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Sandoval.”

    “John, why don’t you tell me about what happened?”

    “I work over at the car lot, night security. It’s a sweet gig. I go to school during the day and there’s usually nothing happening on the lot. They’ve got a tall fence with razor wire, good alarm system. . . not sure why they need a guard. Not that I’m complaining. It’s good money.” His words fell all over each other. His eyes slid sheepishly to his backpack. “I was studying for an exam, when I noticed some light across the street.”

    “What kind of light? Headlights? Flashlight?”

    He shook his head. “I don’t think it was either one of those. It was a kind of soft light. Yellow. I noticed it disappearing around the corner of the building.”

    “It was on the outside of the building?”

    “Yeah. In the alley. I didn’t think much of it until about an hour later, when I smelled smoke. I got up to check and saw the first floor was on fire. I called 911.” He spread his hands. Anya noticed that they were clean, no visible evidence of accelerant under his nails or on his palms. “That’s all I saw and what I told the cops.”

    “Did you see anyone hanging around? Kids, cars, anything out of the ordinary?”

    He shook his head. “I didn’t see anything. I was sitting in the security van in the south edge of the car lot. No traffic.”

    “Any strange smells? Gas, chemicals?”

    “No. Everything seemed pretty normal.” John’s face clouded. “Um. . . are you going to tell my boss I was studying on the job?”

    “No.” Anya shook her head. She gave him a half smile as she capped her pen. “I wouldn’t want to mess up your sweet gig.”

    John grinned in relief. “Thanks, ma’am. Um. . . can I go now? My exam’s at eight thirty.”

    “Sure.” She handed him her card. “I’ll be in touch. Give me a call if you remember anything else.”

    “Sure thing.” John swung his backpack over his shoulder and scrambled out of the patrol car.

    Anya climbed out of the cruiser and fished her camera out of her equipment. She paced around the perimeter of the building, camera clicking. She took note of the front and back doors from which leaking fire hoses snaked. These heavy metal doors bore the scratches of the tools the firefighters had used to enter. The ladder was still extended up to the broken second-floor window that had held the mannequin, clearly sketching the scene where the young firefighter had gotten into trouble.

    But how had the firebug gotten in? The extent of the structural damage suggested to Anya that the fire had been set from inside. Without fuel for the fire, a blaze set in the alley or against an exterior wall would have burned itself out in short order. Her practiced eye roved over the boarded-over windows on the lower level, the upper windows with the glass broken out by the heat and pressure of the fire. Her firebug hadn’t gotten in up there. He would have found a way in at ground level.

    She frowned. Fires set for insurance purposes usually occurred at the roofline. Fires always traveled upward. Roof-set fires caused minimal damage to the actual contents, but made spectacular blazes that compromised the structure enough to ensure a payout and airtime on the evening news. A fire set at ground level or below was a fire set to burn everything inside. The person who set this one knew about fire.

    Anya paced around the foundation and basement windows. Most were covered with steel grates still solid to the kick. The glass behind them was embedded with chicken wire and would have deterred most attempts to enter.

    Still. This was an old building, a building that wasn’t patrolled, a building that had no working alarms. . . otherwise the fire department would have been summoned automatically by the alarm company, not called by a student security guard when the flames grew too large to miss from across the street. Maintenance was not at the forefront of the owner’s mind. There would have to