Embers of Murder (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 12)

by Alec Peche

  The pathologist was falling in line with Jill’s line of thinking. He offered, “How about succinylcholine?”

  “That might work. Although it can be hard to get hold of that drug, we should keep it on our list. What else can you think of?”

  After running through scenarios in his head, the forensic pathologist couldn’t think of another poison that wouldn’t leave evidence behind in an autopsy.

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “Yeah, that’s been my conclusion also. So back to my original question of could this case be a homicide; the answer is may be yes, or after further investigation, the case may simply end up as ‘unable to determine.’”

  The two pathologists looked up as Jennifer Galloway approached holding a piece of paper in her hand.

  “This is the DNA report from our outside contractor. The DNA on the three cigarette butts is the same. What is really odd is it is female. I did a quick search of the Internet to find out how many arsonists are female, and it’s a small number.”

  “Wow, that’s unusual news. Is the lab sure about the female?” Jill asked.

  “Yes. In the first case, the victim’s DNA was also on the cigarette butt, but the other two only had female DNA. Do we have a cigarette butt from this victim?” Jennifer asked, nodding at the victim on the autopsy table.

  Jill was unaware of what evidence came in with their victim, so she waited for the pathologist to answer the question.

  “I didn’t see it in the evidence list. The list included the victim’s clothing, a wallet, and a phone.”

  “I’ll go visit the site tomorrow with my dog. Trixie can sniff out cigarette butts and I’ll see if I can find one from the scene. That DNA report begs the question, Why is a woman killing these men?”

  “That’s why we hired you, Jill Quint. It’s time to leave your pathology skills behind and start using your private investigator skills. However, let’s speculate. We know these men are not related genetically. We know these men do not live in the same city and, in fact, live as much as two-hundred miles apart. They are all from a fairly narrow age range. My gut would say this is revenge murder by a woman, but if that were the case, there would be poison involved, and frankly, that’s a cheap shot at my gender.”

  “I have to agree with your comments so far, Jennifer. In previous cases, I have had female murderers, but it is rare. One more thing to add to your description of these cases—the last three have died from unknown means. We know the first victim was overdosed with barbiturates, but these last three had died just before the wildfire started from an undetermined cause. So, we have a woman who has some means of taking these men out that leaves no evidence and likely doesn’t require physical strength on her part as there are no signs of a struggle. You’ve got quite a mystery here, Dr. Galloway, and I’m looking forward to trying to solve it. I have a friend who may be able to help. She’s a social media maven. She’ll examine all of these men’s social media posts and develop a dossier of sorts for us to review. Since she works part-time for me, I’m not sure I’ll have an answer from her today, but it’s likely. As for tomorrow, my dog and I will visit this latest site to see if there’s any additional forensic evidence to be found. How’s that sound for a plan?”

  “That sounds excellent. Is there anything you need?”

  “I’d like to check out a piece of clothing from the victim just in case my dog finds something else in the area besides the cigarette butt. I’d also like to see the report from the fire officials on this fire. She’s starting these fires somehow. Her means of starting fires is as mysterious as her means of killing her victims.”

  “Okay, I’ll get you both items momentarily,” Jennifer said, disappearing from the autopsy suite.

  Jill was left with the pathologist who looked at her and said, “This has been quite the learning experience. We have circumstantial evidence that points to homicide. I’ve performed autopsies on homicide victims in the past, but it’s always been obvious. There have been gun or knife wounds, or lungs filled with water. Not so in this case.”

  “If this victim had been found sooner, we might try a lung biopsy or tracheal gas analysis or gastric gas analysis to see if the he had been near helium.”

  “You think the evidence is gone?”

  “Yeah, though you might try gastric analysis as it would hold onto the remnants of either nitrogen or helium longer. It’s worth a try, though it doesn’t help us identify the killer.”

  "I’ll do that.”

  Dr. Galloway returned with the items Jill requested. After changing into street clothes, she was on her way home from the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office.

  Chapter 8

  Jill reached her house just after lunch. It was too hot to go jogging, so she made lunch and sat down at her computer to do some work on the case. She looked at the fire report to find the geocoordinates and found the location on a map. Thanks to Google Earth, she could virtually stand on the road close to the fire and get a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the landscape. Once again, these were low foothills with gradual inclines in elevation. The closest city was Winston, and the victim lived in Oroville. She would have almost a three-hour drive to this fire location. She wondered what she would find on this hiking trail that made it interesting. Butte County was named for the nearby Sutter Buttes or small hills as they were known. The highest butte was about two-thousand feet above sea level, which was a small hill compared to the nearby Sierra-Nevada mountain range which topped ten-thousand feet. It would be another warm day, so she would have to take plenty of water for herself and the dog. Now that she knew the route she would be taking the next day, it was time to work on other things.

  She composed an email to Marie, her social media maven who could find out anything about anyone. She also copied Jo, who did any financial research that she needed, and Angela, who, when on the scene of the crime, would always capture the best photographs and get the most information out of anyone they interviewed. She didn’t think she would need Jo or Angela for this case, but she often was surprised by the direction a case could take. Certainly, she hadn’t seen the need for Marie at the start of this investigation. A few minutes later, she had her response from Marie. She was in North Carolina, visiting her daughter and family. Since the grandkids were enthralled with a cartoon movie, she could work on Jill’s investigation right away.

  Jill paused for a moment to decide what to work on herself. She decided to take a deep dive into the world of female arsonists. Until she had gotten the DNA results, her nameless perpetrator had been male. It was a paradigm shift trying to understand the world of a female arsonist. There had been no DNA match in the system, so while this woman might have a history of starting fires, so far she hadn’t been caught and registered into the criminal justice system.

  An hour later, she understood a lot more about arsonists and some of the dreadful things they had done. The National Firefighting Organization even had the cause of some wildfires as being “wildland firefighter arson.” These arsonists were motivated by their pay for fighting fires and/or the heroic feeling that came from extinguishing a fire. Those arsonists often went on long fire sprees and had a high degree of intelligence which helped them hide their crimes. Other arsonists had impulse control disorders, or they started fires to feel like they were in control.

  She wondered how many of these arsonists’ attributes applied to female arsonists. Clearly, the woman starting these fires was highly intelligent as she had done an amazing job hiding both the cause of death and the cause of the fire. One of the most common causes of arson fires was for insurance fraud purposes. Jill was fairly sure that insurance fraud had little to do with this series of cases she was investigating simply because the victims were not connected and the insurance claims were minimal as structures were not involved.

  After reading about the arsonists, she realized she had goosebumps on her arms even though it was close to one-hundred degrees outside. Jill was the anti-arsonist as she contended
with pyrophobia. She tried to imagine feeling strong and in control of fire. Instead, all she felt was that life was out of her control. A wildfire or even a house fire could overtake her at any moment. She had no control, no power over fire. It could overtake and kill her at any moment. She had no fireplace inside her house and no fire pit. She wasn’t taking chances with her property when it came to fire. Maybe once they caught this arsonist, Jill should spend some time with her to help her get over her feeling of pyrophobia. They both had a psychiatric diagnosis—one had a love of fire, and the other had a fear of fire. Jill intended to put the fire out for this arsonist.

  Jill spent the rest of the hour reading case studies of arsonists. Some of them had been quite prolific before they were caught. In the case she was investigating, the criminal justice system might have missed that they had a serial arsonist at work. Thankfully, the insurance adjuster, Jack, had thought to alert authorities to the potential of arsony. She was lost in her thoughts about the arsonists she’d read about in the case studies. Like other serial killers, they were a creepy group of people. Fortunately, she noted the incoming email from Marie that helped extract her from the horrors of arsonists.

  Sounds like you have another interesting case. I can’t recall working on an arsonist in our past. Rather than doing my usual dossier on each of your victims, I instead searched for the common elements among these men. Each of them resides in a city of 50,000 people or less. They are all single because they’ve never married, or they’re divorced. None of them have children. All of them are employed. All of them are in a similar age range. None of them indicate that they like mother nature or hiking, which is weird as it sounds like each of them died at the end of a hike. In fact, there’s nothing in their profiles that says they even participate in any exercise. They live far apart, so they don’t have a common restaurant or gym. They all use Facebook and Instagram. They play video games. They are all using an online dating website called Matefinder, and they play fantasy sports.

  Marie continued a while longer, but Jill wondered about the dating website given that they suspected a female was their arsonist. She wrote back to Marie:

  Hey, we got word that our arsonist is a female, given some evidence left at the first three sites. I’m wondering if she is finding her victims through that dating site. Can you get any additional information about it or the women the victims were chatting with?

  She sat back, not expecting an immediate answer from Marie, but she smiled when she read her short response.

  That’s creepy.

  Yes, creepy nicely summed up this entire case between knowing it was a female killer and then the whole fire thing. Jill spent some time studying where the victims were found as well as their home locations. It appeared that she was making her way north, skipping every other county. By Jill’s estimate, the next victim would be found in Shasta County. Then she would target Del Norte County, which was small and didn’t have many fires. She wondered how this woman could move around the state finding new victims. Did she live in the center of California and drive to meet these men on a hike? She would end up driving, in some cases, three or four hours. Did she torch her victims on the first or second meeting? How did she find these trails since they were in so many locations? Jill had to think she scouted them first to make sure that the location she picked had everything she needed—something special to hike for, dry brush, and no other hikers on the trail. She would also need to plan her wildfire such that it moved in the right direction over the victim yet gave her time to escape without being seen. Then she saw another text from Marie.

  It’s going to take me longer than I expected. I will have to create a profile and then see if I can see what women are dating the victims. I’ll be Mark Simon rather than Marie Simon. I may attempt to create the profile that your arsonist likes. The good news is that even though they’re dead, their profiles are still live on the website. Talk to you tomorrow.

  Jill sat back and wondered what else she could do on the case but couldn’t think of anything. It was time to go for a run, and she would talk with Nathan later and fix herself dinner. Then she thought of something. Had the wildfire been extinguished where they found victim number four? It had only been three days since it started, and it might not be out yet. She went to the state website on fire fighting and found that the fire was still raging. She might not be able to get close unless she could prove she had a legitimate reason to be there. She debated what to do and decided she would ask Jennifer to call her local fire leadership and see if they could clear Jill getting into the area tomorrow.

  Just requesting access gave Jill heartburn. She would have to pack a mask for herself and the dog as the air was probably bad. She researched the question of how fast fires moved. This fire seemed to be moving at seven miles an hour, which might put it fifty miles away from where they found the victim depending on wind and fuel.

  She was just sitting on her steps when word came back that she had access. Detective John Mullin from the California Bureau of Investigation would be joining her at the site. She was to meet the officer at a specific time and place the next day, and they would drive in together to the fire site.

  She hadn’t thought to tell Jennifer that the case should be investigated by the police, but she was correct in notifying them. She hadn’t met this detective before. Tomorrow was going to prove to be an interesting day. With Nathan unavailable for dinner or anything else that evening, she went to bed early as she had an early drive north the next day.

  Chapter 9

  Jill was just finishing her second cup of coffee when she pulled into a convenience store parking lot to meet Detective Mullin.

  She exited her car and walked over to the detective holding out her hand, “Hello, Detective Mullin, it is a pleasure to meet you. I can brief you on this case.”

  “We received a call from the Sacramento Coroner’s Office yesterday, and it sounds like you have an interesting trend here with brushfire victims.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know in just a moment. I drank two cups of coffee on the way here and really need to use the restroom,” Jill said as she started to walk toward the store. Then she turned back and asked the detective, “Do you like dogs?”

  “I do. I have two of my own at home. Would you like me to walk your dog while you go inside?”

  “Let me get her for you. She’s a sniffer dog, so she’ll be helpful at the scene of the crime. Her name is Trixie,” Jill said as she hooked the leash onto the dog and brought her over to the detective.

  Jill observed for a few seconds and decided the man and the dog were becoming fast buddies, so she went inside to take care of her own needs.

  A short time later, they drove toward the fire site in an unmarked hybrid SUV vehicle. Jill discussed the forensic evidence that had been collected so far. She also mentioned the work that Marie was doing regarding the dating app. Trixie was asleep in the back of the vehicle, but she sprang up once she felt the vehicle slow at a law enforcement checkpoint near the fire. Detective Mullin held out his business card. After a short discussion, they continued down the road less than a mile to the site of the fourth victim’s demise.

  Jill got out of the vehicle with her backpack containing everything she needed to investigate the fire scene and the usual water for the dog.

  “Each location in which a victim has been found has had something special going for it as a hiking trail. The first case had a spectacular view. The second case was a beautiful creek, and the last case had an interesting rock formation. As we approach the scene, ask yourself, what makes this hike special?”

  The detective nodded and said, “At this point, you think all four deaths are homicide, the killer is a female arsonist, who is finding her victims on a dating app, and one of their dates includes a special hike where she has some technique to incapacitate her gentleman before she starts a wildfire, right?”

  “When you put it that way, it sounds very far-fetched, but that’s my theory at the moment. This fem
ale arsonist is good at covering her tracks. Still, she’s making a few mistakes, and let’s hope that leads us to her before she kills her next victim in eleven days in Shasta County.”

  “I think I missed your explanation as to why she’ll strike in eleven days and in Shasta County. That sounds exact. Explain, please.”

  “It’s the pattern of these deaths. She strikes every two weeks in a county that is two counties north of where she killed her last victim.”

  “Dr. Quint, you’re scaring me. This potential killer sounds smart and determined.”

  “Detective, do you really think these cases are not related and are not homicide? You also know from your law enforcement training that successful serial killers are highly intelligent. They have to be to escape notice and capture by law enforcement. I’ve never had a case involving an arsonist, so I’ve done quite a bit of reading about them to understand why they start fires. This arsonist feels very satisfied every time she starts a fire. It’s a moment of control and power. She’s pleased she had the control to start the fire and the power to control the spread, so not only does it kill her victim, but it leaves her unscathed.”

  “I’ll have to read up on arson when I return to my computer. According to my phone, we’re coming upon the murder scene.”

  Jill tried to imagine what the area looked like before the fire turned everything black and gray. Like the other fire locations, it looked bleak, and it stunk. The air was unhealthy, and the two humans and the dog had masks on trying to filter the air. Jill would have to remove Trixie’s mask when she was ready for the dog to go to work, but in the meanwhile, she wanted to keep the dog safe from the bad air.

  Jill studied the geocoordinates and eyed in her mind their approximate circle. She pulled the pack of cigarettes out of her backpack and put latex gloves on.

  “Trixie, smell,” Jill said to the dog, holding out a cigarette in her gloved hand from the pack that she purchased before visiting the first fire victim site.