(My retelling of The Burnings continues. All episodes of the retelling appear under the “Burnings” tag.)
(Blaise Ashcomb, having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, testifies as follows:)
PROSECUTION: Let us now move to the Village Booksmith fire. Can you briefly describe your investigation of that fire?
ASHCOMB: The fire was put out before I got there, and no one was injured. So my first task was to identify and interview witnesses. But when I got there, everybody was already in a huge conversation about book burning. I thought this was very strange.
PROSECUTION: Why was this strange?
ASHCOMB: When I was walking up to the scene, it looked like a minor cigarette butt fire or something like that. It was way too early to establish if the fire was even intentional, much less a specific motive for it. But they were right in the middle of it. I thought maybe they saw something, or knew more than the newspaper did about this supposed protest. But they didn’t.
PROSECUTION: Who was there?
ASHCOMB: The neighbors, their adult daughter, the grandfather Ed Crankshaft, and a darker-skinned couple.
PROSECUTION: What did they tell you?
ASHCOMB: Well, the dark-skinned couple didn’t say anything relevant, and didn’t stay long. But the rest of them all bought that newspaper story about the Booksmellers fire. This fire was lit on the 16th, and the Booksmellers fire was on the 5th. And I just said we had ruled the Booksmellers fire accidental by then.
PROSECUTION: Did the witnesses say anything else?
ASHCOMB: Ed Crankshaft started telling me this absurd story about how being unable to read cost him a shot at the major leagues. I remember thinking “yeah, buddy, I’d be quarterback of the Browns if I didn’t tweak my knee in high school.”
PROSECUTION: To be fair, you’d probably be better than DeShaun Watson.
ASHCOMB: Heh. That’s probably true.
PROSECUTION: Anything else?
ASHCOMB: Ed Crankshaft vehemently denied having anything to do with the fire.
PROSECUTION: Did you believe him?
ASHCOMB: Yes, because it quickly became apparent that he had no involvement.
PROSECUTION: Why did you believe Mr. Crankshaft had no involvement in this fire when his, uh, propensity for starting fires is well-known?
ASHCOMB: This fire was clearly the work of an amateur, and Ed Crankshaft is no amateur. He’s actually kind of a genius. Do you know how much energy it takes to launch a 35-pound backyard grill into orbit? Escape velocity is 25,000 miles an hour. And that’s at the equator. Imagine being almost halfway up the globe, and getting a non-aerodynamic object moving that fast, using only store brand lighter fluid. And he’s done this many, many, many times. The laws of thermodynamics don’t seem to exist around Ed Crankshaft. NASA should hire him to build rocket engines. It’s crazy.
PROSECUTION: Why did you think this fire was the work of an amateur?
ASHCOMB: The huge puddles of unignited accelerant at the scene, for starters. That’s a smoking gun for arson. Also, the failure to ignite all the accelerants kept the fire small, almost as if the firestarter didn’t want to do too much damage. They also used a particular accelerant, one that was very easy to track down.
PROSECUTION: And what was that?
ASHCOMB: Creosote oil. It’s a yellowish-brown liquid. There were also traces of gasoline, maybe because they stored it in a container that previously held gasoline. Or maybe they thought it would fool someone. Like I said, amateur. By the way, creosote oil can cause cancer.
PROSECUTION: So this was definitely an arson attack?
ASHCOMB: 100 percent.
PROSECUTION: Did you rule out any other possibilities?
ASHCOMB: It was also quickly apparent that Lillian McKenzie did not start the fire.
PROSECUTION: Why is that?
ASHCOMB: She was inside her house when the fire started, and when I interviewed her, she was pretty shaken up by the attack. But mainly, she had no motive.
PROSECUTION: Why not?
ASHCOMB: Insurance fraud is a major motive for arson, so it’s something I always have to consider. But Lillian’s business was completely uninsurable. She basically hung a plank outside her house and declared her attic “The Village Booksmith.” It doesn’t have any kind of business licensing, much less business insurance. And the fire was so small she wouldn’t have met her deductible anyway. It made no sense from an insurance fraud perspective. And she wouldn’t start an insurance fire at the most fire-resistant point of the house.
PROSECUTION: Can you explain what you mean by that?
ASHCOMB: Much of the McKenzie house, including the stairs, was made out of fire-resistant wood. Clearly Lillian took some extra precautions after a few Crankshaft grill incidents. She wouldn’t have started the fire on the bottom steps, unless she wanted it to fail right away. Which makes no sense in an insurance fraud scenario, or other rational motives like concealment of something. But it does make sense in terms of what we later learned about the firestarter.
Son of Stuck Funky 
