Free Arsonist by Victor Methos

across the street and Emma Lyon hopped out wearing jeans and a tight black shirt. She held a red case with a white handle and had a badge—issued to her by the county with the emblem of the San Diego Fire Department emblazoned on it—clipped to her belt. Stanton got out of the car and met her in the street.
    “Detective, glad you came.”
    “To be honest, I haven’t worked too many arsons before. I’m interested to see what you do.”
    “Same thing you do. Fire speaks to you. It tells you things, it breathes, it reproduces, it follows the easiest routes in a house. If you know what you’re looking for, everything is right there. I’m guessing murders are the same.”
    “More or less I suppose. I do envy you one thing; no hospital visits to the live victims.”
    “Yeah, I could never do that. I don’t really want to know what people are capable of.” She turned to the house and took a deep breath. “You ready?”
    “After you.”
    They walked to the sidewalk and then to the front lawn. Emma put down her kit and took out a small camera. She began taking photos of the house from all different angles as Stanton stood quietly and watched. Then, as Benny had done before her, she diagramed the house on graph paper. Without a word she replaced the camera and the clipboard with the paper and went inside the house. Stanton followed but didn’t say anything. She stood at the doorway a while and then began slowing going from room to room. She put on latex gloves and ran her hands over some burn impressions on the doors.
    The room that the body had been found was the one she spent the most time in. She measured burn marks on the walls and took photos of the puddle marks on the baseboards. She slowly went over every inch of flooring and would occasionally stop and snap a photo of a certain section.
    A chair was in the bedroom that was covered with soot. Stanton leaned against its back and folded his arms, staring out the window as Emma finished what she was doing. After a long while, she stood up and turned to him.
    “Fernando didn’t do this.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “The fire started here. Probably from that portable heater that’s been melted to the floor. There’s something called flashover, it’s a term of art in arson investigation. It’s when the radiant heat in a room transforms it. Instead of a room with a fire in it, it becomes a room on fire. It’s the point when the fire gets out of control. It creates almost a fireball. The fire shot up the wall and then raced around. As it went lower to the ground it reached somewhere around eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. At flashover, the fire consumes every piece of fuel source in a room and then searches for more. It shot out of this room and down the hall. What we call puddle configurations can happen naturally from flashover because the fire’s darting around everywhere.”
    “What about the spiderweb patterns on the broken glass?”
    “That’s more likely caused by rapid cooling than rapid heating. I read your arson investigator’s report. The V marks he claimed indicated an accelerant also happen during flashover, whenever a new fuel source is ignited.”
    “How certain are you of this?”
    “Ninety-nine percent. I’ll be a hundred percent after a few days in the lab. The only way to tell the difference between puddle configurations caused by accelerant and those caused by flashover is to analyze samples in the lab. I’ll know in two days for sure, and I’ll write a report and submit it to your office.”
    She began placing samples onto small circular dishes and then started packing up. They walked outside into the sunlight together and Stanton stood next to her as she placed her kit back in the car.
    “I’ll give you a call in two days, maybe less,” she said, climbing in and starting the car. “Congratulations, Detective. You probably saved an innocent kid’s life.” 

 
    CHAPTER 15
     
     
    Monique Gaspirini sat up in her bed. She