"Yes, I do understand," Howard said, a little arrogantly. "Well then, let's cut to the chase, shall we? What is it you need from me?"

"The mentality of someone that's so closely linked to arson...it's something I can't quite nail down."

"Arson?" Howard said, a little confused. "Why are you a.s.suming arson has something to do with it? The man is burning bodies, not buildings."

"Because he's using fire almost like a weapon. He's using it almost as a symbol."

"Exactly," Howard said. "And if he's using fire for some sort of symbolic means, that does not necessarily mean he's an arsonist."

"But fire seems to be the most important aspect to this case. That or he has some sort of weird fixation on bones and ash. But you need fire to get to those things."

"Indeed. I agree one hundred percent. But still...the inclusion of fire in his murdering does not necessarily mean you're looking for an arsonist. That's like saying a killer that would kidnap people and drown them in a tub must surely be some sort of failed scuba diver." He chuckled at his own a.n.a.logy; it was a dry and wretched sound.

Avery had considered this before but had not dwelled on it. The issue of fire seemed too important to not be the driving force behind the murders. But what if the killer was indeed only using it as a means to an end...a way to show off or eliminate evidence?

"Really, Avery," Howard said, crossing his arms. "I thought you were much smarter than this. I feel like you might be relying on me a little too much. Are you getting lazy?"

"No," she said, nearly offended by the accusation. "It's just rare to have such a relationship with someone who knows the minds of killers so well. As odd as it may be, you're one of the most reliable resources I have."

"I don't know if I should take that as an insult or a compliment," Howard said. "Either way, I suppose that makes us kindred spirits in an odd way, doesn't it?"

The thought of it made her want to shudder. But she'd be d.a.m.ned if she'd look weak in front of him.

"So what do you want me to do?" he asked. "Would you like me to drop you several hints? Are you hoping I might have some insight that will present you with a lead that you can claim as your own, solve the case and save the day?"

She wasn't sure how to respond. He had never been so confrontational. In fact, whenever she visited, he seemed to get an almost intellectual satisfaction from their conversations-from her cases. Perhaps that was no longer the case.

"No," she said. "I thought you might be able to lend some thoughts that might speed things along. That's all."

"Perhaps I could," he said. "But really, where is the fun in that? This killer...he seems to take pride in his work. More than that, he's brave. It's rather admirable really. You know, maybe I don't want to take your side every time, Avery. Maybe it would do you good to get out there and do the hard work yourself."

A simple response came to her lips, but she bit it back. f.u.c.k you.

Instead, she replied: "So you'd be fine just letting this psycho continue to kidnap and burn these people? He's probably burning them alive, you know."

"Oh, I almost guarantee it," Howard said. "And maybe that's the important thing you should have been chasing this whole time rather than wasting your time studying arson. Now...I appreciate the visit, but I'm going to have to ask you to head along on your way."

"Are you-"

"Guard!" he shouted, interrupting her. "I'm done here."

Right away, one of the guards who had escorted her came into the room. He still had the same unpleasant look on his face as he approached Howard.

"Best of luck, Detective," Howard said.

Avery sat there, stunned for a moment. Howard Randall had always been full of surprises. But she had never expected this. Maybe he had just gotten tired of playing along with her cases when she had hit bottom.

Daughter, boyfriend, sister...now a killer to add to the list, she thought. No one wants to be around me...not even Howard Randall.

She slowly got up and headed for the exit. As she did, she thought about the almost riddle-like clue he'd dropped near the end.

...maybe that's the important thing you should have been chasing this whole time...

If the killer was burning his victims alive, that spoke of a whole new level to the case. It meant they were dealing with a man that was likely somewhere far beyond s.a.d.i.s.tic. It was one thing for someone to want to watch the world burn and quite another for someone to find a purpose and maybe even joy in the pain of the burning.

Maybe there are still some clues to be found on the bodies themselves, she thought. At least what's left of them.

With that thought in her head, she made her way back out of the prison thinking about teeth.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

She arrived back at the A1 half an hour later. She headed directly down to the lower levels, where Forensics took up most of the floor s.p.a.ce. There were in-jokes about how all of the scientists and lab rats had been pushed down into the bas.e.m.e.nt, but, truth be told, Avery enjoyed visiting this quieter and often calmer part of the building.

She headed for the office of Sandy Ableton, one of A1's two dental forensics experts. She didn't have to knock; Sandy's door was open and the unexpected sounds of Tom Petty's "Into the Great Wide Open" came spilling out. Avery poked her head in and knocked on the doorframe. Sandy looked up with a smile and motioned her inside.

"Avery, how are you?" she asked.

"Well, I was hoping you might have some sort of useful information from the dental findings in these burning deaths."

"Nothing new, I'm afraid," Sandy said. "We're still running a few tests on Sarah Osborne's molars, but that's likely not going to provide much to go on. And we've mined everything we can out of Keisha Lawrence's remains."

"Well, I was curious," Avery said. "Is there any way you can determine if the victim was killed before they were burned?"

Sandy raised an eyebrow, as if it was something she had not considered yet. "You feel like they might be burned alive?" she asked.

"I think it's a possibility we can't afford not to explore."

"Well, in some cases we could make an educated guess based solely on the condition of the gums and surrounding tissue. But in the case of Keisha Lawrence, the teeth had been totally stripped and burned of the gums. And while there was some remaining on Sarah Osborne's, it's not going to be enough to get you that sort of information."

"Okay," Avery said, quickly cycling through her new ideas. "Is there any way to determine how hot the teeth became while the body was burned?"

"I can give you a pretty good estimate, but nothing spot on. And you'd probably get the same lackl.u.s.ter answer off of the bone samples, too."

"An educated guess is all I'm looking for."

With that, Sandy typed in a few commands on the laptop that was sitting on her desk. "Into the Great Wide Open" had ended, giving way to "Mary Jane's Last Dance."

"Teeth, as you know," Sandy said, "are among the strongest bones in the human body. When exposed to extreme heat, they'll weaken but rarely will they start to decompose. We can gauge the approximate intensity of heat based on the amount they are weakened...just like any other bones, really."

She tapped a few more keys and then turned the laptop toward Avery so she could see it. She pointed to a section of a file and said, "Right there. Right around one thousand to eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit."

"And what does a temperature that high tell you about the killer?" Avery asked.

"Well, it indicates that he knows what he's doing. Another four to eight hundred degrees and we're talking about cremation practices. Crematoriums usually burn bodies at somewhere between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred degrees."

"So the fires this guy is setting aren't just random fires by some random firebug in other words."

Sandy shrugged. "I don't know for sure. That's above my pay grade. But yeah...to get to temperatures like that, it's more than just using some lighter fluid and striking a match."

"And do you know how crematoriums deal with teeth since they don't burn down?"

"Yes, they're usually ground up just like bones. I'm not sure what sort of a machine does it, but with human remains that are cremated, it's very rare to find anything other than ash."

Avery nodded, taking it all in. She had started to think that their man might have had some sort of connection with a crematorium but based on what Sandy was telling her, this man wasn't quite that efficient. So that had to leave other links that they had not discovered yet. Crematoriums might certainly be worth looking into, but Avery wasn't so sure it was the most pertinent place to start looking.

"Can I help with anything else?" Sandy asked.

Avery tried to think if there were any other questions that needed to be asked but was interrupted by the ringing of her cell phone. She grabbed it and saw that it was Connelly. A slow sinking feeling started in her stomach.

"This is Avery," she said.

"Black, where are you?"

"With Forensics. What's up?"

"I need you out here ASAP. We've got another body."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Having seen the state of the two previous victims as little more than ash and bones, Avery was not mentally ready for what she saw at the third crime scene. She could tell right away that something was different about this scene when she parked her car behind O'Malley's. The location was very similar to the first scene where the remains of Keisha Lawrence had been discovered-derelict, on the farthest edges of town, and just inside their jurisdiction. Only, whereas the first location had been in the midst of undeveloped land, the newest scene was located among several buildings that had been shut down and abandoned long ago.

Several other cars were parked along the street, one of which was a news van. So it had hit that point already-the news was all over this, no doubt spurred on by what was starting to seem like an interdepartmental rivalry of sorts. She surveyed the scene and saw that there was a thin line of activity heading into a small alley between an old brick building and a smaller building that looked to have once been a convenience store.

She pa.s.sed by two officers-one was Finley and the other was a younger guy she had never spoken to-keeping the press away from the alleyway. She edged by them and made her way into the alley. She saw O'Malley, Connelly, and Ramirez standing in a semicircle, all looking down.

She also saw Agent Duggan from the FBI. He barely looked up as she approached. He had apparently gotten the hint that she really didn't want his help. Still, she had to admit that the presence of the FBI made her feel a little more at ease. It showed that a case that was so far escaping her was severe enough to have the bureau involved.

When the four men heard her approach, O'Malley turned to her and nodded her over. She approached slowly, not liking the look on O'Malley's face. She cast her eyes to the ground and felt herself stop breathing for a few moments as she saw the body.

She could only wish this one had been reduced to nothing more than ash. As it was, though, this body had been only partially burned and that was somehow worse.

First of all, the shape of the actual body remained. While it was little more than bare bones from the waist down, flesh still clung to the abdomen, ribs, and lower neck. Even the lower half of the face remained and that, as far as Avery was concerned, was the most grisly thing of all, looking to a corner of a singed mouth that was burned into a frown. What remained there was clearly skin and tissue but it had been badly charred.

"The d.a.m.ned thing still feels like there's heat coming off of it," O'Malley said. He then looked to Avery and Ramirez, giving them a hopeful and slightly angry look. "If you two could wrap this one up p.r.o.nto, I'd appreciate it. We can't keep having this happen...especially not with the media on our heels and you," he said, stabbing a finger in Avery's directions, "setting out to make us look like idiots at every turn."

Agent Duggan looked at her with an amused little smile. Whatever respect he'd had for her when they first met seemed to be long gone.

"What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?" Avery asked.

"You were very vocal about Denny c.o.x being innocent," O'Malley said. "Simmons and the other B3 guys hung on your every word. And now that c.o.x is clean and off the hook, it's making us look like fools."

Maybe if you'd listened to me from the start, she thought, but bit the comment back. Instead, she slowly stalked around the scene, taking in every detail as she came to it. The first and most obvious thing to note was that this body was not nearly as burned down as the others has been.

He's either getting lazy or he was in a hurry this time, she thought.

With a grimace, she hunkered down next to the body. This one was also a female. She'd been burned with her clothes on; a few stray sc.r.a.ps of burned fabric were in her hair and fused to her chest. She looked at the woman's face. The flesh here had been totally burned away. Avery could see around the teeth, though, that a few traces of the gum line remained. She wondered if this might be enough for Sandy and her crew down in Forensics to mine some more information about when the burning had occurred.

She scoured the area for more fragments like they had found at the first scene but could find none. There were also no clearly visible footprints of any kind.

"What are you thinking?" Connelly asked her.

"I'm wondering why he did a sloppy job this time. I wonder if he intentionally left her in this state just to shock us or if he was hurried or rushed this time. Seeing the body like this makes me think he might not be as methodical as we originally thought."

"Great insights," Duggan said. Avery thought he was only speaking because he felt he needed to in order to be noticed. "If the killer has the capacity to be sloppy, he can screw up enough to basically leave a sign for us, making him easy to catch."

"A good theory, Black," O'Malley said. "Now let's see you prove it."

Avery continued to scour the area, looking for any sign as to how long the body had been there. She saw no clear drag marks, indicating that the killer had carried the body and then quite literally dumped it here in the alley. Her mind turned to the street corners out along the street. While this was a mostly dead part of the city, she thought the traffic cameras in the nearby stoplights might be worth checking out.

She was dimly aware of a cell phone ringing behind her and O'Malley's voice answering the call. His voice was agitated but she paid it very little mind as she continued to look around the alleyway.

No blood, no footprints...but maybe the lazy nature of the burn this time around will reveal some fingerprints or other d.a.m.ning evidence. Maybe- "Black!"

She wheeled around at the sound of her shouted name. It had come from O'Malley and when she faced him, she saw absolute rage in his eyes. She also saw that he was still holding his cell phone. She wondered what the call had been about.

He stalked toward hers, leaving the other three men behind. Duggan watched on, clearly quite interested. When O'Malley reached her, they were nearly standing nose-to-nose. He spoke quietly but with unmistakable fury.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I just got a call from Peggy Stiller. You know who that is?"

"I can't say that I do."

"She's one of the security administrators over at South Bay House of Corrections. She and I go way back to when she was a lowly secretary for the local PD. The last time you got busted going to see that psycho Howard Randall, I called in a favor. I asked her to let me know if you ever showed your face over there again to speak with him. And guess what little bit of news I just received?"

"Sir, I-"

"Please correct me if I'm wrong. But after last time, didn't I specifically ask you to stop a.s.sociating with Randall?"

"You did."

"So you agree that this would be considered insubordination, yes?"