“Jerri,” I said, and I was out of breath. “I hate to disturb you but I’ve got something I think you’ll want to look at.”

I held up the pink swimming cap. Her reaction was completely blank.

“Silicone,” I said.

Her eyes lit up.

“Wow! A swimming cap? Boy howdy. Who would have thought that?” she said. “Just goes to show you, there’s too much to keep up with these days.”

“Can we burn it?” I asked.

“This has got to run for a while anyway. Come on. Now you’ve got me curious, too.”

The actual trace evidence labs, where evidence was processed before it was routed through complicated instruments such as the SEM and mass spectrometer, was spacious but already running out of room. Scores of airtight aluminum paint cans used in the collection of fire debris and flammable residues were in pyramids on shelves, and there were big jars of granular blue Drierite, and petri dishes, beakers, charcoal tubes, and the usual brown paper bags of evidence. The test I had in mind was easy and quick.

The muffle furnace was in a corner and looked rather much like a small beige ceramic crematorium, the size of a hotel mini-bar, to be exact, that could heat up to as much as twenty-five-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. She turned it on, and a gauge very soon began registering its warming up. Jerri placed the cap inside a white porcelain dish not so different from a cereal bowl, and opened a drawer to get out a thick asbestos glove that would protect her up to her elbow. She stood poised with tongs while the temperature crept to a hundred degrees. At two hundred and fifty, she checked on our cap. It wasn’t the least bit affected.

“I can tell you right now that at this temperature latex and Lycra would be smoking up a storm and beginning to melt,” Jerri let me know. “But this stuff’s not even getting tacky yet and the color hasn’t changed.”

The silicone cap did not begin to smoke until five hundred degrees. At seven hundred and fifty, it was turning gray at the edges. It was getting tacky and beginning to melt. At not quite one thousand degrees, it was flaming and Jerri had to find a thicker glove.

“This is amazing,” Jerri said.

“Guess we can see why silicone’s used for insulation,” I marveled, too.

“Better stand back.”

“Don’t worry.”

I moved far out of harm’s way as she pulled the bowl forward with tongs and carried our flaming experiment in her asbestos-covered hand. The exposure to fresh air fueled the fire more, and by the time she had placed it under a chemical hood and turned on the exhaust, the outer surface of the cap was blazing out of control, forcing Jerri to cover it with a lid.