An accidental fire? Or arson?
A familiar darkness tore through my body, curling my hands into fists and tightening my jaw. Not only might someone have set the fire that had taken Sarah’s life, but someone might have tried to cover it up. That fit in with Maggie’s story too, about how she felt like the case had been mishandled.
“I got something,” I whispered to Lucas.
“Only fifteen more seconds left, Mila,” he urged.
I scrolled through the files, noting that many of Blythe’s reports were co-signed by a woman. Sonja Lopez. And that, three days after he filed that broken-up report, a new name replaced Edgar Blythe’s on the case. Scott Pacelli.
Something slithered down my spine. Three days. Coincidence? Surely not. “Ten . . .” Lucas whispered, starting the final countdown.
Physical evidence: SL11-25, SL11-26, SL11-27, SL11-28.
The numbers continued up to SL11-40.
“Nine . . .”
I loaded them and got more than I bargained for.
“Eight . . .”
Photographs spilled forth. Images of Sarah’s house, burned to the ground, charred and blackened almost beyond recognition. Descriptions of mangled objects—a melted family portrait. Fingernail scrapings.
Nothing helpful. And nothing about the possibility of an accelerant, which would prove arson for certain.
“Mila, hurry. Five . . .” The pitch of Lucas’s voice deepened.
I double-checked, and then swore. “Three of the physical evidence descriptions are missing,” I whispered.
SL11-27, 11-28, and 11-29. Blank.
Before I could dive back in to try to find them, something wrenched free of my finger. For a panicky second, my mind went blank, as empty as those barren files. Then I noticed Lucas dangling the end of disconnected wire. Thank god he’d disabled the connection. But not before I’d committed every bit of information to my own personal data banks.
“What did you find?” Lucas asked.
I felt the burn of tears behind my eyes. “It’s all pointing to a cover-up. I wish we could go to Blythe and get some more answers.”
Lucas turned back to his laptop. “Let’s just search his name, see what it turns up.”
His fingers flew over the keyboard while I watched the screen. I closed the tip of my finger port, but the sizzle of energy remained in my disrupted skin cells.
He pulled up an article from the local paper on the monitor. The headline revealed yet another dead end. Literally.
DETECTIVE DIES IN HIKING ACCIDENT
Forty-nine-year-old police detective Edgar Blythe’s body was found at the bottom of a valley on a popular hiking trail. The medical examiner found that a head contusion was the likely culprit, the result of slipping on the trail and hitting his head on a rock. A park official reports that the trail, while usually safe, was treacherous after a prolonged rain, rendering it muddy and slippery.
Lucas pointed at the date. Two days after Blythe logged in his report. The day before Scott Pacelli took over the case.
Was Holland behind all of this somehow, taking one innocent life after another in order to hide his true motives and plans? Or were we going down the wrong road, developing a false conspiracy theory? What did we really have except for shards of information and suspicions from an old woman?
Daniel. He’d always believed something had been off about the fire. But Daniel wasn’t reliable—he was grieving over his dead daughter, desperate to find an explanation.
We needed more. Something substantial. A smoking gun. Evidence that would lead us to Holland’s schemes, both then and now.
“There’s more,” Lucas said, pulling up another article. This one detailed how Detective Scott Pacelli had been convicted of drug trafficking in federal court, six months after he’d taken on Sarah’s case. He was currently tucked away in a federal prison. “Looks like we won’t be able to talk to him either.”
I choked down bitterness as another prospective lead slipped through our fingers. But then I realized that maybe it didn’t matter.
Sonja Lopez. The woman who co-signed Blythe’s reports. I shared the name with Lucas, and he tracked down a recent social-media photo and an address nearby. Sonja was an attractive Hispanic woman, probably in her late fifties. Her brown eyes were as bright as her smile in the picture. From the conference room in the background and the cake with “Congratulations” scrawled across the top, I guessed the picture was taken at her retirement party.
“Shall we pay her a visit?” Lucas snapped his laptop closed.
I could have kissed him for being so eager to help me fit this gigantic puzzle together, under such insane circumstances. I settled for a hug instead.
“Thank you,” I mumbled into his shoulder.
At first,