The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(12)
“So as I was saying.” Rooney hit the button and the first image splashed across the screen. “This was a month ago. Out in the sticks, this house had three acres around it. Fire marshal believes the blaze was set in the living room and spread rapidly—a key indicator of an arson.”
“Accelerant?” Frank Del Monaco asked.
Rooney twisted his lips, hesitated, and said, “Denatured and jellied alcohol. Sterno.”
“From those catering canisters?” Vail asked. “Not a very effective way of starting a hot fire. Or sustaining it. Right?”
“Right.” Rooney forwarded to another photo, and then others: wide angle shots showing the crime scene and surrounding land and close-ups of the fine ash and burned rubble—remnants of kitchen appliances. “They’re still analyzing samples from the house. My guess is there was something else used other than Sterno because that fire was damn hot. With intense fires we typically see color changes or spalling in concrete, melted aluminum, deformation of steel, that type of thing—and we see some of that here.
“There wasn’t much left of the structure—cinderblocks for the fireplace, the back and front steps outside, some metal from a dishwasher and refrigerator. And that’s about it. While those are generally unreliable indicators of the presence of an accelerant, I’m convinced that the intensity of the fire is significant. I’m sure we’ll find something more potent than Sterno. Oh, we also found traces of bone. There was apparently a body, which is why homicide was called.”
“Identification?” Tom van Owen asked.
“Not a whole lot left. No teeth, no long bones. They’re running DNA. Homicide dick is Kevin McBride.”
“And that’s why we caught this case?” Vail said. “Almost no forensics?”
“Yeah, that. Plus this isn’t the first fire matching the MO. McBride said there were four more before this one, spread across a wide area. All in Virginia. And another they’re now looking at from five years ago.”
“I’m confused,” Del Monaco said. “What in this crime scene says homicide? Sterno? Could’ve been left over from a party they had. The body could’ve been the homeowner. Smoking, watching TV, falls asleep, place goes up. Not like that doesn’t happen. A lot.”
Rooney’s military demeanor helped him maintain his composure at times like these when others—Vail being the definition of “others”—would lose it with Del Monaco. “Too hot,” Rooney said evenly. “I’m telling you, Frank, we’re going to find a bonafide accelerant. And if not, we’ll be going over those other cases to see if there’s something that can clue us in on what to look for. We just need to dig deeper. The more info we have on the behaviors he left behind, the better we can establish linkage. And if we can establish linkage—well, you know the deal. If it is the same offender, we’ve gotta find him. He’s not going to stop. These guys love their fires too much.”
“And,” Vail said, “if he’s setting fires with people inside the houses, that’s a whole other ballgame.”
“Were there any distinguishable vapors at the scene?” van Owen asked. “Weather’s been cold.”
Rooney nodded. “Good point. Accelerant odors are sometimes detectable when the investigators make their initial inspection of the fire scene—and those smells are usually sharper on cold mornings. I’m told that they smelled something but couldn’t identify it.”
“Thank you, Art,” DiCarlo said. “Agent Vail, you want to give us an update on Jasmine Marcks?”
He’s “Art” but I’m “Agent Vail.” What’s up with that? Vail did not bother walking to the front of the room. She had no PowerPoint to present. Just a verbal update, if that. “Some of you remember the Roscoe Lee Marcks case that Thomas Underwood handled before I joined the unit. I inherited the case and Marcks has been sitting behind bars at Potter Correctional doing LWOP,” she said, using cop speak for life without parole. “Everything’s been quiet until his daughter wrote a book about him. That seems to have stirred her father’s pot.”
“Why would he care?” Dietrich Hutchings asked.
“Because Jasmine was the one who turned him in.”
“Oh, right. Duct tape or something?”
“Among other things,” Vail said. “The profile was pretty much spot-on, but the nail in the coffin was the evidence she gave the cops. Her testimony blew away the thin alibis he had on the more recent murders. Not to mention the forensics they found at two of the later scenes. Anyway, Jasmine got a threatening note from him and—”
“And,” DiCarlo said, “Agent Vail appears to have allowed herself to be drawn in to act as a babysitter.”
Vail kept her death-ray gaze away from DiCarlo. And she held her tongue—both improvements in her demeanor that she had been working on the past few years, at Gifford’s urging. She glanced at Hutchings instead, but he was wearing a politically correct poker face. “Fairfax County PD is taking it seriously, which I agree with. Detective Erik Curtis.
“I met with the offender at Potter Correctional, which I’ve been trying to do for years. After threatening his daughter, I felt he may have something to say and be more open to a sit down.”
“And? What’d he say about his daughter?” Del Monaco asked.