Perfect Justice

31.

IN THE ORANGE GLOW cast by the sun rising over the Ouachitas, Ben and Mike surveyed the damage to Coi Than Tien. The Truong home was gone; nothing remained but charred wood and rubble. Substantial portions of the homes on both sides were also burned. The entire settlement reeked of smoke.

After Sheriff Collier finally arrived, he took Colonel Nguyen and Maria Truong, the woman Nguyen had pulled from the burning home, to a clinic in town, along with several others suffering from smoke inhalation. They never found the woman Ben had rescued. She had disappeared without a trace; no one seemed to know who she was or where she had gone.

As Ben and Mike approached the charred ruins Sheriff Collier was standing outside, scribbling in a notepad.

“ ’Morning, Kincaid,” Collier said, without looking up. “Glad to see you again when you’re not behind bars.”

Not as glad as I am, Ben thought. “Find anything interesting?”

“Lot of wasted firewood,” Collier muttered. “Few personal possessions. Not much else.”

“Have you determined what started the fire?”

“What am I, a fortune-teller?” the sheriff said irritably.

Ben glanced at Mike, then decided he’d better take the lead in this conversation. If Mike started lecturing the sheriff about arson, Collier would probably go off the deep end.

“Did you find any evidence of an incendiary device? Perhaps some fire-resistant casing? Maybe something as simple as a book of matches for a fuse.”

Sheriff Collier eyed him suspiciously. “What makes you so sure a book of matches started the fire?”

“I’m not. I’m hypothesizing.”

“Look, mister, these shacks are firetraps. No two ways about it. Probably one of these folks was smoking one of those funny pipes in bed, or trying to light a Chinese lantern, and the place caught fire.”

“No way,” Ben said firmly. “I was here when it happened. This was no gradual fire. We heard a loud noise, and then, a second later, the house erupted into flames. I saw a black pickup speeding away. Someone intentionally torched the house. We need to determine how they did it.”

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to root around in that trash heap,” Collier said. “What’s your interest in this, anyway? What’s the connection between this fire and your boy’s case?”

“I don’t know,” Ben answered. “But I can’t help but think there is one.”

Sheriff Collier closed his notepad and started toward his silver pickup. “If you’re looking for some convoluted story to get your client off the hook, you might as well forget it. We’re simple folk here in Silver Springs. We don’t get ourselves caught up in a lot of nonsense.”

“If it’s all nonsense,” Ben said, “you won’t mind if we look through the ruins ourselves?”

Collier frowned. It was obvious he did mind, but didn’t think he was in a position to offer any objection. “Suit yourself, but if you find any evidence, I expect to hear about it.”

“Believe me, you will.” The sheriff drove away.

“Good work, kemo sabe,” Mike said. “You played him like a violin.”

“Yeah, right.” He entered the ruins of the Truong home. “Aren’t you an arson expert?”

“Well, I worked arson cases for two years, if that’s what you mean.”

“Good enough. You’re in charge. How shall we proceed?”

Mike pointed toward the north end of the house. “You take that end; I’ll take this end.”

Ben started on the outside perimeter and slowly moved inward. He was glad he bought some gloves; these charred embers were still hot. He pulled out some tattered clothes and a few bits of plastic that might have once been records or tools or someone’s favorite toy. How awful to have your home consumed by fire, he thought. To have everything you hold most dear go up in smoke.

“I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” Ben admitted. “You’re the expert, Mike. Clue me in.”

“Well, the first item on an arson investigator’s wish list is evidence of a criminal design. Proof that the fire was not an accident.”

“Are we looking for liquids … solids … ?”

“Both. Or neither. A liquid inflammatory agent is probably most likely here. They’re cheap and easy to come by. Alcohol. Kerosene. Ether. Gasoline.”

“What would a solid inflammatory agent be?”

“Well, there are dozens, but one I’ve seen in good supply around this town is coal dust. Mix it with air and ignite it and that’ll start a fire in nothing flat. Some grains will do the job, too.”

“What about chemicals?”

“Harder to come by, but not impossible, even in Silver Springs.”

“ASP probably keeps a stockpile in their ammunition dump.”

“Probably so. Sodium and potassium are both common chemicals, and both ignite upon contact with water. ASP could claim they keep them for, oh, excavation purposes, and then use them to make a heck of a good bomb.”

“Any news on that blood sample you sent in for testing?”

“I Fed Ex’d it to Tulsa and asked the lab to give it Priority One treatment. Even so, it’ll be several days before we get the results.”

“Okay.” Ben paused. “You’re a real friend in need, Mike. I appreciate your help.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“This is way beyond the call of friendship—”

“When I said, don’t mention it, I meant, don’t mention it!”

“Okay, okay.” Ben resumed his search. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to suggest you might have a sensitive side.”

“I don’t. By the way, did I tell you I saw your sister last week?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah. Julia and I had a long talk. Well, longer than a minute, anyway.”

“For you two, that’s an eternity.”

“She has a baby now. By her second husband.”

“So I hear.”

“But she’s divorcing him. The husband, I mean.”

“Seems to be a habit with Julia.”

“Yeah. I told her you were on vacation. She was glad you were getting away for a while.”

“That’s nice.”

“Then I told her you went camping. And she just started laughing hysterically.”

Ben concentrated on his examination of the debris. “Julia always did have an odd sense of humor.”

“Yeah. She was real nice to me, though.”

“Well, hot dog. Maybe you two will patch it up yet.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid. I don’t give a flip about her anymore.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why you get all moony-eyed and morose every time her name comes up. Even after she divorced you.”

“You should talk. You’ve been all screwed up about Ellen for years! That’s—” He stopped himself in midsentence.

A deadly silence descended upon them.

“Hey, I’m sorry, Ben. I shouldn’t have brought that up—”

“Just forget it,” Ben said, not looking at him.

“Right. Sorry.”

Ben didn’t say anything for a long time.

Half an hour later Ben shouted, “Hey, I think I found something!”

Mike ran over to examine Ben’s discovery. It was a broken glass Coke bottle, blackened and charred, but still recognizable.

Mike took the bottle shard and held it up to the light.

“Is that what started the fire?” Ben asked. “Or just leftovers from the Truongs’ lunch?”

“Dollars to doughnuts, this bottle delivered a liquid inflammatory agent.” He held the bottle to his eye and peered inside. “I can’t believe you found it so soon.”

“It’s a gift,” Ben said modestly. “You should treat me with more respect.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” He handed the bottle back to Ben. “Notice the charring on the inside. If the fire had started from a pipe, or any other external agent, the outside of the bottle would be blackened, but not the interior. That tells me the fire started right in there. It was probably filled with gasoline. A Molotov cocktail. It’s easy enough to make. Now we look for the wick or fuse, if it still exists. Probably an oily rag, or perhaps wadded paper. If we can find that, we’ll have a case of arson.”

Ben resumed the search.

The combination of the morning sun and the heat rising from the charred ruins made the search increasingly unpleasant. Time after time Ben wiped sweat off his brow and out of his eyes.

After a while he lost track of the time. Providence appeared to be balancing the scales. Since he had found the bottle almost immediately, it was going to take him forever to find the fuse. The black soot rubbed off on his clothes and face; soon he was covered.

Ben began to wonder if this was even possible. He couldn’t identify most of the debris he sorted through. He could be holding the fuse in his hand and never know it.

“What if the fuse was made of paper? Wouldn’t it have been consumed in the fire?”

“Possibly,” Mike answered. “Even then, though, we should be able to find—”

Midsentence, Mike’s voice simply disappeared. There was no interruption. He just wasn’t talking anymore, as if the air had suddenly been sucked out of his throat.

“Mike?”

Ben glanced back over his shoulder. Mike was still there, but his face was pale. “What’s wrong? Did you find the fuse?”

“I found—” Mike pressed the back of his hand against his lips. “Not the fuse,” he whispered. “A body.”

“Oh—God. No.” Ben was torn between wanting to ask and not wanting to know. “A … body?”

Mike nodded. He looked as if he might be sick at any moment. “What’s left of it. Skeleton, mostly.”

Ben eased to his feet. So they didn’t get everyone out after all. What a hideous way to die. “A man? Woman?”

Ben was astonished to see tears spring from Mike’s eyes. He shook his head slowly back and forth.

“A baby.”