He Put Three Empty Cases Beside My Signed Repair Orders

Cormac laid the cases on my counter, one beside another.

"The controls," he said.

"I've called the fire office. They asked me to keep them here."

He looked at my bench. Then he looked at me.

"You've made a mistake."

"That may be. Someone trained to look at fires can decide."

He slid a check across the counter. It was made out for $900.

"Disposal fee."

I left it where it was.

"You signed them over. The orders are here."

"You mend shades, Alaina."

"I also keep records."

He smiled without showing his teeth.

"Your lease ends in five months."

My rent was $925. I had $6,140 in the business account, and almost half belonged to customers whose parts had not arrived yet.

I felt that number in my knees.

"You should take your check," I said.

He picked it up, slowly, and left the empty cases behind.

I did not carry the modules home. I did not try another read. I locked the shop, waited inside, and jumped when the ice machine at the store next door dropped a load.

The investigator arrived forty minutes later.

"Rafael Mendes," he said, holding his badge where I could read it. "You called about control units?"

He had warm brown skin, tired eyes, and a small white scar through one eyebrow. His shirt sleeves were rolled the same width on both arms.

"Please tell me what these do," he said.

That was how he began. Not with whether I was sure.

I explained the old lamp wiring and the added controls. He listened without reaching past me.

"May I sit?"

I moved a spool of cord from the stool.

"They're retired units," I said. "They can't tell us what happened after I took them out. But that service-device line might tell you who worked on them before."

"That's a useful limit," he said. "Keep saying it."

He asked when I had opened each case, what my reader wrote back to a unit, and who else had touched them. I answered what I knew. Where I did not know, he wrote that down too.

"It reads only," I said. "I have the tool's sheet."

"I'd like a copy."

We photographed everything in place. He gave each box an evidence number. I signed a transfer receipt with the time beside my name.

"Am I giving up ownership?" I asked.

"You're giving us custody for the case. Your receipt shows that."

I read it before I signed.

He gave me a copy and waited while I checked all three serial numbers against my orders. One digit on the middle line was hard to read. He rewrote that line, initialed the change, and asked me to check it again.

Cormac would have called that wasted time. I put the receipt in a clean envelope. For the first time since the radio report, I felt able to take a full breath.

His mouth softened a little.

"Good," he said.

I asked whether the matching code proved someone had set the fires.

"No. It gives us a place to ask for records. We'll need much more."

He was forty, he told me when I asked how long he had done this work. Brazilian American, raised mostly in Jacksonville, twelve years in fire work. He said it without turning it into a speech about himself.

"Do you have any other orders from this owner?" he asked.

I brought out a folder as thick as a shade catalog.

Cormac's building manager, Brynn Vale, sent work in batches. Lamps, wall lights, loose shades. Sometimes she attached building service sheets so I could separate my charges from the electrical contractor's.

Rafael turned a page and stopped.

"What's this note?"

It read CLEAR AFTER SERVICE.

"I thought it meant clear the bill," I said.

The note appeared on all three burned buildings' sheets. Each listed an evening service visit after my lamp work was done.

That proved nothing by itself. Rafael said so before I could ask.

Then I remembered the new job.

"There's a fourth folder."

Juniper Arms. Twenty-four apartments off a road shaded by live oaks, east of my shop. Brynn had asked me to collect its lobby lights next Monday.

There was no old module from Juniper in my archive. I had never touched its lamps.

But the attached service sheet used the same device identifier.

Rafael took a clean sheet of paper and wrote down the address.

"Do people live there?"

"A lot of people. One of them fixes my roof."

The order listed zero occupied units.

I watched him read that line again.

"May I call the tenant I know?" I asked.

"Yes. Tell them exactly what you know. I'll call this in."

My phone buzzed before I could dial.

Brynn had sent a revised service sheet. The evening visit had moved forward to that night.

At the bottom, in red, was a new instruction: OWNER REQUIRES COMPLETION BY 8 P.M.