Chapter 20
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.”
“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 and rowdy 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 was never talked 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’t hurt 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.”
“And don’t I know it with every breath I take.
” Her voice quaked. “You don’t get to judge me.
You don’t know what it’s like to live knowing your one child’s carelessness took your other child’s life.
” She glared at David, whose expression was blank and resigned.
“Now, why you are here digging up old wounds is beyond me.”
“We have two victims, and the only thing connecting them is your company,” Zoe said. “Jackie was obsessed with the fire. Did she ever try talking to you about it?”
“No.” Dawn shook her head. “Lisa, are we done here now?”
“Yes.” Lisa looked embarrassed. “I think we got everything we need.”
The conversation was wrapping up. Dawn and David were about to leave the room when Zoe piped up. “We’re getting Annabelle’s laptop as we speak. If there’s a time to come clean about anything, it’s now.”
The blood drained from David’s face. He ran a hand down his face while Dawn stepped forward, tipping her chin up. “What I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room. Is that clear?”
Zoe scoffed. Dawn reminded her of a strict high school principal who believed she had the authority to order everyone around. “Yes, ma’am. Anything you want.”
Aiden elbowed her subtly, but Dawn didn’t seem to have taken offense.
“As you know, we are a data storage company but we have been reporting losses for the last consecutive four quarters. And then there was the SEC investigation of fraud that led nowhere. We’ve been branching out into gaming, working with small companies around the country and hiring developers.
The idea was to innovate and diversify into what the market wants.
So we developed something innovative to announce the new direction our company was taking. A video game.”
“That’s the top-secret project Annabelle was working on?” Aiden asked. “And that Jackie was a tester for?”
“Yes. The launch of the new game is critical. You don’t understand but this could save our company.” She took a shuddering breath. “We didn’t want any of the details to get out because of how uniquely it was positioned. But ten days ago, an earlier prototype of the game was stolen.”
“An internal investigation has started but we haven’t got very far,” David explained. “The prototype is very different from our final product. If it is leaked it will ruin our launch and impact the sales and perception around the game.”
“So you’re delaying the launch of your game?” Aiden guessed.
“Yes,” Dawn said, her teeth clenched. “Whoever has stolen the prototype hasn’t released anything about it, which means they’re waiting for us to release the game so that they can undermine us.”
David sighed. “Annabelle was spearheading the project. Her laptop contains all the details and specs that we are trying to protect. So please, whatever you do, do not let this information get out.”
“All they care about is some video game, not one of their employees who was murdered!” Zoe huffed as the door shut behind them and they walked down the curling, cobbled driveway of the lavish home.
It was an unusually sunny and warm day. When Aiden opened his mouth to reply, she raised a hand. “Yes, yes, I know how the world works.”
Behind them, Lisa trailed in deafening silence.
Zoe didn’t fully understand Lisa—she had a quiet strength to her, always following up on tips and coordinating searches.
She didn’t speak much, but the deputies in the room would stand up straighter around her.
That strength buckled when she was around the Harringtons.
She transformed into someone inferior who didn’t speak, not because she wasn’t naturally assertive, but because she was afraid.
Aiden stopped in his tracks and a distracted Lisa almost slammed into him. “Sheriff, is there a conflict of interest we need to know about?”
Lisa bit her lower lip. “No. It’s not like that.”
“This is a high-stakes investigation. We potentially have a missing woman on our hands,” Zoe said. “If the Harringtons are involved in any way, then we can’t let them off the hook?—”
“I know that!” Lisa snapped. “Look, they are the reason I got elected, okay? What you’re seeing isn’t subservience.
It’s gratitude. Besides, I don’t have the luxury the two of you have.
You will move on from this town and these people once this case is over.
I’m stuck here. I can’t afford to piss people off, especially people like the Harringtons. ”
“We just want to make sure that you’ll be able to remain unbiased,” Zoe said gently.
Lisa’s eyes ping-ponged between them. She shook her head and sighed, pushing past them, muttering something inaudible under her breath.
Zoe watched her stocky frame head toward her jeep. “We weren’t being unreasonable, were we?”
“No, we just found one person who isn’t charmed by you,” Aiden teased.
“Are you saying I’ve charmed you?” she blurted out without thinking and then bit her tongue. Was she flirting? She could retract and deflect but she waited. She actually wanted to know his answer.
Aiden adjusted his glasses and smiled. A brief pause. “Yes.”
She rolled her eyes and took out her sunglasses despite her heart doing a little skip. “Wish I could say the same. Anyway, what do you think?”
“The only connection is the Harringtons and the video game that was supposed to launch,” he said thoughtfully as he leaned against the car door. “We should get a list of everyone that was involved in the project.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard now that we have Annabelle’s laptop. Do you think the fire is just a red herring?” Zoe said. “There was no hint that Annabelle was interested in it. Maybe it was just Jackie.”
Aiden stroked his jaw and stared at his feet.
“I can imagine every other person we find in this town will at the very least be fascinated by the incident, if not somehow related to it. This could all just come down to whatever’s going on with Harrington Group.
Like you said, someone who stole the earlier prototype. Maybe Annabelle found out who it was.”
A thought occurred to Zoe. “Dawn is very concerned about competition. What if that’s what this is? Some corporate spy? Only a competitor would benefit from this theft.”
“Who enjoyed killing a little too much.” Aiden completed her train of thought.
Zoe’s mind raced with question after question. She didn’t want to admit it out loud but the biggest question still remained—what was her connection to all this? She imagined a dark, shadowy figure always following her around, blinking in and out of existence. Her phone chirped with a notification.
“It’s an email from the crime lab.” Zoe opened it. “They were comparing the DNA from the lock of hair in the mail to Jackie since it didn’t match Annabelle.” Blankness spread through her synapses. “It doesn’t match Jackie either.”
“ What ?” Aiden closed the distance between them, looking at her phone over her shoulder.
“Enough nuclear DNA was preserved to determine it is male DNA. It wasn’t a match but there was an overlap.”
“They are related.”
Zoe skimmed the long report. “Around fifty percent match…” She scrolled down to the summary. “Mitochondrial DNA was identical, which means?—”
“Siblings.”
“There’s more.” She waded through the tide of information. “They did keratin degradation analysis and amino acid racemization testing to get a rough timeline of decomposition. It’s around thirty years old.”
“That old?” Aiden sounded skeptical. “Wouldn’t it have degraded? The hair you got looked fresh enough.”
“Hair is one of the most durable tissues. Far more so than skin and other organs. It’s possible for it to be just fine if the body was embalmed or placed in a sealed coffin.” Something clicked inside Zoe. “The fire was thirty years ago.”
The revelation simmered between them.
She spoke through the knot in her stomach. “Jackie’s brother, Michael Fink, died in the fire. The killer sent me his hair. But why? And how did he have access to his hair?”