The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(94)
“Don’t know. I would’ve said Gaines—but given what we’re hearing about MacFarlane … we don’t know enough to say yet. That said, on this inventory of items taken from the Gaines house, there was a small bottle of diethyl ether, which my expert tells me is the chemical name for ether.”
They chewed on that a minute.
“So, what does this mean?” Ramos asked. “That the guy who was Marcks’s accomplice on the serial killings is also setting these fires? He’s an arsonist?”
“Looks that way.”
“How does this help us?”
“It gives us another avenue of investigation,” Hurdle said. “Let’s get up to speed with the investigating agency on these fires, see if there are any forensics we can track that’ll give us a lead on where to look for these guys. If this accomplice is getting his chemicals locally, maybe it dovetails with something we’ve got on Marcks.”
That’d be helpful. If we actually had something on Marcks.
“You mentioned there were a couple of fires set after Marcks escaped,” Tarkoff said. “Any chance he’s involved?”
“Hard to know,” Vail said. “But now that there looks to be a tangible connection I’ll look at this case differently. I have a message out to Art Rooney, the profiler—” Her Samsung vibrated again and she held up an index finger while she answered the call. “Art. Just talking about you. Got something interesting on your case.”
“Saw your text. And I’ve got some things to tell you, too, on the arsons.”
“I’d like to share that with my task force. Can you Skype? We’ve got a setup here at the command post.” Vail glanced at Hurdle, who nodded. She got the user ID and passed it on to Rooney.
Two minutes later the Skype tones were beeping and bopping over the RV’s speakers. Rooney’s face filled the forty-inch flat screen that was mounted at the front of the room. They huddled around the TV as Vail made quick introductions.
“You first,” Vail said.
“Arson is no different from any other serial offender,” he started, giving the other agents and detectives a quick and dirty primer. “He has a particular way of operating that is identifiable to him. MO just like a homicide.”
“Behaviorally,” Vail added, “we look for those things that are unique to that offender. Things he does a certain way because it’s familiar to him and because it’s got meaning to him. Forensically, obviously, we can also look at fingerprints he may’ve left on the items he uses. But the items he uses gives us something else, too.”
Rooney picked it up. “If an arsonist has a certain way of setting the fire, it can provide linkage among the cases we’ve got where we’re not sure if they’re related. And if we can find a relationship, a forensic or behavioral trait from one case, added to something from another case, it might make the difference in whether or not we find the UNSUB.
“In this case, we had six fires that all appeared to be set by the same arsonist. In the most recent one, the investigators found remnants of a wooden match—and, most significantly, a small dollop of wax that chemically matched one from a case he remembered handling about six years ago. In that case, the offender used a candle with a hole drilled a quarter inch below the wick. He stuck a wooden match through the hole, then soaked the match in the jellied substance they use for chafing dishes.”
Morrison turned to Vail. “Sterno.”
“Sterno,” Rooney said. “So this offender placed the match very close to the wick. The candle started to burn and when it hit the wood, the flame traveled down to the head of the match where there was jellied string. It lit up and went down to the Sterno can, which had the rest of the jellied substance—and a rag doused in gasoline that hung down to the floor.”
Rooney clicked and crime scene photos appeared on the screen. “Can you see these okay?”
“Affirmative,” Hurdle said almost absentmindedly as he studied the image.
Successive pictures showed a flame-scorched Sterno can, remnants of a match, a candle.
“So this fire was not successful,” Ramos said.
“Right.” Rooney’s voice was off-screen, the crime scene photos still visible. “Which is the beauty of linkage. We now know that this earlier crime scene may in fact be the UNSUB’s first attempt. And he screwed it up. The fire didn’t really take off. We found a partially burned body, too.”
“Very elaborate setup,” Curtis said. “What’s the point? Is this just something he enjoys?” He turned to Vail. “What do you call it, ritual?”
Rooney answered. “No, this is part of his MO. At first glance, it sounds like this guy’s a nutcase. Why such a far-fetched contraption? It’s a simple explanation, really.”
“A delay mechanism,” Curtis said. “To allow him to leave and get away. Once he lights the candle, he leaves. It gives him plenty of time to get a fair distance from the home before it goes up in flames.”
Rooney clicked away from the photos and back to his face. “Exactly, detective. We thought he chose houses in the boonies because they’re served by volunteer fire departments, which have longer response times. But there’s another reason.”
“He takes a long time at the scene setting up this elaborate candle and wood match contraption. If he’s in the middle of nowhere, there’s a greater chance he’s left alone. Fewer visitors, less chance some neighbor or friend is going to drop by or walk in on him. Theoretically.”