Victor Methos - Arsonist

“Where is it?” Stanton asked.

“La Jolla. Maybe half an hour from here.”

Gunn started the car and pulled away. The freeway was relatively clear and Gunn had the radio turned to a rock station blaring Metallica. It was giving Stanton a headache and he knew most of his headaches turned to migraines.

“You mind if we turn this off?”

“No,” Gunn said. “So what kinda music you like?”

“Not this.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way and as they pulled off the La Jolla exit Gunn folded a piece of gum in half and stuck it in his mouth. They followed the off-ramp down and turned right, getting into a residential area that was packed with apartment complexes and single family homes. It was middle-class and the cars, though not luxurious, were freshly washed and waxed and the lawns were well maintained.

They came to a home with a large tree on the front lawn and a mini-van in the driveway. Silently, they sat looking into the house and could see a woman in a long-sleeve shirt and khaki pants vacuuming as two children ran around.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Gunn said. “She must’a given me a fake plate.”

“I don’t think so,” Stanton said.

He thought of the victim in this case, Michael Cisneros. A young homosexual male with no known gang affiliations or criminal history. Cisneros had only his mother who was suffering from Alzheimers and was unemployed. He was the type of victim a monster might think could disappear without anyone noticing.

“You tellin’ me the dude that put twenty holes in Cisneros is married to fuckin’ June Cleaver?”

“One or two wounds to the internal organs or throat is enough to kill a person within minutes. When there’s that many wounds, it’s pure rage. It wouldn’t be some drug dealer in the ghetto who got ripped off or something like that. They don’t hide what they are. This person hides himself to the world.”

“You can tell all that about our perp from some body in a dumpster?”

“It’s not just a random attack. Victims are always chosen and they’re chosen for a reason. Sometimes it’s unconscious. A lot of mass murderers when they’re confronted with photos of all their victims are surprised how similar they all look. They didn’t even realize they were being driven to find a certain type of person.”

Gunn threw up his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Get the fuck outta here. Nicky fed me a bogus plate for cash. I’ve had CI’s do it before.”

“Cisneros’ mother told us he was gay, right? And semen was found in the anal cavity during the autopsy.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you think of a better cover for a homosexual psychopath than living in suburbia with a wife and kids?”

Gunn looked back to the house, watching the woman as she wrapped the electrical cord of the vacuum up and put it back in the closet. “I still say it’s gangland.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Gunn exhaled. “You’re gonna miss your arson investigator.”

“We’re not doing anything tonight, right? Just watch the house and get a profile on him when he comes home. We’ll run his history and ask around about him before we pull him in.”

“Ask around where?”

“Gay bars and clubs that Cisneros went to.”

“Fuck. We just got off a stakeout. I hate this shit. It’s bad for my bowels. I can only go at home.”

“You’ll be fine. Drop me back off at my place and call me as soon as he gets home.”

Gunn pulled away from the curb, glancing one more time into the house.

Stanton parked in front of the Yazzie’s burnt-out home and turned off his engine. Some kids were playing nearby and they saw him and immediately turned and began walking away. He could see them toss the rocks in their hands onto the sidewalk. A house that was nearly burnt to the ground and barely standing was simply too much of an enticement for them to resist.

When he was a kid, there was a man that lived in a rundown home by a friend’s apartment complex. Stanton and his friends would walk by every day on their way to a nearby soccerfield or to the rec center. If they got near the yard, the man would sick his dog on them.

When he was ten, he tripped on the uneven sidewalk and the dog got ahold of his calf and wouldn’t let go. The man stood over him and laughed and then finally pulled his dog off when neighbors began looking out of their windows at what was going on. Stanton’s father tried to speak with the man to discuss what had occurred. Rather than calling the police or beating the guy to a pulp as any normal father would, he just knocked on his door and tried to discuss the situation. They spoke for a few minutes and his father shook the man’s hand.

He came back to Stanton and explained that he wouldn’t be going on the man’s lawn anymore and that he was actually a nice fellow and that he was married but recently gotten a divorce. But Stanton didn’t hear any of it. The image of his father shaking hands with the man that had terrorized and wounded him cut so deeply, that he never looked at his father the same way again. He didn’t do it consciously or even want to, but he knew that was the day that his connection with his father had been severed.

An FJ Cruiser came to a stop across the street and Emma Lyon hopped out wearing jeans and a tight black shirt. She held a red case with a white handle and had a badge-issued to her by the county with the emblem of the San Diego Fire Department emblazoned on it-clipped to her belt. Stanton got out of the car and met her in the street.

“Detective, glad you came.”

“To be honest, I haven’t worked too many arsons before. I’m interested to see what you do.”

“Same thing you do. Fire speaks to you. It tells you things, it breathes, it reproduces, it follows the easiest routes in a house. If you know what you’re looking for, everything is right there. I’m guessing murders are the same.”

“More or less I suppose. I do envy you one thing; no hospital visits to the live victims.”

“Yeah, I could never do that. I don’t really want to know what people are capable of.” She turned to the house and took a deep breath. “You ready?”

“After you.”

They walked to the sidewalk and then to the front lawn. Emma put down her kit and took out a small camera. She began taking photos of the house from all different angles as Stanton stood quietly and watched. Then, as Benny had done before her, she diagramed the house on graph paper. Without a word she replaced the camera and the clipboard with the paper and went inside the house. Stanton followed but didn’t say anything. She stood at the doorway a while and then began slowing going from room to room. She put on latex gloves and ran her hands over some burn impressions on the doors.

The room that the body had been found was the one she spent the most time in. She measured burn marks on the walls and took photos of the puddle marks on the baseboards. She slowly went over every inch of flooring and would occasionally stop and snap a photo of a certain section.

A chair was in the bedroom that was covered with soot. Stanton leaned against its back and folded his arms, staring out the window as Emma finished what she was doing. After a long while, she stood up and turned to him.

“Fernando didn’t do this.”

“How can you tell?”

“The fire started here. Probably from that portable heater that’s been melted to the floor. There’s something called flashover, it’s a term of art in arson investigation. It’s when the radiant heat in a room transforms it. Instead of a room with a fire in it, it becomes a room on fire. It’s the point when the fire gets out of control. It creates almost a fireball. The fire shot up the wall and then raced around. As it went lower to the ground it reached somewhere around eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. At flashover, the fire consumes every piece of fuel source in a room and then searches for more. It shot out of this room and down the hall. What we call puddle configurations can happen naturally from flashover because the fire’s darting around everywhere.”