“I managed to scrape enough samples to examine, but I didn’t find any trace of an accelerant at all.”
It was Callahan’s turn to frown. “That’s a little hard to believe.”
“Yes,” Pereira said. “So I checked and rechecked. No chemical residue whatsoever.”
“So then how did she catch fire?”
“It’s quite obvious,” Martinez said from the doorway. “If this wasn’t suicide, it was an accident. Gabriela was a former meth addict who went back to her old ways and somehow managed to torch herself.”
Callahan looked at him and could see that he didn’t believe a word he’d just said. This was the public relations speech-a cover story-for something that couldn’t be explained.
“That seems unlikely,” she said. “Did you find any signs of drug abuse? A pipe? Matches? Anything?”
“We’re working on that. Perhaps one of her friends removed the evidence to protect her reputation.”
Pereira shook his head, apparently not willing to go along with the lie. “Without an accelerant, it wouldn’t be possible to do this kind of damage merely by lighting a pipe, even if the substance in that pipe was highly volatile. So we have no real answer to your question. Unless . . .”
He hesitated.
“Unless what?” Callahan asked.
“As a man of science, my training tells me that there should be a rational explanation for the condition of this body, but in truth . . .”
He let the words trail again.
“What?”
“It almost appears that the combustion was . . . well . . .” He shifted uncomfortably, glancing at Martinez, as if he were too embarrassed-or too afraid-to continue.
“Go on,” Callahan told him, her patience growing thin.
Pereira took a moment. Crossed himself. “That the combustion was spontaneous.”
9
The Spontaneous Human Combustion.
It seemed to Callahan that the so-called science surrounding this idea was sketchy at best and downright ridiculous for the most part. But she knew this wasn’t the first unexplained death by fire to wind up on a coroner’s slab.
Pereira went on to explain a documented phenomenon called “the wick effect,” which more or less amounted to body fat turning the victim into a human candle, burning from the inside out.
A grisly thought if there ever was one.
Experiments on a pig were supposed to be proof that such a thing was possible-pigs and humans shared similar fat patterns-but Callahan had her doubts.
Judging by the videos she’d seen in the airport lobby, Gabriela Zuada didn’t have more than a thimbleful of fat on her body, and as Martinez had said, there was no real evidence of drug paraphernalia in the room.
So unless the poor girl had somehow willed herself to catch fire, they were back to square one. And the way Callahan looked at it, there were four possibilities at work here:
1. Suicide
2. Accident
3. Murder
4. Act of God
Since Callahan didn’t have a religious bone in her body, number four was immediately scratched off the list. Numbers one and two were still possibilities, but the preliminary forensic evidence didn’t support either of them.
So what about number three?
Murder.
Callahan had briefly considered this on the plane, and maybe she should give the idea more attention. Was it possible that some crazed fan had managed to sneak backstage, snatch Gabriela away from her entourage and kill her by using some undetectable accelerant to light her on fire?
Based on the timeline mapped out in the dossier, this seemed even less likely than the other scenarios, but witness accounts are notoriously faulty and, at this point, all bets were off. Maybe the timeline was wrong. Maybe in the panic and confusion of finding their beloved Gabriela burned to a crisp, her friends had misjudged the sequence and duration of events.
It wouldn’t be a first.
But the absence of any chemicals in Gabriela’s lungs continued to niggle at Callahan. People just didn’t burst into flames for no reason.
“Check the body again,” she said to Pereira. “There’s no way she wound up like this without some kind of help.”
Pereira sighed. “I doubt I’ll find anything.”
“Keep trying,” she told him, then turned to Martinez. “Shall we take a look at the crime scene now?”
Again that trace of fear flickered in the detective’s eyes and Callahan wondered what he was holding back. She could see that he wasn’t about to volunteer anything-not yet, at least-so she decided to give him some room. Let this thing play out before she got aggressive about it.
She really did need to see the crime scene, however, and Martinez wasn’t all that anxious to move-like a child who’s reluctant to go to bed because he’s afraid the boogeyman is hiding in the closet.
“Well? Shall we?”
“You’re the boss,” he said quietly, then turned and walked out the door.
Acrowd had gathered outside the concert auditorium.
Hundreds of Gabriela’s fans stood shoulder to shoulder, some staring blankly, others openly weeping, still others carrying placards with her photograph, singing along with one of her songs that was piped through a portable loudspeaker.
It struck Callahan as both circus and wake, an outpouring of true affection for a lost star, tainted only by the attention seekers and rubberneckers who came here simply because it was the thing to do.
Wooden barriers had been placed along the entrance to the auditorium; armed state police officers watched the crowd carefully, waiting for any signs of unruliness. At their feet were dozens of bouquets and wreaths and crosses and candles and more photographs, a multicolored shrine to Santa Gabriela.
Callahan marveled at it all. Could not quite fathom how a simple girl who sang simple pop songs could garner such attention and adulation.
Martinez turned their squad car onto the main drive and waited for a guard to disperse a section of the crowd and wave them through. Callahan sat next to him, soaking it all in with a mix of dread and curiosity, knowing it wouldn’t take a whole lot to get this crowd worked up.
Gabriela was dead and the details of her death were sparse and slow to surface. And the people here no doubt wanted answers. Sooner or later they’d start insisting they get some and Callahan didn’t think they’d be too friendly about it. Despite the tears, that undercurrent of anger that plagued so much of the world these days was very much in evidence here.
Simmering. Waiting to explode.
The guard raised a megaphone, calling for several onlookers to step aside as Martinez gunned the engine and slowly drove toward a gate to the left of the entrance. Another guard unlatched it and waved the car through, giving Martinez a quick salute as they passed.
Martinez ignored him.
A moment later, they pulled up next to a loading dock as the gate closed behind them. A third guard came over and opened Callahan’s door for her.
“Quite a crowd,” she said to him as they climbed out. “They must have really loved her.”
The guard nodded. “We all did. She was one of us.”
