“Yes. And then someone else came to finish the job.” I was jogging down the hill by then. “I need to check on something.” Yes, yes, yes.
Exits and entrances.
“Pat?” She was following me. “Is everything OK?”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “The bowl is in the way.”
“What are you talking about?”
I ran around to the front of the house. “Do you have your computer with you?”
“No. It’s at the hotel. What’s gotten into-”
“We need to go.” My mind was clicking, pieces falling into place.
I threw off the borrowed boots, grabbed my shoes. “Now.”
“Pat, what did you see?” She caught up to me. Put her shoes on.
“Did the guy leave something else behind?”
“Yes.”
She unlocked her car and we jumped inside. “What’s that?”
“A map.”
19
As gentle and soft-spoken as Lien-hua is, when she’s in a hurry she drives like Jackie Chan on caffeine.
But I have to say, I like it.
As long as the car has air bags.
We flew around a corner, and I put my hand on the dash to avoid slamming into the door.
“You need to explain yourself,” she said. “What do you mean he left a map? And why do we need to hurry?”
“Do you have a notepad?”
“There should be one on the backseat.”
I snagged her legal pad and started calculating as many of the geographic profiling algorithms as I could freehand, but algebraic equations never were my specialty. I really needed my computer.
“So, why the big hurry?”
“Because I’m not as smart as I pretend to be. I need my computer before I lose my train of thought. I think I might be able to get us a picture of the original arsonist.”
“How? What’s going on?”
“The bowl is in the way.”
“Why do you keep saying that? What does it mean?”
“You’re familiar with cognitive mapping, right?”
“Sure. It’s how people envision their environment. Everyone creates mental pictures of the roads they take, the routes they travel, estimated distances between points on the map. Things like that.”
“Right, but the mental maps are distorted by-” “Barriers and familiarity. Yes, I know. Attitudes, past experience, and comfort with different locations all skew our perceptions of distance and space. And we overestimate the distance between two points when natural and man-made barriers appear-things like rivers, mountains, bridges, malls.”
“Wow. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“I know. I was paraphrasing from your book. Your word choice was a little too stilted. I had to change it.”
I cleared my throat slightly. “My point is that we all create cognitive maps without even being aware of it, even those of us who are serial arsonists. And sports stadiums are large mental barriers. So, because of the proximity to the fires, Petco Park would change the way the arsonist views the city in his mind and change the dynamics of the geo profile.”
“So is that the bowl?”
“The big salad bowl, yes. You see, they were serving pork tenderloin with mangos and pineapple and I had to order two salads-never mind, it’s a long story. Can we go any faster?”
“Not without filing a flight plan. How are you going to get us a picture of the arsonist?”
“I’ll get to that. Listen, as soon as you drop me off, I need you to call Aina, see if she can meet us. If not, ask her for the access codes for the videos taken at the depots for all of the city’s mass transit stations.” We were pulling into the hotel parking lot. “Got it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to search their databases, not just view the live footage.”
Lien-hua braked at the entrance to the hotel. “OK, but I’m not sure I understand-”
“I’ll meet you in my room as soon as you’re done parking.” I jumped out of the car.
Then, carrying her legal pad, I hurried to the elevators, hoping I’d be able to decipher my scribbled notes and formulas when I finally got my computer in front of me.
Acquiring Cassandra had been easier than Creighton expected.
She’d barely struggled at all. And, once they arrived at the warehouse and she’d regained consciousness, she’d been a model subject.
Yes. The last couple hours had been very productive.
Creighton almost had enough footage to finish the video.
Then all he had to do was wrap up the editing and make the phone call that would put everything into play.
He could hardly wait.
The anticipation of her coming death, and his own, made his fingers quiver with excitement.
20
In my hotel room, I pulled up the computer files I’d been working on yesterday morning when I’d started comparing the geographical and demographic data with the timing and progression of the fires.
I’d been on the right track, just on the wrong, well… track.
I was typing in my scribbles when Lien-hua tapped at the door.
“It’s open,” I called.
“Aina can’t come.” Lien-hua had her computer with her. She sat on the edge of the bed and flipped her laptop open. “The 911 caller was a dead end, but she’s busy evaluating potential ignition systems from the previous fires. She gave me the codes.”
“Good. Give me a minute, then I’ll need them.” I clicked on one of the icons on my screen, and a map appeared with each of the arson sites marked by a small flickering flame. “See the placement of the fires?” I punched a couple of keys, and a series of red lines laced the city, highlighting the streets and highways of San Diego.
I traced one with my finger. “Roads.”
“Oh. Is that what they are?”
“Sorry. I’ll try to stop stating the obvious.” I tipped the screen so she could see it. “Now, if you look at the distribution of the fires, what do you notice?”
She studied the map carefully but shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Neither did I, until…” I uploaded the trolley routes and overlaid them against the map of the fire locations. A couple more keystrokes, and my computer-mapping program calculated the distances between the fires and the nearest trolley depots and flashed the totals in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. “See? The fires all occur within two hundred meters of a trolley stop, usually the Orange Line or the Blue Line.”
She gave a soft gasp of acknowledgment. “He’s starting the fires and then boarding the trolleys to get away.”
“I think so. Let’s check the timing. Look up the trolley schedule for me, and I’ll compare it to the times of the fires.”
She surfed to the San Diego mass transit site and read off the trolley arrival and departure times, and I punched them in. Hit enter.
A crisscross of lines appeared along with a detailed timing chart on the right-hand side of the screen.
“It fits,” I said.
She gave a long, soft whistle. “So, except for last night’s fire, each of the other fires was reported between five minutes prior to a scheduled trolley departure or eight minutes after the trolley left. How long would it take to walk two hundred meters?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe three to five minutes. We also need to factor in the time it takes for the fire to grow, get noticed, and be reported. We can have some officers walk the distances to confirm the timing. But it looks like he didn’t park. He rode.”
“So, if that’s how he’s getting away…” Then it struck her.
“Access codes.”
“Right,” I said. “Every trolley depot is monitored by video surveillance. Let’s see how photogenic our arsonist is.”
21
I surfed to the city’s mass transit DVA, the Digital Video Archives, and logged in with the access codes Lien-hua had gotten from Aina.
I was annoyed to find that the older footage had been deleted, so only the last six months were available. That left us with only eight fires, and I wasn’t sure if it would be enough, but I downloaded the footage from the trolley depots that correlated to the time and location of those eight fires to give it a try. “This gives me a good chance to try one of the new toys Terry’s designing,” I said. “You know him, right? Terry Manoji? My buddy from the NSA?”