"Maybe so it didn't throw the circuit breaker?"
"In a joint like this, yeah, maybe. A heat gun's probably about the same voltage as a blow-dryer. One-twenty, one-
twenty-five. And a blow-dryer would probably knock out the
lights in a dump like this."
I move over to the dresser and look at the Bible. It is open to the sixth and seventh chapters of Ecclesiastes, and the ex- posed pages are sooty, the area of dresser under the Bible spared, indicating this was the position the Bible was in when the fire started. The question is whether the Bible was open like this before the victim checked in, or does it even belong with the room, for that matter? My eyes wander down lines and stop at the first verse of the seventh chapter. A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth. I read it to Marino. I tell him that this section of Ecclesiastes is about vanity.
"Kind of fits with the queer thing, don't it?" he comments as aluminum scrapes outside and Kiffin returns with a rush of wintry air. Marino takes a paint-spattered, bent ladder from her and opens the legs. He climbs up and shines the flashlight on the bolts. "Damn, I think I need new glasses. I can't see nothing," he says as I hold the ladder steady.
"Want me to look?" I offer.
"Help yourself." He climbs back down.
I take a small magnifying lens from my satchel and up I go. He hands me the light and I examine the eyebolts. I can't see any fibers. If there are any, we are not going to have any luck collecting them here. The problem is how to preserve one type of evidence without ruining another, and there are three possible types of evidence that might be associated with the eyebolts: fingerprints, fibers and tool marks. If we dust off soot to look for latents, we might lose fibers that could match the ligature that might have been threaded through the eye-bolts, which we also can't unscrew without risking the introduction of new tool marks, assuming we use a tool such as pliers. The biggest threat is inadvertently eradicating any possible prints. In fact, the conditions and lighting are so bad that we shouldn't be examining anything here, really. I get an idea. "If you can hand me a couple baggies," I tell Marino. "And tape."
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."
"Hey," Marino quips to her above the noise of sawing, "you'll probably get business from the publicity."
She gives him a black look. "Those types can just stay the hell away."
FROM THE PHOTOGRAPHS STANFIELD SHOWED ME, I
recognize the area of wall where the body was propped up and I get the general idea where the clothing was found. I imagine the victim nude on the bed, his arms strung up by rope threaded through the eyebolts. He might be kneeling or even sitting_only partially hoisted up. But the crucifixion position and gag would impair his breathing. He is panting, fighting for breath, his heart palpitating furiously in panic and pain as he watches someone plug in the heat gun, as he hears air blow out when the trigger is pulled. I have never related to the human desire to torture. I know the dynamics, that it is all about control, the ultimate abuse of power. But I can't comprehend deriving satisfaction, vindication and certainly not sexual pleasure out of causing any living creature pain.
My central nervous system spikes and surges, my pulse pounds. I am sweating beneath my coat even though it is cold enough inside the room to see our breath. "Mrs. Kiffin," I say as Marino strokes the saw, "five days_a business special? This time of year?" I pause as confusion dances across her face. She is not inside my mind. She does not see what I see. She can't begin to imagine the horror I am reconstructing as I stand inside this cheap motel with its secondhand prison mattresses. "Why would he check in for five days the week of Christmas?" I want to know. "Did he say anything at all that might have given you a hint as to why he was here, what he was doing, where he was from? Aside from your observation that he didn't sound local?"