Declan swallowed. “You also learn not to lose sight of your partner. Especially when you’re in a hundred-year-old structure and under a wooden balcony.”
“You think Dad caused his own death?” Connor’s voice grew tight. “Dad? The original believer in ‘we go in together, we come out together’?”
“He also knew better than anyone that there is always an element of the unknown in a fire.” Declan’s gaze skimmed one of the debriefing reports. “And something wasn’t known in this fire. Why did he make that decision to go deeper and trap himself outside of that sunroom?”
“You think he should have known better? That he made a mistake?” Indignation colored every one of Connor’s words.
“I think…” Declan squinted at a page, then flipped it. “That there must have been a compelling reason to go under the overhang and try to get inside the sunroom.”
“He probably spotted the seat of the fire.”
“But he was there early, and the rags combusted outside,” Declan reasoned.
“Then maybe he saw someone inside.”
“Everyone in that house was already out, accounted for, and standing in the street.”
Of course, Connor had no comeback to that.
But there had to be some reason Dad broke protocol. His partner’s interviews had been no help, since he’d stated repeatedly that one minute he could see Joe Mahoney, and the next he couldn’t. And Lieutenant Rainey had moved to New York not long after Dad died and, sadly, was lost in 9/11, so they couldn’t ask him now.
Connor put the file down and perched on a couple of boxes. “You think this’ll make you feel better, or help you forgive Evie?” No surprise, his shrewd brother would cut to the quick.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Declan said. “But could I feel better? I don’t know. I do know that reading these is…long overdue.”
“You took it hardest,” Connor said simply.
Declan eyed his brother, remembering the brash teenager who’d emerged after Dad died. Work and maturity had toned him down, and Sadie Hartman had tamed the last of the beast in him, but still. “You didn’t take it all too well, either.”
He acknowledged that with a shrug. “So, what else are you finding in there?”
“One arson investigator didn’t sign off on that final decision. A guy named Kirby Lewis, a specialist the NCBI brought in. He said there was more than one burn pattern, and the inside one wasn’t consistent with the combustion of linseed oil in painting rags that started outside.”
Connor nodded. “But read the whole report. The rags blew up in the heat. No one disputes that.”
“It says here that Kirby Lewis found lighter fluid inside the house. I had no idea.” Of course, he’d ignored every word about the fire at the time.
“But don’t they have a lighter collection in that house? It made sense there would be lighter fluid.”
“Yeah, and a sunroom that was adjacent to the covered patio was where Max cleaned his lighters. Still, I wonder why one guy didn’t agree.”
“Hang on.” Connor pulled out his phone and touched the screen. “Braden knows the details inside out.”
“He does?” Declan drew back with surprise. “How the hell did I not know that?”
“Because no one talks to you about this fire, Dec. You snarl like a ticked-off Rottweiler.” He talked into his phone. “Hey. Come back to the storage garage for a minute.” He waited a beat. “Eat later. Family business.”
Not two minutes later, Braden walked in wearing his Bitter Bark FD T-shirt and department-issued khakis, carrying a half-eaten banana. “What’s so important that I can’t finish chow before a call comes in?”
“The fire that killed Dad,” Declan said simply. “You’ve studied all these files?”
“I actually did a paper on that fire during my canine arson training.”
Good God, did the whole family protect him from anything that had to do with Dad? A new shame crawled up Declan’s chest.
“This is why you wanted to train arson dogs?” he guessed.
Braden’s blue eyes flickered with a silent confirmation.
“So you think it was arson. You think this Kirby Lewis guy has a legit point?” Declan asked.
His youngest brother blew out a noisy puff of air, leaning on a stepstool. “First of all, you need to know who and what that guy was—a legend in arson investigation, but also cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, if you get my drift.”
“Was?” Declan asked. “Is he dead?”
“No. He’s retired and so far off the grid, I doubt you could find him. More than one arsonist who managed to get paroled would like to.”
Declan winced. “So he’s really good? And he didn’t buy the linseed oil as the origin?” He looked from one brother to the other. “Doesn’t that bother you guys?”
“Not me,” Connor said. “Read the Bureau report. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is not cuckoo for anything. The cause was accidental. Or, as I like to say, human stupidity.” At Declan’s look, Connor shrugged. “Hey, just calling it as I see it. A lifelong painter should know better than to stick linseed oil rags in a container and put it outside on one of the hottest days of the year.”
“Says here she snapped it closed.”
“And then the wind knocked it over and opened it.” Connor pointed at something he’d read on one of the pages. “Couldn’t have been closed tightly enough.”
Declan turned to Braden. “What else do you know about this Lewis guy, besides being nuts and good at his job?”
“He finds arson where it may or may not be,” Braden said. “He also finds it where other investigators miss it.”
“Which would be his job,” Declan said.
“Yeah, and he cracked some big cases. But he also spent thousands of taxpayer dollars trying to prove some fires that were clearly accidental were really arson. He was a lone wolf, too. Not on anyone’s payroll, but brought in by individual departments, usually when there’s an LODD.”
Because a line-of-duty death was the thing that made any department ultra-introspective and determined to find a culprit other than human error by one of their own. Especially one as
