Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  I scooted back up to the table and my computer. “Let’s get into the details.”

  Ken moved his chair slightly closer to mine. As if I was a magnet and he couldn’t resist the pull. “They’ve all been structure fires. Some brush burned incidental to the main blaze.”

  “What kind of structures?” I floated my hands over the keyboard.

  “Sheds, barns, a chicken coop. A garage.”

  “I’ll need them in date order.”

  He pulled several folders off the stack and flipped through them as he checked dates. “The first was an old chicken coop on January 16th. Then two sheds, one on February 9th, the other on the 27th. The first barn was on March 5th followed by another shed on March 15th. The second barn burned on March 22nd. The garage was yesterday, the fourth shed today.”

  As he reeled them off, I entered the dates and structure types in the appropriate data fields. I angled the laptop toward Ken. “These are the fields I have so far. Anything I should add?”

  He glanced at the input screen. “Area of origin, point of origin, type of fuel, maybe some kind of checkbox for flashover.”

  I gave myself a mental palm-slap to the forehead for forgetting it. Flashover happened when a contained fire, like in the sheds, the barns and the garage preheats the room like you’d preheat an oven. When the fuel all reaches ignition temperature at once and the entire space is consumed by flame in an instant, that’s flashover.

  I right-clicked to select the field creation menu and added the additional fields. Then I switched back to data entry mode. “So flashover occurred in how many of your arsons?”

  “All but one of the first five. The chicken coop was such a wreck, it wasn’t truly a confined space.”

  I clicked the checkboxes on the appropriate entries. “No flashover in the one today, according to the fire captain.”

  “No windows in the shed, just big vents along the roof. Abe introduced oxygen by entering and leaving the door open, but with the venting, the fire still wasn’t energetic enough to form a sufficient hot gas layer required for flashover. Since Mary called 911 the moment she and Abe saw the smoke, suppression started sooner than with the other fires.”

  With flashover temps in the neighborhood of one thousand degrees, not only would Abe not have survived, there wouldn’t be much left of him to ID. “Any evidence left of ignition source?”

  “Even with flashover, the investigators found candle wax left behind at the first six fires. It helped that the candles were set on the floor.”

  “And kerosene was confirmed as the accelerant in the first two fires?” I asked.

  “Those are the only two I have official results from. Investigators are pretty certain they’ll find the same in the others as well, based on the fire behavior.”

  “You told me, no assumptions.”

  “Right. Except...” He dragged over the rest of the folders. “These are reports of arsons in the area over the last five years. We average a half-dozen or so a year. Most burn brush or forest, idiots get a kick out of throwing matches out a car window or kids start fires out in the woods. Like I mentioned before, we’ve had some trash can fires at the high school. When there have been incendiary structure fires, the homeowner’s always been involved. Insurance fraud, that kind of thing.”

  “Excitement, vandalism and profit motives.”

  “Right.” He stabbed a finger at the other stack. “Eight in three months is unprecedented. They all seem to have been set during the night because there’s been no sign of an intruder within at least an hour or two of when the blaze starts. Candles as ignition source, kerosene-soaked rags, the areas of origin on the floor away from windows or doors. We’ve seen the same patterns of clean burn in all of them.”

  With clean burn, the accelerant creates such an intense fire, the soot gets burned away. A fire so hot it would burn away all my sins.

  I flexed my shoulders to throw off the notion. “Flashover could have burned away the accelerant too.”

  “In some cases it did.”

  “Then theoretically, those could have been accidental fires,” I suggested, playing devil’s advocate.

  “The structures all had plenty of fuel. Hay in the feed shed, old lumber out at Sadie’s place. But the owners tell me there were no flammables like gasoline or kerosene stored inside.”

  Which meant less likelihood of an accidental source. “Electrical short?”

  “None of the sheds were wired,” Ken reminded me.

  “And the electrical in the garage was brand new and to code.” Somehow Ken had moved his chair closer. I edged mine away. “Let’s go through them one at a time, make sure we have everything.”

  He read through one folder after another, pulling out the data I needed to enter into the fields we’d set up. I filled a few empty holes.

  I eyed the ignition source field. “I’m still having trouble with the idea of an arsonist using a candle. It seems so old school.”

  Ken tossed the last folder back on the table and leaned back in his chair. His arm brushed against mine, an electrical shock of awareness jolting through me. Just like that, the memories came tumbling back, reaching inside with hot intensity.

  Ken flicked a glance at me. He knew what I was feeling. “Since he’s not sticking around to watch it, I’d say our arsonist isn’t as interested in the fire itself as much as its end result.”

  “Destruction of whatever he’s burning,” I suggested, wishing I could destroy the sensations rocketing around inside me. “Although that doesn’t explain why.”

  “If it is an unbalanced individual, his reasons probably won’t make much sense to us.”

  Ken was so close, I could feel the warmth of his skin. “Any connection between the victims?” I asked.

  He took another swig of Bud. “Nothing we’ve been able to find.”

  “The program might be able to make some correlations.” And kick my brain onto a less dangerous path. I returned to field creation mode and added several columns to the database. “Let’s go through it all again, but with our focus on the victims.”

  Rising from his chair, Ken laid out the eight folders along the table for easy reference. “The chicken coop was on BLM land along the river, nearly all that was left of a defunct ranch that used to lease the property. The first shed was northeast about ten miles as the crow flies at Sadie Parker’s place. The second was southeast of Sadie’s, nearly three miles away. A contractor put in the shed to store supplies while he built a client’s house.”

  His hands propped on the table, he checked the next folder. “First barn was farther south and east, at a ranch on the north side of the river. The Westfields bought the place a few years ago and built their house and a second barn on the property, but only the older barn was burned. The McKays owned the third shed. It’s a good five miles west of the Westfields’.”

  He moved to the last three folders. “Second barn was on a parcel that’s up for sale nearly at the south edge of the county. Elvin Hughes is caretaker. He lives in an old modular on the property. The garage you saw yourself.”

  I shook out a cramp in my hand, then resumed typing. “Markowitz’s place is what... maybe two miles north of town?”

  “Something like that. He bought the place last year and had the garage built in the last month. Abe and Mary’s place is south again, a bit west of Markowitz’s property.”

  “Sadie’s been in Greenville since dirt was invented, so I’m guessing she’s well acquainted with Abe and Mary. What about the others?”

  “Markowitz likely doesn’t know anyone since he’s so new here and a horse’s ass to boot. The Westfields are more sociable, but they haven’t been here long either. Their kids are young, so they usually interact with other young couples. The contractor’s from out of town. The McKays are from the Bay Area and Mr. McKay is only here on the weekends. No one knows them very well.”

  “So other than Sadie and Abe, the people involved don’t know each other.” My fingers ached, tension tig
htening my arms from wrist to elbow. “Anything else?”

  He sank back in his chair. “They were all fairly isolated locations. Other than the garage, they were all old structures. Other than the chicken coop, someone was in residence when the fire was set.”

  “Occupations?” I asked, taking a stab in the dark.

  “Sadie still publishes the Greenville Gazette, believe it or not.”

  “Good God, she’s got to be nearly ninety. Still a muckraker?” She used to take great delight in skewering the town council whenever possible.

  “I nearly lost the election when I turned down her invitation to coffee and cookies.”

  “What does she think of you now?”

  “I hang the Moon.” His smile just about stopped my heart.

  “Managed to develop a little charm since you left SF?” I laced my query with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

  He ignored the jab. “Mr. Westfield runs a computer consulting business out of a home office, his wife is a stay- at-home mom. The McKays, I have no idea. Markowitz commutes down to his law office in Sac.”

  I entered everything, even though it might turn out to be useless garbage. “Let’s see what ProSpy makes of this mess.”

  One hand on my chair, Ken looked over my shoulder, his breath warming the back of my neck. “How’s Darren been doing? Staying out of jail?”

  Darren had created ProSpy as a sixteen-year-old genius twerp. “He’s a hotshot senior scientist of some cutting edge tech company.”

  Ken must have straightened his fingers because I could sense them stretching toward the nape of my neck. “I don’t remember the program looking this good.”

  I tried to build a mental wall between us, shutting out his touch. “He keeps me updated. It’s light years ahead of what I used to run. Does a better job of isolating connections between disparate data elements.” I wasn’t entirely sure what I was talking about, but I figured it would impress the hell out of Ken.

  “Could I get that in backwoods country sheriff terms?”

  “Think of it like a jigsaw puzzle.” I turned toward him, despite my better judgment, edging nearer. “You pick up a piece, consider the color, the shape, look at the options for where it fits in the picture. Or you have a piece missing, so you visualize it in your mind as you search.”

  “Haven’t played with puzzles since I was a kid, but okay.” His fingers grazed the curve of my ear. “It’s a jigsaw puzzle.”

  I should have shrugged him off again, but it was late and I was tired. And wanting him, inside and out. “I treat the arsons like a puzzle, but instead of shape and color forming the picture, I use the common elements we come up with.”

  “And the program does the rest.” His knee pressed against my leg.

  I pressed back. “The program organizes the elements optimally. I still have to rank the results to eliminate superfluencies. Pieces that come from a different puzzle, parts that don’t fit.”

  Damn him, he got closer, his mouth brushing against my hair. Breathing became a real issue. “I tweak the data... put the brown pieces in one corner, the reds in another... The program makes correlations a manual search might not...”

  He kissed my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. My libido was reporting for duty, every nerve in my body standing at attention. I didn’t want to think about that little girl inside me, always aching for affection.

  I turned toward him, my hands curling around his shoulders, my mouth ready for tongue-wrestling. I summoned up a modicum of self-control.

  “Back off, Ken,” I said with little conviction.

  “I lied to you, Janelle.” His voice rumbled in my ear. “I do care. Never stopped.”

  “I’m not good for you.”

  “You think I don’t know that? I wish to hell you’d never come here.”

  The honest truth of his declaration hurt more than I wanted to admit. “My bed’s already too crowded with monsters, Ken. There’s no room for you in there.”

  He stroked my hair. “But there’s no one to stop us, Janelle. Tara’s gone. You have no one in your life.”

  I was ready to melt against him. Instead, I grabbed his wrist to pull it away. We stared at each other, gazes locked, temptation digging in its claws. “Don’t.”

  One more tantalizing moment sizzled between us, then he shoved back his chair and grabbed his empty beer can. Slapped it into a can crusher in the kitchen. The sound of him pulverizing the defenseless aluminum jolted me. I could relate, though, since I wanted to pitch my laptop across the room.

  When he returned to the trestle table with another Bud, he positioned his chair a good foot away from mine. So he wouldn’t go blind trying to read the screen, I angled the laptop toward him and shifted my own chair out of his way.

  I could tell myself it was all for the best. Entangling myself in Ken’s life again would be like jumping in front of an armed perp and daring him to take his best shot.

  Even still, deep inside I knew that was one bullet I would have been glad to take.

  CHAPTER 14

  The computer beeped as ProSpy completed its processing, and a message flashed telling me the results were ready. Now it was time for the real number crunching part. Using the criteria ProSpy had spit out, I had to search against the California All Incident Reporting System database.

  “You use CAIRS?” Ken asked as I double-clicked the appropriate icon.

  “I have access to the arson module through a friend.” The less said about that the better since my use of CAIRS wasn’t entirely kosher. I’d called in a favor when the cheating husband of one of my clients had tried to destroy marital assets by burning them.

  A dialogue box popped up on the screen, whining about the lack of a connection. “What do you use for internet out here?”

  “Satellite and wireless network. I’ll set it up for you.” He scooted closer to the table, reaching for the keyboard.

  I imagined an invisible keep away barrier around Ken pushing me back in my chair. While he tapped away at the computer, I took my half-empty beer into the kitchen and emptied it into the sink. I wondered if he had any hard liquor in the house, considered searching through the cupboards. Instead I took a glass from the dish drainer and filled it with water.

  The glass lifted to hide my face, I surreptitiously spied on Ken. Physically, he was everything a woman could have wanted in one boffo package. But it wasn’t raging hormones that had me feeling restless and agitated. It was the connection that still threaded itself between us, first woven when our professional partnership began, strengthened each day the trust between us grew. Seemingly shattered the day Tara discovered us.

  “We have internet,” Ken said.

  I set aside the empty glass, then returned to the computer and started up ProSpy’s search and match function. Too edgy to sit while waiting for the results,

  I wandered around the dining room, nosing through a bookshelf full of well-thumbed paperbacks. The mysteries and thrillers didn’t surprise me, but the classics did. Grapes of Wrath. David Copperfield. Heart of Darkness.

  I turned to find him staring at me. He didn’t drop his gaze when I caught him. I had some trouble breathing.

  Would you have left her for me? For a moment, I was terrified that I might have spoken it out loud. I don’t know where it came from, knew damn well I didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Saved by the computer. With a beep, it displayed the first 20 of 586 matches to the data we’d entered.

  Ken broke his eye-lock on me and adjusted the screen for a better look. “Those can’t all be my arsonist.”

  Maintaining a safety zone, I returned to the table and scrolled through the hits. “I still have to massage the data. Eliminate the most obvious mismatches. Overlapping dates too far separated by distance, solved cases where the perp is incarcerated and therefore couldn’t have set your fires.”

  ProSpy included a feature that allowed me to list terms that would filter the results, both adding to and deleting items from the re
sults. I entered the appropriate terms

  and ran the filter against the first set of data. “I threw in questionable cases, fires not definitively ruled intentional.”

  ProSpy hummed along, the little hour-glass turning end over end. My better judgment seemed to have evaporated. Ken and I had drawn closer together, like flames reaching across a backfire. Maybe I should have followed Sheri’s advice, gotten Ken out of my system. Not that that was likely to happen.

  Another beep from ProSpy and 21 matches displayed on the screen. I scrolled through and made a quick assessment. “Six of the eight Greenville fires. Seven in Mojave. The rest all over the state.”

  “Not all over the state.” Ken drew a finger down the list. “Two in Bakersfield. Three in Visalia. Two in Fresno, one in Modesto.”

  The light bulb clicked on. “They’re all along State Route 99.”

  “Can you map them?” Ken asked.

  “Alas, no map function in ProSpy. I’ll have to do it the hard way, with Google Maps.”

  “I’ll get a printer. And a map of the state.”

  I grabbed the addresses one by one and pasted them into Google Maps. Once we’d connected Ken’s color printer, we ran off hard copies of each location. Using Post-it flags, we marked the spots on the California map, including the incident date and sequence number.

  “There’s a year’s gap between the first one here and the last one in Modesto.”

  “Maybe the guy was incarcerated?” Ken suggested.

  “Maybe.” I looked through the list of results again to confirm the dates and realized we’d missed one. I clicked to page two of the results. “Huh. An outlier. Something that fits... But doesn’t.”

  Ken looked at where I pointed on the screen. “What

  is it?”

  “We didn’t map this one. Near Victorville, in San Bernardino County. A year and a half ago. A month before the first Mojave fire.”

  “But that’s a house fire.”

  “Right. Every other arson on the list involved outbuildings, sheds, barns. No occupied structures.”