Don Winslow - California Fire And Life

"Go figure," Jack says.

If Bentley had done his fucking job, he might have traced it back the other way, from the vodka pour back to the closet. But he didn't — Jack did — and to Jack, what he's looking at now is like reading a book.

Someone poured a great deal of accelerant in the closet. Jack knows this because the flooring is burned clear through, exposing the concrete pad beneath. Then someone poured a trail of accelerant from the closet over to the bed. Jack can see the pour pattern, a pale spalling on the wood. Here and there a hole where the fire burned the hottest.

But there's no hole beside the bed where the remnants of the vodka bottle were. Whoever poured the juice was careful not to pour it there.

Jack lifts up the charred mattress and spring and moves them over. What he'd expect to see underneath would be a relatively undamaged floor. Again, you're talking about the fall-down effect. If the fire started on the floor beside the bed, it would have ignited the wood frame of the bed. When the frame collapsed, the mattress and box spring would have dropped down, shielding the floor beneath.

But that's not what he sees.

Not what he hears, either, because the fire is talking to him again.

Yapping at him, chirping at him, I did her right here, baby. I did her right in her bed. Blew through the freaking roof, baby.

Because there's heavy ash where there shouldn't be.

Jack digs through the ash.

Underneath it there's a big hole. Irregularly shaped, but roughly the size of the bed. Wider, in fact, on the side opposite the bottle remnants.

Jack keeps digging.

Digs right down through the flooring to the concrete pad beneath.

Scoops the char off the pad, and what he sees is a white stain where the concrete was scorched.

Spalling.

It's another sign of a set fire, because, once again, fire burns up unless it has a reason to burn down. You have spalling like this, you have juice dripping down onto the concrete, luring the alligator down for a snack.

So Jack's standing there and he has the hole beneath him, and above him, there's the hole in the roof.

"Jesus Christ," Jack says.

The fire is screaming at him.

Feels like it's coming from inside his soul.

Whoever set the fire poured accelerant under the bed. Then doused Pamela Vale with it. Doused it from her hips down her legs. Then lit a match.

No professional arsonist does that, Jack thinks.

Not on a strictly business fire, anyway. You douse a woman in a bed like that, it's personal. It's sexual. It comes out of rage.

Jack goes through his whole routine again. Photographs the floor in black-and-white and color, logs the photos, videos the room, then sketches the pour pattern onto a floor plan of the room. Belt and suspenders, because he wants a lot of evidence to go in front of a jury.

The best thing would be if the jury could visit the site, but he knows that's not likely to happen. For one thing, the chances of getting an injunction against demolition and reconstruction of this room are practically nil, and two, judges rarely allow a site visit, especially when there's been a fatality. It could prove to be too emotional and prejudice the jury.

What it could prove, Jack thinks, is that Nicky Vale burned his wife up in their marital bed. If I could walk a jury through this place and explain to them what they're seeing…

But fat chance of that, so he documents the scene the best he can — photos, video, sketches — then grabs samples from around the pour pattern and under the bed. For each potential "dirty" sample, a potential "clean" one for comparison. He puts them into plastic evidence bags and logs them in.

The samples are everything now.

If the samples test positive for accelerants, it makes total bullshit out of the smoking-in-bed theory.

Then it's not an accidental fire or an accidental death.

It's arson.

And murder.

Jack heads off to see Accidentally Bentley.

Tell him he needs to reopen the Vale file.

You got it wrong again, you dumb lazy fuck!

Is what Jack wants to say to Accidentally Bentley. But Jack doesn't figure that's exactly diplomatic, so he settles for, "I think you might want to reconsider your call on the Vale fire."

"Get out of here," Bentley says. He's sitting at his desk at the Sheriff's office. Actually, he's cleaning out his desk, and what he means by Get out of here is not You're kidding; what he means is Get out of here.

Bentley jerks his thumb toward the door.

Which looks good to Jack, too, but he reminds himself that he's here to try to get Bentley to reopen the investigation, so he takes a breath and says, "Brian, the house has all the indicators."

"Such as?"

"Deep char."

"There was a lot of stuff in the house."

"Alligator char on the beams."

"Old wives' tale," Bentley says. He doesn't even look at Jack. He's busy putting stuff into a cardboard box. "Could mean something, could mean nothing."

"Spalling on the concrete pad."

"Same."

"The damn bed frame was annealed."

Bentley puts a coffee mug in the box. "Jack, if you're saying this was a hot fire — okay, it was a hot fire. I'm telling you, there was a fuel load in that place could have burned Chicago. Now get out of here."

A couple of deputies standing at another desk look over.

"I found a pour pattern," Jack says.

"There was no pour pattern."

"You didn't do a dig-out."

"Didn't need to do a dig-out."

"The hell you mean you didn't need to do a dig-out?!"

The deputies are watching now. Ready to step in if this guy needs moving.

Bentley yells back, "The deceased was smoking in bed! The most common cause of fire fatality there is!"

"There was no smoke in her lungs!" Jack yells. "Less than 10 percent CO in her blood."

"She was drinking!" Bentley hollers. "She was bombed on booze and pills! She OD'd!"

"But first she went around the room pouring accelerants?" Jack asks. "Gives herself her own Viking funeral? Come on, Brian."

"The fuck you talking about, accelerants."

"I took debris samples, and they're going to come up positive-"

"Bullshit."

"— and I just want to give you a chance to back off your call first."

"Well, you're a hell of a guy, Jack," Bentley says. "But I'm not backing off shit. Now go back to cheating widows and orphans."

"You need to reopen-"

"You just can't stand being an insurance adjuster, can you?" Bentley says. "You still wanna be a cop. Well, you're not, Jack. They threw you out, remember?"

I remember, Jack thinks.

"Yeah," he says. "I remember you going belly-up on the stand."

Bentley grabs him by the shirt. Jack grabs back. The two deputies move in to separate them, so they have a real little scrum going when Letty comes around the corner.

"Jack, for Christ's sake-"

"Hey, Jack," Bentley says, "maybe you can beat a confession out of him."

"You don't do your job-"

"I told you not to dick around-"

" Jack — "

"— with shit you don't know any-"

"— you dumb, lazy-"

"Jack."

Letty takes him by the elbow and walks him up against the wall. "What are you doing?" she asks.

Jack takes a deep breath. "I came to try to get him to back off his report."

She gives him a quizzical look.

"The fire was an arson," he says.

"Oh, you two are together on this, huh?" Bentley says. "What are you, Jack, doing her again?"

Jack starts for him but Letty stands in his way.

"Let him go," Bentley says.

Letty says, "Like you want me to."

"And you was told to stay out of this, del Rio," Bentley says.

"She was my sister."

"She was stoned and drunk and she torched herself," Bentley says.