The cop looked at the table and shrugged. “They wouldn’t have survived. Papers burn the fastest, before anything else.”
“But… there’s no ash. There should be a whole bunch of ash from the burned papers, and there isn’t.”
“I’m no specialist in arson. I’m just here to keep the building secure. Talk to the arson investigator if you have any questions. I’m sure he’ll want to hear anything you might have to say. Anything you notice.”
Between the fire, the smoke, and water damage from putting out the fire, there was going to be very little that was recoverable, if anything. Zachary sighed. He looked at the small kitchen as he walked by.
“Oh… something in the freezer might have survived, right? They say to put valuable papers in the freezer, so they’ll survive fire…?”
“Maybe,” the cop agreed. “Did you put anything in there?”
“A few papers, yeah. I don’t remember what all I put in there. At the time, I got together everything I thought I might need if everything else was destroyed…”
The cop looked at the closed fridge. “I hope you put them in plastic bags, because everything in there is melting and going to stink to high heaven by the time they retrieve anything.”
“Yeah. I did. Hopefully…”
“With any luck.”
“I don’t suppose you could open the freezer, just take a peek inside?”
“Nope. My instructions are not to touch anything. You’ll have to talk to Darryl Reimer. He’s the arson investigator. He’ll be able to give you a timeline if anyone can.”
The cop, Lawson, conceded to Zachary waiting inside the building, just inside the doors where Lawson could still keep an eye on him to make sure that he wasn’t getting into anything. It was still cold, right in the doorway and all the utilities in the building being cut off, but it was significantly more comfortable than sitting on the cold stone bench outside in the snow. What should have been lunch time had come and gone, and the sun was low in the sky by the time Darryl Reimer showed up. He looked down at Zachary, sprawled on the floor inside the door, tired and bored, trapped with nothing but his thoughts in the little alcove.
“Mr. Goldman?” he inquired.
He was a stocky man. He wore a suit, not a uniform, and it appeared that he had been wearing the same shirt for a day or two. His face was red. He had a small black mustache.
“Yeah,” Zachary scrambled to his feet. “You must be Reimer?”
“That’s me.” Rather than shaking hands, Reimer pulled out a shield, held it up for only an instant, and then put it back away again. “Thank you for sticking around to see me.”
He headed toward the stairs, and Zachary followed him.
“I’ve read both your statement to the police last night, and your statement following the car accident on New Year’s Eve. I’m as much up-to-date as I can be without talking to you.”
“Uh-huh.” Zachary focused on breathing. The stairs were just as difficult to climb the second time as they had been earlier. Luckily, though, Reimer didn’t seem to be in great physical shape and was happy to take it much more slowly than Lawson.
“First off, do you have any questions or concerns for me? Anything you’d like to bring to my attention?”
“I looked around the apartment… I didn’t see a lot of ash from burned papers on my desk.”
“How many papers?”
Zachary went slowly through what he could remember of what was in the piles. The sizes and approximate number of pages of each stack. That took the rest of the way to the apartment. They were both silent as Reimer looked around. He had brought a powerful flashlight with him, so the setting of the sun didn’t bother him. He played the light over the desk and nodded thoughtfully.
“It does seem like there should be more,” he agreed. He played the light on the floor surrounding the desk, humming tunelessly.
“You had been getting threatening notes about one of your cases?”
“Yes.”
“And were there documents from that case on the desk.”
“Yeah. Sure. From all of my cases.”
“There was some question of whether your wife could have been involved?”
“Ex-wife,” Zachary corrected quickly. “Well, yes. I don’t think she was, but there’s a possibility. I know she wasn’t anywhere nearby when my brake lines were cut, so it doesn’t seem very likely.”
“Right. And there is a current girlfriend?”
“A girl I am seeing, yes.”
“And she was nearby when both attempts were made on your life.”
“Yes. She doesn’t have a motive, though.”
“If there’s both a girlfriend and an ex-wife, there’s motive. Believe me.”
Zachary stood in the middle of the room, watching Reimer move around, examining clues that didn’t mean anything to Zachary. It was all just blackened fragments of his broken life. None of it told him anything.
“I was dreaming before I woke up to the fire,” Zachary said. “And in my dream, it was Kenzie, the girl I’m seeing.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “That doesn’t mean it has anything to do with her. It was just a nonsensical dream.”
“Our dreams often derive from the environment,” Reimer observed. “Did you dream about a fire before you woke up?”
“Yes. I was in a house fire when I was a kid. I dreamt I was back there.”
“Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? And dreaming about the girlfriend could mean that she was here while you were sleeping. It’s not a forgone conclusion. Our brains aren’t just input and output.”
“She was here before I went to sleep, but then she left.”
“Did you lock up behind her? Walk her out?”
“No.”
“You are only assuming she left. Maybe you dreamed about her because she was here before you went to sleep. Maybe while you were asleep. No way to know.”
Zachary was glad that Reimer hadn’t taken it too literally. Zachary had been honest, and Reimer hadn’t overreacted, taking it as an accusation.
Reimer continued to look
