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Not Hoyt. Not safety. It wasn’t over yet, and I was utterly screwed.
The man in the doorway smiled because he knew it, too.
I screamed, though there was no one else around to hear.
25
Hoyt
The interrogation room was getting crowded. Carson had brought in Damon and Eric Bradford, along with their parents, Doug and Nicole. Someone had dragged in a couple more chairs, but there still wasn’t enough seating for everybody, especially not once both Carson and Chief Thompson stepped inside.
Yet again, I was being allowed to watch from the observation room, provided I didn’t interfere. I wanted this whole thing done by the book so that if these little shits were guilty, they wouldn’t weasel out of the consequences. And judging by the evidence collected in the initial search of the property by Sutter’s Ferry PD, they were guilty of something.
“Our boys didn’t do anything,” Doug Bradford insisted.
“They’re good kids. Honor roll students,” Nicole added.
“As we said back at the house, if they’re innocent, then there’s nothing to worry about in a search. Y’all were incredibly cooperative. We really appreciate that.” Carson sounded almost amiable. “You’ve been on-island all summer, so you know we’ve had some trouble, and we’re eager to get to the bottom of it.”
Doug Bradford was the picture of agreeableness as he nodded, his salt-and-pepper hair hardly moving a millimeter. “Understandable. Which is exactly why we let you search the house.”
I didn’t miss how Damon, the elder of the two boys, jolted at that announcement. Eric’s face paled.
Yeah, you had something to hide that Mommy and Daddy didn’t know about.
“We found some interesting stuff.” Carson put three evidence bags on the table. He tapped each one in turn. “Firecrackers. Lighters. Lighter fluid.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Doug insisted. “I smoke, so the lighter and lighter fluid are mine. And we bought firecrackers for the Fourth of July.”
Carson nodded. “Sure. That makes sense. One of my officers also found this in the outside garbage can.” He added a large plastic bag to the table. Inside was some kind of fabric. An item of clothing? I couldn’t tell from where I watched. “Seems like those are scorch marks on this hoodie.”
Damon lifted his head in defiance. “I caught it on the top element of the oven when I was pulling some tater tots out the other night. Since there was a hole in it, I didn’t see the point in keeping it.”
But Eric’s shoulders were creeping up around his ears.
Nicole’s expression was turning mutinous. A similar shade to her eldest son. “I don’t like any of what you’re implying, Chief Carson.”
Carson smiled, but there was no hiding the edge to it. “I don’t like the mess somebody’s been making of my island.” He set one last evidence bag on the table. Inside was a cell phone. “This is one of those new-fangled models with the facial recognition. I’m a fan of having a fingerprint or proper password myself, but it’s handy in cases like this.” He pulled it out of the bag and tapped the screen on, then held the phone up first to Damon’s face, then to Eric’s. The screen unlocked. With a few more swipes of his fingers, he opened some app on the phone and set the device down on the table.
I didn’t have a good view from here, but I could see shades of red and orange on the screen. Flames?
Carson swiped the screen, moving from image to image. “If your boys are such law-abiding little angels, how is it they’ve got pictures of what appears to be every fire set on this island since the start of the summer?”
Eric’s face had turned a little gray.
Damon stared at him. “You dumb fuck. You took pictures?”
“Damon! Language!”
Doug clearly wasn’t registering the implications of what was happening.
But his wife was staring at her youngest. “Eric, explain yourself.”
The boy’s shoulders were rounded, and his voice was so soft, I almost couldn’t hear it. “It was Damon’s idea.”
Yeah, throw your brother under the bus.
Everyone turned to stare at Damon. I could see him considering the wisdom of doubling down, but ultimately, he threw up his hands. “Yeah, okay, fine. We set a few trash cans on fire. Some mailboxes. It was no big deal. Just little stuff.”
