The house didn't look like it had been too much to begin with, but that didn't make it right for someone to have burnt it down, for whatever reason. The wood on the door and windows was charred like the trees, and there was ash on the front porch and steps, most likely from when firefighters ran back and forth inside the house to extinguish the flames. Kenzie could only imagine the condition the interior of the house was in.
Pulling her hair back into a ponytail and tying it with a ribbon, Kenzie grabbed her camera out of her evidence kit and followed Tara toward the front of the house. Crime scene tape was in front of it, but she ducked underneath it to begin. She then just stopped and stared at what lay before her.
A large pile of unsalvageable items was nearby, among the weeds, all that remained of what was probably a once lovely garden. Broken boards lay scattered haphazardly about. The house looked as though it may fall down at any given moment, but Tara had assured her that it was safe for them to go inside.
After she finished taking the exterior pictures, Kenzie and Tara headed inside. The door was surprisingly unlocked. As Kenzie had suspected, the interior looked even worse. Furniture was scorched, the walls smoldered so the paper was unrecognizable, broken objects lay everywhere, and even more boards littered the floor. She shook her head sadly and took more pictures.
The kitchen seemed to have gotten the worst of the damage. But that didn't say much, since it was very easy for a fire to start in a kitchen. One only had to be a bad cook and unfamiliar with the oven or stove, or even the microwave, to ignite a spark powerful enough to burn down the house.
Still, Kenzie had her doubts about that when she looked inside an overturned trash can and found a match.
"Something tells me no one found this," she said as she stood up and showed it to Tara. Tara looked at it and raised her eyebrows. "I guess not. Of course, it was kind of camouflaged into the surroundings."
"True, but I have to ask, have you had anyone else look for evidence in this house? Or the other one that was burned down?"
"We had a few detectives pop in and look around, but this is Twinbrook we're talking about. The biggest crimes that usually happen here are neighbors borrowing things and not returning them. I doubt the detectives expected to find anything incriminating."
Kenzie tried not to roll her eyes at the idiocy of Twinbrook's detectives. It was a town similar to Riverview, but to her, it had even more crime than her nice little farm town. There were a lot of criminals in Twinbrook, and plenty of places to hide what with the swamp. But she didn't say any of this. She just kept going from room to room in the house, documenting the sad fate of what was once a family home.
The saddest part was looking at bedrooms that unmistakably belonged to a little boy and a toddler girl. Most of the toys were ruined and it looked like neither bedroom would be habitable for quite some time.
"Please tell me the kids who lived here are all right," she said to Tara, who followed her through every room in the house.
"Everyone's fine," Tara replied. "No one has been hurt from any of these fires. Like I said, no one was home when they started."
Just then, Tara's cell phone rang. She answered it with an authoritative, "Hello?"
Kenzie continued digging for clues, but tilted her head when she heard Tara sigh.
"Fine, go ahead and take care of that. I'll be back as soon as I can."
The person on the other end of the line said something that made Tara reply with, "For the millionth time, no. He can't start looking into the arsons. He isn't a licensed detective, and we don't have a name, so that won't work. Tell him if he asks again, I'll throw him in jail for harassment. Even though I technically can't do that, but he doesn't need to know that."
Kenzie furrowed her brow as she stood up from looking at a pile of toys. Tara hung up the phone and rolled her eyes. "I swear, that guy is the most stubborn person I've ever known."
"Who's that?"
"Oh, a local who takes the whole vigilante thing to the next level."
"Vigilante?"
"I guess that isn't the way to put it. No, the guy's a bounty hunter. In Twinbrook, we usually have a name to go with a crime, and some chucklehead got the idea of putting bounties on the heads of these criminals, and this guy is forever bringing them in for payment. He tries to uphold the law even though he doesn't wear a badge."
"I can see why you'd find that annoying."
Kenzie didn't elaborate that if there was one type of person she couldn't stand, it was a bounty hunter. What was the point? Why not get an actual job, something that would basically be doing the same thing, but in the right way instead of the rebellious way?
At last, Kenzie finished collecting evidence and the two headed back to the police station. Along the way, she hoped that bounty hunter wouldn't still be at the police station. From the sounds of it, he almost wanted to do her job for her, since Tara had mentioned the arsons. She wasn't about to let that happen. If he was there, she'd give him a piece of her mind.
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