Chapter 11 - Fire in the Backyard
Daniel saw the flames before the police car turned onto Hawthorne Street.
Orange fire rolled through the workshop roof. Smoke poured into the night sky. Firefighters dragged hoses across the lawn while neighbors stood behind the tape.
Emily jumped out before the cruiser fully stopped.
"Noah!"
Mrs. Chen waved from her porch.
"He's with me! He's safe!"
Emily nearly collapsed.
Daniel ran toward a firefighter.
"Was anyone inside?"
"No sign of anyone. Stay back."
The workshop roof groaned and dropped inward with a burst of sparks.
Thomas Walker's tools, his workbench, the place where he had spent half his life building cabinets and fixing bicycles and teaching Daniel how to use a saw, disappeared behind a wall of flame.
Daniel stood perfectly still.
Emily touched his arm.
"I'm sorry."
He swallowed hard.
"Dad built that place with Grandpa."
"I know."
A firefighter approached them forty minutes later.
"We found evidence of an accelerant near the west wall. This looks suspicious."
Ramirez arrived soon after.
Daniel told him about Marcus's threat, the break-in, the storage boxes.
Ramirez nodded grimly.
"The good news is the evidence from the workshop cavity was already gone. Whoever set this fire may have been trying to destroy what they thought was still there."
The next morning brought the bad news.
An insurance investigator named Carl Benson sat in their kitchen asking questions about Daniel's finances.
"You were laid off recently?"
Daniel looked at Emily.
"Yes."
"Your savings dropped by eighteen thousand dollars?"
"Yes."
"You recently increased coverage on the detached structure?"
Daniel frowned.
"I didn't."
Benson slid a printed document across the table.
A policy change had been submitted online three weeks earlier.
The workshop coverage had doubled.
The request came from Daniel's account.
"That wasn't me," Daniel said.
Benson's face revealed nothing.
"Someone used your login."
Emily stared at the timestamp.
11:42 p.m.
Three weeks earlier.
She remembered that night.
Daniel had fallen asleep on the couch by ten.
His laptop had been on the coffee table.
They had hosted Ruth's birthday dinner.
Marcus had been in the house.
Benson closed his folder.
"Until we establish what happened, the fire is being treated as potentially intentional."
Daniel leaned forward. "By Marcus."
"Possibly. Or by the policyholder."
Emily's voice sharpened. "Are you accusing my husband of burning his own father's workshop?"
Benson stood.
"I'm telling you what the evidence currently allows."
After he left, Daniel stared at the blackened ruins outside.
Then Emily's phone rang.
It was Officer Ramirez.
"We found something in the ashes," he said. "A gas can with fingerprints."
Emily gripped the phone.
"Whose?"
Ramirez paused.
May you like
"Daniel's."
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