Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Even quick, hot flare-ups can cause death from smoke inhalation. People killed in this way often appear unharmed. With higher temperatures or longer burn times, or both, the eyes and tongue swell and the skin blisters. Though disfigured, these DOAs may also remain visually recognizable.

Those are the best-case scenarios. Raise the heat or increase the length of exposure and death by fire is far more brutal.

This blaze had been a ballbuster. I feared we were facing the worst-case alternative.

While I was changing, Hickey had issued a general all-clear signal, so Thacker’s team had moved from their vehicle to the base of the front steps. I walked toward them, every neuron in my brain firing.

Imagining the people trapped in that building, I wondered about their last moments. Had the couple clung to each other for solace? Had the Canadian teen cowered alone in her room? Had the foreign national knelt to pray, terrified of dying far from his homeland?

Or had each made a wild dash to escape? Might all four have ended up in the same location? Finding no exit, had they huddled together in a place they hoped was protected?

My thoughts weren’t simply morbid speculation. A victim’s final actions are pertinent in the search for remains.

If the four had dispersed throughout the building, their bodies could be anywhere in the debris. Finding them would be the challenge. Had they died together, commingling could be an issue.

Commingling occurs when parts of one person break off and mix with parts of another. Heads detach and reposition. Arms entwine. Legs overlie torsos. Individuation can be a bitch when separate bodies have congealed into one amorphous mass of charred muscle and bone.

I also considered the legal implications of the task ahead.

Every fire triggers an investigation. Where was the origin? What was the spread pattern? What was the cause of ignition? Was the blaze accidental or intentionally set?

I knew from Sergeant Burgos that fatalities mandated activation of the Joint Arson Task Force. That the JATF consists of representatives from the DC Fire and EMS Fire Investigation Unit, the Metropolitan Police Arson and Explosives Unit, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And that a homicide detective might also get involved.

I also knew that this inquiry would go beyond the routine. Had the property been operating as an illegal Airbnb, its owners could be subject to criminal charges. That meant that painstaking evidence collection and scrupulous maintenance of chain of custody would be essential.

Looking around, I noticed that the crowd had grown. Was thankful for the police tape barricading both ends of the block.

A fire often triggers a media circus. Throw in deaths, and coverage can grow frenzied. We’ve all seen the footage. A bar pyrotechnic display gone wrong. A high-rise gas explosion. A post–plane crash inferno. All the pics fit to print. All the human tragedy capable of boosting viewership

Doyle’s coverage had already drawn public attention to the Foggy Bottom blaze and her rivals were now parking their vehicles by hers. FOX5. NBC4. WJLA. All local, nothing national.

A good fire also piques the morbid interest of Joe Q. Citizen. Despite the early hour, the usual nosey gawkers were gathering. A tall skinny man in a red tracksuit. A woman pushing toddlers in a stroller. A couple sipping coffee from Starbucks cups. A preteen on a scooter. The kid and the mom were holding smartphones above their heads and clicking away.

Nearing the ME team, I raised an arm in greeting. The shorter of the two gestured back.

“Temperance Brennan.”

I proffered a hand to the tech who’d returned my wave, a small man with haphazard dreads and skin the color of week-old tea.

“Jamar Delson.” We shook, with Jamar doing some fancy finger thing at the end. “Dr. Thacker said you was coming.”

Cocking his chin up and left, he said, “My pale pal here is Ace Bagget. He’s a bit slow but listens real good.”

Ace rolled his eyes. Which were so velvety brown they made me think of Bambi’s mother. Badly scarred skin bore witness to acne that must have made his teen years difficult.

Both men appeared to be in their late twenties. While Jamar topped out at about five-five, I put Ace at six feet minimum.

“Dr. Thacker said you two were crackerjack with burn vics,” I said, exaggerating a tad.

“Snap!” Jamar shot a bony finger my way.

Ace said nothing.

“I assume you’ve worked a few fires?”

“Does a goose shit every ten minutes?”

Assuming the question was rhetorical, and clueless about the answer, I offered no response.

“People lost their lives here,” I said. “The authorities, friends, relatives, insurers, lawyers, you name it, will all want to know why. And who. So, a critical first step in this investigation will be victim ID. The more of each corpse we recover, the easier that will be.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jamar over-nodded his agreement.

Ace started working a cuticle with his front teeth.

“This fire was a doozy,” I said. “I suspect the bodies will be in bad shape.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jamar repeated himself.

Ace said nothing. The cuticle was now red and raw.

“Captain Hickey has cleared us to enter the building. I’d like to begin by walking each room in a grid pattern.”

“We go in squarin’ and starin’,” Jamar said.

“Exactly. If you spot remains, stop and alert me.”

With that rather nebulous plan in mind, we donned the rest of our PPE, raised our N95 masks to our faces, and climbed to the front entrance, now sans door. Here and there, through the shattered cellar and first-floor windows, I saw gossamer wisps of smoke feathering up from the wreckage. And the occasional firefighter still probing it.

Picking our way through ash and chaotically piled rubble, carefully testing the placement of each booted foot, we took a quick tour. Confirmed that the building’s interior was as devastated as the damage to its exterior had suggested.

The roof’s eastern third had fallen in, taking with it significant portions of the inside walls on that side. As expected, sections of both upper floors had collapsed down onto each other. Much of that wreckage had then ended up in the basement.

On each level, metal fixtures, knobs, appliances, and hinged cabinet doors had warped and distorted. Porcelain sinks and commodes had cracked. Upholstery, carpeting, and drapes had been reduced to charcoal vestiges.

Every item in the house was darkened and covered with soot. The air coming through my mask reeked of the plastics, oils, chemicals, varnish, and paint recently consumed by the flames.

Having evaluated the situation, and sensing that these guys knew their way around a fire scene better than Thacker had let on, I suggested we split up. Jamar volunteered to search what remained of the upper floor. Ace took the second. I headed to the main level.

For more than an hour, the only sounds were the muted thudding of our footfalls, the soft tapping of our probes, the raspy crunching and scraping of displaced debris. Occasionally, one firefighter called out to another.

Then Jamar whistled.

Rising from a squat—a move decidedly unpopular with my ankles and knees—I gingerly worked my way up two flights of stairs. Thankful they were located in the less damaged western portion of the house.

Jamar was standing at the back of a charred shell that had probably been one of the jerry-rigged bedrooms. A singed mattress lay half-off a blackened bedframe. A metal rack leaned at an impossible angle against one wall, its rubber wheels melted, the hangers at its base twisted into grotesque shapes.

Seeing me, Jamar pointed at a slag-coated mound underlying the hangers. I crossed to him.

Typically, the scalp goes first in a fire. The human brain is roughly 75 percent water and fills most of the 1,200 to 1,700 cm of the cranial cavity. Deprived of its insulating helmet of hair and tissue, the skull’s outer surface heats up and its contents cook and expand. Pressure builds and eventually the cranium splits.

As the head is destroyed, the facial skin bubbles and crisps. The features melt, eliminating that external fa?ade by which we all recognize each other.

Further south, dehydration and protein denaturation lead to muscle shrinkage throughout the body. Since the bulkier flexors contract more than the extensors, fire victims frequently curl in on themselves, assuming the “boxer” or “pugilistic” pose.

Much of this had happened to the person lying at our feet. Oddly, his or her headgear, though singed, was largely intact.

Ignoring the warning emanating from my knees, I squatted for a closer look. The hat was a baseball cap, with a red, white, and black patch above the bill. A pair of stars on the white stripe suggested the emblem might be a flag.

It was impossible to guess the victim’s gender, or the nature of the rest of his or her clothing. All other fabric had been reduced to a crumbly black residue adhering to the scorched flesh.

Unfolding to upright, I said to Jamar, “Good eye.”

“Poor bastard.” He crossed himself with one gloved hand.

“The body looks fragile. What’s your plan?”

“First, I troll through the rubbish above and around him, bagging and tagging every friggin’ thing.”

“Recording detailed notes and taking pics,” I said.

Jamar looked at me as though I’d suggested babies need feeding.

“Then I get Ace up here and we slide a stretcher under the guy’s ass. If that don’t work, we use plastic sheeting and plywood to get him onto a gurney.”

“Yo.”

As one, we swiveled.

“Found a stiff.” Ace was standing in the hall. “Maybe two.”

We descended single-file down one floor into what looked like another small bedroom. Ace’s “stiff” was wedged into a back corner, behind the gutted frame of an overturned dresser. Cranial fragments stood out pale against the backdrop of flame-darkened wood.

I counted at least six limbs, each now a charred and desiccated cylinder. The lower torsos and thighs, composed of solid, heavy bones encased in thick muscle masses, had congealed into one shapeless glob.

As with the third-floor victim, the body parts having little or no flesh exhibited the most damage—the fingers and hands, the toes and feet. The few surviving digits had been reduced to clawlike hooks.

Four melted sneakers. Two scorched zippers suggesting more than one pair of jeans. I suspected we’d found the couple.

After discussing strategy, I left retrieval to Jamar and Ace and returned to the main level. Spent another hour searching the rubble. Found zilch. Assured several skeptical firefighters that I was doing just fine.

Since a large portion of the parlor floor had fallen into the basement, I proceeded to that level. The air was danker, the light gloomier, but little else differed.

Except that I scored body number four.

The remains resembled those we’d found on the upper floors. The features were toast, and only a hard blackened mask covered the underlying facial bones. But this corpse featured one added twist.

As flames heat a torso, the internal organs and intestines expand, and the viscera may burst through the abdominal wall. Here the full sequelae had played out in all its gory splendor.

Not wanting to slow the recoveries taking place above, I opened my kit and began this one on my own. Had taken pics and was shooting video when I heard boots clumping the stairs behind me.

Thinking it was Jamar or Ace, I lowered my camera and turned.

Hickey stood halfway down the treads, a shaft of dirty gray light casting shadows across his features and sparking the neon strips on his turnout suit.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” The baritone voice boomed loud in the small, enclosed space. “How goes it down here?”

“Good. How goes it up there?”

“Good.”

I gestured at the subject of my photography. “All four vics are now accounted for.”

“Impressive.”

“Thanks.”

A moment of awkward silence. Hickey broke it.

“I’m about to release most of my crew. Before I give the word, I’d like to walk the cellar, make sure there’s nothing below ground that might still go hot.”

“You won’t disturb me.”

“I’ll be quiet as a mouse.” Finger pressed to his lips.

I smiled and gave a thumbs-up.

Jesus. Were we flirting?

Returning my gesture, and smile, Hickey stepped onto the cellar floor and set off to his right, here and there kicking at heaped debris or lifting an object with the toe of his boot.

I idly followed his progress.

Until the man suddenly vanished.