LITMIR.BIZ

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metal toolbox and what looked to be a pile of plastic and paper evidence bags.

      “Pretty bad,” Cruz observed, as they watched the men working over the grim scene.

      “Pretty bad,” the deputy agreed—both of them masters at understatement.

      A silence settled over them, a quiet more profound than any Cruz could remember for a very long time. There were no automobile noises, no commuter planes, no traffic helicopters droning overhead. No hum of the heavy machinery that is a city’s living, beating heart. He might have expected a few chirping birds, at least, but any that were wintering here had obviously had the sense to flee this place of death.

      Cruz would have welcomed the opportunity to fly away himself. His stomach turned at the acrid odor of wet, charred wood and the toxic stench of melted plastic, rubber and paint.

      He took a step forward and heard a brittle crunching sound under his shoe. He looked down to see that he was standing on broken shards of glass, maybe a piece of shattered window pane. He kicked it aside, then stopped to pick out a small fragment that had become wedged into the hard rubber of his left heel.

      “Winds were high the night of the fire,” Berglund said. “Flames jumped from treetop to treetop, and it looked like they might cross the lot line. We were worried we’d lose half the street.”

      Cruz followed the direction of the burly man’s cocked thumb to the white birch and silver maples standing between the destroyed house and the property to the north of it. Several were scorched and fire-capped. On the neighbor’s garage, maybe sixty feet away, the wood siding was visibly blistered and peeling in a couple of spots, mute testimony to the intensity of the blaze.

      “We’ve only got two pumper trucks,” Berglund said. His deep voice doled out words sparingly, Cruz noted, like someone unaccustomed to strangers or long explanations. “It’s just a volunteer force, and fighting the wind like we were…” The frown deepened on his square face and his white-blond eyebrows were almost linked now by the two vertical creases above his nose. “If it hadn’t been for the wind, we might have been able to get it under control, save more evidence. Once we realized there was no way of saving the house or pulling Mrs. Meade out, though, we made the decision to save the neighbor’s place.”

      He said it defensively, Cruz noted, like he thought this D.C. hotshot might be getting ready to ream out the locals for their ineptitude. “Makes sense,” he agreed.

      A cold wind blew up off the lake and Cruz felt the damp cut through him. He turned up the collar of his overcoat, wishing once again that he’d worn something warmer. Back in D.C., they were just weeks away from cherry blossom time, when the air would turn humid and ripe, but that kind of weather was a long way off here. There was no point in looking for warmth in these ice-crusted coals, either.

      Suddenly, he recoiled, picking up a trace scent through the pervasive stink of charred wood, a smell that was both familiar and unforgettable—the terrifying odor of roasted human flesh. It was just his imagination messing with his head, he tried to tell himself. Grace Meade’s charred body had long since been removed.

      Logic carried no weight, however, because what he was seeing in his mind’s eye was not this scene, but another fire long ago—another murder victim’s body torched in a deliberate bid to destroy evidence, only this victim hadn’t been a stranger, and Cruz hadn’t been some impartial investigator arriving after the fact.

      “You want to take a closer look?” Berglund asked, stepping up to the ribbon of yellow plastic crime scene tape that circumnavigated the lot. He reached out and lifted it, holding it up for Cruz to pass under. All the professional courtesies.

      God almighty, no, he didn’t want to get any closer, Cruz thought, revulsion springing from the deepest recesses of his brain, that primitive part that deals in instinctive fear and the impulse to flee. He managed to hold his ground—just.

      “I can see all I need to from here,” he said. “I’ll just wait till those guys get done. I don’t want to be trampling over evidence.”

      He turned his back to the site, looking up and down the road as if recreating in his mind the scenario as it had played out two nights earlier. All along the curving lakefront road, well-tended houses with two-car garages nestled into wooded lots that flowed, unfenced and unbroken, from one into the other. They were a custom-built mix of ranch-style bunga lows, Cape Cod salt boxes and sprawling split-levels with sand-colored prairie limestone facades. The lots were large, none smaller than a half acre, Cruz estimated, space beyond the reach of all but the wealthiest of urban dwellers. Even in a small town, this had to be prime real estate. Cruz saw snowmobiles parked in several of the driveways, and a couple of tarp-covered powerboats jacked up on trailers for the winter.

      When his heartbeat had finally slowed to a normal pace, he allowed himself to turn back toward the destroyed house, where the two jumpsuited investigators seemed to be finishing their work. They picked their way across the rubble, stopping to lay down a few evidence bags in the tool case. One of the men was carrying a long-handled spade, and he jammed it upright in a pile of ash. Clapping the dust off their hands, they ducked under the tape and walked over to where Cruz and Berglund were standing. One was gray-haired, balding, but fit-looking under his orange jumpsuit. The other was younger, heavyset and perspiring, despite the cold, so that his black-framed glasses kept slipping down the slick incline of his nose, which was black from the repetition of his sooty hand pushing them back.

      “This is Agent Cruz from the FBI,” Berglund told them.

      They nodded, and the older of the two men held out a dirty hand. He then thought better of it and transformed the shake to a quick wave. “I don’t think you want to touch this hand,” he said. “I’m Don Beadle from the State Bureau of Investigation. This is Bill Oppenhalt from the Arson Investigation Unit. I guess it was you who originated the request for us to come out here and take a look, Agent Cruz?”

      Cruz nodded. “That’s right. Appreciate the cooperation.”

      “No problem. That’s why we’re here.”

      “So, how does it look? Do you think this was deliberately set?”

      Beadle deferred to Oppenhalt, who pushed his heavy glasses up his nose once more and nodded. “Oh, yeah, not much question of that, I’d say. Things were a little stirred around before we got here, mind you, but we were able to spot a fair number of physical indicators just the same.”

      “Like what?” Berglund asked.

      “Well, you got your multiple high burn points and several localized heavy burn patterns indicating that there was more than one point of origin. Some spalling in the concrete foundation, too, which some would say indicates an accelerant, although it’s not a real reliable indicator, in my experience. We took some carpet and underpad samples, though, and those were a little more conclusive. I’ll want to run them through a gas chromatograph back at the lab just to be sure, but in the end,” he said, tapping the side of his blackened nose before pushing his glasses up yet again, “the nose knows.”

      “What do you mean?”

      Oppenhalt grunted as he bent to scoop a sample of dirt, which he rubbed between his fingers, then held under his nostrils. “Gasoline,” he said. “On a cold day like this, it’s real easy to pick it up. You guys don’t smell it? It’s all over the place here.”

      Berglund shook his head. “I can’t smell anything except charcoal, and that’s been stuck in my nostrils since the night of the fire. And anyway,” he added, nodding to the gravel driveway beneath their feet, “what you’re smelling here is probably several years worth of dripping oil from all the cars that have been parked in this drive.”

      “Well, sure, but it’s not just in the drive, Deputy,” Beadle said, cocking his thumb back over his shoulder. “It’s all over the scene. Really strong in the carpet samples we found, like Bill here said. Even I picked it up, and my nose isn’t nearly as well trained as his is.”

      The broad shoulders of Berglund’s green parka hefted, sending a shower of what

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