“I’m sure he could recite you a laundry list,” Leigh said flatly, her defensive stance deflating. “He’s never liked the fact that I’m the daughter of the unit’s past sergeant. He thinks I get special treatment.” Defiance flashed in her eyes. “Which I don’t.”
Matt held up both hands, palm out. “I’m not saying you do. But that at least explains the ‘department pet’ comment, which irritated the hell out of me.” He stepped closer. “Truce?”
“Are you going to leave Morrison alone next time?”
“I can’t promise you that. If he’s going after you—”
“You’ll leave him to me.”
Matt swallowed the curse that sprang to his lips and tried to meet her halfway. “I’ll do my best. But no promises if I think he’s way out of line.”
Leigh sighed. “Fine.” She glanced over toward the students. All three had their bags open and were pulling out disposable white jumpsuits. “Come on, you need to get ready.”
They started toward the harbor’s edge. “I’m confused,” Matt said. “What exactly is Bree? She’s a firefighter and a cop?”
“Sort of. I’ve never worked with her before, but I’ve heard about her from one of the guys in the Unit who went through the academy with her and later worked a murder case with her. She was a firefighter, right here in Salem. She worked up the ranks to lieutenant and was the city fire marshal for a few years. But I guess she wanted the meatier cases because she quit the fire department and went to the police academy with the express purpose of getting into the fire marshal’s office. She’s been there a few years now and has a good rep.”
“Having been a firefighter, I’ll bet she has instincts cops don’t have. Sounds like a good person to have on the case.”
A few minutes later Bree and a second firefighter returned, their arms full of equipment they unceremoniously spilled onto the grass.
Leigh pulled on the bulky bunkers and boots Bree offered her, awkwardly readjusting the waistband around the Sig Sauer service weapon at her hip before pulling the suspenders over her shoulders. Holding out both arms and turning in a slow circle, Leigh glanced over her shoulder at Kiko. “Tell me the truth. Does my ass look big in these pants?”
Kiko laughed. “Nah. Just ask the guys. I bet they think the lady firefighter look is sexy.”
“Oh yeah,” Paul agreed, zipping up his jumpsuit and tugging on a pair of latex gloves. “It’s . . . uh . . . hot.” He glanced at Bree. “No pun intended.”
This time Bree’s eyes held a glint of humor. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.” She turned to Leigh. “Do you know what happened here this morning?”
Leigh shook her head. “Just that a victim was found after the fire was extinguished.”
“Let me give you a quick rundown. Someone called nine-one-one at four-thirty-two this morning.”
“Who spotted the fire at that hour of the morning?” Matt asked.
Bree turned to the boats bobbing in the dark-blue water of the marina. “Someone heading back to his boat after an evening with the boys at an after-hours club. We agreed not to ask too many questions about that in return for his statement.”
“That’s some evening,” Paul muttered.
“Headquarters responded and the first trucks arrived at four thirty-eight—two engines, a ladder truck, and Deputy Chief Baldwin as the incident commander. When a working fire was confirmed, they sent two more engines and a second ladder truck so they had five attack lines going at once. The building was fully involved by the time those trucks arrived, but they managed to keep the fire contained to this one building, saving the surrounding structures. With simultaneous attacks to both the front and back of the building, the fire was extinguished by six a.m.”
“When was the victim discovered?” Leigh looked up from her notepad, her pen poised over the paper.
“Just after ten. When the guys started overhauling, they began with the outside stores and worked their way in because the seat of the fire was the center store. They needed to let that area cool down, preferably without dousing it again.”
“Sorry,” Leigh interrupted. “Overhauling?”
“Once the fire is out, they check for extensions—places where the fire spreads into walls or attics where they can’t readily see it—and hot spots, to make sure the fire is really out. For safety, they also took the time to shore up the walls of the middle section with two-by-fours. The roof collapsed into the structure during the fire, so they had to clear a lot of debris for the investigation. That’s when they found the victim and called the state police, the medical examiner’s office and the fire investigation unit.”
“You’ve worked with Dr. Rowe before?” Leigh asked.
Bree nodded. “Yes. Good man, Rowe. Never had him at a scene though. Usually I’m on his turf, not him on mine.”
“He’s trying to get additional funding for on-scene body processing by showing that having an ME at murder scenes improves conviction rates, so he’s running some cases himself on his own time. He’s not still here, is he?”
“No, he left about an hour ago. He said something about enough hands coming that he wouldn’t be needed. I’m sure he’ll be in touch—” She looked back and forth between Matt and Leigh. “With one of you. But he called for techs to transport the remains. They should be here shortly.” She glanced around the group. “You guys look ready to go. The Crime Scene Services guys were here earlier with Rowe, but they went for coffee and will be back in a few minutes. Grab whatever gear you need.”
Matt and the students put on their backpacks, and then Bree led the group across the street to where the dark maw of the fire scene beckoned.
CHAPTER THREE: BLEVE
* * *
BLEVE: pronounced “blev-ee,” an acronym for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion. This type of explosion occurs when the contents of a closed container boil and vaporize when the container is heated, even if the container was not pressurized prior to the fire.
Sunday, 2:43 p.m.
Wharf Street,
Salem, Massachusetts
A charred beam slanted down from the roof, partially blocking the gap that once marked the store’s front entrance. They had to duck as they moved from blazing sunlight into a steamy haze of rancid smoke and stifling humidity. Paul misjudged the distance and scraped his helmet against the rough wood, causing a shower of charcoal shards to rain down on him.
“Step carefully in here,” Bree directed. “We’ve cleared a path but the floor is uneven and the water makes it slick. And watch the wiring overhead—it came down when the ceiling collapsed. The power’s off, but you can still get caught in the wires.”
Matt, Leigh and the students paused as they took in the devastation.
Debris was piled high all around while open blue sky soared above their heads. Water puddled around their boots on the scorched antique tongue-and-groove floor, and more steadily dripped from the remnants of the roof. Wisps of smoke rose from scorched piles of charred timber, shattered china and twisted metal, and the acrid air reeked of burned wood and plastic.
Leigh’s face was pinched and she blinked rapidly. Matt’s own eyes stung and watered from the bitter smoke. He let her precede him around what looked like the remains of a glass-topped jewelry display, tipped over in the rubble, its treasures lost in the surrounding chaos. “Try to breathe through your mouth,” he murmured, drawing her gaze. “It’s like being around decomp. You learn how to make it easier on yourself.”
“Thanks.” She took a cautious shallow breath through her mouth. “Better. My lungs still burn, but at least it’s easier on my nose.” She glanced at Bree who stood a few feet away, hands on hips, surveying the damage and totally oblivious to the stench. “How does she do it?”
“I’ll bet she’s so used to it, she doesn’t really notice anymore.” Matt turned to study the space around them.
The shop was about twenty-five feet wide. The front of the store was mostly intact, the walls which framed the bo
ttom of the doorway revealing the original cream-colored paint. But from several feet above the floor, the paint was darkly stained with soot and smoke. Heavy soot outlined pale rectangles on the wall, marking where antique paintings and photos hung until fire and blasts of pressurized water displaced them. The front window was shattered, the glass blown outwards to scatter over the sidewalk leaving a rim of vicious teeth biting from the sill.
Juka picked up a twisted piece of metal balanced on scraps of wood and shingles. It was scorched and bent but the original cylindrical shape was still discernible. “I wonder what this was.”
Kiko lifted it from his hands and examined it. “A lantern? Maybe one of those old-fashioned punched tin ones that hold a candle? How hot did it get in here that metal melted?”
“It was plenty hot,” Bree said. “Somewhere between fourteen hundred and sixteen hundred degrees. But the temperature would have varied around the room. It would have been hottest at the seat of the fire.”
“How can you tell where it started?” Matt asked.
“I look for the area of deepest penetration of the fire and the most widespread thermal damage. The longer materials are exposed to heat, the greater the damage. A lantern made of a soft metal like tin would begin to melt at less than five hundred degrees.” She pointed at a blackened wall sconce that hung beside the door. “But that lamp on the outside wall didn’t melt. It looks like brass, which melts at about sixteen hundred degrees. And the hurricane glass on it would have melted at fourteen hundred degrees. It’s only crazed.”
“Crazed?” Leigh asked.
“You see the pattern of micro fractures in the glass?”
Matt leaned in to examine the crisscrossing spiderwebs of tiny fractures spanning the glass shade. “That’s from heat?”
“It’s actually from the sudden change in temperature between the heat of the fire and cold water from the hoses. Depending on the temperature change, the glass might craze or it may simply shatter.” She indicated the front window. “Like that.”
“That’s why the glass is all outside?” Juka asked. “From the water streams inside the store?”
“Yes. We had two attack lines coming into this store—one from the front and one from the back. And then additional lines overhead from the ladders. It wasn’t actually the force of the water that shattered the window, although two hundred psi packs a hell of a punch. It’s the sudden drop in temperature that weakens the structure. Knowledge about how heat affects materials also helps me determine the point of origin.”
“Where’s the body?” Matt asked. “I thought I might be able to smell it, but there’s just too much sensory overload.”
“That’s typical. There’s a lot of wood in here, but the real stench comes from the polyurethane foam in cushions, and from plastics and other chemicals.”
Matt looked over sharply. “Chemicals?”
“They refinished antiques, and the chemicals used were all highly flammable. When we get to the back, you’ll see the damage they did. The body is there too.” Bree picked her way toward the back of the store. “It was while the guys were clearing debris in here that they found the victim. That’s when we called Bailey in.”
“Bailey?”
Bree grinned. “Bailey is always my spot of sunshine in a scene like this. She’s part of our K-9 unit—an accelerant detection dog. We always use the K-9 team when there’s a fatality or if we suspect arson. Unfortunately, there was so much background from all the refinishing chemicals in the store, she alerted multiple times but never in the place I’ve identified as the point of origin.”
As they moved toward the back, light flooded in from the rear of the building. Blackened studs outlining a doorway marked the separating wall to a back room. Inside, the crumpled remains of a garage-style door lay in strips on the floor, the freshly cut edges razor sharp. The rear wall of the store was almost completely destroyed.
“As you can see, the fire had a really strong foothold back here,” Bree said. “Unfortunately, as we often see in historic buildings, there was no centralized sprinkler or fire detection system in place. Since it’s not required by law, many owners skip retrofitting because of the cost. Add to that a single common attic stretching the length of the building, and the fire spread unchecked in all directions.”
The smell hit Matt in that instant—the sickly sweet scent of roasted flesh that made saliva pool in his mouth even as his stomach rolled. It had been years since he’d run experiments at the University of Tennessee’s Body Farm using burned cadavers, but he never forgot the smell. He’d gone off Canadian bacon for years afterwards as a result. As he scanned the surrounding debris, his gaze finally came to rest on blackened flesh camouflaged by scorched wood.
The burned bulk of a large wooden box—perhaps a cabinet or a wardrobe—lay on the floor, but there was no mistaking the body partially pinned underneath. The victim lay on its side, the upper body charred deep black. One forearm was curled up and pulled into the chest, but it ended abruptly at the wrist. Instead of a hand, the exposed flesh had split over the ends of the long bones in the arm, curling away to reveal glimpses of white. The torso was a mass of striated muscle and charred intestine disappearing underneath the wardrobe.
Leigh gave a choked gasp from behind him and he turned to see her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the victim, her sheet-white face tinged with green. He reached out to touch her arm, stopping at the last second as he realized his gloved fingers were black with soot and grit from maneuvering through the debris. Instead, he rubbed the back of his hand against her upper arm. “You okay?”
It took her a moment to answer, and she swallowed audibly first. “Yeah.” The word came out as a half croak. She sucked in a breath, her eyes going wide as the putrid smoke filled her lungs. She coughed raggedly several times. “You warned me it was going to be rough.”
“First burn victim?” Bree asked.
“Yes.” Leigh’s voice wobbled but she doggedly stepped forward to take a closer look.
“Rowe did an initial examination but said right away that he’d need a forensic anthropologist,” Bree said.
Matt stepped into the debris, skirting the rubble along the very narrow area around the body. He squatted down beside the torso. “This is CGS-3. Definitely outside his expertise.”
Bree crouched down across from him. “That was my estimate too.”
“CGS-3?” Leigh asked.
“It’s the Crow-Glassman standardized scale for burned bodies. One is the least severe and five is the worst—essentially a cremation. Three means there is significant loss of tissue, including disarticulation of some body parts, and a visual ID isn’t immediately possible from the remains.” Matt looked up at Kiko. “We’re going to need to do a skull reconstruction.”
“I agree,” Kiko said, “but it’s going to be a challenge. Even if we can find all the pieces, the bone is going to be calcined.”
Leigh slid in beside Matt, bracing her hand on his shoulder to lean over the body. “What happened to the head? Blunt force trauma?”
The forehead and top of the cranium were missing above the startlingly white bone rimming the eye sockets, exposing the mass of charred brain tissue. Below the eye sockets, the fleshy cheeks were burned a deep, leathery black. “Could be, but I doubt it. That’s typical fire damage.”
“The infamous exploding skull,” Bree said.
Leigh glanced from Bree to Matt. “Exploding skull?”
“People think the skull fractures like that because pressure builds up as the brain boils, causing the head to explode,” Bree explained. “Somehow they seem to forget that the skull has several natural openings that allow the steam to vent.”
“There’s actually a very simple explanation,” Matt said. “Skin burns first, then the muscle and fat underneath. In areas like the forehead, there is very little fat and muscle below the skin, so the organic components in the bone start to burn quickly. When the organic components are gone, what’s left is calcined bone—the mine
ral scaffold which is extremely brittle and shatters easily under any pressure.”
“Like from a water stream or the roof collapsing,” Bree supplied.
Leigh leaned closer to the body. Matt reached up to steady her as her eyes locked on the torso where it disappeared under the wardrobe. “See something?” he asked.
“There’s something buried in the chest.”
Matt stretched upward, trying to peer over the side of the corpse. “I can’t see from this angle. What is it?”
“There’s a lot of damage and the upper body is curled in on itself, but it looks like a knife.” She paused. “It’s just . . .”
“What?”
Leigh remained silent for a moment, then she straightened. “Let’s wait until the body is out from under all this. We’ll see better then.”
“Rowe told us to leave the wardrobe in place because he didn’t want to risk scattering body parts until you got here,” Bree said. “But when you’re ready, I’ll pull in some guys to move it. Even mostly burned, I’ll bet that thing still weighs a few hundred pounds.”
“We’re going to see fractures from it,” Paul said. “That thing could crush a living person, forget about fire-damaged bone.”
“I didn’t think about that.” Leigh eyed its bulk critically. “It looks solid. Are you going to be able to tell trauma injuries from fire injuries?”
“Absolutely. It’s all about fracture speed. It’s also how I’ll be able to tell when the head injury occurred, but we’re going to need to find all the pieces of the skull to do that.” Matt straightened and Leigh stepped back into the main pathway to give him room. He started to follow and then stopped, his eyes fixed on the corpse, his brows drawn together in confusion. “What’s that?”
A Flame in the Wind of Death Page 3