“Great!”
We sat back to finish our coffee and finalize our plans until I had to get ready for work. Vincent and I had a busy day ahead in Cranford County.
Eight
Vincent and I met at the DOI, and after a quick drive to Cranford County, I was pulling the SUV to the shoulder of Highway 403, where a couple of sheriff’s department cruisers, a pickup, and a white van with emergency light bars and the Georgia Department of Fire Investigation logo were already parked.
“We’re fortunate that the Department of Fire Investigation was called in right away, and Eva is one of the best arson investigators on staff,” I said to Vincent as I hopped out of the Explorer.
Two young Cranford deputies were lingering on the periphery of the fire scene—obviously having pulled guard duty—and I nodded to them in greeting as I walked straight over to DFI investigator Eva Sinclair, whom I’d met on numerous occasions.
Fraudsters were always setting stuff on fire, so the DOI and the DFI often worked in tandem on these types of cases. In addition, city officials and sheriffs can request state arson investigators, and though they don’t ordinarily investigate isolated vehicle fires, the presence of a body made this case a high priority, especially since Cranford County was not equipped to handle such an inquiry.
Fire was the quickest way to destroy evidence, or so criminals thought, but Eva was good, and she’d racked up a record number of successful prosecutions.
I was glad to see her.
With a last name like Sinclair, Eva should have been born with red hair and a flaming temper to match, but she had nothing of the stereotypical Scottish appearance.
Instead, she was more like a Nordic goddess: tall, blond, and composed. Wearing a pair of black cargo pants, military-style boots, and a tan polo shirt with the DFI logo embroidered on the front, she was the picture of calm efficiency as she greeted me. I wouldn’t call her particularly beautiful, but she radiated a certain power that I admired, and the two men beside her were obviously under her spell already.
“Hey, Eva,” I said, extending my hand for a quick shake. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, gesturing around at the pine-tree-lined street with the clipboard she held. “Fun, fun, fun in exotic locations. Have you met Sheriff Harper and Fred Thomas of the volunteer fire department?”
I shook the sheriff’s hand and then greeted Fred, who I knew from the reports as one of the firemen who’d extinguished the blaze. He owned the Bait and Tackle, a nearby hunting and fishing supply store.
I introduced Vincent, and after everyone exchanged the obligatory salutations, we gathered in front of the taped-off fire scene, taking in the carnage that used to be a Ford LTD.
“Well,” Vincent said, deadpan, “we can definitively rule out an auto insurance claim as the motive. This car’s Blue Book value couldn’t have been more than five hundred bucks.”
“I think you’re being generous,” I said with a laugh. “Blue Book was probably two-fifty, tops. But maybe he could get five if he sold it for scrap.”
Vincent grinned at me and then turned back to the car. He ran a hand from his chin to his cheekbone, and I swear I could hear the sound of his stubble scratching against his palm as he studied the scene.
The LTD was scorched to say the least. All the windows were completely gone, and tiny rectangular cubes of shattered safety glass littered the ground around the vehicle. Paint had burned off sections of the side panels, and the whole vehicle sat unevenly, probably because the tires had not sustained consistent damage at all four corners.
We walked toward the perimeter for a closer look. The driver’s door was open, revealing what used to be the passenger area. No one was going to be sitting there anytime soon. The seats had been reduced to metal and springs.
All the plastic that had made up the dashboard and door panels had melted into a black ooze, revealing the scorched sheet metal behind it. Part of the steering wheel had melted, and ash and debris were everywhere.
How in the world could a car fire leave that much junk behind? And the smell….
“What’s that smell?” Vincent asked as if reading my thoughts.
“Does it smell like barbecue?” Eva asked.
“Yeah, kind of.”
Oh, God. I definitely did not want to know what it was.
“That’s the odor of burned human remains,” Eva said matter-of-factly.
“It smells a lot like smoked pork,” Fred affirmed.
“You’re kidding,” I said, wishing desperately that I hadn’t heard that. I might never eat barbecue again.
Ever.
“I wish we were kidding,” Eva said, “but humans have a great deal of similarity to pigs, at least when it comes to physical properties.”
I looked at the burned-out car and the total destruction before me and thought back to the pictures I’d seen of the body.
Maybe humans were even more like pigs than Eva realized. Only a pig would set out to destroy a body in such a heinous fashion.
That is, if this fire were ruled arson.
I stepped back from the tape where Fred Thomas was subtly ogling Eva as she spoke with Sheriff Harper.
“You were the first responder on the scene?” I asked, pulling his attention away from Eva’s backside. Aside from being an obviously classy and discreet person, Fred was short and squatty, but sturdy enough.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, scratching under his baseball cap and leaving the bill tilted up. “Mike Symmes and I took the call around 3 AM.”
“Describe the scene when you arrived,” Vincent said.
And here is where Fred Thomas confirmed the myth about outdoorsmen and fish stories. He stuck out his chest, which actually did more to display his beer gut than his pecs, and began his embellished tale.
“The LTD was fully involved when we pulled up. Flames were shooting out the windows at least two hundred feet high.” We all looked up toward the treetops as if the flames might appear now.
The tallest pines were about half as tall as Fred claimed the flames had been, and none of them showed signs of being singed more than halfway up the trunks.
“Two hundred feet high?” Vincent repeated, eyeing him seriously.
“Well, maybe not that high, but flames were visible not only in the engine compartment but also in the passenger area,” Fred said, sobering. “And we were able to see a person in the front seat, so the victim became our first priority.”
I nodded, and trying to keep Fred on track, I asked, “Was the victim responsive?”
“Not that we could tell, but at that point, our goal was to get him out of there. We ran a 1-and-3/4-inch hose, and Mike kept the flames off the guy so I could work on extracting him, which is dangerous work.” He leaned toward me and waggled his shaggy eyebrows. “Cars don’t just explode like they do in the movies, but you’ve got to be careful of other hazards, like fumes and bumper struts blowing off and taking out a knee. Normally, we keep back from the vehicle until all the flames are extinguished.”
“So Mike manned the hose and you approached the vehicle?” I prompted.
“Yes, ma’am. First, Mike washed out the underside of the car to keep flammable fluids from catching and to cool the gas tank. Then I was able to approach as he aimed the stream through the driver’s window, which was already open. I was planning to carry the victim a safe distance away and render what aid I could until EMS arrived.”
“But that’s not what occurred?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. I would have,” Fred said, “but the victim was already deceased.”
“Even at that point in the fire, you were certain?”
“I don’t mean to be crude, ma’am, but once the flames had been knocked down and I got the door open, I saw there wasn’t much of him left. I didn’t want to risk moving the body, given its condition. When we discover a body in that state, we do our best to preserve what we can by keeping the flames away and leaving the body where it is until EMS or the coroner arrives. Plus,
removing a victim from a burning car is dangerous for the fireman.”
“So you extinguished the fire?” Vincent prompted.
“Yes, sir, but when the EMS arrived, there was nothing to be done, and soon after the coroner declared him dead.”
Sheriff Harper jumped into the narrative here. “At this point, I put a call in to the state arson investigator. We don’t see incidents like this much in Cranford—we get more domestic violence calls than anything else—and we don’t have the equipment to handle a fire investigation of this scale.”
“When did you arrive on the scene?” I asked Sheriff Harper.
“I rolled in while Fred and Mike were knocking down the last of the flames. That was around 3:30 AM.”
“Was anyone else present? Any onlookers?” I asked.
“Well, it was late, you know, so the crowd was pretty slim. Luis Pedroza, the man who called 911, was there and also a couple of boys from the volunteer fire department.”
“Sometimes the newbies like to come out and watch, so they can learn from us veteran firefighters,” Fred interjected.
Vincent’s focus remained on the sheriff. “Have you followed up with the witnesses? Canvassed the area?”
“Of course,” Sheriff Harper said, turning to Vincent. “I sent a team of deputies out the next morning. They spoke with Mr. Pedroza and the volunteers. Mr. Pedroza said there was no one else around when he came by on his way home from his shift at the diaper plant, and no one passed the site while he was waiting for the fire truck.”
“And the volunteers?” I prompted.
“They didn’t see nothing but the fire,” Fred said. “Trust me. A fireman’s first love is the flame.”
“Any other witnesses?” Vincent asked, looking down the isolated road.
No cars had passed since we’d arrived, and only a few driveways were visible, but the houses were set a good distance back from the road and tucked behind the pine trees. The vehicle’s location was almost totally isolated, so I was guessing the number of possible witnesses would be pretty low.
Sheriff Harper confirmed my suspicions. “I sent the team to the houses adjacent to the fire scene, and they brought back a big fat nothing. Everyone was asleep at that time of night. No one saw the blaze, much less noticed anyone coming or going on the highway.”
Eva, who had been riffling through the papers on her clipboard while Vincent and I spoke with the first responders, stepped beside me. “Sheriff Harper requested a state arson investigator at the ungodly hour of 4 AM Saturday morning, and I arrived around 5.”
“I thought you were based out of the Atlanta office,” I interrupted, confused. “How’d you make it so fast?”
“Oh!” Eva said, smiling at me, her eyelids crinkling so much that her blue eyes almost disappeared. “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve been promoted to lieutenant, and Sophie and I are moving down to the Middle Georgia sector. We’re staying at a hotel in downtown Mercer until we can buy a house of our own.”
“Congratulations on the promotion,” I said as I looked behind me toward Eva’s van for Sophie, her accelerant-detecting partner and yellow Labrador retriever. “Speaking of Soph: where is she?” I asked, not seeing her cute face in the window.
Eva glanced over her shoulder. “She’s in her crate in the back, probably asleep. She’s had a busy couple of days.”
“Did she find anything?” Vincent asked, all business as he left our little huddle and began to walk around the vehicle, taking in every detail.
“I’ll get to that,” Eva said as she shot an eye roll at me. “You investigators are always in a hurry, but you miss things if you rush.”
I glared at Vincent with mock ferocity. “Don’t rush her.”
“Sorry.” He held up his hands as if to ward off attack. “I tend to get antsy when a body is involved.”
Good point, I thought as I turned to Eva and asked, “What were you able to tell about the body?”
Now I was rushing her too, and Eva laughed at my eager question.
“Not really my department,” she said. “You’ll have to talk to the Cranford County coroner and state medical examiner about the body. However, we were able to remove most of the remains the first morning, and I understand the body has been transferred to the medical examiner’s office.”
“Most of the remains were removed?” I repeated. I’d seen the photos, and I knew the body was in poor condition, but there was something disturbing about not being able to sort out body parts from the rest of the fire debris. I looked down at the floor of the LTD and wondered what body parts might still be there.
Eva nodded sadly. “Yes, it’s likely there are more human remains in the vehicle, so I’ve been busy sifting and cataloging. There’s still quite a bit to sort through, but already I’ve uncovered additional fragments—phalanges, that sort of thing—and sent those to the crime lab too. I’m still hoping to find the ignition device in all this mess.” She paused and looked us over. “Any more questions before I get on with the story?”
Yup, our interruptions were beginning to annoy her.
“Okay,” I said, “message received. Tell us what happened.”
“Like I said,” she continued deliberately, “I arrived at 5 AM, and Fred, the other local volunteer firemen, and Sheriff Harper had secured the scene and thrown a salvage cover, basically a tarp, over the vehicle. The body was still in the front seat and had not been touched. I began with an examination of the exterior of the vehicle. There were no footprints, but”—she led us toward the back of the cordoned-off area and gestured at the ground—“in the photographs, you’ll notice that there seems to have been another vehicle parked here long enough to leave slight depressions in the grass. Of course, you can’t tell it now.”
Eva pointed at the tires as we followed her to the driver’s side. “The LTD appears to have been intact at the time it was burned. The wheels and tires seem to be correct for this make and model, and the lug nuts are all present and tight.”
“So they didn’t strip the vehicle before it burned?” I asked, wondering if there had been anything on this vehicle worth stripping in the first place.
“It appears not.” She nodded toward the center console, which was now a mass of melted plastic. “There’s evidence of the radio, and that’s usually the first thing removed in those cases.”
The hunk of black goop had no resemblance to a radio. I’d have to take her word for it.
“The fire had already popped the windows when the truck arrived, and the doors were unlocked.”
I looked at the glass particles on the ground around the LTD. “So you’re saying the fire shattered the windows?” I asked skeptically. It sounded so Hollywood.
“Could have, but I can’t say for certain.”
Vincent and I looked at Eva for further explanation.
“Fire weakens glass by melting it unevenly. In a regular window, it would cause crazing, a complex series of cracks that ultimately results in breakage. You can tell when fire breaks an average window. But tempered glass, which is used in automobiles, fractures into these cubes you see on the ground no matter what breaks it. Hard to tell if it was broken by fire or mechanical means.”
“So someone might have broken the windows out?” Vincent asked. “Or at least some of them.”
“It’s a possibility, but I may not be able to say for sure. As I said, tempered glass can’t be reconstructed to discover the reason for breakage,” Eva replied as she led us to the front of the LTD. “But I can tell you that the fire did not begin under the hood as a result of any front-end collision.”
“We suspected that from the pictures,” I said. “Not as much damage in the front as in the passenger area.”
“Good eye,” Eva responded. “You might make a decent fire investigator someday.”
Vincent had been pacing slowly in front of the vehicle, studying every square inch of damage. “How long did the fire burn before it was extinguished?” he asked.
Eva turned to him. “I
t’s impossible to say for certain given all the variables in the fuels present in an automobile, but near as I can tell based on the time of the call and the time the fire was put out, it burned at least twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes?” I repeated, shocked as I thought back to the pictures. The human remains had been nothing more than a torso, skull, and parts of the left appendages. “That was enough time to cause this much destruction to the vehicle and leave the body in such a condition?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Eva said. “With proper ventilation and all this plastic and fabric to burn at high temperatures, the body could have been reduced mostly to bone if it had gone much longer.”
I gaped. It was hard to believe a body could be destroyed that fast. If the fireman had arrived much later, we would have had a much more difficult time sorting out what happened.
Vincent did not appear surprised one way or the other as he moved to his next question. “Did the dog find traces of accelerant?”
“Boy, did she!” Eva said with enthusiasm. “Sophie pinpointed several locations, particularly concentrated in the front seat and splashed along the exterior door panels, which accounts for the burned paint. I’ve already collected some samples to test for specific accelerants, but I’m guessing it’ll be good ole gasoline. It’s the most common. And I’ll most likely find more evidence, such as the source of ignition—a lighter or maybe even part of a matchbook—as I sift.”
“So the fire started inside the vehicle,” I stated, “and not from a front-end impact as implied by the scene.”
“Based on the preliminary evidence, I’d say so.” She pointed to the hood. “We investigate from the least burned to the most burned, and here the least burned section is clearly the hood area. The fire spread outward from the passenger area, encountering the firewall at the front and slowing its progress forward, but managing to make it to the gas tank at the rear. Some of the fuel lines failed and leaked gasoline, which ignited under the vehicle.”
“So you’re confirming arson?” Vincent surmised.
Eva nodded, but her wording was careful. “At this point, I’m going to investigate as though it was an intentional fire.”
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