Warren called Pinky into the back room at the barracks once Tommy had gone home for supper and showed him the reports Tommy had brought from Burlington. In addition to the autopsy results, he had brought a report from the state fire investigator, who had concluded that the fire had been deliberately set. The point of origin had been next to the cot and gasoline had been used as an accelerant, just as Warren had suspected.
The state pathologist had completed the autopsy on what remained of Hugh Weber. He had likely died, the report concluded, from concurrent smoke inhalation and bleeding on his brain due to a head injury sustained at some point before death.
“The extent of thermal degradation makes it difficult to ascertain whether radiating fractures to the skull and the brain damage that would result caused subject’s death or whether the injury occurred first and then Mr. Weber died of smoke inhalation.”
Warren read the description of the injury to Pinky. There was a linear fracture at the back of the victim’s skull that, if he had still been alive, would have caused massive bleeding in his brain. Indeed, what was left of his brain tissue did indicate catastrophic bleeding. But it was unclear if it had happened before or after the smoke inhalation. The upshot of the report was that Hugh Weber could have been killed by an attack with a blunt object and then, almost at the exact same moment, died in the fire. It was also possible that he could have died when the fire caused a timber from the barn to fall and hit him on the head. Warren remembered that the firemen had removed a charred timber from the burned cot where they’d found Hugh Weber’s body.
“Unless he was so drunk he couldn’t move, he would have to have been sitting up and turning toward the door to the office in order for the timber to hit him on the back of the head,” Warren said.
Pinky’s eyes widened and he said, “So you think…”
“I don’t know what I think, but do something for me, will you?” he told Pinky, dragging two chairs together to make a small bed. “Lie down there on your back.” Pinky gamely assumed the position, tucking his knees up to fit on the chairs. He folded his hands over his chest and closed his eyes in an expression of mock repose. Warren laughed and Pinky grinned, then blushed furiously, the pink spreading across his cheeks and temples.
“Okay,” Warren said. “Now, sit up, like you’re checking on something. You’re lying on the cot and maybe you hear something. Yeah, just like that, not all the way. Now, turn your head to the right. Yeah.” Pinky did as he said, holding the position. Warren let his hand drop from a few feet above Pinky’s head to mimic a falling beam. The back of his skull did jut out a bit; it was the natural spot where the beam would have hit his head, but Warren thought the angle might be wrong. If the beam was falling from above, it would have to have rotated slightly as it fell in order to hit the back of Pinky’s skull head-on. Was it plausible that it had? Yes. Likely? Warren wasn’t sure, but he’d found in his line of work that, just as with medicine, the most obvious solution was usually the correct one in criminal investigation. Yes, strange things happened. But they didn’t happen as frequently as normal things happened.
So, possibly an accident, but more likely murder. Warren felt his heart speed up and touched the back of his skull. He would have been hit from behind. A picture jumped into his mind: Hugh Weber sitting at his desk in the barn, typing away at the typewriter, someone—the arsonist?—coming up behind him, hitting him in the back of the head with a blunt object, Weber falling to the ground, the assailant dragging him to the cot and then pouring gasoline on the floor and lighting the match. Or maybe he was already on the cot. So … a lover? That seemed unlikely. Wouldn’t Sylvie Weber have seen someone arrive? The picture grew murky.
“If someone killed him,” Warren said aloud to Pinky, who was looking curious about what was going on in Warren’s head, “then we’re back to the same question. How did the assailant get out of the barn? We know that the barn door was locked from the inside. Sylvie Weber said the only other way out was blocked by the piled bales of hay and when we checked it out, it looked like that was the case.”
“Right.” Pinky tapped his head, thinking. “And we don’t think he could have climbed up the inside or down the outside without a ladder. There might be another way out of the barn, though. My grandparents’ barn has tons of little doors and hatches and things. There were boards nailed to the walls that you could climb up to get into the haymow. My sisters and brothers and I used to play hide-and-seek in there and I liked to sneak out and go around to hide somewhere my brother had already looked. Used to drive him crazy.”
Warren looked at him. “You’re right. But if there was a door like that, why didn’t she tell us?”
Pinky shrugged, then flushed as he realized what Warren was implying. “You think Sylvie Weber…?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Warren said. “Anyway, if someone hit him on the head and then dragged his body over and set the fire, it must have been someone who was determined, who felt they had a good reason to murder him. And someone fairly strong.”
“If he was murdered,” Pinky pointed out. “That report only says he could have been.”
“Dammit, you’re right,” Warren said. If, if, if. He felt a sudden flash of frustration. He needed something to go on. Something solid. And right now, the most solid thing he had was that man in the woods, the one who had been watching them after they responded to the second fire. He told Pinky about his realization that wanting to get hold of the Webers’ farm could have been a motive for murder too.
Warren sighed. Outside the barracks, the dark had closed in, just a few streaks of yellow-and-gray sunset in the sky. “It’s late, Pinky,” he said. “It’s been a long day and I need some supper and a night of real sleep. But tomorrow I want to go talk to those farmers who wanted Weber’s land and I’d like you to come with me. Sylvie Weber said there was bad blood there. If someone did kill him, it’s got to be someone with a motive like that.”
Pinky looked delighted at the new angle. This was the stuff, real investigation. This was what he’d imagined when he’d thought about assisting the new detective, Warren thought, a real lead, a new thread to pull.
Just wait until he experienced the way the threads of an investigation could unravel before you, though, just like a sweater caught on a nail.