"Damn, my phone." " What do you say, Colby?" " Hey, Don." "Our friends from the Earth Liberation Movement again, huh?" "Yeah, this makes for the fourth eco-fire." "You tell me how you're gonna save the world burning down an SUV dealership, you know?" "Yeah, well, all I can tell you is, we've got a guy over here who's not gonna be around to enjoy the fresh air." "Sean Grasso." "He's 32, junior salesman." "The owner says he thinks he probably came in early to do some paperwork." " You notified the family?" " Yeah, Megan talked to his wife." " Evidently, they have a 4-month-old." " Don." "Hey, I got your message." "You didn't have to come down, buddy." "Four fires doesn't provide enough data to create a hot zone, so I thought there might be something else." " Come on." " There's not much." "It's just the burned-out SUV and this booth here." " Hey, Paul, what do you say?" " Don." " How's it going?" " All right." " Colby." "Hi." " Paul." "Charles Eppes, FBI consultant." "Paul Stevens, LAFD arson investigator." " Are you an arson expert?" " I'm a mathematician." "You might be wondering what I'm doing at a scene of an arson." "Hey, it makes sense to me." "I mean, I got arson books full of equations." "Open and contained flame calculators, flow rates for oxygen." "Well, the study of combustion is based largely on fluid mechanics." "There's some amazing work done by Prandtl and Euler, Smits." "Equations are in the books, not..." "Not in here." "Mostly, I work with physical indicators:" "Scorch marks, ignition devices, burn patterns." "Try to build a signature, arsonist's M.O., that kind of thing." "So anything?" "Yeah, the SUV went up with a Molotov cocktail." "That's the same as all the other fires." " The security booth?" " Cigarette and a book of matches." "Classic, old-school igniter." "Why bother with the booth?" "There's was phone inside." "Wanted to make sure no one called for help." "Only the salesman shows up early and tries to make a call anyway." "Opens the door, influx of oxygen creates a back draught." "People underestimate the power of a fire, even a small one." "What do you suggest we do at this point?" "Trying to catch an arsonist by his signature is like..." "It's trying to identify someone by their shadow." "I might come up with a lot more if I could borrow your professor here." " That's fine with me, go for it." " Sure." "It's my pleasure." "Can I see what you're working with?" "You know, in Colorado, these guys eventually destroyed a ski resort." "Left a banner that said, "If you build it, the ELM will burn it."" "What's concerning me is that with each fire they're getting more aggressive." "We all use math every day:" "to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money." "Math is more than formulas and equations." "It's logic." "It's rationality." "It's using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know." ""There is no more open door by which one can enter the study of natural science, than by considering the phenomena of a candle."" "Faraday said that." "Faraday?" "I wonder if Faraday ever used his insights to crack an arson case." "Oh, do my sensors detect frustration?" "Yes, your sensors are correct." "Arson investigations consider seven points of data:" "Fuel, burn rate, scorch marks, smoke patterns, flame temperature, igniter and, oh, point of origin, to create what's called a fire signature." "Seven points." "You know, this sounds less like a signature, more like a fingerprint." "That's just it." "It's not like a fingerprint." "Arson signatures are not nearly as accurate nor are they as specific." "I need more parameters, everything that gives a fire its specific character." "All right, what's to be done here?" "I've already started by breaking down the initial seven data points into several subsets." "Although I'm sure there's more to follow." "Do you realise that if every vehicle in this nation averaged just 2.7 more miles per gallon, we could cut our dependency on Mideast oil?" "Are you seriously trying to justify the arsonist's motive?" "No, no, no, no, no." "Hear me out." "I'm merely making a point that the ELM's goals are ecological, they're not pathological." "Larry, I'm not really interested in the social significance of these fires..." " You should be." " No, I shouldn't be..." "Yes, you should be." "Listen to me here." "As fire destroys, it also creates." "And not just heat or light, but a solid product." " Soot?" " Soot." "And the soot created within that fire is what gives the flame its colour." "Something you can't even see and yet it defines its entire nature." " Larry." " Charles." "With all due respect, I don't get it." "This most recent fire claimed a life." "The others didn't." " Intent." " Keep going." "Intent and..." "Intent and result." "If each arsonist approaches a fire differently, then it makes sense that every fire set..." "Would be as unique as the person setting it." "And not just in terms of the method used, but in terms of the entire character of that fire." "So, what you're talking about, really, is like a..." "Like a fingerprint for fires." "A "fireprint."" "That's ridiculous." "Why would the ELM waste our efforts on an SUV lot?" "Gas prices and common sense are gonna do that work for us." "Your group's connected to acts of sabotage against constructions sites and lumber mills and oil wells..." "And has acknowledged every single one." "The ELM has no involvement in these fires." "We've repeatedly said so." "So tell me again then why it is that your logo is spray painted at the crime scenes?" "Anyone can put three letters on a wall." "Even an FBI agent." "We've condemned the arsons." "We've cooperated with your investigation." "Actually, you haven't." "We asked you for your membership roster and you took us to court." "We're a national organization with 200 active members, and 10 times that number of associates." "We can't let you harass us." "A homicide investigation is not random harassment." "The FBI has a history of undermining legitimate protest." "Congress of Racial Equality, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party," "American Indian movement." "That was the 1960s." "Do me a favour and check your calendar." "These fires are intended to discredit us." "In my book, that makes you people the suspects." "I mean, it's possible." "Someone could be using their logo to throw us, right?" " Maybe one fire, but four?" " Yeah, so?" "Well, the ELM isn't exactly a monolithic organization." "Kids float in and float out." "Right, we just keep busting their soldiers and they'll just keep recruiting more." " Hey." " Hey." " Hey, where did you get that?" " ELM office." "I'm positive I've seen that guy in the middle before." "You stole this picture?" "Well, it must have fallen off the bulletin board and gotten stuck to my shoe." "You gotta do what you gotta do, right?" "Wait a minute, you see that?" "Look at that hat." "L.A. Center College." "Yeah, there's probably only a few thousand kids with that hat on." "Yeah, but hold on, look at this." "There." "How many of those show up at two different fires?" "Ninety percent of all ELM activists are college students." "They're all young, white and male." "Yeah, but look at that." "That's a good match." "Yeah, I agree." "All right, so we've got a face and a school." "We just need a student I.D. match." "College." "Here it is, room B." "Hey, wait a minute." "Door's open." "Yeah, but anything we find can be subject to a challenge in court." "Why don't we try and just break one law a day?" "Hi." "I'm trying to find Jake Eckworth." "Can you tell me where I might find him?" "Jake's my roommate, but he doesn't tell me where he goes." "Mind if we take a look around your room?" " So is Jake a geography major?" " World history." " What are you studying?" " Engineering." "Oh, cool." "You're not gonna find anything, he nukes the history." "Really?" "And how do we know that?" "Well, because they're probably good friends, Granger." "I'm sure he uses your laptop sometimes, right?" "Sometimes, yeah." "You should really wait until Jake gets back." "Hold on, you said he deletes the history, so what if I run a system restore?" "You're gonna mess up his software." "Just use the hard drive trace." "You can backdoor from the desktop instead of trying to drop through the C drive." ""E-L-M. com"?" ""Glendale Chamber of Commerce"?" "There's some notations on the map around Glendale." "Yeah." "Look at this." ""Verdugo Ridge." "Glendale, California." "A private, luxurious living space, opening fall 2006."" "This could be our guy." ""One hundred units being built on a mountain habitat."" "Well, that fits the profile for an ELM target, doesn't it?" "Certainly does." "Thank you." "It's pretty up here." " That's his car, the blue Honda." " Yeah." "I see it." "Colby, we've got his car." "You ready?" "We're on the access road." "If he wants to leave, he'll have to come past us." "All right, we're moving." " You guys take this side." " Got it." "Jake, FBI, don't move." "Jake, wait." "Jake." "Jake." "He's coming your way." "He's coming your way." "All right, copy that, Don." "FBI." "Freeze." "Freeze!" "Drop the bag." "Get you hands up." "Get them up." "I haven't done anything." "Cigarettes, lighter, spray paint?" "I thought you guys were all about clean air." " I didn't set any fires." " Really?" "The local news puts you at two ELM fires in the past three weeks." " ELM is being set up." " What, Jake, you don't want credit?" "Why, because someone's dead now?" "ELM events are carefully planned to protect human life." "Yeah, but then accidents happen, right?" " What are you doing here, Jake?" " I'm just meeting a friend." "Really?" "Because your roommate says you've been coming up here a lot." "Who's that, Ethan?" "Ethan's a wannabe." "He doesn't know anything." "Who's your friend?" "Just a concerned citizen." "Concerned with what, Jake?" "Setting fires in Glendale?" "Oceans can absorb 2 gigatons of carbon yearly." "We're putting four times that in the atmosphere." "How about this?" "How much carbon do you put in the atmosphere burning a 32-year-old father?" "Why don't you take a good look at that?" "No?" "My involvement with the ELM is to forward information to the media." "I have never been involved in illegal activity." "You can't hold me here without evidence, so either release me or get me a lawyer." "He knew exactly what to say." "Yeah, well, I used to be smarter than everybody else too." "Arrogance fits the profile of a political arsonist perfectly." "We don't have enough to hold him." " So we're letting him go?" " We'll put him under surveillance which will at least keep him from lighting another fire." "I'll check his phone records and credit cards, try to connect dots." "I think the roommate knows more than what we got out of him." "Yeah, if he hears Jake badmouth him, he might be a little more forthcoming too." "So were you able to determine what caused the booth to explode?" "Like I thought, a back draught." "The igniter was shoved under a seat cushion, creating a high level of heat in the booth, limited oxygen." " Door opens and boom." " So let me get this straight." "The arsonist throws a Molotov cocktail to start one fire but not the other." "Molotov cocktails are tricky." "You want a structure to burn, a simple fuse ignition source is easier, gives a better shot at success." "Well, right now I'm working on a principle components analysis to give us a more accurate arson signature." "Great, but how do you do that with seven data points?" "Oh, no." "Charles is considering using over 600." " Six hundred?" " Well, you're looking at rate of heat," " times span and weather, right?" " Yeah, that's right." "Right." "So I'm just calculating heat absorption, the rate of fuel burn and the torching index." "That's beyond what we're capable of, I'll tell you that." "Can I also see all the arson records for L.A. county that you have access to for, like, the past year?" "That's several thousand fires." "That's a pretty limited sample." "You know what?" "Make it the past two years?" "He's a 17-year-old sophomore and I did some checking." "He published a paper in the International Journal of Civil Engineering." "Oh, at 17?" "That's impressive." "Yeah." "I..." "I want you to talk to him." "See if you could get me some insight on him." "That's your field, Agent Reeves." "Yeah, but he's a young genius in college with older kids." "I'm guessing he's feeling some of the same social pressures you did." "I'm looking for a button to push." "Are these seats taken?" "I don't have anything to say to you." " What's the matter?" " You told Jake I spoke to you." "Yeah, but I didn't tell him anything you said." " Who's this?" " A friend." "Ethan, Jake's headed for a fall and he's not the guy you wanna be near when he goes down." "Let me guess." "Prom queen?" "Cheerleader?" " Excuse me?" " You don't know what it's like." "The ones that don't ignore me make me feel like a freak." "Scared of you, because they'll never catch up to you in the classroom." "Only talking to you when they want your help." "And when they let you sit with them, they have conversations that go over your head." "Nothing's supposed to go over your head." "Jake talks to you." "You wonder if he's the first and last person who ever will." "Jake says he's innocent." "Well, okay, the best way to prove that is to help Agent Reeves." "Help her get to the truth." "You don't understand." "May I?" ""C sub H equals NA sub one, plus MA sub two where N equals M."" "Single wall carbon nanotubes." "Potential applications include artificial muscles, combat jackets, a space elevator." "I understand." "What do you want?" "I want the name of the person that Jake was meeting in Glendale." "He has these friends from Oregon." "He talks to them online." "I have to go." "I guess it does pay off sometimes to be a know-it-all." "A back draught is a fascinating phenomenon." "We can demonstrate it with this candle." "It's also called a smoke explosion." "The flame causes the hot gases rising from the candle to re-ignite." "Somehow I missed the fact that the CalSci engineering department" " had a combustion lab." " It's pretty neat, huh?" "We converted it from an old laundry room." "Thank you, Professor Waldie, for setting this whole thing up." "Bill, please." "And you don't have to thank me." "Creating the conditions for a back draught?" "It's just way cool." "Well, here's our booth." "And as noted in the arson report we have:" "Insulated compartment, combustible ceiling." "Now, this geometry will starve the fire just enough so that when this door is opened, oxygen will rush inside, creating a gravity current." "Cold air and hot gases and boom!" "Smoke explosion, a.k.a. back draught." "All we need now is the heat source." "Yeah, that would be me." "I..." "I thought we could use the same brand that the arson investigator found." "And you're ready to go." " Where did you get a cigarette?" " I know a guy." "Okay." "So Stevens said that the arsonist probably placed the igniter near some fuel, like a seat cushion." "This type of foam is an excellent hydrocarbon-based fuel." "Okay." "Temperature's rising" "When the temperature inside reaches 600 degrees, we'll open the door and add oxygen." "Okay, well, if the scorch marks and flame indicators were recorded correctly for a 5:41 a.m. start time, then wind and outside pressure are a check." "And at 600 degrees, we should be good to go on a back draught." "We're almost there." "Easy." "Did we ventilate the booth properly?" "According to my calculations, yeah, we did." "Heat release, burn rate, air, time." "There is no error in your math." "No, no, no, that's a statement, not a question." "The booth fire couldn't have been caused by a back draught." "All right, so if it wasn't a back draught, then what was it?" "Given the speed of the flame, the heat, the fire must have been assisted by some sort of accelerant." "The lab came back negative for any accelerant." "But some accelerants, when used in small amounts, often easily evaporate, like..." "Like hydrogen peroxide, for instance." "High-concentrate hydrogen peroxide might oxidize the fire enough for an explosion and not leave a trace, but that's difficult to obtain, legally anyway." "Are we talking about the hydrogen peroxide in my medicine cabinet?" "Charlie's talking about industrial-grade." "Yeah, but Larry gets it for his intro class every year." "All right, so a student could get it." "If he uses gasoline for the SUV, why not use it for the booth?" " That would have been easier." " It's more like choosing a poison that wouldn't show up in an autopsy." "So you're saying they intended to kill whoever opened the door?" "You know, Larry posited that the character of the fire will reveal the character of the person who set it." "Yeah, Larry's right." "Then the person who set this fire is a murderer." "So the security booth fire is an intentional homicide." "The ELM has no history of murder." "Yeah, but these nuts hide five-inch spikes in the trunks of trees." "If nobody dies, that's just luck." "I'm not defending their methods, but the ELM has stuck to environmental targets, construction projects, chemical pollutants." "The injuries have been unintentional." "But not that dealership fire." "That was designed to kill." "Yeah, so either that wasn't the ELM, or..." "Or else their membership got a hell of a lot less exclusive." "The roommate said Jake was in touch with people from Oregon." " Online." " But I checked his e-mails and IMs and phone records and I didn't find anything." " What about chat rooms?" " Why don't you find who their ISP is and subpoena their records, right?" "You know, it used to be this garage was for laundry and parking a car." "Sorry." "All my cognitive emergence theory work's over there so we had to..." " Had to expand out." " My God." "You're pretty sure that you can identify a single arsonist?" "Well, I'm not trying to identify a particular person." "I'm using principal components analysis and I'm inputting 600 variables to quantify 5000 fires to create a database that links the fires to the people that set them." "We're calling it a fireprint." "What's the next variable?" "Piloted ignition temperature." "Piloted ignition, what?" "It's describing a fire that needs a spark to ignite itself." "Yeah." "It's like a fuse being lit." "The match and the fuse together both pilot the fire." "How else does a fire get started?" "Spontaneous combustion." "Yeah." "A gas being heated to the point of producing a flame without there being an outside source." "And that would be unpiloted fire, right?" "But you have this one described over here as a piloted and unpiloted fire?" "Well, you know the SUV fire was started when gasoline was ignited by a flame, piloted." "But the booth fire was caused by heat rising to the point of oxidation, an unpiloted." "That's right." "The explosion of flame was caused by the combination of hot gases and the oxidation of hydrogen peroxide." "That's a very complicated way of setting a fire." "It is." "Well, I mean, shouldn't they be considered two separate fires?" "I mean, for this to be considered a fingerprint, then shouldn't every fire have only one set of fingers?" " That's exactly right." " Yeah." "One fire designed to kill, the other isn't." "It's two different agendas." "Two different arsonists." " Hey." " Hey." "So Jake Eckworth's Internet service provider downloaded" " everything from his IP address." " And?" "Well, it turns out he's using two different screen names and passwords" "The first one was fairly straightforward." ""EarthAvenger," his password was his birthday." "But finding the password to the second name has been a different story." "Yeah, it looks like Eckworth used a Diffie-Hellman encryption code." " Basically impossible to crack." " Yeah." "I'm guessing we're gonna find all the good stuff behind that password." "His second screen name is nanotube?" "Yeah, sounds like a nerd porno star, huh?" "Shows me where your head is at, Granger." "It's a technical term." "I heard it used the other day when I was interviewing Ethan Powell." "How sure are you?" "Mathematically, I'm almost positive." "You see, when fires are being investigated, several elements are studied." "Elements that form together to create a fire signature." "But unlike handwriting, elements of a fire signature are more general and less individually specific." "Elements like scorch marks, rate of burn, accelerants, gas, acetone, kerosene, alcohol." "So I created a more specific analysis, like I did with the theory of fingerprinting." " I thought you didn't like fingerprinting." " I don't." "The points of comparison aren't standardized." "Now, with fingerprints, it's generally believed that no two are the same." "Well, that level of specificity allows you to find matches with as little as seven points of commonality." "My fireprint analysis uses over 600 precise variables, projected down to a 15 dimensional hyperplane." "So we have 15 numerical coordinates to match that level of specificity." "Now, these are the fireprints from the two fires set at the SUV dealership." " They're not the same." " Two different patterns." "When I ran these comparisons against other fires set in L.A., I found matches." "The SUV fire was nearly identical to three other previous ELM fires." "But the security booth fire was extremely dissimilar." " So someone else set that fire." " That's the theory." "All right, so two arsonists." "Yeah, now, when I ran the security booth fire against my database" "I found 17 identical fires going back almost five years." " Five years?" " And none, not one of them, had any environmental agenda or even the remotest connection to the ELM." "So one guy sets a typical ELM fire in the SUV." "And the other guy sets the security booth fire only that one is intended to actually kill somebody." "A leader and a follower." "It's Leopold and Loeb." "Leopold and who?" "It was the most sensational murder of the 1920s." "These two guys killed a little boy simply to prove that they could." "Loeb was the dominant personality and Leopold looked up to him." "Jake Eckworth, Ethan Powell." "Eppes." "Yeah, on our way." "Okay." "Another fire." "Well, how is that possible?" "Eckworth's been under surveillance." "Yeah, but Ethan hasn't been." "It's arson, the ELM again." "The fire was contained to the sixth floor." " What's up there?" " Oil exploration company." "They have bids in to drill in Alaska." "What exactly happened?" "Standard teams went in, got up there, flashover hit six guys before they had a chance to get out." "What's flashover?" "When everything in the room ignites at once." "What might have prevented the entire building from burning?" "Fire doors must have done their job." "Lucky for us, huh?" "Fire doors, my ass." "That fire wasn't meant to burn the building." "It was meant to hit those men." "Let's say the arsonist, or arsonists, plural, know how to engineer a back draught." "Well then, doesn't it stand to reason that they could create a flashover?" "Well, look, I mean we're talking about a serial killer now, right?" "Yeah, who's using fires as a weapon." "So they're saying the fire doors were able to contain the blaze to the sixth floor." "Which supports Megan's theory that people were the arsonist's real target." "How did he do this?" "Likely used an accelerant." "There was no accelerant." " Look, hang in there, man." " Okay, thanks." "I double-checked the thermal dynamics myself." "There was no accelerant." "If you don't mind, this is just me being me," "I'd like to recheck those calculations." "Please." "You know, I am just about at the end of my rope." " How long were the men up there?" " No more than a few seconds." "And that was sufficient to cause all this?" " It shouldn't have been." " Continue, please." "Well, this was a fairly typical fire." "I mean, given that it was a high-rise, it presented certain logistical problems, but nothing they shouldn't have been able to handle" "I mean, they hooked their hoses to the standpipe, okay?" " What is that?" "The standpipe?" " The water supply pipe." "It's firefighter use only." "And it was functioning properly?" "The computer said it had all the water it needed." "This fire should have been out in a few minutes." "Then why didn't it go out?" "That's the same questions I have six families asking me right now." "That's it." "It's all there." "So you set all the fires." "Your buddy Jake had nothing to do with it, huh?" "Yup." "It was all me." "First degree murder." "That's life in prison, if you're lucky." "That's a big weight to carry alone." "You still don't think I'm capable of it, do you?" "My IQ is over 160." "What I didn't think you were capable of was being this stupid." "You need to sign the bottom and initial each page." "Maybe he's telling the truth." "Charlie's fireprint proves that there were two different arsonists at that car dealership." "And one of them is intentionally trying to kill people." "I don't think Ethan has that in him." "Press relations has already issued a release saying we found our guy." "You know, 300 years ago London burned to the ground and the guy that confessed to it wasn't even in London the night of the fire." "They didn't realise that until two days after they hanged him." "Sometimes people say things to be noticed, because sometimes being ignored is worse than being blamed." "Steven's calculations were correct." "There was no accelerant." "The computer readout on the truck was functioning properly." "Yeah, okay." "Small fire, no accelerant, a sufficiency of water, the fire should have been extinguished in minutes." "And reality agrees, the fire goes out." "You know, I'm not even going to ask." "Look, there was another fire and apparently a signed confession does not satisfy Professor Eppes' standard of guilt." "Well, I sort of understand what it's like to be this kid, Ethan Powell." "You know, in my freshman year at Princeton there were times where I was pretty desperate to fit in anyway I could." "What are you saying?" "That you are who you are because of just dumb luck?" "That you're just one roommate away from being a pyromaniac?" "No, of course not." "That's clearly not what I mean." "Good, because that wouldn't say much for the time that your mother and I put into raising you." "He makes a good point, Charles." "There's something that I don't understand." "Dad, you know about fire suppression systems." "You know about standpipes and sprinklers." "Yeah, of course." "That was one of the highest priorities and one of the headaches for a city planner." "Okay, so answer me this:" "How could firefighters have adequate enough water pressure and still not be able to put out a fire?" "Let me show you." "Larry, just turn the water on." " Okay?" "High." " Yeah." "All right." "Now, turn it lower." "Slowly." "Not off." "That's it." " There." " Dad, that's Pascal's principle." "Water distributes its force uniformly, but there's no way to tell how much water volume there is based on the pressure." "Fire hoses have nozzles that automatically maintain high pressure, just like your thumb just did." "And the pressure created by the nozzle hid the actual amount of water flowing through their hoses." "So they were fooled into thinking they had normal amounts of water." "Which means between the water supply and firefighters on the sixth floor, the actual water volume decreased." "Which suggests that someone tampered with the standpipe." "Dad, who would know how a building's standpipe system works?" "Contractors, plumbers, firemen, engineers." "I gotta go talk to Don." "Yeah, but I still have to take a shower, you know." " No, thanks." " Okay, all right." "The arsonist tampered with the standpipe and reduced the water volume to a point that the firemen couldn't detect." "The water pressure seemed normal when they turned their hoses on." "It would take a sophisticated understanding of engineering." "Which Ethan certainly has." "Now, there are other factors as well." "Remember, the character of the fire..." "Should match the person that set it." "And whoever set the booth fire was clearly expecting a fireman to be the first responder." "Firemen were the targets at the high-rise as well." "So your second arsonist is setting traps for firefighters." "Which doesn't fit Ethan." "He's trying to impress Jake and the ELM and his peers." "But doesn't that gives us only half the team?" "Well, he ain't talking so..." "Yeah." "Because he wants to take full credit for this." "He doesn't understand what he's taking credit for is murder." "Why did you bring me back here?" " Because I want the truth." " I already told you the truth." "You only told me part of it." "You think this makes you cool?" "You think this is gonna make other people look up to you?" "I told you everything." "Yeah, that's why I brought someone here for you to talk to." " What are you doing here?" " They told me what was going on." "Well, thanks for coming down, but I got it under control." " I don't think so, dude." " I don't care." "I think maybe you do care." "I think maybe you care too much what I think." "Don't flatter yourself, Jake." "You know, sometimes you can be a real jerk, Ethan." "You have any idea what it's like to be around a kid who thinks he knows everything, and usually does?" "This guy you're protecting, he used you, Ethan." "He wanted your engineering skills to help him create more fires." " I don't know what you're saying." " Don't lie to them anymore, Ethan." "You set it up for me to meet him in Glendale, remember?" "Dude, he wants to kill people." "You're wrong." "What happened to that salesman was an accident." "When have you ever made an accident in engineering?" "I mean, come on, you had to have some idea what this guy was doing" "You wanted to join the ELM, right?" "You wanted us to think you could handle what we're about." "Well, show me." "Tell them what they wanna know." "There are six firefighters in a hospital fighting for their lives." "Dude, it's okay." "I don't know his name." "We only talked online." "Then give me your password to your screen name and we can trace him from your account." "Ethan, you have to help us find him before he hurts someone else." "I've got a line on the kid's ISP which is giving me a back-trace to his chat room buddy." "Links up to a computer at 200 Anaheim Street." " Anaheim Street." "Where's that?" " Station 117 firehouse, LAFD." "Specifically, the arson investigation squad." "How do you know that?" "Remember, I said that the one fireprint" " linked 17 fires over five years." " Yeah." "Guess who investigated all 17 of those fires?" " Stevens." " It's perfect." "He sets fires he knows he's gonna investigate." "Yeah, because it's easy to look smart when you know everything about the fire." "Because you're the one who set it." "He was using me all along." "Serial arsonists have a driving need to prove they're smarter than others." "Stevens applied for the Los Angeles Fire Department eight years ago and didn't pass the screening." "He got a job at a smaller city then worked his way back to L.A." "We got two teams up at Stevens' house." "CHP, PD and sheriff's department have all been alerted." " No sign of his car yet." " Do you think he's the type to run?" "No." "He's enjoyed this too much." "He's gonna need to teach us a lesson." "Every fire he set required days, really even weeks of planning." "Plus he saw us talking at that last fire, so he knows we're close." "Which makes him dangerous and in a hurry." "He was gonna meet Jake at the development." " That's right." " Now why there?" " Unless he's planning a strike." " You come with me." "We need tactical and fire prevention units up to Verdugo Ridge ASAP." " Okay." " I don't see why he needed Ethan." "He wanted bigger and deadlier fires, Charlie." "Ethan's engineering skills could help him do that." "And by pretending that he needed my help with the arson investigations." "He did need your help, Charlie." "Serial killers will often contact the police if an investigation stalls." "They're gonna keep hurting people, they want someone to stop them." "May I?" "You did good." "Stevens." "Stevens, it's over." "You hear me?" "We know what happened to you eight years ago." "We know that the Los Angeles Fire Department turned you down." "They said I wasn't good enough." "I understand." "We know better." "We know what you're capable of." " Paul." " White phosphorous." " If this hits the air, it explodes." " Okay." "The kind of fire that really makes an impression." "Yeah, okay." "Let's just take it easy now." "Okay?" " Paul, just listen to me." "Paul..." " Back up." " Back up!" " I'm backing up." "Everybody back up." "We're backing up." "Just relax." " I know what I'm talking about, okay?" " Listen, let's just talk." "Paul, don't." "Whatever you're thinking, don't do it." " I'm getting out of here." " Don't do it." " Damn." " Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad..." " Oh, boy." " There it goes." "We got plumbing problems again?" "More like one of Charlie's hands-on investigations." "I used the shower for a standpipe." "Now we're having a hard time unusing it." " Hey, that kid took a plea bargain." " He did?" "How many years?" "Three years." "Boy, one wrong decision, his whole life's almost ruined." "Sometimes that's all it takes." "You know, I know what it's like to be that kid." "I wished that I was a normal college kid sometimes." "Kind of tough when you're still in puberty." "Yeah, I'm sure there were plenty of kids who wished they were you." "During midterms, certainly." "Keg parties?" "Absolutely not." "How about at shop class?" " What do you mean?" " How about we call a plumber?" "Dad, I can..." "Give me..." "Give me the wrench." " Give me it." " You can't do it." " And we're sending the bill to the FBI." " Here, give it to me, I'll do it." " Here." " All right." " Put your hand on this valve." " Okay." "Okay." "If the toilet goes, you're on your own." "Just hold it." " Just hold it." " That's my hand." " That's my finger." " All right, all right."