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be Max. Did he…would he…hell.
Mumbling something like a goodbye, Finn left the shop at speed and in a few minutes had walked the length of the short street and turned onto his own road. It was only when he shut the door on his two-bedroom apartment that he let out the groan of embarrassment that had been stuck inside him.
Sometimes he hated living and working in a small town.
Chapter Four
    The meeting was far more interesting than Max expected. He thought he’d left arson back at the city, imagined that Ellery would be a whole different kettle of fish. But no. The fire had been started deliberately, and the forensics backed up with fire patterns and spread that could only mean the jar-and-gas idea had been used. He and Quinn had been called to a meeting with the police chief Carter Mayfield and the mayor. He found it weird to move from a situation where he was learning to support the mayor to suddenly being the experienced one.
“Did you manage to get any fingerprints from the glass?” Max asked.
    Mayfield shook his head. “Nothing that was useable. Whoever it was took great pains to keep everything clean. But this is what I don’t understand. Why wipe prints and put the forensic trail that way at an end and then leave a fully set up cocktail ready to throw at the scene?”
    “Maybe whoever it was expected to need to use two?” Quinn pointed out. “Maybe they didn’t think the place was going to go up so quickly? The explosion the cocktail caused then burned up grass outside the building and came close to where we think the perp was standing. Maybe he or she just got scared and ran?”
    Chief Quinn tapped at his notes thoughtfully. “Max, have you come across something like this before? Where there is deliberate arson where the tools are left behind?”
Max paused for a moment. What he wanted to say was nothing new to the chief but maybe, just maybe, some of what he said could ring a bell with the cops. He was new to this town and didn’t have a handle on the general population yet. Settling his thoughts, he slid straight into where his experience and knowledge could help.
“Arsonists can be split into five categories. Most of all arsons are committed for either revenge or excitement. The remainder are committed as acts of vandalism, or to conceal a crime, or for profit, including insurance fraud. Leaving evidence at a site implies the firebug is new to all of this, but that doesn’t help us categorise him or her as the one wanting revenge or excitement. I think we can rule out concealing crime or profit given this is a public building and there was no crime in there to hide.”
“So in your opinion?”
“Revenge on a case? Vandalism against the cops, or a cop in general. Nothing else was hit, so it was clear that was the only target. Do you have any ongoing cases, or anything outstanding you should be tracking back?”
“No one who has an arson MO,” Quinn answered quickly. Frowning, he glanced down at the photos of the crime scene with the Fire Department markings. “This is kind of a quiet place. Only one murder in twenty years, and just your average kids’ stuff, nothing like attempted murder.”
No one mentioned the fact that Quinn had labelled it as attempted murder. Simply because it was. Whoever had thrown the bottle would have known people were inside.
Max left the meeting unsettled and when he stepped out on the sidewalk he took a detour back to the destroyed police house. Something itched at the base of his skull, a similarity with a case back in Nashville. A disgruntled ex-employee from a chemical company had targeted various pharmacies. There had been no chance of causing damage to his employers so he’d taken it out on the closest thing—pharmacies carrying the medications his ex-employers created. The one similarity here was that the same bottle was used. Max recalled, when questioned, the guy said he’d used the one that he’d researched on the Internet. Max sighed inwardly. He had