CSI: NY – Fires of the Heart
Prologue
Nighttime in the countryside just outside of Syracuse, New York, almost dawn. Everything was quiet; peaceful.
The back door of a white farmhouse opened, Rober Hanson stepping out onto the porch. Looking out across the yard, he sighed, smiling, and started down the steps, workboots clomping on the wooden boards.
On his way to the barn, he glanced out across the cornfield, stopping as he saw smoke curling into the sky, seemingly from the crop itself.
Frowning, he climbed onto a batterd four-wheeler, and headed out onto a track between two of the fields, heading to where the smoke was coming from.
There were about eight rows of cornstalks between the trail and the smokesource. Upon pushing through the crop, Hanson found himself in the middle of an empty circle of field, a partially burnt pickup truck straight ahead.
Pulling out a cell phone, he dialled hurriedly. "Hello, 911?" He paused, looking again at the truck. "I have a burnt truck in the middle of my field . . . . 291 Cedarvale Road . . . . It's in the middle of a crop circle . . . . Okay. Thank you."
Terminating the call, Hanson looked around. ON the left side of the circle was a gap in the corn. Walking over, he saw it extending farther into the field.
He passed through a flower-shaped patch where the corn was lying on the ground, cut down by some sharp implement. Another straight passage led him to a second crop circle. Unlike the first, this one had a little round patch of corn, unlike the other. Walking over, Hanson pulled several stalks aside, examining it. Looking further ito the corn, he spotted something lying incongruously on the ground.
Closer inspection revealed it to a badly burned hand and arm, stil connected to the body of a dead person.