by Alec Peche
“Yes, I have to agree with you. Anything else I need to know?”
“I forwarded two additional cigarette butts to the crime lab for DNA analysis. All three butts may be the same cigarette brand and have been touched by the same perpetrator. I wish I could speed up the lab, but I remember how it was when I worked here. I don’t suppose you’ve added new resources in the DNA analysis area?”
“We haven’t, but we do have contracts in place to send out results for more critical case analysis. Do you think we should do it for this case? We might get results within the week.”
“We are talking about three homicides. If the same DNA was on all the butts, then I would say you definitely have evidence that an arsonist is at work here. We might even luck out and identify the person if they have had their DNA registered. Arsonists start young and are usually in the criminal justice system somewhere.”
“Okay, I’ll route the cigarette butts to our outside contractor. Actually, your case is a good test of the company for both accuracy and turnaround time. I’ll send them out and see what we get.”
“Great. I’d better get back to the lobby. I stashed my dog there at reception as it was too hot to leave her in the car. I remembered your receptionist was a dog lover, and she agreed to watch while I ran the evidence down to the lab. I’m not going to do anything more on this case for a few more days as I await the DNA analysis and see if you have a new victim in several days.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that pattern. I’ll be watching the news.”
“It’s a shame we can’t predict where the arsonist will strike next. Nothing is connecting the three locations other than there was something special about the hike—a rock formation, a creek, and a view. I bet there’s at least a couple thousand hiking trails in this state. How could you begin to guess on which trail the arsonist will strike next? I’m not aware of any software that could do that kind of analysis for us. Besides, I bet there’s something special on about fifty percent of the trails,” Jill said.
“Yes, this seems pretty impossible to narrow down.”
They said their goodbyes and parted ways. Soon Jill was on her way home with Trixie stretched asleep out in the back seat.
Chapter 6
Jill returned to work on her vineyard, giving occasional thought to the unknown arsonist. Usually, she informed her friends and teammates who lived a few states away about any cases she had, but this case felt like it was going to be all hers. Perhaps once she identified a suspect, she could pull them into the investigation.
She had a few sites she monitored for fires looking for the actions of an arsonist. With each wildfire that she read about, she had to decide if it was within an hour of a large town. It also had to be more toward the interior of California in the foothills, as that is where the three victims were found. She also worried that a body might not be immediately discovered by fire personnel given the many acres that burned and the need to walk through all those acres. There was nothing more she could do but wait for the announcement of a dead body discovered in one of many wildfires.
Today was one day beyond when the next death would have occurred, given the pattern of the last three victims. On the one hand, she was alert for a death. On the other hand, she had only a gut feeling and circumstantial evidence that an arsonist was at work. With her fear of fire, she was haunted in her dreams by fire nightmares. Nathan had shaken her awake the previous night when she’d been making little sounds of distress in her sleep.
She was planning to meet Nathan at a restaurant that they both wanted to try about an hour outside of town. He was returning from meeting a client while she was visiting a new and innovative tasting room, and they decided to try a restaurant that had good reviews in a city that they rarely visited.
She felt her phone vibrate with an incoming email or text just as she was getting into her car. Before turning on her ’57 Thunderbird's ignition, she pulled the phone out to see if it was junk or something important reaching her. It was an email from Jennifer with two comments.
Spoke with our pathologist, and the death of the victim in the third case has been changed to “could not be determined.”
We just got word of another victim on its way to us from a Butte County fire that fits our profile. I guess we’ll see you tomorrow.
Jill replied,
Thanks for the heads up. Even though I know what you’re doing, I’d love it if the mortuary techs got fluid samples and a pathologist estimate of TOD. See you early tomorrow.
Jill ended her message with a smiley face to take any sting out of her message that implied Jennifer might not know what she was doing as a forensic pathologist.
Jill started her car to head to the winery and dinner. She thought of immediately heading to Sacramento, but she knew Jennifer would have the crime scene folks start collecting any time-sensitive specimens. Canceling her dinner with Nathan wouldn’t gain her additional forensic knowledge. Still, she was excited to drive north tomorrow and pursue the case.
Depending on the determination of the time of death, this might be the biggest indicator yet that the deaths were connected. She continued to think about the case as she drove to the winery she planned to tour. She had final plans for building a tasting room on her property. She’d toured wineries across the world, collecting their best features to incorporate into her new tasting room. She planned to start construction within the month, and it would be finished and ready to be used in the spring of next year. She wanted California architecture with the Italian family feel, combined with the regional pride of some wine regions. She thought her architect achieved that with the plans she’d drawn up, but the winery tasting room she was visiting had a store incorporated into it that sold whimsical wine-related products. She knew her featured wine, Moscato, was more likely to appeal to female wine drinkers than males. It made sense to have a retail store that also appealed to her future clientele.
With her mind focused on her tasting room design, she was surprised to find herself pulling into the parking lot of the winery. She had an appointment with the owner just after the tasting room closed. The parking lot was empty, so it seemed like this was still a good time for the owner.
Jill walked inside a standard Spanish arch stucco building. The owner was also a woman, and she had about five years over Jill in terms of age and experience growing grapes.
“Hi, I’m Jill Quint.”
“Welcome, I’m Melissa Profino, and this is Profino Vineyards. Would you like a taste of wine while we talk?”
“You bet. What varietals do you produce?”
“Chardonnay, Cab, Zin, Pinots, and Barbera. I looked up your winery, and you like sweet, so my wines will likely not appeal to you.”
“I’m trying to like dry varieties, but I’ll admit I’ve had some awful dry wines that score high with wine enthusiasts. I planted additional crops a year ago, but they won’t be ready for another couple of years, but yes, I love sugar in my wine.”
“I think that’s what exciting in the wine world; there’s room for everyone’s taste buds,” Melissa said. “It’s funny, but I’ll try a sweet wine and think it has syrup in it. I’ll pour my Cab for you.”
“I’ll try a dry wine and ask myself what’s the difference between it and white wine vinegar. The same goes for beer. I don’t like sour beer, and I wonder how the brewmaster determines that their beer has reached the perfect fermentation of a sour beer when it tastes so awful to me.”
“Exactly,” Melissa said, holding out her wine glass to toast.
They settled in to discuss the origin of Melissa’s customers, her sales in her retail store, and staffing of the tasting room. It was a great discussion, and she was shocked when she felt her phone vibrate with a text from Nathan.
“Whoops. I forgot I was supposed to be having dinner at the Grapes Restaurant. Just a moment.”
She texted Nathan with news about where she was and when she would arrive.
Melissa said, “They serve great food there, a
nd some of my wines are on their wine list. We should stay in touch, and I’d love to tour your winery.”
Jill gathered up her stuff to leave, reaching into her bag to offer Melissa a bottle of Moscato as a parting gift. “My contact information is on the bottle. Give me a call when you’re in my area, and we’ll make a date.”
“Actually, how about tomorrow? I have to drive through your area on the way to Fresno, so I could stop by on the way there or on the return.”
“Sorry, tomorrow is the one day I’m not available. I also do part-time work as a forensic pathologist and private investigator. I have to be at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Sacramento tomorrow morning for some work.”
“Wow! Okay, I’m going to send you an email to set up a meeting time. I’ll drive out of my way just to make time. We need to talk. I’ll drop you an email for a few dates next week. Oh, and here—take this bottle of Zin with you; it’s the sweetest thing I have,” Melissa said with a big grin.
Jill took the bottle, offered a brief handshake, and was out the door a short time later.
She drove the short distance to the restaurant and joined Nathan at his table about fifteen minutes late, leaning down to kiss him, “Sorry, I’m late.”
“You’re such an on-time freak that I worried when you didn’t show up on time. Then I remembered that you’re not deep enough into this case for me to worry about your personal safety.”
“Sorry, I should have thought of that. I was having such an interesting conversation with Melissa Profino that I lost track of time. Is she one of your clients?” Jill asked.
Nathan thought through his list of clients and replied, “I don’t think so. Did you like her wine label?”
“I did,” and Jill reached down to pull the bottle out of her bag.
Nathan examined it and said, “I don’t see a signature on this label, so I’m not sure who the wine label artist is, but I like it.”
“She’s going to come over to visit my winery perhaps as soon as next week. I’m not sure exactly when, but if she has time and interest, I’ll bring her over to your studio.”
“I wouldn’t hire me if I were her. She’s got a good label artist.”
“She’s got her act together. I liked her retail store. She’s about five years ahead of me in terms of being a vintner.”
“What’s her background?”
“I don’t know. I’ll research Melissa later tonight. I do know that she likes vastly different grapes than I do, so we’ll never be head-to-head competitors. She’s one of the few of my fellow vintners that I liked. She’s not pretentious at all. We may become good friends, although I didn’t see a dog or cat nearby, and that isn’t a good thing,” Jill said with a smile.
“Just remember that she’s operating a tasting room and may have public health standards that she can’t have animals in her tasting room.”
“You could be right. I hadn’t thought of that. She also seemed really interested when I explained why I couldn’t tour her tomorrow at my winery.”
“Why can’t you tour her? Did you get another fire case?” Nathan asked, frowning.
“Yes. The victim’s remains are arriving tonight from Butte County. Sounds like my arsonist’s M.O.”
“Yikes. Are you going to have more nightmares tonight?” Nathan asked, worried. Jill wasn’t afraid of much, and he’d never realized how she went out of her way to avoid fire until this case.
“I hope I don’t have more nightmares. I was hoping this case might help me get over my fire paranoia.”
Jill received a text and looked at her phone to see it was Jennifer. She opened the text and read it.
“The time of death of this victim was exactly spaced as though a killer was at work causing these fires. It’s the best evidence yet that the deaths are not accidental. Never in California fire history have we had such similar wildfires, with single male deaths separated by exactly two weeks. These deaths cannot be victims of Mother Nature as she’s a whole lot more random than that,” Jill said.
“So what’s the connection? Are the men related?”
“If they are related in some way, we haven’t discovered that connection yet. They live in different cities, are of different ethnicities and ages. They drive different cars. I guess one thing in common is they are all hikers on a trail that promises something unique to view—a creek, a rock formation, or a panoramic view. I may have found the same brand of cigarettes at each site, and so far, two of the three men were not smokers. I don’t know about the first victim as he was already buried. We’re waiting on DNA analysis on those butts, which should be released any day now.”
“This is sounding like you have a puppet master behind the scenes killing these men.”
“Rather, it’s an intelligent killer who has thought of ways of hiding their handiwork. The small mistake with the cigarettes may lead somewhere. Not only is the crime lab mystified about how these men have died, but the fire experts haven’t figured out how the fires were started.”
“Does anyone outside of your old office and your insurance adjustor know you’re working on the case?”
“No. There’s been no media coverage of the deaths, so no one is putting two and two together. It helps that this arsonist has struck in counties that aren’t close to each other, so even the counties seem unaware of the trend.”
“Good. With the land around your vineyard, I would like to avoid worrying about your safety from a wildfire. Let’s hope your name stays out of the press. These killers have a long history of coming after you.”
“I should be able to hide behind Dr. Jennifer Galloway in the coroner’s office with this case.”
They finished eating their very excellent dinner and made plans to meet at Jill’s house later.
Chapter 7
Jill was on her way to Sacramento early the next morning, having left Nathan sleeping. He wasn’t a morning person, and his scheduled permitted an extra two hours of sleep. She, fortunately, hadn’t had any dreams the previous night of death by fire. She entered the adobe colored government-looking building just before eight. She was buzzed into the autopsy area. She changed into scrubs in the locker room before approaching the autopsy table containing the latest fire victim. Right away, she noted the similarities to the other victims in terms of age and minimal burn damage to his remains.
The pathologist who had performed the autopsy on the third victim was also assigned this one. Jill hoped that Jennifer hadn’t revealed that Jill was the cause of his having to change his mode of death. It was awkward enough that Jill was a contractor looking over his shoulder. Still, she had been down this road before, and she knew how to influence the autopsy findings without getting his hackles up.
Two hours later, the autopsy was nearly finished when the pathologist said, “It appears to be another case of an undetermined mode of death. Just like the last one that was handled by this office.”
“Let me ask you some questions if you don’t mind.” He knew that she was a pathologist who worked at one time in this very building, so whatever questions she had would likely be technical in nature.
He nodded.
“We have no signs of suicide, correct?”
“That’s correct—no ligature marks, no findings of poison, no trauma.”
“Could this be a death of natural causes?” Jill asked.
“No, this is too young a person to have died of natural causes.”
“Was this an accident?”
The pathologist paused for a moment to think and replied, “I think that is unlikely as, again, there is no trauma. Could he have accidentally fallen asleep while a forest fire raged around him? I suppose that is possible but unlikely.”
“Was this a homicide?”
“If it is, we have no idea what the murder weapon was.”
“Have we done all the appropriate testing to determine what the murder weapon is?”
“You know, Dr. Quint, that’s a very interesting question. I can tell you what the murder
weapon isn’t. It’s not a knife, a gun, fire, drowning, and perhaps the top twenty poisons that we hear about in the state.”
“Do you think he died of smoke inhalation?” Jill asked.
“No. While smoke particulate landed in the victim’s nose and mouth, he stopped breathing before there was a lot of smoke, which is similar to the previous case. Whatever caused his death did so close to the time that the fire started.”
“So if you had to make a guess at what might have killed him, that left no evidence, what would be on your list of items to include?”
“I’m starting to feel like I’m in the midst of an exam for my forensic pathology board. Do you know the answer to your question?”
“I don’t. I’ve been thinking about what might possibly leave little evidence. The first things that come to mind are helium and nitrogen, mostly because of their ready availability. What do you think about that idea?” Jill asked.
“Well, if you breathed one-hundred percent of either gas, you would deprive yourself of oxygen. First, the victim would become unconscious, and then their heart would stop. As for lab work and how to detect either gas, I’ll have to do some research, but my sense is that neither gas would show up on any chemistry or toxicology tests.”
“The next question is, how would you get someone to inhale either of those gases? People like to have fun with helium, sucking in the gas from a balloon. Still, I’ve never seen anyone fall into unconsciousness doing that. It’s possible for pure helium to quickly displace the oxygen in your lungs. Same with nitrogen-filled balloons. If he inhaled it, he would pass out even faster than with helium. Imagine if someone was trying to kill you by having you inhale from a balloon as a prank. You inhaled, and then you would become unconscious from hypoxia. Then it would be easy to place a mask over the victim’s face with helium or nitrogen continuing to flow. That would kill them in a very short time. What else might have killed this victim? Can you think of any poisons?”