“But . . .”
“Sweetheart, you’re exhausted to the point of almost being punch-drunk, it’s after two A.M., and you have a teddy bear show to help run in the morning.”
“But . . .”
“So the last thing you need to be doing is tromping around in the dark, breathing smoke, getting soaked and filthy, and then catching a chill.”
“What about you?
You’re
tired.”
“I’m fine. Haven’t I always been able to operate on just a few hours of sleep?”
“Well, yes,” she grudgingly admitted. “But, Brad, honey, I want to help.”
“I know and I appreciate it. But the fact is, you’re so tired, it would be dangerous. Even with the fire extinguished, an arson scene is extremely hazardous. It’s like a three-dimensional minefield.”
Ash pretended to pout. “Okay, I’ll stay. But I’m sulking.”
Leaning over to kiss her, I said, “And looking beautiful while you do it. Go back to sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”
I arrived at the blaze a couple of minutes later and parked behind Tina’s patrol car. The air stank of smoke, and the road was jammed with fire trucks. A turbulent sea of fire was swallowing up the old house while a column of flame-lit smoke rose into the dark sky. Hoses snaked across the pavement, and four jets of water were directed at the inferno, but they looked as useless as streams from squirt guns.
As I climbed from the SUV, I heard warning shouts and a loud, ominous creaking sound. Then, like a flaming ship majestically sinking beneath the waves, the upper portions of the home began to collapse into the basement. Geysers of swirling sparks shot high into the air, and the accompanying roar of the collapsing timber and masonry was deafening. Even though I was fifty yards or so from the house, I could feel the pulsing heat.
I headed toward the conflagration and found Tina standing by one of the fire trucks. She was in conversation with a fire department supervisor, and I opted not to interrupt. Another fire truck arrived, and its crew began unrolling a hose. I glanced back at the fire. With the collapse of the structure, it almost appeared as if the firefighters were spraying water into the cone of a miniature volcano.
When Tina joined me, I said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
She grimaced. “Yeah. As if I didn’t already have enough on my plate. Where’s Ash?”
“Over there. There’ll be a lot more of it by morning.” I nodded toward the fire. Tina rolled her eyes and I admitted, “Ashleigh wanted to come, but I had to put my good foot down and tell her no. She’s flat exhausted.”
“She must have been for you to have won
that
debate.”
“Tell me about it. Now, before we go any further, I’ve got to tell you that if this is arson, I’m out of my league. That’s a very specialized field of expertise.”
“I know,” said Tina. “I’ve called the state police, but unfortunately, they can’t have an investigator here until sometime tomorrow.”
“Well, in the meantime we can process everything outside the burn zone. Who made the original fire notification?”
“A big-rig driver going down Route Three-Forty. He called and said the place was burning like a bonfire.”
“What made you think arson?”
“When the first fire truck arrived, the engine commander made a quick recon of the exterior of the house to make sure there wasn’t anybody here. There wasn’t, but he
did
find an empty five-gallon plastic gas can in the backyard.”
I glanced toward the blazing ruins of the house. “Unfortunately, now the evidence is gone.”
“Brace yourself. We actually caught a break.” Tina gave me a weary smile.
“Don’t toy with me, Barron,” I said in a mock stern tone.
“I’m not kidding. The engine commander recognized that the gas can was evidence and grabbed it. He put it in the cab of his fire truck.”
“Hallelujah. The fact that the can was found in the backyard also tells us something about whoever torched this thing—an amateur. A professional would have left the gas can inside the house so that it would be destroyed in the fire. Liz Ewell won’t be happy about paying for such sloppy work.”
The wind shifted slightly, blowing some smoke in our direction. Tina rubbed her eyes and asked, “Do you really think she’s responsible for this?”
“Tina, how many arsons have you had in Massanutten County since you began working for the sheriff’s office?”
She shrugged. “This is the first one.”
“And it happened just hours after Miss Ewell—who could have given Machiavelli some pointers on treachery—yanked that house off the market, because she couldn’t stand the idea of Ash and me owning it.”
“Sorry, but I don’t see how the two events are connected. She’d already stung you guys by refusing to sell the house. Why burn it down?”
“There you go, injecting logic into the discussion,” I said, realizing that my loathing for Liz Ewell might have clouded my ability to objectively weigh the facts. “It’s also a damn good point. Okay, maybe I’m
not
the center of the universe. But Liz Ewell is still the natural suspect.”
Tina nodded. “Obviously. She’s the only one who benefits financially from the house being destroyed.”
“Yeah, but that may back
fire
on her. No insurance company will pay if there’s evidence of arson.”
Tina and I turned to watch the firefighting efforts for a few moments. There were now six hoses on the blaze, and the fire crews seemed to be making some headway. Still, it would be at least a couple of hours before we’d be able to get anywhere near it, so instead we put on some latex gloves and went to examine the recovered gas can. The five-gallon, red plastic jerry can looked new but was missing its screw-on cap. I tilted the jug slightly to the side and noted mud stains on the bottom.
I said, “In the words of the immortal Bugs Bunny: What a maroon. He probably dropped this when things went
whoosh
too quickly. Or . . .” I glanced back at the dying flames and had the disquieting thought that I was looking at a funeral pyre. “Or maybe he
couldn’t
carry it away because he was inside when the fire erupted.”
Tina was suddenly solemn. “So we might have a victim in there after all.”
“And with the house collapsing like that, it’ll take days of searching through the rubble before we know for sure.”
“Gee, Brad, you sure know how to brighten a girl’s night.”
I handed Tina the gas container, and we began to walk back to her patrol car. I said, “Let’s think this through before we panic. We’ve got a five-gallon jug that had to have been awfully heavy when it was full of gasoline. How did it get out here?”
“By car, presumably, though the fire chief says that the only vehicles that were here when he arrived were fire trucks.”
“So our arsonist didn’t park in front of or near the house,” I said.
“But he couldn’t have parked too far away, because he wouldn’t have wanted to carry the heavy gas can very far.”
“Or risk being seen lugging it down the road.”
“So he would have parked somewhere nearby.” Tina opened the back door of her patrol car and put the gas can on the floorboard.
I pointed with my cane to the north. “That’s all farm-land over there. No roads.”
“But Wardlaw Lane is back there.” Shutting the car door, Tina then pointed in the opposite direction. “It kind of runs parallel to Coggins Spring Road, which would give him an invisible approach through the field behind the house.”
“How about if I cruise over there and see if I can find any suspicious-looking vehicles?”
“I’d appreciate that. I need to stay here.” Tina gestured toward the mass of fire trucks.
“I know. And this is one time when I hope we
don’t
find the suspect vehicle. It’ll mean our firebug is still alive. I’ll call you if I come up with anything.”
“You can’t. You broke my phone, not that I’m complaining. Take the portable and I’ll monitor the radio in my unit.”
I took the radio from her. “And I might as well take the camera and evidence kit, too.”
Returning to the truck, I maneuvered it around some fire hoses and headed toward Wardlaw Lane. Once there, I slowed the SUV down, but there was no sign of any other vehicles. That helped me relax a little. I really hadn’t been looking forward to hanging around the wreckage until the cadaver dogs finished playing olfactory Marco Polo with the immolated remains of the arsonist.
There wasn’t much to see along the sides of the road; just a lot of wet brown leaves, masses of naked and forlorn-looking honeysuckle vines, and the occasional big bluish-gray rock. Emerging from a dip in the terrain, I suddenly saw the flames and smoke about two hundred yards away across an open field. This was a likely direction for the arsonist to have approached the house.
I was about to head back when something on the side of the road caught my eye. It was a bit of rich burgundy color on an otherwise drab palette. I stopped the truck and got out. Then I grabbed the camera to take several photographs of the unused highway safety flare that lay on the gravel.
Back in the homicide bureau, we used to call that a clue.
Seventeen
Obviously, this was where the arsonist had parked his vehicle, and it was my guess he’d dropped the flare while hurrying to escape. The road flare was another clue that the guy was a rank amateur. Professional torches usually want their handiwork to look accidental; they almost never use that sort of pyrotechnic device to start a fire. Road flares can burn at more than a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, leaving a distinctive scorching pattern and unique chemical signature, both of which will make an arson investigator sit up and take notice.
Once I’d collected the flare as evidence, I began searching to see if our bumbling burn artist had dropped anything else, but came up dry. After that, I turned my attention to the shoulder of the road and was disappointed to see that the ground was too gravelly to have retained any tire impressions. However, I did find the two different spots where the arsonist had crossed over a small and grassy embankment to enter and leave the field. Carefully ascending the bank, I shined my flashlight down at the moist farm soil and admired the most perfect shoe impressions I’d ever seen in my law enforcement career. Indeed, the sole patterns were so distinct that even my untrained eye could tell that they came from athletic shoes.
I reflected that it was kind of a shame there wasn’t a Better Business Bureau for crooks that Liz Ewell could complain to about the hapless fool she’d hired. Not only had he flubbed the job of making the fire look like an accident, he’d left all sorts of useful evidence behind. You just can’t find good help these days.
“Mike-Fourteen to Mike-One,” I called over the radio. “You can relax. There’s no car, but I’ve found where the guy parked. I’ve also recovered a road flare. Even better, there are two sets of clear foot tracks showing he went toward the house and came back out.”
“Copy. Excellent work,” Tina replied, and I could hear the relief in her voice. “Are you going to need a roll of crime scene tape to mark the scene? I can have Deputy Paine bring it over.”
“That’s affirmative. And you’re going to have to call the crime lab and have that tech come back up here. We want plaster castings of these pretty shoe impressions.”
Deputy Paine arrived just as I was finishing up the pictures of the footprints. After acquainting him with the crime scene, I rejoined Tina. The fire was slowly dying under the assault of thousands of gallons of water, and I noticed that the smoke was now mostly white instead of black. An hour or so later, the fire chief dismissed several of the fire trucks but kept two hoses spraying the debris for flare-ups. Meanwhile, Tina and I cooled our heels and drank some wretched coffee she’d gotten from the only all-night convenience store in the county.
It was nearly six A.M. when the fire chief finally declared the scene safe enough for Tina and me to approach the house to take some photographs and look for evidence in the yard. The smoke hung in the air like fog, so we put on disposable breathing filter masks before proceeding any closer to the still-smoldering wreckage. However, the masks did nothing to protect our eyes, which soon became so red and teary that you’d have thought we’d been watching that old three-hanky film
Somewhere in Time
.
We began our search in the backyard. Tina used her flashlight to scan the ground while I took photos of the destruction. It was slow and unpleasant work. The house had been sprayed with such a huge volume of water that the backyard was now a quagmire. Before long, my boots were soaked and I could feel my socks becoming cold and wet. Days don’t start much better than that. And for all our efforts, we turned up only one useful piece of evidence: Tina located more of the suspect’s shoe impressions in the soil on the other side of the backyard fence.
The sun was already above the Blue Ridge when we slogged back to our cars. I glanced at my watch. It was a little after seven o’clock. I was pretty much in a zombie state with fatigue, which kind of shocked me, because back when I was a cop I could work thirty-six hours straight on a murder investigation. Yeah, I’d be a space cadet the day after, but I was capable of that sort of prolonged effort. But that obviously wasn’t the case any longer. It sucks getting old. I just hoped that the combination of a shower, lots of good hot coffee, and the kind of breakfast that would give a vegan the shudders would restore my vitality before the teddy bear show opened.
Tina and I were saying good-bye to each other when a big black Ford van pulled up behind my SUV.
“Look who’s come out to make sure the job was done properly,” I muttered.
“Just when I thought the morning couldn’t get any worse,” Tina said with a heartfelt sigh.
“You’d better do the talking. I’m liable to say something indelicate.”
“You?”
The driver’s-side door opened, and a young woman with short-cropped hair and the stern face of a Marine Corps drill instructor climbed out and marched to the back of the vehicle. I heard the rear doors open, then the whine of a small electric motor. A moment later, my favorite local sociopath rolled around the side of the van in her motorized scooter.