and curled in places from the heat, remained mostly intact.
“Is it cool enough for you to touch anything?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine now.” He was already bending over the back of the thing, mostly looking. But then he probed a few places with his fingers.
For the next few minutes, Sara mostly recorded and listened as Jason used his knowledge of cars to study every centimeter of what he was able to see and described what he was doing.
At first, he apparently saw nothing that he seemed to think was out of place in the remains of a burned-out Jeep.
At one point he asked, “Do you happen to know if General Yarrow was carrying anything in the bed here?”
“He didn’t mention anything.”
“Well, we’ll need to check with him. I see a few things that are definitely not part of the car, but they don’t look especially dangerous, either.”
Without moving them, he pointed them out to her. One was the burned carcass of what appeared to be a battery, and the other was a small piece of metal that could have been from a child’s toy, maybe even a model of the Jeep, judging by its angles.
Then there was what was probably the remains of a steel fishing rod and a lure box containing what once had probably been hooks but were now just melted puddles of metal. Some additional small, melted clumps of metal. Nothing useful or conclusive. In the passenger seat were the remains of what must have been the general’s overnight bag, still partially intact.
Sara dutifully continued to shoot the video, recording Jason’s mention of each item and exactly where it lay in the midst of ashes and other debris.
She was impressed with Jason’s meticulousness and attention to detail in the ruined Jeep. He pointed out the parts he recognized, those that were no longer recognizable but had qualities that allowed him to make assumptions, and more.
He occasionally asked for her to gently touch something, holding it out of the way so he could pry even farther into some inside area. She shot more pictures of each of those areas when her assignment was complete.
Eventually, after more than an hour, Jason was through.
“I know it’ll all be speculation,” Sara said, holding the camera on Jason, “but do you have any initial opinion about the origin of the fire?”
His handsome features grew even sharper as his expression hardened. “Nothing conclusive, nothing I can point to that proves it was anything but some odd mechanical failure or spontaneous combustion or unavoidable accident,” he said, “but despite finding nothing obvious during this first examination, I knew this Jeep well after servicing it for General Yarrow. I believe this was somehow deliberately sabotaged, set on fire. And I’ll do anything I can to find proof.”
Sara turned off the camera and looked at him, seeing the frustration and sorrow on his face. She wanted to do something to comfort him, but all she could do was to acknowledge her agreement. “That’s my belief, too,” she said quietly. “But since you didn’t see anything to hang that opinion on—”
“I will,” he said grimly. “Count on it.”
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