“And you saw no one?” Clarke asked.
“Wish I had. It would have made last night a lot calmer.” She sipped her coffee. “It’s always the unknown that eats at you.”
“I’m going to walk the woods and see if there’s anything,” Clarke said.
Joan shoved her hands in her pockets, promising herself to buy gloves before the day was out. “Have at it.”
When Clarke vanished into the woods and they were alone, Gideon said, “You’re very calm.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she challenged.
“Last night had to be traumatic. A reminder.”
She crossed her fingers. “Haunting memories and I are well acquainted. I don’t run from them anymore.”
His brows knotted together. “Are you still troubled by the College Fire?”
“Troubled is a strong word.”
“You said haunting memories.”
“A figure of speech.” The emotional scars, unlike the physical ones on her hands, were very much alive and painful.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.
Again, Gideon lingered, his head cocked, as if searching for any small clue lurking behind her expression and tone. Her skin tingled, and a restless energy surged inside her. Finally, he shook his head as if whatever he had been stalking had eluded him.
Clarke returned from the woods and strode toward the burn site. Gideon joined him, and the two poked through the ashes. Clarke stopped in what had been the center of the shed and knelt down.
“See anything?” she asked.
Clarke held up a blackened, twisted blob covered in charred mulch and dirt. “It’s plastic. Likely the delivery device for the accelerant.” He held it up to his nose. “Gasoline. And there’s a burn track in the grass. The arsonist trailed the gasoline from the shed to the woods.”
She imagined someone placing the jug in the shed and setting it on fire knowing she had a front-row seat. She tried to imagine Nate at the center of this storm, but the more she thought about him as an arsonist, the less it made sense. Christ, if genetics were a precursor to trouble, she and a lot of other folks were screwed.
“If there’s any chance of pulling prints or DNA, our best bet is the state lab or the FBI lab at Quantico,” Gideon said.
Clarke carefully bagged the remnants of the homemade device and handed them to Gideon. “It’s got to be similar to the other one. Joan, you might want to find out where your pen pal Elijah was last night.”
There were several cars parked in front of Elijah’s boardinghouse when Joan arrived. She had decided to make this visit without Gideon because she sensed that Elijah would be more forthcoming if it was just her asking the questions.
Striding across the front and up the steps, she rang the bell and was shown to the den by Mr. Pickett. She found Elijah on his laptop studying video clips of arson events.
“You do this for fun?” she asked.
His gaze did not waver from the screen, but a smile curled the edges of his lips. “Back so soon? People might start to talk, Joan.”
She moved into the room and took a seat next to him. “Don’t you have class today?”
“I did. Class was an hour ago. When did you start sleeping in late? And why do you smell like smoke?”
Despite a shower and a clean shirt, her jeans still reeked and would until she could wash them a few times. “Someone torched Ann’s shed last night. I had the pleasure of putting it out.”
He paused the video and faced her. All traces of humor had vanished. “What happened?”
“Fire set outside my window.”
“How?”
“I’m not supposed to say. It’s an active investigation.”
“I didn’t set it.”
She held up her hands. “I suppose you have an alibi.”
“For last night? Yes, I do. Was anyone hurt?”
“No.” She searched for traces of Nate in Elijah’s features and found several. “How old were you when you set those dumpsters on fire?”
“Are we relitigating old news?”
“Humor me.”
“Twelve and thirteen.”
“Why did you do it?”
“My mother had kicked my stepfather out and begun to invite the first of many boyfriends into our home.”
“What did you hope to accomplish by the fires?”
“The prison psychologist asked me that very same question, and I’ve had ten years to think about it.” He shifted, crossing his legs. “I was angry. I didn’t know how to articulate it.”
If she were back in Philadelphia, she would not have hesitated to use the information Ann had given her. But this was not back east, and Ann was her friend, maybe the only one she had in Montana. “What are you watching now?”
“This is research.”
“On?”
“You.” He hit “Play,” and the fire began rolling again. As she looked closer, she saw this fire was eating through Avery Newport’s house. The footage had been recorded by a neighbor’s cell phone. “Amazing what you can find on YouTube.”
“Why would you care about the Newport fire in Philadelphia?”
“This fire reminded you of the College Fire, didn’t it? Two young women home alone. Fire breaks out, and one dies.”
“Newport is a cold-blooded killer. End of story.” Joan watched as the flames ate into the house, consuming it like a roaring dragon would. Her attention shifted to the left side of the screen, where she knew the roommate had slept.
His brow knitted with curiosity. “This really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“A young woman died in that fire.” She reached over and closed the laptop.
“You’ll get another chance to catch her.”
“Really? How can you be so sure?”
“I know Ms. Newport better than she knows herself,” he said.
“How?”
“The footage captured Newport at the scene, but her expression was all wrong for an innocent victim. All they saw was her crying, but the tears weren’t for her roommate. They were for her child, the fire.”
A sense of vindication rose up in Joan. “Unfortunately, that’s not enough for the prosecutor to file charges. And the evidence I collected was all circumstantial.”
The smile returned, warming his eyes. “I do have some theories, if you wish to hear them?”
“Yes, I
