"All right, he was right."
Taking a moment to check on Harley, Su Ming saw that she was no longer reading comics but fiddling with the big-butt TVs on the table, so he continued speaking to Kitty.
"My conclusion is also that the fire started in the basement."
"Hm? Why do you both say that, meow?" Kitty remained in its paws-tucked posture, though its eyes widened slightly. It was not asking Batwoman, because it knew she never bothered explaining things, so it was better to ask Deathstroke directly.
There was nothing to hide from Kitty. After taking a happy sniff of it as payment, Su Ming smiled and answered.
"I don't know what Batwoman based her judgment on, but my evidence is the rubber ring beside the bathroom faucet. The way it melted wasn't from direct flames; it was heated from the inside out. This house uses old cast-iron pipes running through the walls. Iron is an excellent conductor of heat, and the point where all the pipes converge and is exposed to air is most likely in the basement, where the main water valve is located."
Under normal circumstances, because of air circulation, flames generally rose upward. So it was basically impossible for the second floor to catch fire first before the flames spread down into the basement.
In other words, the basement caught fire first. The open flames heated the pipes, which conducted the heat to the second-floor bathroom and melted the rubber gasket. About five minutes later, the flames finally spread upward, and since the bathroom was covered in tile, the clues had been preserved almost intact.
Of course, that depended on Christopher's memories being real. But if he knew about the changes in the bathroom, that only made him more suspicious.
Perhaps his conscious mind had