I didn’t even try to speak. My throat had caved in, my natural physical reaction each time anyone mentioned anything about a blaze. What would I say—I don’t want to know? No. That would be too harsh. Instead, I closed my eyes and hoped like hell nothing else tumbled out of his mouth.
“One of them was a neighbor who’d seen smoke coming from the rear section of the home. Engine one—the truck I was in—was the first one on the scene. We—” Cowboy stopped talking, so I opened my eyes and glanced at him. He ran a hand over his distraught face, as if he were mentally reliving the moment. “We tried to enter the house to search for survivors and fight the fire from the interior, but the flames had already spread into the walls and roof.”
Why was he telling me this? According to him, I was nothing more than a stranger, even if I had technically met him before. So why ramble on and disclose things that were obviously so upsetting and personal to him?
“The conditions forced us back outside, where we stayed until the fire had been declared fully contained. Three hours passed before the fire marshal allowed us to search inside. Downstairs, we found the corpse of…a man.”
Jesus, please stop. I wanted to tell him not to go on, that I’d heard enough, but my thick tongue wouldn’t work, so I sat there cringing while he kept on talking.
“Upstairs, we found Chief Swanson’s wife, Janet.” His fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Dead. With her wrists bound behind her back.”
I gasped and covered my mouth. Oh, dear God, the chief didn’t…
It was only the second time he’d looked directly at me since he began the story. “I know what you’re thinking, Anna. It’s the same damn thing everyone thinks. But Chief Swanson didn’t do it. He loved his wife. They’d just gotten back together after being separated for almost six months, and it was the happiest I’d seen him.”
Confused, I lowered my gaze and finally found my voice. “P-people sometimes do…things.”
“Not this,” he said, adamantly shaking his head. “He wouldn’t have hurt Janet like that. Maybe he wasn’t a perfect husband, but the chief and I were good friends. I spent a lot of time with that man. I know he didn’t do it.” He sighed heavily. “Besides, none of it makes any sense. Why would Chief Swanson tie up his wife and leave her upstairs while he doused himself with an accelerant and…”
I wasn’t sure if Cowboy didn’t finish the sentence because he couldn’t say the words or just didn’t want to. Either way, I was relieved. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure it was tough. For you, I mean.”
He nodded and turned onto my road. “The other firefighters are all part of my extended family. It’s like someone telling me that my brother killed himself and his own wife when I know he didn’t.” He released a hard breath. “I just can’t prove it.”
I gaped at him, recalling the book I’d helped him locate. “That’s what Bobbie Jo was talking about earlier?”
“There are no other leads. I have to know what happened that night.”
Up ahead, the small white house I’d rented came into view. I nodded at it. “That’s where I live, the one with the blue shutters.”
He slowed, veered off the road, and rolled to a stop in front of my driveway to let me out. “Chief Swanson and his wife lived up the road, only about half a mile.”
I remembered passing by the charred rubble of a home nearby and even stopped to take a closer look. But, at the time, I didn’t know it had belonged to the chief. Dread flooded over me as torturous images flickered through my mind. I didn’t need or want any more sleepless nights than I already had.
Instead, I wanted to get out of the truck and walk away from the horrible pictures flashing through my head. Get as far away from them as I could. But I sat there for a second longer, feeling like I owed Cowboy some sort of comforting thought in return for the roadside assistance he had given me.
“No matter what happened to your chief, I’m sorry for your loss. It had to be devastating for you to lose someone so close.”