Chapter 11 - The Husband I Buried

Now

By the time I got back to the office, my phone was already buzzing.

Carl was in my doorway when I arrived, arms crossed, tablet tucked against his chest. His expression told me this wasn’t a routine update.

‘The fire wasn’t an accident,’ he said.

I set my bag down slowly. ‘Start from the beginning.’

He followed me into my office and closed the door behind us, his shirt catching the light.

‘The initial fire report was vague because the investigators hadn’t finished their lab analysis yet,’ he said. ‘But the updated report came through this afternoon.’

I sat, impressed that Carl had managed to get the report. I didn’t ask how he had worked his magic, I was just thankful he had.

‘They found an accelerant,’ he continued. ‘Not gasoline. Not kerosene. Not anything you’d buy at a hardware store.’

‘So, what, then?’ I asked.

Carl hesitated. ‘An oil blend.’

That made me look up.

‘Specifically,’ he said, ‘a mix of essential oils suspended in a carrier oil. High flash point. Burns hot. It’s fast, and clean.’

‘That’s . . . unusual.’

‘It gets better,’ he said grimly. ‘It was poured in a deliberate pattern.’

My stomach tightened. Any hopes I’d been harboring for an accidental spark, some faulty tech or an unfortunate accident, obliterated.

‘Go on.’

‘His body was engulfed in a kind of circle.’

A circle. A containment ring. Not to start a fire – but to keep someone inside it.

I leaned back, the chair creaking softly beneath me.

‘And that’s why the police ruled it a homicide,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Carl replied. ‘Or at least, they found strong evidence of intent.’

‘Any idea where the oil came from?’

Carl tapped his tablet and turned it toward me.

A logo stared back.

A stylized spiral. Soft colors. Serif font.

THE COTERIE INSTITUTE

Alignment. Renewal. Becoming.

My chest went cold.

‘It’s a wellness collective,’ Carl said. ‘They sell oils, supplements, courses. Everything’s branded as “holistic healing”.’

‘Where are they based?’

‘Massachusetts,’ he said. ‘And Spain.’

Of course they were.

‘The oil blend is proprietary,’ Carl continued. ‘Not widely sold. Mostly distributed through workshops and retreats.’

I thought of Rebecca’s bag.

The brochure.

The way she’d shoved it back out of sight.

‘And Brad?’ I asked. ‘Anything in his background?’

Carl nodded. ‘Financial records show repeated payments to the Institute. Retreat fees. Donations. Large ones.’

‘And Rebecca?’

‘Nothing in her name,’ Carl said. ‘But someone registered her for at least two programs.’ I closed my eyes briefly.

‘The oil pattern suggests ignition occurred sometime before midnight. Most likely between eight and eleven thirty p.m. According to the report, Rebecca told police she returned briefly and left before the fire “broke out”. Her words.’

So, she’d told them she was in the house, but not that she’d been there when the fire was blazing.

‘There could be a few reasons she’d tell the police that version. Maybe she panicked, then figured she’d already dug herself a hole that wouldn’t be easy to get out of,’ I said.

‘Maybe,’ Carl agreed. ‘Oh, and get this, apparently, they weren’t married long. Kind of a whirlwind romance.’

‘Does the report say anything else?’ I asked.

Carl scrolled, then stopped, turning the tablet around. ‘There was something else there,’ he said. ‘They found residue – trace amounts of the oil – on the exterior door handle. The back entrance. Not enough for DNA. Not enough to prove transfer. Just . . . presence.’

‘Meaning whoever ignited the fire didn’t leave in a rush,’ I said. ‘They stopped.’

I read through the report quickly, a picture forming in my head as I visualized the crime scene. My chest tightened as my eyes flicked across the screen.

‘They locked the door.’

‘Accidental fires don’t get locked in,’ Carl added. ‘And neither do panicked ones.’

‘Someone had planned this out,’ I said. ‘Oils. A circle.’ I scrunched my nose, a theory forming like an unwelcome smell. ‘It feels almost ritualistic.’

Carl raised an eyebrow, considering it.

‘How did your meeting with Rebecca go? Did she seem . . . guilty?’

I ignored the question. It wasn’t relevant.

‘Well, we walked out of the police station and went for coffee. She certainly seems to have a reason to want her husband out of her life, but I don’t know . . . killing him seems a little extreme. She said he was controlling. He made decisions for her.’

‘If my boyfriend did that, I’d be out of there,’ said Carl without hesitation.

I believed it. I couldn’t see Carl taking orders from anyone, even if they were well-meaning. I walked him through what Rebecca and I had discussed.

‘So,’ he said, ‘someone definitely killed him, and they always suspect the spouse.’

‘We need to go digging. Find out if there was someone else who might want Brad dead.’

‘On it,’ said Carl, gathering up the tablet to take notes.

*

By the time Carl was finished, I already had a strategy forming.

That was always the first step – not belief or doubt, but structure. You didn’t win cases by deciding what felt true. You won them by finding the version of events the law could tolerate.

‘OK,’ I said, pushing my chair back. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’

Carl sat on the edge of the desk, tablet at the ready.

‘Rebecca wasn’t arrested, because they don’t have a clean line from her to ignition,’ I continued. ‘No accelerant on her clothes. No DNA evidence. No eyewitnesses placing her inside the house at the time the fire started.’

‘And the oil?’ Carl asked.

‘The oil establishes method, not actor,’ I said. ‘They know how the fire was set. They still don’t know who set it, but they’ll be looking into it. They’ll search her bank records for purchases linked to the accelerant.’

‘Will the bank give them those details freely?’

‘I doubt it. Unless it was fraud, banks are reluctant to give out client information. Especially if their client has millions invested in their bank.’

Carl looked suddenly interested. ‘Millions?’ he said with a low whistle.

‘It might take the police a while to sift through their accounts.’

I stood and crossed over to the whiteboard.

DEFENSE THEORY: LACK OF INTENT

‘They’ll try to frame this as deliberate,’ I said. ‘A ritual. A contained burn. But intent is the hill they have to die on.’

I wrote:

•   No prior threats

•   No accelerant purchased in Rebecca’s name

•   No forensic tie to ignition

•   No motive strong enough to kill

‘She leaves the house after an argument,’ I continued. ‘She believes he’s asleep. She comes back later to find the fire already underway.’

Carl frowned slightly. ‘But she didn’t call for help.’

‘That could be fear,’ I said. ‘Shock. Panic. The prosecution hates that explanation, but juries understand it.’

I wrote, then underlined, PANIC RESPONSE.

‘People freeze,’ I went on. ‘They make irrational choices when they’re scared. Especially women who’ve been conditioned to doubt their instincts.’

Carl nodded. ‘Abuse dynamics.’

‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘And to prove that, we don’t need bruises. We don’t need hospital records. We show coercive control. Emotional dominance. Routine enforcement.’

I paused, then added another line:

•   Victim’s rigidity / need for control

Carl glanced at the board. ‘And the locked door?’

‘We don’t explain it,’ I said. ‘We dilute it.’

I capped the marker, using it as a pointer on the board.

‘Heat transfer. Firefighter movement. Secondary contact. They’ll bring in an expert to say it’s possible.’

‘Possible is enough,’ Carl said.

‘For now,’ I agreed.

I stepped back, looking at the theory laid out in clean black strokes.

It was solid. More than solid.

This version of events could hold.

Rebecca didn’t kill her husband.

‘We need to find out if that door locks from the inside,’ I said, deep in thought. ‘Anyone who accessed the house that night could have accidentally triggered the lock.’

Carl’s fingers moved quickly, tapping out notes as we talked. ‘She left. A fire started. A tragedy followed.’

Intent blurred into an unfortunate set of circumstances, in which Rebecca was a victim too.

Carl studied me. ‘You believe this?’

The question caught me off guard.

‘I believe it’s defensible,’ I said carefully.

That was the truth.

I gathered my files, already mentally preparing motions. Suppression arguments. Expert witnesses. Narrative framing.

I’d built stronger cases on thinner facts.

Still, as I turned off the light in my office late that evening, something nagged.

The theory depended on chaos.

On panic. Or fear.

But nothing about the fire report suggested chaos.

It suggested order. It suggested a plan.

I pushed my thoughts away.

Every defense has gaps. That didn’t make them fatal.

I just hoped there was nothing tying Rebecca to the accelerant that was used to set the fire.