Chapter 14 - THE FIRE NOBODY DISCUSSED
David told me he had gone to the warehouse to retrieve tax documents for Thomas.
He was twenty-three, impatient, and furious with his father's business partner.
He left before midnight.
The fire began sometime after two.
Investigators found faulty wiring and closed the case as accidental.
"Then why are you afraid?" I asked.
David rested his hands on the table.
"Because I went back."
He had forgotten his phone, returned by a side entrance, and heard two men arguing inside.
He recognized Vale's voice.
The other man's voice was unfamiliar.
When David opened the stairwell door, the lights failed.
He fled, terrified he would be blamed for trespassing in his own father's building.
Later Thomas convinced him to give a statement about his first visit but not the second.
"Dad told me he would handle it," David whispered.
I was beginning to hate those words.
He will handle it.
I will protect you.
Don't tell your mother.
All of them had become ways of burying danger beneath a carpet of family silence.
We went together to speak with Ruiz.
David corrected his old account, knowing it might expose him to difficult questions.
Ruiz did not suggest that a seventeen-year-old case would suddenly be solved.
He said the new statement could be compared against surviving evidence.
Later that night I found Thomas's oldest radio on the workbench.
It was heavy, dusty, and fastened with screws unlike any other radio I'd seen.
Nolan's words returned: the safe you wouldn't recognize as a safe.
David helped me remove the back.
Inside was a fireproof tin lined with felt.
It held a ledger, a cassette tape, and one sealed letter addressed to Sarah.
May you like
Across the envelope Thomas had written: SHE MUST HEAR THIS BEFORE THEY TELL HER WHAT TO BELIEVE.
