What Echoes Render

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What Echoes Render Page 32

by Schultz, Tamsen

“Jesse?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to be there that day,” she said, her voice flat. He brushed a piece of hair away from her face, wishing he could take all this pain away.

  “I know Jesse, no one should have been there that day,” he answered, speaking of the fire that had killed Mark.

  “No,” she said firmly, her eyes boring into his. “You don’t understand. He wasn’t supposed to be there that day,” she repeated. “I was.”

  CHAPTER 23

  DAVID’S MIND FROZE FOR A MOMENT then sputtered to life.

  “What?”

  “I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to pick up his files,” she said, her eyes searching his.

  “Whoa. Wait a minute. Ian needs to hear this.” He reached for his phone.

  “David, it’s late.”

  Her voice was returning to normal he noticed, but he didn’t stop dialing. “He’s awake. Trust me.”

  “Hathaway,” Ian said when he answered.

  “Jesse just remembered something you need to know,” David said, putting the phone on speaker.

  “Ian, I’m sorry to bother you so late,” she started.

  “Not a problem. Tell me what you remembered,” Ian coaxed.

  She took a deep breath. Holding David’s gaze, she spoke. “Mark was at a conference in Boston that week. He wasn’t going to be back until late Friday night. I was headed into Albany for a board meeting on Friday afternoon, so he asked me to swing by his office to pick up some of the papers he wanted to grade over the weekend.”

  She paused, swallowed, and then continued. “We had a crisis at the hospital that day and I had to skip the board meeting. I called Mark and he said it wasn’t a problem. He’d decided to leave a little early so he would just swing by and pick up the papers himself. So it wasn’t supposed to be him in his office at all. If his death was intentional, I think it might have been meant for me.”

  David could see the reality of what she was saying come crashing down on her. He was pretty sure that, up until now, up until she put herself in Mark’s place and maybe saw herself burned and dead, the idea of someone wanting to hurt her had been more theoretical than anything else. He would wager that she knew it intellectually and believed what she was being told by him and Ian and the others, but she hadn’t really accepted the reality of it. Until now.

  “When did you talk to Mark?” Ian asked.

  “That Friday afternoon, when he was on his way home.”

  “No, I mean the first time, when you made the plans for you to stop by his office?” Ian clarified.

  She seemed to think about this for a second before answering. “Thursday, sometime. I think it was in the afternoon, but it might have been in the evening.”

  “This, well, this doesn’t really change a lot for us in terms of how we were thinking about things, but it does give us a new lead. And does remind us of how serious this can be. Whoever is doing this, might have already killed one person. I know this isn’t what you want to hear—”

  “I can hardly deny it now, can I?” she interjected.

  “True. And to be fair, we still don’t know for certain if Mark was murdered. But please take this seriously. If for no other reason than that it would upset my wife greatly if something happened to you.”

  Jesse’s eyes softened at Ian’s teasing plea. “Believe me, I’m taking this very seriously now, Ian. Aside from wanting to know the truth about what happened to Mark, I’m not at all interested in leaving my kids without either of their parents.”

  “Then you’ll be safe?”

  After she agreed, Ian requested to speak to David.

  He took the phone off speaker. “Yeah?”

  “You’re going to work on the fire reports right?” Ian said without preamble.

  “All day tomorrow. I’ll probably bring in a few friends as well, to weigh in.”

  Ian grunted. “When do you go back on shift?”

  “Tuesday night.”

  “I want someone watching her,” Ian stated.

  “You won’t get any arguments from me,” he countered.

  “Not even if it’s Caleb?”

  David could hear the humor in the other man’s voice. “Do you trust him?” he asked.

  “With my life,” Ian answered without hesitation.

  “But would you trust him with Vivi’s?” David asked, more to the point.

  Ian hesitated at this point, but David was fairly sure it didn’t have anything to do with Caleb. A thought that was confirmed by Ian’s next statement.

  “Yes, if I had to.”

  “Then yes, even if it’s him. Can you arrange it?”

  Ian said he’d take care of everything and they hung up.

  Jesse looked at David with curiosity and he filled her in.

  “God, this is just getting worse and worse, isn’t it?” she said, lying back down beside him and tucking herself in close.

  “It’s not any better, that’s for sure. But you have a lot of good people in your corner. Ian and Vivi are a solid team.”

  “And Caleb?” she added, her voice teasing. He chuckled.

  “Like I said, I don’t want to like the guy, but if he can help keep you safe, I will definitely revise my opinion.”

  ***

  David stood by as the man in question came to pick Jesse up for work the next morning. Matt had gone off to visit Danielle, James was at school, and he had plans to hit the station, review the reports from the fire that killed Mark, and maybe ask a few more questions. He was just closing the door after setting the alarm when Matt pulled up.

  “Everything alright?” he asked as Matt climbed from his car.

  Matt nodded. “Yeah, I was just, well, I was hoping to catch you alone.”

  David leaned against his truck and waited. He had an idea where this conversation was going, but he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  “How is my mom? And I don’t mean just with what happened with Dr. Martinez and everything.”

  “She’s hanging in there,” David said. “She has good moments and bad ones, but she’s a smart woman and is listening to what people like Vivi and Ian are telling her with respect to her safety.”

  “Is there more going on than you guys are telling us? I know you’re looking into my dad’s old computer, and my mom seemed a little out of it yesterday. Is there something more going on?”

  David knew he had to tread carefully here. Matt was almost a grown man, but he was also Jesse’s son and what he was entitled to know wasn’t David’s decision.

  “You and your brother both know what you need to know.”

  “That’s a nonanswer if I ever heard one,” Matt responded, showing his teenage years.

  Again, David shrugged. It was a nonanswer, but it was the only one he was going to give.

  “You seem pretty laid-back about the whole thing. My mom is off at work by herself, you’re here headed off somewhere else, I’d bet.”

  David knew when he was being egged on, and he also knew that fear quickly turned to anger, especially in teenage boys. In grown men too, for that matter. Still, he forced himself to take a deep breath before he answered.

  “Look, Matt. I saw what your mom’s car looked like, I saw Spin-A-Yarn, and I was the one who found her after the break-in. I can’t even begin to put words to how I feel about it all. But believe me, no one is laid-back about this. Your mother has someone with her now. Vivi and Ian are doing their part, and I’m looking into a few things myself. We all have our parts to play in finding out who is doing this and in protecting your mother. And right now, she has someone far more qualified than me to play bodyguard.”

  He saw Matt swallow. “But she does have a guard, someone looking out for her?”

  David nodded, thinking this was probably the crux of Matt’s concern, his mother’s safety. He’d already lost one parent, the thought of losing another was more than any kid should have to bear.

  “What can I do?” Matt asked.

  David considered the boy in f
ront of him. He couldn’t say “nothing,” but he knew Jesse wouldn’t want Matt involved, not just because she would worry about his safety but because of what he might find out about his father.

  “Don’t give her any cause to worry,” he said. “Be where you say you are going to be, be home when you say you will be. Call her and let her know if your plans change. This is hard for her, none of us need to do anything that might make it harder.”

  Matt’s eyes searched his and David knew he had been looking for more and was disappointed in not getting it. But he wasn’t about to budge on this, plus, he believed every word he said. Matt must have sensed his honesty, because, finally, he nodded.

  David looked at his watch. “If I recall, you’re supposed to be at Danielle’s house right now.”

  Matt opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. But as he reached for the door handle on his car, he turned back. “I’m sorry I insinuated you didn’t care, but where are you off to today?”

  “I need to go over some reports at the station. Your mom should be home by six. I was thinking of coming back a little earlier and getting dinner ready. Thoughts?”

  Matt gave him a small smile. “She really likes lasagna. I mean really likes lasagna.”

  David was still smiling when he pulled out of Jesse’s drive and headed to Albany.

  ***

  But he wasn’t smiling several hours later as he stared at the fire report and the photos spread out on the table before him. There wasn’t any proof to be had, but he’d bet a year’s salary the fire that killed Mark Baker was no accident. He picked up a photo of the remains of the man himself—what very little of him was left—and his stomach lurched at the thought of Jesse being the possible intended target.

  “Having fun?” Dominic and Kurt joined him, pulling out a couple of chairs across from him.

  “This is crap,” David said, gesturing to the report. “What do you see here?” he asked, handing them a photo of what had been a hallway before the fire consumed it.

  “A burn pattern. It’s hard to see with all the damage, but you can definitely see it,” Dominic said, taking the photo and studying it.

  “Right. And this?” David handed them a report claiming the cause of the fire was old wiring and a small gas leak emanating from the faculty kitchen at the rear of the building.

  “That the fire started with the gas leak in the kitchen,” Kurt said.

  “Exactly.” David said, reaching for the photo Dominic still held. Placing it next to the schematics of the building he slid the two images across the table. “And what do you see now?”

  Both men leaned forward and studied the two documents for a long moment. Then Kurt let out a low whistle.

  “You see what I see, don’t you?” David insisted.

  All three men sat back. “Why do we have a burn pattern indicating that flames were moving from the front of the building toward the back if the fire started in the back?” Dominic stated.

  David shot them a frustrated look. “Exactly my point.”

  “So you think that the fire actually started in the front of the building? Maybe in Professor Baker’s office itself?” Dominic asked, taking another look at the photo of the hallway.

  “If the fire—or a fire—started in his office, I think it would explain the position of his body and why it doesn’t look like he tried to make it out at all,” David posited as Dominic picked up a few more photos.

  “But look at these patterns here.” Dominic pointed to another picture. “This charring is consistent with a fire emanating from the kitchen. Not to mention the fact that the ceiling burned out in that room, too.” David knew what Dominic was talking about and it was something else he found disturbing about the fire and the findings of his predecessor.

  “What?” Kurt prompted.

  David took a deep breath and let it out before he spoke. “I think there might have been an explosion of some sort, maybe even gas, in the office. I think, well, in my opinion, I think we should consider the possibility that when Baker went into his office to find his files and he turned on the lights, there was a wiring issue and it sparked a small but forceful explosion. In his office.”

  “And the flames from that explosion then travelled back toward the kitchen and ignited a much bigger, hotter, and more destructive fire when it came in contact with the gas leak from the old stove,” Dominic finished.

  “And the first explosion is what did him in,” Kurt added. “Maybe it didn’t kill him, but it incapacitated him enough that he was already down when the second, larger fire came through. The whole series of events could have happened in less than a minute,” he mused.

  All three of them studied the images and the report for several more minutes before David finally asked the question that had been on his mind since he’d started looking into the fire.

  “Am I crazy? Am I finding things because I want to blame Jesse’s husband?”

  Both men looked up, then at each other before Kurt spoke. “Look, we didn’t want to say anything, but Rodgers, the guy before you, was done about three years before he finally left. There were a couple of instances where he called things that the chief caught before the final reports were filed—things he had to go back and change. Rodgers was a good guy, but at that point he just wanted to be done.

  “And this fire was one I remember. None of us were convinced it was accidental. We weren’t convinced it was arson, either, but it just seemed that Rogers reached his conclusion too easily. Especially considering the location and state of the body. We all thought it deserved a little more attention. A couple of us said something to him about it but he blew us off. We mentioned it to the chief, even, especially when we learned the victim had a wife and two kids. We wanted to make sure they had justice, you know, if it was called for. He promised to look into it, but then we had a rash of serious arsons and a couple of big summer brushfires, and it got a little lost in the shuffle, I think.”

  “Anyway,” Dominic picked up where Kurt had ended. “By the end of that summer, we were all done for. It was a brutal year with the drought and the heat and, not that it’s an excuse by any means, but I honestly think it fell through the cracks.”

  David heard what they were saying and even understood it. But that didn’t mean he had to like it. Even so, what was done was done, and while he believed that if Mark was murdered, the murderer should be brought to justice, he was more concerned with knowing whether Mark’s death had anything to do with Jesse, and if learning more about it would help him protect her.

  He sighed. “So if the fire started in his office, how did it happen?”

  The three of them thumbed through the photos for a few minutes. He hated investigating this way because he was limited to whatever the photographer had decided to take pictures of and he didn’t know what he was missing. But the pictures had already shown him one discrepancy, maybe they would reveal more.

  “Here,” Dominic said, pushing a photo across to David. “Is that what I think it is?”

  David studied the picture and though he thought he saw what had caught Dominic’s attention, he spread the rest of the pictures out, found the one he wanted, and compared it to the one Dominic had handed him.

  “Jesus, how could he have missed this?” David muttered to himself about his predecessor.

  “What?” Kurt demanded, reaching for the two photos. After a minute, he let out a low whistle. “Well, hot damn, does it look to you like the light switch was tampered with?” The question was rhetorical. By this point, all three of them had seen the scratch marks on the plate that covered the switch.

  And the distinctive “V” shape that indicated the origin of a fire.

  The shape was faint and hard to see with all the other fire and smoke damage on the wall, but it was most definitely there. Which meant that even if a much bigger fire had come from the kitchen, another fire, a smaller one, had ignited in Mark Baker’s office.

  David felt his jaw tense as he laid the two pictures asid
e and continued to thumb through the rest. If a fire had sparked in the office, it would explain the burn patterns he’d seen in the first photo he’d shown to Dominic and Kurt. But faulty wiring on its own wasn’t enough to cause the kind of fire that produced the charring he’d seen. There had to have been more.

  Studying the photos for several more minutes, David finally saw something. “What’s this?” he asked, handing a photo across the table and pointing to the lower right hand corner. His teammates looked at the object.

  “A fire extinguisher?” Dominic answered, clearly not convinced himself.

  David opened his computer, pulled up a screen and found another picture.

  “Have a look at this,” he said, sliding his computer across the table.

  “It looks like the same kind of canister,” Kurt commented.

  “What are you showing us here?” Dominic asked, gesturing to the picture on the screen.

  “That is a picture of the canister for the explosive used in the Spin-A-Yarn fire.”

  “Shit,” both men said in unison.

  “They’re the same,” Kurt added to no one in particular.

  “Yes they are, and I think I better call the sheriff.”

  ***

  Jesse set the phone back in its cradle just as a knock sounded at her office door. Calling to whomever it was to come in, she watched as Colin Gray popped his head through the doorway.

  “You have a few minutes?” he asked.

  She smiled at the detective. “Definitely. Anything to avoid having to write the next newsletter. For all sorts of reasons, this month’s edition is going to be hard to get out.”

  He gave her a sympathetic look then paused halfway to his seat. “Any chance you’re up for some coffee? We could talk as we walk to the hospital café?”

  Jesse glanced at the clock. With Caleb keeping guard, she hadn’t left her office all day except to attend a lunch in one of the conference rooms down the hall. It was now heading on four p.m., and coffee, and a walk, sounded heavenly.

  Caleb tried to stop her as they walked through the outer office, but she’d been a mother for almost eighteen years and knew just what kind of a look to throw at him to convey exactly what she wouldn’t say out loud. With a grunt of exasperation, Caleb threw up his hands and followed them out.

 

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