Elias had washed the two controls and set them on a white cloth.
Maya stopped at the bench. “Should you have cleaned them?”
“I've photographed everything. I needed to see the marks.”
He sounded impatient, as if she had arrived to question the one thing he knew how to do. She didn't touch the parts. The blackened edges were different, but the maker's stamp and small batch number matched.
Rae was standing on the other side of the bench, notebook open. She'd been there before Maya arrived. Nobody had waited to begin.
“Photographs aren't the same as leaving them alone,” Rae said. “Don't clean anything else. I'm telling the investigator what you've done.”
“These came from the same shipment.” She pointed to the matching stamps. “I installed both. Jory was with me at Mercer.”
“Does that tell you what caused the fires?” Maya asked.
“No.” Rae ran her thumbnail along the notebook's cover. “It tells me we need to check the other ones.”
“A crew is doing that,” Elias said.
“Which ones?”
“The ones we've identified.”
“You have the invoices. I've got my book. Give me something to compare.”
“I'm pulling the list.”
Maya could see him holding back the sheet with his body. The radio was off today. A telephone in the office rang, and he let it go to voicemail. Rae's brisk younger voice told the caller to leave an address.
The front bell sounded before the message finished. Daniel Soto came in with a paper bag tucked under his good arm. He stopped when he saw all three of them.
“My landlord said you were expecting me.”
Elias moved to the counter. “Yes. I asked him to tell you we'd help with—”
“He said bring the bill.” Daniel took out a clinic invoice, a note about missed work, and a sealed packet of medicine. “I couldn't open that. My daughter wasn't there when I got home.”
Rae took a pair of scissors from a drawer. “Do you want me to cut the edge?”
He nodded. She did it and gave the packet back.
Daniel looked at Maya. “Are you the one who knew?”
“I'm the dispatcher who took the warning.”
“Then maybe you can tell me why nobody told me the heater was bad.”
“I didn't know it was. Elias gave me your address and the time.”
Daniel turned to Elias. “How?”
“I received information.”
“That's what she just said.”
Elias took the invoice as if it might help him answer. Daniel watched him put it beside the keyboard.
“Mrs. Malik's nephew has a room for her,” Daniel said. “She keeps telling him to call me and apologize. My hand is hurt and she's apologizing. Can somebody from your firm call her and tell her she's not the reason?”
“Yes,” Rae said.
Elias said it at the same time. Their voices met awkwardly. Daniel looked between them, then wrote the nephew's number on the paper bag.
“I can lift with the other hand,” he said. “My manager says that doesn't count. The boxes don't get lighter because I'm sorry.”
“We'll make a payment toward those costs,” Elias said.
“Today?”
He hesitated. Daniel gave him a bleak smile.
“Today,” Elias said.
Rae went to the office computer. Daniel stood at the counter while she found the details they needed. Maya saw Elias look at the two damaged controls and then away, as if he had hoped they could remain a private problem while the man with a bandaged hand was in the room.
When Daniel left, he stopped beside Maya.
“I'm glad the crew was there,” he said. “I mean that. I still had to decide what to do. Mrs. Malik was shouting upstairs. I couldn't stand there listening.”
Maya nodded. Daniel put the opened medicine in his coat pocket and left.
After the bell settled, Rae put the scissors back.
“My mother's control,” she said to Elias. “Same shipment?”
He looked at Maya, who didn't know.
“Yes,” he said.
“I installed that too.” Rae turned pages. “No invoice. A family favor.”
Maya felt the floor cold through her shoes. Her house had been warm when she'd left. She'd eaten breakfast beside the heater, half asleep, listening to an ordinary ticking noise.
“Can you check it?” she asked.
“I can take it out of use until somebody knows what we're dealing with.” Rae looked up. “Don't turn it on to see whether it does something.”
“I won't.”
“I know. Sorry.” She shut the notebook. “I'll come after the last job. I have the key if you've already left.”
Elias started to say he could go. Rae was already putting on her jacket.
“You have customers to call,” she told him. “Tell them about the fires. Don't tell them you're doing routine checks.”
She left him at the bench.
Maya waited. “Give me the list.”
“Imani can request the company records. I'm not giving my customer accounts to my ex-wife.”
Maya tightened the strap of her bag. She had no right to take the papers. She still wanted them.
“Then I'll tell her to request them.”
He nodded once. The gesture seemed to cost him more than she'd expected.
Outside, Maya called Imani before getting into her car. She named the two returned controls, the matching batch marks Rae had shown her, and her own house. She was not an electrician and couldn't diagnose the failure. Rae could be contacted about the installations. Elias was tracing other jobs.
“Come in early,” Imani said. “We'll add it to your statement and pass the concern on.”
Maya looked back at the shop window.
She had known since the first night that Rae's firm had worked at Lark. Yesterday she'd seen the damaged part and waited for Elias to finish explaining it. She couldn't move those facts forward a day to make herself quicker.
“There's something else,” she told Imani. “I'll give you the time I first learned each part of it. I waited.”
“We'll take the times,” Imani said.
Maya drove home without turning on the car radio. At a red light she scanned the windows of the apartment building across the intersection. No smoke. She caught herself doing it, but the relief had already come.