Chapter 13: The Report

The fire marshal's office was one room over the Port Gannet post office, with a flag and a fan.

I sat on a folding chair against the wall and watched Ansel write.

He had come at nine in uniform, and he had asked me to come as a witness.

"I'm not asking you to say anything you don't know," he said on the stairs. "Just what you saw."

"I saw a shed burn."

"That's what the report is."

The marshal, a heavy woman with a gray braid, pushed a form across the desk.

"Officer Pettengill," she said. "You understand what you're putting your name on."

"I do."

"The permit was filed by a man who works for your brother's company," the marshal said. "If you name him, it goes to the board."

"I know."

"Your boss will hear about it by noon."

"I know that too," Ansel said.

He took the pen.

I had expected him to hesitate.

He didn't.

He wrote in block capitals, line after line.

I could not see the hand until he turned the form toward the marshal to check the date.

He had seen a flatbed from the yard parked on the Point road at eleven that night.

He had seen the man who drove it.

The man was one of Bryce's groomsmen.

He'd been on the town dock in the headlights, laughing, with a phone in his hand.

I had counted him then.

The name on the permit was the name Ansel wrote.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Left Him at the Altar, So the Best Man Took Me Off the Island from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.