She had to get away from the fire. Every time she tried to inhale, the hot air burned her lungs and sent her into coughing spasms. Frantically she felt around for a doorknob, overwhelmed with relief when her hand encountered one and found it unlocked. Twisting it and throwing open the door, she burst out of the house and just stood there for a moment inhaling fresh gulps of clean air.


Mike Sanders. He had been the bane of her existence ever since the beginning of high school. His hair had always looked as if he used vaseline as a gel, he picked his nose in public and wiped his hands on his clothes afterwards, and he thought that passing gas in public and putting thumbtacks on people's chairs were hilarious.

The first time she had seen him, she had been walking toward the school with an armload of books, and he had been on the top porch step with a group of rough-looking boys. He had sauntered over to her wearing a sardonic smile.

"Hey baby, how about a date?"

"Um...no thanks, I don't think so."

"Well, I think you're making a big mistake." With that he had walked away while the boys he had been with laughed rudely.

He never gave up. No matter how many times she politely declined his invitations, he always asked her out again the following weekend.

"I don't get it, Lindsay. Are you a dyke or something?" he asked her once.

"No!" Shocked at his insolence, she gave him an indignant glare.

In her senior year she started dating Derek.

"What's he got that I ain't got?" Mike asked.

"Me!" she replied.


"Mike Sanders was there," Lindsay told Gil when he came to visit her the next day.

"Mike Sanders was where? Who's Mike Sanders?" Gil was puzzled.

"A guy I used to know in high school. He was always bugging me to go out with him. He was in the house where the fire was."

"Why did the house catch fire? What were you doing in there with him?"

"I can't remember!" Lindsay cried.

"It's all right, Lindsay," Gil said soothingly, patting her shoulder.


Gil remembered that there had indeed been a recent house fire in the area. A couple of his co-workers had investigated it, and a report had been written up about it. After he finished his beat, he went to the clerical department in the police station.

"Hi Mary," he said to the middle-aged clerk on duty.

"Hi Gil. What's up?"

"Just want to check something really quick." It didn't take him long to find the report, and he poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down to read it.

According to the report, the single fatality in the fire had indeed been a man named Mike Sanders. The puzzling thing was that there was no mention whatsoever of a fellow occupant of the house who had escaped the blaze. Had Lindsay just imagined that she had been there? He didn't think that Lindsay had lied about being there. What reason would she have had to do that?

Gil decided to interview the neighbors on either side of where the house had been and see if they could shed any light on the subject.