When the House Burns

A Coffeetown Press book published by Epicenter PressEpicenter Press6524 NE 181st St.Suite 2Kenmore, WA 98028 For more information go to:www.Camelpress.comwww.Coffeetownpress.comwww.Epicenterpress.comwww.priscillapaton.comAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.Cover design by Scott BookAuthor photo by Brett DorrianWhen the House BurnsCopyright © 2023 by Priscilla PatonISBN: 978-1-68492-081-5 (Trade Paper)ISBN: 978-1-68492-082-2 (eBook)Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941478Produced in the United States of America For David CONTENTSACKNOWLEDGEMENTSCHAPTER 1CHAPTER 2CHAPTER 3CHAPTER 4CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 6CHAPTER 7CHAPTER 8CHAPTER 9CHAPTER 10CHAPTER 11CHAPTER 12CHAPTER 13CHAPTER 14CHAPTER 15CHAPTER 16CHAPTER 17CHAPTER 18CHAPTER 19CHAPTER 20CHAPTER 21CHAPTER 22CHAPTER 23CHAPTER 24CHAPTER 25CHAPTER 26CHAPTER 27CHAPTER 28CHAPTER 29CHAPTER 30CHAPTER 31CHAPTER 32CHAPTER 33CHAPTER 34CHAPTER 35CHAPTER 36CHAPTER 37CHAPTER 38CHAPTER 39CHAPTER 40CHAPTER 41CHAPTER 42CHAPTER 43CHAPTER 44 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSWhen the House Burns is a work of fiction buttressed by research. For sharing their time and expertise, I wish to thank Paul and Kathy Anderson of Amaximmo Realty, Doug Beussman of St. Olaf College, Greg Casura of Stock & Barrel Gun Club, Paul Gardner for context on the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, Mary Ella and Rick Jones of Jones Associates, Daren Maas of Boldt Construction, and Suzanne Terry of Edina Realty. I am indebted to the Twin Cities Chapter of Sisters in Crime which, conveniently for this book, hosted speakers on fire investigation, firearms, law enforcement’s collaboration with social workers, and homelessness. For being sympathetic readers, I thank Jill Ewald, Michelle Kubitz, Krishna Lewis, and Timya Owen. As always, I am deeply grateful to Jennifer McCord, Coffeetown Press, and Phil Garrett, Epicenter Press, for supporting Erik and Deb in their adventures. Places in the book are a mix of fact and fiction. The Father of Waters statue is real, and the Survivors Memorial in Boom Island Park is the first in the nation to honor survivors of sexual violence. My family sustained me through the challenges of the pandemic time, and I dedicate this book with love to my husband David. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,They have to take you in.”“I should have called itSomething you somehow haven’t to deserve.”—Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”“Who is good if he knows not who he is?”—Epictetus CHAPTER 1THE ONLY FOREVER HOME IS DEATH. Yet the manner of its purchase—natural, accidental, suicidal, homicidal—can be put to trial. Not that once gained, one loses ownership of death, but among survivors there will be winners and losers. Those who profit would cancel out any lien against death’s aftermath and demand a deed free and clear, while the losers cannot even measure the loss. Impossible to fix are the boundaries of absence and grief. Detective Deb Metzger shivered off a haunted feeling as she stood where a body outline had been. That’s what made this condo unit cheap and available, the sudden death discount. Deb spread her arms, her blazer sleeves receding from her wrists, and attempted a spin in the open-plan room. Her athletic six-footer self couldn’t swing a dead cat in here, if she had a dead cat to swing. She went to the window hoping to see a swath of October foliage flaring across Minnesota’s Twin Cities. The view this Wednesday consisted of an early morning drizzle on the gray lanes of Highway 100, which ran north-south through the inner ring suburb of St. Louis Park. “Inner Ring” sounded magical, though the magic Deb experienced was a sinister chill seeping from the walls—likely a ghost from the past, given that the décor remained stuck in the 1980s of sponge-dabbed paint and tile countertops, in this case a counter harlequined pink and green. The chill sucked the life from the room, and Deb shivered again. Spaces should breathe. It was her partner in crime-solving, Detective Erik Jansson, who insisted that spaces breathe. She should receive hazard pay for working with inscrutable Erik at Greater Metro Investigations. Greater Metro, G-Met, was not the transit police, not a delivery service, not a booster organization. It was a fully-fledged public unit pushed out of the nest by other regional law enforcement agencies. Deb and Erik could see eye-to-eye since he was 6'2" in shoes and she was 6'2" in stacked boots. It didn’t work out that way. Erik handled crises with a sleight of hand, mind, and body that twisted him out of trouble, whereas Trouble with a capital T shined a spotlight on Deb, tossed her in a thicket, and left her to whack her way out with a machete. During a close call when Erik almost didn’t twist free and Deb’s whack was off target, she had an unnerving exposure to her partner’s phobia about tight spaces. She mocked him, non-blond taciturn Scandinavian that he was, for conceding that. In this death-discount condo, she understood what he meant about room for air. This stagnant box was not what she wanted at all.She wanted acres. Space to shake off the day’s resentments, to let go the traumas of her domestic violence and homicide cases, to push away dismay over the world as it is. Six hundred square feet wouldn’t cut it. Deb shut her eyes only to experience vertigo. She opened them and yanked at her bleached hair spikes. She should take a gander at the bedroom, where it didn’t take much space to engage in fantastic sex. It would take the woman of Deb’s dreams whoever, wherever, she was.The real estate agent had disappeared, either sucked into the vortex of the mysterious chill or scared off by her admission that she pursued murderers. Ah, Deb remembered, the young man had stepped out into the hall. He’d been willing to show her the place at 6:30 a.m., before she was due at work, but deserted her to make phone calls or fall asleep standing