Karen Rose - Count to Ten

Mia considered the compassionate restraint he'd shown with the parents. "The Burnettes don't need to know that," she agreed. "That they fought over grades and that she was there to study would be salt in their wound. Let's go to the Doughertys' now. CSU should be there already."

Monday, November 27, 11:45 a.m.

A CSU guy met them at the Doughertys" curb as they got out of the SUV his face breaking into a grin. "Mia. I'm glad you're back."

She smiled with true pleasure. "I'm glad to be back, Jack. This is Lieutenant Reed Solliday." She looked up at Reed. "This is Sergeant Jack Unger, CSU. He's the best."

"I heard you give a lecture last year," Reed said, shaking the man's hand. "Use of new analytical methods in detecting accelerants. Good stuff."

"Glad you got something out of it. Lieutenant, I already have my team inside, working with your guys. They're grid-ding off the front hall and the living room."

"Give me a minute to change into my boots." Mitchell and Unger inspected the front of the house while Reed concentrated on not fumbling the clasps on his boots. His fingers always got clumsier when he was in a hurry. He joined them at the front door and led them into the kitchen. "We found the body right here." He pointed to the far wall.

She looked up at the damaged ceiling. "The master bedroom's up there?"

"Yeah. It's one of the three points of origin. The kitchen here was the main one."

Her brows furrowed. "But you think she was in the spare bedroom studying. On the other side of the house. Tell me the time line of the fire from start to finish again."

"The neighbors reported an explosion about midnight and called 911. That would have been the kitchen. The first company arrived three minutes later and found flames engulfing this whole side of the house, top to bottom. There was a smaller fire in the living room on the other side. They charged a line and hit the blaze just inside the front door. The kitchen ceiling came down shortly after the fire department arrived and the chief pulled the firefighters out of the house I got here at 12:52. They'd knocked it back by then. They shut off the gas line to the house when they arrived, so there wasn't any more fuel for the fire in the kitchen."

"Heat, fuel, oxygen," Mitchell murmured. "Good old fire triangle."

"Eliminate one and you can knock down the fire," Reed agreed.

Unger looked at the wall with a frown. "The 'V pattern's narrow. Like it ran straight up fast until it hit about five feet high. Then everything's black the rest of the way up."

"The valve to the gas line was removed. He started a leak, waited for gas to build up, then left a device to get the fire started. The room exploded when the flame reached the gas, which rises. He ran a line of accelerant up the wall to make sure it did."

"What did he use to start it?" she asked.

"The lab's doing an analysis for the exact structure, but it was a solid accelerant, probably in the nitrate family. Mode of delivery was a plastic egg."

Mitchell's blond brows went up. "Like an Easter egg?"

"No, bigger. Like the eggs panty hose used to come in. He probably mixed the nitrate with guar gum so it would cling to the wall. When the solid ignited, it would have burned straight up. That's why you see the narrow 'V. But it also exploded out, which took care of everything below the gas line. Most likely he drilled a hole in the egg, filled it with the mixture, and ran the fuse. He wouldn't have had much time to get away. Probably no more than ten or fifteen seconds."

"He likes life on the edge, then," she said. "How did he get in the house?"

"Through the back door," Reed answered. "We took pictures of the lock, but we didn't touch it to get prints."

She looked up with a frown. "Why not?"

"I was afraid it was a homicide yesterday. I didn't want some judge throwing out our evidence because it was collected under an arson warrant."

She looked reluctantly impressed. "Did you get prints. Jack?"

"Yeah, but I'm betting they don't belong to our guy. If he was smart enough to pull all this together, he was smart enough to wear gloves. Although we could get lucky."

"Can you check for shoe prints?" she asked Unger. "Although the rain's probably destroyed any chance of that. Dammit."

"We got a number of shoe prints," Reed said, "most of them from firefighters' boots, but there were a few that weren't. We made plaster casts of those yesterday."

Again she looked reluctantly impressed. "They're at the lab?"

"Along with the egg fragments. They're checking for prints on those, too."

She crouched next to where they'd found the body. "Jack, let's get samples here."

Reed crouched next to her, so close he picked up a lighter, much more pleasant scent than the smell of charred wood that hung over the room. She smelled like lemons. "I took samples around the area we found her. We found traces of gasoline."

She frowned, troubled. "He doused her with gasoline. That's why her body burned so hot the fibers of her shirt melted onto her skin."

"Yes. I picked up traces of hydrocarbons in the air space above the body. You can also see the checkerboard pattern here on the subfloor. It's what happens when gasoline seeps between the tiles. The adhesive is softened and the floor beneath it gets scorched. He probably poured gasoline over her and splashed some on the floor."

"I can't imagine him taking a chance on lighting a match with all that gas in the room," Unger said thoughtfully.

"I think when the plastic egg exploded, bits of the burning accelerant would have landed on her. Either way, gasoline burns off pretty quickly unless you have a constant supply. That's why there was enough bone left for Barrington to X-ray."

Mitchell stood up, her jaw clenched. "So where did the little fucker shoot you, Caitlin?" She walked around the fallen rafters and into the hall where one of Jack Unger's men worked with Ben, gridding off the room with string and stakes. "Hello."

"Ben, this is Detective Mitchell from Homicide and Sergeant Unger from CSU."

Ben nodded. "Nice to meet you. Reed, we found something just a few minutes before you got here." He carefully stepped across the gridded area, a small glass jar in his hand. "Looks like it came from a necklace."

Reed held it up to the field lights. "The letter 'C'." He handed it to Mitchell.

"Where did you find it?" she asked, studying it with a frown

Ben pointed to the grid. "Two up, three over. I was just looking for the chain."

She turned her eyes to the staircase. "You said you found pages from her statistics book upstairs. That means she was studying upstairs, so she had to come down the stairs at some point. Either alive or dead."

Unger nodded. "If he shot her upstairs and then dragged her down the carpet, there will be traces of blood in the fibers. We'll take the whole carpet and check it out."

"He may have shot her in the kitchen," Reed pointed out.

"Then we take the whole damn floor," Mitchell said grimly. "Shit. I hate fire scenes. There's just nothing left."

Reed shook his head. "There's lots left. You just have to know where to look."

"Yeah," she grunted, holding the glass jar up to the light. Her eyes went fierce. "They fought here," she said, one hand fisted at her throat as if she clenched a necklace. "Caitlin must have heard something, come down the stairs."

"He discovered her, overpowered her," Reed continued.

"Grabbed the necklace. The chain broke and the charm flew. Then he shot her."

"Then I'll find spatter on the carpet." Unger looked around. "We'll bring some bright lights in here and go over the place with a fine-toothed comb. You said three points of origin. We've seen the kitchen. What about the other two?"