Fire Angel (16 page)

“I'll add the ones I take once they've been printed, but I'll email you the file as soon as I download it.”

Jake took Maya out of her harness and tied her to a tree along the track, well away from the area they would be examining.

“I have digital copies of all of those if you need them,” he said. “Now, what can I do?”

“How about you start looking through the grass for signs that someone has been here? The grass hasn't been cut; you might find something at the ground level. Think August, early September — when you think the fire started. Look for the same sort of things you found at the park across from the garage and on the roof. Cigarette butts, gum, anything that might show he was here watching. If you don't find anything in the grass, check by the river in case he came in by boat. Remember; he had to have watched it burn. I'm going to walk the perimeter, and then go inside.”

Jake reached for her arm as she turned.

“Be careful.” He looked around. “No one knows we're here, but he could be watching us all the same.” He turned and walked towards the edge of the trees.

Alexis shivered and looked around the overgrown area. The lake formed one side of the squared off clearing, which extended about ten yards in each direction. To her left and behind the cabin, the gentle slopes were heavily brushed and would provide a good vantage point. The other side was treed and flat. If the killer wanted to watch them, he had his choice of locations. She shuddered. If she let him bother her, she gave him control, and he would win. She couldn't sense him, so she relaxed.

She forced her thoughts back to the task at hand. Why had the fire not spread? She moved forward slowly, examining the grass as she walked. The area in front of the cabin and to the right of it had been badly trampled.

She walked over to the pile of debris that had been removed and set down her hot pink work kit. She removed her portable hydrocarbon vapor detector, looked for oil and gas residue, but the readings were minimal.

She continued around to the back of the cabin. Here, except for a few animal tracks, the area was undisturbed. She stood at the edge of the clearing with her back to the woods, and studied the scene. She snapped several pictures, and then slowly walked from the outhouse towards the cabin, stopping about ten feet away from it. She stared at the grass, green still, and devoid of scrub. The earth was lumpy, not as smooth as the rest of the clearing was. She took several more pictures and followed the grassy verge around to the left side of the cabin, and then to the front where it could no longer be seen.

“So,” she mumbled to herself. “You built a fire break — love nature, hate people. Now, I know something about you, and I'll get you.”

Alexis walked towards the back step and stopped when she noticed a flash of light coming from the trees. She waited, but it did not come again, so she dismissed it from her thoughts. She climbed the step and walked through the partial doorway. She used the hydrocarbon vapor detector again. In the middle of the room, several boards had burned through; some had probably rotted through after the fire because of the autumn rain, so she carefully tested the strength of each board before putting her weight on it.

Hydrocarbon vapor residue was slight on the right side of the cabin, but as she moved towards the left side of the shack, it became stronger. An unusually shiny residue caught her attention. It was on the edge of the least-burned section of the floor, near the front door. She dug a couple of specimen jars out of her kit and filled them with wood scrapings.

As she neared the far wall where the woodstove sat next to the remainder of the cot, she watched the floor for signs of a liquid accelerant, which might have seeped into the sub-floor; even a cabin like this had a sub-floor.

Alexis used the small crowbar from her pack to lift a few planks until she found the joists. There it was, the char pattern indicating that the gasoline had been poured onto the floor and had pooled in this area; no doubt a level would show that the floor tilted towards the river. There were not enough baseboards and walls to provide additional evidence, but the strength of the floor boards indicated where the fire had started.

She stood and walked over to the remains of the bed; no matter how hot a fire burned, steel springs rarely melted. Alexis smiled at the sheets of galvanized tin that leaned against the wall. They had fallen on the bed and partially smothered the flames, preserving the body that had connected the fires.

In the dirt under the planks, she found what she had been searching for — a waxy residue similar to what must have been found at the other fire scenes. How did the candles fit in?

Now that she had garnered her information from the evidence, it was time to use her gift, the ability to pull all the facts together and see the fire as it had been.

She stood, closed her eyes, and slowed her breathing. Gradually, images of that night formed in her mind as the clues from the evidence fit together. She saw him preparing the scene, placing the carefully wrapped body on the bed, pouring the gasoline on it. She watched him build and light a small fire in the center of the room where the floor was no more, and pour a stream of gasoline towards the body.

She observed as he placed a candle on the floor near his feet, and lit it. She imagined him watching the multicolored flames as they sped along the stream of gasoline until they climbed the blanket and engulfed the body.

Jake was right; based on the amount of preparation and the safe-space, he was a pyromaniac. He loved the sound, the smell, and the look of fire, but most of all, he loved what it did to human flesh. She opened her eyes and shook her head. She rubbed her aching back and stretched, suddenly sensing eyes watching her, the same feeling she had had at Providence House. She looked around, but the feeling was gone.

It must be from the flash back,
she thought, dismissing it. You couldn't crawl into a mind like that and not feel tainted. She was convinced that this had been his first fire; there had to have been some significance to its date. Satisfied that she had everything she could hope to get, she left the cabin and returned to the vehicle.

Jake had opened two lawn chairs and set a folding table between them. On the table lay a small picnic basket.

“It's too awkward for me to try and get up off the ground, so I carry the lawn chairs wherever I go. I thought you might be hungry. I asked Minette to put a lunch together for us before I met you for breakfast. Do you realize how long we've been here?” He opened the basket.

“I hope you like ham salad sandwiches, they're my favorite, and she knows it. We have chocolate chip cookies too. There's coffee in the thermos, sugar and cream already added.”

Exhausted, she dropped into the chair beside him. She looked at her watch, surprised to see that it was after one; the sky had clouded, keeping its promise of rain and an early dusk.

“This is great. I'm starving. I had no idea that I had taken so much time, but I have evidence and answers.”

She poured coffee for them both and handed him a cup. She noticed an open note, a picture drawn by a child of a man and a little girl. Carefully printed under the smaller figure was the name Mila. The drawing was similar to the one she had seen in his office.

“Is Mila your artist of choice?” she asked. “I noticed a similar portrait in your office.”

He laughed.

“Mila loves to draw. If I hung every picture she gave me, we'd soon run out of wall space. You should see the stuff she brings home from school. Minette has made it clear that the fridge can only hold so many pictures. She gets to pick her best one each day for viewing. We've made this little frame and she gets to put her daily pick in it. I'm sure she'll want to regale you with her entire portfolio tonight,” said Jake as he bit into his sandwich.

Mila is a child and lives with him?
Her imagination went into overdrive.

“I can see that you're very fond of her,” she said and then casually added, “Is she your daughter?”

“Mila is Minette's daughter. Her father was a member of my squad. He was killed in the roadside bombing that day,” he replied glumly. “Mila never got to see her daddy.”

Alexis thought better of satisfying her curiosity. She had put her foot in her mouth already today; she would wait before trying it again. There was probably a logical explanation why the child's pictures were on his fridge.

Even though she'd worn gloves, she cleaned her hands with sanitizer before reaching for one of the sandwiches Jake had unwrapped.

“These are delicious,” she said as she savored the spicy ham mix spread over homemade wheat bread. “If I keep eating like this, I'll gain a ton. Did you find anything?”

Jake pointed to half a dozen small, airtight containers on top of what looked like a tool kit.

“Wow! That's amazing.”

“Don't be so shocked. I'm not a rookie, Alexis, I know how to collect evidence; I do have police and forensic training.”

Three vials held cigarette butts. The others were filled with various colors of dirt.

“I'm just surprised that you managed to find so much after all this time; so, what do you have?”

“I found these butts over by the rock on the other side of the road; one of them might be the end of a joint — no filter. Two of them are cigarette butts, but they're in pretty bad shape. The third was under some leaf mulch, so they may be able to recover DNA from it. It looks to be the same kind as the ones you found on the roof.

“I know Luke James, the owner; he doesn't smoke, so we can assume, having found butts at three of four fire sites, the arsonist does. I'm not an expert, but I'd guess they're the cheap ones that you can buy tax-free on Bear Island. If they are from there, then our killer could be Temagami, since they aren't supposed to sell cigarettes to non-natives. Every now and then a carton or two gets by, but we can't ignore it. This will narrow the list of suspects.”

He finished his own sandwich and washed it down with coffee. He took a cookie and bit into it, chewed, and swallowed.

“I also found traces of what might be motor oil or some other kind of engine fluid. It discolored the dirt and the grass. I'll check with Luke to make sure his engine isn't leaking. What did you discover?”

Alexis sat up straighter and smiled.

“I found out where he set the fire and how it moved. He took the chimney off the woodstove, and forced both doors open to provide additional oxygen to feed it. He used gasoline as an accelerant, and he built a campfire, probably using paper and sticks. That's why the floor burned through in that one spot.” She took another bite of her sandwich, washing it down with a mouthful of coffee.

“He used a lighter to light the fire and a candle that he placed on the floor. My gut says that it will be scented soy, like the others. This is the creepy part; he stayed inside the cabin up close to the fire as long as he could. There is a safe spot, an area without accelerant residue on the right side near the door. He left the scene before the roof collapsed; otherwise, he would have known that the fallen roof had prevented the total destruction of the body.” She finished her coffee.

“Oh yes, I almost forgot; he built a fire break to stop the blaze from spreading into the woods. Our man has camping experience and cares about nature.”

“Wow! You are good; that's a hell of a lot more than the local guys got. The fire break may point to his being Temagami as well, since they have an incredible respect for nature. Let's pack up. By the way, I called Everett and told him to put the visit to scene two on hold until tomorrow. It'll be dark early today, and they're calling for freezing rain overnight. We'll be lucky if we get back before the sky opens.”

Together they picked up the remainder of their lunch, packaged up the evidence, and the rest of the gear. While Jake secured Maya in the back of the vehicle and walked around the truck to check for anything they might have dropped, Alexis went back to check the cabin. She was just moving around to the back of the shack when the unmistakable crack of a rifle shattered the silence, and she heard the thud of the bullet hit the wall just above her head.

“Alexis!” she heard Jake cry. “Alexis!” He called again. “Are you all right?” A second shot echoed in the stillness, but she'd already dropped to her belly in the grass.

“I'm okay!” she shouted, her voice betraying her fear, as she crawled quickly to the lake side of the cabin, using what remained of the walls for cover. She had pulled out her gun and held it ready.

Alexis fired three quick shots into the trees, not intending to hit anything in particular, but hoping to distract the shooter. Jake followed suit with two rifle blasts. She used the opportunity to run a zigzag pattern from the edge of the structure to the open passenger side of the vehicle. Heart pounding in her ears, she climbed in and kept low. Jake started the engine and put it in gear. Just as she pulled the door shut, a third bullet struck the side mirror on Alexis's side of the vehicle shattering it, sending shrapnel at her through the open window. She screamed, raising her hand to the side of her face that stung from the bite of mirrored glass. Jake quickly used the electronic button to close the window.

“He has a pretty good aim,” she croaked, looking at the blood on her fingers. Jake gunned the engine and sent the truck careening down the laneway. She folded herself into as small a target as she could. In her mind, she was back in the hotel in L.A., and the small sting on her face became the searing heat of the bullet penetrating her side. She gasped; suddenly, she was as terrified as she had been that day.

Jake could see the gut-wrenching fear on Alexis's face, but this wasn't the time to try and comfort her. He used the voice command to activate the onboard phone and called 911. He identified himself and gave the information necessary to report shots fired. He gave the location of the hunting cabin, and asked to be transferred directly to Everett.