Already Dead (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Laura walked in through the doors of the precinct and clocked Agent Won immediately. He was sitting at the desk they had been assigned – well, not at it, but on it, apparently holding court with three of the local detectives. He was talking something over with them, expressing himself with his hands – which made her feel very nervous indeed.

She wished she didn’t have to feel quite so much like a babysitter, but there it was.

“Agent Won,” she called out, as she headed into the room. She could have added some kind of catty remark, like nice of you to join us, but she held her tongue. She could make him feel guilty for sleeping in on their own time. Putting him down in front of other officers wasn’t right.

“Oh, Agent Frost,” he said, turning and quickly leaping down from the desk. “I was just discussing with Frank, Steve, and Mandy here about the possibility of a new angle.”

Laura tilted her head, coming to a stop in front of him. “Well,” she said. “Let’s hear it.” She had nothing to lose, after all. Talking to Mrs. Powers had been something of a bust – more confusing than anything else.

“Fire,” he said, triumphantly, as if it explained everything.

Laura raised an eyebrow at him.

“Well,” Agent Won said, hastily, clearly excited about his idea. “The killer likes candles, right? He likes lighting the flame. It’s always burning when we get there, and I think that’s significant.”

“I’m sure it is,” Laura agreed, though what she wasn’t sure about was that they were on the same page.

“I think he likes fire in particular,” Agent Won said. “Most killers usually graduate from smaller, more petty crimes into murder, right? And pyromania is quite common among serial killers. I think that’s what we’re dealing with, here. He’s a pyromaniac, and he lights the candle because he can’t resist adding a touch of flame to his murders as well.”

Laura turned it over in her head, glancing at the cops behind Agent Won. They all looked fairly eager, like they were buying into it and wanted to get started on the investigation in this direction. It was easy to get swept up in the excitement of a new theory, especially when you didn’t have one to begin with. They were probably also pretty excited about getting something to work on from an FBI agent, given that they didn’t see many big cases down here.

But all that didn’t mean that Laura couldn’t also see where he was coming from. She thought about her vision of the flames – something she couldn’t share, but it did back up Agent Won’s theory. It could even be possible that was what the visions were trying to tell her – to look for someone who was obsessed with the flames.

But, still…

“It’s a good theory,” she conceded. “But why doesn’t he bring fire into it more? Why not light the bodies on fire to hide the evidence of his crimes, or burn down the places where he took them?”

Agent Won’s confident expression faltered a little, dropping from his face as he tried to answer the question. “Maybe because the killing is separate from the arson. You know? Like, two different crimes. It’s just a little touch he likes to add.”

Laura couldn’t say his answer was too convincing. “And yet you think the candle is enough evidence to be sure that he’s a pyromaniac?”

“Well,” Agent Won hesitated, looking more uncertain than ever now. “Well, not, like, sure. But, I mean, it’s something, right?”

Laura considered it for another long moment, leaving him hanging. “The way I see it, the commission of the murders themselves has very little to do with fire,” she said. “There’s no sign of burning of the bodies, no burning at the sight – the only thing we have is the candle. And for all we know right now, maybe the use of the candle is about wax, or about time, or something completely distinct from the flame. But… in the absence of anything else, yes, it’s something.”

A beam broke out on Agent Won’s face. He looked so much like a little boy being given praise by a father figure that Laura almost faltered in her resolve to resent having to work with him. It was almost adorable. It was a shame that being adorable wasn’t exactly a required trait for an FBI agent, however.

“We should start looking into it right away, like I was saying,” Agent Won said, spinning around to face the other detectives again.

“Have there been any local arson reports recently?” Laura asked. “We wouldn’t have to be talking whole properties on fire – even just unattended flames, garbage cans set on fire, little brushfires, anything.”

The officers shook their heads, looking to each other for confirmation. “We didn’t have any suspicions of someone like that in the area before now,” one of them – the woman, and therefore most likely Mandy – said. “But we didn’t think we had a murderer either and here we are.”

Laura nodded. That was a sensible approach to take: assume that all of your assumptions until now were faulty. “Well, you’ll need to look into the records of anyone who now lives in the area,” she said. “Starting from maybe five or even ten years ago, you need to compile lists of anyone who was ever accused of starting a fire – and especially those who had it confirmed. These won’t all necessarily be arrests – you might have fines on record, for example. If you can’t find anyone in your own arrest and fine logs, then start looking at people who’ve moved from out of town recently.”

There was a general murmur of agreement and a lot of nodding heads as the detectives began to disperse back to their own desks. Agent Won looked unaccountably pleased with himself, following them to stand over one of their monitors and observe as they presumably brought up their internal system.

Four cooks toiling over one dish was already enough, and Laura knew her talents would not be best used in simply doing the same thing as them. She chewed her lip for a moment in thought, and then turned on the computer they’d been assigned, making up her mind. While they looked at arrest records and individuals, she could look into this pyromancy thing from another angle. Incidents and fires. Arson wasn’t always solved or even detected, and that meant there might be more out there the records couldn’t tell them about.

Laura searched for and navigated to the page of a local newspaper. With the simple keyword ‘fire,’ she began to trawl back through their records, looking for anything that would stand out.

Of course, there were plenty of things that didn’t have any relevancy at all. A Firefly Dance barn raiser. News about the local fire department, that was more to do with the arrival of a new captain or fundraising events than actual fires. But there were fires, here and there, and Laura read into each of them, jotting down the details.

The articles seemed to be filtered by relevancy rather than by date, which was irritating, but Laura fought through it. On the third page of the results, she spotted something: a fire that was dated very recently. She clicked open the article and read through it, her interest growing with every second.

LOCAL STORE LOST TO FLAMES

Lighting The Way, a store which opened five years ago on West Ocean Drive, has been burned to the ground in a terrible accident which has devastated the owner.

Michael Noran, 53, spoke to our reporter on what was once the grounds of his well-stocked and recently refurbished store. He said: “I just can’t believe this has happened. Obviously, on some level you always know that you’re dealing with a very flammable product, but I never expected something like this to happen. It’s my whole life’s work really, just gone, just like that. It’s the end of a dream.”

The fire was reported at 4 A.M. on Saturday morning, just a few hours before Lighting The Way was set to open for the weekend’s trading. The store, which was in a central location on West Ocean Drive and popular with tourists, was fully stocked with scented candles and other themed items, such as essential oils, burners, and incense sticks. Firefighters say that the stock would have caught fire quickly, turning a small accidental flame into an inferno which ravaged the building and ultimately brought it down before anything could be done to save it.

When asked if he would rebuild and reopen the store, Noran was only able to look down at the blackened ash and remains of his store and shake his head sadly.

The Pacific Cove fire chief and police chief came together to issue this joint statement to all homeowners in the town: “This is a timely reminder that fire is dangerous and is not something to be played with. If you are burning candles in the home, please make sure that all flames are snuffed out before leaving the room or falling asleep. This is also a good time to check that your fire alarm is functional – it could save your life.”

Laura felt a smile coming over her face, in spite of herself. A fire at a candle store. Not only was it the kind of delicious irony that would probably make it onto some kind of wacky world news round-up site, but it was also extremely relevant.

“Agent Won,” she called out. “Get your jacket. I have a lead. Let’s go and see if it checks out.”

***

West Ocean Drive was easy to find. Laura parked the car alongside the very obvious site of Lighting The Way, a half-shell of a storefront that was covered in construction materials. Bags of sand and bricks were laying around it like dropped eggs, and scaffolding supported what remained of the structure. Some of it was still visibly blackened from the fire. The rest was new, brickwork going up to fill in the gaps that appeared to have been blown out by the flames.

“Excuse me?” Agent Won called out to a passing man. He was wearing a yellow hard hat and an orange reflective vest. Together with his slightly smarter clothing, compared to the other two men working on the site, Laura thought that Won had correctly guessed this to be the foreman.