The Arsonist

2. Sifting

Author's Note: Don't kill me if I use the same word fifteen times. I wrote the entire story (and I meant the entire story not a chapter, all of it) in about… 12 hours… so I'm a bit starved for vocabulary… My feet are also killing me….I've sat here for so long now...

Urm, okay, it's the next day now. But I'm not going to be going back and changing anything.

Disclaimer applies. (previous)

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Phoenix PD

17th March 2005

7:20 AM

Detective Cato Delfine had just come in the next morning, a take away cup of coffee in his hand as normal per the lovely police stereotype, when there were mutterings from the police department's cafeteria. The cafeteria not so much sold food, but was just where everyone gathered to eat most of the time. Even so, the woman waiting at the counter was disgruntled as he and several other officers and detectives joined the crowd around the television for the early news.

Cato raised his eyebrows as he saw footage of the burnt out shell of the dance studio.

"There was also a stolen car outside the studio. Police suspect arson was the cause of the blaze." The newsreader concluded as the image flicked back to the newsreader who introduced the next story as the image behind him also changed.

"In a hotel, a young girl allegedly tripped while descending some stairs and fell down two flights of stairs and out a window. Police have ruled it an accident. The lady has yet to regain consciousness but is in a stable condition. Her family and friends have requested her name be disclosed…"

Cato turned away from the footage of the smashed hotel window as the newsreader concluded that they would probably not press charges. He wondered who had let the media know what the police thought, or if someone had overheard his and Erica's conversation. Or even if the media had just assumed given the way the building had been, but who knew? He just hoped they didn't have a leak somewhere, but to be honest – if they did, he would be the first suspect as he was the only person who really knew anything about the case.

Cato sighed at the continued problems and settled at his desk, pulling up some information he read before Aleron came up to him, a mug of coffee clasped in his hand.

"Ready to go check out the airport?"

"Sure." Cato replied, finishing his own coffee and lobbing the cup into the bin. He put his computer on standby and they headed out to climb in one of the station's squad cars. They were at the airport in twenty minutes because of the early morning traffic and they went inside briskly, going over to the counter.

Dressed as they were, not in uniform as they were detectives, but dressed pretty casually but with a degree of formality in shirt, slacks and leather jacket for Cato and a longer dark brown jacket for Aleron, they flashed their badges at the lady at the counter and requested what they needed. A few minutes later, after some explanation and more badge showing, they were shown into the staff only area and allowed access to the video.

There were not that many cameras in the parking lots, Cato realised, but as he pulled up the one of the entrance, well aware of one of the security guard's gaze burning into the back of his head, he thought he could see the carpark area well enough. He went back to the previous day, scrolling to around midday before he let it play on triple speed, waiting for someone to head over towards the carpark.

He stopped the tape a few times as people went over to collect their cars, but then a while later frowned as something seemed to move quicker than his eyes could follow – then again, he was playing at triple the speed – and a car began to pull out of the lot, but he hadn't seen anyone approach.

Aleron hit pause. "Weird."

Cato agreed. "Go back."

They scrolled back about seven minutes and watched at normal speed; finally after a minute or so, someone emerged from the entrance, looked around as though for something – or someone? – and headed towards the car. They were walking very quickly and determinedly, so quickly in fact that they seemed to jump at points. At this moment Cato cursed the slow frame rate and monochrome scheme of security cameras, but it couldn't be helped.

Cato noticed that a group of people had left the airport, but two others seemed to look towards the guy who was now starting to get into the car.

Hang on, how had he gotten in?

Cato supposed the lock had been picked, maybe, but noone could do it that quickly could they? He didn't know, the door hadn't shown damage of that extent so it hadn't been forced and there weren't any broken windows. It was all very mysterious, but for now, he accepted it.

The car sat there for a while longer and then pulled out of the lot with speed. Cato raised his eyebrows as he assessed it seemed to be under the hand of an experienced driver, and it tore out of the carpark, people staring in its wake. Hotwired, he guessed, but quickly indeed. Hmm.

"Looks like they broke a speed limit there." Aleron said grimly, eyes narrowed at the car as he paused and rewinded it again, trying to see if there were any good images.

Each image after the other was inconvenient, someone just managing to block the person, too far away, too grainy, their hand suddenly coming up to block most of their face, the roof of the car obscuring most of their face. Ugh. But at least they could verify it was the right car and by the end they had also decided that it was probably a male who had taken the car.

"The question is now," Aleron said with a sigh, "If it's the same person who set that building alight."

Cato put his hand on his hips as he organized his thoughts. "Yes, I think it probably is. I don't think the car would have been stolen again a second time, but the question is, why pick that location? Why the studio?"

"I don't know. Grudge? But we wouldn't know about it if it was. Besides, arsonists often don't need much of an excuse to burn something down to the ground. I think we should scrap the motive for now."

"No, I disagree." Cato insisted. "That fire didn't seem like it would be the work of a professional arsonist, but probably an amateur."

"Doesn't mean they couldn't have only did it for fun. All professional arsonists start out as amateurs."

Cato frowned. "Perhaps." Why did he get the feeling he was missing something? Then an idea popped into his head. A long shot perhaps, but it might lead to something. "The fire might have been lit to cover something up?"

"Like another crime?" Aleron's voice was faintly surprised, but he could see how it was possible.

"Sure. It would make sense." Cato suddenly looked up and blinked, remembering suddenly that Erica was going to be at the site today looking for evidence. If they joined her with these new perspectives, it would be interesting to see what they might come up with. "We should probably go back to the scene and see if Investigator Alan has found anything."

"Alan?" Aleron looked at Cato quizzically. "Hang on, if there's another person already working on this, why are we too?"

"Arson Investigator Erica Alan." Cato corrected. "It's not just a fire we're investigating here and not just a stolen car either. This could be serious."

"Hmm." Aleron gave a nod. "Our work here is done. Or at least, I don't think we can do much more. Let's go visit the Investigator."

--

Arson Investigator Erica Alan was sifting through the rubble, as they termed it, with a fine toothed comb. She was going over every inch of it as carefully as she could. The latex gloves on her hands had long been grey with soot and dust even though it was true she hadn't gotten very far when Cato and Aleron arrived.

"Investigator!"

Erica looked up as Cato approached slowly.

"Is it alright to come in, or would you rather we stay out?" Cato called.

"One of you." Erica replied evenly, pulling down the sooty mask around her nose and mouth. "Be careful though. You know the standard procedure."

Cato looked at Aleron, and by silent agreement, Cato went into the burned up building, pulling a pair of gloves from his pocket as he drew closer, careful about what he stepped on.

"Anything?" Cato asked as he crouched.

"Not much to say what caused the fire; the ground here is pretty much dirt as you can see. The whole wooden floor of the building burned. There wasn't any accelerant used, such as gasoline or anything. There is an unusual smell in the air I can't quite place, but am very worried about though."

"Um." Cato began, but Erica ploughed on.

"Anyway, if no fuel was brought the only thing they might have used to fuel the flame would just be the room itself, the floorboards, maybe, which might account for how the flames spread so fast."

"Is the water damage bad?" Cato asked.

"Well, of course you always lose evidence when the firefighters put out a fire, but still, I guess you have some evidence left to work with. There always is evidence, as you should know anyway. If it ever was here, there still should be a trace of it somewhere. The problem is finding it, always, isn't it?"

Suddenly Cato kicked against something as he shifted.

"Hey, be careful!"

But Cato wasn't listening. "Hang on. Isn't that glass?"

Erica bent for a closer look as Cato reached down and carefully extracted it from the damp ground with his gloved hand. It was a melted piece of glass, twisted, with slivers of silvered glass stuck to it.

Mirror glass.

The edges of some of the piece were jagged, showing that the mirror had probably smashed somewhere along the line, then melted some in the heat and joined up with the larger glass. The fire could have slowly burned away at the wood, causing the mirrors to come loose and smash – it was feasible. But the extent to which it had been melted made them think otherwise. The glass looked like it had been smashed before the fire had reached the walls.

Cato suddenly stood up and went to one of the last sides of the building still standing, the last crumbling wall. The dirty mirror glass there reflected the sunlight dully. He turned to look at Erica, then he brushed off some of the soot with a pretty grimy cloth Erica passed him and they sat back to look at it.

The glass there looked smashed, as though something had been thrown into it. There wasn't much of it left to go by, admittedly, but the pattern of the cracks across it showed very clearly something had been thrown into it. It obviously hadn't been thrown into that area exactly, but, once again, the way the glass was smashed definitely looked like something had been thrown against it.

"A psychopath." Erica said in a sarcastic tone as she looked at the glass emotionlessly, rolled her eyes , then sighed. "What on – "

"No." Cato looked over it, still frowning. "I get the feeling this gets deeper and maybe I'm on the right track."

"What track is that?"

Cato glanced at her.

"Oh come on, if I'm helping you, I deserve to know some things."

"You just want a promotion or something?"

"Ugh." Erica rolled her eyes. "I just want to figure out what happened here."

Cato smiled. "I guess I have myself quite a team." He reached out a grimy glove-covered hand, "Welcome Erica Alan."

Erica raised an eyebrow at him as he helped her to her feet and he led her back out and introduced her to Aleron. The two seemed to wonder if Cato was joking or not both shooting their 'leader' a strange look.

Either way, Aleron hung back and Erica followed as Cato stripped off his gloves, stuck them in his pocket and used the camera he retrieved from the car to photograph the mirror and the piece of melted mirror glass they had found.

"Now," Cato announced as he had returned the camera to the car, "we go figure out that smell."

This time Aleron followed as they went back and the three split up. Cato sniffed, trying not to inhale too much soot as he went over to where, most likely, the fire had started. The damage there seemed to be the greatest, almost everything burned out of existence by the great heat of the blaze.

He took a deeper breath, filtering through the smell of charred wood. Suddenly there was a sound behind him.

"Ugh." Erica had come up behind him a ways and was frowning now. "I know what this smells like."

"What?"

"It smells like… burnt flesh, kind of. Just different. There's a really…" She shook her head, "Strange thing about it though. But definitely flesh."

"Meat burning kind of smell? Something like that?"

"Could someone just have decided to have a meal here?" Aleron asked, having followed also. "Some… hobo?"

"No," Cato disagreed. "The place would be locked and the homeless wouldn't come here to live, I don't think." He met Aleron's gaze. "Besides, the homeless don't venture often in this part of town. This could well be about covering the other crime I discussed with you."

"What?" Erica look horrified.

"A fire to cover a murder. Possible." Cato shook his head, thinking aloud. "But there was noone with that man… perp at the airport, unless … he was in the car already, which would explain why he got in so quickly, but why would the… perp kill the other person?"

"Maybe you should just call him UNSUB." Aleron suggested.

"Probably because we know it's a guy and probably other things about it. It's not really an unknown subject is it?" Cato shot back. "Anyway, just ignore me if I call him the perpetrator, alright? Answer the question."

"There was noone in that car." Aleron disagreed with what Cato said before. "It was grainy for sure, but I didn't see anyone in that car when our 'perp' went over to it."

"So assuming the second person wasn't in the car already, they would have been picked up or here already. If they were here already, that might account for the unusual location." Cato drummed his fingers against his leg. "So the perp kills the second person and sets the studio alight."

"Hang on!" Erica's voice was alarmed. "You can't assume that this is a murder already. We can't be sure if whatever got burned here was animal or human, it's just burned flesh, or meat or whatever. It could be a dog for all I know. A pet bird!"

"I don't think it's a bird. It would need to be something big to leave such a smell." Cato told her. Erica gave him an as-if-I-didn't-know look, knowing he made sense but not wanting to acknowledge it.

"A horse?" Aleron joked earning a annoyed look from the other two.

Erica glowered at Cato and Aleron. "If you know so much, why do you need me at all?"

"Sounding board." Cato replied without hesitation. "I'm not dismissing your opinion at all, I am considering it, but it doesn't seem right to me. I'm sorry, but I get the feeling the one I am on right now is the right track."

Erica sighed heavily in defeat. "Alright, so assuming that this is where someone died, how do you know the person who died isn't the person who lit the fire, the supposed arsonist?"

Aleron's shoulders drooped. "What are you saying, girl? We said it was the act of an arsonist and then it's back to accident? We're just going to go in circles at this rate."

"It's a good point." Cato's eyes were narrowed as he thought.

"If they were just lighting a cigarette or something, and dropped a match." Erica theorized.

"Hold it. They would have to be building a fire or having a very big accident for it to grow so big." Cato warned. "That is the one thing that is certain. Not to mention there has to be things in that building like fire extinguishers or a fire blanket. They are required to be kept in a handy place in case of fire. Without purposely building a fire in the first place, the blaze would have gotten nowhere near that big."

"Where are you getting this?" Erica asked in annoyance, probably over the fact that he seemed to be taking over her job. This wasn't anything she didn't know, for sure, but Cato always seemed to be jumping ahead of her all the time.

"Deductive reasoning." Cato replied, still deep in thought. "But someone building a fire in here wouldn't be so stupid as to be caught in it unless they were committing suicide and the body language of the ... perp as he went to steal that car doesn't seem like someone going to die."

"On the contrary." Aleron had to agree, "When I think about it, and this is a new perspective, not trying to see things with a bias, his movements could be described as someone with an intention to kill."

"Oh, come on." Erica's voice was scandalized. "You can't not think biased. People see what they want to see."

"Alright, then." Aleron raised a superior eyebrow at Erica and she flushed, very aware that she had spent a shorter time on the force than they had. Aleron sighed. "He seemed furious at the least. I am sure of that. That sort of deep anger that I'm not sure I can explain."

Erica gave him a disbelieving look.

"And that's what gives him away." Cato concluded. "I say this all points to that."

"There's not enough evidence to prove anything." Erica argued. "Just theories."

"We have a video tape." Cato counted, "We have mirror, which obviously looks broken in a manner which means something was thrown at it, so some violence probably happened here. We have the smell of burnt flesh which is here, even after a bath of water to put out the fire. I think it seems pretty conclusive at this point." He sighed, "At least it adds up in my mind when I try to add up all these factors."

Aleron rubbed his chin. "The car was a fast car, not to mention the way it was positioned, they were probably in a hurry. But why are they in a hurry? You can't be in a hurry to kill."

"A kidnapping." Erica shot.

Cato was a little surprised at this new perspective. Maybe Erica was a very good team member for all she seemed to have a 'rigid mind' as he might call it.

"It could fit." Cato allowed. "So we have three or so theories… maybe. What we're missing is a suspect of any kind."

Aleron nodded. "The airplane lists and the fingerprints. We'll look through those and see if we can find a suspect. The time from the video showed the time to be around 3 o'clock, so it would have been a flight not too early before that if our perp was in a hurry."

Cato smiled at this thee-person team. "Let's do it."

--

Hope you liked it. I'm well aware the story is strange and also well aware of my interest in crime fiction. I didn't really think anyone would be all that interested in reading, to be honest, since this isn't your usual Edward and Bella story. So, I'm glad there've been people in here at least.

Mind dropping me a review then, if you've been reading?

I love writing these cases, but I don't think anyone wants to read them a lot of the time. This is actually my second Twilight crime fan fiction. The first one has not been published yet and it is called 'Mystery Song'. It's taken quite a while as I do all the planning and research on police methods.

I hope if you've gotten this far, you'll continue to read the rest…