“I needed to confirm it was the origin.”
Malostic sneezes, pulls a Kleenex from his pocket, blows his nose. “You really shouldn’t touch anything,” he says, shaking his head. “There might have been some residue in the pan we could have analysed. Next time, just wait. Or bring a metal detector.”
Berton and I exchange glances. “Good point,” says Berton. “We’ll add one to our kit.”
Malostic nods, looks vindicated. “So, why did he start it here?”
“He used the brush pile to assure ignition,” says Berton, staring at the crater and rubbing his chin. Berton is short, balding, trim and tidy. With his glasses, he looks like a high school math teacher. But he’s been on more fires than I’ll ever see.“He probably used an accelerant like diesel to start the pile. Once the heavy slash in the pile was burning, it threw embers into the block and ignited the logging slash. With a bit of wind, this would produce maximum fire intensity by the time it hit the standing timber, where it crowned out.”
“Crowned out?” says Malostic.
I’m not encouraged. “What do you know about wildfire?”
“I’ve done some research.”
“Research?” As usual, it looks like the Forest Service picked the lowest bidder.
Malostic looks injured.“There’s some excellent material available.”
“I hope so.”
“Crowning is when the fire gets into the tops of the trees,” Berton explains. “To crown the fire needs wind, ladder fuels and sufficiently dry conditions. When it gets rolling, a crown fire is the most difficult sort of fire to fight.”
Malostic is taking notes. “You think the perpetrator knew this?”
“He knew what he was doing.”
Malostic sneezes again, reaches for another Kleenex. “Sorry. Allergies.”
“You’re allergic to smoke?”
He ignores my question. “Why do you think he used diesel to start the fire?”
“Well,the cake pan was used for a reason,”says Berton.“Probably to contain a fluid. So the question has to be asked — why use a pan at all when he could have simply sloshed some gas on the pile, tossed a match and run like hell?”
“Time delay?” says Malostic.
“Exactly,” says Berton. “But you couldn’t use gasoline for any sort of time delay involving an open flame or spark, so he probably used diesel, which isn’t as volatile as gasoline and won’t ignite until it actually contacts a flame. He probably put a candle in the diesel, which would give him plenty of time to get away from the area before the fire started.”
“Makes sense,” says Malostic. “Except it wasn’t a candle.”
Berton and I look at each other. “Why not?”
“The diesel would dissolve the candle,” Malostic says. “You see, paraffin is a heavy fraction of crude oil. During the refining process the lighter components are distilled off, leaving behind the heavier components such as paraffin. When recombined, the diesel would act as a solvent.”
“A chemist in our midst.”
“It was just a minor,” Malostic says modestly.
“So it had to be something else,” says Berton.
“Sure,” says Malostic. “It could still be diesel, but with a different igniter.”
Malostic is scribbling in his little notebook. I reach over, use my fingers to smear a bit of soot on his cheek. Now he fits in better. He looks at me, alarmed.
“Mosquito,” I say.
He returns to taking notes. I unload my backpack, put on fresh gloves. Berton and I use string and pins to cover the origin area with a grid, then take pictures, make sketches and take notes of our own. We squat and sift through the ash, use magnets to look for metal debris, one section of the grid at a time. We make it to the cake pan without finding more evidence.
More pictures, then I carefully tip over the pan, right side up, examine ash I’ve inadvertently dumped out. Wood ash from the slash pile, but this time there’s something new. Because the pan was tipped over the residue at the bottom is now on top and