Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

He hands me two small, transparent plastic bags. I slip one over each eyebolt and carefully wrap tape around the top of the bag, careful not to touch any part of the bolt or the ceiling. I climb back down while Marino opens his tool box. “Hate to do this to you,” he says to Kiffin, who hovers outside the door.

hands deep in her pockets, trying to keep warm. “But I’m gonna have to cut out part of the ceiling.”

“Like that’s gonna make much difference at this point,” she says in a voice of resignation, or is it indifference I detect? “May as well,” she adds.

I am still wondering why the fire only smoldered. This has really got me stuck. I ask Kiffin what type of linens and mat­tress cover were on the bed.

“Well, they were green.” She seems sure of herself on this point. “The bedspread was dark green, sort of like the color the doors are painted. Not that we know what happened to the linens. The sheets were white.”

“Do you have any idea what they were made of?” I ask.

“I’m pretty sure the bedspreads are polyester.”

Polyester is so combustible that I try to remember never to wear synthetic materials when I fly. If we have a crash landing and there is a fire, the last thing I want against my flesh is polyester. I may as well douse myself with gasoline. If a poly­ester bedspread had been on the bed when the fire was set, more than likely the entire room would have gone up in flames, and quickly. “Where did you get the mattresses?” I ask her.

She hesitates. She doesn’t want to te’l me. “Well,” she fi­nally gets around to what I believe is the truth, “new ones are awfully expensive. I get secondhand ones when I can.”

“From where?”

“Well, from that prison they closed down in Richmond a few years back,” she tells me.

“Spring Street?”

“That’s right. Now, I didn’t get anything that I wouldn’t sleep on myself.” She defends her choice in fine bedding. “Got the newest ones from them.”

This might explain why the mattress only smoldered and never really caught fire. In hospitals and prisons, mattresses are treated heavily with flame retardants. This also suggests that whoever set the fire wouldn’t have had any reason to know he was trying to burn a mattress specially treated with flame retardants. And of course, common sense would have it that this person also did not hang around long enough to know that the fire went out on its own. “Mrs. Kiffin,” I say, “is there a Bible in every room?”

“The one thing folks don’t steal.” She avoids my question, taking on a suspicious tone of voice again.

“Do you know why this one in here is open to Ecclesi-astes?”

“Now I don’t go around opening them. I just leave them on the dresser. I didn’t open it.” She hesitates, then announces, “He must have been murdered or everybody wouldn’t be go­ing to all this trouble.”

“We have to look into every possibility,” Marino remarks as he climbs back up the ladder, a small hacksaw in hand that is helpful at scenes like this because the teeth are hardened and aren’t angled. They can cut elements in situ, or in place, such as trim molding, baseboard, pipes or, in this instance, joists.

“Business has been hard,” Mrs. Kiffin says. “I’m on my own because my husband’s on the road all the time.”

“What does your husband do?” I inquire.

“A truck driver for Overland Transfer.”

Marino begins popping out drywall tiles from the ceiling around the ones the eyebolts are screwed through.

“I don’t imagine he’s home much,” I say.

Her lower lip trembles almost imperceptibly and her eyes brighten with pain. “I don’t need a murder. Oh Lord, it’s going to hurt me bad.”

“Doc, you mind holding the light for me?” Marino doesn’t respond to her sudden need for sympathy.

“Murder hurts many people.” I train the flashlight on the ceiling, my good arm steadying the ladder again. “That’s a sad, unfair fact, Mrs. Kiffin.”

Marino starts sawing, wood dust drifting down.

“I’ve never had anybody die here,” she whines some more. “Not much worse can happen to a place.”