Embers of Murder (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 12)

by Alec Peche

  “Fire temperatures can get very hot very quickly with sufficient fuel, but I agree with you. Looking at the surrounding area and the trees closest to where you found your cigarette butt, the fire was not as intense here as it was close to where we parked on the road. There’s a tree here that doesn’t look particularly damaged, but down by the road, the trees are blackened sticks, which suggests the fire was more ferocious there.”

  “I read in the report that this fire is labeled with a cause of undetermined. Since the cigarette butt was here, that suggests to me that the fire personnel either didn’t see it or didn’t think it was the cause of this fire. What’s your guess about that conclusion?”

  “I generally find the fire personnel to be very thorough in looking for the cause of the fire. Certainly, if there’s an arsonist on the loose, they want to bring law enforcement in to assist with apprehension. They also have sniffer dogs like your Trixie here, but we’re in peak fire season, and maybe the dog wasn’t available for the smaller fire. Also, maybe he couldn’t see the butt if the body was covering it up.”

  “If the arsonist had used gasoline or, say, charcoal fluid to start the fire, the fire experts would have seen that, correct?”

  “I’m not a fire expert, but in my observation, the fire would have had different properties if someone had doused the area with gasoline. Usually, you can smell it even after the fire has been put out.”

  “So if they detected gasoline anywhere close to this fire, it would be in the report?” Jill asked.

  “Yes, and there would’ve been a definitive statement as to whether the gasoline started the fire or was in the path of the fire.”

  “I can’t think of any additional questions for you. Is there something I should’ve asked you about this fire scene?”

  “You’ve now seen two of the three locations that I visited. Did you see any similarities between these first two sites?”

  “When I pulled into the parking space here, I was struck by how similar the two locations were. They were both located on a quiet two-lane road. These are low foothills, and there’s plenty of dry brush. The difference between the two locations was the first one had a view of the surrounding hills and valleys. In contrast, this location has a babbling brook nearby, so they both had something to see at the end of the hike. I guess I should get a hiking guide for these areas to see if they're recognized hiking locations.”

  “I don’t recall hearing water the first time I was here. However, there were other people making noise. Did you visit the water source?”

  “I did. There’s fire on both sides of the little creek, but the water is clear. I tried to get Trixie to drink it, but she passed on the experience of freshwater.”

  “You can lead a dog to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

  “Yep,” Jill replied, leaning over slightly to rub the dog’s ears.

  They began walking back to the cars when Jack added, “That was a good conclusion about something special being available at the end of the hike. Maybe these cases have something to do with hikers.”

  “Maybe.”

  They wrapped up the conversation, and Jill promised to stay in touch if she discovered any additional sites. Talking to Jack had been very helpful.

  Chapter 5

  Jill thought about the idea that these murders were related to hiking. On the long drive home, she tried using her phone’s verbal search commands to see if she could find hiking trails close to the two fires. She soon gave up as she couldn’t be specific enough to get an intelligent answer to her search out of her phone.

  She returned home and debated what to do with the cigarette butts. They were potentially forensic evidence, but could she process anything in her lab that might yield new information? Her lab, out in a barn on her property, did not do DNA analysis. She could do other analysis. Her lab was built for chemistry and toxicology.

  She decided she would take one of the new cigarettes she purchased and do a side-by-side analysis of it versus the cigarette butt she collected at the second scene. Maybe that would yield some new information. First, she went into the house to take a shower. Even though it had been almost two hours since she was at the scene of a fire, she could smell soot on herself. While her fear of fire had been dialed back, just the smell of her clothing was enough to remind her of how much she was scared by fire. She stripped down to her undies just inside her front door and threw the clothing and shoes outside on the porch. She would clean those later before bringing them inside the house.

  An hour later, the only soot she smelled was when she opened the bag containing the cigarette butt. Maybe all cigarette butts smelled this way? She didn’t have enough experience with cigarettes to know. She was old enough to remember the smell of cigarettes in a crowded bar. Still, the smell of an active burning cigarette was different from a butt that had been sitting around in a fire zone. Indeed, there should be some water on it from the firefighters and potentially some of the red stuff that she had seen in places around the fire zone. She did a quick search to see what the stuff was and found it was red-dyed fire retardant to prevent the spread of fire by covering brush with a gooey flame-retardant substance. It was a mixture of iron oxide and ammonium phosphate. The iron oxide gave it the red color so that pilots could see from the air where they needed to drop the mixture to prevent the spread of the fire.

  She put the two cigarettes in her analyzer. As she expected, they came back with the same result—tobacco, nicotine, tar, acetone, with a little ammonia and arsenic thrown in for good measure. Why would anyone inhale such a toxic group of chemicals? The clean, unsmoked cigarette had less carbon in it as it lacked the soot of the butt found at the fire scene. The cigarette butt contained something else not found on the original cigarette—isopropyl alcohol. That made no sense. Isopropyl alcohol was not in the flame-retardant materials sprayed by the airplanes. It was also highly flammable. A smoker wouldn’t soak a cigarette in isopropyl alcohol to smoke it unless they wanted their face to catch on fire. She would reach out to the fire scene investigator and ask why someone would use isopropyl alcohol in a wildfire area. She remembered this victim had the remains of the backpack near him, but there was no mention of a bottle of isopropyl alcohol being located inside the backpack. As flammable as it was, it would incinerate a backpack. The victim’s backpack was burned but not incinerated.

  The difference in the cigarette composition was the only thing she found at the scene besides acknowledging that both wildfire areas had something to see at the end of the hike. The first scene had the view. And the second scene had that creek with the beautiful sounds it made. It was time to move on to determining if both locations were designated as hiking sites. That might help her understand why the victims had been found where they were. Of course, if there was an arsonist behind these deaths, there were so many hiking trails throughout California that it would not be a useful fact to aid in predicting where the arsonist would strike next.

  She checked the temporary mailbox she had with the Sacramento Coroner’s Office to see if any other counties had responded to her inquiry about deaths in local wildfires. There were fifty-eight counties in California, and she knew of three counties with suspicious deaths. That left fifty-five counties for her to hear from. Looking at her inbox, she had perhaps forty responses, which was surprisingly good. Some of the counties were small, and the person receiving the email would likely have to refer to someone else to answer. She started opening the emails one by one, and by the time she got to the twentieth email, no county could find a report of a lone male who died in a wildfire this fire season. She kept going and found no other positive responses. So that appeared to be a dead end.

  Jill moved on to looking at the locations where the bodies had been found. She researched online what hikers said about the hike through the fire area. There was a known trail in each case. It was hiked enough to flatten the brush, but the hikers who reviewed the trails mentioned that they never saw another person while on the hike. They
appeared not to be well-traveled hiking trails. What could she do with that piece of information? Was she any closer to determining if this was an accidental death or a homicide? The answer was that she had more information, but it wasn’t conclusive. If she had been the medical examiner for these victims, she didn’t have enough evidence to rule their deaths as deliberate. That said, there sure were a lot of commonalities about the locations where the bodies were found.

  So what was her next step? How could she help her former employer reach a conclusion about the three victims? As much as she hated to think it, she needed another victim with live evidence for her to review. She looked at the schedule of how far apart the victims died. Each one was two weeks to the day of the previous one. That meant that if they had a serial arsonist, he or she would kill someone else in less than a week based on the date of the past death. She put her thoughts into an email to Jennifer to update her on her progress with the case. The bottom line for Jill was that she was convinced there was an arsonist at work here, given the strange similarities among all these cases. She had no proof, but she noted that if there was a serial arsonist at work, the next murder would be in five days. Rather than use up the eighty hours of her contract immediately, she planned to visit the third site the next day and then lay off the case for a few days to see if there was an additional death. It wasn’t a great strategy, but it was all she had at the moment.

  Jill finished up at the lab and checked in with Nathan to see if he was available for dinner that night. He was, and they would meet at his house, and he would cook. What more could a girl ask for? A wonderful man and intelligent partner, flexible, a great cook with a fabulous wine cellar. The only rub was that Arthur, Nathan’s cat, and Trixie hated each other’s guts. For Jill and Nathan, the two animals provided much amusement.

  The next morning, on her way to the third and most recent wildfire, Jill made a slight detour to Nathan’s new employer, the university, to drop off his signed contract. They had had a lovely evening together and she was smiling as she remembered their first goodnight kiss so long ago.

  When Jill and Trixie reached the third site, the burnt smell was much more pungent as the fire had been more recent and larger than the two wildfire locations she visited the previous day. After she exited her car, she leaned against it, listening for the sounds of fire but heard nothing. The fire must indeed be out. As she already had a cigarette butt from this site, she did not have Trixie search for one. Again, she was struck by how similar this third site was to the first two locations. She just needed to figure out what the drawing point of this site was. She didn’t hear a babbling brook, nor did the trail have a beautiful view. When she returned home, she would research this area to see what hikers said about the trail that she had somehow missed in her visit today.

  Who might be the serial arsonist? Why was that person targeting men in their thirties and forties? How were they starting the fires? Why weren’t the men running from the fire? Usually, you don’t allow yourself to be burnt at the stake, so to speak, without trying to run away. Certainly, that was Jill’s nightmare. Yet, the second two victims appeared to have nothing in their system that would’ve stopped them from running away from the fire.

  Jill pulled out the autopsy report of the victim from this site. He had minimal burns. Then she thought of something. What had the victim actually died from? He had hardly any evidence of smoke inhalation in his lungs, and she didn’t recall that there was evidence of a lot of soot in the victim’s throat and lungs. She looked through the paperwork for the lab report of carbon monoxide. If he was inhaling smoke, his bloodwork should show higher-level carbon monoxide. However, if he was dead before the fire started, he would have a lot less lung damage as he would not have been breathing to inhale deep into his lungs some of the toxins in a normal fire. His bloodwork was slightly elevated with carbon monoxide. The soot was on his face and his nose, but it hadn’t entered the back of his throat or nose, suggesting that his lungs were not working at the time the soot was being created by the fire. So what killed the young man? She made a note to ask the pathologist who performed the autopsy why he thought the cause of death was smoke inhalation.

  This third location was a larger fire in part because the slope of the walk was steeper. The fire would have had an easier time spreading uphill. Jill looked around at the trees, and again she could tell that the fire started in this area before picking up speed and heat. The trees next to the road were sticks, while the trees where the body was found still had some leaves on the branches. If the hiker walked to the clearing where his body was found, he had to have a certain level of fitness given the slope. Certainly, he had enough fitness to run from the fire unless he was incapacitated by something. She started thinking about what other agents might kill someone but leave little evidence. He could have been injected with succinylcholine or inhaled a gas that didn’t have enough oxygen in it. Maybe he ingested a poison that was not on the routine autopsy testing list.

  She was startled when she heard voices and conversation floating down to her. She called Trixie to her side and then waited to see who or what was making the noise. She waited as she spotted a couple coming downhill toward her, chatting as they walked. That was curious as she couldn’t recall seeing any cars parked down below other than hers. They also gave a slight jump when they saw her, and she waited for them to approach.

  “Hello,” Jill said, holding tight to Trixie, who had a tendency to like strangers who seemed friendly.

  “Hello. We usually don’t see anyone on this trail,” said the woman, advancing her hand for Trixie to sniff.

  “I wondered why anyone hikes in this area. The fire wreaked such damage on the landscape here, and the smell is still bad.”

  “This is our favorite hike and the first time we’ve been here since the fire.”

  Jill looked around, trying to see what they saw in calling it their favorite hike.

  “Why do you like this hike so much?”

  “Further up the trail, there are a lot of cool rock formations, and we like testing our level of fitness in the steepness of the trail.”

  “Oh. Where are the rock formations?” Jill asked, looking at her watch and gauging that she could afford the time to hike farther.

  “Continue about another fifteen minutes up this hill and when you’re close to the top, take a right turn, and you’ll find them. It was very different doing the hike today as we couldn’t find our well-worn trail, and I think we climbed at a steeper rate without using the switchbacks that were here.”

  “Will you be back to this location to hike again?”

  “We don’t think so. There are other places to hike in this area, and if we wait until next spring, the landscape will look better. We might try it again at that time.”

  “Thanks for the hiking advice,” Jill said, and the couple moved beyond her and continued their descent.

  Then she thought of another question. “Hey, I didn’t notice a car parked down below. How did you get here?”

  The couple grinned. “A couple of years ago, we discovered a secure hiding place to stash our bikes. They are down below and chained to a small rock formation. We’ve been coming here for three years, and our bikes have never been stolen, I think in part because we’ve never seen another hiker in this area.”

  “Oh. Well, I wish you continued good luck in keeping your bikes hidden,” Jill said with a smile.

  As they disappeared, Jill said to the dog, “Well, should we go find that rock formation?” At least now she knew what the attraction was for this hiking trail.

  Jill was panting by the time she reached the top and made the right turn over to the rock formation. Okay, she wasn’t wowed by the gray rocks, but whatever floats your boat. Certainly, she wouldn’t have ridden a bicycle uphill then hiked about a mile and a half uphill for this rock formation. There was a view, but she was unimpressed.

  There really wasn’t anything more to be gained from this scene. She looked at her watch and thou
ght she had time to stop by the crime lab and talk to the pathologist who examined the victim from this scene. She was still puzzled as to what killed the man.

  Jill pulled into the parking lot of the coroner’s office and debated what to do with Trixie. She knew the assistant behind the desk to be dog friendly. She would see if she minded watching the dog while she went inside. If she wasn’t there or wasn’t available to keep Trixie behind her desk, Jill would have to wait to have questions answered about the autopsy at a later date. It was simply too hot to leave the dog in the car.

  She was in luck with the assistant who was willing to take Trixie off her hands, and then she buzzed Jill through the door to the autopsy area. She didn’t know the pathologist listed on the report, so she called Jennifer to see what she thought of her issue with the pathology report.

  She sat down with Jennifer to discuss the inconsistencies between the evidence and the conclusion of smoke inhalation as the cause of death.

  “I have to agree with you, Jill. Sadly, the report was signed off by two people in this office. Let me talk to the pathologists involved and ask them to revise their report. If they don’t understand why it’s wrong, I’ll get them some remedial education on the subject.”

  “Awesome, thanks. Thinking through this last case made me think about the second one. I think it was also ruled smoke inhalation, and it should be labeled as something else. I think we have an arsonist at work here and that the arsonist is killing these victims before lighting a brushfire. Clearly, the first victim with barbiturates in his system was likely a homicide, but the second two look like accidental deaths until you look deeper into their signs and symptoms.”