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

by Alec Peche

  “Yes, I thought about waiting on the public announcement until we get Matefinder’s data in hopes that it might offer up some clues. However, the clock is ticking, and she’ll kill the next person in less than two weeks. She may already have the first date set up. We’ll make an announcement at least before the next kill day. She’ll strike either Del Norte or Humboldt County if she follows her pattern. Of course, after that, we don’t know if she’s going to continue north into Oregon or make a U-turn and start going south down the western edge of California.”

  Vickie exited the coroner’s office with a bag in hand. She passed it to Jill for her to drop off at her DNA source. Jill decided she would see if she could drop it at the private company rather than at the Sacramento Coroner’s Office. She could make that call on her way south. She gave a sigh of relief as she settled into her car with her dog for the four-hour drive home. It was a relief to drive away from the fire in a well air-conditioned vehicle. She couldn’t wait to arrive home and shower. Between the terror of the fire, the heat, and the smoke, she was sure she stank.

  Chapter 21

  The next day Jill received two pieces of information from the DNA company. The latest cigarette butt was used by a female, and all four matched to the same person. That was confirmation that they had a serial killer on their hands. There was simply no other explanation for it. That afternoon she was on a video call with Agent Sanderson and several other FBI agents, including SAC Leticia Ortiz. They were planning a press conference for the next day. They wanted Jill to participate by walking everyone through the similar forensic evidence in all of the cases. They also planned to include the State Fire Chief, who could address how the fires were started.

  The hole in their plan was the subpoena for Matefinder. It was a negotiation with a company that was doing its best to protect its subscribers’ privacy and support their business needs. They were dragging their feet to the degree they could without being charged with contempt, and at the same time threatening to sue the FBI for severely damaging their reputation as a website to find your future partner and the love of your life. To know that there was a serial killer among their subscribers was not pleasant news.

  Still, the FBI decided to take the risk of upsetting the company to potentially save another life. Of course, they had to depend on local media to get the word out as Matefinder wasn’t going to help them. They could only hope the next target would hear their message and not go on a hike with the Burnt Widow. It was a catchy name for their killer, which would stick in potential victims’ and the public’s minds.

  This all sounded well and good, but Jill was worried about how the Burnt Widow would react to hearing her story broadcast. Would she leave the state? Would she change her M.O.? Would she go underground and stop killing for a few years? She picked up the phone and called Melissa Profino.

  “Hey Jill, how’s your case going?”

  “That’s why I called. The FBI is holding a press conference with a bunch of law enforcement types tomorrow. They have asked me to be the expert who explains the forensic evidence. I’m a little worried about how the Burnt Widow will react. What’s your guess?”

  “That’s a good question. I’m sure she has a compulsion for what she does with the fires and her victims. The Burnt Widow has been successful at least five times. Perhaps she tried something different before settling on the current path, like just wildfires but not killing males. She’s going to find a way to continue fulfilling her desire to start fires. She enjoys the power of watching flames ignite. I don’t know why she’s killing men on dates. The easy explanation is that she had an unbelievably bad date and decided to fix that in her own way.”

  “Do you think she’ll move to a different state and pursue her serial killer fantasies there? Like Oregon or Washington?”

  “Of course, that’s a possibility, or she might miss your press conference and do nothing different from what’s she’s been doing.”

  “Do you think that might happen?”

  “No. I bet she’s been monitoring the fires she started and has gotten satisfaction from however many acres have burned. Still, that involves looking stuff up on the state fire website. She could be doing that and still miss the press conference,” Melissa remarked.

  “But, she might catch the press conference, and then what would she do?”

  “Let me think about that question and call you back. I have some ideas, but I want to do a little research on arsonists. I’ll have an answer for you within a few hours. Okay?”

  “That sounds great. My biggest worry is that by being involved in the press conference tomorrow, I’ll put myself in danger from a sociopathic serial killer. That’s not the attention I want. I think I’m right to worry.”

  “Yes, but there are others to kill, like the FBI agents and the fire guy you mentioned. They are almost all men, and I would think she would go for the men first as has been her pattern.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. I’m a minor player. I’ll start worrying when there are attempts made on the men’s lives. On that note, can you give me everything you can think of to predict the Burnt Widow’s next move?”

  “Sure. I’ll try to have something for you tonight. That way, if you want to use any information in my analysis for your press conference, you can.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be on the lookout for your email.”

  Jill wrote a description of the case so she would be ready to talk at the press conference. She also wrote a list of things she planned to withhold as law enforcement liked to hold things back to be used to determine guilt.

  She spent a little more time playing around with Matefinder, but she didn’t come up with anything new. She was still a little unnerved by her visit to the active fire location yesterday. It made her want to take action to make sure her winery wasn’t vulnerable to brushfires. She dug out her drone and planned to fly it around her property to make sure she created a barrier that fire would have a hard time jumping.

  After she surveyed, she felt good. There was no brush that could catch on fire. There were patches of greenery everywhere—vineyards, almond trees, and pistachio trees. She also had a road on one side of her property. When she looked at the situation, her house and outbuildings were the most burnable part of her land. They were well protected by a sophisticated security system that she’d put in after her house was bombed in one of her earliest cases. She would have peace of mind that the Burnt Widow wouldn’t find much material to ignite on her land.

  It was time to switch directions. Jill was planning to spend the night at Nathan’s house as they were both back in town, and he liked cooking in his kitchen more than in Jill’s. She would take Trixie for a run and then drop by the architect’s office to see if she’d worked up a cost estimate for the project. Jill would have to get a loan, and she needed to know how expensive her taste was. She had a ballpark figure, but now that the rubber had hit the road, it was time to get a little more exact.

  Later, when she and Nathan were chatting while he cooked, she told him about the press conference.

  “It’s too bad they want you there to discuss the forensics. If not for that role, you would just be an anonymous forensic pathologist in the background. Now your serial killer has someone to focus on.”

  “I spoke with Melissa, and her first thought was the Widow would go after men first. That will be my first warning if Agent Sanderson is targeted. So hopefully, I’ll be safe. I will admit I was worried enough that I put my drone up in the air to see if the Widow could burn down my vineyard, and I feel confident that she can’t as there is mostly green stuff in the area, and I have the security system on my house.”

  “True, but like some of the psychos you’ve dealt with in prior cases, she may not be predictable.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I’ve thought of some other things to research that I want to look at. We haven’t looked at helium purchases,” Jill said, opening the Google function on her phone.

  “Drat.”

 
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked, looking up from his sauté pan.

  “There are too many sources for helium,” Jill replied, reading something on her phone. “Maybe not. This is interesting. Did you know you can buy a small tank of helium to be used to blow up balloons? Of course, as I read further, this is not the gas that our arsonist is using to murder her victims.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “This tank is eighty percent helium and twenty percent room air. That’s not a high enough concentration to cause hypoxemia. The Burnt Widow must be buying industrial helium, which is used for welding or to calibrate analyzers like the ones out in my barn. Still, there are too many of those types of suppliers for me to chase any purchases. She would only need one small tank for all of her kills, but it would need to be pure helium. Sometimes they mix helium with argon, but that mixture is just as deadly as pure helium.”

  “What other way do you have to track her down?” Nathan asked.

  “I guess we need to do more with the white truck. Maybe I’ll see if Jo’s partner, Jack, can do any photo enhancing to show the vehicle identification number in the front windshield. I must have twenty pictures of the truck where the photos might be enhanced to reveal that information. I just checked a used-car site, and they had three-thousand used white Ford F-150 trucks for sale in California, so it would be hard to narrow that many trucks to our killer.”

  Jill pulled up the pictures she had and attached them to an email to Jack with a copy to Jo. While Jo, Marie, and Angela helped her with most cases, she hadn’t had cause to use Jo’s or Angela’s skills yet. Jack taught graphic arts at a college in Wisconsin. He would be knowledgeable about any photo enhancement software that she might use for this case.

  “On that unhappy note, let’s eat.”

  Chapter 22

  Jill entered the FBI's Sacramento office and was escorted to a conference room that contained Special Agent in Charge Leticia Ortiz, whom Jill had worked with off and on over the past three years on cases in California and around the world. Agent Ortiz served as a reference for Jill on numerous occasions, which helped her achieve some standing with law enforcement. Agent Sanderson was there and other personnel, including sheriffs’ representatives from the other counties and someone from the State Fire Chief’s office. The press conference was in two hours, and they were meeting beforehand to discuss what information they would and wouldn’t release. Until the meeting, fire representatives hadn’t realized the scope of the Burnt Widow, which was the operational name that the FBI was running with. A legal representative discussed the difficulties they were having with Matefinder, which was dragging its feet to comply with the subpoena.

  “I suspect they will be hostile once we say their name during the press conference. They will either begin complying with our subpoena or throw up more barriers to our getting the information. At least men will be warned and be on the lookout for the Burnt Widow,” said the attorney. “We have a duty to warn the public that supersedes Matefinder’s right to privacy.”

  “What do you want me to hold back from my explanation of the forensic evidence?” Jill asked.

  “Let’s stay quiet about the helium in the balloon evidence,” Leticia said. “Let’s also not mention the ‘every other county’ pattern, but we’ll call her a statewide killer and name the counties and let someone else draw that conclusion.”

  “Should I mention that the men’s profiles suggest that they wouldn’t normally enjoy hiking?” Jill asked.

  “Yes, I think so. Let’s be specific on the commonalities in their profiles. As much as Matefinder is slowing us down, I don’t want to decimate their customers. Men who are outside of the profile can relax a little and may choose to have dates in crowded areas for their own protection.”

  “Have we contacted the sheriffs in Del Norte and Humboldt counties to warn them that she may strike there next?” Jill asked.

  “No. Our profiler doesn’t have a handle on whether she’ll stay in California or go north into Oregon. We just need to make sure that this press conference gets broadcast in the far north of this state. Sacramento has different television stations from Redding, Eureka, and Crescent City, but we’ve had our media people invite the stations from those areas to this press conference. It’s probably rare that they get an invite to something that doesn’t appear relevant to their area, so we’ll see if they come. If they don’t, our media person will send them footage and suggest they broadcast, but we can’t do more than that,” SAC Ortiz said.

  “It’s such a sensational story, I can’t believe that the television stations wouldn’t pick up on it. I bet the story gets national coverage,” Jill suggested.

  They discussed the conference further and then moved onto other issues with the case. The DNA lab verified that the same female’s DNA was on all the butts. Jill mentioned trying to locate the helium source, but there were too many gas sources. She also mentioned the request she made of Jack to see if he could identify the VIN number of the white truck.

  “The FBI has its own experts in that area. We’ll see what we can do with the photos. Have we located any additional video footage sources from Redding?” Leticia asked Agent Sanderson.

  “We’re calling around as we speak. One of the routes is through an active fire zone, and it’s been evacuated. We can’t ask those business owners until they return after the fire is extinguished.”

  “Do you have an ETA on the end of that fire?” Leticia asked the fire representative.

  “At least another week. Can you show me on the map which road you’re interested in? Maybe we can let those business owners back in to retrieve the footage. Likely, there’s no reason to open their businesses as the air quality is so bad that you don’t want to be there. Also, the electricity may be shut off, so they will have no way to power on computer equipment or the internet.”

  “I’ll send a few agents out, and we’ll see what we can do,” replied Agent Sanderson. “I’d send them with a generator, but that would insult those business owners that may be losing whatever they store in their refrigerators.”

  The fire representative nodded, “Yeah, I’d be pretty angry if someone showed up with a generator but only wanted to run my computer with it. I’d be angry enough to make you go get a warrant. Then again, people may be nicer on that road than elsewhere in the state.”

  The agent nodded as he stood up to leave the room and make some calls to his staff.

  SAC Ortiz planned to be the mistress of ceremonies for the press conference. She would introduce the case and then have Jill discuss some of the forensic evidence. The fire representative would have a few words about arsonists and the variety of fires associated with these murders. The press conference would end with Agent Sanderson requesting the public’s help in identifying the arsonist. He would also issue a warning to those using a dating app to avoid date hikes in areas prone to wildfires until their perpetrator was captured.

  As Jill had correctly predicted, the case took off in the media like wildfire, no pun intended, she thought. She was getting calls from national media outlets to the point that she had to turn her phone off. She received emails from her mother in Arizona and her friends in Wisconsin. Her mother had her usual worries about Jill’s connection to criminals. Her friends called to tell her how beautiful she looked on television, which brought a smile to Jill’s face. You could always count on your girlfriends!

  What Jill really wanted to know was, Had their arsonist been listening? If she stuck to her pattern, she might already have lined up her next victim. They might be going on a date to a bar this evening, at which point she would set up a hike that would result in the sixth victim.

  The FBI had a meeting in court with the dating app company regarding their subpoena. Jill hoped that the judge would side with the FBI. Then Jill thought of another way she might get at Matefinder’s data. What if she performed a twenty-mile radius search of women using the dating app around each victim? Their perpetrator had to be editing her home
cities with each victim. Maybe she was setting up a new account with a new name and picture in each city. If she did that, Jill would not find her. However, if she was just changing the city that she now lived in, Jill might be able to see that as a member of the general public using the dating app. Then she thought of another idea. What if she looked at Eureka and Crescent City for any new woman who had just joined the dating app? Suppose their perpetrator was starting new accounts or was editing the home city of an existing account? In that case, Jill should be able to see her profile on Matefinder. By the time she reached her vineyard, she had a couple new avenues to pursue.

  Chapter 23

  Amanda Moore was working in the living room of her recreational vehicle. She needed to code four additional medical records in order for her to meet her quota for the day. She took a break at one point, standing up and stretching and rubbing her eyes. Someone could go blind, looking at all the boring information in medical records.

  She did a quick scroll through her phone, and a word caught her attention.

  Arsonist.

  She opened the story and started reading it with alarm. Then she began to pace. Then she sat down and spent the next hour looking for both print and video coverage of the story that caught her attention.

  She needed to think about this for a while. There was nothing she had to do immediately. She knew that in her heart. They didn’t know where she was or even who she was. She would focus on getting her work done, then she could make some decisions about what she was going to do. She returned to reading and coding the medical records in front of her while in the back of her mind her brain was processing options for what she would do next. She finished her work in record time, and just as dusk was setting in, she returned to the story about a “female arsonist murdering men across California.”