bombs. They burn extremely hot and fast. Light a cloth fuse, attach it to a bottle of grain alcohol, leave it in the middle of the room. When the fire hits the vapors in the bottle, there she blows! Cheap, easy, and gets the job done.”
Quin paused and raised an eyebrow. “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
Nora knew exactly what she was talking about, because she’d thought the same thing as Quin was talking. “Just like the bombs Lorraine used to make.”
“Not that she put them to much use.”
“She graduated pretty quick from the modified Molotov cocktail to pipe bombs,” Nora said, irritated that Quin was bringing up their mother in conversation. Quin seemed to enjoy digging into the past. “All the information is readily available on the Internet, in the library, and in the
“Testy, aren’t we?”
“Quin, is there anything that differentiates the BLF device from others?”
“No. The bottles they picked can be bought pretty much anywhere in California and most other states. I have enough pieces from the previous arsons to link them, and I suspect this will be no different when I’m done. Find a suspect and bomb-making supplies, and I can match them. There’s no unusual signature if that’s what you’re asking. These aren’t people who get off on the fire.”
“There’s drawbacks in the method they chose,” Nora said. It wasn’t her FBI training that told her this; it was her childhood. “The biggest being the cloth wick fizzles out and never ignites the alcohol inside, or the air is too cold.”
“Bingo! You win!”
“Quin-”
“Right, stay serious. Grain alcohol has a higher flash point, and naturally retains cold. If the alcohol is cooler than fifty-five degrees, it won’t ignite.” She fanned herself. “Obviously, no problem here. Another major miscalculation is how long it takes for the explosion. I had an idiot standing over a similar device to ‘make sure’ it ignited. He’s dead.” Quin shook her head. “The fire spread from this room into Dr. Payne’s office because there was plenty of fuel. The door was ajar-”
“How can you tell?”
Quin walked over to the opening. Keith Coffey said, “I’m ready to move him when you are.”
“Great, five minutes.” Quin gestured at the door. “The door wasn’t axed or rammed down. It was ajar or open when the fire started. Now, I need to do some more tests, but I don’t think there were any accelerants in Payne’s office. They saturated the lab, but the fire in Payne’s office was simply papers and wood catching sparks and burning. The fire didn’t burn as hot, which is why his body is in such good shape.”
Nora didn’t think Payne’s body was in good shape, but from an arson investigator’s standpoint she could see that the body being intact was a huge plus.
“You’re incredible, as usual, but you still haven’t explained why you think the arsonists took the research animals.”
“A cage is missing. Maybe more than one. And I could find no animal remains in the lab.”
Nora looked at the wall-what was left of it-and all she saw was a mess of melted steel and ash. Some of the metal could have been cages, but she didn’t see-wait. “There’s a gap.”
“Bingo! You win!”
“We need to get the staff in here and find out if the animals were, indeed, birds and what kind. And if there had been cages here prior to the fire.” Nora almost jumped out of her boots. “Wait, don’t researchers mark their test animals? With tattoos or bands around their leg or something?”
“Makes sense to me.”
If the animals were marked-and the arsonists had kept one or more in their possession-that was hard physical evidence. Enough to get a warrant at the very least. “Quin, you’re incredible.”
“That’s what Devon said after the show last night.”
It was Nora’s turn to roll her eyes. “I’m calling on Payne’s staff. We may have our biggest break yet. I just wish we’d had it before someone died.” She glanced around. “By the way, where’s your friend, the county arson investigator-Ulysses, right?”
Quin grinned. “I tasked him with an assignment outside the building. I couldn’t stand him hovering, and one thing I’ve learned is that if you give someone something productive to do, they leave you alone.”
“So is that why you sent me out to defuse Sanger with the reporter?”
“Of course not. I wanted you to see the hunk Sanger was talking to.” She paused a beat. “Though I get more done when no one is asking questions.”
“I get the hint. Be available, Quin. No out-of-town dates for the next few days.”
“Never in the middle of a job.”
Professor Leif Cole had just sat down at his desk with a stack of papers and his morning coffee when his phone rang. It was early, the department secretary hadn’t come in, and all calls rolled over to his direct line. All he had wanted was a few moments of peace, but technology thwarted him again.
He considered letting the call go to voice mail, then he noticed that it was his direct line flashing. He picked up the receiver.
“Professor Cole.”
“Hi, Professor, Rich Belham from the
Leif didn’t care for Rich, but the reporter had given the college and Leif’s demonstrations fair coverage, so he didn’t simply hang up. “Rich, I don’t have time for this now. I have a class to prepare for. Call me-”
“-outside Butcher-Payne along with the fire department and the FBI.”
Every muscle in his body tightened as if they were being squeezed by a thousand small vises.
In a voice far calmer than he felt, he said, “I told you the arson fires are off-limits. I’m not involved, I don’t know who is, and the FBI is wasting taxpayer resources by hounding me. But what else is new, right?”
“Right,” Rich laughed, his voice dripping with falseness. “Except this is much bigger.” All fake humor was gone.
Against his better judgment he asked, “How?”
“Murder.”
His stomach dropped as if he were on a roller coaster, and he leaned back into his chair.
“Someone was hurt?” he finally asked.
“Someone is dead. Caught inside. I don’t have the details, but I have confirmed with the sheriff-Lance Sanger, a friend of yours, right? — that there is definitely one dead body in all that destruction.”
“Who?” Leif was whispering. He cleared his throat. “Do the police know who?”
“Not officially.”
Rich was quiet. Damn that man, he wanted to play. He didn’t know how good Leif was at these games.
“What do you want from me?”
“A quote.”
“On what? Shit, Rich, I’m not involved. The fact that the FBI keeps dragging my name and the college through the mud because they don’t have enough evidence or intelligence to do their job is inexcusable. They’re looking at a lawsuit, and you know it.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I got squat from the feds. It’s your friend the sheriff who has it out for your neck.”
Lance. He should have known. Lance never understood how Leif had grown up, educated himself, become a better person than he’d been before. Lance was a thug, a cop; he played by society’s corrupt rules. Harboring a fantasy that Leif was still the same Boy Scout who raped the earth and killed innocent creatures for sport.
“What do you want?” Leif asked slowly.
“Two years ago, you led a protest against Butcher-Payne for their research into gene therapy, which spurred Butcher-Payne into funding a media campaign to discredit you and your claims-”
“Hold it. You’ve already gotten it wrong. I didn’t lead the protest, I participated in it. And Butcher-Payne has not even begun to discredit my facts relating to Frankenstein’s monster-namely, genetic engineering.”
“I’m sure they’d disagree. They certainly aren’t at a loss for funding, picking up huge private and public grants.”
