The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Has to be, doesn’t it?”

  Dana shrugged. “I can’t smell hydrogen burn, and I don’t know how often you’d find it at a house fire. That’s your call.”

  And so it was.

  Donovan called it. “I’ve never smelled it at a fire before this case. This is our guy.”

  9

  Donovan walked the scene, heading into the house despite the firefighters’ warning that the structure wasn’t cleared by the arson investigator yet. Donovan just nodded. Wade didn’t even bother with that.

  They stepped gingerly, listening for squeaks, creaks, or the sound of wood giving way. Several times Donovan jerked back, relying on his keen senses to keep him out of danger. Wade almost walked into the back of him.

  “Sorry.”

  Donovan turned, looking at his friend. None of the women were in with them. None of them had the skills—except maybe Eleri—to walk through here without being more likely to get hurt than not. Heat still radiated from the frame of the house. In places, mist rose from charred wood and synthetics. Donovan wasn’t sure if the mist was actual steam or not. He didn’t check.

  “Not paying enough attention.” Wade offered by way of apology again. “This is weird. You could maybe pick it up at the last place, but here it’s strong.”

  Donovan understood. He’d thought the same thing, but doubted himself. “I don’t know why that is. I want to say the smell is stronger because the fire is much more recent. Still, I feel as if it’s even more than that. I just haven’t been to enough house fires to know just how likely that is.”

  “I have.” Wade countered abruptly. “And it’s definitely abnormal.”

  The smell of hydrogen was strong enough to buzz. The feel of something burning hung in the air, but Donovan couldn’t place it. “I’ve never smelled a flamethrower before. Do they smell like this?”

  “No, they smell like gas. Like ethanol. Like hairspray even. Depends on what you make them out of.”

  “Homemade flamethrower?” Donovan frowned.

  “Absolutely. I’ve made a few myself.”

  Good to know, Donovan thought, though truthfully it didn’t surprise him that Wade had simply made his own flamethrower. He’d probably thought one day, I’d like to have a flamethrower and just assembled one. Maybe his friend made his own bombs or fireworks. He didn’t put anything past Wade.

  “Thing is,” Wade continued, “they don’t smell like this. That pure hydrogen burn? You smell the accelerant in a normal flamethrower.”

  “So this is an abnormal flamethrower?” Donovan asked, but Wade didn’t really answer, he’d already wandered off.

  The body was in the middle of the main room. The front door had suffered in the fire, so they’d entered by way of the back porch. Once he saw the body and established a safe route to it, Donovan headed back for Dana and Eleri. He only nodded at Christina, who seemed to take the near-dismissal in stride. He didn’t like her.

  He spoke as he pointed out where to place their feet on each step. They were like clumsy elephants to him here. They didn’t hear the wood straining, settling back in after expanding from the fire. They didn’t hear the slight hiss of escaping gases or the constant dripping of draining water onto the dirt under the once-mobile home. “Wade and I both smell that hydrogen smell again. I don’t know about it, but Wade says it’s not normal. This means we’ve got some dude running around the country, killing people with fear and a flamethrower.”

  Dana tipped her head a little, considering that. “Maybe the fear is from the flamethrower. Maybe it’s so scary looking . . .”

  Eleri shook her head. “Wouldn’t that give them a heart attack? Wouldn’t that be something we’d see in autopsy or you’d sense? There was no physical sign of death in Burt Riser.”

  “Y’all done in there?” A heavy voice yelled in from outside the house. Donovan hadn’t heard it before.

  Dana yelled back, “No! It’s our case.”

  “It’s my case.” The voice yelled back and Donovan heard Eleri muttering under her breath.

  Dana just yelled it out loud. “We’re the FBI. It’s our case.”

  There was nothing Donovan wanted to do less than be involved in this argument. Who had the bigger dick? Dana did. She was FBI. Whoever this guy was, he was local and he was out of his league now. Donovan looked around the scene.

  It wasn’t to be.

  Dana—exasperated when the argument continued—started toward the front of the house. She made it three steps with Donovan lightly dogging her before her foot went through a soft spot in the floorboards. She swore, picked herself up, swore again when she looked at her torn pants leg and blood on her shin, then she motioned roughly for Donovan to show her a safe path to the front of the house where she stuck her head out an exploded-out window and swore again.

  “This is not your fucking scene! I’m FBI.” She flipped open her badge and jabbed it at him even though there was no way he could see it from the yard. “I own this shit all the way up to the road and out to the property edges.”

  “My guys put this fire out.” He put his hands on his hips, something about the gesture reminded Donovan of the last arson guy. But he was too busy watching Dana shift and making sure she didn’t go through the floor again to think too much of it.

  Dana’s demeanor changed suddenly. “You put the fire out? Well, golly gosh, that makes the whole thing yours.” She smiled. “Christina? Be a doll and get them all the paperwork from the four murders in three other western states. Explain to these nice boys that there’s no known cause of death in two of the cases—now three, looks like—and that we’ve got ourselves a fucking serial killer on our hands. And let’s us all go get a nice lunch now that these sweethearts have taken this shit off our little old hands.”

  She stared at the inspector.

  He stared back.

  But the game of chicken didn’t last long.

  “Suit yourself, missy,” he told her.

  “Fuck yourself, asshat,” she replied back.

  Dana’s expression stayed flat. Donovan, on the other hand, was struggling to keep his face straight. If he laughed too hard he might not just reflect badly on the FBI, he might go through the floor. Dana had been lucky and not gotten very injured. He used to think he had a foul mouth. Dana made him feel like a rank amateur.

  She headed back toward the body but her head clearly wasn’t in it. She was like a dog that had just successfully defended its turf—the winner, but not fully itself again. It took her a few minutes of looking down at the body of Leroy Arvad before she could say anything.

  Donovan looked, too. He didn’t see much he could distinguish. Instead he listened to LeighAnn Arvad as the local police tried again to convince her to let them take her to the police station. No one was winning at that game. He smelled the room, the hint of ozone, the burn of hydrogen that he’d noticed before but was unmistakable here. He looked at the traces of burn pattern on the floor—they were sharper here and smelled stronger, too. He sniffed at the body, but aside from the scent that told him Leroy Arvad was scared enough to loose his bowels before he died, there was nothing to smell that Donovan didn’t already know. Leroy had been terrified. He stank of the fear-pheromones a live person exuded with mortal terror.

  Donovan looked at the body as a medical examiner. Parts intact. No obvious bruising. Though he paid extra attention around the neck, he could see nothing. The house looked much the same as Burt Riser’s house. The main difference was that Leroy Arvad didn’t run. The killer didn’t chase him down with his flamethrower. Nope, good ole Leroy had stood in one spot, faced the man, died of fear, fallen onto his back, and laid there while the house burned around him.

  “Nothing.” Dana pronounced. “He died of nothing!”

  Donovan concluded that wasn’t a normal thing for her to find. Not before this case at least. She looked at him, “You?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already have, except that Wade and I have latched onto the flamethrower theory. We no
w believe that he’s using some kind of homemade device.”

  “Which will only make it harder to trace.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have been such a bitch. I shouldn’t have said ‘serial killer’ and I should have let the arson guys take the case.”

  “Sure, but they’d have given it back when they realized what a shit show it is.” Donovan offered what he considered consolation. “And by then they would have screwed something up.”

  “Yay. Bitchiness wins,” she said, but her tone didn’t match the celebration of the words. “Tell me about the flamethrower. Maybe there’s something about it that we can trace.”

  Donovan shook his head, but Wade jumped into the conversation. Thermodynamics and all, he was in his element.

  “I don’t even know that there is an accelerant. Honestly, I can’t smell one.” He shook his head. “It’s as though the flamethrower creates instantaneous flashover—as though it’s producing fire through heat alone. But I don’t smell the remnants of a heating element either. If I were making this, I’d use hydrogen and oxygen gas tanks and a mixture and ignition system.”

  “Would it get up to the temperatures we’re seeing here?” Dana frowned, shook her head, and stepped to the side.

  Reaching out lightning fast, Donovan grabbed her arm and stabilized her as another soft spot gave way under her foot. This time she didn’t fall through. “Nice save.” She looked at him appreciatively.

  “I hear the floor groaning as you start to step on it.”

  She flattened her mouth, widened her eyes and gave a short nod. It took him a moment to realize he might have insulted her weight. He had no real idea though, so he kept his mouth shut.

  “Well, he died before the house burned.” She commented.

  Donovan looked at her. Shit. She was right. “No.”

  “Yes,” she responded. “No soot around the nose or mouth. No blistering. He didn’t breathe in the hot air. Or smoke.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Donovan said. “But he saw the fire. Or at least he was alive when it was burning.”

  Without stopping to think if there was a better way, he pulled a knife from his back pocket. Stepping three paces, he stooped and sliced at Leroy Arvad’s shirt, cutting a chunk from it. Standing, he held it out. “Wade! Smell it. Smell both sides.”

  Wade did, almost reverently, definitely methodically testing each piece. “It’s through and through.” He was nodding as he handed it back.

  “What does that even mean?” Dana asked, looking back and forth between the two men. The two wolves.

  “We need to change and we need to run the property.” Wade said, but he was looking at Donovan. Donovan agreed.

  “Keep everyone but us out. We need to check all the corners.” He said, already looking for a place to change. He didn’t think any of the rooms still had four standing walls to hide them as they altered.

  Dana’s hand landed on his shoulder, stopping his thoughts. “What does that have to do with him seeing the fire?”

  “He saw it. The smells are mixed.” That didn’t help anyone who couldn’t smell it. He tried again. “The scent of fear, of terror, and the smell of the ozone and hydrogen are completely mixed. The fire scents didn’t get stopped by his sweat. They got onto his skin, mixed in. It was burning while he was actively sweating. So it was burning while he was alive.”

  Dana sucked in a deep breath and started out of the house. Her breathing had turned shallow while they stood there. She probably didn’t handle the chemicals in the air very well. That was normal; it was Donovan and Wade that weren’t.

  She stepped carefully in the spots they’d walked in on, impressing Donovan that she’d been paying attention. Especially since she’d tried to go through the floor twice and had even succeeded once. She called for Eleri who was scoping out a back room and came out just as carefully planting her feet and paying attention to spots where Wade pointed.

  Dana looked at Eleri with fierce eyes. “Touch everything. Get everything you can out of this place. Because according to Donovan and Wade, the fire burned around him. While he was alive, and yet somehow the air around him didn’t burn. It didn’t even get near his mouth or eyes.”

  Dana shook her head. “I hate this case. Everything we find out is worse than the last thing. And this guy is out there with some homemade flamethrower and he’s killing people. We already lost Leroy Arvad on our watch. We won’t lose two.”

  Her conviction was admirable but misplaced, Donovan thought.

  There was no way they were figuring this out before the flamethrower hit another person.

  10

  “Tell me about the flamethrower.” Dana pressed.

  Eleri shrugged. Though she’d touched what walls and pieces of furniture she could, she wasn’t getting any impressions or information about the flamethrower.

  “Was there a gas can? No—wait—a hydrogen tank?” Dana followed her, peppering her with questions.

  Donovan and Wade had gone off to change, literally. Christina was nowhere to be found, and Eleri was wondering why she’d gotten duty with Dana. Here Eleri was told, to “touch everything.” Never mind that most of it was still on fire in its little wooden soul. Okay, she was bitter.

  Eleri tried to shake it off.

  She put her hand on a scrap she found and almost said, “This was the bedroom,” but it was too obvious. There was no psychic ability needed to deduce that the bigger of the two rooms in the back was the main bedroom and that the soggy scrap she held in her hand had once been the comforter on the bed. It was probably acrylic, given the way the edges had curled and twisted. But that was deduction, too, requiring no ability other than having working eyeballs.

  “If we could find anything about the fuel source or how this guy was lighting the fire, that would be helpful.” Dana pushed.

  This time Eleri’s tongue got the better of her.

  “I’ve got nothing. Seriously, this is their comforter. Here’s what I’ve picked up so far: No one lived here other than LeighAnn and Leroy. LeighAnn desperately wanted to conceive, she even envisioned their life with the daughters she thought she should have had running around—” Eleri flitted her fingers by as though that might make her purely useless information more helpful. “—and they weren’t able to have children at all.” She paused. “That’s it.”

  “Everything?”

  “No. Leroy has a collection of lawn mower parts out in the back. He thinks he’s a mechanic of sorts, but LeighAnn hates the parts rusting in the grass. LeighAnn had a doll collection. They cost about fifteen dollars apiece. She saved up for each and every one of them. And they’re all burned now and the Arvads don’t have fire insurance.”

  Okay, Eleri made that last part up—not the dolls but the lack of fire insurance. She’d bet she wasn’t far off the mark though. Still, she’d learned a long time ago that trying to force something to come was as useless as heels on sneakers. No good could come of it.

  “Dolls, huh?” Dana looked at her, disappointed, and Eleri tried not to be disappointed that Dana was disappointed in her. She didn’t put stock in parental unit dissatisfaction anymore.

  “I’ll let you know if I get anything of value.” Mostly what she had were LeighAnn’s imaginings. The dolls. Dreaming of a baby. They didn’t have the money to furnish a nursery for a baby they didn’t have, but LeighAnn dreamed. Little blond girls running around the place, and LeighAnn brushing their hair, feeding them peanut butter sandwiches, showing them the dolls. Older girls, coming and going, getting report cards, learning to drive. Dreams of a family. Dreams that had literally gone up in smoke.

  There was a lot more of LeighAnn than Leroy here. No surprise. She looked up at Dana. “Leroy was a long haul trucker. He got back last night.”

  Maybe Dana already had that information. She had to have Christina doing something of value, right?

  Just then, something wet nudged at her hand and she looked down to see Donovan standing at her side. He nudged her again and turned away.

&n
bsp; Eleri looked up to Dana and said, “That’s my cue.”

  Dana was staring at the wolf, which Eleri found odd. “Have you not seen him this way before? I thought you knew about them.” She frowned at her boss, who hadn’t changed her dazed expression.

  “I did.” She stuttered. “I mean, I know about them, but I’ve never met one before. I—”

  Eleri waited the full beat it took Dana to get herself together.

  “—I understand the science. It’s pretty sound, I’ve just never met one in the flesh.” She knelt down and spoke slowly and tentatively. “Hi, Donovan.”

  Oh, shit.

  “Um, Dana.” Eleri waited until her boss looked up at her. “He can understand you just fine. Actually, his ears work better now, in this shape.”

  “Oh! That makes sense!” Dana said, but she didn’t stand up. In fact, she was reaching out to touch Donovan’s head.

  “Dana.” This time Eleri said it sharper. “You notice how I’m not petting him? Yeah, he hates that. He may bite your face off.”

  Dana jerked back and stood up this time, looking at Eleri in alarm. Eleri almost felt bad. But Donovan was nodding in agreement to her “bite your face off” statement. “He’s still Donovan. He’s still a highly trained FBI agent, and he hears and understands everything. He just can’t talk to you.”

  Donovan nodded again and trotted off, his paws hitting the floor soundlessly and leaving paw-shaped squish marks in places where the soggy carpet remained. Eleri followed, glad to be out of that house, out from under the pressure of reading the sodden remains of what may have been a relatively unhappy life.

  Outside, Wade waited.

  Where Donovan’s coat was almost fully black, Wade’s was brown with a golden hint. His eyes were still green, less like an actual wolf’s than Donovan’s. Donovan blended better. Wade was the prettier of the two, though Eleri had never told either of them that. Both men pushed one-eighty plus pounds, making them incredibly large wolves and definitely frightening to any mere human they might come across. If they ran into anyone, it would be helpful to have her walking along with them.