"Dr. Bloom. He's local." Burnette met Mia's eyes directly. "Tell me," he said in a low voice. "Did he…?"

Mia hesitated. "We don't know."

He looked away, cocking his jaw. "I understand," he bit out.

Mia leaned forward, snagging his attention again. "No, Sergeant. I mean we really don't know. I wouldn't lie to you."

"Thank you." She'd started to move away when he caught her arm hard and it was all she could do not to flinch in pain. But she didn't, shaken when his eyes filled with tears. "Find the bastard who did this to my baby girl," he whispered, then let her go.

Mia straightened, her shoulder burning like a live flame. "We will." She slid one of her cards across the counter. "If you need me, my cell phone number is written on the back. I'd appreciate it if you didn't let Caitlin's friends know that anything's happened."

"I know the drill, Detective," he said between his teeth. "Just get her released as fast as you can so we…" His voice broke. "So we can bury our child."

"I'll do everything I can. We can see ourselves out." She waited until she was in Solliday's SUV before hissing out a breath of pain. "Goddammit, that hurt."

"I have some Advil in the glove compartment," Solliday said.

Mia moved her arm and winced at the fire that raced up into her shoulder. "I think I'll accept." She found the bottle and dry swallowed two pills. "My stomach's going to hate me later, but my arm thanks you now."

One side of his mouth lifted. "You're welcome."

"I hate these visits. Their kids are never screwed up, never in any trouble."

"I think it's worse when they're cops," Solliday observed.

"That's the truth." It came out more fervently than she'd intended.

He glanced over at her before pulling into traffic. "Personal experience?"

If she didn't tell him, he'd ask around. "My father was a cop."

He lifted a brow, looking like Satan again. "I see. He's retired?"

"He's dead," Mia said. "And before you go asking around, he died three weeks ago."

He nodded, his eyes glued to the road. "I see."

No, you don't. But she wouldn't argue. "Cops' kids go astray, like everybody else's."

"Did you?"

"What, go astray? No, I didn't." And that's all he needed to know. She looked through her notes. "This could have been random. Somebody could have broken in to rob the Doughertys and found Caitlin there feeding the cat."

"She wasn't feeding the cat." He glanced over at her before returning his eyes to the road. "I didn't want to say anything to Burnette, but I found pages of a statistics book in the Doughertys' spare bedroom. I think she went there to study."

Mia considered the compassionate restraint he'd shown with the parents. "The Burnettes don't need to know that," she agreed. "That they fought over grades and that she was there to study would be salt in their wound. Let's go to the Doughertys' now. CSU should be there already."

Monday, November 27, 11:45 a.m.

A CSU guy met them at the Doughertys" curb as they got out of the SUV his face breaking into a grin. "Mia. I'm glad you're back."

She smiled with true pleasure. "I'm glad to be back, Jack. This is Lieutenant Reed Solliday." She looked up at Reed. "This is Sergeant Jack Unger, CSU. He's the best."

"I heard you give a lecture last year," Reed said, shaking the man's hand. "Use of new analytical methods in detecting accelerants. Good stuff."

"Glad you got something out of it. Lieutenant, I already have my team inside, working with your guys. They're grid-ding off the front hall and the living room."

"Give me a minute to change into my boots." Mitchell and Unger inspected the front of the house while Reed concentrated on not fumbling the clasps on his boots. His fingers always got clumsier when he was in a hurry. He joined them at the front door and led them into the kitchen. "We found the body right here." He pointed to the far wall.

She looked up at the damaged ceiling. "The master bedroom's up there?"

"Yeah. It's one of the three points of origin. The kitchen here was the main one."

Her brows furrowed. "But you think she was in the spare bedroom studying. On the other side of the house. Tell me the time line of the fire from start to finish again."

"The neighbors reported an explosion about midnight and called 911. That would have been the kitchen. The first company arrived three minutes later and found flames engulfing this whole side of the house, top to bottom. There was a smaller fire in the living room on the other side. They charged a line and hit the blaze just inside the front door. The kitchen ceiling came down shortly after the fire department arrived and the chief pulled the firefighters out of the house I got here at 12:52. They'd knocked it back by then. They shut off the gas line to the house when they arrived, so there wasn't any more fuel for the fire in the kitchen."

"Heat, fuel, oxygen," Mitchell murmured. "Good old fire triangle."

"Eliminate one and you can knock down the fire," Reed agreed.

Unger looked at the wall with a frown. "The 'V pattern's narrow. Like it ran straight up fast until it hit about five feet high. Then everything's black the rest of the way up."

"The valve to the gas line was removed. He started a leak, waited for gas to build up, then left a device to get the fire started. The room exploded when the flame reached the gas, which rises. He ran a line of accelerant up the wall to make sure it did."

"What did he use to start it?" she asked.

"The lab's doing an analysis for the exact structure, but it was a solid accelerant, probably in the nitrate family. Mode of delivery was a plastic egg."

Mitchell's blond brows went up. "Like an Easter egg?"

"No, bigger. Like the eggs panty hose used to come in. He probably mixed the nitrate with guar gum so it would cling to the wall. When the solid ignited, it would have burned straight up. That's why you see the narrow 'V. But it also exploded out, which took care of everything below the gas line. Most likely he drilled a hole in the egg, filled it with the mixture, and ran the fuse. He wouldn't have had much time to get away. Probably no more than ten or fifteen seconds."

"He likes life on the edge, then," she said. "How did he get in the house?"

"Through the back door," Reed answered. "We took pictures of the lock, but we didn't touch it to get prints."

She looked up with a frown. "Why not?"

"I was afraid it was a homicide yesterday. I didn't want some judge throwing out our evidence because it was collected under an arson warrant."

She looked reluctantly impressed. "Did you get prints. Jack?"

"Yeah, but I'm betting they don't belong to our guy. If he was smart enough to pull all this together, he was smart enough to wear gloves. Although we could get lucky."

"Can you check for shoe prints?" she asked Unger. "Although the rain's probably destroyed any chance of that. Dammit."

"We got a number of shoe prints," Reed said, "most of them from firefighters' boots, but there were a few that weren't. We made plaster casts of those yesterday."

Again she looked reluctantly impressed. "They're at the lab?"

"Along with the egg fragments. They're checking for prints on those, too."

She crouched next to where they'd found the body. "Jack, let's get samples here."

Reed crouched next to her, so close he picked up a lighter, much more pleasant scent than the smell of charred wood that hung over the room. She smelled like lemons. "I took samples around the area we found her. We found traces of gasoline."

She frowned, troubled. "He doused her with gasoline. That's why her body burned so hot the fibers of her shirt melted onto her skin."