Chapter 15

Since I was more or less done with the investigation, I left the patrol vehicle at the station. It didn’t feel right to drive it around for personal use, especially when I had basically everything I needed except for the credit check on Jeremy and the lab report on the samples I’d taken. Honestly, I was confident enough in my conclusions that I probably could have written the report now, and would have if I’d only been waiting on the credit check. That was just icing on the cake, as it were.

The lab’s findings, however, were needed to finish the report, especially since the rest of the case was circumstantial. Strongly circumstantial, true, but no one saw him around the shop that night and I doubted he’d just up and confess. Once we had the forensics confirming the building had been set on fire with an accelerant, all the other evidence would fall into place.

At loose ends, I headed towards Rosita’s. I was feeling amped up after making such good progress and didn’t want to sit in a mostly empty apartment.

Rosita was getting things set up when I walked through the door, causing her to stop and look confused.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

It was a legitimate question. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet and this was by far the earliest I’d ever come to visit her. It occurred to me in that moment that I probably should have gone back to my apartment instead. I was already stopping by every night, and there was a limit on how long someone could hang out and visit before they overstayed their welcome.

“Yeah, I just finished up at the sheriff’s office and didn’t feel like going home. Sorry, I didn’t even think before I headed over here. I know you have to get ready for lunch. I can take off if you want and come back later.”

“No, stay. It’s fine. You can keep me company and when it gets busy, I have all the dishes from my prep work that you can wash for me.”

“Ohh, so I’m to be unpaid labor, am I?” I said, smiling so she knew I was joking.

“Being allowed to stay in my presence should be payment enough.”

“Fair enough,” I said, following her through the door into the back of the restaurant and finding a spot out of her way to lean while we talked.

“So, you are done with the case then?”

“Almost. I’m just waiting on the lab report and I’ll be able to write up my report and turn it in.”

“Do you still think the son did it?”

Normally it was bad form to talk about a case with someone not involved, but I used to vent to Terri after a long shift, in the rare moments when we were getting along. I’d made sure to tell her she shouldn’t share what I was saying with anyone else, but she was smart and already understood the need for keeping it between us.

Besides it being useful to have someone, even someone who didn’t know the specifics, to bounce ideas off of and it gave me an excuse to say things out loud which was incredibly helpful. It also kept the negative feelings related to investigating people that could come with police work from building up. I know most guys on the force back in New York City felt that way. That wasn’t particularly the case now, since Jeremy was a twerp and I’d be happy to see him in handcuffs after he tried to murder someone like Mr. Cooper.

I looked out at the front to make sure there weren’t any customers and said, “I’m nearly certain of it. He’d already found someone to sell the property to and changed the insurance policy around the same time. Of course, for that to work, he’d have to kill Mr. Cooper, so it’s not just arson anymore.”

“That’s terrible.”

“I know. I’ve known Mr. Cooper since I was a little kid, and he was always a good guy. It takes someone particularly cold-blooded to do something like that. Especially when he’s doing it just for the money.”

“Did he need it that bad?”

“I don’t know. I’m also waiting on a credit check to come back on him.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s actually pretty common in most cases that aren’t open and shut and aren’t misdemeanors. Money is one of the big motives for a lot of crimes and even when it’s not, it can tell us things about the suspect.”

“I didn’t realize that. How is Mr. Cooper? Did you talk to him today?”

“No, but I talked to his partner. Mr. Williams isn’t doing well. I’m getting the impression he doesn’t have much longer to live, which may be why his son decided to act now, since anything that gets paid out would go to his father and he’d inherit the money afterward.”

“That’s gruesome. At least the insurance money will be able to go to Mr. Cooper now, so he can rebuild his shop, if he wants.”

“Actually, it won’t. In cases like this, where a family member of one of the owners, especially one who had power of attorney and made changes to the policy, is accused of damaging the building, the insurance doesn’t pay.”

“That’s awful.”

“That’s insurance for you. The first thing they always do is try to find a way to screw you out of paying you. The only reason I didn’t have a hassle with it for my two surgeries is that I had the backing of the players’ union the first time and the policemen’s union the second, and they both have enough pull to make it too much of a headache to screw the claimants. Someone like George Cooper though, they’ll mess over without a second thought.”

“So they won’t pay him anything?”

“I don’t know. If pressured, they may pay out for what the policy was originally, before Jeremy changed it, but that’s a long shot. Even if they did, the policy isn’t enough to completely cover rebuilding and replacing everything that got destroyed during the fire.”

“Ohh, I feel just terrible about that. We should do something!”

“I’d love to, but it’s not like either of us has a hundred thousand just sitting around, burning a hole in our pockets.”

“We can still do something. If we can get enough people to chip in, we can get the supplies to replace the shop and people to volunteer their time. Buxton might not be a wealthy town, but I’ve always found the people to be good. They care about their neighbors, and like you said, most people have known Mr. Cooper since they were kids, right?”

“Yep. I’m not doubting it’s possible, but it’s going to take a lot of material, a lot of know-how, and some experts, like electricians, to do some of the work.”

“We can try to get some of them to donate their time, and if we can’t, that can be what the donations are for. If he still gets some insurance payment, we might be able to make up the difference with donated labor and materials.”

“I mean, it’s worth a try, but I don’t think you should get your hopes up.”

“And I don’t think you should doubt me. I might surprise you.”

“You already do,” I said.

Our conversation basically ended there, as people started coming in to order lunch. I was banished to the sink where I did dishes and wiped down some of the prep areas while she was upfront cooking and waiting on customers.

While I was skeptical she’d be able to get enough people to donate, I was proud of her for wanting to do something to help Mr. Cooper. It just reinforced to me what a good person she was. After years of living with Terri, it was refreshing to find the person I cared about was also a decent human being.

I begged off after helping clean up from lunch, since I didn’t want to wear out my welcome. She didn’t bring up finding people to help Mr. Cooper again the next day when I saw her, or the day after that, so I kind of assumed she’d let it drop. Or she’d tried and found people were less receptive to helping others than she’d hoped. Maybe it was the cynic in me that assumed people would always disappoint, but I hadn’t been proven wrong yet.

The lab report came back two days after my call with Mr. Spencer. I’d been hanging out at home, not wanting to repeat my early arrival at Rosita’s, when Sarah called to tell me it had been delivered.

“So it came in?” I asked when I came through the door.

“Yep. I also got the credit check back last night, but the lab had called and said they’d sent the report to be delivered to us, so I decided to wait until they were both here so you didn’t have to walk here twice.”

“I wasn’t doing much else, but I appreciate the thought. Where’s Orville?”

“Al needed tonight off, so Orville agreed to switch with him and work tonight. He’s home getting some sleep so he’s not too tired. You know, he really is pushing himself too hard. We really could use another hand around here.”

“So he has you doing his dirty work too?”

“No, I really mean it. He’s been pushing himself too hard. It’s a small county, but our budget is almost non-existent so we can’t really pay what it’ll take to get someone from outside to move here. Besides, last year he tried out a guy from Virginia, and he just didn’t understand how people are down here. Orville’s a big believer in having the police be part of the community they’re policing. He wants someone who understands the people around here.”

“Then you wouldn’t want me. I’ve been in New York City for a long time. I’m not exactly a local anymore.”

“I can think of a lady who runs a restaurant who’d probably disagree.”

“Do you people do anything but gossip?”

“No, not really,” she said, giving me a knowing smile. “I put the report and credit check on your desk.”

“It’s not my desk,” I said, walking past her.

“Whatever you say.”

I wasn’t a scientist, so the lab report had a lot of stuff that didn’t mean anything to me, or anyone else who wasn’t an expert witness, but it made it pretty clear the fire was arson.

The samples from within the building had some kind of substance that, as far as I could tell, was a product left behind when wood is burned rapidly with an accelerant, or that’s what I thought it said. The part that was clear was what I needed, though. The scrapings I took heading into the door were made by good old gasoline. They had a bunch of other words in there that probably described exactly what kind of gas it was and maybe even which gas station it was from, but knowing it was gasoline was enough to say it was arson. When coupled with everything else, would make this an open and shut case.

The credit check, while not vital, was still an interesting read. A steady string of missed mortgage payments, late payments on a car note, and a staggering amount of credit card debt painted a picture of someone in serious financial trouble, which gave him a motive for wanting both the insurance payment and the proceeds from selling the property. It also explained why he’d increased the insurance amount so much. He was in enough debt that selling the property and the insurance as it was wouldn’t have been enough to cover his massive cash flow issue.

Sarah had actually gone above and beyond just the credit report, and had gotten Orville to obtain a subpoena for his credit card history on the basis of looking for transactions in or around Buxton the day of the fire. Jeremy had been too smart for that, but the history did add more insight into his spending. There were regular charges at horse racing tracks and a tribal casino that, looking at a map, wasn’t that far from his home.

From his credit report, and the pattern of charges, he was spending really close to his entire income on gambling. As addictions go, that one could be pretty close to drugs as far as how expensive it could be and how much it could financially wreck someone’s life.

I booted up the computer and, after having Sarah log in for me, started typing up a report. This was something I’d gotten very good at since the NYPD loved bureaucracy and red tape, even if the reports I wrote in New York City were a lot more mundane than arson.

I didn’t know exactly what Orville was looking for, so I kept it fairly simple. I started off by laying out the incident, including a timeline of what happened, mostly from my own observations, but including some statements Orville and Al had taken from people who arrived after I’d gone inside. I then went into a breakdown of the determination that the fire was caused by the use of an accelerant by a third party, going point by point through the requirements for a finding of arson, which I double checked against the statute that I pulled off the internet to be sure I wasn’t missing anything.

Once I’d shown conclusive evidence that it was arson, I laid out the evidence showing Jeremy Williams had most likely committed the crime, again in chronological order. I started with a breakdown of his financial problems and ended with actions he took after the fact to keep anyone from knowing about his activities. Most of those later actions probably didn’t rise to the level of actual obstruction, but they could possibly be used to construct a pattern of criminal behavior. I didn’t know if Orville would re-write this or submit the report to the county DA as it was, but I figured it was best to include everything and let whoever ended up prosecuting Jeremy sort it out for themselves. I also footnoted everything that I had been recorded, including the witness statements, lab reports, and interview notes I’d taken while talking to Mr. Cooper, Mr. Spencer, and Jeremy’s father, all of which fairly nailed Jeremy to the wall, especially Mr. Spencer’s interview.