The Figure Eight

You wake up on the porch at six with a crick in your neck and your phone face-down on your chest.

You don't reread the conversation. You don't need to. You can still hear it, the way her texts came in bursts, three and four at a time, then a gap, then sorry, then another one anyway. Five years, and she still types like she's talking with her hands.

You stand under the shower until the hot water runs out. Then you go to work.

Sunday on Pier Road is quiet. No trucks, no forklifts, just gulls on the fence line and the smell of the marsh cooking in the sun. The warehouse has stopped smoking. It's done talking. Now it just sits there, waiting for you to read it.

You and Marisela grid the floor with string and stakes. Biscuit works each square. You photograph every burn mark, measure every trail, sketch it all on graph paper the old way, because the old way makes you look.

By noon the drawing on your clipboard is finished. You stare at it.

Two origins, forty feet apart, Bay B and Bay D. Between them, the pour trail. It doesn't run straight. It loops out from Bay B, swings around a row of pallets, crosses itself at the center of the floor, loops around the other side and ends at Bay D. Two rings joined in the middle.

A figure eight.

"That's weird," Marisela says, looking over your shoulder. "Who pours like that? If I want to burn a building, I walk a line. I'm not doing ballet."

"Somebody who wants the fire to meet itself in the middle," you say. "Two fronts. The center flashes first. The roof comes down faster." You tap the crossing point. "And somebody who's done it before."

"How do you know that?"

You don't answer. You fold the drawing and put it in your pocket. "I need to see a man about a fire."

Saltmarsh Bay Fire Station 3 is red brick with two tall bay doors and a bench out front where the old-timers sit and judge everybody's parking. Sunday dinner is on. You can smell the gumbo from the street.

Obie Treadwell is in the kitchen in an apron that says KISS THE CAPTAIN, stirring a pot the size of a trash can. He's fifty-two, built like a refrigerator, and moves like he has all the time in the world, right up until a fire, when he moves faster than anybody you've ever seen.

"Well, look at this," he says without turning around. "State man comes to visit the peasants."

"Hey, Cap."

"You hungry?"

"Always."

He ladles you a bowl and doesn't ask anything until you've eaten half of it. That's Obie. He hired you at twenty-two when you were nobody, taught you how to read smoke, stood up at your wedding and, five years ago, drove you home from the courthouse in Beaufort without saying one word the whole way, which was the kindest thing anybody did for you that year.

You take the drawing out of your pocket and flatten it on the table.

Obie wipes his hands and looks at it for a long time. The gumbo bubbles behind him. A couple of the young guys come in for seconds, see his face, and go back out.

"Sweetgrass," he says finally.

"Yeah."

"You said something about that floor. That night. I remember." He rubs his jaw. "You were standing in the water at four in the morning pointing at the concrete, and you said, Cap, somebody poured that in a loop. And I said..."

"You said leave it to the county."

"I said leave it to the county." He sits down heavily across from you. "And the county said a drifter knocked over a kerosene heater and burned himself up. Dub Yarbrough. They wrote him up like nobody'd miss him."

"Cletus Spruill wrote that report."

Obie's eyes come up to yours, slow. "So he did."

The kitchen is quiet except for the pot.

"Who owned Sweetgrass, Cap?"

"Some holding company out of Charleston. Palmetto something. The cannery was shut down, been empty for years." He frowns. "Why?"

"I don't know yet."

"Son." Obie puts one big hand flat on the drawing. "You're looking at a Kavanagh building with a Kavanagh girl's car on camera. And you're thinking about a fire from five years back that happened two months before that same girl walked out on you. I'm going to ask you once, and I want you to think before you answer. Are you looking at this because it's there? Or because you want it to be?"

It's a fair question. It's the question you've been asking yourself since you saw the loop on the floor yesterday morning.

"It's there," you say. "I didn't put it there."

Obie nods. "Then be careful who you show it to."

The call from the state lab in Columbia comes at four-fifteen, while you're sitting in your truck outside the station with the drawing on the dash.

"Trunk carpet," the analyst says. "Gasoline with a heavy diesel fraction. Same blend as your debris samples from both origins, as far as I can tell this fast. I'll have the full comparison Tuesday."

"Thanks."

"That's not why I'm calling." Paper rustles. "Investigator Spruill asked us to run the purchase records you flagged. Pruitt's Marine Supply, Saltmarsh Bay. Thursday, two-forty in the afternoon. Two five-gallon gas cans, red, plus a funnel. Paid with a credit card in the name of Paloma A. Kavanagh."

You close your eyes.

"Investigator? You there?"

"I'm here. Is there video?"

"Store has one camera, over the register. Spruill's pulling it tomorrow."

You thank her. You hang up. You sit there with the engine running and the AC blasting cold on your face and look at the figure eight on your dashboard.

A drifter's kerosene heater. A spoiled heiress with a grudge. Two short stories, five years apart, both written by Cletus Spruill. Both with the same loop burned into the floor.

Your phone rings again. Not a text this time. A call. The screen says Don't.

You let it ring three times. You answer on the fourth.

"You heard about the gas cans," Paloma says. Not a question.

"Yeah."

"I didn't buy them." She sounds like she's walking, fast; you can hear gravel and wind. "I was at the dentist in Beaufort Thursday at two-forty, Ethan. I have a receipt. I have a numb lip in a selfie I sent Lettie. I don't know how my card... It doesn't matter. That's not why I called."

"Then why did you call?"

The wind stops. She's stopped walking. You can hear her breathing.

"Because you're going to find out anyway," she says. "And I'd rather you heard it from me than from that floor."

Your hand goes still on the wheel. "Heard what?"

"Meet me at Warehouse 4 tonight. Eleven o'clock. Come alone, Ethan." Her voice drops so low you have to press the phone to your ear. "I'm going to tell you why I signed."