Beyond Recognition by Ridley Pearson Page A

saw, after which he looked up to see Bahan standing alongside.
    â€œGot something?” Bahan asked.
    Boldt pointed, “I take it the fire crew used ladders fighting this one?”
    â€œNo way. Too hot for that. Besides,” he said, pointing to the area in front of the impressions. “There was no wall there at all; the fire destroyed it. A little hard to lean a ladder against that.”
    Again Boldt glanced up into the air where the wall should have been, and again he was overcome with the image of a man climbing a ladder. He took time to mark the area with police tape before continuing around the foundation. By the time they had finished, only the ladder impressions were of interest to him.
    Boldt telephoned the office and requested Bernie Lofgrin, the senior Identification Tech, to send someone out to cast and photograph the impressions and take samples of the colored flecks alongside. Excitement welled inside him. Crime-scene evidence, any evidence at all, is paramount in a case. Two fires too many, he thought. No more, he promised himself.
    It was only as Boldt stepped inside his house later that night that another piece of crime-scene evidence revealed itself. He had stayed on-site for hours, overseeing the collection of the ladder evidence, and had been on hand for the grotesque discovery of the charred partial remains of a body discovered in the basement, trapped underneath an overturned bathtub. The removal of the remains had been conducted carefully. Dixie had showed up personally to help, something Boldt appreciated. The sex and age of the victim remained undetermined. More would be revealed in autopsy the following day.
    But it was back at his house that Boldt stumbled—literally stumbled—onto that additional evidence, for his boots stuck to the kitchen floor as he stepped inside. They stuck, and Boldt fell forward and tumbled like a drunkard after a long night out.
    He pulled them off and almost touched the melting rubber sole before thinking better of it. Whatever could disintegrate a Vibram sole was nothing to mess with. He wondered if any of the others had experienced the same phenomenon. Or had he been the only one wearing civilian shoes?
    He called Bernie Lofgrin, awakened him, described the soles of his boots, and was told to wrap them thoroughly in aluminum foil and bring them into the lab in the morning.
    â€œWhat’s it mean, Bernie?” Boldt asked his friend, when the man was through with the instructions.
    â€œA strong base or acid,” Lofgrin replied, his voice puzzled. “But what that’s doing in a fire is anybody’s guess.”

12
    Behind his Coke-bottle glasses, Bernie Lofgrin’s eyes looked like hardboiled eggs cut in half. Lofgrin stood five feet five inches off the ground. He was balding and overweight. He wore baggy khakis and a button-down blue oxford with no tie. There weren’t many stars in any city government department, including the police, but Lofgrin stood out despite his diminutive size. As senior identification technician, Lofgrin had two decades of experience and a nose for evidence collection and analysis. Rookies observing him at a crime scene for the first time would say he possessed a sixth sense. But it had nothing to do with paranormal ability; it was a trained eye. Lofgrin knew his stuff.
    He and Boldt and Dixie shared a love for their work. Perhaps, Boldt thought, this was what made them such close friends and allies. A common interest in bebop jazz brought them together, but it was dedication to the job that fixed the bond. When Lofgrin was definite about an opinion, Boldt ran with it and placed his faith in it, no matter how tempted to do the opposite.
    There were only a few people on the department who would travel across town on a Saturday morning to sit around a kitchen table and talk shop. Bernie Lofgrin was one of them. Boldt fixed him a pot of coffee, put on a Scott Hamilton album, and cut open a cantaloupe.