Free Clouds without Rain by P. L. Gaus Page B

back of the house. Only the upright studs remained, charred, with irregular patches of blackened wallboard hanging here and there in the ruins. The kitchen counters and cabinets had burned and canted inward, spilling their contents onto the rubble on the floor.
    As he crossed the flagstone patio at the back of the house, Branden’s feet crunched broken glass and splintered wood trim. Inside, he saw Captain Bobby Newell and the Millersburg fire chief working in the middle of the kitchen, painstakingly lifting boards, ceiling plaster, and sections of an interior wall from a long kitchen table that stood in the center of the room. He eased himself carefully through the back door frame and stood inside the sooty room to survey the damage.
    Newell ushered Branden out onto the back patio and asked, “What do you smell, Professor?”
    Branden, somewhat dazed, turned to Newell and asked, “What? What did you say?”
    “What do you smell?”
    “Smoke,” Branden said, puzzled.
    “No. It’s out here, mostly,” Newell said. “Smoke and burnt wood inside, where the fire was hottest, but what do you smell out here?”
    Branden shrugged.
    Newell bent over, picked up a tatter of window curtain, and held it to his nose. Then to Branden’s nose.
    “Gasoline,” Branden said, frowning.
    “It’s all over out here, where the initial burst scattered all this glass.”
    “Arson.”
    “Exactly.”
    “I’m praying, Bobby, that the next thing you tell me is not that you found Britta Sommers in there.”
    “She’s not there, Mike. Not at work, either. And we can’t raise her on her cell phone.”
    Branden said, “I didn’t notice whether or not her car is parked out front.”
    Newell nodded, “It is,” and Branden groaned, clasped his fingers on top of his head, and dropped into one of the wet patio chairs.

10
    Thursday, August 10
4:58 P.M.
     
     
    CAL Troyer went looking for the professor late that afternoon on the campus of Millersburg College and found him in the firearms restoration labs in the darkened basement of the Museum of Battlefield Firearms. Branden was perched on a tall stool in front of a workbench on the far wall. There were two intense work lights trained on the work surface, which was covered with a thin rubber mat. Laid out on the mat were the sundry parts of an antique firearm. Branden was scrubbing meticulously with a toothbrush, cleaning the trigger group on a long gun. The gray metal parts and the brown wood stock were arranged in roughly the same order on the mat as they would take when the piece was fully reassembled.
    Cal descended the steps, crossed the large, darkened room to Branden’s workbench, and asked, “You got time to talk, Mike?”
    Without looking up from his work, Branden said, “Hi, Cal,” a weary tone in his voice.
    Troyer stepped into the light of the workbench and leaned on his elbows to inspect the separate parts of the rifle. “Got someone’s old rifle in the mail again?” he asked.
    “Came in last week,” Branden said as he worked.
    “Civil War?”
    “No. Pre-Civil War. More like the Black Hawk Wars. It’s a breech-loading Hall. Made at Harpers Ferry in the 1830s.”
    Cal picked up the gray metal bayonet, fiddled with it absently, put it back in place, and said, “Lawrence Mallory told me you were down here.”
    “I didn’t know Lawrence was in today,” Branden said. He finished with the trigger group, set the works down, and turned on his stool to face Troyer.
    “Are you working or thinking?” Cal asked, leaning sideways with his elbow on the bench.
    “I like thinking down here. Quiet.”
    “I understand you’re helping the sheriff with the buggy wreck out at John Weaver’s place,” Cal said. He pushed away from the workbench and stuffed his large hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He wore a plain white T-shirt that fit snugly over the muscles of his chest and arms. There was a carpenter’s knife strapped to his belt. He was short and stocky, with