Arsonist (3 page)

CHAPTER 5

Stanton sat outside the burnt-out shell of a house and sipped a
Diet Coke as Joy Division played on the CD. The neighborhood was quiet and upper-middle class; the type of place where something like this would be talked about and dissected for years to come.

The home was just a
two-story brick and stucco with a small front lawn. Police tape was pulled across the windows since they had been blown out during the fire. Stanton could see the charred exterior around the windows and front door.

A car came to a stop in front of him and he saw Gunn motion to him with a salute using two fingers. Stanton nodded and took out his phone and texted him.

where’s the fire invest?

sleepin’ with yo mama

my mother’s dead, jerk

really? what kind of sick fuck do we have as a fire investigator?

Stanton grinned and then noticed the old Ford truck that pulled up in front of the house. A man got out wearing an old bomber jacket and took a kit from the bed of the truck. Stanton stepped from the car and approached him.

“Are you Benny?”

“Yeah, you Jon Stanton?”

“Yeah,” Stanton said, shaking his hand
. “How are ya?”

“Good. Looks like we got ourselves a little barbeque.”

“A man was killed in that house,” Stanton said, hoping there wouldn’t be any jokes or lighthearted comments.

“Don’t mind him,” Gunn said, walking up, “his mother died recently.”

“Really? I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She didn’t die recently. Let’s just get on with this.”

The man shrugged and looked the house over. He took glasses out of his breast pocket and slipped them on. “Let’s get this party off the ground.”

They walked up the lawn and to the front door. Then Benny walked back down to the lawn and around the house in a full circle. Stanton and Gunn followed behind quietly. Benny then took out a small camera and began snapping photos. He took ten of the exterior and then pulled out a pen and graph paper and began making diagrams. He did this for so long that Gunn sat down on the porch and began surfing the internet on his phone.

“Okay,” Benny finally said, “let’s go inside.”

The interior smelled like
campfire and melted tires. Benny quickly glanced around and then turned down the hall and went into the bedroom. Then he came out and went into the kitchen, another bedroom, and then the living room. He stopped there and took the camera out again.

“You gotta start where there’s the least damage,” he said
. “That means the fire didn’t start there. See there’s just smoke and heat damage here. Now we just gotta follow it out to the source.”

They walked back out into the hallway. Wires were hanging down from the destroyed ceiling and there was some sort of sticky ash on the ground that clung to Stanton’s shoes. They were Italian imports, handcrafted, and he wished he’d kept some sneakers in his car.

Some debris was at the end of the hallway. Benny removed it and the three men noticed charring at the base of the wall.

“See here,” Benny said, pointing
. “Gases become buoyant when they burn so flames burn up. These char marks that look like puddles—they show the flames burning low. Now we just gotta follow the burn trail down this hallway here.”

As they walked down, Gunn leaned close to Stanton from behind him and whispered, “Since when is he the
fuckin’ professor?”

They walked into the bedroom on the far right where the responding officers had found the body. It was cleared out now and the sunlight that came in through the broken windows illuminated the room.

“We got more pour patterns here. See if the fire’s burning low, it means an accelerant was used. And look at that glass there. Those broken pieces by the window. See those spiderweb pattern cracks? That’s called crazed glass. That means the fire burns fast and hot and causes the glass to do that. That also means an accelerant was used. What you got here is someone who poured something over this house and lit it on fire. You got yourselves a murder.”

“What are these Vs?” Gunn said.

“The smoke and heat from fire goes outward, so when something catches fire, it creates that V pattern. The bottom of the V points to a place of origin for the fire. I noticed one out there in the hallway too. That means you got one point of origin in here, and one out there. One accidental fire maybe, but not two at the same time. This was started by someone.”

Gunn nodded. “Son of a bitch, you are the professor.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Stanton said, “if he wanted to kill himself there are much less painful ways than being burnt alive. And if it was someone else, why didn’t they create a fire wall and lock him in? If they would’ve poured an accelerant over the entryway and by the windows, the vic couldn’t have gotten past them to get out. Why would they pour them in such random places?”

Benny spit near the wall. “Who the hell knows? That’s your guys’ department. I told you this here was a murder and I bet if you talk to that stepson
a his, you’ll find out he was the one that did it.”

Stanton opened the file in his hand. The victim’s name was Marco Yazzie. The stepson was Fernando Yazzie. Fernando was the only one home when the fire began. He ran out of the house screaming, calling for help. Several neighbors ran over
, and in their initial statements, stated that he was frantic.

“Well, should we go have a chat with the Son of the Year?” Gunn said.

“Looks like it.”

“You wanna grab something to eat first?”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll just meet you down at the precinct. Is he still in custody?”

“Yup. They picked him up a few hours ago from school.”

They exited the house. Stanton saw Benny making notes on a sheet that was attached to a clipboard. He waved goodbye to them as he walked to his truck.

It didn’t take Stanton long to get back to the precinct and when he did he went straight to his office and shut the door. He reviewed the Yazzie file again, reading the initial responding detective’s report. The victim had actually died of smoke inhalation before he was engulfed by the fire. There were some photos and Stanton glanced at them and shuffled them to the back of the file.

He stretched his neck and closed the file before turning to his computer. Opening Google Mail, he saw he had eighty-seven unread emails.

It was nearly an hour later that Gunn showed up to the precinct. He walked through quietly, nodding to a few people
before coming into Stanton’s office without knocking. He sat down across from him and put his feet up on the desk. It was almost ten minutes later that Stanton responded to him.

“You smell like booze,” Stanton said.

“Haven’t touched the stuff today. Well, ten shots. Give or take.”

“You can’t come in drunk on every case. Eventually someone will notice.”

“Someone will notice because I ain’t actin’ right or someone will notice because someone else will tell them?”

“I’m not like that, Stephen.”

“No? You sure as hell testified against Harlow pretty quick.”

Stanton stopped his work on the computer and turned to him. “What did you say?”

“I’m just sayin’, you tell me you’re not a rat and I tell you that you’re the only detective here that’s testified against another cop.”

He turned back to the computer. “Michael Harlow wasn’t a cop. He was a thug. I took another thug off the street but testified against him first. That’s all we do. That’s our job.”

“This ethics lecture is borin’ me,” he said, leaning farther back in the chair. “Let’s go get some pussy.”

“Not interested.”

“Man, sixteen homicide detectives and I get stuck with the Mormon.”

“It’s not exactly charming from where I’m sitting either.”

A long pause and then Gunn said. “I didn’t mean that. I really didn’t. You’re dependable and there’s no one else I’d want watchin’ my back. But you gotta cut loose sometimes, man. At least a little. I feel like I’m hangin’ out with my grandma sometimes.”

Stanton finished the email he was working on and sent it. He stood up and turned to Gunn. “I’ll try
to be more fun if you quit showing up to work drunk.”

“I’ll try.”

They walked out of the office and into the long corridor. To the right were the holding cells, to the left the front commons area and the entrance. Some commotion was near the entrance as two officers tackled a man that was resisting them and one of the officers tased him. He was screaming and they had to hurry and get the cuffs on before he regained his composure. Stanton had to step over the pool of urine that was running down his leg and onto the floor.

CHAPTER 6

The interrogation room was hot and there were no windows. Stanton brought a cold soda in with him and set it on the table in front of
sixteen-year-old Fernando. He sat across from him and smiled as he opened a bottle of juice for himself. Fernando watched him a moment and then opened the soda and took a swig.

“I saw in your file from school that you play baseball. What position?”

“Shortstop.”

“I played catcher but I was too skinny so they sent me to left field. I remember there wasn’t much to do there but I would get a chance to just hang out in the sunshine and think about things. It was much more enjoyable than
being catcher.”

“How long did you play for?”

“Just one season. I never really got into sports until I took up surfing.”

Gunn walked in then, his hair wet and slicked back and his face freshly washed. Stanton knew he had been in the bathroom splashing cold water on himself.

Fernando looked to him and then back to Stanton and said, “I’ve been playing since I was six. I was gonna go to college on a scholarship. That was my plan.”

“Why did you say it ‘was’ your plan?”

“I don’t know. I ain’t got no other family. I might be put in a foster home. I’ve heard bad stories about people my age that get put into foster homes and I don’t know if they’re gonna let me play baseball.”

Stanton leaned a little closer to the table. “I’m really sorry about what happened to your stepfather, Fernando.”

“He was a good guy. He took me in when my moms died and took care of me. He was the one that got me into baseball. He said that was my way out.”

“Out of what?”

“The life, man. I got two older brothers and they’re both in prison. Where I come from, you play sports or you stand on them corners and sell dope. There’s no other way out.”

“He sounds like he was a good father.”

Gunn was leaning against the wall and looking at his shoes. “My old man bought me a hooker when I was fourteen. He said I’m a man and that’s what men do. That’s the only thing the son of a bitch ever bought me.”

Stanton looked to him and then back to Fernando. “Fernando, can you tell me what you remember about the fire?”

“I was asleep in my room. I was just there on the bed and I heard my pops yelling for me.”

“What happened then?”

“I got up and there was smoke everywhere. It was coming in through my door and I started coughing and stuff. I ran out into the hall ‘cause he was yelling for me but it felt like I was gonna pass out and there was fire everywhere. It was all in the hallway and I couldn’t get to him.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “I couldn’t get to him.”

“Fernando, listen to me, you did everything you could. No one expected you to be able to save him. It was out of your hands at that point.”

Gunn said, “Did you see how the fire started?”

“No.”

“So you just woke up and the house was on fire, huh? That seems weird that you didn’t smell nothin’.”

Fernando shrugged and looked down to the table. He began to play with the soda can. Stanton could tell he was shutting down.

“Stephen, would you mind if Fernando and I just talked for a minute?”

Gunn looked at him, incredulous, anger flashing in his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

When he had left, Stanton took a sip of his juice and leaned back in the chair. “His family’s not close. He doesn’t know what it’s like to lose somebody.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, my mother. She died of breast cancer when I was a lot younger. I was with her through those times. The hospital cafeteria cook even started making me dinner every night and keeping it warm in the oven ‘cause I was there so much.”

Tears came to Fernando’s eyes again and he wiped them with the back of his hand. Stanton gently placed his hand on his wrist. They sat quietly a long time as Fernando softly wept.

When he was through, Stanton stood up.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He stepped out of the room and saw Gunn staring through the two-way mirror. He didn’t acknowledge Stanton as he walked by.

Stanton walked down the hallway to his office and flipped through the contacts on his iPhone. He found the number he was looking for and dialed. A female voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi
, Cami. It’s Jon.”

“Hey, how are you! I haven’t talked to you in a minute.”

“I know. Sorry about that. I’ve been swamped up here. How’s Hank doing?”

“Great. He’s been focusing more on commercial real estate and leaving the residential stuff for the young kids. He works fewer hours and likes his clientele more.”

“That’s good news. Please tell him hi for me and that we’ll go golfing again soon.”

“I will. So what can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you could pull some strings and have a kid placed with a family.”

“For you, anything. Tell me about him?”

“He’s sixteen and his mother died some time ago. His stepfather took care of him since then and he just passed away in a fire. I think he needs a family that doesn’t have anybody else his same age. He’d do really well with a couple or a couple with young children.”

“Okay. I’m not at the office now but when I head back I’ll find someplace good. Can you email me his info?”

“Sure thing. I’m going to keep him here at the station for now. How quickly can we do it?”

“We could get him in tomorrow
or the next day if I rush. You can place him in a group home for now.”

“No, I’ll put him up in a hotel. Can you let me know as soon as you have a place lined up?”

“You got it.” 

“Thanks, Cami. Take care.”

“You too. Bye.”

Stanton walked out of his office and to the front desk. He checked the roster and saw that a young rookie named McManis was on duty at the front desk. He went and hunted him down, finding him in the break
room, eating some Twinkies.

“Got a kid here that we’re putting up in a hotel. There’s a Marriot
t a couple miles west, near Greenview. I need you to take him there.” Stanton took out his credit card and handed it to him. “Use this to pay. Also tell the front desk to allow him any meals he wants.”

McManis rolled his eyes but took the credit card.

Stanton walked back to the interrogation room. Gunn was still standing there, his arms folded.

“So we gonna actually drill this little shit or what?” he said.

“No.”

“And, oh great and wise Jonathan, may I ask why not?”

Stanton ignored the sarcasm. “He didn’t do it.”

“What? You think you can tell that from a
two-minute conversation about baseball?”

“I’m telling you, Stephen, he didn’t do it. I’m putting him up in a hotel for tonight
, and tomorrow he’s gonna be placed in a good foster home. He’s got no relatives to go to.”

“Hey fuck that. He’s our prime
—no—our only suspect in a homicide and you’re just gonna let him go?”

“I don’t think it was a homicide.”

“You heard the arson investigator just like I did.”

“He came to his decision too quickly. He was just processing the scene to match a hunch he had. It wasn’t objective; he wasn’t listening to the evidence.”

Gunn shook his head. “You don’t know shit about arson investigations, Jon. And neither do I. Let’s leave it to the experts.”

“I intend to.”