Page 38 of Flash and Bang
“Jarrett, look at this,” Thayne said.
Jarrett glanced down at a photo that Thayne had been staring at for quite a few minutes. “What?”
“I saw this out at the blast scene down at Miramar but I didn’t know what it was.”
Jarrett stared at the tiny yellow papers crumpled and lying on the ground near a shop’s picture window on the street near the lantern debris. He recognized them immediately.
“You saw this out at Miramar?” Jarrett asked.
“Yeah, what are they?” Thayne looked up at his partner.
“Field strips,” Deukmejian answered before Jarrett could reply. “I didn’t think they could be related to the accident.”
“What’s a field strip?” Thayne asked.
“Those are cigarette papers that have been stripped of the filter. Folks in the military are taught to strip out the filter and then roll the papers so they don’t leave cigarette butts in the field. Less likely the enemy will know anyone’s been there but if you ain’t military, ya wouldn’t know what you’re looking at,” Jarrett explained. He glanced over at Deukmejian with a raised eyebrow.
“Army,” Deukmejian said in answer to the unasked question.
“Marine Corps,” Jarrett replied, nodding. He looked back at Thayne. “You sure you saw this same thing out at Miramar? I can’t believe I missed it.”
“Yeah, positive. I thought it was detritus from the explosion but it stuck with me because the cigarette papers were colored, unlike most of the burn debris.”
Jarrett knew why he hadn’t seen the papers. He’d been too busy having flashbacks to that shitty day two years before when he’d seen pictures of the little rag doll on the ground in Gaza City.
“I got to get another look at them pictures from the base, Wolfe.”
Thayne eyeballed him as he nodded. “Okay, we can do that.” He looked back down and pushed the file toward Jarrett. “You wanna look at these?”
“Yeah.” Jarrett sat down again and Deukmejian moved closer to him.
“I’m gonna go start on those permits,” Wu said, leaving the room as they continued perusing the file.
He walked out as Jarrett started paging through the photos stopping on one and looking up at Thayne and Deukmejian. “What’s this?” He pointed down at a photo showing what appeared to be a strip of white paper with some writing on it. It was singed, obscuring some of the letters.
“I don’t even think it was related to the scene but I took a photo of it anyway. We collected it and it’s in evidence.”
Thayne stared down at the paper. “What does it say? I can’t make it out.”
“It’s a portion of a biblical passage,” Deukmejian said, looking slightly embarrassed. “It reads:And the beast was taken.”
“It sounds like a bible passage,” Thaynelooked over at Jarrett. “How do you know that, Deukmejian?”
“I studied to become a priest before changing course and going into the police academy. It’s actually from Revelation 19:20. The complete passage is:“Andthe beastwas taken, and with him thefalse prophetthat wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone”.
Jarrett stared hard at Thayne. “The lake of fire and brimstone again. Sounds like we got a theme here.”
“You’ve seen this before?” the young officer asked.
“Yeah, a portion of another verse was written on a note and sent to the Marine Corps base down in San Diego after the fireworks explosion there,” Jarrett said.
“The breath of Jehovah,” Thayne replied.
“So it sounds like the two crimes can be tied together,” Deukmejian said, frowning. “How likely can it be that you’d have two fireworks explosions with notes about fire and brimstone and field-stripped cigarettes at two different crime scenes hundreds of miles apart? Do we have a religious nutjob on our hands?”
“It might be too soon to say that, but until we examine the note better to see if we can get some prints off it and then try to get some DNA off those cigarette papers, we won’t know for sure. The note down in Miramar had no prints so we may get nothing from this one either.”
“That’s gonna be a problem,” Deukmejian said.