Page 57 of Slow Burn

“Got another one,” she said. “Pastor at a church in Louisiana. No connection to the other cases, except that the majority of them seemed to be centered in the south and southwest. I’m sending Mrs. Womack and Mendoza down to do data collection.”

Grady pulled the papers closer and skimmed through the report, settled on the pictures. The upper half of the face was almost normal, except for the boiled-egg eyes. Whoever had tried to save him had gotten to him quickly. Even so, the tissue damage was incredible. It was impossible to tell what in the red and black mess was clothing, what was skin, what was muscle.

“I want to go,” he said. When she didn’t answer, he looked up at her. “Ineedto go.”

“My people can handle things.”

“I’m not disputing that, but—”

“Mrs. Womack?” Carling interrupted. He’d forgotten all about the older woman, who still sat in the back of the room, hands neatly folded on her lap. Mrs. Womack fussed with her floral skirt, picking invisible lint from it. “Your opinion?”

“Ma’am, I’m just an employee.” Mrs. Womack shot him a look that was nakedly ungrandmotherly. “However, if this nice young man insists on acting like a Junior G-man, I’ll cheerfully shoot him in the back. I don’t need your help, son. Tust do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

After a long chilly silence, Grady managed to clear his throat and nod.

“Lovely. Now, dear, Mendoza and I will need a few things from storage. I trust that’s all right?”

“Perfectly,” Carling agreed, and opened a desk drawer. She passed over a card key. “Try to get the body transferred to Quantico, or, failing that, get the forensic reports and get me some tissue and blood samples. Anything else, Martin?”

“Uh—yes, his clothes. I’ll need to see test results on those. Also, local water samples.”

“He was in a baptismal tank,” Mrs. Womack reminded him. “I think they’ve drained it, but I’ll see what I can find.”

She bustled out, shutting the door behind her. Grady looked at the photos again, flipped through the narrative reports.

“What are we missing?” he asked. On the other side of the desk, Carling shrugged and played with a Mont Blanc pen. “It’s not random,” he added. “If it were random, we’d have female victims.”

“Unless women simply are immune to it somehow.”

“That doesn’t fit with the standard pattern of spontaneous human combustion. The typical SHC victims are usually women, usually over forty, and the cases occur during the late evening and early morning. These have almost exclusively been daytime occurrences. Public.”

“Strikes a little more terror that way, doesn’t it?” Carling asked. He gave her a disgusted look. “Oh, come on, Marty. You said yourself, it isn’t random. And it doesn’t follow established patterns, if you believe in that sort of thing. So what do we have left?Human agency.Deliberate murder.”

He continued to study the picture of Pastor Zeke Clayburn, mouth open in a rictus of horror. Nearly normal down to his nose, charred meat from mouth to waist.

His white Sansabelt slacks looked sooty but intact. No burning of the legs and pelvic region.

“Files,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “The El Paso file. Where is it?”

Carling dug in a desk drawer and passed him another red folder. He pulled the picture and stared at the mashed charred corpse. The feet looked intact in battered running shoes. Other than that, he was a mess.

“Clayburn was in a baptismal tank,” he said. Carling came around the desk to examine the photos side by side. “No combustion below his waist. I’ll bet he was sopping wet.”

“So?”

“So if the water’s making them burn, why would it keep him from burning below the waist?”

Carling met his eyes.

Grady sat back, photos still held at eye level, and shook his head.

“The water’s safe. My god, the water’s safe! Itismurder. God, that’s great!”

Carling leaned over and kissed him, a chaste gentle peaceful kiss. “I like to think so.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Velvet

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