“I know it seems bad now, but give yourself some time. The important thing is that no one died or got hurt.” She pulled a card out of the breast pocket of her shirt and held it out to me. “You can leave a message for me here if you think of any questions later.”
Wordlessly, I took the card. She said a few more things, then walked off. I went back to staring at my destroyed shop.
I didn’t realize someone was standing right next to me until they spoke. “You’re the owner?”
I jerked and turned to find an officer staring down at me with a notebook in his hands. “Yeah, that’s me. Or was me, I guess.” I turned to face the burnt-out shell, but he stepped in front of me, blocking the view.
“I need to ask you some questions,” he said. “Where were you at roughly six this evening?”
“Why does that matter?” I asked. “I wasn’t here to stop this.”
“Maybe you were here,” he said.
That confused me enough to pull me out of my self-pity stupor.
“If I’d been here, I wouldn’t have let this happen,” I snapped.
He looked delighted to have gotten a reaction from me. “Sure.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked. What was with this guy's attitude? I was the victim here!
A nasty smirk twisted his lips. “It’s just that sometimes people do destructive things to get out of debt. They let their car get stolen because the payments are too high. Or they leave the stove on in their home because the mortgage is underwater. You probably weren’t making much money with a fancy clothing shop. Not in this neighborhood.”
Raw rage filled me. I wanted to punch the cop in the face, but even in my enraged state, I knew that wasn’t a good idea. I remained silent, trying hard to keep my fists at my sides.
“You girls think you can open a business, and it’ll just be successful,” he mocked. “None of you understand what hard work is.”
“I didn’t do this,” I ground out between clenched teeth. “I’d never do this.”
He tried to assume a sympathetic expression, completely spoiled by the malice on his face. “It’s okay! I understand, it was all too much for you. Admit you set the fire. Nothing bad’s goingto happen to you. We just need to know. No one’s going to bother prosecuting you.”
“Murphy!” a feminine voice yelled. “What the fuck are you doing?”
We both turned to see the fire inspector I’d been talking to striding over. She looked supremely pissed and was completely focused on the cop trying to talk me into a confession.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” he snapped back, “but I’m interviewing a suspect.”
“I haven’t even finished my report yet,” she said, putting herself between me and him. Damn, I wished I’d paid attention to her earlier. This woman deserved my respect.
With her hands on her hips, she glared up at him. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. I haven’t declared this a case of arson yet.”
“But you will,” he retorted, face turning red. “Everyone can see that the fire started at the front. That area was all windows with no wiring and no bottles of chemicals. It doesn't take a genius to realize that only means one thing; someone deliberately set the fire.”
“Are we doing each other’s jobs now?” she challenged, then pointed to a security camera over the door of the shop next to mine. “Because that means I should get off my ass to see if anyone got video from earlier. Wouldn’t that make more sense than trying to verbally browbeat this woman into a confession with your small-dick energy?”
There was a second of stunned silence, and suddenly Murphy's face went from red to purple with anger.
“You fucking cunt,” he said, taking a threatening step forward.
Although the fire chief didn’t seem intimidated, I was freaked the fuck out. This guy was at least six inches taller than us and looked ready to beat both of us to prove a point. Even worse, it looked like no one around us noticed what was going on.
I put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her back, all my earlier rage vanishing as I worried about the health and safety of this woman.
“I might be a cunt, but you’re a corrupt cop. You’re never making detective for as long as I’m around, Murphy,” she said, only letting me move her back a step. “Not after what you did.”
I was all kinds of curious about what Murphy had done, but now wasn’t the time for a gossip session.
“So, um, I might have a few questions after all,” I said, trying to pull her away from Murphy. “Maybe we could go over here and talk about it?”
