“Maybe he is innocent.”
“She. And no, she is not.”
“Charges get dropped all the time.”
“Her defense attorney coerced a reporter to do a story on police bias and referenced my experience with an apartment fire when I was in middle school and the College Fire. He also discovered I was writing to Elijah. Pressure quickly mounted online, thanks to the attorney, charges were dropped, and I was put on administrative suspension with pay for two weeks.”
“What happens after the suspension?”
“I’m going to be riding a desk for a while. The department is hoping that the news cycle will run its course, and I’ll be yesterday’s news.”
Gideon pulled into the rental car place’s parking lot. “You did nothing wrong.”
“In my rush, I underestimated my suspect.”
“And how will chasing Elijah help you?”
“Would you believe a little redemption would do a lot to soothe my ego?”
“No. Your ego is fine.”
“It took a beating.” She looked up at him. “Dr. Phil, do I get in on the autopsy or not?”
“Do you know where the medical examiner’s office is?”
“I’ll find it.”
“Nine a.m. Sharp.”
“Thanks, Gideon.”
“Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“I’m officially an open book.” Which was basically true.
“If I get a whiff that you’re lying, I’ll drive you to the airport myself.”
She opened the door and paused. “While you’re in a giving mood, can I look at your case files on the College Fire? I’ve never seen them, and now is as good a time as any.”
He sighed. “Sure. They’re in storage, so it may take a day or so.”
“I have nothing but time right now.”
It took Joan a half hour to get her rental car lined up. The cost of the car made her cringe, but she had enough savings to handle this additional expense over her two-week suspension. Beyond that, it would be tight.
Returning to the arson scene did not make sense. It would be hours, if not days, before the forensic team had processed all their evidence, and she would only be in the way now.
Joan turned the ignition, took a moment to set the radio to her favorite station that she had listened to in college. It no longer played rock but country and western. “Nothing stays the same,” she muttered as she pulled out of the lot.
She drove toward the university, curious to see what was different about it. Would it be like the once-huge elementary school swing set that became ridiculously small over time?
As she drove closer, memories of college drifted back. When she had first arrived in Montana, the place had been so different from anything she had ever seen. The mountains and the enormity of everything were breathtaking. By her senior year, she had become jaded by all this, and like many twenty-two-year-olds, she had become restless and yearned to see new places.
She took a left onto a side street, recognized her old neighborhood, and minutes later found her old address. She stared at the two-story house built on the ashes of the old place. It was painted a dark blue with black shutters and a bright-yellow front door. The house had a wide covered porch perfect for kicking snow off boots on a cold winter day.
There was no garden, but the green grass was neatly cut and peppered with pine cones from a middling ponderosa pine. The wide driveway held three cars, including a four-door Ford, a late-model red truck, and a hard-top Jeep. The license plates were from Idaho, California, and Texas, suggesting this was still student housing.
She closed her eyes and recalled the cute yellow house that Ann’s parents had secured for them. Excitement had rolled through her as she thought about living in a real house and not an apartment.
Opening her eyes, she shifted her focus to the neighboring houses on the street. Gideon and Clarke had lived at the end of the block in the brick rancher. God, that had been a fun year.
As she stared at the rancher, a memory flashed. It was January of her senior year, snowing and cold as hell.
Joan was walking home from the rancher, where she had been partying with Gideon, Ann, and Clarke. She could have stayed the night, as Ann had, but she was on the schedule for an early shift at the diner the next day and knew she needed to get some sleep.
Still intoxicated, she left a sleeping Gideon to make her way home. Per usual, she was not dressed for the extreme Montana cold or the never-ending wind cutting through her jacket and stripping her of all warmth. She lost her bearings in the near whiteout, tripped over something on the sidewalk, and did a header into a pile of snow.
Disoriented, she pushed to her hands and knees. Her fingers were numb, and her teeth chattered. Where the hell was her house? Ann had warned her about this unforgiving land, but she thought that after three Montana winters, she could handle a short walk.
Snowflakes fell on her head, soaking her thick green yarn hat, dampening her hair, and drenching her jacket in liquid ice. Shit. Where was her house?
She tried to stand, but her feet were so cold they barely worked. Ray was going to be notified that she had died drunk in a snowbank. And he would shake his head and tell everyone he had tried his best.
Strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her wet, cold, and weak body to her feet. She stumbled and would have fallen if a strong grip had not steadied her. Normally, she would have yanked free and insisted she was fine. But even drunk and half-frozen, she realized her ship was sinking in a sea of ice and snow, and if she did not get help, she would perish.
Relaxing into the steady hands, she put one snowbound foot in front of the other. Her legs felt like lead, and her fingers—well, she did not feel them anymore. The hands tightened and pulled her close to a body that was dry and teased her with a warmth she desperately craved.
Blinking, and feeling a sense that she might get out of this alive, she refocused. She looked up and saw the front steps of her house. Her gratitude was palpable.
Gingerly, she raised her weighted feet one after the other until she’d summited the four steps.
“Keys.”
“What?” she asked.
“Keys to the door.”
“Oh, right.” She fumbled wet, gloved fingers into her pocket and produced a key ring attached to a worn purple macramé fob that had been her lucky charm since middle school.
The hands took the keys and opened the front door. A rush of heat greeted her, sending a shiver of pleasure through her body. She stumbled inside, vowing not to leave the house until spring.
The hands stripped off her coat and snatched off her hat. The items were hung by the door in a careful row on horseshoe hangers.
“You better get out of those clothes.”
She peeled off her gloves and dropped them on the floor as she toed off her shoes. Her fingers were beet red and trembled slightly as she moved toward a radiator and held them close.
“Thanks,” she said.
“That was stupid.”
“I know.” She turned to face her savior and looked up into the familiar gray eyes of Elijah Weston.
His cheeks were rosy from the cold and his overcoat covered in snow. “Where did you come from?”
A brow arched, amused. “Funny, I was thinking the same question.”
She shrugged, staggered a step.
He looked around the entryway, seemed to absorb every detail, and then moved toward the door. “See you in class on Monday.”
That distant memory had been lost to Joan for years, and it was funny she recalled it now. Elijah had saved her on that night. But where had he come from? He did not live in the neighborhood, and the campus was several blocks away.
Her drunken, addled mind had not had the desire to seek the answer then. But now she realized Elijah must have been watching her.
Human memories were a tricky thing. Trauma, alcohol, and time had a way of altering the story and imposing impressions gathered from other life events that happened days, months, or years later. She had witnessed this on her job and always took eyewitness testimony with a healthy grain of salt. If Joan were to have interviewed herself about this, she might have called bullshit on it all. You were drunk. It was dark and snowing heavily.
She started the car’s engine, chasing away a chill worming its way into her bones. Given her experience, she knew she should not trust the memory. “It was Elijah. Right?”
By eight thirty in the evening, Gideon had learned from Becca that Lana Long had an arrest record in Denver. Most of her offenses were minor, including two drug-possession charges and one arrest for vandalism. She had been charged with setting fire to a trash can, and the fire had done several thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the adjoining structure. The property owner had dropped the charges.
As he pulled up to the ranch, he saw the rental car parked in Ann’s driveway. He half hoped to see Joan, but there was no sign of her when Ann answered the door and called to Kyle.
“Are you doing all right?” Gideon asked.
“I’m fine.”
“What’s your take on Joan?” he asked.
“She’s the same in many ways, and yet different. She’s just as guarded as she used to be. Did she tell you her family home caught fire when she was in middle school?”
“She skimmed over it.”
“I’ll bet money the College Fire dredged up a lot of old memories. If she were my patient, I’d be treating her for PTSD.”