THERE IS NO way that a human being smelled smoke through a closed door in an outer hallway before the room’s smoke detector sounded,” McKinnon said.
I leaned against the empty room’s dresser and agreed. “Maybe a wererat would smell it, but I don’t know enough about the sensitivity of smoke detectors to make that call.”
“Why not just shapeshifters, why wererats specifically?” Dolph asked.
“Rats have one of the best noses in the animal kingdom, better than dogs,” I said.
Dolph made a note.
“Well, I don’t know much about shapeshifters, but a human being did not beat the smoke detector,” McKinnon said.
“She got the fire extinguisher and then entered the room,” I said.
“That’s why she knocked and announced herself first,” McKinnon said.
I nodded. “Just in case the vampire was already awake for the night. If he’d answered she’d have asked if he needed anything, or said she’d come back later.”
McKinnon and I nodded. Dolph just stood there making notes and thinking. I’d begun to suspect that sometimes doodling in the notebook helped him think, but maybe he made in-depth notes. I wasn’t going to arm-wrestle it away from him to check, and without a stepladder I was too short to peek.
“Are we all thinking she opened the drapes and then waited to put out the fire so there was no loss of life other than the victim?” Dolph asked.
McKinnon and I exchanged a look, then turned back to Dolph. I said, “Yes.” McKinnon said, “We are.”
“Let’s go talk to our hero,” Dolph said.