Tess Gerritsen - Presumed Guilty

“We’re okay,” Chase said. He took Miranda’s face in his hands and kissed her. “We’re fine.”

Somewhere, a window shattered in the heat of the flames.

“Hey! You people move back!” a fireman yelled. “Everyone get back!”

Chase pulled Miranda to her feet. Together they retreated across Mr. Lanzo’s lawn and onto the street. They watched as the fire hoses unleashed a torrent of spray. Water hissed onto the flames.

“Aw, honey,” said Mr. Lanzo sadly. “It’s too late. She’s gone.”

Even as he said it, the roof collapsed. Miranda watched in despair as a sheet of flame shot up, turning the night sky into a blazing dawn. It’s all gone, she thought. Everything I owned. I’ve lost it all.

She wanted to scream out her fury, her anguish, but the violence of those flames held her in a trance. She could only watch as a strange numbness took hold.

“Ms. Wood?”

Slowly she turned.

Lorne Tibbetts was standing beside her. “What happened here?” he asked.

“What the hell do you think happened?” Chase shot back. “Someone torched her house. While we were in it.”

Lorne looked at Miranda, who stared back at him with dazed eyes. He looked at the burning house, which had already collapsed into little more than a heap of firewood.

“You’d better come with me,” he said. “I’ll need a statement. From both of you.”

“Now do you believe it?” asked Chase. “Someone’s trying to kill her.”

Lorne Tibbetts’s gaze, in the best poker player tradition, revealed absolutely nothing. He began to doodle in the margin of his notepad. Nothing artistic there, not even a few healthy free-form loops. These were tight little triangles linked together like crystals. The geometric creation of a geometric mind. He clicked his pen a few times, then he turned and yelled, “Ellis?”

Ellis poked his head in the door. “Yo, Lorne.”

“You finished with Ms. Wood?”

“Got it all down.”

“Okay.” Lorne rose to his feet and started out of the room.

“Wait,” said Chase. “What happens now?”

“I talk to her. Ellis talks to you.”

“You mean I have to tell it all over again?”

“It’s the way we do things around here. Independent questioning. Routine police procedure.” He tucked his shirt into his trousers, smoothed back his hair and walked out the door.

Ellis Snipe sat in Lorne’s vacated seat and grinned at Chase. “Hey, Mr. T. How ya doing?”

Chase looked at that moronic, gap-toothed smile and wondered, Was Mayberry ever this bad?

“Why don’t we start at the beginning,” said Ellis.

“Which beginning?” Chase shot back.

Ellis looked confused. “Uh, you choose.”

Chase sighed. He glanced at the door, wondering how Miranda was holding up. No matter what Dr. Steiner had said, a hospital bed was where she belonged. But the old quack had simply dressed her glass cuts, examined her lungs and declared hospitalization unnecessary. What Dr. Steiner had neglected to consider was her emotional state. She’d lost her house, her possessions; she was left with no sense of order to her life. What she needed was a safe place, a cocoon where no one could hurt her….

“Uh, Mr. Tremain? You think you could maybe try and cooperate?”

Chase looked at Ellis. What was the point of fighting? he thought wearily. Ellis Snipe looked like the kind of robot who’d follow orders to the letter. If he had to, he’d sit there all night, waiting for Chase to talk.

For the second time that night Chase told the story. He took it back to the cottage, the evidence of a breakin, the secret files. This time he left out the information about Lorne Tibbetts and his fling with the librarian. Some things, he thought, should remain private.

Ellis wrote it all down in a weird, spidery script that couldn’t possibly be produced by a normal personality.

When Chase was finished, Ellis asked one and only one question. “Was there anything in those secret files about me?”

“Not a thing,” said Chase.

Ellis looked disappointed.

After Ellis had left, Chase sat alone at the table, wondering what came next. A third cop, another go-around with the story? The whole affair had taken on a surreal quality, like some never-ending nightmare. For ten minutes he waited for something to happen. Then, fed up with being ignored, he shoved his chair back and went in search of Miranda.

He found her in the same interrogation room where he’d first laid eyes on her over a week before. She was sitting alone. A smudge of soot blackened her cheek, and her hair was dusted with ash.

She gazed at him with a look of utter exhaustion. “The cop station from hell,” she murmured.

He smiled. Then he saw her hand. It was encased in bandages. “Is it as serious as it looks?”

“The doctor just believes in doing a thorough job.” She looked in wonder at the free-form sculpture of surgical gauze and tape. “I was afraid he’d amputate.”

“A hand as nice as yours? I wouldn’t have let him.”

She tried to return the smile, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“You have to leave the island,” he said.

“I can’t. The terms of my bail—”

“To hell with the bail terms! You can’t wait around for the next accident, the next fire.”

“I can’t leave the county.”

“This time you were lucky. Next time—”

“What am I supposed to do?” She looked at him in sudden anger. “Run and hide?”

“Yes.”

“From what? I don’t even know who’s trying to kill me!” Her cry echoed in the stark room. At once she flushed, as though shamed by the sound of her own hysteria.

“If I leave, I’ll never know what I’m running from,” she said quietly. “Or if I’m still being hunted. What kind of life is that, Chase? Never knowing if I’m safe. Always waking up at night, listening for footsteps. Wondering if that creak on the stairs is someone coming for me….” She shuddered and stared down at the table.

Lord, he thought. How did I ever get involved with this woman? She’s not my problem. I’m not her white knight. I should get up and walk right out of this room. Who would blame me?

And then a voice inside him said, I would.

He pulled out a chair and sat across from her. She didn’t look up. She just kept staring at the ugly tabletop.

“If you won’t leave, then what are you going to do?”

She shrugged. It hurt him to see the hopelessness in that gesture. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“Why?” The look she gave him made him want to say things he knew he’d regret. That he cared whether she lived or died. He cared what happened to her. He cared too much.

He said, with unassailable logic, “Because what happened tonight is somehow tied in with Richard. The breakin at Rose Hill. The fire. And you.”

She gave a dispirited laugh. “Yes, somewhere in all this mess, I seem to fit in. And I haven’t the faintest idea why.”

The door opened. Ellis said, “There you are, Mr. T. Lorne says you both can go. Says he can’t think of any more questions.”

I hope I never see this place again, thought Chase as they followed Ellis down the hall, into the front office. Lorne was sitting at one of the desks, talking on the phone. He glanced up as Chase and Miranda walked past, and motioned to them to wait.

“Oh, hell.” Chase sighed. “He just thought of another question.”

Lorne hung up and said to Ellis, “Bring the car around. We got us another call.”

“Man, oh, man,” Ellis whined as he headed out to the garage. “This is one heck of a Thursday night.”

Lorne looked at Miranda. “You got a place to stay?”