initially proved elusive.”
“Initially?” Boldt asked, sensing a breakthrough that Casterstein wasn’t revealing. He might have complained about Casterstein’s college professor approach, but he knew Lofgrin to be much the same and had come to accept that labbies gave elaborate explanations but only once. It was up to the investigating officer to inform others, from the ranking superior to the jury. The detailed explanations were a way for these forensic scientists to move on to other analyses without a dozen follow-up inquiries. For this reason, Boldt took meticulous notes.
“We have some interesting clues in these burns,” Casterstein suggested. “Of primary concern is that at least Enwright was viewed walking around inside before the fire. Sergeant Boldt raised the appropriate question: Why did Enwright not get out of the house?”
Bobbie Gaynes answered. “We’re assuming she fell through the floor, into the hole created by the fire, and, injured in the fall, was consumed in the basement.”
“A justifiable theory,” Casterstein said diplomatically, “but not supported by evidence. To explain such a fall, I’m afraid we would be looking at an explosion, something that instantly took the floor out from beneath her.”
Boldt couldn’t take this kind of talk without his imagination running wild. He could picture Dorothy Enwright breaking through the flaming floor and falling to her eventual death in the fiery confines of the basement. The helplessness of such a moment overwhelmed him, and briefly he neither heard nor saw Casterstein but, instead, felt himself inside Dorothy Enwright, weightless and falling, the flames licking up from below. Casterstein’s voice brought him back.
“We have no reports of any such explosion, only fire. A devastatingly fast, enormously hot fire-a spike of purple flame jettisoning into the air. This is not timber burning. This is not the explosion of a gas barbecue stored in the basement for winter. This is an unknown accelerant, somehow ignited, most likely by timer, or less likely, radio-controlled from a distance, that spread so quickly through the house that the resident never had time to react. What I find of particular interest, and what I wanted to show you today, is this.” Casterstein put on a pair of latex gloves. He held up a black blob, and whoever was operating the camera zoomed in on it. “Found by you, Mr. Bahan, according to our documentation.”
Those at the conference table looked over at Neil Bahan. His thin brown hair and big build reminded Boldt of the kids in school who never joined in, always standing on the edges and watching. Boldt was reminded then of Daphne’s warning that a fire inspector is dangerously close in mindset to an arsonist-two sides of the same fence. He paid particular attention to both Bahan and Fidler for this reason: If they were investigating fires they themselves had set, Boldt might never find the truth.
Bahan said, “I found it up the street from the Heifitz place, by where my car was parked, actually. It was still warm to the touch, so I included it as evidence. But I put a note on it, because it seemed awfully far away-a hundred yards or more.”
“We think it significant,” Casterstein said, spinning it in his fingers. It was a hard piece of plastic the size of a large golf ball. “We’ve x-rayed it, and there is apparently a piece of a wire melted into it, leading us to believe it to be-”
“The detonation device,” Bernie Lofgrin said quickly.
“Precisely. Or part thereof. Yes,” Casterstein agreed. “Further tests are needed, of course, and may take a month or two-”
“A month?” Boldt shouted. “We haven’t got a month! We have a-an informer,” he explained, stopping himself from using
Neither Casterstein, Lofgrin, nor Gaynes were aware of that development, and they all sat stunned. Casterstein finally muttered, “I see. Well, something like this takes time.” He held up the melted plastic. “Our principal concern is the identification of the accelerant. If we can give you the accelerant and you can trace its components to their sources, you just may be able to end-run this guy. Detonators are a dime a dozen, and though sometimes, when in better shape, they offer latent prints, we’re not going to see that in this case.”
Lofgrin said, “Why don’t we handle the possible detonator up here? Spread out the manpower and consult you guys on what we find?”
“That works for me,” Casterstein agreed. “We’ll send this and some other evidence back up to you.”
Bobbie Gaynes said, “I’m still confused as to why both women were unable to get out of their houses in time. These fires were late afternoon, early evening. It’s not as if they were asleep.”
All eyes turned to the wall.
“We can’t answer that at this time. It might be explained by the fire going off so fast, so hot, that it sucked the oxygen out of the structure and suffocated the resident instantly-kind of like being kicked in the chest.”
“But if that were the case,” Fidler suggested, “we would have seen some of the windows imploded-glass
“Agreed,” Casterstein said, glowing on the wall, still spinning the black plastic ball between his fingers. “If there had been accelerant in every room,” he suggested, “if the device was of multiple origin with simultaneous detonation, the choices for egress would be limited.”
“Trapped like a rat. That’s what you’re saying,” LaMoia said, speaking for the first time. “He rigged the whole fucking place to blow at the same time.” He glanced at the others and then said to the wall, “In which case there should be more than enough evidence for you guys to tell us that.” LaMoia had never been fond of the Feds, and Boldt nearly kicked him under the table. The detective went on. “Lemme ask you this, Doc. What is it you boys aren’t telling us? What is it you’re leaving out? I’m feeling a gaping hole here, and the wind blowing through it stinks kinda bad.”
A silence hung over the conference room. The speaker spit static. When Casterstein moved, the image blurred slightly. It did so as he looked off-camera and then back at those in the room. He said softly, “We’re seeing what we term a
“Like us,” Boldt said. Casterstein was describing an investigation perfectly.
“We’re both detectives in our own way,” Casterstein said.
“Bottom line?” LaMoia demanded harshly. “What’s the bottom line here, Doc? We got people this guy’s planning to barbecue here shortly. I, for one, would like to see something we can take away from this powwow, lovely as it’s been to visit the Federal Building. A black golf ball? That’s not exactly the treasure I had in mind.”
Casterstein remained unruffled. He allowed a slight smile, as if he had expected a LaMoia in the group. “I appreciate your honesty, Detective. I asked Sergeant Boldt here,” he emphasized, “because I wanted to show him this piece of evidence. I also wanted to show him this.” Casterstein nodded to someone off-camera at his end. The screen went blue. Casterstein’s voice said, “Stand by. What you’re about to see is a test conducted by the Fort Worth Fire Department.”
The image was of a large deserted supermarket in an open sea of empty blacktop. Where the windows should have been were sheets of plywood. Grass grew up through gaping cracks in the pavement. Surrounding the structure were twenty or more fire vehicles, all parked at a good distance. Crews stood on the ground with hoses, but there was little water on the ground, no evidence of a fire having been fought. A digital clock counted down in the lower right-hand corner.
Casterstein said, “Pay particular attention to the speed of the burn and the color. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
The clock counted down to zero, at which point Gaynes and LaMoia, closest to the screen, actually jumped, leaning back in their chairs and away from the bright purple flash that rose into the sky like the flame from a wick. The roof of the building melted away, creating a hole in the doughnut. Everything seemed to burn at once. It lasted for three minutes and forty-two seconds, at which point the crews moved in and began to hose water onto the structure. The only water able to reach the center, shot from ladder trucks, exploded into flames as it arrived at the burning core. Those firefighters shut off their hoses, and the ladder engines were pulled back some distance from the inferno. Boldt had never seen a fire so ferocious.
The video stopped; Casterstein’s image reappeared, fuzzy at first and then clear. “They fought the fire for another twenty minutes, but it’s that initial burn that is of interest. I don’t know if you noticed, but this burn went off at temperatures that caused water to separate into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, literally exploding the attempts to suppress it. Never seen anything like it. The fire was an attempt to discover the accelerant used in a
