A silence hung over the conference room. The speaker spit static. When Casterstein moved, the image blurred slightly. It did so as he looked off-camera and then back at those in the room. He said softly, “We’re seeing what we term a mixed profile. We need to see through that, to separate out the elements. It takes time. They aren’t the common hydrocarbons that we would expect. So we start over and try again. We fail, and we try again.”
“Like us,” Boldt said. Casterstein was describing an investigation perfectly.
“We’re both detectives in our own way,” Casterstein said.
“Bottom line?” LaMoia demanded harshly. “What’s the bottom line here, Doc? We got people this guy’s planning to barbecue here shortly. I, for one, would like to see something we can take away from this powwow, lovely as it’s been to visit the Federal Building. A black golf ball? That’s not exactly the treasure I had in mind.”
Casterstein remained unruffled. He allowed a slight smile, as if he had expected a LaMoia in the group. “I appreciate your honesty, Detective. I asked Sergeant Boldt here,” he emphasized, “because I wanted to show him this piece of evidence. I also wanted to show him this.” Casterstein nodded to someone off-camera at his end. The screen went blue. Casterstein’s voice said, “Stand by. What you’re about to see is a test conducted by the Fort Worth Fire Department.”
The image was of a large deserted supermarket in an open sea of empty blacktop. Where the windows should have been were sheets of plywood. Grass grew up through gaping cracks in the pavement. Surrounding the structure were twenty or more fire vehicles, all parked at a good distance. Crews stood on the ground with hoses, but there was little water on the ground, no evidence of a fire having been fought. A digital clock counted down in the lower right-hand corner.
Casterstein said, “Pay particular attention to the speed of the burn and the color. I think you’ll find it interesting.”
The clock counted down to zero, at which point Gaynes and LaMoia, closest to the screen, actually jumped, leaning back in their chairs and away from the bright purple flash that rose into the sky like the flame from a wick. The roof of the building melted away, creating a hole in the doughnut. Everything seemed to burn at once. It lasted for three minutes and forty-two seconds, at which point the crews moved in and began to hose water onto the structure. The only water able to reach the center, shot from ladder trucks, exploded into flames as it arrived at the burning core. Those firefighters shut off their hoses, and the ladder engines were pulled back some distance from the inferno. Boldt had never seen a fire so ferocious.
The video stopped; Casterstein’s image reappeared, fuzzy at first and then clear. “They fought the fire for another twenty minutes, but it’s that initial burn that is of interest. I don’t know if you noticed, but this burn went off at temperatures that caused water to separate into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, literally exploding the attempts to suppress it. Never seen anything like it. The fire was an attempt to discover the accelerant used in a series of arsons that swept the country from ’89 to ’94. Our Washington office had a hand in it, which is how I have a copy of the tape.”
Boldt could picture a person inside such a structure. He shuddered from head to toe and wondered if Bahan, next to him, saw him shake. All of a sudden the lack of human remains discovered on-site made sense to him; it explained the inability of Enwright and Heifitz to flee their homes. The pressing urgency of preventing another fire welled up from within him, and he immediately felt filled with self-doubt. Perhaps he should have moved on to lieutenant, he thought. Perhaps the work required younger minds, more agile thinking. Had he grown staid and incapable? Could he do his job effectively while worrying that his wife was having another affair? He had too much on his plate, too little time. Time. The word haunted him. Not another fire, not for anything.
“The recommendation coming out of Washington-and I have to agree with it-is that, should there be a third fire, we let it burn. No fire suppression, certainly no overhaul.” An uncharacteristically long silence hung over the room.
“What the hell did we just look at?” Boldt inquired, uncharacteristically brash. He glanced over at LaMoia, feeling respect for the detective; only LaMoia had dared to push Casterstein. Only LaMoia had sensed something lingering under the surface. Boldt couldn’t help but wonder if he’d lost his touch.
Casterstein pursed his lips and leaned into the camera, going slightly out of focus again. “I don’t know yet what we’re looking at in these fires of yours,” he said flatly, his voice suddenly dry. “But I can tell you what they set off in that test fire. I can tell you what they’re thinking back East. I can tell you what they’re looking for, now that they’ve culled the test site and run the necessary analysis.” He allowed it to hang there for a moment, suspended on a telephone line somewhere between Sacramento and Seattle, a ball of spoken information surrounded on both sides by static. He brushed his hair back like a pitcher debating a signal sent by the catcher. Then he took a deep breath and spoke two words that flooded Boldt with heat and caused his eyes to sting. “Rocket fuel,” he said. “The accelerant in the Fort Worth test was liquid rocket fuel.”
23
The grounds of Owen Adler’s residence intimidated Boldt despite the fact that he had been there three years earlier. One measured Owen Adler’s kind of wealth by the size and range of his private jet. It was a Gulfstream 3 with the wings of a 4 for extra fuel. He was on the Seattle A-list. His marriage to Daphne Matthews was to be performed by Robert Fulghum in a private ceremony on the grounds of the estate, overlooking Shilshole Marina and Puget Sound. The marriage had been postponed twice, although only their closest friends knew this-no invitations had ever been sent. Daphne claimed it was because, in putting his food empire back together, Adler had encountered repeated scheduling problems, but for Boldt there were other signs. Daphne had allowed the tenant of her houseboat to leave without penalty; she had made no attempt to rent it again. She was back to volunteering at the Shelter, a church basement for teenage runaways, a commitment she had dropped during the infatuation days with Owen Adler. For his part, Adler had twice been photographed in the company of other women for the society pages. Boldt had not asked any questions. Any man who could lift a multimillion dollar company out of ashes the way Adler had deserved some kind of medal. There was no doubting the man’s power to overcome financial obstacles. On the other hand, Boldt thought, Daphne Matthews might be a kind of challenge he had never faced.
The picturesque marina, so pretty at night with its white lights, black reflecting water, and regimented lines of white boats, their masts as delicate as frost on a window, was nestled inside a stone seawall, far below the hillside compound.
Using the front door’s intercom, Daphne asked him to go around the house and wait for her out on the patio. When he circled the sprawling mansion, he saw that both pool and patio lights were on. It felt more like Italy than Seattle. He and Liz had not been back to Italy since Miles was born, another of those lifestyle changes that at moments like this registered in him as regret.
Daphne had it all. This would be hers soon. He wondered what that felt like.
The French doors opened and she ducked through chintz drapes wearing a pink robe and a towel wrapped around her head. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I was … I wanted a swim. A shower first. I was just getting out-”