On this day, April Fools’ Day, they’d managed to all get there. They hoped that having their shoes on the ground would give them new insights into the man or men they were trying to catch. There were things you couldn’t know until you were there in person.
Tunkel was asked to give a presentation to some of the fire investigators who were desperate for something, anything, that could help forward their psychological understanding of the arsonist. Jon Cromer remembered sitting in the audience and being impressed with his colleague’s work, and the way he vividly described how to best embolden witnesses to come forward. “He will make a mistake,” Tunkel said. Police should trigger citizens’ memories by encouraging them to trust their instincts and be on alert for anything out of the ordinary.
One person at the meeting, a police supervisor, had a question for further down the line: When they did catch the guy or guys, how should they question him? What should be the protocol?
Tunkel demurred—he was hesitant to offer a boilerplate protocol when every situation required nuance. The questioner pressed on: “Listen,” he said, “my boys might catch him tonight, and we won’t have time to get up with you.” They needed something general they could work with if push came to shove.
Tunkel tried to formulate something general that would be of use. He talked about power. “Arson is a means of power. Fire setting is a means of demonstrating power,” he said. “Serial arsonists tend to be unempowered people. These aren’t captains of industry or successful businessmen.”
On television, police interrogations often involved an officer browbeating a suspect, or two of them ganging up until the suspect finally cracked. That wouldn’t be the way to go in this case, he explained. The person or persons lighting the fires were already having a bad year, some of the people in the room remembered him saying. The way to get him to talk wouldn’t be to berate him, but to be gentle. Make it clear the investigators understood where the arsonist was coming from. Make it feel like some of the power was being returned to him.
“We know there’s some goodness in you,” Tunkel suggested saying to the arsonist. “We know that whatever was going on in your life, there was a lot of stress. We appreciate the fact that most of the buildings were unoccupied.” Tunkel suggested reminding the arsonist of the chickens at the Gomez house. Remind him how he made sure to let them out before lighting the garage on fire. He didn’t have to do that, but when he was given the opportunity to be compassionate, he chose to be compassionate.
“Anyway,” Tunkel concluded, “these are common suggestions. If we were to write an interview strategy, we would most likely talk about these things.”
Either after or before the presentation for law enforcement—it was hard to remember—the psychological profilers all got in a few cars and took a tour of the county.
As they drove through the unfamiliar place for the first time together, Ron Tunkel’s heart began to sink. One of the concepts that he’d always held firm on was the idea of the unknowing witness—the assumption that, with this many fires, someone would have seen something. With this theory, if the police could only trigger the memory of that unintentional witness, they would have a breakthrough in solving the crime. Now that he was looking at the landscape, he realized that assumption might not hold. The landscape was more barren than he had imagined. The houses were farther apart, the streets weren’t well lit, the shops closed up earlier. There’s nobody out here at night, he thought. Had one of his premises been wrong? Suddenly, it seemed completely plausible to him that someone could light seventy or eighty fires without anyone else seeing.
Isaac Van Patten felt a similar sense of frustration. Looking at the case from back home in western Virginia, the sheer number of fires had led him to believe that the arsonists were likely to be either exceptionally skilled or exceptionally audacious. Now he, like Tunkel, saw that these arsons hadn’t necessarily required smarts or bravery. The county he was looking at was isolated and dark. They’re not hunters at all, he thought to himself. They’re like a duck hunter who is sitting on his boat and the entire flock just happens to land around him.
That night, around the county, the usual arson-catching apparatus was slipping into gear like a well-oiled machine. The men in tents were settling in for the night, on an evening that felt uncommonly cold. The men in cars were refueling, making sure they had enough coffee and gas to get them through their shifts. The firefighters were getting home and getting to bed early, before dusk. Daylight savings time had begun a few weeks before and made it even harder to get enough sleep. Scott Wade, the detective who had run into Tonya in the Royal Farms and visited her house during his canvassing, was also home asleep. Rob Barnes was at the state police office in Melfa, wading through backlogged paperwork. Glenn Neal had just arrived in Atlantic City, having finally accepted a superior’s advice that he needed to get away for a long weekend and clear his head.
The psychological profilers went out to a late dinner, to talk over the day and come up with strategies. They were filled with a sense of renewed anticipation: Now that they understood the landscape, now that all of their brains were in one room, they might at last have the tools they needed to understand who the arsonist was. The anticipation was tempered by dread. What if they were even further off than they’d realized? What if they never caught him?
But they would. Sooner than they thought.
CHAPTER 16
“I DIDN’T LIGHT THEM ALL”