After the Fire: A True Story of Love and Survival by Robin Gaby Fisher

piles. Then they sifted through every inch of ash and gunk for evidence. When they walked out of Boland Hall after midnight, they had eliminated most of the typical causes of accidental fires. They had checked every electrical socket and wire. They had searched for space heaters and found none. “We believe the area of origin was the couch beneath the bulletin board in the third-floor lounge,” Frucci wrote in his report.
    The early investigation revealed that the fire had been searing and quick, a twelve- to fifteen-minute event that probably started with an “open ignition” — a match or a lighter. There was no evidence of accelerants.
    The team suspected arson, but they couldn’t prove it. Their only hope was to find someone who had seen something suspicious.
    Within twenty-four hours of the blaze, investigators had begun interviewing students. They learned that Boland Hall had been a rowdy place on the night of the fire. There had been parties after the basketball game, and kids were drunk and rambunctious. Boys had been wrestling in the third-floor lounge. The resident advisers had tried to calm them, but it had done no good.
    Two students offered a curious observation. From their dorm room, they said, they had heard the sound of paper being torn down, like a banner being ripped off the wall. Then everything had gone silent — until the fire alarms began wailing.
    That was helpful information, but the cause remained a mystery. Maybe the banner was deliberately torn down, or maybe it just came down on its own when the tape adhering it to the wall lost its stick. Maybe the two students were wrong about what they had heard. And even if they were right, what did that prove? Frucci was stuck.
    Little did he know that he was about to get his first break.
    It was Sunday. Investigators had interviewed dozens of students in the four days since the fire and they were frustrated at how little they still knew.
    Sean Ryan was one of several students at the South Orange police headquarters that afternoon, a random name on a list of some two hundred Boland Hall residents who still needed to be questioned.
    Seated on the other side of a metal desk from his state police interrogator, Sgt. Kevin Dunn, a ruddy-faced Irishman with a crew cut, the boy had seemed calm enough at first.
    Yes, Ryan said, he lived in Boland Hall.
    Yes, he had been horsing around in the dorm with friends after the basketball game.
    No, he didn’t know anything about the fire.
    Cops walked in and out of the tiny interrogation room. One hour turned to two, then three. Ryan fidgeted in his chair. He was tired and feeling the pressure. Suddenly, he turned weepy.
    The worst thing he had done that night was pull a paper banner off the wall in the lounge, he finally admitted. He certainly hadn’t started any fire. No way.
    Frucci watched from his seat in the corner. The air seemed to leave the room. No one breathed as Dunn exchanged a quick look with Frucci. Frucci read his expression as saying Holy shit.
    Frucci and Dunn were thinking the same thing: two students had said they heard the sound of paper being torn down in the third-floor lounge right before the fire alarm rang. The banner was hanging over the same couch in the lounge that arson investigators had determined was where the fire began.
    State Police lieutenant Christopher Andreychak was the next to speak.
    So, hypothetically, if you knew who lit the fire, would you tell us? Andreychak asked Ryan nonchalantly.
    The boy turned cold. “Well, I’m no rat,” he said.
    It was a strange answer, Frucci thought, and a telling one.
    Dunn turned to his computer and perched his fingers over the keyboard. It was time to take Ryan’s official statement.
    Ryan stared at his interrogators. He had said too much and he seemed to know it. He rose from his chair to leave. There would be no formal statement, Ryan said. Not today.
    “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, walking toward the door.
    Would he take a