Matt spread the word that there would be a meeting at his house, for anyone interested. And, being a man accustomed to running his own business and having to think about advertising, Matt realized the first thing they needed was some branding.
He called up his friend Seth Matthews, who was a graphic designer, and the two quickly came up with a design concept: over the front left chest, a small flame, and on the back, a big flame. Over both, a logo: Eastern Shore Arsonist Hunters. T-shirts, available for $22.
The inaugural meeting of ESAH was held in Matt’s living room. Three guys showed up: Michael Stefano, a fellow real estate agent whose car had been parked so close to one of the fires that the paint was melted clean off, and Sutton Perry, who had returned to the shore after college and was biding his time working as a technician for an eye doctor while he decided whether to join the military. Seth Matthews, the graphic designer, also showed up. He was recently divorced and had begun to stay up late in his new bachelor pad, listening to the scanner and adjusting to the quietude of his new, single life. He’d tried the bar scene, a little. One night he took a snapshot of some acquaintances, Charlie Smith and Tonya Bundick, and they liked it so well they asked if he would be the photographer for their upcoming wedding.
The four men brought their laptops to Matt’s house and pulled up a Google Earth map that the local news had run recently, which plotted all of the fires. Now all they had to do was figure out where the arsonist was going to strike next. He seemed to strike a lot in the central part of the county, they could see that. He was in Tasley a lot, and Parksley, too. As a real estate and construction person, Matt was familiar with many of the properties in those areas, abandoned or otherwise.
Michael Stefano knew the houses, too, but at some point during this meeting, he started to think the whole idea was a little ridiculous. The other guys were young and unencumbered; he was a fifty-seven-year-old businessman and father of two who was now sitting in some vague acquaintance’s living room pointing to random locations on a map and talking like he knew what he was doing. “It was all very Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick,” he would say later about the experience. He didn’t go to any more meetings.
But for the others, the idea of finding the arsonist started to mean something. At the end of the meeting, in a way not too different from how the police and sheriff’s department had done it, the Eastern Shore Arsonist Hunters came up with their own list of potential targets.
They started by again staking out the house Matt owned down in Cashville. Matt and Sutton set up a couple of lawn chairs behind the big picture window, opened a couple of beers and set to waiting. It was a quiet night on an empty road, and in the hours they sat there only one car passed: a dark-colored Pontiac Grand Am. A little while later it passed again, going in the opposite direction, returning from whatever errand its driver had been running. Right after that, Matt’s scanner app went off.
He and Sutton looked at each other. The arson address given on the scanner was less than a mile away. Taking the logical route, the arsonist would have had to drive right past Matt’s Cashville house to get to the fire. And there was only one car that had driven in and out, the whole time they were sitting there: a dark-colored Pontiac.
They could feel adrenaline coursing through them, tinged with a disappointing realization. “We can’t go driving after them now,” Matt pointed out. They’d each had a few drinks. And if they left the house, there would be another problem. To get ready for this stakeout, both men had elected to wear camouflage and carry firearms. Which had seemed prudent earlier, but which now, Matt was realizing, just made them look like crazy arsonists.
They phoned the police to let them know about the car but then watched helplessly as it drove away. The next day, Matt was in the Food Lion parking lot when he saw a guy—tattooed, pierced, carrying a Zippo lighter—walk back to his car, which was a dark-colored Pontiac.
Oh my god, it’s him, Matt thought, fumbling for a pen to write down the license plate while dialing Seth on his cell phone. “We found him,” he hissed into the phone, getting into his own car and trying to appear nonchalant as he followed the Grand Am out of the parking lot and turned right onto Route 13.
“I think he knew we were following him,” Matt would admit later. “I mean, we’re not used to following people.” For miles, they were on one long, straight road. It hadn’t occurred to Matt to do anything like adjust his speed or leave another car in between. Basically, if this guy had looked in his rearview mirror at any point whatsoever he would have seen Matt inching along behind him. Matt stayed with him for a good half hour, at least, until finally he realized they were almost to the Bay Bridge, halfway into Northampton County where the arsonist had never struck. He called it quits and went home.
They didn’t give up, though. Matt decided that the T-shirts Seth had designed should be available to all of the public and put them on sale for $22. The proceeds, he announced, would go to the local fire departments. “Buy a shirt, help the fire companies!” he wrote, posting pictures that users had submitted of themselves in the clothes. He also decided they needed to put up some cameras. He didn’t know about the ones Bobby Bailey from the fire marshal’s office had set up around the county and believed the idea to be entirely new.
There was an abandoned old place down in Tasley, where the arsonist hunters knew the owner and thought he’d be okay with—that he might even appreciate—having a few cameras on his property. One night, late, Matt and Seth pulled up to the entrance, dropping Sutton and quickly driving off so as not to give away their plan.
Sutton tiptoed around the perimeter carrying the camera, trying to find a tree branch with the right height and angle to attach it. After strapping the camera on, he had begun to pick his way back through the woods when he looked up and saw it: another camera, pointing directly at him. It appeared to be much nicer and more professional than the one Sutton had just jerry-rigged to the other tree, and he realized that it must belong to law enforcement. All of the hundreds of abandoned houses on the Eastern Shore, and he, Matt, and Seth had picked the same one as the professionals. He felt a small thrill of pride, and then he started to panic.
These guys are going to think I’m the fucking arsonist, Sutton thought as he ran, panting, back through the woods. They’re going to think, “I know that kid, there’s Sutton Perry, he’s the arsonist.”
And then he started to think, what if the actual arsonist was there, too, watching him. What if the arsonist has a gun? Pant, pant, pant. We’re on the Eastern Shore. Most people have guns. We have cameras and phones. Pant, pant, pant.