Brent Smith trudged up to the burnt remains of the abandoned house. As he ducked under the yellow caution tape he let his gaze fall upon the recently smoldering remains. The house looked like the skeleton of a once magnificent creature, reduced to bones. Its burnt exterior still exuded the smell of smoke even after having been thoroughly doused in high-pressure water. He grimaced and turned away from the property and instead towards one of his subordinates.
“Detective Tremai, what was so urgent you needed me over here at a crime scene?” Brent questioned the detective
“Lieutenant Smith! Glad you could make it! As for why…” The detective's mouth curled down in a grimace as he looked at the burned-down house. “Well, there are a couple of things that I thought you would appreciate knowing as soon as possible. You should follow me.”
Brent gave a nod of assent and followed behind the detective. He only had to walk a short distance before he noticed the first oddity. Sucking in a gasp of air the Lieutenant let out a whisper.
“Well fuck me in the ass, that was definitely not an accidental fire.”
“No sir, no it was not.” came the response from Detective Tremai. In front of Brent sat an organized cradle of furniture deliberately placed to maximize airflow to a fire in the middle.
“Well, at least we don’t have to wonder if this is arson now,” Brent said with faux optimism. The man beside him let a weak chuckle escape his lips before his boss continued. “So this has to be a professional, that is too organized for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.” suddenly he cleared his throat and called “SIMSON TELL THE CSI GUYS TO LOOK FOR PREVIOUS FIRES!” before rapidly dropping his town and remarking to Tremai. “We got to hope this was done to conceal something and not a pyro as morbid as that sounds. Crime concealments usually only happen once, with a hot head this could happen again.” Brent finished
Tremai grunted before saying. “Yeah, the pyre over there is pretty important, but it's what the arson guys found that you can’t see that's even bigger. See the guys were looking for accelerants cause there's some weird patterns.'' The detective walked Bent over and began to point at points on the ground that were significantly less burned than the flooring around it. “This is a line of relatively unburnt area that's almost perfectly smooth, exactly 5’4 in diameter, but around that the ground is evenly scorched, and against this wall, well the wall proves that for itself.” He was pointing at a wall near the front door, on the wall there was a handprint, it was too burnt to get a print off of but still clearly visible against the coal-black wall.
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“See the boys couldn't find anything.”
“What do you mean? You just showed me severe oddities?” Brent questioned.
“That's exactly the problem, there is no trace of accelerates or decelerates anywhere, and yet there’s these clear paths through the fire! There isn’t a single drip or splat mark. It's got the CSI types real confused.`` Tremai finished explaining with a frustrated tone
“Well double fuck, that's ain’t good.” Tremai looked up in confusion at the lieutenants' outburst. Only to find that his boss's eyes were fixed on something at the center of the rose pyre. Right at the center was an orange flickering dot. “Treami, you know if they ever cut the gas here?” Crouching down to look at the fire, he almost didn’t hear the response to the negative. Brent pushed aside some burnt splinters and looked down at where the fire was coming from before almost keeling over from an ice pick of a headache.
The nearby detective rushed over to help the Lieutenant to his feet but before he could ask the older man if he was okay said man pushed off of the detective and started staggering away from the pyre shouting over his shoulder “QUICKLY, EVACUATE THE SCENE AND SURROUNDING HOUSES THIS THINGS GONNA BLOW!”
Brent staggered from the remains of the house and began barking orders to evacuate the area because of a gas leak. The surrounding officers quickly jumped to attention and began the move everyone away from the house. It wasn’t until an hour later when people were starting to question the voracity of the gas leak did the fire reached the gas reservoir that had been building beneath the house. The news stations were just finishing up recording the story on the house before the remains suddenly erupted into the air with a thunderous roar, dirt and debris soaring into the air and landing just yards from the barrier the police had set up. A veritable mushroom cloud spread into the air as firefighters hurried to clean up the new fire.
,,’\_/’,,
Brent Smith collapsed into his office chair sorting through his thoughts. He rubbed at his temples as he began to look at the reports coming in from officers at the scene, the gist of it though was that all evidence not collected before the evacuation was destroyed, and what they did have was pretty much nothing, just that some unknown untraceable substance was used at the scene, and that it was probably to conceal another crime. But those thoughts were not what took up the most of his brain power. No, his mind was on the headache he got at the house.
Memories blasted through his mind, he hadn’t fully comprehended them at the time, but now, he knew what he had seen. Knowing had not made him less confused if anything he was more confused. After all, how do you rationalize seeing the future to yourself?