Invisible Page 6

  Except for that smell.

  Burnt tar, melted plastic, and an undercurrent of something unidentifiable but clearly chemical, all bundled with the jarringly pleasant smell of damp, charred wood, like campfires in the autumn.

  “The fire primarily affected the back of the house, as you can see,” says Ressler. “The back bedroom was completely involved, as were the master bathroom and the hallway. The rest of the house suffered smoke damage, and of course everything is still damp from the fire suppression, even a week later.”

  I stop for a moment to take it all in. For all the research I’ve been doing, this is the first torched house I’ve been in since Marta’s. The house is completely different, of course, but it throws me back anyway. Marta’s was a typical Southwestern home: rounded entryways, lots of tile, and adobe-colored everything, with an open floor plan. This one is a more standard midwestern layout, with a living room, half bath, and kitchen on the first floor, two bedrooms and a full bath on the second floor.

  I pause at the base of the stairs to brace myself. The walls are blackened starting halfway up the stairs, in sharp angles and lines clearly defining the path of the flames before they were extinguished. The “char patterns,” as I learned at Marta’s house.

  I reach the landing and pause again. Closing my eyes, I can see the licking flames from my dreams—“angel fingers,” the firefighters call them—snaking across the ceiling. The boiling smoke ripples like the surface of the ocean just moments before the second story erupts in flashover, simultaneously igniting every flammable surface and turning the cozy home into a convection oven.

  Ressler continues, thankfully unaware of my moment of hesitation. “The point of origin was back here, in the master bedroom,” he says. “Now be careful, here—this fire burned really hot and fast, and didn’t make it through the floor joists, but I don’t want to discover structural damage by dropping an FBI agent through the floor.”

  He laughs, rapid-fire ha-ha-ha, to emphasize he’s kidding. I’m not sure he is.

  We get to the bedroom—Joelle’s bedroom, not Marta’s, I remind myself—and I suck in my breath. The bed, or what remains of it, is positioned directly across from the bedroom door. Not terribly unusual but not that common, either—but it’s like she and Marta read the same home design magazine and picked the same bedroom layout. And Marta’s room hadn’t been laid out that way the last time I’d visited her. She reorganized her room before she died. Or so I thought.

  Queen-size mattress with a bedside table on one side (or, at least, what remains of it). Overstuffed reading chair, no doubt once made of highly flammable polyurethane, with comfortable, equally flammable throw pillows and blankets, by the window. Ruined piles of wet ash that were probably piles of books.

  The ceiling is gaping open to the sky, where the firemen had vented the fire to prevent smoke explosions. It should be raining, I think. It rained for Marta, even in Arizona, even in January.

  The four of us begin our examination. Joelle’s body had been removed, of course, but we knew her remains were found among the ruins of the left side of the bed. The photos had shown her body curled into the characteristic burn-victim posture—legs bowing outward, wrists curled in, arms bent—caused, I knew, by the heating and drying of muscles and tendons as they pulled bones like postmortem marionettes.

  The char patterns, where they can be seen, show a narrow V shape right to the side of the window, ending near the floor amid the blackened remains of the desk Ressler had indicated was the origin point of the fire. The carpet is melted and burned nearly completely, though a few places in the farthest corners still show the original color.

  After two hours of scouring every inch of the room, the four of us smell like incinerators. There is absolutely no evidence of an accelerant, or of any intentional method of setting the fire that seems to have killed Ms. Swanson. Lieutenant Ressler and the Lisle Police Department had every reason to reach the conclusion they reached.

  But I’m surer than ever that this was the work of our subject.

  24

  “SO HERE’S what we know,” I say to my team, as we settle into a conference room at the FBI’s Chicago field office.

  “One: there was a candle, which likely was the point of origin, one way or another.

  “Two: the fire spread very quickly up the curtains and around the room until it reached the point of flashover, when everything in the room simultaneously combusted.

  “Three: there was an alarm system on the house, but it was not activated at the time of the fire.

  “Four: there was one window open in the spare bedroom across the hall from Joelle’s bedroom. It was eighty-two degrees at one-thirty a.m. the day of the fire, and her central air-conditioning was on. Her AC was on, but she left a window open.

  “Five: we were unable to locate any other candles in the house. Joelle does not seem to have been a big candle user.

  “Six: there is very little smoke staining on the unbroken windows or other glass surfaces, and the char patterns are consistent with a very hot and fast-burning fire. Those qualities are often indicative of a fire assisted by an accelerant. However, we found no evidence of accelerant near the origin of the fire, or anywhere else.

  “Seven: the ‘fire triangle.’ Fires need oxygen, fuel, and heat to burn. There were books spread around her room, many of them open, and papers on the floor. That’s fuel. A candle was left burning on a desk too close to a curtain—that’s heat. And a window was left open across the hall—that’s oxygen. And not only is that oxygen, but the path of the air being sucked in through that window would have ended on the wall directly opposite the door—which is the precise location of Ms. Swanson’s body on the bed. And, because the fire will burn hottest where it has ventilation, Ms. Swanson’s body was in the hottest-burning fire in the room, and was almost completely consumed in a relatively short period of time, including her skin, fat layers, and much of her muscle.

  “Eight: the DuPage County arson task force has not been called. This fire was determined to be accidental by the fire investigator, and they have no interest in reopening the case. There will be no autopsy performed unless we can convince someone that there is a reason to do so. Or unless we take over the investigation.

  “Nine: there are fifty-three other fires that share nearly all of these characteristics. With my limited means over the last several months, I haven’t been able to determine the positioning of the beds in each of the other fifty-three bedrooms, but I have obtained information on eighteen of them. And they are all…the…same.”

  I look at Books, piercing him with my eyes, so that he understands: including the one in Peoria.

  Sophie speaks up. “I think all of these people moving their bedroom furniture around into the same position and then burning to death would be a reason for some autopsies. Don’t you?”

  Maybe Sophie isn’t so bad after all. I’d like her even more if she gained thirty pounds and got some acne.

  “So we start right there,” says Books. “Let’s find out about the positioning of those beds in the bedrooms. Let’s finish the work Emmy started.”

  I nod at Books. “And time’s a-wastin’, folks,” I say. “Because two days from now is Labor Day. And if our subject keeps to form, that means he’s about to take his show on the road. And start killing two people a week.”

  25

  * * *

  “Graham Session”

  Recording # 7

  September 1, 2012

  * * *

  Good evening, class. Tonight, I won’t be taking questions from the audience. I want to say a few words about lying, a key ingredient in any respectable artist’s portfolio. Lies are fascinating because they expose the paradoxes of our society.

  What is a lie? It’s a distortion of reality, presented as reality. We say it’s a bad thing. We teach kids not to lie. We even put people in prison for lying. And yet there are lies all around us, and half the time we don’t even really try to disguise it.

/>   The TV commercial with the bubbly family ecstatically stuffing French fries and burgers in their mouths with the fun-loving clown looking on? We all know those are actors who are paid to play a fun-loving family. They’re not having fun. They probably had to reshoot that scene twenty times and they’re tired and nauseated and the last thing they want to do is stick another French fry in their mouths. And what about those thick, scrumptious burgers in the ad—are those the ones you get when you go to the restaurant? None of that’s real, and we know it but don’t care.

  Women wear clothes that hide their flaws. Men suck in their guts when those women walk by. Office workers turn the screen away from their game of solitaire when the boss strolls in. Lies, lies, lies.

  You’re taught not to call someone who’s fat fat, or someone who’s stupid stupid. That’s wrong, we tell our kids. Don’t tell the truth if it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings. Those lies are okay, too—desirable, in fact.

  I’m not complaining, mind you, just commenting. It gives me perspective. And that perspective is: embrace it! Because if everyone else is lying, then you better, too, or you’ll get caught in the crosscurrent, spinning and flailing. You don’t want to spin and flail, do you?

  As you can imagine, I’m a master liar. How else do I woo all these unsuspecting people into letting me into their lives, and usually their homes? Lying is easy, but being good at it is hard. Here is Graham’s Handbook on Lying:

  First: lie no more than you have to. Because for that duration of time you’re with a target—be it two hours or two weeks—you’re going to have to live with that lie. If you want to get close to a target who happens to be a smoker by saying you smoke, too—which works, by the way, there’s an unspoken brotherhood between all tobacco users—then you better be prepared to light up every few hours or so. What I do, when I use that ruse, is claim to be a former smoker, so of course I love to smoke and maybe just this once I’ll partake, so I can have the bonding experience with my target, but I have an excuse not to smoke again if I have to spend a longer time with the target.

  Second: be no more specific in your lie than is absolutely necessary. The vaguer you are, the more rope you give yourself.

  Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. This last guy, Curtis Valentine. I found him easily because he runs a website-design business out of his house in Champaign and he’s on Facebook, too. To get into his house, I told him two lies:

  1. I was starting a consulting business that needed a website; and

  2. I hired someone else first, but they scammed me and stole my money.

  I couldn’t have gotten a meeting with Curtis if I didn’t need his services, thus the consulting company. But I said I was starting one, instead of operating one already, so Curtis wouldn’t be suspicious if he looked up my company on the Internet and didn’t find anything.

  Why the second lie? Several reasons. Most website designers never meet their clients; they just communicate by phone and e-mail. But if I got burned once by a scammer, it would make sense that I’d want to see this guy’s operation for myself, to make sure he was the real deal. Also, it would allow me to appear reluctant when he asked me questions like, What kind of consulting will you be doing? That’s the last question I wanted to answer, because if I said I was a private detective or mechanical engineer, it might turn out that Curtis studied mechanical engineering in college, or his best friend or brother is a private eye, and then suddenly I’d have to actually know something about private detection or mechanical engineering. But with lie number two, I could just say, I’d rather not say until I’ve hired you. You know, because I’ve been burned once before, etc.

  I lied no more than I had to, and I locked myself down as little as possible. A couple beers at a bar, Curtis talking about how he can expand my business’s potential, me looking impressed but also gun-shy after being burned once, and next thing I know it’s his idea that we go to his house so I can see his operation firsthand.

  Any questions? Good. Class dismissed for now. But don’t go away—we have a lot of fun right around the corner!

  [END]

  26

  THE FBI building on Roosevelt Road in Chicago never really closes, because the FBI never really does, either. But it’s Labor Day, and after business hours at that, so the building is about as empty as it will ever get. The eighth floor, where our temporary digs are located, is positively barren.

  Our four-person team, believing as we do (or at least, as I do) that time is of the essence, has been doing its best to make progress, but we arrived on the Saturday of the three-day weekend and haven’t had a regular business day yet. Still, we’re trying to do the person-to-person stuff, calling local cops or county sheriffs in all the jurisdictions where our subject has killed, asking them to dust off the files on that “accidental” fire so they can tell us the position of the bed in the bedroom where the victim was found. Sometimes there are insurance company investigators involved, too, who often take more photographs than the cops because their money is at stake, so we’ll be tracking them down when normal business resumes tomorrow.

  The good news is that computers know no business hours, so Sophie and I, the research analysts, have been trying to work cross-references, looking for any number of things that might indicate a pattern. We know (as much as we can say we know anything at this point) that he chooses people who live alone and that each of these victims engages, to some extent, in social media, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever. But there has to be more. Something has to be connecting these people. Nobody acts completely at random.

  At seven o’clock, I get up to stretch my legs and peek into the office next to mine, where Books is stationed. “Thanks, Sheriff, that would be much appreciated,” he says, rolling his eyes when he sees me. “Call me anytime, day or night. You have a good night, too.”

  He hangs up and makes a face. He’s been making calls to the upper brass in the local jurisdictions, trying to persuade them to reopen their investigations or, at a bare minimum, conduct an autopsy on the body. The problem is that even if the FBI takes over the investigation from the locals, all of these victims have been buried, so an autopsy would first require us to petition the court for an order of exhumation.

  “He said he’d talk to the family about an exhumation,” he says to me.

  “You don’t need the family’s permission.”

  He nods. “But you start there, because you can avoid having to go to court if you get consent. Anyway, I think he’s just looking for a reason to turn us down.” He blows out a sigh. “Emmy, these departments have closed these cases, in some instances several months ago. If we want to get autopsies, we’re going to have to go into each jurisdiction’s local court to get the grave opened. And that assumes the local U.S. attorney is even willing to go to bat for us, which is no small thing.”

  “Then we’ll try.”

  “Right, but you know how long that’s going to take? A few weeks would be the minimum. Dickinson—he just hasn’t given us the manpower.”

  “Can you get more agents assigned?”

  “That’s the catch-twenty-two, lady.”

  “Right,” I agree. We can’t get more agents until we show him some hard proof. And we can’t get hard proof, any time soon, without more agents.

  And all the while, our subject just keeps on killing.

  Which is why I’m pinning so much on the two most recent deaths, Joelle Swanson in Lisle, Illinois, and the latest one, a man named Curtis Valentine in Champaign, Illinois. We haven’t been down to the Champaign site, but a detective down there with Champaign’s police department was kind enough to have a video done of the entire house and e-mail it to me. It was a single-family house, not a townhouse, but otherwise the death of Curtis Valentine bore a startling resemblance to that of Joelle Swanson—a fire that started in the bedroom; the victim found in that same bedroom; a candle as the likely source; char patterns and minimal smoke staining, indicating a fast-burning fire, yet no evi
dence of accelerant; the bed positioned directly opposite the bedroom door.

  God, our subject is smart. I have to admit, even I would think this looks accidental if I only knew of this one fire. None of these investigators know that this nearly exact same pattern has been taking place all around the country.

  “You look exhausted, Em,” he says.

  “I am.”

  “Let’s get everyone together and get something to eat at the hotel bar,” he says.

  I sigh. “I suppose if we get a change of scenery, we get away from phones and computers and just talk, maybe an idea shakes loose.”

  Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we need to take a breath and think big-picture, brainstorm. Maybe the trees are blocking us from seeing the forest.

  I look back at Books, who is smiling at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “The only way you’ll join us for dinner is if we agree to talk about the case, isn’t it?”

  I raise my hands. “Is there anything else to talk about?”

  He shrugs. “We could talk about the Chiefs,” he says. “They kick off this weekend.”

  Books is a die-hard football fan. It’s one of his only flaws.

  “Okay, fine.” Books raises his hands in surrender. “We’ll talk about the case. Maybe something will shake loose.”

  27

  OUR HUMBLE team hits the bistro located within the Chicago Marriott where we’re staying, a place called Rooks Corner that Books has been all excited about because they serve Chicago-area microbrews on tap. Books always liked to take in the local favorites when he traveled, which, as an FBI agent, was often.