Missing: The Body of Evidence (4 page)

The
receptionist at the fire department laboratory escorted her through to the
warehouse. Nancy shook hands with Rob, the fire investigator, but she couldn’t
even look at Tracy, who likewise ignored her.

‘Okay, everything is set up for the
experiment, follow me,’ he said.

They walked toward a metal storage
container at the centre of the warehouse. Nancy gulped. Inside, a strange
unexpected sight greeted them. A dead pig wrapped in ill-fitting clothing sat
upright in a chair similar to the armchair at the professor’s apartment.
Furniture items arranged around the container mimicked those found at the
professor’s home. There were steel tubes with probes sticking out at various
positions leading back to the door. Wires led back to monitoring equipment
outside the container.

‘Okay, were going to see if we can
reproduce the candle-wick effect that we think took place at the apartment,’
Rob said

Rob doused the clothing with some gasoline,
took out a box of matches from his pocket and told them to go back to a painted
line in the warehouse. Rob quickly joined them behind the line.

‘What about the door?’ Nancy asked. ‘The
professor’s apartment door was closed. The wires and pipes are preventing the
door from closing on the container.’

Tracy turned away with a disparaging sigh.

‘Good point. We’re not able to mimic the
exact circumstances. Today is more about seeing the damage and smoke trail
caused by the fire and trying to replicate the candle wick effect,’ said Rob.

‘How long will it take?’

‘It depends on the temperatures achieved. A
crematorium oven can reach over one-thousand degrees and take two hours for a
body to turn to ash and even then not
all
the bones turn to ash.’

Rob and Tracy walked over to the monitors
behind a screen; leaving Nancy feeling like a spare part that wasn’t needed.
She knew the Boss wanted her to create some sort of dialogue with Tracy, but
seeing as how Tracy wasn’t making it easy, she thought it best to let them get
on with it.

‘Two hours is a long time, I’ll let you
experts get on with it and call back after lunch,’ Nancy said.

Rob acknowledged her with a thumbs-up, but
Tracy kept her head buried in the data on the monitor screens. Nancy turned on
her heels and came face to face with Blondie and his sidekick from the CIA. The
sidekick thrust the apartment keys at her.

‘Find anything?’

‘Nothing to find.’ Blondie said. ‘Accident,
like I said.’

Nancy took the keys and watched as they
lined up side by side, with their arms folded, at the yellow line on the
warehouse floor. Nancy looked at the keys and across at Tracy who was still
busy.
I’ll give her the keys later.
She decided to head to the Mall for
lunch and some shopping therapy.

***

Nancy finished her
shrimp-salad sandwich and ordered another latte. The events surrounding the
professor’s death kept nagging at her and she took a pen and notebook from her
purse. She began to jot down bullet points of things that were bugging her. The
lasagne purchase at the top of the list kept drawing her attention. The
waitress arrived with the latte, but she pushed it to one side, left payment
and a tip and set off for her car.

In the parking lot, her cell phone rang and
she answered. The line was bad, but she could see it was Kyle from the display.

‘Wha... doi... tonight.’

‘I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up.’ The
phone went dead and she could see there was no signal.

Her fingers tapped him a message back, to
say she would call him later and she set off for the apartment. As she drove
along the highway, she checked her cell phone on the seat beside her. The
signal was strong and she pressed send. She turned off at the next intersection
and arrived outside the apartment.

The curtains twitched at number one, but
she paid it no attention. She fished in her glove compartment, took out some
evidence bags and exited her car. A quick climb up the stairway, she arrived at
the doorway, put the key in the lock and opened the door.
My God!

The odour of fresh paintwork hit her in the
hallway. Nancy checked all the rooms. No one would have guessed there had been
a fire. It looked like a new apartment prepared for sale. The room was empty
and every surface freshly painted. There was even a new smoke-detector alarm.
Nancy went to the bedroom; the drawers in the walk-in-closet were empty and
there were no clothes on the rack. The degree certificates had gone from the
wall.
Oh no.
Her temper was self-evident as her cheeks flamed and her
head pounded. If someone had given her a thermometer to hold, she felt like it
would have exploded. She rushed to the kitchen, pulled out the trash can and
pressed the pedal with the toe of her shoe.
Ha... they missed it
. ‘Oh...
thank you.’

She rolled her eyes to look at the ceiling.
Nancy bagged the Wal-Mart receipt, gum wrapper and beans can separately. A
glance around and she headed back to her car.

In the sanctuary of her car, Nancy started
to go over various scenarios in her mind until she could no longer think
logically. Her head still pounded, and she pushed a CD into the player, started
the engine with the ignition key and set off for the warehouse.
I’m Flying
Without Wings
, blasted through the speakers, uplifted her spirit and
despite the volume, her headache subsided.

Nancy parked outside the warehouse and
entered. The two CIA guys were still standing like statues, arms folded and
with their toes exactly behind the line.

‘You decided to join us, then?’ Tracy
asked.

The stench in the warehouse was the same as
that she had experienced in the apartment on the day of the incident. Nancy
ignored Tracy and turned to Rob.

‘Well, how’d the experiment go?’

‘Best we talk about it in the office. It’s
a bit toxic in here. It’ll take some time for the fan to clear the air.’

They all made their way to the office and
sat around a large table. Rob sat down and placed an armful of printouts on the
table. Tracy placed a CD in the computer and pressed play.

‘We can definitely say there must have been
a body in the apartment,’ said Tracy. ‘All the samples I have taken indicate
that the yellowish-black residue from the fire, and that we replicated today,
is the fat from the body. The bone of the foot hadn’t been severed and
comparisons with other bone fragments found in other fires, indicate it had
burned in situ.’

Rob interjected.

‘If you look at the playback, which is in
fast motion, you can see the effects of the heat on the surroundings and the
candle-wick effect of the clothing burning the body fat. As you can see, none
of the surrounding furniture is catching fire.’

‘What were the temperatures?’ asked Nancy.

‘One thousand-five-hundred degrees was the
highest we recorded,’ Rob said.

‘I see the ceiling of the container is
buckling. Wouldn’t that have caused the ceiling to burn through in the
apartment ceiling?’ Nancy asked.

‘Well, we’re burning a pig here, so the
body mass of a human body may have acted differently with lower temperatures,’
replied Rob.

‘And did it turn the pig to ash?’ asked
Nancy.

‘Some of it… but not all.’

‘You poured gas on the pig’s clothing and
lit it with a match. I thought there weren’t traces of accelerant found at the
scene, or signs that he smoked?’

‘We’ve moved on since then,’ said Tracy, ‘the
clothing we took from his closet showed traces of rubbing alcohol used for
cleansing hands in hospitals. He could have used matches to light a cigarette
or a cigar. There were traces of a wine glass smashed from the heat, maybe he
had a drink, used the wine glass as an ashtray, fell asleep and. and there we
have it, hey presto... our first case of apparent spontaneous combustion.’

‘There you are then, accident, like we said
all along,’ said Blondie. ‘Case closed, we can all go home and the coroner can
write it up.’

Nancy wasn’t buying it. She glanced at the
computer monitor, the time flashing away in the bottom left indicated
approaching two hours, but most of the pig’s bones remained.

‘Tracy, can I have a word in private?’
Nancy asked. ‘We can talk on the way to my car.’

‘Sure, I think we’re finished here. I think
I can guess what it is.’

They headed for her car and Nancy walked
slowly to give the CIA guys time to leave first.

‘This has nothing to do with you saying
anything to Logan about me not wearing a cap at the scene.’

Tracy’s face rouged.

‘What is it, then?’

‘I don’t buy this accident thing. Did you
know the CIA have totally cleaned the crime scene and decorated all the rooms?’

‘Crime scene!’ Tracy shook her head. ‘You
mean the apartment. Yes, they told me. They said if there is anything we need,
they’ll share their findings with us.’

‘So you don’t find it strange?’

‘What do you want me to say? I don’t work
on conspiracy theories... just facts.’

They arrived at the car. Nancy opened her
car door, leaned over the seat and took the evidence bags from the glove box.

‘What about the missing battery?’ Nancy
asked.

‘Rob took it for testing. It still had a
charge. He reckons it stopped working when the wires melted and short
circuited.’

‘Then how come no one from whole block of
apartments heard the alarm, except for the janitor?’

Tracy looked unfazed.

‘Smoke alarms are internal. They’re only
designed to alert the occupants of the apartment.’

Nancy wondered if maybe Tracy should have
slept in her apartment the night before and listened to the racket that she had
heard, but she wasn’t about to debate on the subject of acoustics and sound
travelling around apartments.

‘Okay, then there’s the timing. If two
hours couldn’t incinerate pig bones, how come the alarm was still going when
he’d turned to ash? It only took fifteen minutes for the fire department to
arrive.’

‘You tell me, you’re the detective,’ said
Tracy. ‘It isn’t every day we get to experience cases like this.’

Nancy felt anger well up inside at Tracy’s
apparent disinterest, but managed a smile in return.

‘I just collected these from the apartment;
the clean-up guys missed them. Can you check out the gum wrapper to see if
there are any traces of drugs? Oh, and a bean can from the trash can in the
kitchen. It probably has the professor’s prints.’

‘The bean can okay, but why the wrapper?’
Asked Tracy and placed her hands on her hips.

‘Look, I can’t say anything until I’ve
spoken to Logan. I want you to trust me on this. I have a strong hunch. There’s
more to this than an accident.’

‘Why didn’t you say something in the team
meeting?’

‘I don’t trust the CIA guys. That’s why.’

Tracy laughed at first and then set a cold
stare. Nancy flustered and felt a rage boiling inside her at Tracy’s
indifference.

‘Hunch? I’ll tell you what, you tell Logan
and if he wants me to check it out, he can speak to my boss, how’s that?’

Tracy took the gum wrapper in the evidence
bag and walked away shaking her head.

She watched as Tracy re-entered the
warehouse.
Bah, ‘create empathy,’ Logan said. More like apathy
. Nancy
wrenched her car door open, hopped onto the seat and set off to the screech of
tyres. On the open road, she thought ahead to her meeting to debrief Logan. A
glance between the car seats and she noticed an evidence bag.
Damn, the
receipt, and I forgot to mention the lasagne packaging.

On
arriving at work, Nancy waited for Logan to call her into the office. She was
surprised when Logan’s door opened and Kyle’s face appeared.

‘Chief will see you now.’

She joined Kyle and Logan in the office and
took a seat.

‘Okay, tell me about the experiment. Then
you can tell me about your hunch,’ said Logan.

‘Hunch.’ The bitch
. It wasn’t exactly déjà vu, but from his expression, she could tell
she had been in this zone before.
Damn, I’m gonna look stupid in front of
Kyle.
She glanced at Kyle, who looked to be doing his best to seem
invisible as he stared at the floor and fidgeted his feet. Nancy took out her
notebook.

‘The experiment showed there were
similarities to what we found at the apartment to a point.’

‘And what would the point be?’

‘Well, points really. The fire was
localized to the body. The residue from the burning pig created the same smoke
damage and residue, so we can assume there was a full body at the apartment.
But, other than that, it proved nothing. The pig’s bones hadn’t turned to ash
and the damage to the steel ceiling indicated to me we should have seen the
fire break through the ceiling at the apartment.’

‘And the hunch?’

Nancy relayed her findings from her
investigation at the apartment and from the witness statements.

‘Conclusion?’

‘We need a search warrant for the janitor’s
apartment.’

‘For lasagne packaging?’

‘Yes, Chief.’

‘So when the judge asks what the janitor is
suspected of, you’re gonna say ‘I think he stole a lasagne during the confusion
in the aftermath of the incident at the professor’s apartment.’ Is that it?’

‘Yes, Chief... I mean... No, Chief. I’m gonna
say, I think he could have murdered the professor, disarmed the smoke detector,
set him on fire and then he stole the lasagne.’

Logan rose to his full height from his
chair. His face reddened, the knuckles of his clenched fists supporting his
weight on the desk turned white and the tendons in his neck stood out. She
heard a faint snicker from Kyle’s direction.

Oh, shit.
Nancy
reared backward on her chair.

‘Motive?’ His voice had raised an octave
and gained a rasp.

‘Drugs, remember the young man? The professor
could have been dealing drugs. Then there’s the CIA connection?’

‘So let’s see. We have a professor dealing
drugs under the protection of the CIA, and a janitor who murders the professor
for a... a lasagne! Get out of my sight. Bring him in for questioning, and then
we can see if we need a damn search warrant. CSI need his prints and DNA anyway
to eliminate his from the scene.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Kyle, stay here, I need a word,’ said
Logan and sat back in his chair.

Nancy rose from her chair and headed through
the door, without even a sideways glance at Kyle.
Damn traitor, he could’ve
backed me up, somehow.
Nancy walked out of the office, her shoulders
sagged, cheeks flushed and fingers trembled as she made her way outside to head
to the janitor’s apartment.
What is it with Logan? Why is he pushing me so
hard?