by Alec Peche
Chapter 14
Jill, with Trixie in tow, arrived at the rendezvous spot to meet Agent Sanderson. Jill was a little on the early side, and another car pulled into the parking lot close to her. A woman got out and asked, “Are you Dr. Quint?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Agent Jeannie Chan from the Fresno office. Agent Sanderson mentioned you would have a sniffer dog with you. Since you’re the only woman with a dog in this parking lot, I deduced with my agent skills that you must be Dr. Quint.”
Jill immediately liked anyone who didn’t take themselves too seriously, no matter how important their job was.
“Hi Agent Chan, I’m Jill, and this is Trixie.”
The agent held her hand out to the dog, and when she got a tail wag, she kneeled to give the dog an ear rub. Jill looked up as she heard the sound of another car approaching and saw that it was Agent Sanderson behind the wheel. They decided to take Jill’s car as it had the most room for the dog. Besides, Jill knew the way to the two fire locations and where to park, given that she had already been there before.
As she arrived at the first site, she was tempted to look over the hill and search for the bicycles to see if the hikers were on the trail that day. However, she had two armed agents with her, so she wasn’t worried about being surprised by strangers on a hiking trail.
They started walking uphill, and Jill thought about the long recovery time for this small piece of burnt California landscape. She couldn’t detect any difference between this trip and the last. The devastation looked the same. There was no sign of life, nor would there be for at least three or four months. First, the area needed rainfall before little green weeds would be the start of the rebirth of this plot of land.
“This makes me mad to see the work of the Burnt Widow. This area is going to look devastated for months.”
“Burnt Widow?” asked Agent Sanderson.
“That’s my nickname for our arsonist/murderer. I got tired of the word arsonist as it seemed like too mild a word to describe her actions. I have a marketing friend, and he couldn’t think of a better nickname than the Burnt Widow. It is sort of like the Black Widow, but more suited to this situation.”
“I like it. I’ll see if we can call this investigation Operation Burnt Widow,” said Agent Sanderson.
They were slowly walking uphill, and Jill was carrying the personal effects of the third victim for Trixie to use when they reached the location where the victim was found.
Jill pointed out an area and said, “I don’t know exactly where the victim was found. I only have geocoordinates which roughly approximate this area.” Jill walked in a circle that covered the area.
She took the item out of the bag and asked the dog to sniff and find.
They all stood quietly, watching the dog sniff. Jill looked over her shoulder when she heard a piece of brush snap. She stiffened when she saw who was approaching, glad that she had back-up this time.
“Detective Mullin, I’m surprised to see you here,” Jill said.
“You said you were going back to the locations to look for more evidence, and that sounded like a good idea. Plus, you have your dog, which is something the CBI doesn’t have,” replied the detective.
Just then, Trixie focused on something, and Jill forgot about the fake detective as her focus turned toward the dog. She kneeled next to the dog and shifted things around to see if she could locate what had excited Trixie.
“Bingo!” exclaimed Jill, holding up a balloon fragment between the tweezer pinchers and then dropping it into an evidence envelope.
While Jill concentrated on the dog and whatever treasures she found, the two FBI agents had moved close to Detective Mullin. Jill stood up and turned to face the three of them.
Agent Sanderson held up his shield and identified himself, “May I see some identification?”
“Why?” asked Detective Mullin.
“Because I don’t know who you are.”
Detective Mullin sighed and pulled a business card out of his jacket pocket.
Agent Sanderson looked at it and said, “It’s a federal offense to lie to the FBI. Who are you really? We called the CBI, and they never heard of you.”
“Really? You must have called the wrong section of my agency.”
“So, let me see your shield,” said Sanderson.
“We’re an undercover unit, so we don’t carry shields.”
“Agent Chan, please call the CBI, and we’ll see if they’ll identify Mr. Mullin. Why don’t you take a picture of him, Jeannie, and we’ll send that to them in case they need it.”
Mullin put his hand up to block any picture taking of his face and turned around, clearly intending to flee. He took off at a run, and Jill noted Chan and Sanderson communicate something silently between them and decided not to give chase.
“I’m curious. Why did you decide not to chase him down?” Jill asked.
“I noted the gun in the holster under his arm when he turned to flee. We could have gotten into a shootout over his impersonating an officer. That’s likely to have a poor outcome. He’s interested in this case, and I will find out who he is eventually. If you didn’t have DNA pointing to a female arsonist, I might consider him a suspect. I can’t quite figure out his behavior. Did you get his picture?” asked Agent Sanderson.
“How do you know I got a picture?” Jill had found Agent Sanderson friendly and relaxed, but he was far more observant than she had given him credit for.
“You were aiming your camera to take a picture of the balloon fragment, except the angle was wrong, and I realized you were taking a photo of the detective.”
“I also got a picture of the balloon fragment. I have a laptop in my backpack that has very sophisticated facial recognition software on it. I can’t use it now because there’s zero to poor cellular reception in this area. When we drive to the next scene, at some point, I’ll pull off the highway and run the picture at that time. I would send you a copy right now, but it won’t do you any good as you don’t have an Internet connection either.”
“Okay. Is there anything else to see here?” asked Agent Chan.
“Yes. I have a theory that Burnt Widow picks locations that have something special about them. With this location, there’s a rock structure that’s interesting to look at. I was also going to have Trixie do a second round of sniffing to make sure we didn’t miss anything. I’ve already seen the rock structure, but if either or both of you want to view it, it’s about ten minutes up that hill,” Jill said, pointing to the hill in front of them.
The agents looked at each other, and Agent Sanderson said, “I’ll go find your rock formation. Agent Chan will stay with you.”
Jill thought about that and said, “That is probably a good idea. Detective Mullin could return and take the evidence packet from me.”
By the time the dog completed her second round of sniffing the crime scene, Agent Sanderson had returned from the hike up the hill.
“Okay, I saw your rock formation. I suppose if you’re really into hiking, that’s a lovely thing to hike to, and I guess the Burnt Widow chatted up that rock formation to the man she lured here to kill. Did the dog find anything else?”
“No. We’re ready to go.”
In the back of her mind, Jill wondered if there would be any damage to her vehicle. When she saw her car, she was grateful he hadn’t thought to take a knife to all four tires. That would’ve stalled them from moving on to the next crime scene, as it would’ve taken a while to get a tow truck out there. The dog and the humans entered the car, and with the agents watching their cell phone reception, about ten minutes later Jill pulled off the road when they had a good cell phone connection.
Jill took a moment to study the picture before uploading it into her friend, Henrik Klein’s, facial recognition software program. The program took a little longer than normal and came up with five identities for the mysterious Detective Mullin.
“That’s an interesting software program and an inter
esting outcome—five separate identities. The man has a variety of driver licenses and passport names, but no criminal history, which is either good or bad,” said Agent Sanderson.
“What’s bad about him having no criminal background?” Jill asked.
“Given that he moves around with five different identities, he may be equally good at hiding his criminal behavior,” replied Agent Chan.
“Among these five identities, what’s your guess on which one is real?” Jill asked the two agents.
They studied the five profiles again, and not one of them stood out as being more legitimate than the next. The age range fit the man they had met in the woods. The driver’s licenses were issued by states on the East Coast.
“If I had my guess, I think the most legitimate identification is the one from Rhode Island. It’s the oldest, and I thought I detected a Rhode Island accent,” said Agent Chan.
“I’m going to send an email to one of my teammates, who is really good at researching people’s backgrounds. I’ll give her the five identities with the advice that the first one might be the most legitimate.”
“Needless to say, the FBI will do likewise.”
Jill pulled back onto the road and continued to the next site. Agent Chan had secured a piece of personal clothing from the medical examiner in the county that performed victim number two’s autopsy. After another search by Trixie, more balloon evidence was found among the burnt debris of the wildfire. There was no sighting of Detective Mullin. In the case of both victims, the balloon debris was big enough that Jill could take a sample with her to process at her lab, while the FBI sent a piece to their regional lab for processing.
Chapter 15
Jill and Trixie arrived back in her vineyard when the temperature gauge was pushing over one-hundred degrees. Given her fear of fire, Jill always tried to block out the wildfires each year, knowing that Nathan or the local sheriff would let her know when a fire was getting close to her land. For her own sanity, she had to keep the thought of the wildfires tucked back in her mind. What was so hard with this case was she had to trample through the scene of a wildfire every couple of days. She also gazed upon victims who met the fate of dying in a fire, which was her greatest fear. She reminded herself that the fire didn’t kill them. An arsonist did. She let Trixie loose, where she started her immediate search for squirrels that had dared to enter the vineyard in her absence. Jill took her evidence envelopes and headed for the lab that she’d set up in one of her barns. She paused a moment to think about Detective Mullin. He didn’t seem like he would be a threat to Jill despite the number of fake identities. She had her sophisticated alarm system, and she would let it protect her and not run off to Nathan’s house.
A short time later, she had an answer as to what was on the balloon fragment. In addition to smoky debris and a type of talcum powder common in latex balloons, she also found evidence of He-4. Now she thought she knew how the victims died. It was due to a lack of oxygen. Still, she wasn’t close to identifying the killer. Maybe she could think about suicide with helium, but then, who started the wildfire after the victim died from the helium?
Jill’s phone rang, and it was a number she didn’t recognize though the area code was close by. It was probably another one of those spam calls.
“Hello.”
“This is Melissa Profino. May I speak to Jill Quint?”
“Oh, hi, Melissa. How are you?”
“Did I catch you a good time?”
“Yes, how can I help?”
“You really captured my interest the other day when you spoke about your other job as a forensic pathologist/private investigator. I believe I have a service to offer you, and I would like to become a part of your team.”
When Melissa indicated the other day that she wanted to chat more, this was not the conversation Jill envisioned having with her. Still, she was curious.
“What service can you provide that I might need as a forensic pathologist?”
“Before I retired to run the vineyard, I worked in the behavioral science division of LAPD. From what I read about some of your cases, it seems like you might benefit from some behavioral science.”
“I would. Some of my cases have touched the FBI, and they’ll use behavioral scientists with some cases. However, about a third to half of my cases have been outside of the United States where behavioral science isn’t common, so yes, I can use some help. In the current case that I’m involved with, the FBI is assisting, and we haven’t had any behavioral analysis. We’re pretty far away from identifying our perpetrator. What kind of fee would you charge?”
“How do the rest of your team members get paid?”
“That’s just it. We don’t get paid for every case. Sometimes we’re involved just trying to keep ourselves alive. Other times the client has signed a contract for services, and our vacation accounts increase thanks to client fees. So it’s a range of about zero to one-hundred dollars an hour.”
“I would agree to work for that. You seem like a trustworthy person, and if you say you’re not being paid, I’ll believe you.”
“That sounds well and good, but it’s a little more complicated than that. For example, the Sacramento County crime lab is paying me for autopsy and investigative services up to eighty hours, and I have to document what I do to get payment. I won’t be able to charge for behavioral analysis, so I don’t have a way to pay you for the current case unless something changes.”
“No worries. I just want to keep my skills up and my brain active. If I occasionally get paid, then that’s gravy on top. We can use your current case as a way for you to become familiar with my skills. Do you have time to meet this evening? I can’t get away from my tasting room before then.”
“Sure, why don’t you meet me at my vineyard at 6:30? My partner will be here. And he’ll make us an excellent meal.”
“Sounds like a plan. See you later.”
Jill was used to the odd ebb and flow of an investigation. Sometimes she ran out of clues to follow, and other times she and her friends were running for their lives from some killer. It was a job of extremes.
Jill did a quick reference check on Melissa. She was able to verify that she had worked in the named unit of the LAPD. They had been sad to see her go and set up a winery. She then contacted Nathan to tell him about the guest she expected for dinner. Since Melissa was in the wine business, she knew Nathan would enjoy meeting her.
Melissa arrived at the appointed time. Jill gave her a quick tour of both her vineyard operation and her forensic lab. By the time they returned to the house, Nathan had arrived and was working in Jill’s kitchen to prepare dinner. He was doing a seafood paella and had a bottle of white wine to pair with their meal.
Jill sat on her sofa with Melissa across from her with a pad of paper. Jill described the case so far with the key points of a female arsonist who was using the dating site Matefinder to find her victims, or so it appeared. She added the speculations about hiking and helium.
“In my years with the LAPD, we had a few arsonists, and I can’t think of a single one who was a female. I still have all my textbooks, so I may do a little research and perhaps talk to my fellow professionals. I should be able to provide you with a behavioral analysis by the end of tomorrow. My tasting room isn’t open, and so I’ll have a lot of time to devote to this.”
“Do you have any thoughts on my mysterious fake Detective Mullin?”
“I don’t believe he intends to harm you as he had the perfect opportunity when you were visiting the fourth crime scene. My guess about his identity is either he’s a relative of one of the victims and seeking justice, or he’s an investigator of some sort involved in this case. What I don’t know is if he told the truth about the DNA results. You might call and ask.”
Jill hit her forehead with the palm of her hand and said, “Duh.” She dialed Detective Mullin’s number.
“Yes?” said the male voice.
“Hello, it’s Jill Quint, and I know you’re not
a real detective. Did you really send the balloon fragment and cigarette butt from the fourth scene for analysis?”
“Yes, I did. A legitimate lab gave me those results. Are you any closer to knowing who this female is?”
“No. They haven’t found a DNA match yet, and I don’t think they’re going to. What do you know about the Burnt Widow that you aren’t telling me?”
“I have no comment.”
“Do you intend to harm me?”
“Good God, no. You’re too good at your job.”
“Good night,” Jill said and ended the call.
She had her cell phone on speaker when she made the call.
“What do you think?” Jill asked Melissa. She thought about adding more words to her question, but she didn’t want to influence Melissa’s answer.
“I think you’re safe as you got a gut response from him when you asked if he was a danger to you. Even the best criminal actors don’t sound like that so quickly. It was like a knee-jerk response. He seemed offended that you even asked the question. I couldn’t tell from your short conversation if I think he’s related to one of the victims or to the arsonist, or as you call her, the Burnt Widow.”
“On that happy note, dinner is ready,” Nathan announced.
The three of them sat down to eat and to discuss the wine industry. Jill had never said Nathan was a wine label designer. When Melissa found out who he was, she pummeled him with design questions. At one point, she went outside to her car and retrieved one of her bottles for his analysis of her label. Jill liked Melissa. She was hard-working, and when presented with the opportunity to learn, she took it and ran with it.
She also enjoyed watching the master at work. Despite being partners for almost three years, she learned something new when he went into wine marketing mode.
After a lengthy discussion, Melissa said, “I should hire you and re-do all of my labels. I have five varietals that I produce.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily do that. I’m not cheap, and you’ll need to earn my fees back in your wine sales. I always advise potential clients that they should make the best possible vintage first before they spend money on marketing. I’ve not tasted your wines, but do you think they’re perfect? Is there anything you could do to make them taste even better?”