Jill Jackson - 04 - Watch the World Burn by Leah Giarratano Read Free Book Online Page A

studied them. Finally, he clasped them in his lap, like an altar boy.
    He’s got a lot more he wants to say, thought Emma, watching Chin. His hands are like his thoughts – they want to break free. He knows more than he’s saying.
    ‘And we didn’t say that the victim had accelerant all over her,’ said Vrisakis.
    ‘Because what we’d have then is a fire trail,’ said Chin. ‘The accelerant fluid would have flowed down her body, and we’d have run-down burn patterns. We’d also have a liquid burn pattern area on the floor or table here. And because the fire was extinguished so quickly,’ he continued, ‘we would have expected some ignitable liquid residue recovery on the floor around her.’
    Emma noted that Chin’s hands now rested, but his eyes glowed with more.
    Vrisakis pulled a tissue from her pants pocket, removed her glasses and wiped them. ‘And that’s why Inspector Chin here made the comment about the lack of evidence telling us a lot about this offender.’
    ‘Go on,’ said Scotty. Without a table to lean on, he sprawled awkwardly on a spindly dining chair.
    ‘Well, your perpetrator planned this act for some time,’ said Chin. ‘The methyl alcohol on the blouse was squirted from a small device with a narrow propulsion point.’
    ‘Like a syringe?’ asked Gibson.
    ‘Exactly,’ said Vrisakis, voice flat.
    ‘But there was an insufficient amount of this accelerant to reliably cause death,’ Chin went on.
    ‘None of this makes sense,’ said Scotty. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us about who we’re looking for?’
    ‘Your perp is a cool, collected individual,’ said Vrisakis. ‘Almost all arson attacks have no witnesses. This person had potentially eighty. You’re not looking for your typical crazy. Like Chin said, this crime was planned and meticulous.’
    ‘He has detailed knowledge about fire behaviour,’ said Chin. ‘Which means he may have committed similar crimes in the past, or have a law-enforcement background.’
    Gibson glared at Scotty. He kept his eyes on his notebook.
    ‘And your offender, who may or may not be male,’ said Vrisakis pointedly, giving Chin a school principal eye, ‘was of course in this room and in the vicinity of the victim within moments of her being ignited.’
    A moment passed, then an elevator’s chime sounded faintly outside the restaurant.
    ‘I gotta say, it seems most likely that Miriam Caine set herself on fire,’ said Scotty.
    ‘Well, to explain the sequence of events, that possibility may be the most plausible,’ said Chin. ‘Given what the evidence tells us, however, that possibility is less likely than the fire being caused by another person.’
    ‘How so?’ asked Gibson.
    ‘Well, we’re not ruling anything in or out,’ said Vrisakis. ‘We should make that clear first off. But there’s the matter of how the accelerant was applied. No trace of it was found on her hands, and no device has been located that could have been used to apply it. More importantly, we found no incendiary device – the implement that ignited the fire. With suicides, the deceased has the lighter or matches on their person; there’s no option to dispose of the incendiary device, nor any reason to.’
    ‘Couldn’t it have burned in the fire?’ asked Gibson.
    ‘Nothing like that could have been destroyed so completely in this fire,’ said Chin. ‘We would have found it, or whatever it had been reduced to.’
    ‘So you believe someone ignited her and took whatever they lit her with?’ said Scotty.
    ‘We don’t believe anything, Detective,’ said Vrisakis. ‘We’re just pointing out the preliminary evidence.’
    ‘I still don’t get the two accelerants thing,’ said Scotty. ‘Why would the perp do that? I mean, that would take more time. It’d put this fucker at even more risk of being caught. Why wouldn’t he just double the amount of shit he shot onto her blouse?’
    ‘I agree,’ said Vrisakis. ‘That, we can’t help you