Arsonist (21 page)

CHAPTER 41

Emma Lyon waited at her office until darkness fell before she rose from her desk and headed out the door. She had a full day of lectures tomorrow, but she would regurgitate old lectures she had prepared or just do it by heart. She had given the same lecture on the third law of thermodynamics so many times, she occasionally dreamed about it and ran through the entire lecture before waking, tired and groggy, early in the morning.

She heard footsteps behind her as she walked down the corridor out to the parking lot and turned to see Philip Christensen come out of a lab and smile as he saw her. He caught up to her, sipping on a Mountain Dew Code Red and stopped a moment to tie his shoelace.

“You comin’ to that symposium?”
he said.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“
’Cause we work for an asshole.”

“So? You’re tenured. Just come and see what he does.”

“What he’ll do is give me all the 7:00 a.m. classes, and channel the funding to other people. He can’t fire me, but he can turn me into little more than a TA.”

Philip took a long drink. “Fuck it. It’s still better than a real job.”

“That it is.”

They got outside and said goodbye as Emma got into her car. She put a Mozart CD into the player and waited until the music came on before pulling out of the parking lot and onto Springhill Drive. She turned west and onto the interstate heading southeast. It was jammed with cars, their taillights like glowing red orbs hanging in darkness. Construction had blocked one of the lanes and it was stop-and-go traffic for almost half an hour before she got off the nearest exit and took side streets to Harvard Ave. Down half a block was the
burnt-out remains of the Brichards’ home.

She parked across the street and finished listening to the piece that was playing. Then she checked her digital recorder before slipping it into her pocket and getting out a flashlight that was in her glove-box. She looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath before stepping out of the car.

The air was warm and she thought it odd that that’s the first thing she noticed. She glanced up to the moon and saw that it was full. It appeared brighter than usual and she thought it must’ve been the fact that there were few street lamps in this neighborhood to provide light pollution.

She glanced around the neighborhood to make sure no one was out watching her. Though it had been found to be
an accident, many of the neighbors had probably heard Stanton on the news describing it as arson and they would be jumpy. Many of them would be armed and inexperienced with firearms and might take a shot at her, thinking her to be a prowler. She waited near a telephone pole until she made sure that no one in any of the surrounding homes was watching her through the windows.

She went up to the porch, one of the only portions of the house that was still standing. She noticed a melted barbeque on the porch right next to a pet bed where the blankets had been charred but not burnt. Fire was odd that way. It seemingly chose its targets. Emma had seen video of fires that had been set by arson investigators across the country and when you ran them at a slower speed you could watch the flames zip around the house, up the walls, over furniture. And then for no apparent reason, it would skip something; like a lamp or a table. It would shoot over or around it. Investigators didn’t pay much attention to it and figured it simply had something to do with the flow of oxygen in the room and flammability of the substances around the item, but it was unsettling to see on video. The fire appeared alive.

She took out her digital recorder and hit the “rec” button.

“
Brichards’ home, July first, about 10:00 p.m. There’s a little doggie bed on the porch. I didn’t see mention of a dog in the police reports. The medical examiner didn’t make note of a dog with the remains of the bodies. What happened to the dog?”

She held the recorder low as she walked around the perimeter of the home. Normally, she would take photographs and measurements but she skipped those. Benny, she assumed, at least had the competence to measure accurately.

Emma walked in through what had been the front entrance and slowly took in the home. She took out her flashlight and ran it slowly around the hallway and then the living room. She ran the light around the baseboards and then squatted and observed them more closely. She went back to the hallway and examined the baseboards that had been left, going over the bedroom, the kitchen and the bathroom as well. There were no puddle configurations indicating the use of an accelerant. She slipped out a small plastic container and a metal device that looked like a scalpel and took several pieces of the baseboards in the hallway, living room, and bedroom, put them in individual plastic baggies, and placed them in the container. There were pieces of broken glass in the bedroom and she examined them and placed a few pieces in her container.

There was little else she could do right now. Analyzing any secretions from the bodies, surveying body position and the types and locations of burns are much better indicators of arson than most inanimate material but she didn’t have those now. Other than a few photographs in a file. She held the recorder up to her lips.

“Maybe I was wrong. There’s nothing here now other than a few samples. I don’t see any indications of purposefully setting the conflagration other than the position of the victims in the photographs. None of the victims were attempting to flee, which means they were probably tied up in some fashion. The bodies have already been buried and I won’t be able to get access to them to test for any rope or plastic restraints. Unless the labs come back with a miracle, I’ll have to agree with the county’s fire investigator that this is probably an accident.”

Emma did one more walk through of what had been the Brichards
’ home and then went to her car. There was a cat near the driver’s side tire and she knelt down and ran her hand along his back as he arched and began to purr.

She glanced back to the house. Her gut told her this was purposeful fire setting, but the evidence didn’t add up. It didn’t help that most of the evidence she could have used was either buried in the ground or had been washed away with a direct spray of a hose. Inexperienced firemen rarely can spot the difference between arson and accident upon coming to a fire, and many times most or even all the evidence of arson is washed away before a fire investigator is notified of the scene.

Witnesses could tell her if there was an odor or if the fire took an unusual pattern, indications of the use of an accelerant. As was yellow fire with dark, black smoke. One of the easiest ways to recognize an accelerant were flames that burned directly from the floor, which most witnesses had no trouble identifying. She regretted that there were no witnesses here to give her a clear answer.

She rubbed the cat’s head for a moment before getting into her car and starting the engine. She placed the plastic container containing the samples on the seat next to her and stared at it. It was nearly eleven o’clock and she had an
8:00 a.m. class in the morning. But excitement tingled in her belly. It was so rare that a genuine puzzle present itself in her world. She pulled away, careful to avoid the cat, and sped down to the freeway heading back to UCLA.

CHAPTER 42

Jon Stanton hung around the hospital lobby after he had left Gunn’s room. He didn’t know what exactly he was expecting to happen, but it felt like the place he needed to be right now. He got a Diet Coke out of the vending machines and sat at a table, slowly sipping out of the cold can and listening to the conversations around him.

One woman, older and grossly overweight, was describing the stroke she had suffered. She sat in a wheel chair, her friend next to her, and they laughed about it over ice cream as if she had slipped on a banana peel and hurt her backside. Another table was filled with young girls in their late teens discussing the gunshot wound their friend was being treated for. Speaking in hushed tones, one of them mentioned that she knew where the girl lived that had shot at them.

Stanton ignored them and sipped his drink. He took a good half hour to finish and then rose and walked back to the emergency room. The Richardsons were still there but they were packing up to leave. He was going to stop in and ask them questions about the man that had assaulted them but the uniform came up before he had a chance.

“Detective, I’m takin’ the mom and the kids to a hotel. Dad’s not doin’ so good. He’s got brain damage. Doc said he might have permanent blindness.”

Stanton glanced into the room. The young children sat with blank stares directed at the walls or floors. Only Tabitha had her eyes fixated on her father who was lying back asleep on the hospital bed. Her eyes were rimmed red from crying and he could see the spots on her skirt where the tears had fallen. She looked like she still wanted to cry, but there was nothing left.

“I need to interview them,” Stanton said. “I won’t do it now, though. Tell them I’m coming by in the morning to speak with them. What hotel are you going to?”

“They ain’t got much money with ‘em. I was just thinking the Highway Lodge over there off Friar’s Road.”

“No,” Stanton said. He pulled out his wallet and handed him a credit card. “Take them to the Marriott downtown. Stop at the grocery store first and make sure they have everything they need.”

“You got it.”

Stanton watched them leave without saying goodbye. He headed out to his car and got halfway down the corridor when his cell phone rang. He recognized the number as coming from the UCLA campus.

“Hello?”

“Jon, it’s Emma.”

“
What’re you doing up?”

“Nice to hear from you too.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just late, that’s all.”

“I know you didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Look I’m calling about the Brichards
’ house. I went down and took some samples from the baseboards and the surface of the flooring. I tested it for accelerants.”

“And?”

“Nothing. I was about to call it a night when I decided to run it through one more battery of tests in the spectrometer. Some compounds get burned off so efficiently that they’re difficult to detect so I had to analyze the wood itself rather than looking for accelerant on the surface. I found something.”

“What?”

“It’s not much and I can only give you a range of probability as to the likelihood of its use, but I saw a trace amount of naphtha.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a somewhat broad term and the exact composite varies by manufacturing, but I think I saw a base of thinner. It would have to be nearly odorless and colorless. Something unique. Possibly something made to order.”

“Who could make an accelerant like that for private use?”

“Well, if he’s a chemist, he could make it at home. So we shouldn’t rule that out. He could also just know somebody or have access to some laboratories that contain the compound. There is one other possibility: he could be with the fire department. They would have access to accelerants for training purposes.”

“Let’s hope that’s not it.” Stanton paused. “Is this something Benny should have picked up?”

“It was more difficult to find than other accelerants, but he didn’t even test multiple samples. He took one and didn’t find anything and declared it good. He needs to be fired, Jon.”

Stanton walked outside to his car and leaned against it, watching the front entrance of the hospital as a man helped a woman in a wheelchair out. “Can you get me the lab results and a brief report?”

“Sure, I can email that to you right now.”

“Thanks.” He paused and then said, “I’m sorry about dinner last time.”

“It’s okay. It’s…you didn’t know.”

“I’d like to make it up to you sometime.”

“Sure, any time. You have my number.”

“Thanks, Emma. I’ll get back to you about this.”

“Sure thing. Bye.”

Stanton hung up and got into his car. He began to drive home and made a quick stop at the beach to watch the moon reflect off the water. After a long while, he went back to his apartment and changed into shorts and a
T-shirt and tried to sleep. As he drifted off, he pictured the final moments of the Brichards and Humbolts. He felt his throat tighten up and he swallowed hard, and turned to his side. He knew it would be another night without sleep.