#WordoftheDay Weekly Story - Week Three - Warehouse Arson

Sandra  Looked around at the <strong>bedlam</strong> at the scene.  Another fire had ripped through one of the local warehouses, this time  during business hours, leaving it in ruins.  In fact, there had been a <strong>disproportionate</strong> number of warehouse fires in the city lately.  This had made the third in as many months.  The good news, with this particular fire, was that there had not been any fatalities.  Most of the workers had been on their lunch break.  Only a few people had been in the building when blaze erupted and, most all had gotten out with out any major injuries.   The bad part was that people were already milling around trying to <strong>maraud</strong> what was left. If order wasn't maintained valuable evidence as to the origination of the fire could very well be lost.

As an investigator, Sandra's job was to determine the cause of the fire  and whether it was accidental or arson.  Looking through the pile of rubble, Sandra tried to find something, anything, that would give her a clue as to how this fire had started but it all seemed <strong>nugatory</strong>.  The fire had been so  intense that any evidence that might have been left behind had, most likely, been burned away.  Painstakingly she continued to sift through piles of ash &amp; soot.  After hours of searching she found the remains of carelessly thrown cigarette into a waste bin.  The cigarette could explain the fire, but Sandra wasn't convinced that a lit cigarette was the culprit.  After all, how could a single cigarette cause such a devastating fire?  There had to be something more something she wasn't seeing.

The warehouse had been well known for storing some original, and very valuable, art work.  There had been rumors that some counterfeits were being sold in the black market.  Sting operations had shut down much of the counterfeit operations, but still a couple remained. One of the biggest, and most well known, counterfeit organizations was still in operation.  Police were having difficulty in shutting down this particular organization, but they were having some luck tightening the noose, so to speak, and because of the other sting operations there was beginning to be a <strong>disparity</strong> between the supply of counterfeit product and those interested in dealing in counterfeit sales.

The argument that the fire could have been deliberately set by one of the members of the organization to to remove the originals from the picture was <strong>cogent</strong>.  The difficulty now was in finding the evidence to prove that the fire wasn't accidental but rather arson.