Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [120]
“How do you know?”
“Hey, numb nuts. We’re asking the questions.” I looked up. It was Stevenson, the tall man with the pale face and the Cupid’s bow mouth. The grin made me want to hit him.
“How do you know it was arson?”
Sensing that there was some bad history between us, a third man, a homicide detective, walked over and interceded. His name, I later learned, was Ron Holgate. He was of medium height, had short, curly brown hair and a rotund torso. He wore a suit and tie. He said, “The neighbors think they saw it start. They heard a vehicle leaving out of here at a high rate of speed. When they went outside to investigate, all they could see was a dust cloud. At that point there was only a small orange glow in the front window. They went inside and called nine-one-one. By the time they came out again, maybe a minute later, there were flames shooting out both sides of the house. You know as well as I do a house fire doesn’t progress like that unless an accelerant was involved.”
Stevenson said, “You keep a five-gallon can of gasoline around?”
“No.”
“We found one in your living room.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Not far from the clean spot on the floor where the body was. Burned everything around but the outline of that girl. Too bad. The question is, where were you when this went up?”
“He was with me,” Stephanie said. “We got home late. He had a baby-sitter staying with the girls.”
“We saw your baby-sitter,” Holgate said. “You have any enemies?”
“Just these two.” I looked at Shad and Stevenson.
“What were your daughters up to tonight?” Holgate asked.
“Went to a movie with the baby-sitter.”
“In her car?”
“My truck.” We all looked over at my truck, which had caught fire from the radiant heat and was now a burned-out hulk.
“You’ve got two days left, and your kids are with a baby-sitter?” Stevenson asked.
“That’s the kind of guy I am.”
“That girl in there have any reason to be angry with you?”
“What girl?”
“The dead girl. Neumann. Morgan Neumann. Your baby-sitter.”
“Of course not.”
“No reason? You sure? People say she had a crush on you. You weren’t fooling around with her, were you?”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Just a possibility that had to be raised.”
Holgate stepped forward, the voice of reason. “Why don’t we tell him how we think it went down?”
Shad and Stevenson looked at each other. Shad said, “You got a natural gas stove in there in your fireplace? You keep the pilot light on in the summer, or do you shut the whole thing down?”
“On. Every once in the while the girls get cold in the morning.”
Holgate said, “So the baby-sitter takes a five-gallon can into the house, douses gasoline all over everything, and before she can exit, the fumes reach your pilot light and . . . va-voom!”
“It didn’t happen that way,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because Morgan wouldn’t do that.”
“Did she or did she not have a crush on you?”
“I don’t see how that makes—”
“It gives us a motive, that’s what it gives us.”
“She didn’t do it.”
“So tell us who did.”
“I don’t know who.”
The three of them walked out of earshot and conversed. After a few moments, a King County Police deputy I’d seen them speaking to half an hour earlier showed up and joined their powwow.
Periodically, Stephanie mopped me with a towel. “Oh, God, Jim,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I just don’t believe Morgan would do anything like that. It’s crazy.”
“I only met her those few brief times, but I don’t think she would, either.”
I thought about the way Morgan had been looking daggers at Stephanie, thought about how hormones raced around inside a teenager, and then I wondered if I hadn’t underestimated her feelings for me. Was it possible Morgan had been so upset about Stephanie she’d decided to kill herself, and take my girls with her? Was that possible?
“It’s my fault,” I said. “This whole thing is my fault.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know that.”
“And yours.”
“How do you—?”
“This was never about saving me. You wanted to alleviate all that guilt you felt for not being part of your sister’s life. This has been about