Chapter 7 - Fire on Route 18
By the time Mateo reached the bakery, flames were crawling up the wooden sign above the open front.
“Elena’s Pan Dulce” burned bright against the black sky.
Elena screamed once.
Not from fear.
From grief.
She ran toward the building.
Mateo grabbed her around the waist.
“No!”
“My ovens!”
“Forget the ovens!”
“My mother’s recipes are in there!”
The heat pushed against them.
A propane cylinder popped somewhere behind the stall.
Mateo pulled Elena back as glass shattered outward.
Neighbors arrived with hoses before the fire department did. Men from the tire shop across the road dragged a water line through the dirt. A teenage girl from the motel brought buckets. Someone called 911 again and again.
Then motorcycles appeared in the distance.
Three of them.
They slowed as they passed.
Wade was in front.
He did not stop.
Mateo watched his head turn toward the flames.
Just for a second.
Long enough.
Deputy Shaw arrived eight minutes later.
He looked at the building, then at Mateo.
“Electrical?” he asked.
Mateo laughed in disbelief.
“You got here before the fire marshal and already picked a cause?”
Shaw’s jaw tightened. “I asked a question.”
Mateo pointed toward the rear wall. “Back window was broken.”
“Heat can do that.”
“Before the fire?”
“You don’t know when it broke.”
Elena stood beside them, soot streaking her face.
“Calvin.”
Shaw looked at her.
She spoke quietly. “I held you when your mother was sick. I fed you every afternoon for almost a year.”
His eyes dropped.
“Tell me the truth.”
For the first time, Shaw looked like a man fighting himself.
Then headlights flashed at the road.
Wade’s motorcycle had stopped fifty yards away.
Shaw saw it.
Whatever was in his face vanished.
“I’ll file the report,” he said.
Mateo stepped closer. “You do that.”
The firefighters finally arrived and forced everyone back.
At midnight, the fire chief approached Mateo.
“Found something you should see.”
He held up a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a broken glass bottle with a cloth wick.
A crude firebomb.
Mateo looked toward the highway.
Wade’s motorcycle was gone.
May you like
But carved into the scorched rear door was a single letter.
M.
