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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Incident One
  7. Chapter Four
  8. Chapter Five
  9. Chapter Six
  10. Chapter Seven
  11. Chapter Eight
  12. Incident Two
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Incident Three
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Incident Four
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. Chapter Thirty-two
  39. Chapter Thirty-three
  40. Incident Five
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Chapter Forty-four
  52. Acknowledgments
  53. Special Thanks
  54. About the Author

“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! It is murder. God, that’s great!”

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

Chapter Twenty-two

Velvet

Two pimply teenaged boys in oversized pro football jackets were staring at her. Velvet pointed her shoulder at them and curled closer around the pay phone, wishing the wind would let up, wishing she had her day-glo blue jacket with the fake fur lining. Damn, that thing was warm.