“This is the only time I’ve ever dropped him off anywhere.”
That had been a crucial question. Tonya had no idea that nine miles away Charlie was breaking down and telling Godwin and Barnes that Tonya had been the actual fire starter in some of the arsons, and the driver in all the rest. To corroborate that, Wade needed Tonya to admit that she had been in the car on multiple occasions in which Charlie had asked to get out. That was the lever on which he would move the case.
For now, he backed off.
“Are your parents still alive?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you have anybody other than your kids?”
“No.”
“Do your kids have anybody other than you?”
“No.”
“You’ve never been in trouble before?”
“No.”
“You’re not on probation or anything like that?”
“No.”
“You’re already ahead,” he encouraged her. “Most of the people we deal with are on probation. You’ve got a good, clean past. You’ve never been in any kind of trouble. Even if it was, it was something minor. You’ve got your kids that you have to deal with. Your kids don’t have anyone else, and you’re sitting here, and you’re being cooperative. Everything you’ve got going for you is positive. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Uh-huh.”
But keeping it that way meant that she had to be 100 percent honest, he said. Did she understand? Right now, the two of them together had to have this conversation, and she needed to be 100 percent honest. “The same sheet of music, 100 percent. Is that a deal?”
Charlie had been under stress, she offered. “He’s been under some sort of stress the whole relationship. Either between work, you know, money to pay the bills—this, that, and the other. I’m not sure if you know anything about Charlie, but he’s not your typical person. I sit there all the time and pick on him because, I mean, you can tell him to do something and he’ll turn around twice and forget it . . . He always has these strange ways of acting that would make you think he’s on drugs, but he’s not.”
“I like Charlie,” Wade offered. “But we have to make sure we are all on the same sheet of music.”
“Right.”
“What is the first fire that you were aware of?”
“Tonight,” she said.
“Tonight?”
“Tonight,” she said. She went to Walmart to get two plastic containers to store stuff under the bed, and then another container to put shoes in, and then she got some Easter candy that was on sale. And after that, they went out driving—or actually, Charlie was driving. Then he got out and told her to take over the wheel, saying, “Go up the road and turn around and come back and get me.” So that’s what she did.
“You didn’t ask him why?”
“No,” she said.
“How many times have you gotten in the car and dropped him off—”
“That’s the first time that I’ve dropped him off anywhere,” she interrupted. Sometimes he worked late, she explained. Sometimes he worked late, and then came home for dinner, and then went back to work. Or she always assumed he was going back to work. She couldn’t say for sure what he was doing.
“What does he normally drive?” Wade asked.
“He usually drives his truck, but he’s been driving the van that his granddad gave him.”
“How many nights have you been out riding around with him?”
“Quite a few.”
“You never dropped him off anywhere?”
“No.”
What had they bought at Walmart? Just the storage containers for under the bed? And they left around 9 p.m.? And then they rode around? Okay. What about when he was driving? Did he ever stop in the middle of the road “and you stayed in the truck while he went out and did anything?”
It was just another way of asking whether she’d dropped him off.
“No,” she said. No times. No times had she ever dropped Charlie off anywhere.
He could feel her stiffening every time he circled back to the idea of dropping Charlie off. She was not merely closing herself off to questions, but actively deflecting them. This put him in treacherous territory. She’d agreed to proceed with the interview without having an attorney present, but as soon as she requested one, the conversation would be over. She was obviously getting wise to the fact that they weren’t questioning her merely because they wanted her to implicate Charlie.
Wade decided to back off from the conversation, hoping that another agent might have more luck. Beside him, Keenon Hook had been listening in on the entire interview. Wade leaned back to let Hook take over, effectively disappearing himself from the conversation.
“Tonya, I don’t think I’ve properly introduced myself,” Hook began. “I’m not from around here, so I might need you to help me a little more to understand some of the things he knows”—he gestured toward Wade—“that I don’t. Wade knows Charlie, and has told me a little bit. Obviously, I don’t know either one of you. Help me to understand.”
He asked her to tell him about her house, her neighborhood, her kids—the fight that put the older one out of school, and how the homeschooling was going—“Pretty good,” she said. “The teacher comes out once a week.” The conversation was pleasant, chatty, and he didn’t touch on anything related to the fires.
“You must have been working before?” he asked. “What were you doing?”
“Taking care of mentally retarded people,” she said.
“Is it like a residential care place?” he asked. “So it’s residential, like the mentally retarded people live there?”
“Yes, fourteen people. I would work shifts there.”
They talked more about her work and whether she liked it. He was exceedingly polite and solicitous. When he wanted clarification on something, he preceded the question by saying, “Forgive me,” as if any holdups in the interview were the fault of his weak memory. If he caught a small discrepancy in any of her life stories, he would blame them on his own confusion: “I thought you stopped because of your son, though?” he inquired after Tonya told him she’d left her job in 2011—she’d previously said her son hadn’t left school until 2012.
“It sounds like you and Charlie have really created a stable environment for your children,” he told her. “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices in our lives to deal with their problems and issues that come up, and it sounds like you’ve done that, and that is, you know, commendable. I mean, I really admire and respect you for doing that.”
His solicitousness continued when, several minutes later, he finally pivoted to the fires. Forgive him—but did he understand that Charlie had been involved with the fire companies, but wasn’t any longer? Hadn’t he enjoyed it? Had he ever thought about going back? What about Tonya—had she ever thought about volunteering with a fire company?
“No.”
What size shoe did she wear?