Arson and an Apology
Walt and the boys gathered to see what I was talking about. I showed them the red cylinder but warned them not to touch it. Charlie knew what it was. “That’s a cap to a road flare.”
“That’s exactly what it is. Someone torched this place.”
I herded everyone away from the spot and explained for Walt because he didn’t know anything about flares. “A flare is like a big match. It’s a cardboard tube with magnesium and some other chemicals inside. The top has a striker, and the cap has another striker. To light it, you take the cap off and strike it just like a kitchen match. It lights with a flash and will burn for ten or fifteen minutes or so.”
I pointed at the spot where the cap was. “The missing window screen, was it on this side?”
Charlie nodded and drew on his cigarette. “It was right above where you’re standing.”
“And it was low enough to reach from the ground?”
“Yeah, you could lean right in.”
“Go get your camera and find your dad. Bring them back. Walt and me will wait here. I can’t bear another ride in that Jeep.”
Charlie set off at a run with Mitch on his heels. I shouted to them with an afterthought. “HEY! Don’t say a word to anyone. We don’t know who did this. Don’t tell anyone what we found.”
They agreed and dashed off. A second later, the Jeep roared to life and rattled down the road as fast as it would go.
Walt and I went around the front of the house so I could sit on the steps to rest my knees. He stayed on his feet and grinned until I asked what he was smiling at. “You just saved that boy’s relationship with his father. If you hadn’t been here, David would have blamed him no matter what he said.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. We haven’t even been in this farmyard for thirty minutes. All you did was look around. You found one little piece of litter behind a bush and the fire went from an accident to arson. How do you do it?”
“I see things that don’t make sense and I try to make them make sense. I was up early this morning. Charlie was on the porch. He couldn’t sleep. He told me a story that made sense. I could tell that he believed what he said. My main reason for coming out here was to see if there was any way he could have set the fire by accident. There doesn’t seem to be. There’s too much distance between ignition sources.
“If the barn caught fire, I’d say it was Charlie and his smokes. It didn’t. The house burned. That doesn’t make sense. I looked around until I found the reason. Now everything makes sense. I don’t know why someone torched the house, but I’m sure that’s what happened. That’s all detective work is. It’s almost like science. You see something that doesn’t make sense and you look and look and look until you find what does.”
Walt shook his head. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s just something I’ve always been good at.”
“Do you miss it?”
“No, I don’t. I liked solving the puzzles, but I usually hated the answers. I’ve seen so much evil in my life. I’ve been part of so much violence. I believe in God, but I honestly don’t know why He lets it go on. Just like today. I’m so glad I was able to show Charlie is innocent, but I’m mad as hell that someone deliberately burned this house down.”
“You don’t seem very mad.”
I lifted my hands and let them fall to my knees. “I’ve seen too damn much to get wound up, but if the man who did this was in front of me, I’d beat the living shit out of him.” I flexed my painful fingers and let them rest. “I can’t even do that anymore.”
Walt sat down next to me and threw his arm around my body. “Don’t think about it, Love. Look at the sky. This really is big sky country. I always thought that saying was nonsense. I thought the sky was the same size everywhere. It really is so much bigger here. It’s so pretty. I’m glad we came.”
“Me too.”
* * * *
David pulled up in the Suburban with Charlie and Mitch in the Jeep right on his heels. He got out and stood with his boys. That was the first time I’d seen them all together without a major distraction like a housefire. David could never deny the boys were his. The three of them were so obviously related. All three were tall, strong men. All three wore jeans and short-sleeve, button-up shirts. All three wore hats with domed crowns and flat brims.
I was tempted to think the hats were silly, but anyone who spent as much time under the sun as they did would surely need protection. Charlie was his father’s son from the top of his blond head to the soles of his oversized feet. Mitch looked more like his mother, with black hair and finer features. All three were rugged and powerfully built.
Charlie bounced on his feet and pointed toward the side of the foundation where I found the cap to the flare. David wasn’t so easily drawn in. He shushed his son and deferred to me. “What’s all this talk about arson?”
I heaved myself up from the step and showed David what I found. He rubbed his hands together while he considered the implications. “What does it mean?”
“Charlie said the screen was out of a window on this side. The cardboard of the flare cap looks new. It’s not even stained from rain. That means it hasn’t been sitting there for very long. I think someone either drove in here, or maybe parked at the road and walked. They saw the windows were open and the screen was out. They didn’t bother with the door because it might have been locked. They lit the flare, tossed it in, then left. They dropped the cap without a second thought.”
David balked at the idea. “Why?”
“Not a clue, but I’ve been thinking about it while we were waiting for you. What if the bad luck the last owner had wasn’t bad luck? What if someone was trying to get him to sell? He was an old guy with no one to carry on when he couldn’t tend the farm anymore. It wouldn’t have taken much to discourage him or even bankrupt him into selling. A little sabotage here and there and most people who are at the end of their tether will give up and quit.”
He rubbed his hands again. “I just don’t see it, Law. This place isn’t worth even what I paid for it. It’s just a little farmstead with an old dairy barn. All the stock is dead. The equipment is old. The house was old and run down. There’s property for sale all over. Why bother with this place?”
“I don’t know. This could have been a random act of vandalism. That kind of stuff happens in the city all the time. Even as I say that, I realize that this isn’t the type of place where arson just happens. Someone did this for a reason. We just don’t know it yet.”
He wasn’t convinced. “What if someone caught them in the act? Most folks around here are armed.” He rested his right hand on the grip of a large automatic pistol in a holster on his belt. “I’ve got my sidearm and I carry a rifle in the truck. Even the boys have their .22s. Someone who doesn’t belong is likely to get shot.”
I had an answer for that as well. “The fire was started with a flare. I don’t think that was random. Let’s say a man stops a car at the edge of the drive. We’re not that far in from the main road. He opens the hood like he’s broken down. He takes a flare out, like he’s going to use it to warn other traffic, then he walks down here pretending to look for help and a telephone. He’s got an easy excuse for his presence.
“When he’s sure no one is around, he tosses his flare in the window, walks back, closes his hood and he’s gone. The whole thing takes less than five minutes. I noticed a lot of trucks around here have license plates that just say ‘farm use.’ The Jeep your boys drive has one. If he’s got one of them, there isn’t even a tag number for someone to remember. The whole thing is quick and anonymous as a busy sidewalk.”
“But why?”
My old friend was being exasperating. I tried to make him see what was important. “We can work on the why. The most important thing for right now is that your son didn’t burn his sister’s house down.”
David sucked a breath and blew it out. “I was wrong, Charlie. Can you forgive your old man?”
“Sure dad.”
They were awkward like all men are when one has to apologize and the other has to be gracious. Father and son looked in every direction but at each other. Each desperately wanted to show their affection but neither was willing to initiate. I gave them the push they needed. “Are you going to hug each other or do I have to knock your heads together?”
David wrapped his son in his arms and Charlie reciprocated. They released each other but remained very close. David expanded on his apology. “I’m sorry I slapped your face. I’m still not happy about you smoking, and if I catch you in your mother’s kitchen again, I’ll wear you out, but I know you didn’t do this.”
“Thanks, Dad. I forgive you. I know why you thought what you did. I haven’t always been as responsible as I should.”
“Alright, I’m glad we understand each other.” He came back to me. “You’re the expert, Law. What do we do now? Do I call the sheriff?”
I hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking. I didn’t know the right course of action. I doubted the cardboard cap would show fingerprints. I also wasn’t certain the sheriff would draw the same conclusion I did from the evidence. “How well do you know him?”
He shrugged. “Pretty well. He’s Abby’s cousin. We get along alright, I suppose. You know how family can be.”
I shook my head in amazement at the convenience of being related to the sheriff. “I should’ve been a cop in the country. Don’t call him officially. Invite him over for dinner, or for coffee and dessert later. Let’s show him what we found and see what he says. Something is going on here and I suspect we’ve only scratched the surface. In the meantime, it might be worth having a bigger presence up here. Can you use the property for something?”
“We’re spraying now, fungicide for mold and insecticide for vermin. We need water to mix the chemical. I can tell Eddie to use the wellhead here instead of the one in our yard.”
“Do that, but don’t tell him why. If you need an excuse, tell him you want to use it because it’s a new well. I don’t want anyone to know this was arson. Word travels fast in small places. Everyone here needs to keep this to themselves.”
David objected to keeping secrets. “Eddie is my son!”
“Fair enough, but the more people who have a piece of information, the bigger the risk that they talk. Even an inadvertent word could be dangerous. We don’t want the arsonist to know that we know this was arson. Let them think they’re safe and they’ll be easier to catch.”
He agreed. I had the boys take some pictures of the flare cap, the side of the foundation, the whole farmyard, and anything else I could think of. I even went out to the road and had them snap photos of the tire tracks in the ditch.
Once the film was exhausted, David assigned the boys some work for the rest of the day and he took Walt and me back to the house.
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