It’s amazing how fast love can change. When crime-committing couples are caught, when they are separated and placed in different holding cells and questioned by different detectives, whatever delusional bonds had drawn them together can quickly dissolve. As self-preservation begins to kick in, the interrogations turn into a real-life example of a prisoner’s dilemma. In that game theory scenario, two suspects in separate cells must each decide whether or not to confess. There is no other evidence aside from their theoretical confessions. Thus, the best possible outcome for the prisoners would be if both of them decided to stay silent. Another scenario is for both to confess. And then there’s the murky land in the middle—the scenario where one party confesses, hoping that their cooperation will result in a lighter sentence, or using the opportunity to enhance their partner’s role in the crime while diminishing their own. A prisoner’s dilemma is a test of how much you trust your partner, and how much you value your own life over theirs.
Leopold and Loeb—they both admitted to luring Bobby Franks into the car on the day of his death. But until their own deaths, each blamed the other for being the one who wielded the chisel and did the actual bludgeoning.
Shortly after his capture, Charles Starkweather—the teenager who had murdered Caril Ann Fugate’s entire family because her parents disapproved of their relationship—began telling police that his girlfriend was “the most trigger-happy person” he had ever encountered, and responsible for some of the deaths. Meanwhile, Caril Ann told officers that Charles had kidnapped her and she’d had nothing to do with any of the shootings. He was sentenced to death; she was sent to prison and eventually was paroled in 1976.
It turns out that Bonnie and Clyde were the exception to the criminal love story. For most, love rarely transcends the bright lights of interrogation and confession.
CHAPTER 18
“EVERYBODY HAS A REASON FOR WHY THEY DO THINGS IN LIFE”
AS CHARLIE WAS TRANSPORTED to the drug task force in Melfa—the closest law enforcement building—for questioning, Sheriff Todd Godwin raced to find Ron Tunkel. Godwin hadn’t been in the room for the profiler’s earlier presentation on interrogation techniques, but now the arsonist turned out to be someone he knew, and Charlie had specifically requested Godwin’s presence in the interview room. Godwin couldn’t get Tunkel on the phone, so he asked another officer who had been there for the presentation for a CliffsNotes version. Be gentle and reassuring, the officer told him. Don’t be combative. Be respectful.
These instructions came as a relief to Godwin; they were in line with how he liked to conduct suspect interviews anyway. It was certainly how he would have approached an interview with Charlie, who had played a cameo role in the criminal justice system on the offender side for nearly as long as Godwin had on the law enforcement side. They knew each other well enough to say hello on the street. They’d known each other well enough to sit and have coffee at the Royal Farms gas station on Christmas Day at a time when, Godwin was now realizing, Charlie had already lit more than thirty fires.
This is how he decided to begin the interview, once Charlie was sitting kitty-corner from him at a work desk at the drug task force center—by reminding Charlie that they knew each other, they had something in common. They were both from here, they both understood Accomack.
“Oh, Charles,” Godwin said, crossing his ankle over his knee as Charlie sat kitty-corner from him.
“You know, I apologize,” Charlie started to say, but Godwin cut him off. He hadn’t been read his Miranda rights on camera and Rob Barnes, who was planning to do so, wasn’t in the room yet.
“You’re all right, Bubba, you’re all right,” Godwin said. “We go way back, don’t we? Many years, Buddy. Many years.”
“Trust me, Todd, I’m embarrassed,” Charlie said, letting out one of his peculiar high-pitched giggles.
“You know, you could have called me. I’ve known you how many years? A long time. Twenty years, at least twenty years, Charles. If you needed anything, you could have called me, you know?”
“It was a problem that made me do this. I mean, you want to know the bad thing? I wish I was back on drugs.”
“Don’t say that.”
“That way, I’d have an excuse.”
Godwin clucked and shook his head sympathetically as Barnes came in the room. Barnes slid into the third empty chair at the desk, positioning it so that the three men formed an equilateral triangle, so Charlie wouldn’t feel outnumbered. The room was small, with dingy carpet, a white board on one wall, and a small red cooler stashed in the corner that looked like it could contain either evidence or someone’s lunch. The drug task force office was actually a ranch house, in a neighborhood with other ranch houses. It had been office-ified a little, with regulation furniture and cameras installed in the interview rooms, but it still had a homey quality to it. The kitchen had remained mostly untouched. The stove and oven still worked. On the refrigerator were interdepartmental notices, but inside the refrigerator were drinks and meal fixings that the officers brought from home.
“Is Glenn over here?” Charlie asked, thinking of the investigator Glenn Neal.
“Rob’s here,” Godwin offered, nodding toward Barnes. “You know Rob, so it will make it a little easier.”
Charlie nodded. “It would be more embarrassing with Glenn. I think a lot of Glenn.”
“All right, Charlie,” Barnes said, as he took out a few official forms. He looked tired. He was tired. Godwin was still in his brown sheriff’s uniform; Barnes was in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. “You know who I am, I know who you are.” (They were, in fact, distant cousins in some way neither was quite sure of.) He ran through Charlie’s Miranda rights and then asked if Charlie wanted to talk or not.
“Talk some,” Charlie agreed, and Godwin nodded as if the conversation was Charlie’s idea to begin with.
“Okay,” Godwin said.
“You know everything that has been going on with a lot of fires and stuff like that?” Barnes asked, mirroring Godwin’s position, ankle over knee, flipping through some papers. To an observer, the conversation would have looked and sounded like three friends talking about the fires while hanging out at Shuckers, which is just what Barnes wanted. Charlie hadn’t asked for a lawyer, and with his current demeanor it didn’t appear that he had any plans to do so.
“Yes,” Charlie said.
“And you made the comment to the sheriff earlier that you apologize and whatnot?”
“Yes.”
“But you did state that you didn’t set all of them.”
“Right.”
“All right,” Barnes said, pressing onward. “We’re at the point where we’re at eighty-six fires since the time this kicked off,” he said, including some that the police believed may have been accidents or set by copycats. “So we understand you were at the scene tonight. The one on Airport Drive. Who was driving in the vehicle?”
“She was.”
“And her name?”
“Tonya Bundick.”
These were easy questions, which the police already knew the answers to. Answering them didn’t cost Charlie anything. Barnes asked which direction the van had been driving, which direction they’d approached the fire from. “Did you ride by a couple of times or anything like that?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Charlie admitted, laughing again. “I knew we were busted before we did it.”
“Why?” Godwin broke in.
“Too many cars. It was a dead giveaway. I even told her that. I said, ‘This place is a setup.’ ”
“And you still set it on fire?”