Chapter 8
Tyler
Despite the grisly discovery the day before, Monday morning at the auto shop began like any other. Tyler had his head under the hood of a pickup truck, running diagnostics on a stubborn engine light, when he heard the bell over the front door chime.
He didn’t think much of it. Sue worked in the office most days and handled the customer interactions while Tyler, Robert, and the two part-timers focused on the actual repair work. Robert had another car on the lift and was checking the undercarriage.
Sue appeared between the cars. “Um, hey, guys, can you come up front for a minute?”
Something in her tone made Tyler straighten immediately and reach for a shop rag.
“What is it, hon?” Robert asked, not looking away from his work.
Sue looked toward the front. Tyler followed her gaze. Through the glass partition, he could see two figures.
Edi and Adam stood in the small waiting area, both in full uniform.
“The police,” she whispered. “They’re here.”
Robert sighed. “Why?”
“Follow up. They want to talk to all three of us.”
“Tell them I’m busy.”
“Robert. Please.”
“Fine.” Robert grabbed his own shop rag as he shook his head. “Can’t even let honest folks make a living.”
Somehow, Tyler knew the remark was meant for him, and it brought a smile to his face.
When he returned to Irma, there was no need to tell old man Morgan about his past. Stan Morgan already knew, just like everyone else in town. To Tyler’s shock, Morgan offered him a job minutes after he walked in the door.
When Robert bought the business, Tyler wasn’t sure he’d be kept on. Still, he knew that if he didn’t come clean from the start, it could cause trouble later. Talking about the fire and the loss of his family was hard enough. Admitting there had been accusations was harder.
Robert had only asked, “Did you do it?”
Tyler told him he hadn’t.
“Good enough,” Robert had said. “Let’s get back to work.”
And they had. No further discussion, no questions. Tyler wasn’t naive enough to think Robert hadn’t done an online search, and no doubt he told Sue, as a husband should when everyone had to work together. But she never said anything, and yesterday she seemed almost sad for him.
“Deputies,” Robert said, his voice neutral. “What can I do for you?”
“Just following up on yesterday.” Edi’s tone was professional but not hostile. “We have a few more questions.” She met Tyler’s eyes and gave him a small smile. “Hey, Tyler. Looks like you were hard at work. You have a smudge on your chin.”
He angled his sleeve to wipe at it. “Comes with the territory.”
“I suppose it does,” she agreed.
“Shall we get to it?” Deputy Boverman directed a look at Edi. She kept her focus on Tyler and rolled her eyes. Tyler held his smile. It was good to see Edi with more confidence as an adult than she’d had when they were younger.
“Of course.” Tyler leaned against the counter, forcing himself to look relaxed even though every muscle had gone tense.
Adam’s eyes were cold as they focused on Tyler. “We’ve been going over everyone’s statements, making sure all the details line up.”
“Makes sense.”
“Does it?” Adam shifted his weight, hand resting casually near his belt. “Because I’m having trouble with your statement. Specifically, the part where you just happened to be hiking in the exact area where a body was found.”
“We weren’t.” Sue shook her head. “We were on the trail. The body was off the trail.” She paused for a moment and added, “Only one body, right?”
Adam ignored her, his attention fixed on Tyler. “Why were you hiking there?”
“It’s a popular trail,” Tyler said evenly. “Lots of people hike there.”
“But not lots of people have your history.”
There it was again. Boverman was on a mission.
“My history has nothing to do with what we found yesterday.”
“Doesn’t it?” Adam pulled out his notebook, flipping through pages with deliberate slowness. “Your wife and child died in a suspicious house fire. Questions were raised about the circumstances. And now you’re present when another body shows up. That’s quite a coincidence.”
“I reminded you yesterday, the fire was ruled accidental,” Tyler said, his voice hardening. “The investigation cleared me completely.”
“Officially,” Adam agreed. “But there were questions. Questions you didn’t stick around and answer.”
“I left because I couldn’t stand being here anymore,” Tyler snapped. “Because everywhere I looked reminded me of what I’d lost. Because people like you kept implying I’d murdered my own family.”
“Nobody’s implying anything,” Adam said smoothly. “Just stating facts.”
“Deputy Boverman,” Edi cut in. “We’re here to follow up on the discovery yesterday. Not to rehash a closed case.”
“It’s all connected, Reeves. You know that.”
Robert stood up from where he’d been leaning against the wall. “Tyler’s a good man. Been working for me since I took over in April, and I’ve never had a single reason to doubt his character.”
“That’s right,” Sue added, moving to stand by her husband. “He’s been nothing but professional and reliable. Whatever happened in his past, it doesn’t define who he is now.”
Their support caught him off guard. They barely knew him, really. A few months of working together, some weekend hikes, casual conversations over coffee. But they were standing up for him anyway.
“I appreciate the character references,” Adam said. “But I need to hear from Tyler himself. Walk me through what happened that day. The day of the fire.”
“Deputy,” Edi said with a warning in her tone. “That is not why we are here.”
“It is now. I have questions about this case that may hinge on what happened then.”
Edi’s mouth went into a tight line as she shook her head. When her gaze met Tyler’s, she gave a slight shake of her head as if to say, “You know how he is.”
Tyler held himself still. He’d told this story so many times it should’ve been easy by now. But it never got easier. Every retelling felt like ripping open the wounds that hadn’t fully healed.
“Now? Here?”
Boverman smirked. “Have something to hide? Something you don’t want the boss to know?”
Tyler glanced at Robert and gave a slight shake of his head. “Robert knows what happened.”
“That’s right, I do,” Robert said.
“I know too,” Sue chimed in.
The deputy ignored them and motioned for Tyler to continue.
“I was supposed to take my son hiking,” he said quietly. “Garrett. He was two and a half. Loved being outside, loved the mountains. I’d planned a short trail, nothing too difficult. We’d done it before. He’d walk some, and I’d carry him in a pack some.”
The memories hit him hard. Garrett’s excited face when Tyler had mentioned the hike the night before.
Jen had made them lunches. They’d take their time and just enjoy the day.
He’d asked her to go along, but she wanted to catch up on laundry and maybe get some reading done.
“I might even soak in a hot bath until the water runs cold,” she’d told him with a laugh.
“That morning, Garrett woke up with a fever. Nothing serious, just a cold, but enough that taking him out wasn’t a good idea.” Tyler forced himself to continue. “Jen told me I should go anyway, get some air and clear my head. I’d been working a lot of overtime and was stressed about bills.”
“So you went alone,” Adam said.
“Yes.”
“How long were you gone?”
“Four hours. Maybe a little more.” Tyler’s hands clenched into fists. “When I got back, the house was on fire. Fire trucks were already there, and neighbors were standing in the street. I tried to get inside, but the firefighters held me back.”
His voice had gone flat, robotic. The only way to get through this was to detach, to recite facts without feeling them.
“They found Jen in the kitchen. Garrett was still in his bed. Smoke inhalation. The fire marshal determined it started in the kitchen, probably overwhelmed Jen immediately. Some kind of issue with the gas range. Completely accidental.”
“But you collected insurance money,” Adam pressed.
“Of course I did. That’s what insurance is for. I used it to pay off our bills and cover the funeral expenses. The rest I gave to Jen’s parents.”
“Convenient story.”
Tyler’s control snapped. “My wife and son died while I was hiking because I chose myself over them. That’s what I live with every single day.
I chose to go to the mountains instead of staying home, and they died because of it.
So don’t stand there and suggest I had anything to do with that fire, because surviving when they didn’t is punishment enough. ”
The room went silent. Sue had tears in her eyes, and Robert’s expression was grim. Even Edi looked uncomfortable.
Adam’s face remained impassive. “Just doing my job.”
“Your job,” Tyler said bitterly, “seems to involve harassing innocent people.”
He knew that wasn’t entirely fair. Adam had been new to the sheriff’s department when the fire happened and was eager to prove himself.
For reasons Tyler never understood, he had fixated on him as a suspect despite the evidence.
He dragged the investigation out, showed up at Tyler’s temporary housing with more questions, and made it clear he thought Tyler was guilty.
Edi wasn’t a deputy then. She had just returned to Irma from school and was taking a semester off to help her parents after her dad’s cancer diagnosis. Edi easily found a part-time job working with the county, just to keep from going crazy, she’d said.
Tyler had understood what she was going through.
His mom had died in a car accident when Tyler was in middle school.
His dad died while Jen was pregnant with Garrett, after battling colon cancer for more than a year.
With his folks both gone, then losing Jen and Garrett, it had been easy to leave Irma.
When Tyler came back to Irma just before Christmas last year, Adam had shown up at his rental house within a week. No official business, just a “friendly” reminder that people hadn’t forgotten what happened. That they were watching.