"I have insomnia, officer. I took strong sleeping pills last night. I didn’t hear or sll anything until the commotion woke up. If you don’t believe , you’re welco to test my blood." She paused, her voice heavy with grief. "My husband... he..." Her voice broke, and she gestured toward Ryan. "This is my youngest, Ryan. He woke up."
Ryan stepped forward reluctantly, his face ghostly pale, his eyes hollow. His body trembled as if a chilling wind had swept through him. Katrina’s gaze turned toward him, her smile thinning.
"Mr. Ryan, I’ve heard about you," Katrina began, her tone asured. "Perhaps you can tell why this fire happened? If your wife was unaware, then surely you might have noticed sothing."
Ryan’s voice was barely above a whisper as he shook his head. "No... no, I didn’t. I got ho two hours ago. I was about to check on my brother’s pulse—his routine check-up—when I saw the flas. The fire was too intense; I couldn’t go in. So, I... I went to wake my wife."
Katrina’s eyebrows lifted, her voice sharp. "You went to wake your wife instead of trying to save your brother? Isn’t that... unusual?"
Ryan flinched, his trembling growing worse. "Ms. Katrina, you don’t understand!" His voice cracked, desperation seeping through his words. "I have PTSD from fire. I can’t even stand near a stove, let alone walk into a burning room. I knew I wouldn’t be able to save him... or myself."
He took a shuddering breath, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. "My brother was in a coma. There was no chance he could wake up. So, I did what I thought was best. I woke my wife and called my brothers imdiately. There was barely a mont’s delay."
Ryan’s voice steadied slightly as he added, "My wife’s sleeping pills are strong—prescribed by , as a doctor. If she’s not woken carefully, it could trigger a heart attack or even a brain hemorrhage. I didn’t want to risk her life while dealing with the fire."
Katrina’s gaze lingered on Ryan, her expression unreadable. Finally, she turned back to Es, her voice cold. "You both have your explanations, and I’ll be thorough in verifying them. But the peculiarities of this fire—its precision, its intensity—are things I’ve never seen before. Let remind you, there’s no such thing as a perfect lie."
As Katrina walked away to confer with her team, Ryan slumped slightly, his shoulders heavy with guilt and exhaustion. Es, however, lowered her head, her lips twitching in what could almost be mistaken for a smirk—if one weren’t paying close attention. Katrina, of course, was paying attention to everything.
The investigation intensified as Katrina ordered a series of tests and examinations. True to Es’s claims, the toxicology report confird the presence of a strong sedative in her blood—identical to the dicine she had ntioned. When consulting specialists, the conclusion was unanimous: once soone consud this drug, it was impossible to wake up for at least five hours, no matter the noise or commotion.
This revelation should have cleared Es’s na, but Katrina’s unease only deepened.
The police then turned to the house’s CCTV system. They retrieved footage from the hallway leading to the room, expecting to find soone entering or leaving. But the findings were unsettling.
The caras showed a perfectly mundane sequence: a quiet hallway, no signs of movent. The tistamp ticked on as usual, and then, abruptly, flas erupted from the door. There was no sign of anyone entering or exiting the room. It was as if the fire had materialized from thin air.
"This doesn’t make sense," one of the officers muttered, replaying the footage for the fourth ti. The entire departnt was tense, murmuring in disbelief.
Katrina stood behind them, arms crossed, her sharp eyes scanning every fra. "Check the other angles," she ordered.
They did, but the result was the sa. Every angle of the hallway, every cara in the vicinity, showed no one approaching the room before the fire. It was as if an invisible hand had struck the match.
Katrina’s jaw tightened. The evidence wasn’t aligning with logic. Fires didn’t just start on their own, especially fires this ferocious.
"It’s almost like the room was cursed," one of the younger officers whispered, earning a glare from Katrina.
"There’s no such thing as curses," she snapped, though the unease in her tone betrayed her own doubts. "Get a team to analyze the fire’s origin. I want to know exactly where it started and how."
As the team dispersed to follow her orders, Katrina remained rooted in place, staring at the paused footage of the flas. Sothing about this case felt... wrong.
The precision of the fire, the untouched surrounding rooms, the lack of evidence—it was as if the fire had a purpose. And Katrina wasn’t one to believe in coincidences.
The suspicions surrounding the incident only deepened as Katrina pieced together the evidence—or lack thereof. The body was so incinerated that even DNA confirmation was impossible. Such complete obliteration was beyond the capabilities of a natural fire. And yet, the flas hadn’t spread to other rooms. How could this fire have been so precise, so calculated?
Questions swirled in Katrina’s mind. The room contained no inflammable materials, nor had there been any electrical faults reported. A person trapped in a fire might succumb to smoke inhalation or partial burns. But this? This was different. The body was utterly reduced to ashes, as if soone—or sothing—had ensured no trace remained.
It was deliberate. It had to be.
Katrina stood before Es one final ti that day, her piercing gaze assessing every crack in the woman’s facade. "Mrs. Es, we’re leaving for now. But rest assured," she said, her smile sharp as a blade, "we’ll et again."
Es nodded, her face pale, her expression blank as if consud by shock.
The room was sealed off for investigation, its charred remains forbidden territory. The house fell into a suffocating silence, grief and confusion weighing heavily on the Su brothers.
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