Chapter Three - You Can't Evict An Idea

"Frost, you got that list of recent fires?" asked Jane as she entered the AV room.

Her partner was surrounded by screens boasting an array of crime scene photos, reports, blow-ups of smaller objects, maps of buildings' wiring, and other minutiae associated with criminally-instigated fires. "All arsons, solved and unsolved, in the last 60 days."

"Drop it to seven days. Body's been dead maybe three at most," Jane directed. Crossing her arms, she lent against the desk. "Particulars are house fire, between 80 and 100 years old, no furniture."

Impressed, Korsak took up position opposite Frost, "She figured out all that just from the body?"

"Just the lungs." Privately, Jane was hella impressed by her girlfriend's ability. Publically she put on an annoyed face that was only partly an act. Maura was equal parts brilliantly skilled and brilliantly frustrating. "Maura's still looking for trace from the perps. They washed the body before re-dressing it."

Korsak grunted. "That makes our part trickier. But we've done more with less." Frost smiled, busily entering the data. "I ran down the suit. Doc was right, it's a Brooks Brothers, end of year clearance from this year. They sell 'em all over, though, even the outlet mall. Bet that ticks off the Doc, selling them fancy clothes at a strip mall."

Jane knew it did and grinned at Korsak. "You get the list of names of who bought 'em?"

"Whaddaya think I am? Some rookie? Of course I did." Korsak wasn't really offended, Jane could tell by his grin. With a yawn, the sergeant went on, "Couple companies down in the financial district buy them in bulk, though. In case an exec needs an emergency suit."

The cuffs, Maura had noted, were hemmed for a shorter man. "But they get fitted, right? So if we sent in the measurements..."

Korsak shook his head. "They keep them on computer, but they want a warrant for the records." All three detectives sighed. It would be so much easier if people just agreed to help. Then again, not every police force did the right thing with their data. "I filed it before I came up. We just want a list of the names, so I got the doc to give me specifics."

Personally, Jane preferred a more vague warrant that gave her a lot of leeway in a search. If your warrant said you could search the kitchen, then you can only search a kitchen. If it said house, though, then you could search the house and not the garage. Jane did not begrudge these restrictions - much - as they protected the innocent as well as the officers.

"How many guys have uneven legs anyway?" wondered Frost, as the computer sorted the database.

"Most," Jane replied, absently. "Pretty much everyone's got one leg longer than the other. Same with different sized feet." When her partners eyed her, Jane sighed. I am hanging out with Maura too much. No, not too much. "His feet must've been a lot bigger than whoever dressed him," she continued, thoughtfully, chasing the thought train to it's station.

"How'd'ya figure?" wondered Korsak.

"If the feet were smaller, they could put on oversized shoes. But cramming a dead guy's too big feet into tiny shoes? Nuh uh."

"Hey, they already horsed a stiff into clothes," Frost grumbled. "And washed him. That's already pretty gross." Thankfully, Frost's weak gag reflex was saved when the computer beeped and over two dozen dots lit the monitor.

Jane and Korsak stared. "You run that right, junior?" asked Korsak, counting on his fingers. "That's a lot of houses."

"You want a go at it, Pops?" Frost cracked, gesturing at his keyboard. "I ran all the calls for house fires, cooking fires, fireplace fires, arson... There's even a sex fire and a cat fire."

Stifling a laugh at the mental image of a sex fire, Jane amended the parameters, "No cooking fires. Maura says the fire didn't have any grease or food traces." Though how you could tell just from the guy's lungs, Jane had no idea. "How'd the sex fire not include any furniture?"

"Teenagers in the woodshed with a space heater," smirked Frost.

"Roomier than the back of the car," Korsak opined. The computer dinged again, and now there were only five houses. "Well, that's not so bad," muttered Korsak.

"I'll get my coat," sighed Frost, getting up.

"What? Hell no, Frost. This is the perfect job for a young guy, trying to earn his detective stripes." Jane grinned, evilly. Korsak, following right along with her, shared the same look. A heartbeat later, Frost's expression turned enlightened.

It was the conversation with Maura in the morgue that had given Jane the idea. "It's just like the guy to be there all summer and vanish as soon as it gets cold," she muttered, driving through Rondo's regular hood. Frankie was hoofing it to each potential crime scene, leaving Jane and Frost free to chase down a lead.

"He's homeless," Frost pointed out, scanning the streets.

"Never stopped him before."

There was no reply to that. For a CI, Rondo was on the tame side of things. Jane and Korsak had, over the years, cultivated their own network of skells, short for skeletons, that would turn over for a little green. But Rondo was a class in and of himself. When she didn't need him around, Jane still kept tabs on the weirdo, just to make sure he was alright. Her last update on his whereabouts was only a week old, and since the weather hadn't changed much since then, odds were he was still around.

Admittedly, Jane was a little distracted. She and Maura were coming up on a year. Depending on how you counted, it was a year from when they'd first said anything about dating. Just over a year from the date, and less from the first time they'd - Jane cut off that train of thought at the station. You are not going to think about sex with your girlfriend while you're in the car with your partner, looking for a crazy homeless guy who calls you Vanilla, Rizzoli!

"Yo, Vanilla!"

It was like the wrong person developed telepathy. Jane pulled over and rolled down Frost's window. "Hey, Rondo. You busy?"

"I'm never too busy for you," he grinned. No, leered. "Lookin' good, Vanilla."

Jane rolled her eyes, amused. "Want to hop in? I need some info."

"You need help from the Rondo-nator? Baby, I can help you in ways you never dreeeeamed of." Instead of getting in, Rondo kept his position leaning on Frost's door. Well, it was good practice for Barry's gag reflex. "Let the real man help you out, baby."

"Rondo-nator? That's a new one." If it wasn't so funny, Jane might have been offended. "I got a dead homeless guy, died in a house fire. You know anything?"

"Hey, I don't squat in houses, Vanilla. I'm cool, keep off the streets and in the shelters. Get me some food and a bed. Unless you got a better offer, know what I mean?"

Frost was, manfully, trying not to laugh out loud. Jane would have kicked him if she could. "How about your friends, Rondo? Any of them stay in houses to keep dry?"

At least Rondo took the question seriously, and replied with the proper gravitas. "You only asking about the home-icides, right? Not gonna tap a man on a little B&E to keep warm."

It was time to deal. "You know I don't care about that, Rondo."

Still, Rondo looked askance at Frost. "What about Chocolate Chip, here?"

Now it was Jane's turn not to guffaw. Frost looked offended. He protested to his good faith as Jane bit her lip. Finally she patted Frost's knee. "He's fine, Rondo. I'll keep him in line." She and Rondo shared a look, his clearly questioning Frost's reliability, hers assuring just that.

"A'ight," Rondo said, grudgingly. "There's a group of guys, like to crash in those foreclosed houses. Places that ain't selling. It's dry, warmer than a tent, and easier to get in than a shelter, you gotta camp out in line for eight hours. They look for the places without any ADT stuff."

They couldn't really fault that. The entire system was over taxed, literally and figuratively. "How do they check?" asked Jane.

"Chuck a rock in the window, see if anyone shows. Next day, bingo, baby."

Not a bad plan, they agreed. "This group of guys. They regulars?" asked Frost, his North Carolinian accent, acquired before the elementary school years were over along with his time there, slipping into his speech.

Rondo shook his head, "Naw. Some." Contradictory much? Jane mused that Maura could use lessons from Rondo about how to lie and contemplated introducing them. Then she thought better of the concept. "I didn't hear of any of 'em dying in a fire. Which house?"

"Ah, that's the catch, Rondo. We got a body and no house."

Rondo whistled. "Ain't that a pretty mess, Vanilla. And you come to the Ronnnnndo -" Already his hands were on his chest, illustrating pride as if preening luxurious plumage.

"Don't," warned Jane.

His hands went up. "You need me to help? It's my birthday!"

If this doesn't pan out, I am never going to hear the end of it from Frost, realized Jane. It was bad enough that Frost knew Rondo's nickname for her. "You said you could find me anything, Rondo. So how about a house the guys were squatting in that caught on fire."

Whistling through his teeth, Rondo asked, sarcastically, "Bet you wanna talk to all the guys too."

"That'd be nice, yeah," smiled Jane. "Give him the phone, Barry." Very carefully, making sure their skin did not touch, Frost handed over an envelope. "Burner phone and some cash. This pans out, you get regular rates, Rondo. Deal?"

Rondo checked the contents first before sticking his hand in, right past Barry's nose, to hold his palm out for Jane. Without a moment's hesitation, she shook it. After all, Maura had that sanitizing crap shoved in the glovebox. "Deal, Vanilla. And see if you can unwind your sidekick here." With that, Rondo sauntered back off into the afternoon.

"Sidekick?" Frost echoed as Rondo strutted away, purposefully favoring one foot to give himself a hitch in his git-along that he thought made him look cool. "I'm not," he emphasized, staring right at Jane, "a sidekick. I'm a junior member of a mostly-equal partnership."

"Yeah," Jane replied, almost as if she believed it, too. "Yeah, you are."

"I am."

"I said you were."

"Seriously, Rizzoli."

"Hey, I'm agreeing over here." Still, her amusement was palpable as she drove back to the station, chuckling the whole way.

The best thing to be said about a burnt out husk of a house in November was that it didn't really smell. Much. "It's too bad," mused Korsak, looking up through what used to be a ceiling. "This woulda been a nice slice in the city."

"If you got a cool mill and change," agreed the fireman.

Standing in the soggy remains of a century old home, Jane saw little hope in rebuilding. She shook her head at the fireman and carefully picked her way through the debris. "Okay, walk me through the fire." Maura was due any minute, but there was no point in not asking for a little bit of details. Especially if it could be done before Rondo showed up. Maybe she'd be lucky and Maura and Rondo would miss each other.

The fireman had his rookie actually do the walk through. "Fire started here, in the breakfast nook. The house was winterized, and the heat's off, so the wood had a chance to really dry out. Plus this place is old, so that stuff burns up real nice, like a bonfire. The call came from the house across the street. By the time we got here, it was a lost cause. Just turned the water on and made sure it didn't set fire to the neighbors."

While Jane felt the walk through was crap, she smiled tightly at the fireman rookie and took a look at the proclaimed start of the fire. "Why no call to have a detective look it over?"

"Seemed pretty straight forward. Officer on the scene agreed, homeless guys squatting, cheap booze, cigs, fire." The rookie shrugged. "The rest is up to insurance and the owner. Which... well I thought that's why you were here."

"Actually, I can place a dead body in this building." Jane's eyes, actually everyone's eyes, swerved from wherever they were, honing in on the medical examiner who had spoken. Everyone else, even the CSU techs who'd followed Maura in, was wearing black boots or department issued hip-waders.

And then there was Maura, in tight 'cleaning' jeans, clingy olive green top, a snug brown leather jacket with three-quarter sleeves (somewhere between 'classy and modern' and 'sci fi scruffy hero' and Jane suddenly envied the hell out of whoever had fit it to her exact shape), and those boots. Those garish, traffic cone orange boots, with the actual Wellington logo on them, covering up her lower legs to protect them from filth. Or, perhaps, from being shot during deer season. It was fortunate that everyone was staring at the boots, and perhaps that was why she'd worn them. To those who both knew how to read her and could ignore the boots, meaning pretty much just Jane, Maura appeared slightly off balance, though doing a heroic job covering it up.

Korsak coughed delicately, "Nice to see you, Doc."

Smiling at Vince, Maura, tight pants and all, squatted by Jane. "Was someone sleeping here?"

"That I do not know. Yet," admitted Jane. When the firemen looked surprised, she explained, "I'm collecting some of the squatters." Maura, busily taking samples of the fire, glanced up with an interested expression. "Yes, you can meet Rondo." There was no way to avoid the inevitable.

Maura directed the techs to take photographs. "Not every fire, or every... arson," she hesitated over the word, "falls under the purview of the police, Jane," she mentioned. Jane arched her eyebrows over the uncharacteristic hesitation. "Fires in and outside the Boston municipality fall under the state Fire Marshall, and only every fire within the city limits are investigated. Any fire outside Boston is at their discretion -"

Even the firemen were looking at Maura with weary tolerance. It was Jane to the rescue! "Yeah, I know," she cut in. "And if the fire department doesn't find a fire suspicious, they don't call us. Honestly, guys, I'm not sure we care about the fire as much as the body. If a homeless guy died in the fire, I want to know how he got out, and how he ended up in Dewy Park."

The senior fireman looked surprised, "This is your Occupy Dead Guy?"

Jane winced. The last thing the world needed was to have a murder related to the Occupy movement. "It was a body dump," she said, with more certainty than she felt. Maura shot her a scowl, not pleased about the announcement, but simply made a soft snort in reply. Thank you for that vote of confidence, sweetie, thought Jane to herself.

A voice from outside startled everyone. "Hey, baby! The Rondo is here!" The temptation to face-palm was great, but Jane sighed and sent Frost to go fetch Rondo and whomever he'd brought along. "Hey-hey, it's Chocolate Chip!" Rondo said, way too cheerfully from the outside.

Korsak looked like he was swallowing his tongue trying not to laugh. Maura, distracted momentarily from both the body and whatever uneasiness she was doing her best to conceal, glanced towards the voice and watched for the man, or rather, men, being brought inside. Just barely they heard Frost explain to the patrolman that it was okay, before he led in Rondo and four other people. They were, clearly, homeless. From the outset, they were dressed shabbily, in too many layers, and while they clearly took efforts to be clean, there was, as Jane put it, a funk like Rondo had.

Jane felt a pang of guilt for these people. They weren't druggies, or criminals of any nature. They were just people who, down on their luck, had been punted to the fringe of society. Well done, democracy, she thought angrily. This shouldn't happen when CEOs are making the GDP of a small nation. But the system was overworked, and there wasn't enough money there to help anyone. "Rondo, who're your friends?" she asked, masking her anger for their situation with the actual friendliness with which she regarded, and treated, Rondo.

Of course, then he had to speak. "Hey, Vanilla! This your pimp?" asked Rondo, gesturing at Korsak.

Never. Going. To. Hear. The. End. Of. This. Jane glanced at Korsak, who had a shit-eating grin on his face. "That's Sgt. Korsak, these two are Firemen Listman and Dominguez. You know Detective Frost." Jane waved a hand at Maura at the CSUs, "And this -"

"This is someone you gotta be introducing me to, Vanilla. Hellooooo, Caramel Latte! Looks like somebody ordered extra sugar and cream! Mmm, mmm!"

Jane wasn't sure which was more disturbing, the fact that Rondo's nicknames revolved around food, or that he was actually taking his hat off to smooth his hair back and flirt with Maura. And Maura was not just looking curious, but actually smiling back at him. Of course she was. The woman was made of politeness. Also: Caramel Latte? Well, that was better than calling her a blonde. "That would be Doctor Isles, our chief medical examiner."

"Baby, you can examine the Rondo any time!" The man loved the sound of his own name almost as much as nicknaming everyone after food.

Apologetically, and to the amusement of most in the vicinity, Maura replied, "Actually, I can't. A medical examiner's patients are all dead. I just dissect them to find out how they came to be that way."

Korsak had to actually turn his back on the scene to not guffaw. Frost smirked. Even the firemen and the other homeless people laughed. Jane just grinned, delighted to see the gobsmacked expression on Rondo's face. Technically, okay, the medical examiner was qualified as a practicing physician, but Maura tended not to point that out, and thus avoid uncomfortable 'You're a doctor, look at this...' conversations.

The strange man lent towards Jane, "Vanilla, she for real?"

"Mmhm, yeah," confirmed Jane. Rondo voiced a surprised 'huh' but let it go. "You want to introduce me to your friends here, Rondo?"

That perked him right back up. "You know I pull through for you, Vanilla. This here's Jericho, Hoss, Big Ted and Louis."

Naturally Big Ted was shorter than Maura.

Jane held her hand out to each one in turn, even taking her glove off first. "Hi, thank you for coming by." They took her hand without hesitation. "Did Rondo explain what I'm looking for?" There were cautious nods. "Tell me about the fire, first."

The four men looked at each other and Hoss stepped forward. "It was pretty late, about one or two in the morning. Big Ted and I were over there." He pointed by the kitchen. "The water's not running, but the tile was too cold, so we stashed our stuff there and were making a bed by the wall. Lou and Jer were on the other side of the doorway. All of a sudden, I smelled smoke."

Nodding, Jane gestured for Frost to stand by the fire's origin. "Okay, so the fire's there. Did you see it?"

Hoss frowned and then dropped to a squat. "Nah, nah, I didn't see it at all. But you know that smell, right? You know?" Everyone nodded, even if they had no idea. Except Maura, who looked like she knew exactly what Hoss was talking about. "Big Ted grabs our bags and we shout, heading out the side door. We all piled out and went across the street, where this house had the lights on. Took forever and a day, banging on the door, but the old man finally came to the door to call the fire department. Guess everyone thought someone else was calling or something."

Ted, Big Ted, spoke up. "While we were waiting, I remember seeing blue flames." His voice was big, deep, and booming. Now the name made sense.

Listman nodded, "Sure, that's what happens when you guys leave booze around. Burns blue." He managed to be incredible accusatory, and Jane scowled.

"Hey, man!" snapped Jericho. "We didn't smoke, we didn't drink! Sure, we broke in, but we didn't trash the place." Lou grabbed his arm to keep him still. "Why the hell does everyone think we're trash? We're not!"

Angrily, Listman shouted back. "Do you know how many accidental fires you people start with your crap?"

"Us people!" screamed Jer.

"Does anyone smoke Dunhill?"

Maura's clear voice penetrated everyone's head, and the argument was frozen with a chorus of "What?"

With tweezers, Maura held up the remains of a cigarette between the two tips of a tweezer. "Dunhill. One of the more expensive brands, intentionally. They raise their prices above market norm, even for imported cigarettes, in order to publicly imply their superior quality and insinuate that they offer a more refined product. Perhaps ironically, they were favored by less savory characters like Hunter S. Thompson and John Lennon, neither of whom lived up to Dunhill's self-perceived persona of high quality." She flashed a smile at the gathered people, pleased at having stopped the fight. "I find it highly unlikely, though possible, that someone without a job would spend money on this sort of luxury item when less expensive cigarettes could suffice. So again, does anyone smoke Dunhill?" Maura shifted her gaze to the four homeless men directly. "Specifically do you know if anyone in your cadre happens to smoke them?"

Slowly, Jer's arm fell to the side. "Uh... No. None of us smoke. Or drink," he added with a sneer. "We don't let folks in who do. They tend to get into fights and cause trouble."

"DNA?" asked Jane, hopefully.

Maura pursed her lips and bagged the cigarette, "We probably won't get any DNA off this, after the fire, but I'll try. Of course we don't have anyone to compare it to."

Jane contemplated the idea of asking the men for buccal swabs to rule them out, but decided against it. "Where'd you find your instigator?"

Listman huffed. "Bottle of Colt 40, sitting right where I marked. I'm having it sent to your lab." At least he was learning. Listman turned away and pulled his phone out to do what he said, leaving a perplexed Dominguez to deal with the interlopers.

"Was anyone missing after the fire?" asked Jane, picking her way to the far side of the room and looking at doors.

Rondo snorted. "Ain't like folks take roll call, Vanilla." This was confirmed by the other men. No one was noticed missing.

Still, Jane pressed on. "Who was sleeping here?" she asked, gesturing to the fireplace, where the remains of someone's bag had been left. In that manner, she went around the room until they reached a squat by the back door. Finally Jane had found a spot that everyone remembered had belonged to someone, but not who that someone was. She had not come across this position at random, and Jane grimly pointed at the door. "Was that locked?"

The firemen checked their notes. "Yeah, we came in through it." A moment of searching found the door itself, hacked by booted firemen and their axes. The chain was still attached to the door, though it had been ripped out of the frame. Jane knew from personal experience it took her two kicks to get through a door of that size, and most of that power came not from raw strength but adrenaline. Even when bursting into the cellar to find Hoyt that first time, the screams of a woman ringing in her ears, she'd needed two solid, adrenaline-fueled kicks.

With effort, Jane shook off that memory. Dark places.

If someone had been sleeping here, they may not have been able to get out the door. Jane mimed reaching for a locked door, in a fire. If no one knew anyone was sleeping here, she thought, maybe he didn't hear anyone. That was a thought. "Korsak! Go stand where Hoss was sleeping and yell fire, will you?"

Her partner didn't even question the request. "Fire! Fire!"

Hoss corrected him, "No man, it was like this. Fire! Fire!"

Either way, Jane could just make out noise. The words were understandable, but the acoustics didn't make it sound quite as important. If I was used to sleeping where it was noisy, would I pay attention? Fire was, universally, a word that got attention, and if you were used to being evicted, you probably listened well in your sleep. Then again, this might have been the first night in a long time that the guy had a secure place to crash. Maybe he was finally getting a good night's rest. No one knew him, so he was possibly new. No assumptions, Rizzoli, she chastised herself and stared at the back door. Hundred year old house. Milk door. Bingo!

"What do you got, Jane?" asked Korsak quietly.

"Korsak, did your house have one of those, growing up?" she asked, pointing to the small door, nearly dog sized, to the left of the back door. Many of Boston's older homes had these openings, and modern residents often thought of them as dog doors. However, they were not cut-outs in the main door or back door of the home, which opened onto a kitchen on one side and the porch on the other. These were side doors, positioned beside porches but not over them. A dog would have avoided exiting through one of these, and wouldn't have been able to get in one, either. A milkman, however, could walk right up to the house and push several bottles of milk, pounds of butter, and dozens of eggs through a door like this, without even bending over, then walked away to continue his rounds.

"Sure. My best friend climbed out one on a dare, missed the porch and broke his arm." Korsak laughed at the childhood memory before catching Jane's train of though. "You don't think our guy..." He went out the back door to look at the porch and the ground below the milk door.

Sizing up the door and her own hips, Jane frowned. "Hey! Maura, come here!"

"Yes?" Maura asked, standing again and walking over, orange Wellingtons staging a silent war with her purple crime scene gloves. They clashed, something Jane would have to tease Maura about later and collect a point.

Jane pointed at the milk door. "Could you get through that?"

"Yes," came the immediate reply, followed by a pained expression on the medical examiner's face. "Do I have to show you? It's very dirty, and this jacket..." Already her head was shaking; she wouldn't do it if it was not required absolutely.

"Nah," Jane reassured her immediately. "You think I could?"

Her own shoulders hunched as Maura remarked, "Your shoulders are approximately two centimeters wider than mine. Yes, but your hair would become filthy." Still an encouraging answer, from where Jane stood.

Finally, she got to the real point of the questions. "Could our vic?"

This time, Maura considered the question more carefully, head tilted, frowning in concentration (which was not assisted by the sotto voce commentary of Rondo to his fellow houseless companions, mostly concerning the fineness of her ass, or some such, but conspicuously missing any supposed action to be performed thereon). "He was fairly thin at the shoulder for a man. I believe he could," she finally replied, "but it would be tight." She knelt for a better look at the milk door frame. "If he had on bulky clothing, it might have hung onto a rough patch, or been scraped. Ooh - like this."

She reached into a pocket for tweezers, plucked a few stray threads, and held them up for Jane's appreciation before depositing them into an evidence envelope. Once it was labelled and put away, the first of many items that would be collected from the site, she lifted her voice to catch the attention of the lead CSU. "Be on the lookout for any scraped, torn, or ripped clothing. Recent rips, especially." The order was passed along among them all. Again, she glanced about, rubbing her gloved hands together as if to warm them.

Jane rubbed her chin. The suit they'd found on the vic was near pristine. Not that they needed more evidence that he was moved. "Okay. Night before, we have a fire. Presumably our vic goes out the back, when everyone else went out the front. Fire's in the mudroom, so he can't get past. Goes through the milk door and..." Jane stepped over the detritus that was once a back door and pointed to ground on one side of the back steps. "... falls here." She glanced back at Maura and pointed again. "Yes, no?"

"I wasn't here," Maura reminded Jane pointedly, still inside but, thanks to the burning away of part of the wall, able to converse as though right next to the others, "so I can't say whether that's what happened. It's plausible, however." Plausible, she'd learned, was one of the words she could use that would not tell anyone anything of value, but would get them to stop demanding answers based on speculation. "That would explain everything that we've seen thus far." Thus far was another phrase that left the doors of further thought and investigation wide open. It would not do to let people stop searching for more information by telling them something that they'd take as final.

Jane did not roll her eyes at Maura. This time. "I don't even need the CSI super eye for this one," Korsak pointed out from below. "Check it out, he crushed the rhododendron."

"Azalea," Maura corrected automatically. "Though they're in the same genus, this is not a Rhododendron rhododendron. It's a Rhododendron pentanthera, commonly known as the azalea." Pleased at being helpful, enough to distract her from whatever had been making her look chilled and nervous, she glanced around, expecting (against all prior history) to find at least one smile returned to her. When none was forthcoming, she ventured, "No? Well... Oh, I see. You were speaking in the sense of the genus in the first place, not of the species. In that case, absolutely correct. Forgive my assumption." So much for that little distraction; back to feeling, and thus looking, uneasy. It was very hard for her to dissemble with her open, expressive face.

The detectives did not rise to this bait (though Jane muttered 'sarcasm' at Korsak, for a grin from the big man) and instead looked at the crushed plant. "He crawls out," muttered Jane, pointing to the broken branches and other dead plant bits. "And then... Are those drag marks?"

Two furrows in the sodden grass led to the fence along the alley. Though still frustrated at the unaccepted correction from before, Maura offered more assistance, stepping outside at last with a little sigh of relief at having found a reason to do so. "Yes." No qualifiers, no lecture, no alternative explanation. Given the reactions of everyone, her "What?" would have been out of place had it not been uttered. "They are."

Jane jiggled the fence door, and it popped open. "Great security. Who lives here?" she asked, gesturing with her chin to the next house over.

"Owners are on vacation," Frost supplied. "No ADT."

On the alley side of the fence was a thin strip of dirt and Jane wondered exactly how smart Maura was. What the hell, she thought, looking at the tire tracks left in the alley. "Hey. Maura, does that look like a truck or a car?"

Quite obligingly, Maura walked over and looked. "It appears to be roughly 80 inches, which puts it in the realm of a truck or large SUV." A moment later and the doctor had out a measuring tape, confirming the distance at 79" or so, depending on the weight of the truck and the load. "A truck would be more likely, as even the larger SUVs are an inch thinner. Of course, if the truck had double wheels in the rear it would be even wider, but we'd see the second set of tracks here, which we do not. As a point of interest," she added, smiling more now that they were outside in the fresher air, "seventy-nine inches is also the standard length of a bed in Latin America and continental Europe. American, Australian, and Canadian king sided beds tend to be one inch longer, and other sizes are four inches shorter."

Now Jane rolled her eyes. "Frost, check if any of the residents on this block have trucks. And let's get some tire impressions while we're at it."

"You thinking the death's accidental and someone tried to save the guy," asked Korsak, bringing over a beleaguered CSU tech. "Felony homicide if it's the arsonist."

"Anyone else would call 911 if they saw a guy fall out of a burning building," Jane pointed out. "But if you set fire to a place and a guy stumbles out, you sure as hell don't want him fingering the address."

Korsak grunted in agreement, "Then it's time to see why this house was on fire."

Reviews and Rondo goes home. Or stays. Whichever.

Also credit to izzie579 for Korsak's nickname.