Free The Fluorine Murder by Camille Minichino Page A

like we're going to need your help
again," Matt said, addressing me as he clicked his phone off.
"Fluorine came up in the investigation of the fires."
    "Fluorine," I said. "I'm on it."
    "Is that the deceased woman's name?" Rose
asked.
    "It's the ninth element of the periodic
table," her husband, Frank, said, polishing off his second
home-baked croissant and earning a nod of approval from me for his
science literacy. "And we know who's the expert on all things
science."
    "Dr. Gloria Lamerino," Rose said, using her
best drum-roll voice.
    I did enjoy my association with the Revere
Police Department, which called me in as a consultant whenever
science was involved in a case. Revere was home to the Charger
Street Laboratory, a major research facility with more than seven
thousand scientists and support staff. I often found myself in the
position of interpreting and explaining their work to my husband
and his department.
    "The autopsy report says she was dead before
the fire got to her," Matt said. "A homicide." His somber tone
brought us up short. It wasn't as if he'd just heard the news, or
that any of us knew the murder victim. But the senseless ending of
a human life made any other topic of conversation seem
inconsequential. For a moment we were all silent.
    "No smoke in her lungs, I'm guessing," Frank
said finally, almost to himself.
    There was business to do and people like Matt
and Frank were used to focusing on what their role was in the
messiness of the human condition.
    "That's a big factor," Matt said. "No
inhalation. Apparently the victim's body was dumped at the fire
site. The only identifying mark is a tattoo that looks like a coin
or a seal of some kind."
    "The tattoo survived the fire?"
    I'd addressed Matt, but Frank raised his hand
to answer, as if we were all back in school. If I was supposed to
know "all things science," Frank, the veteran embalmer, knew "all
things dead body."
    "Tattoo ink is embedded in deep scar tissue,"
Frank explained. "Even if a body is badly decomposed, a pathologist
can just wipe away the sloughed skin and there's the tattoo as
pristine as the day it was made."
    "Not the first time I've seen it," Matt said.
"In this case, the victim's body wasn't destroyed by the fire, so
there's a decent image left of the tattoo. They tell me they can't
read the writing, but there's a pretty clear representation of a
woman with some kind of crown."
    We cleared away juice glasses and craned our
necks to view the photograph Matt pulled out of his pocket,
Columbo-style, and set on the table. The circular graphic, on the
victim's lower back, looked like a collage of several themes—as if
the Statue of Liberty had left her New York Harbor post and taken a
seat in a cluttered garden. Draped in fabric, the faux Miss Liberty
was holding what might have been a large-diameter candle, and at
her feet were what looked like an urn, farming equipment, and some
indefinable shrubbery.
    "It's not an American coin or any common
foreign currency," Matt said. "Too bad we don't have one of those
magic computers where we scan this in and some enormous database
with every image from the beginning of time clicks away and then
suddenly blinks 'MATCH MATCH MATCH'."
    Frank smiled and helped Matt out with hand
gestures, imitating a blinking computer screen. I knew he was
trying to prevent Matt from launching into a speech about how
inadequate real-life forensics labs were compared to the hi-tech
environments we saw on television shows.
    Rose took us off the topic with her own
analysis. "There weren't even any injuries in the other fires and
now we have a fatality. Do they think this was set by a different
person?"
    "No, there are too many other similarities,"
Matt said. "For one, although the accelerant is different every
time, it's never very sophisticated. He's used everything from a
cigarette to a welding spark to ordinary fuel."
    "Maybe he's trying to make it look like
different people were involved," Rose suggested.
    "The RFD