Chapter 3 - THE POLICE TAPE AND THE ASHES OF BROOKLINE
By sunrise the next morning, the grand Brookline estate was nothing more than a skeletal cage of charred timber and smoking drywall. The roof had partially collapsed inward, taking the master bedroom and Victor’s walk-in closet down into a chaotic soup of blackened debris and water runoff from the firefighters' hoses.
Teresa Gomez, a neighbor from three doors down who had lived on the street for over a decade, stood shivering behind the yellow police tape fluttering in the morning breeze. Fire investigators in heavy rubber boots and yellow helmets were tromping through the ruins, snapping photographs and sniffing the air for accelerants.
A silver town car pulled up abruptly to the police line. The back door flew open, and Victor Vance stepped out, leaning heavily on a wooden cane, his face pale and sunken beneath a layer of hospital stubble. He was still wearing his gray hospital sweatpants and a zipped windbreaker, having checked himself out of Massachusetts General Hospital against medical advice the moment he saw the news alert flashing across a nurse's wall-mounted television screen.
"What is this? What happened?" Victor shouted, his voice cracking with panic as he limped toward the yellow tape. Two local police officers immediately stepped forward to block his path.
"Sir, you need to stay back. This is an active fire investigation site," a young officer said firmly, holding up a hand.
"Are you insane? That's my house! I'm Victor Vance, the owner!" Victor roared, his face turning a furious shade of mottled crimson. He pointed his cane at the smoking ruin. "Where are the firefighters? Where is my wife? Sarah! Sarah, are you in there?!"
Teresa stepped forward from behind the tape, her eyes wide with shock and horror as she looked at Victor. "Victor... oh, my God. You're out of the hospital. But... but Sarah isn't in there. At least, I don't think she is."
Victor stopped struggling against the officers and stared at Teresa, his chest heaving. "What do you mean, she isn't in there? Where is she? Did someone pull her out?"
"No," Teresa whispered, shaking her head. "I didn't see her come out during the fire, but... but I saw her earlier. Last night, right after it started."
Before Victor could press further, a woman walked up behind him, stepping out of a sleek black Mercedes. Rita Diaz—forty-two, impeccably dressed in a designer trench coat despite the early morning chill, her blonde hair styled to perfection—placed a manicured hand on Victor's arm.
"Vic, calm down. Your blood pressure," Rita murmured, casting a nervous glance at the smoking wreckage. "The house... oh, God, the house is completely gone."
Victor shoved her hand away, his eyes wild. "Gone? My entire real estate portfolio, my safe, the cash reserves in the study—everything I built is in that house!" He turned back to Teresa. "Teresa, tell me what you saw. Did Sarah escape? Did she call 911?"
Just then, a quiet voice cut through the commotion from the sidewalk edge.
"Sarah didn't call 911, Victor. Because Sarah wasn't inside."
Everyone spun around. Standing near the curb, holding a small disposable coffee cup in one hand and a digital camera in the other, was Sarah herself. She wore a clean, dark blue trench coat, her silver-streaked hair neatly brushed, her expression completely detached from the chaos around her.
Victor froze. Color drained entirely from his face, leaving him looking like a corpse that had been dug up too soon. "Sarah... you're... you're alive? But how? Where were you?"
Sarah took a slow sip of her coffee, her eyes locking onto her husband’s terrified gaze. "I was checking out of the hospital, Victor. Just like you planned to check me out of your life."
Rita stepped forward, her face hardening into an aggressive sneer. "Oh, please! Don't play the dramatic martyr! You set this fire, didn't you? You psychotic old bat, you burned down the house just because you couldn't stand the thought of Victor leaving you!"
Sarah didn't raise her voice. She didn't flinch at the insult. She simply reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a stack of glossy 4x6 photographs she had printed an hour earlier at a local pharmacy, and held them up for the police officers and investigators to see.
"Officer," Sarah said calmly, addressing the senior fire marshal who had just walked over. "I believe you'll find the origin of the fire isn't arson from the outside. If you check the electrical panel in the basement—the one Victor refused to upgrade last year because he spent the renovation budget on a luxury sports car for his girlfriend—you'll find that the overloaded circuit connected to the illegal sauna in the master bathroom finally gave out under standard load."
The fire marshal blinked, taking the photographs from Sarah's hand. He flipped through them, his professional eyes narrowing as he studied the burnt wiring harness depicted in the close-up shots.
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"Wait... how did you get these?" the marshal asked, stunned. "We haven't even cleared the basement yet."
"I took them at 6:00 AM from the exterior window well," Sarah replied smoothly, turning her gaze back to Victor, who was trembling so violently his cane was clattering against the pavement. "And as for the house burning down, Victor... you might want to call your insurance broker. Though I'm afraid you'll find there's a rather significant catch."
