by Nina Laurin
By then, the police already had their suspicions. Traces of the accelerant were found on the remains of the floor upstairs, and forensic experts excluded the possibility of an electrical fire or any other malfunction.
Perhaps this had been a petty act of destruction, not uncommon in children with behavioral problems. But this particular tantrum turned out to be a perfect storm. The smoke alarms in the house hadn’t been maintained since the house was originally built in 1976 and were not functional. The windows of the master bedroom had been sealed for winter and didn’t open properly. The Bianchis succumbed to smoke inhalation fairly quickly.
Seeing how far the situation had spun out of his control, Eli Warren had to cover his tracks. The prosecution suggested he had gotten rid of the lighter before going back to the house for his sister. What can that tell us about Eli Warren’s intentions? He had planned to get away with it. Until he was cornered, with his sister’s testimony and evidence mounting against him, he believed he would get away with murdering his parents.
One thing is certain: This was the work of a clear, methodical, and thoroughly sociopathic mind.
—Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.
Fifteen years earlier: before the fire
Her rumbling stomach takes her by surprise as she creeps upstairs to her room. In all the commotion, everyone forgot that she hadn’t had dinner. Forgot about her altogether. Hell, she forgot about it herself. As if she temporarily ceased to exist, melting into the wallpaper.
Their mother and Sergio aren’t home. They left less than an hour ago. Andrea didn’t dare ask where they were going. Their faces were grim, and she thought she was better off staying out of their way. They didn’t say when they were coming back, and they dressed like they would for a meeting with the principal or something equally ominous—her mother in a skirt and twinset, Sergio in dress trousers and a button-down shirt.
They forbade Eli to leave the room he shared with Andrea until they came back. She never thought he’d obey. Normally, he’d be out and about the second their parents left, disappearing behind the shut door of the rec room to get on the computer, again, or lounging on the couch in front of the TV, smirking at her—What are you going to do? Tell on me? She wouldn’t, and he knew it.
But to her surprise, he hasn’t moved from the room.
Although she’s almost at the top of the stairs, she changes her mind and turns back, tiptoeing all the way down and then right past the open doorway to the living room, to the kitchen.
A quick foray into the pantry yields a handful of granola bars that her mom bought to replace cookies—for Andrea only, since everyone else chowed down on double chocolate chip as usual. But her mom was concerned with Andrea putting on two clothing sizes in the last three months so it was decided to “cut back on the junk food.” The cookies now sit on the top shelf she can’t reach without pulling up a chair.
Besides, if her mom notices missing cookies, in the mood she’s in, Andrea will get in trouble too. As if taking a cookie were as bad as taking a hundred dollars from Sergio’s wallet.
Andrea stuffs the bars into her pocket and creeps upstairs. The door of their shared room creaks softly when she slips in.
She fully expects to see Eli up and about. But he’s so still and silent, with the blanket and comforter pulled over his head, that for a fleeting second she thinks he may have snuck out. Without thinking, she pokes the shapeless lump of blanket.
He turns over so fast she has no time to jump back, only to bat the comforter away with her outstretched arms.
“What the hell do you want?”
Despite the darkness—the only light comes from the lantern on the patio outside, filtering through the blinds—the fury of his glare scorches her. Guilt turns sour in her stomach. They had a rule about not getting into the hiding place when anyone was home. If she hadn’t broken it, if she’d been more careful, if she didn’t immediately dump all the blame on him, none of this would be happening.
No matter that it was, really, all his fault. Nothing in that hiding place was hers. Certainly not the money.
Her brother sighs and sits up on his bed. The Star Wars logo on his T-shirt stands out starkly in the semidarkness.
“I just want to know,” she says softly. She can’t see his face clearly, but she knows he’s grimacing.
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”
“Why did you do it?”
“What the fuck do you care?”
The first answer that springs to her mind is I’ll tell Mom you were swearing. She bites it back, ashamed of herself.
“I needed it, all right?”
All that money? But he couldn’t spend that much on anything without their parents noticing anyway. “What for?”
“Oh God.” He shakes his head, and his derisive laugh is quiet in the dark. “You’re my twin. How are you this stupid?”
“Don’t say that!” she retorts, but her voice comes out whiny, juvenile. “I’ll—”
“Tell Mom?” he mocks in a falsetto. “Go ahead—you’re good at that, aren’t you?”
She draws a sharp breath, insulted. “When have I ever ratted on you?”
“Seriously? What about earlier?”
“I didn’t!” she snaps back, indignant. “Everything in there was yours. And I didn’t take that money.”
“But it was your sticky hands in there when you got caught.”
“So?”
“So, you were only too happy to go and pin everything on me, like a coward.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
He shrugs and leans back on the bed, putting his feet up. “Share the blame.”
No, she thinks angrily. He can’t say that; he can’t ask me for that—it’s not fair. He was the one who stole; he was the one who started the hiding place. It wasn’t her fault. Why was she supposed to take the blame? The injustice of it makes her choke with tears. She gulps heavily but she still can’t speak.
“I would have done it for you,” he says, and she feels worse. “What did you want in there, anyway?”
“Nothing,” she mutters.
He only gives a soft, skeptical uh-huh in response.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We get to the town house when it’s already getting dark. Sunny stares out the window like a bewildered child, face pressed to the glass. The place must be akin to a zoo to her.
My inner voice, which I’ve managed to ignore up to now, is pretty much shrieking. Sure, let the homeless girl into the house that doesn’t really belong to you. Just don’t leave her alone for more than a minute and then remember to check your valuables.
While I drive into the garage and wait for the door to slide closed behind us, Sunny prattles on: Thank you so much, Ms. Boudreaux-I-mean-Andrea, I’ll be good, you won’t regret it, I promise.
All the curtains are drawn, as I left them, and when I flip the light switch, the glow of lamps fills the space, warm and cozy. Naturally, the moment she’s inside, Sunny drops the bubbly-little-girl act like the proverbial hot rock. She slouches into the living room, shrewd eyes taking everything in.
“Shoes,” I call after her, trying to imbue my voice with some semblance of authority. She rolls her eyes, thinking I don’t notice, but kicks off her ridiculous boots without needing to be told twice. She already left tracks on the hardwood floor, but I decide to let it go.
“Not bad,” she says after a cursory examination of the living room. “That gig of yours must pay a ton.”
“It’s not—” I start, intending to tell her the house is actually my fiancé’s. Ex-fiancé’s. But I catch myself in time. I should not be justifying myself to this girl. Apprehension and, yes, regret, settle in with each passing second. I never should have brought her here. Addie. You’re too soft. Too trusting. That’s why you let them do this to you…
Fuck you, Eli, I think, surprised at the intensity of emotion that twists my gut.
“T
hink you can order a pizza?” Sunny asks nonchalantly, settling in on the couch. “Pepperoni. Or bacon and sausage. Just no mushrooms. I hate mushrooms.”
No please, no thank you. I bristle, but the truth is, I’d have to order pizza or something similar anyway because there was no food in the fridge when I left yesterday, and I doubt it magically appeared there in the time I was gone. My stomach betrays me by letting out a gurgle I’m sure she can hear.
“Vegetarian,” I say through my teeth, remembering belatedly that I don’t do the vegetarian thing anymore—that was Milton. “But no mushrooms.”
She grimaces but then shrugs. “Your call. You’re the boss!”
While I get the takeout brochures from a drawer—Milton didn’t like them pinned to the fridge door with magnets—Sunny saunters up to the fridge and throws open the doors.
“Whoa. Got anything to drink in here?”
I give her an icy look, and she shakes her ponytail. “Kidding, kidding. Going to be a good, proper guest, yeah?”
Is that a question? I wonder sourly. “Pinelli’s okay?” I ask, finally retrieving the brochure I need.
She answers with a grunt and a grimace. “I want Pizza Hut.”
“Well, Pizza Hut doesn’t deliver all the way here. I’d have to go and pick it up.” And I don’t want to leave the house if I don’t absolutely have to, especially with her here.
She makes a noise meant to convey disappointment. But within five minutes, the pizza is ordered, and I find Sunny back in the living room, cross-legged on the couch, remote in hand as she flips through the channels on mute.
My heart leaps, and my mouth forms a silent no. Please please please, stop on some lame reality show or something. But it’s too late. She stops on the twenty-four-hour news channel.
“Oh, hey,” she says, bouncing excitedly as she thumbs the Mute button. The sound comes back, so loud it makes me jump. “I’ve been keeping track of this. So fucked up, huh?”
I keep a neutral face but my mind is threading together a million connections per second. A thousand motivations, reasons she called me, tonight of all evenings. Everything takes on a sinister cast. I want to storm over, pick her up from my couch, and shake the answers out of her.
But all I say is, “Yeah.”
Sunny gives me a strange look, her eyebrows rising, and I’m sure that any second I’ll be unmasked. But the anchor’s voice, melodic and well poised, cuts through the tension.
“Denver police are holding a press conference right now regarding the identity of the murder victim. The victim’s name is Adele Schultz, age twenty-two.”
I’m light-headed from holding my breath as the image cuts to the press conference. There’s Figueroa, her clean-cut partner next to her. She’s standing right in the spotlight, but I can tell that she handles it with comfortable ease, like a Hollywood star. She hasn’t changed her clothes, or maybe all her outfits are identical, and she still has those flyaways around her head. It looks like she put on some lip balm though. She gazes into the camera with unnerving calmness, and I’m consumed with the feeling that she can see me right through this screen.
“We assure you, we are doing everything we can to track Eli Warren down. The brutal murder of this young woman will not go unpunished.”
A little to her right, I can see the photo of the victim mounted on an easel, grainy looking from being blown up to poster size. I tilt my head to see better—which turns out to be unnecessary because the photo fills the whole screen a moment later.
I take a good, long look at the girl my brother murdered—allegedly. She’s smiling, her face is plump, she wears hoop earrings, and her mascara is clumpy and dramatic.
“Looks a little bit like you,” Sunny says, and sucks her teeth. For a split second, I had managed to forget she was there.
Figueroa is on the screen again.
“We are still establishing the connection between the victim and Eli Warren but right now we’re leaning toward the theory that they were romantically involved.”
“Sure,” Sunny says, too loudly, and clicks her tongue. “He killed his parents, and now he killed his girl. Shocker.”
She doesn’t turn to look at me as I hover behind the couch, and I wonder, for real this time, whether she made the connection—Andrea Warren, the girl orphaned by a fire her brother started, and Andrea Boudreaux, her social worker. I always wear shirts with collars that go up to my chin and long sleeves to work. She’s never caught a single glimpse of my burn scars.
Disinterested now, her curiosity satisfied in the most morbid way, she picks up the remote and is about to click away from the news channel. But she hesitates, her hand hovering, when Adele Schultz’s face fills the screen once again.
“Hey,” she says, pensive, “I think—”
Sunny turns to look at me over her shoulder, her face lighting up with a grin of almost childish excitement—glee at being privy to a secret she can’t wait to share.
“Haven’t I seen her around the shelter before?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Once Eli Warren found himself facing the consequences of his actions, he resorted to the tactic sociopaths typically fall back on. He cast blame. He made ludicrous accusations of abuse: against teachers, a school counselor, and most importantly, his stepfather. The stories he told were positively lurid with detail, something out of a tabloid. Unfortunately for Warren, these same details worked against him: Medical expertise proved that the assaults of which he accused his stepfather simply never happened. When he heard the recording of his sister’s testimony (Andrea Warren was at the burn ward at the time, recovering from injuries she sustained when she tried to get to her mother, who was trapped in the master bedroom), he reacted with an outburst of pure rage. The house of cards came tumbling down around him.
—Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.
Fifteen years earlier: before the fire
It’s been a few days since the hiding place incident, and on the surface, everything seems to be going back to normal. At least Eli seems to. He no longer complains about being deprived of TV and computer time, no longer sulks or picks at his food at dinnertime. As far as Andrea can tell, he has reverted to his usual self.
Afterward, Andrea couldn’t remember exactly how they came to be at Sergio’s furniture store on that Thursday afternoon. Their mother wasn’t home when they got back from school. Her car was gone, but there was no note. Andrea wasn’t alarmed by it—Cassie did this more and more lately. She seemed to think the twins were old enough to take care of themselves.
She was certainly right.
Sergio wasn’t due to come back until well past nine, and one of them—it must have been Eli; it had to have been, but she couldn’t remember for sure—suggested going over to the store to say hi. She had no idea why he would have suggested it. Eli hated the store. When they were younger and had to stay there while Cassie finished her shift, he always whined and complained about how dusty and boring it was. They weren’t allowed to jump on the beds or even sit on the couches. They were supposed to sit in the staff room the whole time, a little windowless room where everything smelled like microwaved lunches, and do their homework.
As soon as they walk in through the big sliding doors, she can see the store is almost empty. Halogen lights hum over the showroom, which sprawls across the entire floor. It’s not much of a showroom—rows of desks, rows of beds, rows of couches. A middle-aged couple is wandering amid the couches without much enthusiasm. The woman picks up a price tag, looks at it, and lets it drop back half a second later.
Andrea wants to wave to the cashiers, but Eli determinedly grabs her hand and pulls her along in the opposite direction. “We should find Sergio,” he says.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I have something to say to him,” Eli replies after a pause that lasts less than a heartbeat. But it’s enough to plant the seed of anxiety in Andrea’s mind.
�
�Eli, what—”
“I want to apologize,” he says. He stops abruptly, without warning, so she walks into him and stumbles. He grips her wrist hard before letting go. “Be careful.”
“Apologize?” she says in disbelief.
“Yeah. I’m sick of being grounded. C’mon—I can charm him into forgiving me. I can tell him I’ll work off the money at the store, or something, and in exchange he’ll tell Mom to back off.”
Andrea is doubtful. “Do you think it’ll work?”
“Oh yeah,” he says with a dismissive eye roll. “She’ll do what he tells her. She doesn’t want him on her back right now—trust me.”
“Why would Sergio even listen to you?” Andrea grumbles, but he turns and resumes walking without acknowledging her. He pushes his way past a door that reads STAFF ONLY. Andrea follows him, realizing too late that they’re in the wrong place.
This isn’t the workers’ lounge or the office—this is storage. It’s freezing cold. She huddles in her coat, her hands in her pockets.
“Why are we here?”
“He’s always here at the end of the day,” Eli says, annoyed, like it’s supposed to be obvious. “Doing inventory. Don’t you remember?”
She doesn’t, but she also doesn’t want to admit it.
“I’ll go look for him,” Eli says. “You could help, if you want.”
She shakes her head. She doesn’t like it here. Narrow rows of shelves on all sides, all the way to the sixteen-foot ceiling, all piled with heavy brown boxes plastered with warning signs.
“Climb on the thing,” her brother says, pointing at a mobile ladder near one of the shelves. “You’ll be able to see the whole place.”
“No way.” Since they were little, they were forbidden to go anywhere near the ladder. There’s even a chain with a warning sign in place, but it can be easily stepped over.
Eli sighs and rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he says, and pushes her out of the way. He puts his foot on the first step. Brings the other one next to it. Swings his leg over the chain. “See? Not too hard.”