The Rook

by Steven James

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Then where do we go? How do we get out?”

  I studied the room. “Well, we don’t want to get caught … You can see the front door too easily from the intersection and from the tobacco store across the street. The front would be too risky.”

  “So, we head for the back door.” Lien-hua led the way through the house. Really, the home was small enough so that only one route made sense. As I followed her, I carefully examined the blackened floor to see if the offender had left any shoe prints or impressions in the soot, but there were at least six different tread mark patterns visible, in addition to the ones that matched the boots I’d borrowed.

  The prints must have been left by the firefighters or the MAST officers who’d processed the scene. It would take a lot of checking to figure out if one of the shoe prints didn’t really belong. I gazed at them carefully.

  “What about the gas can?” I said. “Would we leave it here or take it with us?”

  “We’re new to arson, so we might not have thought about that before starting the fire … Or maybe we’re careless and we tossed it outside … Of course, we might have used a plastic canister and then tossed it onto the fire … Or we might have—”“I guess we’re not ready for that question yet,” I said. “Too many mights. We need more evidence—”

  “And less conjecture,” she said, finishing my thought.

  “Oh. Have I said that before?”

  “Once or twice.”

  With my gloved hand, I eased the back door open and noticed the yellow crime scene tape hanging limp in the breezeless morning, encircling the house’s property at about a four-meter perimeter.

  Lien-hua must have seen me staring at the location of the yellow tape, because she said, “Aina told me her criminalists already processed the scene, everything inside the tape. Didn’t find anything.”

  Most law enforcement agencies use the terms “crime scene investigative unit,” or “forensic science technician,” but some places, and especially overseas, the term “criminalist” is more common.

  Either way, I’m usually amazed not by how much evidence the teams notice but by how much they miss.

  “Did they check outside the tape?” I asked.

  “Outside it?”

  I pointed at the yellow police tape. “Don’t you find it a little too convenient that the crime scene just happens to be exactly the same size as the area encompassed by these telephone poles?”

  “They were handy.”

  “Yes, they were. But a crime scene is defined by the evidentiary nature of the crime and the physical characteristics of the site itself, not the location of the nearest telephone poles.” Oops. I’d started lecturing. I needed to watch that.

  “Good point.”

  I peered beyond the caution tape to see if our inexperienced arsonist might have dropped the gas can on the hill. “You’d be amazed how many times I’ve found a murder weapon only a few meters outside of the police tape. But people rarely think to look there because it’s not part of ‘the crime scene.’”She joined me beyond the tape, on the dusty hill that climbed at a slow slope away from the house. “So the tape actually hinders the investigation,” she said thoughtfully. “We don’t see the evidence because we’re looking in the wrong place. It’s a blind spot.”

  A blind spot.

  Yes.

  “Lien-hua, if we were the arsonists, where did we park?”

  She pointed. “Other side of that hill?”

  I jogged to the top. My mind was spinning. “Poor access. Too many streetlights, too much traffic. And we didn’t park to the west of the house over there, since that home is too close—the porch is only ten or twelve meters away. So, maybe we parked in the alley off to the east.”

  “Or maybe not.” Her words caught my attention, and I saw that she was pointing to a pair of black leather gloves strewn about fifteen meters away, beside a worn footpath that led over another small hill.

  I joined her beside the gloves. I didn’t have an evidence bag with me, but I leaned close to the gloves. Sniffed. “Gasoline,” I said.

  “Take off your gloves,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Humor me. Take them off, toss them to the ground.”

  As I removed the gloves, Lien-hua watched me thoughtfully.

  When both gloves were on the ground, she said, “So he pulls one glove off, then the other one, just like you did. And see how one of your gloves landed on each side of you? It’s natural. So he was on the trail here, between the leather gloves, heading north.”

  “Good work,” I said. Then I thought through the way I’d taken the gloves off. “And it also means he touched the outside of the second glove with the fingertip and thumb of an ungloved hand as he pulled it off. If his hands were sweaty enough from wearing gloves or from the heat of the fire—”

  “We might have some prints.”“Call it in,” I said. “Let’s have Aina get the criminalists back out here.”

  Lien-hua pulled out her cell, and while she spoke with Aina, I followed the footpath over the hill and found that it ended in a long, scraggly, brush-covered ravine. I was gazing across the ravine when Lien-hua rejoined me. “I hope,” she said apprehensively, “that you’re not thinking about searching all of that.”

  I shook my head. “We’d need more eyes. We’ll let Aina’s team work the ravine.”

  I froze.

  More eyes. A blind spot.

  We’re looking in the wrong place.

  I was starting to feel the juices flow. “Lien-hua, what’s different about this crime?”

  “The offender. The accelerant.”

  “Yes, but not the location. It fits. So our serial arsonist didn’t start the fire last night.”

  She seemed surprised I was repeating what we’d already hypoth-esized. “That’s our working theory, yes.”

  Facts, facts locking together. “Because someone else did.”

  “What are you thinking, Pat? Where are you going with this?”

  “Somehow the crimes are connected. If we can find the guy from last night, he might be able to lead us to the arsonist from the other fires. It’s like you said, we’re looking in the wrong place … What are some of the reasons crimes that are started aren’t completed?”

  “Well, victim resistance, law enforcement activity, natural interruptions. I don’t see where you’re—”

  “Right.” I turned toward the house. “Natural interruptions.”

  She hurried to catch up to me. She was smart and I knew she’d catch on. “So,” she said, “you think maybe the serial arsonist was interrupted by John Doe’s suicide?”

  “Yes. And then someone else came to finish the job.” I was jogging down the hill by then. “I need to check on something.”Yes, yes, yes.

  Exits and entrances.

  “Pat?” She was following me. “Is everything OK?”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “The bowl is in the way.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I ran around to the front of the house. “Do you have your computer with you?”

  “No. It’s at the hotel. What’s gotten into—”

  “We need to go.” My mind was clicking, pieces falling into place.

  I threw off the borrowed boots, grabbed my shoes. “Now.”

  “Pat, what did you see?” She caught up to me. Put her shoes on.

  “Did the guy leave something else behind?”

  “Yes.”

  She unlocked her car and we jumped inside. “What’s that?”

  “A map.”

  19

  As gentle and soft-spoken as Lien-hua is, when she’s in a hurry she drives like Jackie Chan on caffeine.

  But I have to say, I like it.

  As long as the car has air bags.

  We flew around a corner, and I put my hand on the dash to avoid slamming into the door.

  “You need to explain yourself,” she said. “What do you mean he left a map? And
why do we need to hurry?”

  “Do you have a notepad?”

  “There should be one on the backseat.”

  I snagged her legal pad and started calculating as many of the geographic profiling algorithms as I could freehand, but algebraic equations never were my specialty. I really needed my computer.

  “So, why the big hurry?”

  “Because I’m not as smart as I pretend to be. I need my computer before I lose my train of thought. I think I might be able to get us a picture of the original arsonist.”

  “How? What’s going on?”

  “The bowl is in the way.”

  “Why do you keep saying that? What does it mean?”

  “You’re familiar with cognitive mapping, right?”

  “Sure. It’s how people envision their environment. Everyone creates mental pictures of the roads they take, the routes they travel, estimated distances between points on the map. Things like that.”

  “Right, but the mental maps are distorted by—”“Barriers and familiarity. Yes, I know. Attitudes, past experience, and comfort with different locations all skew our perceptions of distance and space. And we overestimate the distance between two points when natural and man-made barriers appear—things like rivers, mountains, bridges, malls.”

  “Wow. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “I know. I was paraphrasing from your book. Your word choice was a little too stilted. I had to change it.”

  I cleared my throat slightly. “My point is that we all create cognitive maps without even being aware of it, even those of us who are serial arsonists. And sports stadiums are large mental barriers. So, because of the proximity to the fires, Petco Park would change the way the arsonist views the city in his mind and change the dynamics of the geo profile.”

  “So is that the bowl?”

  “The big salad bowl, yes. You see, they were serving pork tenderloin with mangos and pineapple and I had to order two salads—never mind, it’s a long story. Can we go any faster?”

  “Not without filing a flight plan. How are you going to get us a picture of the arsonist?”

  “I’ll get to that. Listen, as soon as you drop me off, I need you to call Aina, see if she can meet us. If not, ask her for the access codes for the videos taken at the depots for all of the city’s mass transit stations.” We were pulling into the hotel parking lot. “Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll need to search their databases, not just view the live footage.”

  Lien-hua braked at the entrance to the hotel. “OK, but I’m not sure I understand—”

  “I’ll meet you in my room as soon as you’re done parking.” I jumped out of the car.

  Then, carrying her legal pad, I hurried to the elevators, hoping I’d be able to decipher my scribbled notes and formulas when I finally got my computer in front of me.

  Acquiring Cassandra had been easier than Creighton expected.

  She’d barely struggled at all. And, once they arrived at the warehouse and she’d regained consciousness, she’d been a model subject.

  Yes. The last couple hours had been very productive.

  Creighton almost had enough footage to finish the video.

  Then all he had to do was wrap up the editing and make the phone call that would put everything into play.

  He could hardly wait.

  The anticipation of her coming death, and his own, made his fingers quiver with excitement.

  20

  In my hotel room, I pulled up the computer files I’d been working on yesterday morning when I’d started comparing the geographical and demographic data with the timing and progression of the fires.

  I’d been on the right track, just on the wrong, well … track.

  I was typing in my scribbles when Lien-hua tapped at the door.

  “It’s open,” I called.

  “Aina can’t come.” Lien-hua had her computer with her. She sat on the edge of the bed and flipped her laptop open. “The 911 caller was a dead end, but she’s busy evaluating potential ignition systems from the previous fires. She gave me the codes.”

  “Good. Give me a minute, then I’ll need them.” I clicked on one of the icons on my screen, and a map appeared with each of the arson sites marked by a small flickering flame. “See the placement of the fires?” I punched a couple of keys, and a series of red lines laced the city, highlighting the streets and highways of San Diego.

  I traced one with my finger. “Roads.”

  “Oh. Is that what they are?”

  “Sorry. I’ll try to stop stating the obvious.” I tipped the screen so she could see it. “Now, if you look at the distribution of the fires, what do you notice?”

  She studied the map carefully but shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Neither did I, until …” I uploaded the trolley routes and overlaid them against the map of the fire locations. A couple more keystrokes, and my computer-mapping program calculated the distances between the fires and the nearest trolley depots and flashed the totals in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. “See? The fires all occur within two hundred meters of a trolley stop, usually the Orange Line or the Blue Line.”

  She gave a soft gasp of acknowledgment. “He’s starting the fires and then boarding the trolleys to get away.”

  “I think so. Let’s check the timing. Look up the trolley schedule for me, and I’ll compare it to the times of the fires.”

  She surfed to the San Diego mass transit site and read off the trolley arrival and departure times, and I punched them in. Hit enter.

  A crisscross of lines appeared along with a detailed timing chart on the right-hand side of the screen.

  “It fits,” I said.

  She gave a long, soft whistle. “So, except for last night’s fire, each of the other fires was reported between five minutes prior to a scheduled trolley departure or eight minutes after the trolley left. How long would it take to walk two hundred meters?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe three to five minutes. We also need to factor in the time it takes for the fire to grow, get noticed, and be reported. We can have some officers walk the distances to confirm the timing. But it looks like he didn’t park. He rode.”

  “So, if that’s how he’s getting away …” Then it struck her.

  “Access codes.”

  “Right,” I said. “Every trolley depot is monitored by video surveillance. Let’s see how photogenic our arsonist is.”

  21

  I surfed to the city’s mass transit DVA, the Digital Video Archives, and logged in with the access codes Lien-hua had gotten from Aina.

  I was annoyed to find that the older footage had been deleted, so only the last six months were available. That left us with only eight fires, and I wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but I downloaded the footage from the trolley depots that correlated to the time and location of those eight fires to give it a try. “This gives me a good chance to try one of the new toys Terry’s designing,” I said. “You know him, right? Terry Manoji? My buddy from the NSA?”

  “We’ve met,” she said coolly.

  “You don’t like him?”

  “He hit on me at a conference once. Told me I reminded him of someone, striking resemblance. Not something you tell a girl.”

  “At least he has good taste.”

  She didn’t smile.

  “Don’t worry. He told me he’s seeing someone. I haven’t met her yet, a woman from the West Coast. Anyway, he sent me this new program he’s designing. Watch this. It’s called CIFER.”

  “What does that stand for?”

  “Characteristic Inventory for Focused Evaluative Recognition.”

  She shook her head. “The government could save millions each year by not spending so much time coming up with acronyms.”

  I opened the program and pulled up the file menu. Lien-hua didn’t seem too impressed. “It looks like a facial recognition program.”“More like identity recognition.” I was getting ju
iced. It felt good to be cranking forward on a case. All I wanted to do was find this guy and then I could spend some quality time with Tessa.

  And maybe a little with Lien-hua.

  Who knows.

  “This program combines facial structure and characteristics, just like traditional facial recognition software, but also evaluates height, weight, pace, posture, nonverbal communication, and spatial movement patterns. Even voice recognition, if we have audio. Plus it amplifies Sagnac Interference to block GPS tracking of the user’s location. It’s for field ops, just in the testing stages right now. This is the only other copy, but from what I’ve seen so far—”

  My computer beeped and displayed seven faces in separate panels across the screen.

  However, none of them looked anything like each other.

  One man appeared to be a transient, another a business executive, the third, a jeans-clad man with a prominent beer gut, and the four other men all looked unique as well. Beard, no beard. Wavy flaxen hair, then black. All were similar height, but that was about it.

  “Strike one,” Lien-hua said. “It’s a different person each time.”

  “I … I don’t understand,” I mumbled.

  “Maybe the program isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Or maybe I’d improperly weighted the importance of some of the signifying trait values. “Wait, let me try something.” I tapped at the keyboard and brought up the similarity index, altered the values.

  The same men appeared.

  I glanced at the legal pad, then typed in a few default changes to CIFER’s index, and punched enter.

  Still the same men.

  I was ready to scrap the whole idea, but then I noticed something.

  “Hang on, Lien-hua.” I punched a button, and the videos began to play in slow motion, the time counter flashing at the bottom of each image. “There.”

  She studied the screen. “What?”

  I hit “pause,” then “play” again. “Look.”