Killed With A Twist

D for Deduction

    " So this is our dear Mrs. Norman's home..." Mokshit muttered in a dry voice, coughing through the handkerchief in which he covered his mouth.
  
     " It was..." Ray sighed.
 
     The enormous conflagration had eased into a light blazer and then into a thick vapour. The firemen had worked overnight till dawn to low down the fire. Shattered peices of wood, plastic and glass were jumbled across the ground. The cement walls were the only remains which suggested that it was once a house.
 
  Moby mused as he stared upon the burnt ashes, putting his cloth inside his coat pocket. " Can't believe its only yesterday Mrs. Norman witnessed a live murder and today she ends up being burnt to death by a huge gas leak fire...."

"Maybe there's a connection.. " Ray mumbled, heading in the direction of the ruined house with his partner, "... or just a coincidence..."
 
   He called to the uniformed cop. It was his intern, who was working under him. Ray instructed to guide him. "Finlay, put some gloves on and take some evidence bags...collect anything you would find interesting.. But be careful with 'em, 'cause they're too fragile since they are burnt.. ... I need them all..."
 
   The female body lied of the floor of the place which was assumed as the kitchen. She was burnt badly, almost unrecognisable. The remains were mostly deteriorated flesh, though in some parts the skeleton too was visible.
 
   Detectives searched the body and surroundings. The firemen were possible it was a gas leak, which unfortunately caused the fire. But there were no evidence if the gas pipes were automatically broken or.....if it was deliberately cut. Ray examined the gas lines,but they were badly damaged and burnt and there was no way to identify how it got opened.

There weren't much to observe around the ruined house. Everything was badly burnt into ashes- the papers, files, and even any evidence of leftover fingerprints. DNA tests to identify the burnt body would too be useless, without a pair to compare it with.
 
    Ray and Mokshit discussed the possibilities. Not a single clue was left to prove if it was an accident or otherwise. Pete Finlay brought up some evidence bags filled with destroyed papers, possibly from books and some accessories lady may have owned. However, they were not useful at all.
 
   After a while, the medics arrived to carry the body to the laboratory for further investigation. They were lifting the body when suddenly a medic called over his back. "Sir ..there is something you should see!"
 
  The detectives hurried back near the body. The medic pointed with his glove, at what all of a sudden caught everyone's attention. The burnt hand was clenched into a tight fist. And something white was slightly visible through her famaged fingers.
 
   " Give me a glove."Ray muttered, studying the hand while he squatted aside the body."... and an evidence bag. "
 
     He put on the glove and carefully parted late Mrs. Renuart's fragile fingers, trying best not to damage them. The medic was right. They saw something like a slightly burnt paper, lying amidst the once tightly gripped palm. Ray slowly removed it, and placed it inside the evidence bag. It didn't take much time for them to realise that it was not just a paper... In fact, it was a shattered piece of a photograph.

***
 
  "It looks like a roof.. of a house.. " Moby mumbled as he examined the picture more closely. It was just a remaining of a photograph of album size. Only the upper left corner was saved from fire, which depicted a leaves of a tree, a sunny blue sky and a wooden roof with a national flag on top. "Could be from anywhere around the country...."
 
  Ray nodded. "But definitely not from here in Laramie... Looks more like country side.."
  
"Uh huh..." Moby agreed. He sounded confused. "Why did Mrs.Norman have this picture when she was burning to death? Did she know she was gonna  die..?"

   Ray rubbed his forehead. " Maybe she did... And maybe it was her childhood home...and wanted to protect the photo...or hlod on to it in her last moments. Old people don't like changes... They love the things from past..."
 
  " Yeah ... That's true.. " Moby nodded.      
 
  "But if she had time to clench a photograph into her hand, she also may've known she was gonna die.. . Unless of course, If it was coincidently in her hand when the fire started.."  Ray mused. There was already an unsolved murder in town. And now, its only witness had died. But still, there was not a single proof if the incidents were connected or not.
   
Someone knocked on the door and entered. It was an inspector from justice department. In his hand was a red file. "Sir..., here are the records of Mr.Miguel Lorenzo's law cases."
     
Ray took it and flipped through it slightly. To his surprise, there weren't many pages. He asked, his eyes on the file, " Is this all of them?"
 
   "Yes, sir.." the inspector stated.
Ray nodded and sat on his desk as he studied the papers. Most of them were simple tax cases. Others were bulgary or theft. Ray gave half of the file to Moby to observe. "How come there aren't many... Only 10 or 20 at most..over a five year period ..? "
    
" And somehow he also could make huge bundles of money through just that..." Moby shared the same confusion. "tax, bulgary, bulgary, hit and run, again tax, -.... !". He suddenly froze as he stared right into the paper.
      
Ray tilted his head to the side, perplexed, "Moby, What's it?"
   
  " Check this out, man...!" his partner pointed out something from one of the papers from the file. Ray squinted and examined what Moby was talking about. It didn't take him long to understand. On the middle column of one of the reports, clearly written in capital letters was... a name.