Chapter 15 - The Witness in the Orchard
We found Mrs. Alvarez behind the abandoned packing shed at the edge of the orchard. Her sweater was torn, and she was holding a garden spade like a weapon. When Marcus called her name, she swung it at him.
"Stay away!" she cried. "I won't go with those men!"
"It's Caroline," I said, stepping into the open. "Mrs. Alvarez, Mom used to bring you peach pie every August."
She stared at my face. Then she began to weep. "Oh, sweetheart. They told me you were a ghost."
An ambulance checked her blood pressure while she told us what had happened. Two men in work jackets had come to her door and demanded the security footage she'd saved from the night Blackthorn burned. She'd made a copy years ago after seeing a truck leave the estate without its lights on.
"I thought the police had it," she said. "When your funeral came, I mailed the disc to Mr. Kessler's office. Then a man told me to keep quiet if I wanted to keep my home."
"Do you still have it?" Marcus asked.
She nodded. "I gave my grandson a duplicate. He hides things better than I do."
Her grandson, sixteen-year-old Noah, arrived on a bicycle twenty minutes later. He took a scratched memory card from inside the rubber grip of his handlebar. Marcus sent it to the forensic unit under an evidence receipt.
On the preliminary viewing, the garden camera showed Bernard Kessler's black van entering through the service gate at 6:42 p.m., after Juliette claimed she had already left. A man stepped out with a metal container. Juliette appeared beside him and pointed toward the rear hall.
Then the frame went white as the house lights flashed.
"Who is that man?" I asked, leaning closer.
May you like
Mrs. Alvarez gripped my sleeve. "His name is Daniel Pike. He fixed the locks at Blackthorn."
Marcus's expression changed. "Pike died last year," he said. "At least that's what his death certificate says."
