“Glad you like it.”
She screwed the cap back on her thermos.“I need to get to work before the mayor gets back from his doctor’s appointment.”She pulled her car keys out and looked at him.“Thank you for helping Cooper with his investigation.I get the impression you’re doing most of the heavy lifting on it.”
“It’s minimal lifting, actually.And I’m fascinated by the things I’m learning.”
“Still.It’s a lot of reading and piecing together obscure details.I appreciate all the time you’re putting in on it.”
“Any time, Bonnie.”
Their gazes met, and the moment threatened to become way too intimate way too fast.They both looked away hastily and climbed into their cars without speaking.
He followed her out the gate and watched her drive away while he waited outside the gate to make sure it closed properly.
His thoughts drifted back to the blueprints.Maybe the sprinkler system had been installed but not properly maintained or inoperative at the time of the fire?—
No.There still would have been melted pipes and brass sprinkler heads all over the ruins.
Someone either paid off the building inspector to sign off on the final code inspection even though the sprinkler system wasn’t installed, or someone paid off the Shoemacher fire inspector not to mention the remnants of a fire suppression system that had been inoperative or disabled the day of the fire.
In either case the evidence still pointed to corruption.And arson.
He pointed his truck toward Apple Pie Creek and the office supply store with the oversized copy machine.
On the drive home from Apple Pie Creek, he called Cooper.
“You found something,” Cooper declared.His brother had an unerring talent for reading people that Gray envied.
“I have a preliminary finding, but I need to look at the photographs Tucker took when we inspected the barn’s foundation.”
“And ...”
“And there's another piece of evidence that points at arson.One that neither of us had any idea existed until today.”He paused at an intersection, waiting for a logging truck to pass.“The blueprints showed a fire suppression system.Sprinklers, pressurized supply lines, underground tank.The whole shebang.”
There was dead silence in his ear.
Even he could tell it was the cold, still silence of someone who understood precisely what that meant.
“What are you looking for in Tucker's photographs?”Cooper finally asked.
“Anything to indicate a sprinkler system was installed.There should’ve been pipes entering the north side of the building, which means there should still be stumps of stand pipes, maybe the remains of a melted pressure gauge.And I don’t recall seeing anything over by the well house indicating a tank is buried there.”
“I didn’t see anything like that in Tucker’s pictures or in the pictures that aren’t missing from the final fire report,” Cooper said grimly.
“Me, neither.I've been through the images from that report dozens of times, and I’ve seen no evidence of any sprinkler infrastructure.”
“Brass heads don't melt,” Cooper said.“Not in a standard structure fire.”
“No,” Gray agreed.“They don't.”
Another silence.Outside, the foothills rolled by in shades of brown and ochre, waiting for the green that would come in April.
Cooper finally said, “But you don’t think this was a standard structure fire, do you?”
“Nope.”
“How long until you confirm whether or not there was a sprinkler system?”Cooper asked.
“I don’t know.”He turned onto the ranch road.“I want to find someone who was inside that barn regularly.Someone who would have known if there were sprinkler heads.”
