“Do you have a full lab here?” Jack glanced around, wondering if he’d missed another door.
“No. I have a few pieces of equipment, but until our budget gets a little more healthy, I have to use the lab in Oklahoma City for most of my analysis. My chromatograph showed an alcohol-based chemical.”
“So, none of the darkroom chemicals were used to start the fire?”
“No. A photo fixer in Harris’s darkroom did contain glacial acetic acid, which is also highly flammable, but that isn’t our accelerant.”
“This is great. You’ve really made some progress.”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t have to start at the very beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen this before. Three times, in fact.”
“What? The lightbulb thing?”
“The alcohol-based solvent, the lightbulb plant, the timer.”
The little nerve on the side of his neck twitched, as it always did at any sign of danger. He narrowed his gaze. “What are you saying, August?”
She exhaled and reached up to release her ponytail, funneling her fingers through the reddish-gold fall of hair as it tumbled to her shoulders. The thick satiny curtain was an equal mix of gold and red, a true strawberry blonde.
“I’ve been working on three cases very similar to this. I think this is his fourth fire.”
Jack’s spine stiffened. “You’re saying we have a serial arsonist?”
“I think so.”
“There have been no other fire deaths,” he said bluntly. “I would’ve heard about that.”
“You’re right, but the other fires involved a janitorial supply store, a photography studio and a dental office.”
“All places with the same accelerant?”
“Yes. The first fire was about ten weeks ago, mid-July. The photography studio was torched in August and the dental office about a month ago. Our guy is a professional. He uses as little accelerant as possible and something that might be used in the course of cleaning any building. If this is the same guy, last night was the first time he’s killed.”
“Why now?” Jack drummed his fingers on the edge of her desk. “And why Harris Vaughn?”
“I have no idea.”
Her voice was even, but the glimmer of brightness in her eyes reminded him that the arsonist’s first victim was also her friend. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ve got to catch him.”
“We will.”
“I’m not sure if I’m—we’re—dealing with an emotional firesetter or a pathological one. Revenge, attention, concealment of a crime are all motives I’m considering. I’ve eliminated juveniles, who often start fires out of curiosity or vandalism. And of course, these fires didn’t start during a riot.”
“What about insurance fraud?”
“That’s also been ruled out. So far, I don’t find that any fire was set in order to conceal a crime, but the revenge and attention angles will take more digging.”
Jack nodded, surprised by a growing urge to offer some sort of comfort, a promise that went beyond his usual dedication. Since when had he even noticed anything about people besides how they fit into his investigation? “I got a call from Mayor Griffin.”
“I thought you might.”
“Since you know Mr. Vaughn was the mayor’s uncle, you probably also got the same…encouragement about solving this case.”
She nodded.
“A good start to that would be you answering my questions.”
For a heartbeat, raw pain stressed her features then it disappeared. “Oh, yes, go ahead.”
Jack swallowed the apology on the tip of his tongue. She wanted to get this slimeball as much as he did. Taking out his notebook, he flipped to a blank page. “How long did you know Mr. Vaughn?”
“Twenty years. He was a good friend of my grandfather’s.”
He searched her softly sculpted features. “So you knew Harris when he was the fire investigator?”
“Yes. He trained me. I apprenticed under him for two and a half years before he retired.”
“And you had dinner with him last night?”
She nodded.
“Did you do that often?”
“Lately, we’d done it once a week.”
“Lately? Does that mean the last month, the last year?”
“The last couple of months, I guess. Since the second serial fire. I was bouncing ideas off him about this arsonist.”
“What time did you meet for dinner last night?”
“Seven. We left the restaurant about a quarter to nine.”
“What restaurant was that?”
“Charlie’s Steakhouse.”
“Can anyone there vouch for you?”
“The waitress, I guess. Charlie, too. We always speak…spoke to Charlie.”
She didn’t react to her slip other than to swallow hard, but Jack felt an unfamiliar burn in his chest. Despite her willowy height, he remembered how wobbly she’d felt in his hold last night and wondered how she was really doing. She put on a good front. “Is there anyone who saw you after you left the restaurant?”
“I went to my gym for a swim and when I got home, I called a friend. Robin Daly.”
“Lieutenant Robin Daly, Presley P.D.?” Jack’s eyebrows arched.
“Yes.”
He jotted a note. Terra’s friendship with one of the best female cops on the Presley P.D. was something he hadn’t uncovered. “And then?”
“Another friend, Dr. Meredith Boren, called. We talked for about twenty minutes then I went to bed,” she said in a wooden voice. “My pager went off a little before 1:00 a.m. You know where I was after that.”
The crime scene. Discovering that the victim was her friend. She didn’t lose her composure, but he saw the bleakness in her eyes. Jack gave her a moment. “You said Harris was divorced.”
“For about six months now.”
“And were the two of you more than friends?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
Her jade gaze leveled into his, but her voice was tired, not angry. “Friends only, regardless of what you may have heard from Cecily.”
Jack felt an unexpected relief upon learning Terra hadn’t been romantically involved with the victim. “His ex-wife thought the two of you had something going on?”
“She thought Harris had something going on with a lot of women.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“There was no girlfriend at all, no other women?”
“He wasn’t ready. Besides, he loved Cecily, despite her jealousy. If she hadn’t been so obsessed, they would still be married. He just couldn’t live with it anymore.”
“With what?”
“She followed