The Fluorine Murder(6)

"What are you looking for, Gloria?" Rose asked.

"Stop," I said, too loudly, causing Rose to jump. Matt tried to get a good still frame but the picture was marred by noise and tracking bars. I was surprised that a person interested enough to take videos still used tape. Matt finally zeroed in on a decent frame. I pointed to a large, rolling two-level lab cart I'd seen in passing the first time. The cart was almost out of range of the camera, but the shape was very familiar to me. Several pieces of apparatus were piled onto its shelves.

"What is it?" Matt asked.

"There's your unofficial fire extinguishing equipment," I said.

In a flash, our four heads were angled for viewing the screen up close. I was grateful that no one pointed out where lab carts were readily available. In restaurants, I thought, in desperation.

"Can you tell exactly what's on the cart?" Matt asked.

I moved my chair still closer to the screen and squinted, without gaining much in clarity. "It's hard to tell, but I think we're seeing ordinary testing apparatus—a cone calorimeter and a smoke density chamber. Maybe a blanket tester, too. It's the kind of apparatus used by fire safety professionals to test various kinds of heat response." And you'd never find it in a restaurant, I thought, my heart sinking.

"What do you think is going on?" Rose asked. Throughout the viewing, Rose, the ultimate housekeeper, had used tissues to dust the small conference table that also held the television system. She'd finished and now wadded up the tissues and handed them to Frank, who tossed them into a corner wastebasket. It looked like choreography, forty wedded years in the making.

"Someone is testing the flammability of materials," I said. "Probably using materials from the nursing home, like clothing, bedding, draperies, upholstery. Anything that's manufactured with flammability in mind."

"That could be an ordinary fire extinguisher," Frank said, indicating a blurry cylindrically shaped object.

"I see that. But what if it isn't an ordinary one?" Matt asked. "It's piled on there with all that other obviously special apparatus."

I blew out a deep breath. I had to admit it—this frame pointed to the Charger Street scientists as surely as if the lab logo had been visible on the cart.

I had an idea that I hoped would redeem the scientists at least somewhat.

"Let's do one more bit of analysis."

It had ages since I'd been inside the destroyed nursing home—the last time was before an aunt died there, more than ten years ago. It was a good thing I had a resource next to me. "Can you give us a sketch of the layout of the home?" I asked Rose.

"Sure. What's this about?"

I handed her a pad and Rose went to work without needing an answer. The project took only a couple of minutes, during which I kept my head down, unable to face Matt, and, therefore, the sad music I was hearing.

"Not bad for a funeral director," I said, tapping Rose's finished sketch. "It's just as I thought. The residents' rooms are in the front and middle of the building. In the front we also have the lobby and small visiting parlors; in the back we have the pharmacy, the kitchen, and the recreation room. The fire was at the back. Right, Matt?"

Matt nodded. "I see where you're going. It's as if the arsonist wanted to make sure no one was hurt. He started the fire as far away from the residents as possible."

"Maybe he just didn't want to be seen," Rose suggested.

"I don't think that's it," I said, running my pen along the middle of Rose's rectangle-cum-building. "I noticed on the video that there are more trees, plus lots of shrubbery around the central part of the building, so patients can look out their windows at some greenery, I suppose. It would be easier to hide there and start the fire, whereas the back is pretty bare and open."

"I get your point," Frank said. "It sure looks like he picked a spot away from the residents, and knew the staff would have time to remove them safely."

In other words, scientists are not monsters.

"In a way, it fits the pattern of the previous fires," Matt said. "The other buildings were unoccupied and this one had been emptied out by the time the fire took hold completely."

"Except for the woman," Rose said.

"It must have been an accident," I said, my voice weak and my resolve fading.

We took a moment to remember the murdered girl with the telling tattoo. If we could only figure out what it was telling us.

****

As was typical before any important meeting, Matt took his notes to bed the night before our scheduled visit to the Charger Street lab. I wondered if anyone in the fluorine group was doing the same.