Free Borderlines by Archer Mayor Page B

friendship, we had never dropped the official titles perhaps as a token of our mutual respect.
    “To the foot of the stairs.” Sunlight was beginning to shaft down the staircase through the open roof above, giving me the sensation of being in a damp cave far below the surface of the earth. Dr. Hillstrom began picking her way slowly and carefully through the tangle, making sure of her footing, anscious not only of her own safety, but of the integrity of the scene as well.
    All three of us knew that while her goal was to view the bodies in place, other experts would follow with different interests-interests we might obliterate if we just marched through the building, tossing bricks aside to make a path. It took us ten minutes to cross some twenty feet.
    The foot of the stairs was especially cluttered, since the staircase had acted as a funnel for much of the debris from the floor above. The crystal-clear mental snapshot I had of the night before, of the white-hot stove spewing its column of flame straight up, and the blackened human m extending from its base, was now smudged and altered, covered with enough clutter to render it almost unrecognizable. Had it not been the staircase, I might not have even known where to start.
    “Here?” Beverly Hillstrom asked, sensing my hesitation. I scanned the wall for the stovepipe flue and then pointed to the door. “That’s where the stove is, or was. The last I saw, the body was laying in the middle of it.” The sunlight was quite bright here. Indeed, looking up the stairs, we could see clouds against a blue sky where once there had been a skyline. But the shadows were correspondingly harsh, and made looking beyond the surface of the rubble difficult. Hillstrom pulled a flashlight from her shoulder bag and began probing the recesses. “Here we go.” She crouched suddenly to look more carefully. Both Potter and I instinctively did the same. Caught in the lamplight, its white teeth shining, was a charred human head, its eyes, nose, and lips burned away, its mouth open wide in a silent, agonized scream.
    Potter straightened abruptly. “Jesus,” he muttered and staggered slightly, shifting a pile behind him.
    Dr. Hillstrom looked over her shoulder at him. “Careful, Mr.
    Potter. Would you like to wait outside? I’m not going to do much at this stage anyhow, and I won’t be issuing any findings before autopsy.”
    “No, no. I’m all right.” She smiled brightly. “Oh, I know that. I just meant this will take a while and won’t tell you much. So, if you have other things pressing on your time, you might want to pursue them rather than watch me poking around.” Potter nodded and made a show of checking his watch. “Well, maybe that’s a good point. I’ll get out of your hair.” “You’re not in my hair. You’re certainly welcome to stay.”
    “No, no. That’s okay. I’ll see you later.” He began to backtrack slowly toward the door.
    Hillstrom didn’t say anything until he’d left. She took photographs and notes, shifting an occasional piece of wood or plaster and then replacing it carefully.
    “Very diplomatic,” I said finally.
    She chuckled. “I didn’t relish him throwing up down the back of my neck.” Her investigation was limited by what we could see without seriously altering the scene, so we soon made our way slowly and gingerly up the clogged stairway, occasionally going on all fours. I noticed her dress was beginning to suffer.
    At one point, she paused to look back and take a photograph. “So you think he may have tumbled downstairs, knocked himself out, and spilled the stove in the process?” “Maybe. You ruling that out?” “No.
    It’s very possible that kind of thing happens. There was no other source of fire?” “None that I saw.
    “And no smell of petroleum or oil or something similar?” “Nope.” I was impressed she asked. I wondered what was going through her mind, but I also wasn’t about to inquire. Like most investigators,