Point of Origin

'Maybe he sets the fire and needs to get to the airport fast,' she went on. 'So the day before, the helicopter does a recon over the farm because the pilot knows he'll have to land and take off after dark. Following so far?'

I nodded.

'Saturday rolls around. Sparkes murders the girl and torches his place. He runs out to the pasture and gets on the helicopter, which transports him somewhere near Dulles, where his Cherokee is stashed. He gets to the airport and does his thing with receipts and maybe baggage. Then he makes himself scarce until it's time to show up at Hootowl Farm.'

'And the reason the helicopter showed up on Monday, when we were working the scene?' I then asked. 'How does that fit?'

'Pyros like to watch the fun,' she stated. 'Hell, for all we know, Sparkes was up there himself watching us work our asses off. Paranoid, if nothing else. Figured we'd think it was a news bird, which we did.'

'This is all speculation at this point,' I said, and I had heard enough.

I began rearranging the infinite flow of paperwork that began where it stopped and stopped where it began. McGovern was studying me again. She got up and shut the doors.

'Okay, I think it's time we had a little talk,' she said. 'I don't think you like me. And maybe if you come clean about it, maybe we can do something about it, one way or another.'

'I'm not sure what I think of you, if you must know.'

I stared at her.

'The most important thing is that all of us do our jobs, lest we lose perspective. Since we are dealing with someone who was murdered,' I added.

'Now you're pissing me off,' she said.

'Not intentionally, I assure you.'

'As if someone murdered makes no difference to me? Is that what you're implying? You think I got where I am in life by not giving a shit about who set a fire and why?'

She shoved up her sleeves, as if ready for a fight.

'Teun,' I said. 'I don't have time for this, because I don't think it's constructive.'

'This is about Lucy. You think I'm replacing you, or God knows what. That's what this is all about, isn't it, Kay?'

Now she was making me angry, too.

'You and I have worked together before, right?' she went on. 'We've never had a big problem before now. So one has to ask, what's different? I think the answer's pretty obvious. The difference is that even as we speak, your niece is moving into her new apartment in Philadelphia, to be in my field office, under my supervision. Mine. Not yours. And you don't like it. And guess what else? If I were in your shoes, maybe I wouldn't like it either.'

'It is neither the time nor the place for this discussion,' I said firmly.

'Fine.'

She got up and draped her jacket over her arm.

'Then we'll go somewhere else,' she decided. 'I intend to resolve this before I drive back north.'

For an instant I was stymied as I reigned from the empire of my wrap-around desk, with its foremen of files, and guards demanding the hard labor of journal articles, and legions of messages and correspondence that would never set me free. I took my glasses off and massaged my face. When McGovern was blurred, it was easier for me.

'I'll take you to lunch,' I said. 'If you're willing to hang around three more hours. In the meantime' - I got up from my chair - 'I have bones in a pot that need heating up. You can come with me, if you have a strong stomach.'

'You won't scare me off with that.' McGovern seemed pleased.

McGovern was not the sort to follow anyone around, and after I had turned on the burner in the decomposition room, she lingered long enough for steam to rise. Then she headed out to ATF's Richmond field office, and reappeared suddenly within an hour. She was breathless and tense when she walked in. I was carefully stirring simmering bones.

'We got another one,' she said quickly.

'Another one?' I asked.

I set the long plastic spoon on a countertop.

'Another fire. Another whacko one. This time in Lehigh County, about an hour from Philadelphia,' she said. 'Are you coming with me?'

My mind raced through all the possibilities of what might happen if I dropped everything and left with her. For one thing, I was unnerved by the thought of the two of us alone for five hours inside a car.

'It's residential,' she went on. 'It started early yesterday morning, and a body has been recovered. A woman. In the master bathroom.'

'Oh no,' I said.

'It's clear the fire was intended to conceal that she had been murdered,' she said, and then went on to explain why it was possible the case was related to the one in Warrenton.

When the body was discovered, Pennsylvania state police had immediately requested assistance from ATF. Then ATF fire investigators at the scene had entered data on their laptops, and ESA got a hit almost instantly. By last night the Lehigh case had begun to take on huge significance, and the FBI offered agents and Benton, and the state police had accepted.

'The house was built on a slab,' McGovern was explaining as we got on I-95 North. 'So no basement to worry about, thank God. Our guys have been there since three o'clock this morning, and what's curious is in this case, the fire didn't do the job well at all. The areas of the master suite, a guest room right above it on the second floor, and the living room downstairs are pretty badly burned, with extensive ceiling damage in the bathroom, and spalling of the concrete floor in the garage.'

Spalling occurs when rapid, intense heat causes moisture trapped in concrete to boil, fragmenting the surface.

'The garage was located where?' I asked as I tried to envision what she was describing.

'On the same side of the house as the master suite. Again, a fast, hot fire. But the burning wasn't complete, a lot of alligatoring, a lot of surface charring. As for the rest of the house, we're talking mostly smoke and water damage. Which isn't consistent with the work of the individual who torched the Sparkes farm. Except for one important thing. So far, it doesn't appear that any type of accelerant was used, and there wasn't a sufficient fuel load in the bathroom to account for the height of the flames.'

'Was the body in the tub?' I asked.

'Yes. Makes my hair stand on end.'

'It should. What kind of shape is she in?' I asked the most important question as McGovern held our speed ten miles over the limit in her government Ford Explorer.

'Not so burned that the medical examiner couldn't tell her throat was cut.'

'Then she's already been autopsied,' I assumed.

'To be honest, I really don't know how much has been done. But she's not going anywhere. That's your turf. Mine's to see what the hell else we can find at the fire scene.'

'So you're not going to use me to shovel out debris?' I asked.

McGovern laughed and turned on the CD player. I was not expecting Amadeus.

'You can dig all you want,' she said with a smile that relieved a lot of tension. 'You're not bad at it, by the way, for someone who probably doesn't run unless she's being chased. Or work out anything except intellectual problems.'

'You do enough autopsies and move enough bodies, and you don't need to lift weights,' I distorted the truth, badly.

'Hold out your hands.'

I did, and she glanced over at them, changing lanes at the same time.

'Damn. I guess it didn't occur to me what saws and scalpels and hedge pruners will do for muscle tone,' she commented.

'Hedge pruners?'

'You know, what you use to open the chest.'

'Rib shears, please.'

'Well, I've seen hedge pruners in some morgues, and knitting needles used to track bullet wounds.'

'Not in my morgue. At least not in the one I have now. Although I will admit that in the early days one learned to improvise,' I felt compelled to say as Mozart played.

'One of those little trade secrets you don't want to ever come out in court,' McGovern confessed. 'Sort of like stashing the best jar of confiscated moonshine in a secret desk drawer. Or cops keeping souvenirs from scenes, like marijuana pipes and whacko weapons. Or medical examiners hanging on to artificial hips and parts of fractured skulls that in truth should be buried with the bodies.'