Going Home - 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.

We were missing any directly incriminating evidence like a witness that saw Jeremy behind the store pour the gas or receipts from him buying a bunch of gas near town, although the latter wouldn’t be as helpful as it would be if the accelerant had been something more exotic. It would be pretty easy for a defense attorney to explain why his client needed to buy gas, after all.

There was a chance Orville could get him to talk when he interviewed Jeremy, but that was up to Orville.

I finished typing everything up, printed out a hard copy for Sarah and then emailed the file to Orville, just to make sure everyone got it and shut everything down.

I’d been at it for hours and it was well after lunch, so I decided to head down to Rosita’s, both to see her for a little bit and maybe get something to eat. The good thing about being friends with someone who owned a taco shop was never being in want of good food to eat.

“So that’s it, huh?” Sarah said as I was leaving.

“Yep. It’s up to Orville now. I’ll see ya,” I said, giving her a small wave.

“Are you going to go down to the thing Rosita set up for this morning?”

“What thing?” I asked, stopping in my tracks.

“She’s set up a big event for people to come help the rebuild of Williams’ Barbershop. I think today they’re just tearing down all the damaged stuff and cleaning the site. I heard she’s got actual construction people to donate some time and equipment, but she wanted the first day to be a big thing. I heard she’s got some of the women from the church who normally do their bake sale to bake up cakes and stuff, with the proceeds to go to the rebuilding fund.”

“She did?” I asked again, a bit floored.

“Yep. She’s been calling all around town, trying to convince everyone to chip in. I swear, she never runs out of energy.”

I wasn’t surprised that she’d set something like that up, since she’d more or less said that’s what she wanted to do earlier in the week. I was surprised that she hadn’t brought it up to me any time since and that I hadn’t heard anything about it from anyone else. Admittedly, since I’d been waiting for the lab report, I’d only really been at her restaurant or at home for the last few days, so it wasn’t like I was going to run into anyone talking about it.

I still couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t bring it up.

“I guess. Yeah, I’ll go down and check it out.”

Sarah’s description of it as a ‘big event’ didn’t really do it justice. There were easily a hundred people all over the site, from men, several of whom I recognized as working in the mines with my dad, who were tearing out the parts of the burned-out building that were charred but still standing, to little old ladies sitting behind tables packed with cakes and bread.

The people working on the site were hauling debris to a big container placed between the damaged pawn shop and the remains of the barbershop, with the name of a local construction company on it, that everyone was throwing trash into.

Rosita was off by the tables next to the old women selling baked goods. She’d hauled out one of the hot boxes from her restaurant and run a plug into the business on the other side of the barbershop. The box looked to be full of food and there were almost as many people lined up next to her table as there were at the baked goods table.

I didn’t see Julie, so I assumed she’d stayed behind to keep the restaurant running, although considering the number of people out here, they might just as well have shut down for the day, since it seemed like everyone not at work today was here.

I made my way over to Rosita, having to excuse my way through the line, and around to the back of the table where she was pulling tacos and taquitos out of the hotbox and handing them to hungry customers.

“This is something!”

“I know. I didn’t think this many people would come out.”

“When did you do all of this?”

“It wasn’t just me. I called Mr. Calvin, he’s the head whatever at the Elks Club and some of the guys at the VA. Did you know Mr. Cooper was a veteran? Anyway, they did a lot of the work getting it organized. You’d be amazed at the kind of connections to companies that offer charitable work and donations the Elks have. Here, help me get these out,” she said, pointing to a tray of taquitos.”

I pulled the tray out and started to wrap them up the way she’d shown me at the restaurant while she took orders and handed out food.

“I meant, why didn’t you say anything? I’ve seen you every night for the last three days, and you never mentioned anything.”

“When we originally talked about the possibility that he wouldn’t get an insurance payment, I’d said we should put something together to help him. I started calling around that night, but I didn’t know if this would actually come together, so there wasn’t really much to talk about. Besides, you were busy with the investigation, and getting justice for Mr. Cooper is just as important as helping him rebuild his barbershop. I didn’t want you to get distracted trying to help me when you had more important stuff to work on.”

“Okay, although next time mention it. My mom has a lot of connections with the church and could probably have been a big help.”

“Ohh, I actually called her. She’s the one that set up the whole bake sale thing. She said they made almost three thousand dollars last year for the new playground at the church.”

“You called my mother?” I said, both surprised and a little horrified.

“Yeah. I wasn’t sure she’d remember me, since we met just that one time, but she did. Once I explained what was happening and what I wanted to do, she jumped right into action.”

“Huh,” was all I could say.

Her involvement did explain some things, like all the miners here working. The thing that had surprised me was how many people had shown up to help. In a place like Buxton, someone was an outsider until they had at least two or three generations in the town, and Rosita had only been here a few years. I know a lot of people stop by her restaurant, but I hadn’t gotten the impression she’d become such a fixture of the community.

My mother’s involvement explained all the church ladies showing up to support the rebuild and my father was probably behind the off-work mine workers here helping with the physical labor.

With my mother’s habit of saying the most embarrassing thing she could think of at any moment, I wasn’t sure I was crazy about her and Rosita having conversations when I wasn’t around to referee, but I had to admit they’d pulled off a hell of an operation in just a few days.

As we fed hungry workers and collected donations to go towards the rebuild, I also found out how the construction container and the people I didn’t recognize came about. Apparently, one of the guys from the mine had a brother-in-law who owned a construction company in Summersville and, after some nudging from Rosita and my mother, talked them into doing some work as a charitable write-off. The money they were collecting was to cover the supplies that had to be bought, although a lot of that had gotten donated as well.

After an hour, we finished handing out the rest of the food and Rosita had to head back to the restaurant to pick up some more. I’d offered to go with her, but she said she also needed to make sure Julie was good and I should hang around here and supervise. Since I had nothing to do with setting it up, that didn’t make much sense, but I got the message and went to help haul wreckage.

I’d been at it for about twenty minutes when I noticed Orville standing by the bake sale table. Although one of the old ladies was talking to him, he’d been watching me and gave me a wave when he noticed I’d seen him. Throwing what I had in my arms in the bin, I told the guys I’d be back in a minute and made my way through the now thinned-out rubble over to him.

“You’re doing a good thing here,” he said, leading me away from the bake sale table and the rest of the people working.

“It’s all Rosita and my mother apparently. I didn’t even know they were doing this until Sarah said something.”

“I’ll make sure and tell them too, although considering how those two would have gotten in contact, I can’t imagine you had nothing to do with it.”

“Maybe, although I’m not crazy about them talking.”

“I hear that. Anyway, I just got done reading your report. Damn fine work, Henry. Damn fine. Hell, it reads like Shakespeare compared to the stuff we normally send to the District Attorney. I’m half tempted to re-write it just so he doesn’t get some wild expectations.”

“The NYPD sucked at a lot of stuff, but they knew how to handle their paperwork.”

“Well, it shows. You pretty well nailed the son to the wall. I could practically turn this over now and just let the DA deal with it, without even interviewing him.”

“You’re still going to question him right? It’d be crazy not to.”

“Of course. I don’t really know him, since he was older than us and moved away by the time we got to high school, so I don’t have a sense if he’ll confess even with the weight of evidence we have against him.”

“Maybe not, but he could say something else that incriminates him.”

“Yep. Plus, the DA would throw a fit if I submitted a case for prosecution and it didn’t include an interview with a suspect. I was just saying that, even without it, you built a solid case. Really shows the kind of professionalism we’ve been missing around here.”

“No,” I said flatly.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I could feel it coming.”

“I know you’ve got this big plan to get out of here and be a gym coach or some such thing, but I also know you’re not really all that excited about it.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Things that Rosita said the other day when I stopped in for lunch.”

“What kind of things?” I ask suspiciously, equally unenthused about the idea of Rosita discussing me with other people.

“Don’t take it like that, she wasn’t gossiping about you. That girl genuinely likes you and I think she’s worried that you’re going to make a mistake.”

“Like what kind of mistake?”

“You should talk to her about this,” he said. “If you do change your mind, you’d be welcome to join us. I haven’t had any good applicants for the third deputy spot yet. Even if you want to do it until your other job offers come through, you’d be a huge help for Al and me. We’re spread kinda thin.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, mostly wanting the conversation to end.

Thankfully, anything else he was going to say got lost in the commotion of a car pulling up, carrying George Cooper and his son. I also noticed Rosita had come back while I was talking to Orville and had joined in the group surrounding the car. Making my way over, I managed to squeeze through everyone to stand next to Rosita, who was talking to George.

“Henry, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of this,” he said when he saw me.

“Ohh, this isn’t my doing. I’m just a worker bee here. Rosita heard about your troubles and was determined to help you out. She started calling around and put this all together in two days.”

“Really?” George asked, looking at Rosita.

“I was just trying to do the right thing.”

“Thank you so much,” he said, grabbing her hand and giving it a tight squeeze.

I took a step back to let others wanting to give their well wishes room to greet George. There was still a whole lot of work to do, and it would most likely be weeks before his shop was back open, but we’d made good progress cleaning out the debris and getting it ready so that the volunteers who’d signed up to actually rebuild the place could get to work.

Rosita had really pulled off something amazing, and I couldn’t be more proud of her.