Burnt out remains

**The Blaze in the Foyer**

The fire started like a ghost in the night, silent and unseen. By the time anyone noticed, flames had already consumed the foyer of the building. Charred remnants of what used to be computers smoldered, their once-blinking lights extinguished forever. The building, unoccupied at the time, stood like a skeleton of its former self against the gray morning sky.

At first, the fire report puzzled everyone. Gas was fine. There was no sign of a leak or explosion. The smoke alarm, bafflingly, had not alerted anyone. The investigators pointed out that the system had been checked just two weeks prior and was in perfect working order. How it failed to go off was a mystery—or so it seemed.

The damage was catastrophic, and the insurance claim was enormous. Tens of thousands of dollars in equipment gone, not to mention the structural repairs the building would need. It was a small tech company, the kind that thrived on tight budgets and big ideas. For them, this fire was almost a death sentence.

As the building’s manager, I was the one handling the claim. At first, I approached it as a matter of protocol: filing paperwork, liaising with the fire department, and calming the frantic company owner. But the more I dug, the more something gnawed at the back of my mind.

It was a few details at first—small things. The fire had started in the foyer, not the kitchen, where most workplace fires begin. There were no signs of cooking mishaps, no overloaded electrical outlets sparking nearby. Computers in the foyer, expensive machines, were burnt to a crisp, while less valuable items in adjacent rooms were untouched.

Then there were the smoke alarms. Not only did they fail to alert anyone, but the central system hadn’t even logged an attempt to activate. It was as if the fire had crept into the building undetected, deliberately bypassing safeguards.

That’s when the forensics report came in. No fingerprints. Not on the smoke alarm system, not on the foyer’s equipment. Even the fire extinguisher cabinet had been wiped clean. A strange, oily residue was found near the ignition point—one the investigators said could have been from an accelerant. But they couldn’t confirm it conclusively.

I spent nights poring over everything—photos, insurance documents, even the building’s maintenance records. Something wasn’t adding up. There were no warnings, no reason for a fire to have started there and spread so methodically. And then, like a puzzle snapping together, it hit me: **this was arson.**

The unoccupied building, the untouched smoke alarms, the erased fingerprints—whoever had done this knew exactly what they were doing. They had chosen a quiet night and left no clues behind. But why? That was the question I couldn’t shake.

Insurance fraud? Possibly. Maybe someone thought the company was worth more in ashes than in action. A competitor trying to sabotage a startup on the rise? Less likely, but not impossible. Or was it personal? Some disgruntled former employee, perhaps, lashing out at the company that had wronged them?

The insurance company brought in their own investigator after I raised my concerns. Together, we started digging into the company’s financials, employee history, and security footage. Patterns began to emerge—little connections between the fire’s timing and a recent round of layoffs. One name kept cropping up: a former IT technician, let go just weeks earlier, who had access to the building’s systems and knowledge of its vulnerabilities.

The police were involved now, and the investigation continues. But for me, the lesson was clear: this fire wasn’t just a tragic accident. It was deliberate. And while the flames may have consumed the foyer, they didn’t destroy the truth waiting to be uncovered.