"The autopsy report says she was dead before the fire got to her," Matt said. "A homicide." His somber tone brought us up short. It wasn't as if he'd just heard the news, or that any of us knew the murder victim. But the senseless ending of a human life made any other topic of conversation seem inconsequential. For a moment we were all silent.
"No smoke in her lungs, I'm guessing," Frank said finally, almost to himself.
There was business to do and people like Matt and Frank were used to focusing on what their role was in the messiness of the human condition.
"That's a big factor," Matt said. "No inhalation. Apparently the victim's body was dumped at the fire site. The only identifying mark is a tattoo that looks like a coin or a seal of some kind."
"The tattoo survived the fire?"
I'd addressed Matt, but Frank raised his hand to answer, as if we were all back in school. If I was supposed to know "all things science," Frank, the veteran embalmer, knew "all things dead body."
"Tattoo ink is embedded in deep scar tissue," Frank explained. "Even if a body is badly decomposed, a pathologist can just wipe away the sloughed skin and there's the tattoo as pristine as the day it was made."
"Not the first time I've seen it," Matt said. "In this case, the victim's body wasn't destroyed by the fire, so there's a decent image left of the tattoo. They tell me they can't read the writing, but there's a pretty clear representation of a woman with some kind of crown."
We cleared away juice glasses and craned our necks to view the photograph Matt pulled out of his pocket, Columbo-style, and set on the table. The circular graphic, on the victim's lower back, looked like a collage of several themes—as if the Statue of Liberty had left her New York Harbor post and taken a seat in a cluttered garden. Draped in fabric, the faux Miss Liberty was holding what might have been a large-diameter candle, and at her feet were what looked like an urn, farming equipment, and some indefinable shrubbery.
"It's not an American coin or any common foreign currency," Matt said. "Too bad we don't have one of those magic computers where we scan this in and some enormous database with every image from the beginning of time clicks away and then suddenly blinks 'MATCH MATCH MATCH'."
Frank smiled and helped Matt out with hand gestures, imitating a blinking computer screen. I knew he was trying to prevent Matt from launching into a speech about how inadequate real-life forensics labs were compared to the hi-tech environments we saw on television shows.
Rose took us off the topic with her own analysis. "There weren't even any injuries in the other fires and now we have a fatality. Do they think this was set by a different person?"
"No, there are too many other similarities," Matt said. "For one, although the accelerant is different every time, it's never very sophisticated. He's used everything from a cigarette to a welding spark to ordinary fuel."
"Maybe he's trying to make it look like different people were involved," Rose suggested.
"The RFD doesn't think so. The blazes have one strange feature in common."
I was already on my way to the living room to retrieve the notepad and pen from my purse. Matt kindly waited.
"Go ahead." I smiled, pen poised.
"Okay, the RFD equipment gets there in record time, of course, but in each case there's been evidence that someone got there before they did."
"The arsonist," Frank offered, with a chuckle.
"Yeah," Matt said. "But also someone who tried to put the fire out."
"Amateurs with fire extinguishers?" I asked. "Like someone who follows fires? Aren't there people who actually get a thrill watching fires?"
"There are plants called fire followers," Rose said. "There was this case where a plant that hadn't been seen in a location for a thousand years suddenly bloomed again after an enormous fire swept through the area."
"How?" I asked, amused at myself for succumbing to one of Rose's trivia lessons, irrelevant as it seemed to our discussion.
Rose shrugged. "What do I know? But I read that the fire raised the temperature of the soil and burned away some stuff that wasn't friendly to that particular plant. It was in a plant book." Rose and I obviously frequented different parts of the bookstore. "Also, I think fire symbolically brings things together, as well as being destructive."
Matt and Frank gave her funny looks, but I knew she was talking about the Unity Candle she saw as the centerpiece of our anniversary party.
"We know lots of people who have scanners and intercept police and fire calls. John is one of them," Frank said.