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

by Alec Peche

  “I do think my vintages are as good as humanly possible, but I’d like to have both of you over to my house. I like to cook, and I can pair my wines with a menu of my choosing. When are you both available, and when is it a likely time that we’ll need to discuss this case?” Melissa asked.

  They discussed their schedules and set a date in two days. Jill was conscious of the fact that the Burnt Widow would strike again in a few days if she stayed on schedule. If she was on schedule and followed her habit, Jill would be driving to Shasta County, which was far enough away that she would likely stay overnight.

  “In my experience with the LAPD, many criminals act in a predictable manner. I have no reason to think that you won’t be dealing with the new victim soon. If you do get called to a crime scene, give me a call and show me the live video in case it tells me anything about your perpetrator.”

  “Only one of the four crime scenes has been close enough to a cellular tower for me to have reception. If it is Shasta County, which is even more rural than the other counties I’ve had victims in, I likely won’t have the reception to do a live video call. I will try and film the scene from my car to wherever the victim is found and whatever makes the hike interesting.”

  Chapter 16

  Over the next days, Jill received more test results. Not only was the DNA on the fourth cigarette butt female, but it was also from the same female. The FBI was becoming more involved in the case now that it was clear that they had a serial killer on their hands. They had done a multistate search for similar arson cases and, like Jill, came up with nothing. It sounded like the Burnt Widow was evolving into a more dangerous person. Consistent with Jill’s belief that these deaths resulted from a hiking date from a match made on Matefinder, it was likely that their suspect was in the same age range as the victims.

  Jill also received confirmation that the balloon fragments contained helium particles. They now had their weapon for the last three murders, which was different from the first one. It was a question to ask Melissa as to why the Burnt Widow changed murder weapons. Meanwhile, Jill was feeling the pressure that another hiking date was likely being scheduled, and it would result in a new death. Nathan and Jill were scheduled to go to Melissa’s house that evening, which would be a very enjoyable experience that she was looking forward to. At the moment, she needed to think. It was her brain that was usually the most powerful weapon in solving these cases.

  She took a pen and paper and a yoga mat and walked out into her vineyard. The air was clear again as her local fire had been extinguished. Maybe if she stretched out and gave the entire case another run-through in her head, she might come up with another angle to explore. Trixie followed her and was puzzled by her settling down on the ground with pen and paper. The dog watched for a moment and then seemed to shrug her dog shoulders as she turned away and went on squirrel patrol.

  As usual, the dog’s antics amused her. She turned her head down and started writing everything she remembered about the case. It was good to think outside among her vines. Sometimes you just needed a new vantage point while you did your deep thinking.

  The one aspect she hadn’t explored was how the Burnt Widow moved around the state. She had to believe that the date to go hiking was a second or third meeting for the couple. So how did she stay in an area long enough to date and to learn where her kill site might be? What was her income that allowed her to be on the move and date in so many cities? She wondered if she explored multiple hikes to determine which was the best for her purposes. She thought back to what Jack, the insurance adjuster, said about how a fire spread.

  The Burnt Widow would have to find a hiking trail that was rarely used, and had a lot of dry brush to ensure satisfaction with the fire for an arsonist. It needed to be on a hillside where she could light the fire and yet have time to return to her vehicle and leave before firefighters arrived. None of the reports from the firefighters had noted any vehicle leaving the brushfire area. Jill made a note to look again at the fire scenes to see if there was another way to leave the scene other than the way the arsonist might have arrived. If the Burnt Widow did her research to know which way fire vehicles would come from to fight the brushfire, maybe then she knew another way to drive away from the scene.

  That was an intriguing thought. It was so intriguing that Jill folded up her yoga mat and returned to the house and the big screen of her desktop computer. She wanted to study the roads around each of the crime scenes. If there was a secondary escape route, that was one more element to add to her list of things the Burnt Widow was looking for when she was searching for the place to do her killing. Maybe if Jill knew that aspect, it might help her narrow what trails the Burnt Widow would use for her next crime scene.

  Jill felt that spark of excitement whenever deep thinking about a crime revealed an additional aspect to examine and perhaps gave her additional information about the perpetrator. Maybe it was time to talk to fake Detective Mullin and pick his brain.

  She dialed his number and waited for him to answer. She never knew if he would take a call from her.

  “Has there been another murder?” was how the fake detective answered his phone.

  “Come on, you know better than that. She won’t strike until tomorrow, and it will take one to two days to discover the victim.”

  “So why did you call?”

  “Why are you involved in this case? You know impersonating an officer is a criminal act. What’s in it for you?”

  “I got information out of you, so it was worth that criminal act.”

  “You’re not some random person seeking out random information. You’re on this case because you know one of the victims, or you know who the Burnt Widow is.”

  “Maybe I’m a journalist wanting to write a true-crime novel.”

  “Yeah, right. I know you’re not John Mullin,” Jill continued reeling off the other names the facial recognition software had come up with. “So, which name should I go with?”

  “You are a very good PI. I’m very impressed. Call me John.”

  Jill sighed. She wasn’t going to get any information out of him that he didn’t want to give her.

  “I’ve been thinking about the way the Burnt Widow has been able to move around the state. She has her own vehicle which she drives to the scene, and she’s able to move to a new city every week or two. How is she so mobile, and where does her income come from?”

  “Why are you asking me? Is that your nickname for her?”

  “Yes, I got tired of calling her the arsonist when she is so much more than that. I think you know something about her that you’re not telling me. So, answer my question: Do you know how she is so mobile?”

  Jill stared at the phone, realizing that John had ended their call. He wasn’t going to answer her questions. He was an intriguing part of the puzzle of this case. She wondered if he knew the person behind the Burnt Widow, and if he did, how did he know her identity? At least she had ruffled his feathers by reeling off other names he used. His identity was the FBI’s problem, not hers. Still, she kept the phone line open between the two of them in case he let slip some information about their perpetrator.

  She turned her attention back to the maps. Maybe she could find a road or business camera on the roads to and from her crime scenes that might carry footage of a car passing by before or after the time of death. She would start with the most recent scene as businesses with cameras might not hold onto video footage for very long.

  Using a Google map, she studied the Butte County crime scene roads, then she switched to the satellite view to look at the lay of the land and any businesses close to the murder scene. She wrote a list of businesses to call and was glad she could use the Sacramento Medical Examiner’s Office as an excuse to gain footage. She called the receptionist at the ME’s office and had her transfer the calls to the businesses so that it would look like the call was legitimate. After identifying herself as an investigator for the ME’s office, she would inquire about where any exterio
r cameras were located and if they had a view of a particular road. Then, when there were useful camera angles, she would request footage for the four hours around the time of death.

  The complicated game of telephone tag took up the remainder of Jill’s day, and she owed the receptionist some kind of gift for her help keeping Jill connected. After all her conversation gymnastics, she managed to get the footage from four locations. If any of the footage proved helpful, she swore she would go into the Sacramento ME’s office the next day just to reduce the phone stress of the situation.

  She was just starting to review the tapes when Nathan arrived to drive to Melissa’s vineyard. True to her word, she was an excellent chef who wisely paired her vintages with the food she cooked. Nathan had a quick tour of her tasting room on the way over to her house.

  “Have you thought about offering gourmet meals with wine as an expansion of your tasting room? You are an excellent cook. Visitors would appreciate the food and any instruction you provide about the pairings. I like what you said when you talked about your wines just now. You would have to hire serving staff, but if you did it as a special request for touring parties, I would think you could manage the food by yourself as long as there were no more than, say, eight people,” Nathan suggested. “It would also be a way for your winery to stand out among the endless number of wineries in this area.”

  “I’ve been tossing ideas around in my head about some food and wine offerings, but until you described it for me now, I hadn’t pictured the idea of a home-cooked meal while wine was discussed. I like it. Can I call you and get your advice when I have a version ready to put forth to the local wine tour companies?”

  “I would be happy to help. Since you don’t have any sparkling pre-dinner wines, you might make Jill your wine pourer while you cook and talk food. She could bring her Moscato with her and do some cross-selling.”

  Jill opened her mouth to say something, but she waited to see how Melissa reacted to Nathan’s suggestion.

  “That’s a brilliant idea. I could also expand and find a third winery eventually that served dessert wine or port. I think I would have to make sure people had a ride home or smaller wine glasses, or they would be roaring drunk by the time they were done. Are you game, Jill?”

  “Count me in. I’ll play wine hostess and help you serve food. Maybe do one or two dinners to see if you like doing them, and they’re profitable. If they are a success, you could hire wait staff next or someone to help you plate food. Nathan would tell you I have no skills in the kitchen and if you want to be a success, you had best keep me out of the kitchen.”

  “You’re a chemist, a botanist, and a winemaker. How can you be a bad cook?”

  “Her friends pay her to stay out of the kitchen,” Nathan said with a smirk.

  “That’s the way I like it. Seriously, I don’t enjoy cooking at all. I know nothing about making food look pretty on a plate. I’m far too happy eating simple fare like a cheeseburger and fries or a pepperoni pizza. Why spend hours slaving in a kitchen? I can pour wine, but if you want your new project to be a success, you’ll want me to stay out of the kitchen.”

  “Okay, I’ll go with what you say. I’m sure I’ll need to get a food license from the county, which might be the biggest time hurdle and expense. I’ll start looking into that tomorrow. Thanks for the great idea, Nathan.”

  “He’s full of ideas on how to expand your business. He’s helping a friend who is producing both wine and beer, he’s helping another friend expand his winery in Germany, and his label is part of the reason my vintages have sold out each year so far.”

  “You make me think about changing my wine labels.”

  “You’ve got a good artist. Your labels are quirky like you, and I like that in a label. Don’t try to look like a serious French wine if that is not who you are as a winemaker.”

  “More good advice. Thanks,” Melissa said.

  “Okay, now I want to pick your brain about my case. My Burnt Widow changed murder weapons between her first victim and the next three. What does that say about her?”

  Melissa thought about that for a while and replied, “I think that means she’s a perfectionist always looking to improve her technique and avoid detection. With the barbiturates, it could have been labeled suicide or a homicide. The next three victims were labeled as accidental deaths from smoke inhalation until you corrected the pathologists, right?”

  “Yes, and you’re correct that they would still look like accidental deaths not to be researched any further, and given there has been no announcement in the press about this, the Burnt Widow probably thinks that no one is on her trail at the moment.”

  “Do you have any new thoughts on who my fake Detective John Mullin might be? I called him this afternoon to ask if he knew how the Widow is moving around the state. He had no answer for me and said I was the detective, so I should figure that out. Well, I’m stumped. I wondered if she was retired, but she’s too young for that. She must have a digital job that allows her to move around, or maybe a trust fund. That’s the only thing I can think of. She needs money to get helium and balloons, and whatever else she takes with her on a hike. She needs money for the vehicle she drives to the fire sites. So, she has some kind of income source.”

  “That’s an interesting question. Several serial killers in this state have held jobs, and several haven’t. It seems like a fifty-fifty split. Some start at a young age and escalate their crimes. Those rarely hold jobs, and they tend to serve jail time before finally getting sent to the big house for their serial killer work. That said, so few of them are female. Most female serial killers murder their families—especially their children. There is often a father in the picture, and a lack of income is rarely the cause of their behavior. There have been a few nurses who have killed large numbers of people, and half are male and half female, but employed.”

  “So, it’s possible she could be employed?”

  “Yes. She sounds like she is highly intelligent. She uses a dating app and knows about the effects of helium. She’s creative enough to find incentives to get couch potatoes to go on a hike with her. The fact that she is killing men probably also gives her a sense of power in addition to the way she feels after watching a brushfire take off. I’m surprised she hasn’t accelerated—made her deaths closer together. That shows she has control. Your Burnt Widow can put off the satisfaction of a wildfire because she doesn’t want to be caught. As for your fake detective, I’m clueless.”

  “That’s very interesting. I don’t know if it gives me any new angle to research who she is and where the Burnt Widow can be found. Work-from-home jobs generally require an internet connection. As long as she spent a certain part of her day within the range of a cellular tower, she could get her work completed. She could be in sales, or computer technology, or a thousand other jobs. Then again, she might be wealthy and have a trust fund available for her use.”

  When Jill and Nathan returned to her house, she had the footage from the various businesses to look through. It was late, but she needed to know whether she was driving into Sacramento the next day. The three businesses were on one road, and the fourth business security camera footage from another road. She watched the first video footage and slowed it down each time a car entered the frame. It was a slow and tedious process.

  Nathan had been watching the footage with her. He asked, “Why don’t you use your fancy facial recognition software and have it identify all vehicles that appear in the camera lens. I thought you could set it up to look for inanimate objects?”

  “You know I’m brain dead at this time of day, so thank you for thinking of something I should have known. Let me set it up to do just that.”

  She started by asking the software to find any cars in both locations one and two, three, or four. Over the four hours of the tape, there were exactly two vehicles that matched and were in both sets of security footages.

  “Sweetie, you are so smart. I wouldn’t have figured that out myself.”
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  “Did you learn anything from the search?”

  “Yes, there are exactly two cars that match the location search I was looking for. One is a government vehicle—sheriff or police—and the other is a white truck.”

  “That’s good news! Can you identify the truck or the driver?”

  “Wow, you sound like a private detective.”

  “I have to be dumb and deaf not to have picked up a few techniques from you by now.”

  “In answer to your question, it’s too blurry a picture to see the license plate or who’s driving. It is helpful to know that it’s a white truck.”

  “Can you tell who the manufacturer is?”

  “I don’t see the words on the vehicle, but that front grill looks like a Ford to me.”

  Nathan studied the picture and nodded his agreement.

  She sent an email to Agent Sanderson with the findings from her afternoon search and what she was planning to do the next day from the Sacramento Medical Examiner’s Office. It was late, and she didn’t expect a reply from the agent tonight. She closed down her computer, looked around to see if she had everything ready to go in the morning, and then dragged Nathan upstairs to her bedroom.

  Chapter 17

  Jill checked her email before heading north to Sacramento. Agent Sanderson was planning to meet her at the medical examiner’s office. He was impressed with her idea about business security cameras on the roads near the fire. That was the only new news for Jill. No word from fake Detective Mullin. At some point, she would figure out who he was, and then she hit upon an idea as she was driving. Why not have Marie look up his five aliases to see what she could compile about him? When she arrived in the parking lot at the ME’s office, she paused a moment to send off an email to Marie. She was sure if she waited until she walked inside, it would escape her list of things to do.