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“Like a bunch of teenagers smashing car windows or spray painting graffiti on street signs or billboards?” Lucy asked, and Xander nodded. Having just moved to Intelligence from a few years as a patrol cop, if anyone knew what vandalism looked like, it was Xander.
“Exactly. But this guy operates solo, and he had gas cans with him, which suggests that he planned this to some extent—albeit maybe not on your SUV in particular. It was alone in the lot, which gave him good cover. It still could have been a crime of opportunity.”
“Still, he’s smart,” Garza added. “He knew where the cameras were, and how to avoid them. Again, it doesn’t mean he targeted you, specifically, Lucy. But he sure looks like he’d scoped out the spot before doing the deed, and setting fire to vehicles like thisisa bit more aggressive than most vandals get. So, it’s a bit of an odd case.”
Yeah. Time to cut to the fucking chase. “That’s interesting, and all, but how do we nail the son of a bitch?” Sam asked.
The detectives all blinked, and fine. Maybe he’d stuck a little more steel to his tone than he’d intended. But come on. Whoever he was, this guy couldn’t just go around torching other people’s vehicles and putting them in danger,orscaring the hell out of them, like he’d done to Lucy.
Capelli rebounded first. “A valid question, although maybe a little, ah…”
“Blunt?” Maxwell supplied.
“Protective,” Hale corrected with an all-too-knowing grin.
“I was going to say emphatic,” Capelli said. “Unfortunately, the answer is that making a positive ID and then finding him to make an arrest based on what we have is going to be difficult. He doesn’t appear in any security cam footage from the surrounding buildings, and even though he exits the scene heading east, we have no way of knowing where he ultimately went. Without a way to ID him or find a current location…”
Lucy filled in the blank. “You’re at a dead end.”
“For now,” Sinclair said, and Sam bit his tongue so he wouldn’t scream in frustration. “But the Criminal Investigation Unit is handling the other cases. We’ll keep investigating, and work closely with them as we do. There’s a very good possibility that they’re all related, and because of your SUV’s monetary value, last night’s fire moved past vandalism into destruction of property.”
“Which makes it a felony,” Isabella put in, and okay, at least that was decent news.
“So, please, be rest assured that we’re taking it seriously even though we don’t have much to go on yet,” Sinclair finished. “We’ll loop Nat in, too, just in case she’s got an angle we’re not aware of.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, resigned but not defeated. “Thank you. I know you’ve done all you can with what you have so far.”
“He may be good,” Maxwell said, sending a high-level frown at the screen. “But we’re better. We’ll do everything we can to get this guy.”
A thought crossed Sam’s mind, not for the first time. “Do you think there might be a connection between these vandalism-by-fire cases and the warehouse fire?
If the looks on all the detectives’ faces were anything to go by, it was a possibility they’d already considered.
“They could be related,” Hale said, “in theory.”
Capelli cleared his throat. “In order to see the parallels and differences between each vandalism fire, including last night’s, and the warehouse fire, I made a quick spreadsheet.” A string of color-coded text blocks appeared on one, two—Jesus, three—of the six screens on the array over Capelli’s desk, and Sam’s head immediately rejected the content as a complete overload.Focus. Focus,he commanded himself.
“That is a lot of information,” Lucy said, her elbow brushing against Sam’s arm ever so slightly as she shifted her weight beside him. In any other situation, with any other person, Sam would swear it had been accidental. For Chrissake, the contact had barely been there. Yet that simple brush, that lightning-fast reminder that she was right there next to him and that she was overwhelmed, too, anchored Sam in the moment. It didn’t allow him to focus more—that was something only medication could really do—but it did allow him to breathe. To soothe the edge off the anxiety he felt when he couldn’t focus. He had no idea if she even knew she was doing it. But having Lucy close, knowing she somehow understood what he needed, that he inexplicably neededher,made things closer to okay.
“It’s less than we’d like,” Capelli said. “There have been four fires total. Two vehicles and two small structures—one a shed and the other a single-bay offset garage.” Images of each appeared on the screen, allowing Sam to visualize each crime.
“Okay,” Lucy said, taking a step toward the array to examine each photograph closely. “Do they have anything in common?”
Capelli pushed his glasses over the bridge of his nose before looking at Lucy, deadpan. “I’m assuming you mean other than the fact that they were all burned to the ground?”
Thankfully, Lucy knew Capelli well enough to smile at this rather than get frustrated. The guy was so freaking literal. “Yes, Capelli. Other than that.”
“Possibly. The cause of the two structure fires was inconclusive, but assumed to be accidental, since both were abandoned buildings in parts of North Point with higher populations of houseless individuals.”
“So, squatters could’ve caused either, or both,” Lucy said.
“Exactly.” Capelli nodded. “Or the fires could’ve been set via negligence, or even purposely, but we don’t have any way of really knowing. We could send a tech team from arson over to test the sites for accelerant, but it’s been nearly a month since the first one happened, three weeks since the second. Considering the scenes haven’t been protected—from other people or the elements—well, I won’t bore you with the actual statistics, but let’s just say it’s highly improbable that we’d find anything useful there.”
“And if we did, wouldn’t it probably be something common, like gasoline or kerosene?” Sam asked. “Not anything we can trace or definitively link to the same person.”
Isabella nodded. “The chances are good that’s accurate.”
“But wait,” Lucy said, her forehead creased in thought. She pointed to the images, each one showing significant fire damage, piles of ash and black scorch marks filling every screen. “Thatisa commonality. I mean, I know it’s not terribly unique, and we can’t use it to trace these fires to anyone based off of it. But it’ssomethingthey’ve all got in common with the warehouse fire, right?”
