by Alec Peche
“Sir, I don’t think they’ll go quietly. If you sent in a SEAL team to extract her, the FBI would cry foul, and we would be answering questions on Capitol Hill, especially since their agent was killed.”
“Sadly, I think you might be right, Lawrence. I’m going to talk over this case with others, and then I’ll let you know. You’re dismissed.”
Lawrence stood up, tamping down an urge to salute. This was a civilian-run agency, but military habits were hard to break. He left the building to find Agent Ortiz on the phone trying to arrange transport.
“Special Agent in Charge Ortiz, if you would let me, I’ll arrange transport back to the airport. It can be tricky getting a ride-share car onto the base.”
“Thank you, Special Agent Lawrence. I would appreciate that. Can we drop the titles? I’m Leticia, and this is Jill.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I’m Jeff.”
“Ma’am makes me feel old, just Leticia.”
A car pulled up, and this time Lawrence got in the front, with Jill and Leticia in the back. They set off for the airport.
“I sure don’t understand the military. It’s far better to own up to your mistakes and move on than expending energy covering them up. She would have been a lot easier to find if you had requested the assistance of law enforcement years ago,” Leticia said.
As the driver was wearing a military uniform, Leticia felt no need to hide her thoughts from the driver.
“We underestimated Amanda’s intelligence and ability to stay hidden.”
“Yeah, you did. Also, you lack law enforcement access to databases like the DMV.”
“Can you tell me if at the time of her release from prison, she was taking any medications?” Jill asked.
“I don’t have the information off the top of my head, but when I get back to my office, I’ll look it up. Is there anything you’re looking for specifically?”
“I’ve been talking to an ex-behavior analyst for the LAPD about the Burnt Widow. Specifically, what set her off at this time? She talked about treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorders, which is sometimes what arsonists are diagnosed with. I wondered if she recently ended psychotherapy or stopped taking medication.”
“Those are good questions. I’ll look them up when I review her file.”
“Has she started fires at any military bases? I would think she would carry a certain amount of anger toward the military for her jail sentence.”
“Yes, those started about the same time as the murders. Our bases have long perimeters, and it would be easy, out of sight of cameras, to approach one and start a fire. We have civilian firefighters on every base, so the blazes have been extinguished quickly. Still, in some instances, the fires have spread outside of the base, and that gets complicated.”
Leticia decided she wanted to increase any guilt Special Agent Jeff Lawrence might feel by describing the upcoming funeral for FBI Agent Sanderson. It would be in three days and at a convention center in Sacramento. They expected upwards of ten-thousand law enforcement officers to show up, including the FBI Director. Most of the agents who died recently did so due to an illness related to the 9/11 tragedy in New York City and the Pentagon. An agent hadn’t been murdered by a criminal directly in the past twelve years.
After they got to the airport, Leticia and Jill went into the ladies' restroom.
“I was ready to start crying on the agent’s behalf. I hadn’t realized that FBI agents are rarely shot in the line of duty. This is going to be such a sad event. I also realize you were discussing it to lay more guilt on the Special Agent.”
“Yes, you’re right on all accounts.”
The three of them went their separate ways, and Jeff didn’t wait around for Jill once he exited the plane after it landed. Jill was late getting back to Nathan’s house that night and just wanted to head for bed.
Chapter 30
Amanda Moore had a list of all the military bases in California. On her bucket list was torching each of the twenty-seven bases. So far, she had started fires at five bases in Northern California, but unfortunately, none of them raged out-of-control. As she moved south, she planned to continue lighting fires. The problem was the eastern side of the state. There were bases in fairly remote areas that would take her a long time to reach. Maybe she would go after those bases last. She could sweep south and then head to the eastern side of the state when she was finished in San Diego.
In the back of her head, she was feeling pressure for the first time that law enforcement was getting close. She tensed whenever she saw a cop. Were they coming for her? Should she change the paint of her truck, or ditch it? Were they on to her recreational vehicle?
Also, she wanted to get better with the wildfires she was starting at the bases. She would love to see a brushfire get out of control and wipe out an entire base. She could buy a flame thrower, but she would have to stay in one area for several days waiting for it to arrive. She looked for stores that sold them, and there were a few around Sacramento. She planned to stop and buy one the next day. She could run with a flame thrower along the fence protecting the perimeter of any base and start a much larger fire that spread faster if she had a little mechanical help from such a gadget.
She also wanted to stop at a large library to use their internet to locate the two women at the press conference who had been talking about her work. She planned to burn their properties down, hopefully with them inside their houses. First, she needed to find out where they lived and scope out their properties. Once she knew that, she would plan her attack and decide where to go next. She paid the fee to park her recreational vehicle at a campground, unhitched her pick-up truck, and went out to handle things.
First, she investigated getting the truck painted. She checked with several places, and she would be without her vehicle for two to three days. She could rent a car in the interim to continue her work. She didn’t want to be on record for using a credit card at the moment as it was traceable. She inquired as to whether she could drive one of the cars from the rental shop while they had her truck in the paint shop. They agreed, which pleased her as she could use it to reach a military base or two in the area. She left the truck in the paint shop and next traveled to an industrial supply company to purchase the flame thrower. Next, she visited the library to look up the home addresses of Special Agent in Charge Leticia Ortiz and Dr. Jill Quint. She wanted to leave no evidence of her plans on the computer in her RV.
She was frustrated when she couldn’t locate the address of either woman after an hour of searching. She found a biography about the agent, and it mentioned a husband and kids. She looked for property in the husband’s name and scored a house in San Francisco. It was a dangerous place to try to burn down as there were people everywhere, and it would be hard not to be caught. She then went looking at the history of property ownership of Dr. Quint. She had owned a property in Sacramento, then in a small city that Amanda looked up. It was called the Palisades Valley, and she sold a property there about a year ago, then purchased a property in Kern County farther to the south. She looked up that property on Google Earth and decided it was a decoy. It had a shack on it and was in the middle of nowhere. This was not the house of a physician, even if she was a forensic pathologist. Amanda looked a little longer and saw that Jill Quint sold the property to a corporation. She researched the corporation but couldn’t find anything on it. She had time on her hands, so she would journey to San Francisco and to the Palisades Valley to see what her opportunities were.
She researched where she might find some roads in the area that weren’t well-traveled. She needed to try her flame thrower against a deserted road. She just wanted to make sure she understood the settings of the model she bought. For once, her goal was not to start a fire but just to test her equipment. Like a good soldier, she smiled to herself. She found exactly what she was looking for and then headed back to her campsite. She needed to get work done if she wanted to pay for things like the paint job and the flame thrower.
; The next day, she headed to San Francisco to look at the agent’s house. She parked on the street and used binoculars to get an idea of where exterior building cameras were on the street. Like so many houses in San Francisco, there wasn’t much distance between houses. If she managed to light the agent’s house on fire, it would likely take out one or both of her neighbors’ houses. Her best bet was to wait until dark and scale one of the side yard fences. She could get a nice fire going in the back of the house, delaying discovery and increasing destruction. It appeared that the bedrooms were on the second level, and she had no way to pump in carbon monoxide like she did with the other agent’s house. She studied the front door and wondered if she could put a steel pipe between the door latch and the doorframe to prevent the door from being opened for the family to escape. The trouble with that idea was she could see a porch camera that would likely alert the family to her work. She would have to do the pipe idea just before she ran away from the property. Oh well, the agent and her family would very likely escape with their lives through the first-floor windows. With a plan in her head, she drove toward the Palisades Valley.
Two hours later, she slowed her car to look at the property that Dr. Jill Quint once owned. There was a sign that said Quixotic Winery. She continued a mile beyond the driveway to the house and pulled off the road. She had filmed the property as she slowly drove by. She hadn’t noticed any cameras beyond those at the front gate, which was closed. She looked up the name of the winery and smiled when she read the owner’s bio.
It was Dr. Jill Quint in the flesh. She must be trying to hide her property ownership through the corporation. Amanda supposed that Jill could have sold just the house but kept the vineyard and the buildings that housed wine production. Maybe Amanda would tell Jill Quint just before she killed her that she should have fixed her website. She had a chuckle at that thought.
It was time to go home and catch some sleep. She had a lot of work planned for that night. She wanted to start fires on three bases and at two houses. It would take her all night to achieve her goal. Tomorrow she would return the car, pick up her truck, and then head south about one-hundred miles and lay low at a rarely used campground. Amanda planned to read all the news reports and privately crow at the destruction she would wield. Depending on her outcomes with the three base fires, she would continue her path of destruction south. On that pleasant thought, she fell asleep.
Her alarm woke her several hours later. Amanda had learned the trick of sleeping at will when she served in the military. She prepared a big dinner accompanied by a caffeine-rich sports drink. Her plan was to strike the three military bases before midnight before heading into San Francisco to take care of the agent. Her final assignment of the night was Jill Quint’s house, which she would strike about three in the morning by her calculation. She dressed in all black and had grease paint to use once she reached her first location. She’d put a temporary black rinse on her hair, covered it with a ball cap, and was wearing gloves. It was still hot in the evening, but she kept the car’s air-conditioning on so she could wear a long sleeve shirt. When she arrived at her first target, an airfield devoted to the Coast Guard, she decided to cross that base off her list as it was so small and exposed. She next had on her list an Air Force base north of Sacramento and one to the south. The one to the north was surrounded by dry brush, and she couldn’t wait to let her flame thrower go to work on that base.
It had miles of deserted fencing that called to her. She loved that it was so dark and deserted here. The initial smoke from the fire wouldn’t show for a while. She would get a nice spread of the fire before the base staff noticed it. Also, there was a twenty MPH wind that she cheered about as it pushed the flames toward the base. She found the deserted road she was looking for and parked the car and gathered her equipment. She had hoped to run along the fence line, but she could see that the idea wouldn’t work as the ground was uneven, and the last thing she wanted to do was trip. Instead, she walked the fence line to the right of her vehicle, figuring she’d cover about two-hundred yards on both sides of her against the fence line. She turned the flame thrower on and torched the area as fast as she could walk while keeping her balance. She’d thought of getting night vision goggles, but the flame would have blinded her night vision.
The most beautiful fire was roaring. She could feel its power and the sound of its roar. She was mesmerized watching the flames dance across the field. In the distance, she thought she heard sirens, which surprised her. She thought it would take at least another five minutes before she heard the first siren. Maybe the base had aerial surveillance from a landing plane, or a drone had caught sight of the flames. She hopped into the car and moved toward the main road with just her parking lights on. She hit the main road and turned away from this base and on to the next.
When Amanda arrived at the next Air Force base, she was dismayed to see they had a large nighttime operation in progress, or so it looked to her. Runway lights were on, and sitting where she was in the car, she could see the lights shining on her. She would have to circle back to this base at a later date.
At this time of the night, it would take less than an hour to reach the agent’s house in San Francisco. She had four one-gallon jugs of isopropyl alcohol, which was her accelerant of choice. She cruised the agent’s street with the lights off several times. There was no activity. She parked the car and quickly grabbed her bag of accelerants and a tiny fuse she planned to light just before she hopped into her car to make an escape. She pulled herself over the fence carrying the tools of fire. In under five minutes, she had splashed the isopropyl alcohol against the house, outlining its shape in the backyard. She soaked her fuse and unwound the cord just before she set a match to it and ran for her car. Just as she was sliding into the car, she could hear sirens close by. She didn’t know whether they were fire trucks, ambulances, or police vehicles. She did know she’d better get out of there fast. It wouldn’t do to be seen leaving a burning house in a hurry. She made random turns on the streets of San Francisco, getting away from the agent’s house. After five minutes, she punched the button on her phone’s GPS to direct her to the city of Palisades Valley.
Amanda felt pretty good about herself having lit two spectacular fires that night. She was hoping for a third when she struck Dr. Jill Quint’s house.
Chapter 31
Jill was nestled in Nathan’s arms when she heard her phone ringing. She opened it and saw the caller, and punched the button to connect. She got out of bed, trying not to jostle Nathan as she did so. Seconds later, she was in the hallway heading for the kitchen.
“Hello.”
“Hi Jill, it’s Leticia. The Burnt Widow is having a busy night. First, there was a fire at an Air Force base in Yuba County, and then an attempt was made on my house. She spread accelerant around the back of my house and then tossed a match. I think your house might be next tonight.”
“Oh, no! Did you suffer a lot of damage to your house? Do you have video surveillance of your house that captures the Burnt Widow?”
“Actually, don’t tell my neighbors, but we had cameras set up on their house focused on my house. The motion detector software sent me an alert, and I, in turn, called the fire department. We’re fortunate; not much damage was done. A good part of the accelerant didn’t have a chance to burn. You want to know the scary thing?”
“What did she do?”
“She took some kind of metal spike and taped it with duct tape inside the latch of my front door. If my family had actually been inside, the rear exit would have been blocked by fire, and the front exit had the metal spike preventing the door from opening inward. My husband says he would have had us out quickly as he would’ve taken the hinges off the door and opened it from the other side. Still, this woman is scary. The house is in my husband’s name, and if you Google him, you’ll find pictures of our kids. I’m sure the woman knew that and didn’t care that she might be killing two children.”
“Wow, she’s quite evil. So y
ou’re thinking I’m next because she’s picking off the people that were at the press conference?”
“Yes. You’re the third piece of the triangle here, so you have a bulls-eye on your back. If I were you, I would alert your fire department to be ready. I would also call your sheriff and put him on alert, and I would pull your security cameras up and watch them. It might take her ninety minutes to get from my place to yours at this time of night. You have another thirty minutes before she arrives.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Leticia. I’m going to get dressed and head over to my house. Hopefully, I’ll be there before her.”
“Jill, I would advise that you stay away from your property. She is very dangerous, and you do not want to go up in flames along with your house.” Jill shuddered, thinking about her fear of fire. Would she even have the nerve to face off with the Burnt Widow? What if she was holding a torch or something?
“I’ll take Nathan with me. With all the cameras on my property, we should be able to take her on.”
“Jill, call your sheriff. You need help.”
“I don’t want to scare her away. If she sees the lights of a police car, we’ll likely lose our best chance to capture her.”
“Jill, I’m going to call your sheriff in a moment. An officer can park his vehicle in your garage, so it’s out of sight. If she shows up with a flame thrower, none of your martial arts training will serve you well. She’ll have a far greater reach that you can’t overcome.”
“You have a point. I’ve got to hang up now to get dressed and out the door and in position before she arrives. I’ll call you later.”
Rather than call dispatch, Jill called Officer Emma Davis. She often worked the night shift, was really good with a rifle, and had saved Jill’s life multiple times. She explained what was going on with her latest investigative case. Emma estimated she would be at Jill’s house in fifteen minutes. Jill gave her the passcode to park inside the garage.
