Scavengers

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Sergeant Tom Mears knelt in the middle of the rubble, feet close together on a two-by-twelve plank that had been laid across the mobile home’s ruined floor. He pointed with the dark end of his flashlight as Estelle approached one cautious step at a time along the plank, shading her eyes against the first blast of early morning sun.

“You can step right there,” he said, pointing at a small section of floor that had been directly in front of the propane heater. The flames had blistered the vinyl, but the small section of floor was still intact.

“You want me to find another bridge?” Tom Pasquale said from below, where he’d been standing with Linda Real and Dennis Collins.

“This is fine,” Estelle said. She reached Mears and knelt down beside him. He held up a plastic evidence bag.

“This is what Denton had in his right hand,” he said. “I thought at first that it was a screwdriver, but it’s not. It’s an awl.” He handed the bag to Estelle, and she took it, careful not to push the point of the tool through either the small piece of cardboard that had been taped over its tip, or through the plastic bag. The tool was short, no more than three inches in the shank. Despite his chronic complaints about his bifocals, Bill Gastner had called it right. She grinned.

“What?” Mears asked.

“Nothing.” She looked up at him. “So what was he using it for?”

“This is kind of interesting,” Mears said. “You’re going to have to scrunch over here to see,’ cause the light’s still not very good with all this crap obstructing the view.” He pointed at the remains of the flexible steel feed line that had was attached to the propane heater’s control valve. “This comes…or used to come, I should say…from the solid galvanized pipe that leads in from outside,” he said. “The solid pipe came through the wall, and then there’s a shutoff valve, and then this flex pipe.” He sat back on his haunches, tapping the butt of the flashlight absently on the remains of the floor.

“The initial point of explosion was right inside the stove. That’s interesting, too, but look at this first.” Holding the torn end of the flex pipe gingerly with one hand, he pulled it up toward them, holding his light in his other hand. “Look about three inches from the stove end,” he said.

By crouching low on her hands and knees, Estelle could move close to the pipe. At 7 AM with the sun still low, the fire scene was a mass of black shadows, one overlaid over another. She brought the flashlight close to the metal. “I’m not sure what I’m seeing.”

“It looks like what Denton did was try to wedge the awl between the ridges of the flex pipe.”

“Here?”

“Right.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“For one thing, he probably thought that it might be the easiest place to make a leak.”

Estelle straightened her elbows and sat back on her haunches. “A leak.”

“That’s what it looks like. Not a huge hole or anything, but it looks like he managed to worry a pretty good opening.”

“So what’s the theory? That he thought the place would fill with propane fumes, and then, when the stove thermostat kicked it on, boom?”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Mears said. He let the flex pipe rest back on the remains of the floor. “That’s maybe what he had in mind. But I don’t think he wanted to leave anything to chance. This is kind of neat.” He started to shift position, then took the evidence bag from Estelle and held it out toward Tom Pasquale. “Take this, please?” he said, and tossed the bag the short distance over the side of the ruined wall of the trailer to the deputy.

He pointed at the heater. “See this area here? That’s just an empty space under the unit, right under the burners. Propane flows through the burner pipe across the front of the stove, the pilot ignites it, and all the heat goes up and out the chimney. During the best of times.” He grinned at Estelle. “There’s normally a decorative skirt around the bottom of the stove. Keeps us from having to look at all the dust underneath.” He reached across and picked up a bent and twisted piece of metal. “This is the skirt.” He handed it to Estelle. “And this is what used to be one of those disposable turkey basting pans.” He pulled the crumpled, roasted aluminum from its place under the stove. The pan was no more than a wisp of its original shape.

“Linda has pictures of all this?” Estelle said.

“Of course,” Mears replied. “Color, black-and-white, and video. Which is good, because this is the payoff here.” He held the thin, blackened shard of aluminum to his nose. “The gasoline that he happened to have was for his string trimmer or lawn mower,” he said. “Something that uses an oil-gas mix. Lots of oil in that, and a real characteristic smell. The lab will tell us the whole story, right down to the brand…probably even the refinery that made it.”

“You lost me. He put gasoline in the pan? In this turkey basting pan?”

“I will bet my next week’s pay that’s what he did.”

“Whoa,” Estelle said softly.

“Why would he use an awl to wedge a hole in the propane line? So the house would be full of fumes, and when the thermostat clicked on, boom. With a nice pan of gasoline underneath, add another couple quarts of fuel to the explosion.”

Estelle frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither did old Denton,” Mears said.

“No. The pilot light is always lit, isn’t it? It burns all the time?”

“Sure.”

“Then how could he put a pan of gasoline underneath the burners? Wouldn’t the open flame of the pilot ignite it the second he did that?”

“In fact, the odds are good that it wouldn’t. I tried it a few minutes ago and couldn’t get a flat pan of gas to ignite until I flipped the match right in the liquid. You can drop a cigarette in a pan of gas all day, and most of the time, it won’t ignite. The butt just drowns. It’s a real don’t try this at home, kids kind of stunt. And in this case, the pilot light is nearly a foot above the floor, so it’s almost that far above the pan of gasoline.” Mears scrunched up his face in wry humor. “What old Denton maybe didn’t know is that propane isn’t like natural gas-it’s heavier than air, so it sinks. Turn on the propane, and just cover that pan of gasoline in a nice blanket of propane vapors. He made a bigger bomb than he thought.”

“I can’t believe he’d do something so stupid,” Estelle muttered.

“Well, actually, if you’re a gambler, it was a pretty good plan, up to a point,” Mears said. “The pan of gasoline makes a nice afterburner. The leaking propane gently fills the place for the main bang. He could turn the thermostat down so that the house was kind of cool. His mother comes home late from bingo, feels the chill, and toddles back to the thermostat to jar it up a notch. She’s even carrying an oxygen bottle, I’m told. That would make a neat torch.”

“You’re saying he wanted to kill his mother,” Estelle said.

“Well, he sure as hell wanted to burn the place down,” Mears said. “Whether he wanted an added homicide or not is conjecture. Then, I’m thinking that he could have turned the thermostat down. If he wanted a delayed explosion, he’s going to have to do that, otherwise the stove would light. That would have made sense if he wanted to kill his mother. He was looking for an opportunity. Maybe she called him after winning bingo and told him she’d be home late. So that was his chance. He could set the thing up, then go out to a bar someplace, and wait for the bad news. With a good explosion, maybe he figured the odds of finding his tampering were small. Old heater, history of complaints-we’ve even got a contractor neighbor across the street who worried about the thing.” He shrugged.

“But…” Estelle said.

Mears pushed his fire helmet back on his head. “Yep, there’s a but.” He stood up carefully and turned. “The wall with the thermostat used to be here,” he said, drawing an imaginary wall in the air over the charred wall studs. “This,” and he bent and pointed the flashlight at a misshapen piece of plastic, “was a thermostat.” He took out his ballpoint pen and pointed with it. “It’s hard to see, but the dial indicator appears to be pointing at the ninety-degree mark.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Estelle said. She peered closely at the melted thermostat. “Why would he turn it up? If the furnace came on while he was standing there, even if the propane didn’t have very long to leak, wouldn’t there be an explosion? At the very least, wouldn’t the gasoline in the basting pan ignite?”

“Exactly.”

“And so?”

“The only thing that makes sense to me is that Denton wheedled the hole in the flex pipe with his little awl there, made sure the propane was flowing, and then slid the pan of gas-oil mix into place. He turned one last time to check the thermostat to make sure it was low enough.”

“Oh, no,” Estelle said, knowing exactly what had happened. “He turned it the wrong way.”

“And turned it the wrong way.” Mears grinned at Estelle, his teeth impossibly white against his smudged face. “He might even have had a millisecond of horror when he realized his mistake and just couldn’t stop his hand in time.”

“This reminds me of a guy up in Minnesota. He built a fire out of old boards between his hot water heater and the outside wall to keep the water pipes from freezing during a cold snap,” Estelle said.

Mears shrugged, still smiling. “Sometimes things seem like a pretty good idea at the time.” He turned back toward the remains of the heater. “Todd Paul from the State Fire Marshal’s office said he’d be here by eight this morning at the latest. That gives us an hour. I’ll be interested to hear what he has to say.”

“You’re confident that the fire did start here, though.”

“Oh, yes. A thousand percent.”

“If that’s the way it worked, then Denton took the time to open all the animals’ stalls and cages before he came back inside to mess with the furnace.”

“A soft touch with the beasts,” Mears said. “Roasted mom is one thing, but he didn’t want fried donkey on his conscious.”

Estelle grimaced. She looked across the wreckage at Tom Pasquale. “We need to find out who Eleanor had home owner’s insurance with, for one thing,” she said.

“And life insurance while you’re at it,” Mears added. “If Denton just wanted to burn the place down, maybe he was after the fire insurance. If he wanted to kill his mother in the bargain, maybe there was some life insurance to be had. That’s unless Denton Pope was a really creative kind of guy and had some grand scheme that we haven’t even imagined.”

“Oh, he was creative, all right,” Estelle said, and shook her head in wonder. “Creative…and really, really stupid.” She stepped away from the wrecked furnace. “We’re going to have to be creative, too,” she said. “Eleanor Pope’s not going to tell us much…if she survives the day. We need to find who she confides in. A good place to start is the three ladies who were with her at the Don Juan earlier.”

“I can do that,” Collins said.

“All right. As soon as the sheriff hits town, I’ll bring him up to speed on all this. And then I’ll be out of service this afternoon for a few hours.”

“Sleep, huh,” Mears laughed.

“No. Mexico. My mom wants to take a quick run down to Tres Santos. I’m going to take her down there, and try to touch bases with Captain Naranjo at the same time.” She started to make her way back along the plank, and then stopped. “And by the way, Tom, did Eurelio Saenz say anything more to you this morning when he was released?”

“Just looked smug,” Pasquale said. “His girlfriend picked him up.”

“Well, we’ll try and un-smug him. You got my note about the hammer spur thingy?”

Pasquale nodded. “Tony Abeyta was going to see what he could find out about recent sales of similar type weapons. It’s a long shot, but we might get lucky. How many Marlin forty-four magnums could there be jumping off the shelves in this part of New Mexico?”

“Luck is what we need at this point,” Estelle said. She turned to Mears, nodding at the wreckage of the furnace. “Nicely done. I’ll be really curious to hear about the insurance angle. I can’t imagine what else would have been on Denton’s mind.”

“The furnace is what he ended up with,” Mears said.