“Half an hour?” she guessed.
“According to the fire captain, less than two minutes passed between when the alarm went off and when you busted out of the window. I think it’s reasonable, in an emergency, that no one was able to reach you in that span. Unfortunate, of course. But reasonable.”
Lana looked at him, incredulous. She couldn’t decide if it was more surprising that she hadn’t been forgotten or that she’d escaped so quickly.
Choi was moving on. “The fire started outside,” he said. “We found remnants of a remote-activated incendiary device in the brush behind the building.” He pulled out a photograph and passed it across the table. “Does anything here look familiar to you?”
The picture was a mess of blackened dirt, splintered wood, and broken glass. The central focus was a puckered exterior wall with a gaping hole in it. The hole looked like it was puking out the guts of the building, a mixture of drywall, curled brown paper, and metal rings.
“This is behind the building?”
“That’s correct.”
Lana closed her eyes and recalled the floor plan. “There was a back door, and a long glass cabinet along the back wall of the building. It held all their records in heavy binders.”
She opened her eyes and pointed to the twisted metal rings in the picture. “That’s probably what’s left of them.”
She thought of everything in Ricardo’s binders, the papers that were now destroyed. Thank God she’d taken pictures. She wondered what, if anything, she might have missed.
“What are those?” she asked, pointing to a few specks of yellow and red in the photograph peeking out from under a charred brown blob.
“We think that’s what was used to set the fire.”
“Dynamite?”
Choi suppressed a smile. “You’d be half-deaf if that was the case.”
“I heard a noise that sounded like a car backfiring—”
He made a note. “That could have been it. It was a black powder device, probably stuffed in a cardboard box with rags and accelerant. We believe it may have been one of those shell crackers orchardists use to scare away birds.”
“Shell crackers?”
Choi nodded. “They look like this.” He showed her a picture of a small, plasticky black-and-orange gun. It looked like a toy. Lana wondered whether the land trust had trouble with birds on any of the reclaimed farms they managed, and, if so, what they used to flush them out.
Choi was still explaining. “But bird bombs can also be in the form of cartridges that are activated remotely. Which is what we believe happened in this case.”
“Is that complicated?” Lana thought of Martin and his tiny robots.
The detective shrugged. “Not particularly. Lots of farmers have remote systems for pest control.”
“Could it be triggered from inside the building?”
“Sure. Or a vehicle parked nearby.”
“Like my Lexus?” A spike of pain flashed across Lana’s forehead. “Are you kidding me? First you go after my granddaughter, and now this?”
“Ms. Rubicon”—Choi put his hands up in a conciliatory gesture—“your car was processed. It’s clean. No black powder. No remote control.”
Lana said a silent thanks that Beth never had given her a clicker for the garage. Then she remembered something. “There was a rusted Toyota in the parking lot . . .”
Choi nodded. “We checked it.”
“And the BMW parked on the street?”
“It belongs to Mr. Morales.”
“Was it clean?”
“Do you have a concern about Mr. Morales?”
“Detective, do you know why I was visiting the land trust?”
“Mr. Morales told us you were inquiring about Ricardo Cruz. He was quite eager to hear about your recovery.”
“I’ve been looking into Ricardo’s work on a property near the slough. Near where his body was found.” Lana attempted a small smile in Ramirez’s direction. “Not to step on your toes, of course. Just, my granddaughter, well . . . I want her to be safe.”
“So you threw yourself out of a burning building,” Ramirez said. The detective’s eyes were firm.
“I told you, I was trapped. And I’m just wondering—what if I was the intended victim of the fire? Because of my . . . investigation?”
Ramirez raised her hand to her mouth and covered a strangled cough. Lana had the impression she was trying to hide a snort of laughter, or disdain. She couldn’t tell which.