Read Online Fall from Pride by Karen Harper - Free Book Online Page B

spring breeze turning the windmill, birdsong and the occasional snorting of the buggy horses tied to the fence rails near where Hannah and Sarah had stood together just last night. She should be here, Sarah thought, and whispered that to Ella. “ Ya, Hannah should be home with her family and you and me, just like in the old days,” Ella whispered as Nate’s deep voice rang out.
    â€œArson is often proved by investigators finding a path of foreign accelerants that ignited, then spread, the flames. Accelerants can include grease, kerosene, gasoline and paint thinner, but I’ve been able to eliminate the accidental spill-age of those or even the presence of those. Besides finding a bunch of matches—unlit—outside of the barn, I found evidence of accelerants within, so let me explain and point that out.”
    His cell phone tone sounded. Sarah noted he ignored it.
    â€œThe front door frame,” he said, pointing to a big, tumbled beam with a blackened metal handle on it, “shows what we call alligatoring—shiny blisters.” Several people leaned closer. The Cleveland reporter and Peter Clawson scratched away on their notepads.
    â€œThis indicates a rapid rise in temperature of the blaze, so nothing really smoldered. Evidence here,” he said, continually moving through the debris and pointing things out, “indicates it spread unusually fast, which eyewitnesses corroborated. These beams were from the roof—third or loft floor. Also, the fire seems to have started in more than one place, one at the back of the barn near a window, another near the east side window. Multiple V-pattern burns are also major clues pointing to arson.
    â€œBut how did someone reach those high windows to get the fire going in the loft where hay was stored? I’m surmising that the arsonist used one or both of the ladders that were on the ground outside the barn, which were then destroyed in the fire. In that respect, the arsonist either knew the ladders were available or stumbled into being able to use them. It meant he or she could stay outside the barn rather than going in and climbing the built-in ladders within to start the fire.”
    The arsonist had used her ladders! Why hadn’t he told her that—warned her he’d say that? At least no one but Mattie Esh so much as glanced her way, but it made her sick that her equipment might have been a part of this—and that Nate had not confided that to her earlier when he told her it was arson.
    â€œWhat might this accelerant be?” he went on. “I’m still running some tests in my mobile lab, but kerosene residue can be recovered from beneath floorboards, which it permeates. It can be found under the ash-and-water pastelikesubstance a hot, fast fire leaves behind. That was probably the case here, especially on the third floor or loft level, which was the ceiling of the threshing floor level. Bishop Esh reports that no kerosene was in the barn, not even an old lantern, and no gasoline in the farm equipment. No green hay to give off methane to cause spontaneous combustion, the latex, water-soluble paint cans were sealed.” A few heads turned Sarah’s way. “So my report, sad to say, in such a helpful, concerned community is criminal arson by a fairly primitive incendiary device lit from at least two points through small window access on the loft level.”
    â€œAny way to catch the firebug with what you got?” Mike Getz spoke up.
    â€œArsonists have a way of being caught in a trap of their own making,” Nate said, staring at the big man. “The Esh fire is a crime and will be severely prosecuted by the state fire marshal’s department in the state courts of Ohio. The penalty for such is long prison time. So spread the word that arson is never, never worth the risk.”
    Sarah noted that the portly, ruddy-faced Peter Clawson kept nodding fiercely, as he stood a few people in front of her.