The Silver Bullet

With Franklin out of town, I knew that if I didn't get some work on this case, it would grow cold. Cold like the pizza I kept in the fridge overnight. So, I started with some quick research on Forensic Psychology--a few episodes of Criminal Minds I'd been saving--not sure if it was paranoia the research was inflicting or that Lady Luck just gave me a good hand that day, but I found myself on Google Maps again scouring it like a madman. I had something here: Gas stations. If he's using tires and gasoline to make fire, then he is getting them from somewhere. You have to ask yourself, how easy is it to get your mitts these things? All it takes to get a can of gas is a can and a gas station: pull your heap into the station, put the can on the ground and you got a few gallons of 85. Tires, you can probably get, no questions asked, from an auto body or tire store: just say you're putting 'em on yourself (obviously not on yourself, but by yourself maybe).

So where are there gas stations and auto body shops in the Plain? I kicked myself for letting Franklin take the notes and the map when I saw him last, so I noted some down to add later. I was going to hang with Books Mahoney later that evening, and she would be able to return the map. Books, Mix Mahoney and I spent the evening working on another case: Who at Fox Studios was so determined to see the X-Men series fail? Who profits? What happened to Shatner in Abrams' Star Trek?

In the cold light of morning, I went back to the maps. I drew the gas stations in red--maybe a poor choice--and the tire or auto body shops in green. Adding them to the map, I got this:

I then noticed something interesting and circled it: There is a gas station and an auto body shop right next to each other. A pump stand called Hatoff's and a garage that goes by CarStar--according to Google. Convenient location if our boy was in a hurry, isn't it. That's when something else hit me like an idiot's car door into a biker: He was in a hurry on one occasion, wasn't he?

He was hitting places regular for a few months and then stopped, but there was one exception: January 28, Maria's Salon. If you took that one out, it would almost seem like clockwork, hitting towards the beginning of the month in December (the 11th), January (the 6th) and February (the 7th). Which means maybe something got him a little jingle-brained on before the 28th.

He'd have to be on the swift to rush a plan together, and maybe that means he'd have to swing by the corner of Washington and Rockvale, which looks like his personal shopping mall from where I'm sitting. If I've got the right slant on this: Between the 7th and the 28th, he must have heard something about Maria's that set him off, and must have started planning then--The one-a-month thing seemed to be working out for him otherwise.

Something caught my eye then, and I marked a small X on the map. The spot I circled was about the same distance from that point as all of our scenes seemed to be. Odds are that our meat lives near there: he'd probably have a base of operations there he could be at day or night, like maybe his house. I thought maybe he'd take a day off work in that few weeks, but I don't know about that. I also don't know what he took a month off in March. Maybe he thought the heat was on, waited for it to cool? What I do know is that to stay ahead of the buttons, he'd have to be smart and organized. My hunch is, he would plan this out. If we're right, he's been at this a while.

What else I know is that I could go for a sandwich. Later, chumps.