Chapter 3 - THE FIRE WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT
The Red Cross placed me and Jasper in a small motel room.
Mrs. Alvarez was housed two doors away because smoke and water had damaged her apartment too.
She had lived below me for eleven years.
Her husband died before I moved in, and she adopted every tenant on our side of the building whether we wanted it or not.
That night, she sat on the edge of my motel bed wrapped in a gray blanket.
“I saw someone,” she said.
“When?”
“Before the fire.”
My body became still.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A person in a dark raincoat entered through the side stairwell.”
“What time?”
“Maybe ten thirty.”
“Did you see a face?”
“No. But the person used a key.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought it was you.”
“I was with you at your car.”
“I know that now.”
Reyes interviewed her the following morning.
Then he returned with preliminary findings.
“The fire began inside your bedroom closet.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Was anything plugged in there?”
“No.”
“Candles?”
“No.”
“Portable heater?”
“No.”
He placed photographs on the motel table.
A V-shaped burn pattern climbed the closet wall.
A melted plastic container had fused to the floor.
Laboratory testing was not complete, but the odor and pattern suggested an ignitable liquid.
“Someone poured fuel?”
“That is one possibility.”
“Was the blue box inside the closet?”
“Yes, behind a loose floor panel.”
“Who knew about the panel?”
“No one.”
“Someone found it.”
“Then why burn the apartment?”
Reyes pointed toward another photograph.
The blue box had been forced open.
The interior contained scorched folders, but most papers were missing.
The memory card firefighters recovered had been hidden beneath the lining.
The person entering my apartment found the box, removed documents, and attempted to destroy what remained.
“Was the fire intended to spread?”
“We cannot determine intent yet. But placing an accelerant in a closet inside an occupied building created obvious danger.”
“I was expected to be home.”
Reyes nodded.
That realization made me nauseated.
My normal Tuesday routine brought me home by ten.
I was late only because Mrs. Alvarez asked for help carrying groceries.
Had she not called me downstairs, I might have been asleep when the smoke entered.
Reyes asked for my family’s names, vehicle information, and recent communications.
I provided everything.
Mother’s SUV was equipped with a navigation service.
Father drove a company sedan.
Miles owned a black pickup.
Mother’s attorney contacted the fire bureau before investigators contacted her.
She volunteered an alibi.
At the estimated time of entry, she claimed she was home watching television with my father.
Father confirmed it.
Miles said he was at his gym.
No security footage showed him there after eight forty.
The hardware store provided surveillance from six days before the fire.
A man wearing a baseball cap entered with the purple-tagged spare key.
He requested two copies.
The clerk remembered him because he paid cash but kept complaining that the machine marks looked different.
The video captured his face.
Miles.
When Reyes showed me the still image, I stared until the features stopped resembling my brother.
“Could Mother have sent him?”
“That is what we need to establish.”
Miles ignored investigator calls for two days.
Then he left me a voicemail.
Claire, this is getting out of control. Mom said investigators are harassing everybody because you cannot accept an electrical fire. Tell them the key was for emergency access.
I played the message for Reyes.
“Did you tell him investigators knew about the duplicate?”
“No.”
“Then how did he know the key was relevant?”
My brother had answered a question nobody asked him.
Search warrants followed.
Police recovered the original purple key from my desk drawer.
It did not open my apartment.
The hardware store had mistakenly copied a similar blank with the wrong shoulder length, then corrected the copies for Miles.
Mother had returned the useless first attempt to me.
The new keys worked.
One was found in my burned bedroom.
The other was discovered inside Miles’s truck.
His truck also contained a half-empty container of camping fuel and disposable gloves.
Miles claimed the fuel came from a weekend trip.
Purchase records showed he bought it the afternoon of the fire.
Then investigators examined traffic cameras.
His truck entered Portland at 9:48.
It parked three blocks from my building.
At 10:22, a street camera captured a hooded person walking toward the side entrance carrying a duffel bag.
At 11:03, the same person returned without it.
The first smoke alarm activated at 11:08.
Miles was arrested while leaving his gym.
Mother called me from an unknown number that evening.
“You have to fix this.”
“He entered my apartment.”
“He made a mistake.”
“He set it on fire.”
“He panicked.”
“How do you know?”
Silence.
Then:
“He was only supposed to retrieve family documents.”
The words left her before she understood what she had admitted.
I recorded nothing myself.
Reyes had arranged for the call to be preserved through lawful procedure because Mother had repeatedly contacted a potential witness.
“What documents?” I asked.
“Your grandmother’s.”
“They belonged to her estate.”
“They contained accusations.”
“They contained records.”
“Claire, listen to me. Miles could go to prison.”
“Mrs. Alvarez could have died.”
“He did not know she was there.”
“He knew I lived there.”
Mother began crying.
Real tears, perhaps.
Not innocence.
Fear.
“I never told him to start a fire.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To get the box before the hearing.”
“And if I was home?”
“He was supposed to wait.”
“But he didn’t.”
“You always make everything sound worse.”
I looked at the motel room that contained everything I still owned.
“A building burned.”
May you like
She hung up.
For the second time that week, my mother ended a call because reality would not lower its voice for her.
