St. Albans Fire

Chapter 2

Jonathon Michael stood under the open sky in the remains of the stable, dressed in heavy boots and coveralls, swathed in an acrid atmosphere of burned wood, insulation, and the sweet smell of cooked meat. The word “Police” was embroidered in block letters between his shoulder blades. He was empty-handed, his arms crossed, his expression pensive. After eighteen years as a state arson investigator, he’d learned that the first best rule in this work was to do nothing, or at least nothing physical. Time and again in the past, he’d seen others steamroll in, get distracted by the flashiest evidence, and reach the wrong conclusion-or at best waste a huge amount of time getting around to the right one. Truth be told, he had done just that more than once in the early days.

But not lately. He’d closed every case he’d handled over the last ten years, and while Vermont couldn’t brag of the arson stats of New York or Boston, it still had its share of wackos, insurance defrauders, and just plain pissed-off people. And the state’s rural nature didn’t necessarily mean a low average IQ among its crooks, either; some of the ones he’d arrested had done excellent, subtle work, making the end result look for all the world like a simple mishap.

So Michael took his time. He usually arrived without fanfare and out of uniform, walking around unnoticed and alone. Eventually, before he was done, he’d talk to the firefighters who battled the blaze, to the cops who controlled traffic and managed the crowd, to neighbors and friends, even sometimes to the press photographers and reporters, and finally to the family, all in the pursuit of telling details. Also-at some point in the midst of it all-he’d process the actual scene, occasionally taking days to do so. The pecking order for this complicated, often diplomatic procedure varied from case to case and usually, as now, was helped along by others, especially the Vermont Forensic Lab, which today was still on its way. Inevitably, however, sooner or later Michael found himself where he was right now: standing alone in the middle of a water-soaked, blackened, artificial swamp, trying to think through what might have led to its creation.

Traditionally, barn fires were among the worst. For the most part old, dry, wooden structures, barns were match heads to begin with, before they were stuffed with hay and chemicals and tractors and gas and oil and anything else highly flammable. By an overwhelming margin, when it came to investigating barn fires, Jonathon Michael found himself the tallest thing standing in a clotted field of tangled char.

This one was the rare exception. For reasons he hoped to discover-through his own reconstruction and from witness accounts-this barn had not been reduced to a cellar hole. It wasn’t salvageable by any means-the entire hayloft overhead was missing, for one thing-but there were remnants of the building still standing, if only to an eye as practiced as his, which meant that he had a great deal more to work with than usual.

This was especially good news, since the primary reason he was standing here instead of running preliminary interviews was the strong possibility that a young man lay dead at his feet somewhere.

Joe Gunther carefully replaced the phone.

Gail Zigman glanced up at him. “Trouble?”

“Yeah,” he answered tiredly. “A possible arson way up northwest, St. Albans area.”

She raised her eyebrows. “They called you?”

“Someone died,” he answered.

Her face softened. “Ah,” she murmured, once more struck by how often death played an intimate third to their relationship. She and Joe had been together for a long time now-decades, in fact-long enough to give her pause occasionally.

“You going?” she asked him, a coffee mug halfway to her lips.

He stretched and arched his back, causing the newspaper spread across his lap to slip onto the floor. “Yup. Not much choice. Sorry.”

She took a sip and then shook her head. “No, no. I understand. I have work to do anyhow.”

They were tucked into her small Montpelier condo, where she now spent most of her time. She’d recently been elected to the Vermont State Senate-a low-paying, part-time job in a citizen legislature that functioned only half of each year, although such a description didn’t do justice to either the job’s real demands or Gail’s ability to transform potentially light labor into something all-consuming. Gail Zigman was nothing if not passionate, and did few things halfway. As a result, her large home in Brattleboro-which she’d briefly shared with Joe a few years back-had become little more than a place to touch base. Certainly, Joe, if he wanted time with her, had learned to drive here for it, usually rationalizing the trip by also checking in with his Vermont Bureau of Investigation headquarters in nearby Waterbury.

Joe got to his feet and went in search of his shoes by the front door. “This’ll probably take a while-maybe a few days. I’ll give you a call.”

“Sure,” she answered. “No problem.” She added, suddenly concerned, “This is safe, right?”

He looked up at her, one shoe in his hand, and smiled. “Yeah. Probably an insurance thing gone wrong. Maybe a feud. We’ll just be cleaning up the mess. Nobody shooting at us, at least not till the lawyers show up.”

She nodded at the feigned humor and let him get back to his task, but the small smile she offered was entirely false. He’d almost died a couple of times on the job, once in a car accident and once when a knife thrust put him in a coma for weeks-not to mention too many lesser injuries and close calls to count.

Reacting to these thoughts, she, too, rose from her chair and crossed over to him, putting her arms around his waist and giving him a tight hug.

He chuckled tentatively and rubbed her back, burying his nose in her hair and breathing her in as he loved to do. “You okay?” he asked. “What’s this about?”

She pulled back and looked into his eyes, her expression serious. “Nothing. I’ll miss you. Do call.”

Jonathon Michael watched as the medical examiner and the funeral home crew wrestled the gurney bearing Bobby Cutts along the narrow trench that Michael had, for safety’s sake, allowed to be cut through the debris, despite it all being a probable crime scene. The volunteer EMT/firefighters had been a huge help there-shoveling a pathway in barely twenty minutes. No surprise, of course; they were routinely reliable if you treated them right, hanging around long after their job was done, eager to assist, sometimes to a fault. Michael had pulled the leash on them more than once in the past to preserve potential evidence from being trampled or destroyed. Among cops, the inside joke was that EMT actually stood for “evidence mangling technician.” Still, he remained grateful-they were cooperative, interested, and instinctively hard workers, especially when it came to the heavy lifting he so commonly required. In his experience, few of his own law enforcement colleagues were as useful-or, to be fair, as plentiful.

The gurney crew reached the edge of the barn’s foundation and the trampled, soiled snow field beyond, to be immediately enveloped by Bobby’s family-assuming that what they’d found was Bobby. Luckily for the medical examiner, given what was left, dental records and DNA would confirm the identity of what had taken hours to locate. Michael’s thermal imager had finally done the trick, just barely distinguishing Bobby’s curled-up form from the smoking timbers and carcasses around it. In fact, when he’d turned the machine off to confirm his discovery, he couldn’t tell the difference.

Michael shook his head gently and returned to work. He’d allowed for the removal as soon as he’d dared, but it still had taken hours for him and the forensics crew to measure, take pictures, and make sketches and notes, all while the family anxiously hovered. He’d met with them earlier, briefly-the mother catatonic, the father stoic and helpful, identifying his son from his partially burned boots, the sister and brother-in-law emulating their elders, although the sister had also given in to occasional bouts of pain so fierce that Michael had thought they might be stomach cramps.

No one had been able to tell him much. This was a bolt from the blue, without context or explanation. Michael hadn’t pressed for more. It was early yet. He’d really only wanted first impressions, maybe an inkling of something amiss. He’d gotten only sorrow and grief.

The barn, by contrast, had bordered on the eloquent. From the moment he’d set eyes on it, he’d had his hopes, which is why he’d alerted his superiors. Arson investigation textbooks tell you to look for multiple sources of primary ignition-often those places that show the heaviest char, called alligatoring for obvious reasons. That’s where this building’s not having burned to the ground came in handy, the consensus being that if you burn anything long enough, it all becomes char.

Here there was enough left standing, or enough that could be re-erected with the firefighters’ help, that Michael had been able to identify several sources of primary ignition. Not only that, but glancing about, especially in the remains of the stable, he’d discovered what looked like trailer lines-burned traces of a flammable substance used to carry fire from one spot to another. As a child, he’d seen his father light a brush pile using gasoline this way, dribbling a line of it along the ground from the soaking pile to a safe distance away. Jonathon had delighted in how the flame from a single match would tear off like a blazing ground ball to ignite the brush with explosive force. The overall effect had made a permanent impression. Never again had he treated fire with anything but respect.

Looking around, he had no idea what Bobby Cutts’s last moments had been like in this scorched place, but if he’d been as surrounded by such images as Jonathon was conjuring up, a better picture of hell had never been imagined.

“Is it okay to approach?”

He looked up from his reverie at the sound of the familiar voice. A relaxed-looking older man, also in insulated coveralls, was standing just outside the encircling yellow crime tape.

Michael smiled and waved him in. “Hi, Joe. Sure. Watch where you step, though. It’s a little tricky.”

The younger man looked as his boss ducked under the tape and headed gingerly toward him, ignored by the other investigators, all dressed in white Tyvek, who dotted the blighted scene like slow-moving, stooped astronauts exploring a lunar landscape. Typically, Joe Gunther’s coveralls were a little ragged and not marked in any way, not unlike the man wearing them. Gunther by now was a legend in Vermont, at least among fellow police officers. Once a Brattleboro cop and seemingly fated to stay forever as such, he had surprised everyone by abruptly transferring to the number two position in the Vermont Bureau of Investigation when the latter was born a few years earlier via a stroke of the governor’s pen.

This turned out to have been a major event in Jonathon Michael’s life, since Gunther’s decision had done much to influence him to follow suit, in his case by leaving the state police. At the time, most cops had warily viewed the new VBI as a political stunt designed to gut the state police’s own investigative arm and lure away the best detectives from all the municipal departments. But after Gunther was made field force commander and demonstrated that this exclusively major crimes unit would only enter local investigations by invitation, perceptions began to soften. Of course, the irony was that both the state police and the municipals did take huge hits, since the VBI package and its high-level mandate were so attractive, but, in the end, that only irritated a small number of management types-the working cops and the populations they served were delighted. The VBI turned out to be efficient, effective, well funded, and self-effacing, always ensuring that local politicians and law enforcement leaders were first in line when credit was doled out and reporters present.

Joe Gunther stuck his hand out as he drew near. “Jonathon, long time.”

Michael shook hands warmly. They had worked together in the past, and he had always enjoyed the older man’s style-a disarming and subtle combination of authority and diplomacy.

“Joe, how’re you doing?”

“Pretty well. How’s Diane?”

Michael chuckled. That was typical. His wife had undergone gallbladder surgery several weeks ago. Not an emergency, and although obviously of concern to the family, it was certainly nothing that had been made public. But Joe had known about it. By comparison, Jonathon wasn’t even aware of Joe’s marital status.

“She’s doing fine. Took advantage of the recovery to go on a diet. Thanks for asking.”

Gunther took in the devastation around them and sighed. “How ’bout you? I saw them loading the hearse. Was it bad?”

“Bad enough. I hope he went quick. I’m okay, though. The family may be something else.”

“You talk to them?”

“A bit. Not in depth. Thought I’d leave that to you, if you’re interested.”

His boss shrugged. “I know Johnson’s on vacation from your office. How’s Ross doing with the Wilkens homicide?”

Michael knew Gunther was merely being polite. It was unlikely he hadn’t been keeping tabs, but again, the man had his own style. “He’s pretty busy. I doubt anyone’s nose’ll be put out of joint if you pitch in, and I’d appreciate the help. I’m more of a hardware man. Not too crazy about dealing with grieving families.”

Gunther nodded as if he’d just been invited, instead of having driven all this way to participate. “Okay, if you’re sure. Is it definitely arson?”

“Yup. I got multiple sources, trailer lines, what I think is glue spread on the walls to carry the fire down from upstairs.”

“It started up there?” Gunther asked, surprised.

“Yeah, the hayloft. I found the remains of some sort of chemical squib near where all the bales were stacked-that and an odor of sulfuric acid. I collected samples for the lab, but right now I’m thinking a one-two ignition on opposite ends of the hayloft, involving chem timers, what looks like a potassium chlorate/sugar mix, and a series of trailer lines made of gas and/or glue, depending. They carried the fire down here and spread it to a series of secondary ignition sources-potato chips and piles of hay or whatever was lying around. Pretty organized work.”

“Potato chips?”

Michael smiled grimly. “People don’t realize it, but if they get the right brand, what they’re munching on is a primo combustible-better than an oily rag and easier to get hold of.”

“But why start upstairs?” Gunther asked. “Fire spreads up. Seems kind of complicated to fight Mother Nature.”

Jonathon Michael looked vaguely uncomfortable. He preferred facts and evidence over speculation, which was one of the reasons he’d stuck with arson as a specialty. “More flammable materials?”

“Implying an inexperienced torch?”

Here Michael felt himself on firmer ground. “Not from what I’ve put together. This was no rookie.”

Gunther was thoughtful for a few moments, while Michael quietly waited. Joe had an impressive record for closing complicated cases, after all-a man after Jonathon’s own heart. He wasn’t about to rush him.

“Anything familiar about his handiwork?” Joe finally asked. “You’ve done most of the big fires in the state.”

Michael had already considered that. “Nope. I’ll be running him through the computer, but I’ve never seen any of this before.”

Another pause.

“How ’bout the family?”

“Could one of them have done it?” Michael asked. “Anything’s possible, I guess. Farmers can pretty much do what they put their minds to, at least mechanically, and I haven’t had a chance to check out the insurance on this. But if you’re looking for a gut reaction, I’d say no. They seem too shook up. And the word so far is they’re super tight-knit.”

Joe Gunther stared down at his soot-smeared boots for a moment before looking back up. “Guess we got an old-fashioned murder, then,” he said sadly.