field experience. She does the paperwork, I do the legwork, and we both pretend I’m not impossible to work with.
“I called the staff,” she says after a while. “Most of them heard about the fire on social media. Two of them showed up here last night but couldn’t get close because of the emergency vehicles. They’re pretty shaken up.”
“Anyone stand out?”
“Not particularly. They all seem genuinely upset about losing their jobs.” She scrolls through her notes. “Except for one. Amy. She quit two days ago for a quote, a better opportunity at the resort.”
“Two days before the fire?”
“Yep. Suspicious timing.”
“Where is she now?”
“I’ve got her number. Want me to call?”
I nod and continue documenting the scene while Phoebe steps outside to make the call. The burn patterns are consistent with a pour-and-run job: no timer, no delayed ignition, just manual lighting and a quick exit. The perpetrator would’ve been on site maybe five minutes total.
I move through the dining room, checking sight lines and exit points.
The café has two entrances: the front door facing Lakeshore Drive and the service entrance in the alley.
Windows on three sides, all of them now blown out from the heat.
Anyone walking by on the street would’ve had a clear view inside before the fire started.
Phoebe comes back in looking troubled. “Amy says she quit because the owners cut her hours to save money. She found out they were interviewing for a new part-time position that paid less than what she was making.”
“Is she angry about it?”
“Said she was frustrated, but not enough to burn the place down. Claims she was at her new job when the fire started. Night shift at the resort, clocked in at six p.m. and didn’t leave until two a.m. I’m verifying with her supervisor now.”
I file that away and keep moving. The staircase leading to the second floor is partially collapsed but stable enough to climb.
Upstairs, Rachel’s office is a disaster.
File cabinets melted, computer equipment destroyed, papers turned to ash.
The inventory she was supposedly doing when the fire started is gone.
Convenient. Or tragic. Hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Her desk drawer is warped but still accessible. I pull it open with gloved hands and find the usual office supplies. Pens, sticky notes, and a spare phone charger. Nothing incriminating. Nothing useful.
“Marco.” Phoebe’s voice carries up from downstairs. “Got something.”
I head back down and find her in the storage room, crouched near the largest pour pattern. She’s holding an evidence bag containing what appears to be a piece of fabric.
“Found it wedged under the bottom shelf. Looks like part of a sleeve, maybe from a jacket or shirt. It’s got accelerant residue on it.”
I take the bag and examine it under my flashlight. Dark blue cotton-blend fabric, torn edge, like it caught on something during a hasty exit. A mistake for amateurs because professionals don’t leave pieces of themselves behind.
“Bag it and send it to the lab. Let’s see if we can get DNA or fiber matches.”
Phoebe seals it properly and adds it to the evidence kit. “You think this was targeting Rachel specifically?”
“Don’t know yet.” I look around the destroyed café one more time, trying to see it from the perpetrator’s perspective. “Could be random. Could be personal. Could be someone with a grudge against the owners who picked a night when the manager happened to be here.”
“Or someone who knew Rachel would be here and wanted to scare her.”
“That too.”
We spend another hour collecting samples and taking measurements. By the time we’re done, the sun’s fully up and early morning traffic is starting to move past on Lakeshore Drive. A few people slow down to stare at the damage, phones out, probably already posting photos online.
Small-town entertainment. Nothing brings people together like other people’s disasters.
Phoebe packs up the evidence kit while I take one last walk through the scene. The café had been here for twenty years, according to the records. Twenty years of serving coffee and pie to locals and tourists. Twenty years of paychecks for people like Rachel Morgan, who needed work.
Now it’s just charred wood and melted dreams.
“What’s the verdict?” Phoebe asks when I meet her back at the cars.
“Definitely arson. Amateur execution, probably someone acting on impulse rather than planning. Multiple possible motives, but no clear suspect yet.” I pull off my gloves and toss them in the disposal bag.
“Run background checks on all the staff, including Rachel Morgan.
Get me the café's financial records, utility bills, and inspection reports. Talk to the neighbors, see if anyone saw someone hanging around yesterday afternoon or evening.”
“You want me to interview Rachel?”
“Not yet. Let her deal with the immediate aftermath first.” I check my phone and see three missed calls from Cole. “I’ll talk to her later if I need to. Right now, I want facts before I start asking questions.”
Phoebe nods and climbs into her car. “I’ll have preliminary reports by this afternoon. Deep background checks might take a day or two, depending on how cooperative the databases are feeling.”
“Fast as you can. Whoever set this fire might try again if they didn’t get the result they wanted.”
She drives off toward the county office while I stay behind, staring at the ruined building. Four arsons in six months. Four different patterns, four different motivations. But this one feels different. Messier. More personal.
Someone wanted this café to burn. Wanted it badly enough to risk getting caught. Wanted it while Rachel Morgan and her kid were inside.
That kind of anger doesn’t come from nowhere. It builds over time, feeds on grievances, real or imagined, waits for the right moment to strike.
I need to figure out who was angry enough. And why Rachel Morgan happened to be in the way.
My phone buzzes, a text from Cole.
Have you figured out what happened yet?
I type back: Arson. Still working on who and why.
I pocket my phone and head to my car. The morning’s already stretching toward noon, and I’ve got evidence to process, backgrounds to review, witnesses to track down.
But first, I need more coffee.
And maybe some answers about why someone wanted to burn down a lakeside café on a Tuesday night when a single mother and her kid were the only ones inside.