Chapter 19
NINETEEN
“Jim, if you want to be a man in this town, you have to get used to violence. You have to know the smell and touch of blood.” His father hugged his shoulders, pointing at the fallen deer on the ground. “Take the knife and make the first cut. Be a man.”
The sound of a mediocre local band playing classic rock music drowned out his father’s voice. Jim took another swig of his bitter beer. He didn’t even like beer. He didn’t like alcohol. It made his head swim and make the demons louder. But wasn’t he supposed to like beer? Wasn’t it manly to drink?
“Hey, Jim,” the bartender said in his usual gruff voice. He gave him a nod. “How’s it going?”
“Same old, same old.”
“Going anywhere anytime soon?” He threw a rag over his shoulder and twisted open a bottle of rum.
Jim swallowed the bitter liquid, despising his weakness. “There’s a gaming convention in Seattle in a couple weeks.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “I didn’t know you were into video game designing now.”
A hot flush crept up his face. He didn’t correct him. He didn’t have a job. He wasn’t into video game designing; he was into playing.
The bar wasn’t exactly pumping on a weekday at this time. The few patrons were haggard, aging with vacant, dull eyes. Jim felt restlessness come over him. Is this what he’d become? He pulled out his phone to mindlessly scroll the Internet.
Somehow he ended up on LinkedIn, where all his buddies were announcing their new jobs and promotions.
They all had fancy job titles and did important things.
He was more qualified than most of them.
And here he was rotting away in a bar, planning a video game excursion while his wife paid the bills.
His father must be turning in his grave.
“Isn’t he the sheriff’s husband?” he heard a man sitting a few seats away from him ask his friend. Jim stiffened.
“I think so,” the friend replied. He cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Are you Sheriff Gray’s husband?”
“Yep.” He clenched his jaw.
“Did they find out who killed that woman?”
Jim’s grip on the glass tightened. “I don’t know. I stay away from all that.”
He looked disappointed. “I know her husband. He’s a mess. Single dad of two now.”
“What a tragedy.” The other man clicked his tongue. “The only big things that happen to this town. Did your wife tell you anything? She must be working late nights.”
Jim had come across something in her files in the morning. He wasn’t planning on it. He’d entered the kitchen and there it was.
Pineview Falls Big Fire. That’s what was in her files.
“She’s working hard,” he said in a clipped tone.
They must have sensed his reluctance to elaborate and began chatting among themselves.
Why was Lisa looking into the fire of 1995? Why did everything revolve around one night in this town?
Jim finished the beer and slid a bill across the table. Curious eyes locked on to him—eyes that only saw him as the sheriff’s husband, eyes that reminded him just how much he’d diminished.
His father was right. Even when Jim was just a boy, his father had picked up on something that haunted him.
“You don’t have the stomach . ” He took the rifle from a sobbing Jim. “Always a little boy, never the man. Nothing in your life will work until you learn how to go for the kill.”
“You’re in a mood,” Aiden commented dryly next to her as Zoe’s foot almost got caught in gnarled roots jutting up like grasping fingers. She kicked the stones loose underfoot to keep her balance.
Zoe smirked. Watching Aiden navigate the ruthless terrain of Washington woods was entertaining enough for a moment. “Being in the field is different from sitting in a fancy office on a comfortable chair, isn’t it?”
“Life is all about new experiences.” His smile was tight as they weaved their way through the crowded trees. The drizzle wasn’t heavy, but it came at them sideways, sharp and relentless, stinging her skin and blurring her vision whenever she lifted her head. “We should be close.”
“This guy is a recluse.”
The house was still out of sight. The path had narrowed, winding through dense woods, the branches overhead knitted too tightly together to let in much light. Everything felt damp: the air, the leaves, the ground beneath her boots.
She hated it. She cursed under her breath and pressed on, muscles aching from the climb, her breath visible in the chilled air.
“Are we looking at a revenge plot?” Zoe asked. “Someone knew that David was on shift that night and maybe blames him? Now targeting his employees like Annabelle and Jackie?”
Aiden was unsure. “That’s a roundabout way to hurt him.”
“Well, they must be even more pissed at Dawn. David was still a teenager. The motive could be to destroy the Harrington legacy and name. Look at all the bad publicity they’ve been getting. That’s got to have an effect on their stock price.”
“Thank Adam Deader for that. The man is on a mission to ensure that everybody sees the names Annabelle and Jackie with Harrington Group in the same sentence.”
The drizzle turned colder, harder, needle-like against her cheeks. “He could fit the profile,” she said. “He’s resourceful enough to pull this off. He’s certainly creative enough to come up with the riddles for you.”
“If you can’t find a story to boost your career, then you can create one.” Aiden remarked.
Then, finally, through a gap in the trees, the house came into view. It sat perched at the edge of the hill, dark and weathered against the slate-gray sky. Zoe could taste brine on her tongue. In the distance, she heard the waves crash against the rocky shore.
They knocked on the door and waited. It creaked open, revealing a muscled, weathered man in his sixties with gray at his temples and lines etched deep around his eyes.
Zoe showed her badge. “Ed Morgan?”
“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 some black-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 an oof sound. “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?