Pushed Too Far

by Ann Voss Peterson

  She wasn’t sure if he was serious or flirting, and the fact that she wanted it to be flirting bothered her even more. “If you find something that might help, I’ll find the money to consult a forensic anthropologist.”

  He turned his focus back to the bones. No sign of guilt, of excitement, of anything other than studious concentration.

  When he finished, she handed him the second file.

  His lips tightened and brows lowered, but after the initial reaction to the mutilated and burned flesh, his face settled into the same unflappable focus he’d shown with the bones. Finally he closed the file and set both of them on her desk, side by side.

  “Well?”

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  “You’ve compared the two. Have you noticed differences?”

  “Of course. You should contact a forensic anthropologist. Maybe you can use this investigation to go through the county or the state, have them foot the bill.”

  “Appreciate the suggestions, but I didn’t ask you here for budgeting advice. Explain what you see.”

  “Okay. How much do you know about combustion?”

  “High school science.”

  “Okay, think of fire as a living thing. It needs four things to exist, and if it’s deprived of any of those things, it dies.”

  “Fuel, heat, oxygen, and…what else?”

  “A chemical oxidation that causes the reaction to be self-sustaining.”

  She liked talking about something as defined as science. It had rules that emotion couldn’t change.

  Of course, police work did, too. “Explain.”

  “Okay. Fire takes two forms, flaming and smoldering.” He held up one hand, then reached into his pocket with the other, pulled out a stainless steel lighter and flipped it open. A flick of his thumb and a small yellow flame danced at the top.

  “I never pegged you for a smoker.”

  He gave her another grin. “I always carry one in my pocket and one on my uniform, but not for lighting up. I use it for demonstrations, at schools, that kind of thing.”

  “Or for the police chief.” She pulled her gaze from his eyes and focused on the fire. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “Notice how the flame seems to be dancing in mid air.”

  “It’s burning the lighter fluid.”

  “Fluid, right. It’s a liquid which must transform into a gas before it can burn. That’s why it looks like it’s floating in space. It’s burning the gas.” He held out a hand. “I need a piece of paper.”

  She ripped a sheet from the legal pad in front of her and gave it to him.

  He held the lighter’s flame to the corner, and the paper caught fire. “Now paper is a solid, but if you look at the flame, it never touches the edge.”

  “So fire only burns fuel in gaseous form.”

  “Right. And the more readily the fuel converts to gas, the hotter the fire.” He pointed through the side window of her office into the station’s main room. “Like those cubicles.”

  She looked at the ratty old walls that had been around for much longer than she had. “Fabric burns hot?”

  “It’s the type of fabric, plus the filler and glue. Especially glue. Something like that or that old pressed-board paneling people have in their rec rooms? A fire trap in the making.” He pinched the flame on the paper’s corner between his fingers. “Don’t want to set off the alarm.”

  She eyed the sprinkler above her desk. “Thanks.”

  “Flame is fuel in a gaseous state burning in the presence of oxygen. It’s a gas - gas reaction,” he explained.

  “And smoldering is solid - gas?”

  “You’re a star pupil. But for a solid to burn, you need oxidation of the solid fuel in direct contact with oxygen.”

  “Okay, you lost me.”

  “Think of a cigarette. When you suck oxygen through the tobacco, the fire gets hotter, glows brighter. More oxygen equals a hotter fire. But when the cigarette sits in the ash tray, it is still burning.”

  “It’s smoldering.”

  “Right. And it can only continue to burn because the structure of the burning tobacco rolled in paper is porous and rigid enough to stay that way. So oxygen is in contact with the charred surface even when the cigarette is at rest and burning at a cooler temperature.”

  “How does that apply to human remains?”

  “A substance that doesn’t create a rigid porous char won’t oxidize, therefore it will not smolder and won’t be self-sustaining. A good example would be thermoplastics, which melt as they burn.”

  Again, she wasn’t following. “There weren’t any thermoplastics in the barrel.”

  “Of course, there weren’t. But the best fuel in the human body is subcutaneous fat.”

  “The fat layer under the skin.”

  “Yes. Like any oil, it burns fairly efficiently, producing a flaming fire. But first it needs heat to transform it from solid to liquid to gas.”

  “The fire generated by the accelerant.”

  “Sure. And there was plenty of oxygen in the outside air, but it isn’t self-sustaining without one more thing.”

  “A chemical oxidation. Smoldering.”

  “Exactly. Namely something porous and rigid. Think of oil lamps, the fat is the oil, but it doesn’t sustain the burn without a wick.”

  “Couldn’t the flesh be the wick? Or the bones?”

  “It can, but the human body is mostly water. It takes time for flesh and bone to dehydrate enough to burn. The accelerant would burn off too quickly to do more than damage the skin.”

  “Jane Doe’s bones burned.”

  “Quite extensively, but you weren’t just asking me about Jane Doe.”

  Lund stood up and flipped open the file from Nebraska. Leaning over the desk, he pointed at one of the photos. “You see this?”

  His head was only inches from hers. Trying not to notice, she stared at the girl’s lower calves and ankles where muscle was charred as well as the skin. In the close up shot, she could see a clear glimpse of bone. “The damage is worst at her ankles.”

  “And her wrists.” He pointed to another shot.

  Val took in the damage, then looked up at him. “So something acted as a wick on her lower legs and forearms.”

  “My guess? She was tied.”

  Val looked down at the poor woman’s damaged face. How frightened she must have been when she realized his plan. Tied, helpless, witnessing that look in his eyes and feeling the slashes, the searing barrel of the curling iron, the fire’s heat lick her skin.

  What kind of pain had she endured?

  She pushed the photo to the side and returned to Jane Doe’s bones. Letting out a shuddering breath, she focused on the shards, human but not. Like studying a skeleton in science class.

  A shin bone tapering to an ankle. Splinters from a forearm. Small bones from the wrist.

  “There’s no damage.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to say, and the sound of the words startled her for a second. Of course there was damage. All the flesh was gone. Not one bone had escaped splintering or charring. There was the most horrible kind of damage imaginable. And yet…

  Where Jane Doe should have been tied, there were no marks. Not like the deep damage on the body in Nebraska.

  “So she wasn’t tied.”

  Hess’s words spun through her mind.

  If you look hard enough at the evidence in that case—not what the cops made up—you’ll see it all doesn’t tie together like you want it to.

  “Why didn’t we see this before?”

  “Because you weren’t looking. Listen, there are a lot of variables with fire. The conditions of the fire itself can change everything about the appearance of the remains.”

  Val took a photo of the Nebraska victim in one hand and Jane Doe in the other. “So what other differences do you see?”

  “There is a lot of splintering of the bone.”

  Obviously he was talking about Jane Doe. “What does that
mean?”

  “It could mean a number of different things, depending on the fire conditions. But in this case, I’d guess the bones were fairly dry.”

  “Which means?”

  “Maybe there was no need to tie her, because she was dead before she burned, maybe long before.”

  She scrolled through a mental list of Kelly Ann’s maternal relatives. “As in dead and buried?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Val set the photos down and cradled her head in her hands. A fuzziness was beginning to form in her right eye, and the stiffness in her neck was getting worse. Her symptoms were moving from her arm to other parts of her body, as they often did, especially when fueled by stress. But as frightening as the prospect of her body betraying her was, the idea that what Hess had told her might have merit bothered her even more. “He could have been telling the truth.”

  “Who? Hess?”

  She looked up at Lund. “He might have been framed.”

  “By who?”

  One name popped into her mind. The person who was cleared when the investigation centered on Hess.

  And she was looking right at him.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  He narrowed his dark eyes. “Don’t know or don’t want to tell me?”

  It was a good question, a fair question. And despite her promise to be straightforward, she wasn’t willing to answer it. “If I find anything, you’ll be the first to know. Deal?”

  He stared at her. “You’re not thinking me?”

  She didn’t want to. He wasn’t the only one with motive. If Kelly was afraid of either of the men in her life, she would have reason to fake her own death. Unfortunately Val couldn’t discuss those possibilities with Lund. Not until she’d sorted through the facts and gained some perspective. Until she did, the job would be best served if she kept all she knew to herself, played it close to the vest, as her mentor had advised.

  “I told you, I don’t believe you killed anyone,” she said. “That hasn’t changed.”

  Chapter

  Ten

  The interior of The Doghouse tavern was dark compared to the sun outside, and Val had to pause to give her eyes a chance to adjust. The rumble of male voices and a wave of smoke washed over her, a unique blend of cigarette, cigar, and the stale remnants of years gone by.

  Lake Loyal had enacted a smoking ban, and word was, the entire state of Wisconsin would soon follow, but that hadn’t stopped Nikki Sinclair.

  If the thirty-five-year-old former stripper, stage name Nikki Sin, believed in anything it was the pleasures of lighting up and men, in that order. She smoked the way most people breathed. Val had even heard her joke that the reason she’d never had kids was too much nicotine buildup in her fallopian tubes.

  Truth was, Val got a kick out of Nikki. She just tried not to show it when writing her yet another ticket for breaking the ban.

  “Let me guess, shot and a beer?”

  Val followed the voice to behind the bar where Nikki, currently a redhead, was wiping dust off booze bottles.

  “Came to see Chief Schneider.”

  “Not me? I’m hurt, Val. But it’s probably a good thing. My budget won’t allow for any more tickets this month.” She waved the bar rag in the direction of the private room off the main bar.

  Eyes more accustomed to the gloom, Val followed a trail of cigar smoke through the scattered seating and circled the pool table. The double doors originally sectioning off the parlor from the rest of the house gaped open.

  Val focused on the group of five men clustered around one of the tables. One puffing on a cigarette and two on cigars, they were all in their seventies, and Val knew each one. Only two of them were retired, but all found time to play a few hands of sheepshead every afternoon, almost without exception.

  “Hey Val, pull up a chair,” said Dick Maher, a dairy farmer who hung out at Nikki Sin’s for a while before the evening milking.

  “Thanks, but I have to talk to the chief.” Usually it bothered her that Schneider would always be police chief in this town, but with this crowd, there was no point in insisting otherwise.

  Fruehauf, the fire chief, threw a queen of clubs on the table and chuckled. “Pay up before you go, Jeff. I’ve got to be getting back.”

  By the time the men finished the hand and settled up their fifty-cents-a-point debts, Val felt like climbing out of her skin.

  The chief pushed himself away from the table and stood up, brushing pretzel crumbs from his belly. “So what do you need, Val?”

  She motioned him through the door and into the kitchen.

  Nikki looked up from her ashtray, arching her eyebrows at their entrance.

  “Can we use your back room?” Val asked.

  She blew out a puff of smoke. “You owe me.”

  “Always.”

  Nikki hoisted herself up from her desk chair and pushed through the door leading to the front bar, smoke trailing in her wake.

  Val cracked the back door open a sliver to let in fresh air, then turned to face the chief. “I don’t think Hess killed our Jane Doe.”

  For a second, Schneider just stared at her, then he sputtered out a cough. “What makes you say that?”

  She cut right to the comparison. Where Lund’s explanation seemed more or less clear, hers sounded confusing and convoluted, even to her own ears. Still, when she finished, the chief was nodding.

  “Have you asked Harlan to look into this? No offense, but you’re hardly an expert, Val.”

  “Just called him.” She skipped the part about Lund originally telling her the things she had struggled to impart. Knowing the source would only make Schneider write off the theory without examination. “Harlan’s going to send the remains and the Nebraska files to a forensic anthropologist.”

  “Not sure it’s worth all that.”

  “If Hess didn’t kill her, we need to find who did.”

  He waved his hands, as if erasing her words from the air. “Of course, we do. I’m just not convinced what you’ve told me proves he didn’t do it.”

  The last thing she wanted was for Hess to be innocent, and she realized that was the reason she’d decided to tell the chief this new wrinkle. If there was a flaw in the direction of her thoughts, she could rely on him to find it. “Go on.”

  “You say he tortured that woman in Nebraska. What’s to say he didn’t torture the woman up here, too? Torture her to death? Then there wouldn’t be a need to tie her.”

  “That doesn’t explain away the dryness of the bones.”

  He blew out an exasperated breath, his neck growing red above the collar of his shirt. “Why can’t you listen?”

  She knew the chief had a temper, she’d witnessed it before, but it had been ages since he’d been this irritated with her. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions and needed to slow down. “Sorry, I’m a little tightly wound lately. Go ahead.”

  “I’m not sure your whole dry bones theory has relevance. He could have just kept pouring on more accelerant when the fire died down. The farm is pretty remote. Your house is closest. He didn’t have to worry about being caught.”

  She wasn’t sure if that was an insult or an unfortunate choice of words, but she chose to let it slide.

  “I know you’re desperate, Val.” His heavy brows dipped low, making him look as grim as she felt. “And I know the county has launched its investigation, but you have your killer. Thrashing around like this is only going to help his attorneys.”

  He was right, of course, and maybe that’s what Hess truly wanted. But she needed to be sure. She decided to test her first theory. “I think there was a possibility Kelly herself was involved.”

  “You think she murdered and burned someone in her own family?”

  “Or dug up a body to fake her own death.”

  He granted her a reluctant nod. “Any other theories? How about David Lund?”

  The part of the conversation Val had been dreading. “I suppose it’s possible he set Hess up, too.”r />
  “Damn straight, it is. Hess was running around with his wife. That’s motive. He had access to the farm and no alibi—opportunity. He knows fire inside and out—means. In fact, if you’re so eager to overlook Hess—which is a mistake—Lund is your guy for both murders.”

  Val bit the inside of her lip. She couldn’t argue with any of it. So why did she want to so badly?

  “Have you checked the cemeteries?” Schneider asked, moving on to the next order of business.

  “I’ve made some calls, but the only one I’ve actually checked is Sunrise Ridge.”

  “If I remember, they’re rural cemeteries and not very lavish ones. If someone dug up a grave and didn’t professionally replace the dirt and sod, the ground might still show it. Listen, I’ll have some time tomorrow, and I have the list Pete compiled. A little road trip sounds fun.”

  “That would be fantastic, Jeff. Thank you.”

  “Not a problem. But I want something in exchange.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “I want you to take care of yourself.”

  “Don’t tell me, Oneida asked you to give me a lecture on getting more sleep?”

  He chuckled. “She was always after me, too. I swear that woman is a force of nurture.”

  It felt good to smile. “Well, I promise to sleep when I can, how’s that?”

  “A good idea, but sleep is not exactly what I had in mind.”

  “What?”

  “Keep this whole Hess-is-innocent theory quiet. And ask Harlan to hold off on contacting the forensic anthropologist, at least for now.”

  “I can’t just cover this up, Jeff.”

  His jaw hardened and hands formed fists by his side. “I’m not saying you should. Just give us time to dig up more evidence. Don’t go off half-cocked. You’re under investigation, Val. You have a lot to lose. Just make sure when you’re looking out for truth and justice, you look out for yourself too. Because no one can to do it for you. That includes me.”

  Val hadn’t even reached her office when Oneida’s voice boomed through the station. “Monica Forbes is waiting, line one.”