LITMIR.BIZ

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the thing she least wanted to talk about. The thing that indicated this was no ordinary murder.

      “There was something written on Constance’s hand.”

      “I know,” Tony said. “I saw it.”

      “What do you make of it?”

      “I’m not sure. It might be nothing.”

      “Or it could mean we have another Grim Reaper on our hands.”

      Kat couldn’t get those five words out of her head. When she closed her eyes, she still saw them, smudged and startling. THIS IS JUST THE FIRST.

      Tony inhaled, his massive chest expanding and deflating. “Yes. That’s a distinct possibility.”

      It wasn’t what Kat wanted to hear. The answer silenced her for a moment as she pondered what it could mean for her and the town.

      The man standing at Tony’s side cleared his throat, forcing an introduction.

      “Kat,” the lieutenant said, “this is Larry Sheldon. He’s an arson investigator with the state police.”

      Kat quickly sized up the newcomer while shaking his hand. He was younger than her, thirty if a day, and boyishly handsome. Wearing jeans, a button-down shirt, and a tie, he looked more like a math teacher than someone who’d be studying a crime scene at three-thirty in the morning. His wire-frame glasses, slipping off his nose, didn’t help.

      “You find anything interesting?” Kat asked.

      “A lot that’s interesting, actually,” Larry said. “And before you ask, I’m ninety-nine percent sure that this fire was arson.”

      “How can you tell?”

      “This is the point of origin.” He turned to the patch of floor he and Tony had been examining. “Although a trail of accelerant at the wall caused the most damage.”

      Kat tapped him on the shoulder. “This is my first arson. You’ll have to dumb it down for me.”

      “Oh, right. Sure.” Larry paused to push his glasses higher on his nose. “The mark on the floor right here indicates that this is where the fire burned the hottest and brightest. That’s the point of origin. The marking is typical of a fire in which an accelerant was used.”

      “Gasoline?” Kat said.

      “Possibly. But my gut tells me it was kerosene.”

      Kat stared at the charred floor. “You can tell all that from a burn pattern?”

      “No. I can tell from this.”

      Larry pointed to a twisted jumble of wood and metal lying nearby. The shards of glass surrounding it were different from the ones from the shattered display cases. These pieces were opaque, almost milky. It took a minute for Kat to realize it had all once been a kerosene lamp.

      “Judging from the burn pattern, the accelerant wasn’t poured onto the floor,” Larry said. “It was thrown, if that makes any sense.”

      “Our guess is that someone smashed the lit lantern onto the floor,” Tony added. “This building is old. The floor is untreated wood. The fire spread very fast to the walls, which are also wood. No drywall or Sheetrock here.”

      “Do you think whoever started the fire knew this?”

      “Not necessarily,” Larry said. “Truth be told, most arsonists don’t even think about such things. They just want to watch something burn.”

      “Which brings me to my next question,” Kat said. “What type of person would want to start the fire in the first place?”

      “That depends on the arsonist’s goal. More often than not, the fire is set for a specific reason. Sure, there are guys—and it’s almost always a guy—who do it because they’re messed up in the head.”

      “Pyromaniacs,” Kat said.

      Larry pointed at her like a game show host commending a contestant for guessing the correct answer. “Setting fires gives them a sense of power, of having control over a situation. But these cases are extremely rare. Whenever I investigate a fire, I assume there was something else at play. Collecting insurance money, for example. Or revenge.”

      “Or,” Tony chimed in, “someone trying to destroy evidence after they just murdered someone.”

      “Maybe,” Larry said. “But there’s also the possibility that the fire, and not murder, was the ultimate goal here.”

      It was entirely possible that whoever set the fire had been caught in the act by Constance, who paid for the discovery with her life. But Kat didn’t think so. All one needed to do was look at Constance’s hand to debunk that theory. Still, she played along with Larry Sheldon.

      “Say someone torched the museum just for the sake of torching it,” she said. “How would we narrow down the suspects?”

      “Have you interviewed the firefighters yet?” Larry asked.

      “Not yet. Why?”

      “Because those are your suspects. It’s no big secret that pyromaniacs tend to gravitate toward careers that have to do with fire. So the first people you have to suspect are the ones who put out the fire in the first place.”

      If Dutch Jansen had been here, Kat had a feeling Larry wouldn’t still be standing. He’d be sprawled on the floor, knocked out cold. Dutch was an old-school chief. He protected his own. And he wouldn’t take well to someone like Larry Sheldon casting doubt on his squad, especially when the speculation was so far off base. Maybe what he was saying was true of fire departments in other towns, but not in Perry Hollow. Still, it didn’t stop Kat from deciding to have Carl look into the records of all the town’s volunteer firefighters. Just in case.

      “Other than firefighters, what else should we be looking for?”

      “People who were watching the blaze.”

      “Which was approximately half the town,” Kat said.

      “Did you notice anyone who seemed particularly fascinated by it?”

      “Yes. Half the town.”

      “Was anyone taking pictures?” Larry was getting exasperated. “And if you say half the town was, then I’m just going to give up and go home.”

      Although it had only been a couple of hours earlier, it felt like a day had passed since the museum was engulfed. Kat remembered the atmosphere being quietly excited—like a crowd at a bonfire. But no one she saw had been taking photos of the blaze. She hadn’t even seen a camera. “Not that I noticed.”

      “Was there anyone acting suspicious?” Larry said. “Anyone who looked even remotely out of place?”

      One person immediately popped into Kat’s head—the stranger with the blond ponytail and outdated clothes she had bumped into during the fire.

      “Yes. A man,” she said. “A stranger. He was the only person at the scene that I didn’t recognize.”

      “Do you remember what he looked like?”

      Kat certainly did. Tall. Vaguely foreign. Weird. “Think a sketch artist is in order?”

      “It couldn’t hurt,” Tony said. “It might come in handy later if this guy really did have something to do with the fire.”

      Kat added talking to a sketch artist to her ever-growing schedule. It wasn’t even four in the morning, and already her to-do list for the day was a mile long.

      “Once the sketch is done, I’ll compare it with photos of convicted arsonists recently released from jail,” Larry added. “Maybe this guy was one of them.”

      Across the gallery, a small commotion rose from the crawl space. Kat heard excited chatter among the crime scene techs. One of them shouted for Tony.

      “Lieutenant!

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