Card Sharks

and the handles are melted off. We used to have a plywood wall behind here — nothing left but the nails in the studs. The floor joists above are heavily damaged; so is the cabinet below the sink and the floor around it.' Hannah paused, leaned over the sink. 'I'd say that someone plugged the drain and poured a good quantity of liquid accelerant in the tub. Then they turned the water on and lit it somehow — the damage to the porcelain and the faucets means that we had one heck of a hot fire right here. The fire touched the wall and went up through them. When the sink overflowed, it spread the fire around the bottom of the sink and over the floor — you can see the trail following the slope of the floor. A definite torch, if we didn't already know that. No signs of a big explosion, so our friend didn't use gasoline.'

Reiger was nodding. The condescension bothered her. He acted like a teacher acknowledging a student. 'Gasoline and fuel oil mixture,' he said.

Hannah shook her head. 'Uh-uh. Too hot a fire for that — it melted the fixtures, and the ignition temperature of a gas/fuel oil mixture's too low for that. The fire went awful fast, too. When we get the results, we're going to find out it's JP-4: jet fuel. I'll bet on it — I worked on a job back' — home, she almost said — 'in Cincinnati where the stuff was used. And look here — ' She pointed to a corner of the sink, which had cracked off. 'That's a concussion fracture, really clean. There was a little explosion here. Our torch used a device to set it off. He was already out of here when it went up.'

Reiger scowled, and Hannah tried to keep the satisfaction from showing on her face. He'd missed the fuse entirely, she realized. 'You might be right,' Reiger admitted grudgingly.

'So did I pass your little exam?'

Reiger grunted.

'I'll take that as a yes,' she said.

'You know something, Miss Davis, you ought to leave that chip on your shoulder at home. I'm sorry if I've offended you, but I've never worked with you before.'

'You do this field testing with every new agent the bureau sends out, Chief?'

'Yeah, Miss Davis. As a matter of fact, I do.' His dark eyes glared at her from under the rim of his helmet, challenging her. You gotta work with him … Hannah could feel the tension in her jaws. She relaxed the muscles, forced herself to give the man a half-smile even though she didn't believe him. Reiger probably didn't call the other agents by their last name — they'd be 'Pat' or 'Hugh' or 'Bob' — and she doubted that he called any woman 'Ms.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, hating the words. 'I guess I flew off the handle a little.' She hated even more the fact that her apology and the smile — as she had known it would — melted the Chiefs irritation.

'It's not a problem,' he said. 'I don't treat you any differently than anyone else. I just want you to understand that.'

Right. 'I understand, Chief.' She smiled again to take the edge off the words, and the man nodded. He gave her a fatherly clap on the shoulder.

'Great. Then I think you should look over here. I think we've found where he broke in …'

'Here's some more tracks-alongside the door.'

'I'll be right there, Pete.'

By late afternoon, the interior had been sketched and photographed. The victims had been tagged, field- examined, and removed. Evidence had been bagged and sealed and marked.

Everything about this fire was ugly. The firesetter, whoever it was, hadn't bothered to hide the arson. He — almost all arsonists were male — had entered through a basement window: Reiger had been right about that. All the windows were stained black with smoke except for one shattered pane on the floor — the glass was still clean, which meant that it was down before the fire. He'd set plants, material to start the initial fire, in the basement under each door of the church and in several other places along the walls. A trailer of oiled cotton rope had gone between each of the plants — Hannah had found an uncharred piece near the window where the torch had entered. The plants themselves were a potpourri of whatever the arsonist could find in the basement: votive candles, paper, cardboard boxes, all soaked in the same accelerant as had been in the sink. Hannah could guess at what had occurred: the firesetter had quickly heaped together the plants, linked them together with the rope, then soaked them all in the jet fuel. One end of the rope had been placed in the sink. Finally, he'd dumped the rest of the fuel in the sink, turned on the water, and placed his fuse on the side of the sink. He would have had ample time to leave the basement before the fuse set off the rising fuel in the sink, and the sound of the small initial explosion had been covered by the singing above.

Ten, fifteen minutes' work. By the time the odor of the jet fuel had wafted upward, the fire would have been raging.

Hannah and Pete Harris were outside, to the rear of the church. The drizzle had stopped and the clouds had broken. The lowering sun touched the steeple, still standing over the roofless edifice, and threw a block of light on the wall in front of the two. A swirling path of darker black showed against the charred wood of the door, like a graffiti-scrawled name on a building: the arsonist, after setting the basement on fire, had gone to each of the entrances of the church and sprayed them with accelerant, also. When the fire climbed the walls, it found more fuel waiting for it.

What made Hannah sick was that he'd also blocked the doors. Here, on the rear sacristy door, a metal bar ran through the ornate curved handle, across the door, and behind the mounting for a lamp. Similar bars had been used on both side entrances and on the main doors in front, though they'd been broken or burnt through eventually. As with the basement plants, no attempt had been made to even pretend this might be accidental. It was almost as if the torch were daring her to catch him.

Whoever he was, he'd wanted those inside to die. This wasn't just a pyro, someone setting a fire just so he could watch the building burn. It wasn't one of the repeat psychos who set a fire and then scurried around trying to help the smoke-eaters put it out.

This was someone who wanted to kill.

'Son of a bitch,' she said. 'No one saw anything?'

'We've talked to all the witnesses,' Harris said. 'No one's admitting it if they did. But then they're all jokers. They protect their own kind.'

'If a joker did this, I don't think they'd protect him, no matter what.'

'You don't know them, do you?' Harris answered. 'I've had to do business in Jokertown before.' His grimace told Hannah his opinion of the area and jokers in general. Hannah decided not to pursue it. Frankly, she didn't like what she'd seen of Jokertown herself.

'This was planned,' she said. 'Did you see the bar that he put on the front door? It was sleeved, so it could be expanded to fit yet not be too bulky to carry. Our guy had this all worked out, down to the last detail. Sick.'

'This is the place for sick, if you haven't figured that out yet.'

'Yeah. So I've been told.' Hannah shook her head, staring at the door. Ugly. 'I'll get the photos of this. Check the other entrances again; I'll bet we'll have the same pattern under the ash.'

'You're the boss,' Harris answered. Hannah decided that the tone was more tired than sarcastic.

As Harris walked away, Hannah took her char probe from her belt, jabbed the end of the stainless steel rule into the wood, and recorded the depth of the burn. She did the same to the bottom of the door, then stepped back. She pulled her miniature tape recorder from her pocket and spoke into it. 'Rear sacristy entrance. Same situation here — a plant in the basement beneath the door, accelerant sprayed on the door and surrounding structure afterward. Spray pattern on wall. Burn on door consistent with a fire communicated from below. Door barred with a steel rod — looks like one of those used in concrete work. The sacristy window is broken out from inside — that's how the priest made it out.' Her head was pounding. With a sigh, she released the record button.

Stretching, she leaned her head back, glancing up at the steeple. She thought for a moment that she saw someone up there, a figure staring down at her from one of the gargoyle-crowded ledges. She blinked and shaded her eyes against the sky-glare, but saw nothing. Just tired. You've had about three hours sleep in the last thirty-six hours.

'You …'

Hannah whirled around with the word. A man, a thing was standing behind her. He was humpbacked, deformed, a lump of twisted limbs. 'Jesus — ' she half-shouted involuntarily, then took a deep breath. 'Listen, you aren't allowed here. This is a crime scene.'