probably Jerry and the guys from Station Four, had set up her portable floodlights while she was gone. Putting herself on autopilot as best she could, Terra decided to record the body first, get it over with. She lifted her camera with shaking hands and snapped pictures from several angles. After each photo, she dictated a brief memo into her microcassette recorder. Tears blurred her vision, but she had a job to do. Harris, of all people, wouldn’t have cut her any slack.
She moved to the right side of the bed. The hallway, guest bathroom and living room only had smoke damage, but fire damage was severe in this room. Especially on the wall beside the bed where destruction was the heaviest.
This could very well be the low point—the place where the fire started—for this room. There could be other origins. She would double-check and verify every room before making notes to that effect. Her initial guess was the bedroom as the point-of-origin, but she would make no conclusions until she finished her investigation.
“Where did you come from?” she murmured to the fire, staring at the charred wood that moved in an upward-spreading vee from the bedside table. “Here? Or another room?”
She forced herself to look a second time at Harris’s body. She wanted to scream, to run, but she didn’t. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and her breathing went shallow, but after a minute, she was able to detach a bit. That’s when she noticed his hands and feet were tied. She froze as the implication sunk in. He wouldn’t have been able to escape.
She jerked her gaze away. Rage swept over her until she shook with it. She stared blankly at the blackened wall and counted to ten as she struggled to level out the tide of emotion battering her. Do your job, she mentally reminded herself. Do your job.
She should take measurements of the body’s position, compare them later to the ones taken by the lab tech who’d already put away his tape measure. And as quickly as possible, she needed to determine what, if any, accelerant had been used before any remaining indication vanished due to the areas ventilated by the firefighters.
She’d always been able to scent kerosene or gasoline at a scene; she smelled neither here. She could call Vicki at the State Fire Marshal’s office and request the use of their German shepherd. Pyro was trained to sniff out accelerants, but Terra didn’t want to wait for the dog to arrive. Besides, her portable “sniffer,” an instrument that detected combustible gases, would confirm the presence and identity of the accelerant. After that, she would take samples if necessary.
Urging herself to get started, Terra turned. For the first time, she noticed her tackle box at the foot of the bed and realized she must’ve dropped it upon first seeing Harris.
Jerry French picked it up and handed it to her. “You okay?”
“Yes, thanks. I just needed a little time.”
He nodded, his smoke-reddened hazel eyes sympathetic. “The guys from Four and One are waiting to begin overhaul. That way, you can move them away from where you think the fire started.”
“Great. That will save a lot of investigation time.”
“The walk-around’s finished. The structure appears sound enough for you to begin.”
“Your guys were first on the scene, right?”
Jerry nodded. “We had some trouble putting out the blaze. It took a small spray pattern to finally do the trick.”
Terra noted that in her tape recorder. If the typical wide or “fog pattern” spray was inefficient in putting out the fire, that was a clue to the type of accelerant used. “Thanks, Jerry. I’ll come out in just a minute to talk to your crew, walk through overhaul with them. Right now, I need to check for accelerants before they evaporate.”
“Gotcha.”
Still off balance and slightly disoriented, she set her tackle box down on the soggy, debris-covered carpet.
Soot streaked Jerry’s weathered, leather face. Concern darkened his eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded, giving him a small smile. “I can do this.”
“I’ll see you outside.” He squeezed her shoulder and motioned to the two firefighters she’d barely noticed earlier. One woman, one man, both pale and wide-eyed. Probies. Had she ever been that green?
The cop who’d kept her from planting her face in the floor watched her coolly from a few feet away. Uneasy with the knowing steadiness in his eyes, her gaze slid away. She opened her tackle box and took out the small, boxlike “sniffer.” The wooden footboard for the queen-size bed was still intact, but the headboard was a crumbling screen of ash. Charred mattress. Closed, scorched closet door.
Rubbing her temple where a headache had started, Terra walked to the far side of the bed. Bedroom fires were typically caused by three things: frayed lamp circuits, electric blankets or smokers. Harris had never smoked so she dismissed the possibility that he could’ve started the fire that way. Though fires due to frayed lamp circuits and electric blankets were rare, Terra checked anyway. There was no electric blanket on this bed. At the bedside table, she noticed a blackened brass lamp and knelt to check the electrical cord. No frayed lamp circuit here.
Intent on checking the same things on the opposite side, Terra edged around the foot of the bed. An identical bedside table held another brass lamp, now soot-black. This lamp’s electrical cord wasn’t frayed either. The fire hadn’t been caused by faulty electric wiring. Glass fragments sprinkled the sodden carpet. The shattered base of a bulb still screwed into the lamp testified that at least some of the shards belonged to an exploding lightbulb.
“You the fire investigator?”
She remembered the rough velvet voice. Standing up, she had to tilt her head a bit to look him in the eye, something she didn’t have to do with very many men. “Yes.”
“Detective Jack Spencer. I’ll be the primary on this case.”
His gaze scoured her face. What was he looking for? She wasn’t going to faint. In the harsh flood of the portable fluorescent lights, Terra noted fine lines fanning out from Detective Spencer’s eyes. Very blue eyes. Hard blue eyes.
He stuck out his hand.
She shook it and released it quickly. “Terra August.”
“I apologize for my comment earlier. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours.”
She tamped down the slash of pain. Presley was still small enough that all police, including the detectives, worked solo rather than with a partner. Except in fire death cases like this. Procedure between Presley’s police and fire departments stated that when P.F.D. found a dead body in a fire, they worked to contain the blaze, then stopped and called Homicide. “I guess we’ll be working together.”
“Yes. Looks like murder.”
Struggling to keep a rein on the emotions swirling inside her, she pressed her lips together and nodded. “The bound hands and feet of the victim also indicate the fire as a probable arson. But why?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” Spencer said. “Do you have any ideas?”
“No. I’ll concentrate first on confirming or eliminating arson. Then we’ll have a solid starting place.” She’d have to work with the
