And to think he almost missed it.
Across the street, under the glare of the porch lights, Noah Glover was being escorted out of his house, a policeman on either side. It wasn’t until he was being turned to be tucked into the rear seat of a patrol car that light glinted off the pair of cuffs circling his wrists.
He sat there a long time after the police cars had one by one pulled away from the curb. The worst of the storm had blown on through. He held a lighter, the only thing his jerk-off of a father had ever given him. But, for the first time in months, he didn’t feel like lighting so much as a firecracker.
A calm had settled over him. The work, the struggle, the soul-grinding disappointment of his life had been lifted away. Noah Glover was under arrest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Noah sat in his sister’s Mercedes staring straight ahead. “Thanks for bailing me out.”
Sandra nodded. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Noah was silent for a moment. It was bad.
There’d been questions, so many questions he’d lost count. Not a big deal, in and of itself. He knew the drill. Yet before, he had always been on the other side of an interrogation.
Leave the suspect in a room for a while, long enough to wonder what the arresting officer had on him. Let him grow restless, angry, reckless, whatever his emotionally volatile trigger was. Then, when the suspect was vulnerable, irritable, hungry, thirsty, maybe jonesing for a hit of something illegal, or bloodshot-eyes tired, begin the interview.
When Durvan had finally sauntered in, in a dry shirt and looking as if he’d had a cat nap Noah didn’t allow himself, the look in his mentor’s eyes told him it was worse than he’d imagined. They had evidence.
Just how much and what kind had been parceled out in a slow drip of information over two hours, interspersed with dozens of rephrased questions that all revolved around when did he start setting fires.
God Almighty. They thought he was an arsonist.
He glanced over at his sister, who was watching him like a bomb that might go off.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m okay. But the charges have been revved up a notch.” Or nine.
“What does that mean?”
“They matched gasoline used in my so-called suicide attempt to the service station near my house.”
“How did they do that?”
“With a gas chromatograph. Every service station’s tanks have a signature mixture. It’s an accumulation of gasoline residues from tankers, ground-water seepage, degrading tanks, and things in the ground that come in with the ground water. We use it fairly often to locate an arsonist.”
“Durvan did this to you?”
He glanced at Sandra and kept talking because she looked close to tears or dismemberment of his superior, neither of which he wanted to handle just now.
“It’s standard procedure if we get samples of the accelerant used in an arson case. Gasoline is cheap, available, and no one thinks twice when someone comes in with a tank and carts away a couple of gallons. When we suspect arson, I collect samples from all the service stations within a four-block area. If the samples from the fires match just one station, I know where my suspect is getting his fuel. Caught one guy recently because he’d been seen on a bike pedaling away from a fire. I went and checked out the station’s video for the day after the next suspect fire in the area. Bingo, guy on bike filled a gas tank. His face was visible. Showed it around and had him in custody within two days.”
“Can’t Durvan do something like that to prove you’re innocent?”
“It’s not just the one fire anymore. One of the arson cases I’ve been working for months came up as a match.”
“You’ve going to have to explain that.”
“Okay. But could we leave the precinct parking lot? I recognize that reporter.” He pointed to the woman coming across the lot toward them at a fast clip, recorder already in hand.
Sandra’s eyes narrowed. “No problem.”
She started her engine and waved at the woman. Then she moved her car right into the path of the reporter, as if she planned pull up alongside her. When they were even, the woman leaning slightly forward with a smile of anticipation, Sandra flipped her the bird and pressed her pedal, sending the Mercedes sailing past.
Noah shook his head but kept silent.
Sandra drove several blocks, hit the drive-thru lane of a fast food place to buy two large coffees and then entered the interstate going west through town before she spoke again. “Explain.”