4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
VIOLET
What the hell had I agreed to? I shut the door to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, staring back at the gruff man who’d just asked me to pretend to be his girlfriend. I thought that kind of stuff only happened in books.
My phone chimed with a notification and I picked it up, groaning at the text from my ex.
This whole thing with Seth might actually work out well.
Ever since my “near death” experience, as my ex called it, he’d been trying desperately to get back together.
I had absolutely no interest. Finding him with another woman destroyed any chance of that.
I didn’t care that he realized he’d made a mistake.
And if I made it clear I'd moved on with someone else, maybe he would leave me alone.
Before I could type out a reply, Dylan’s name flashed across my screen and I slid the answer button over. “What’s up, bossman?”
He scoffed. “Are you ever gonna call me Dylan?”
“Nope.” I smiled. There was just something about nicknames that brought a smile to my face, and I only used them for people I liked.
“The fire investigators have asked us to do a deep dive into the Taylors. See if there’s anyone else connected to the family who could be a suspect.”
I sat up straighter. Was he serious? “Does that mean we’re done looking at the kid?”
“For now.” He was quiet. It didn’t feel right, and I knew he felt it too. “My hands are tied at this point. He has at least one solid alibi. The only thing we can do is figure out if someone’s helping him, or if there’s someone else holding a grudge.”
Logically, I understood what he was saying. But my gut didn’t like it. “Fine. I’m on my way in. Be there in five.”
Arson was one of the most difficult crimes to solve. Evidence from the scenes was almost nonexistent. At least evidence that could point to a suspect. What we needed was a witness. But so far he was good about going unnoticed.
“I thought you were grabbing breakfast with Hattie?”
“It’s ok. I can reschedule.” I’d become good friends with Dylan’s fiancée over the last six months.
I didn’t have many local friends since taking the job and moving to Half Moon Lake two years ago.
But after Hattie picked up a stalker earlier this year, and Dylan stepped in to protect her while we solved the case, we became friends.
“No. Go to breakfast. I know Hattie was looking forward to it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll start digging. I’ll catch you up when you get here.”
“Okay.”
I was dying to tell Hattie what just happened with Seth. But first I had to bring someone else up to speed on this latest development.
Hanging up with Dylan, I opened the text from my ex and began typing a response.
Me: I'm dating someone now. Please stop texting me.
There. That should do it. And if he didn’t believe me, someone was bound to see me at dinner with Seth and news would spread. Small-town gossip to save the day.
I rubbed my temples. Dylan and I had been digging through anyone who had any connection to our suspect’s family all day. My eyes were starting to cross.
They were a straightforward family. Dad was a self-employed plumber.
Mom helped with the bookkeeping of the business.
Two sons, eight years apart. Youngest son was pulled from his family’s house fire seven years ago while the older brother was away at college.
Parents were rescued as well, but the dad was rushed to the hospital for smoke inhalation.
He’d died last year from pneumonia, and looking at his health history, it looked like he’d had respiratory issues consistently over the past seven years since the fire.
But he was also a smoker before the fire ever happened.
And who knows if he actually quit or kept smoking after the fire.
The oldest son didn’t live locally. He was a dentist in Ohio. Neither the mom nor dad had much family here. Mom was from Florida; the rest of her family was still living there. Dad was local, but an only child, both of his parents having passed away years earlier.
“I think I got it.” Dylan’s voice broke through my thoughts. I spun my chair and raised a brow at the manila folder in his hand. “Who is most likely to be an arsonist?”
Great. Profiling. My favorite topic of choice. “You know how I feel about this.”
“Yes, Violet. I know. But humor me. Because we can’t ignore statistics.”
I sighed. “Fine. Young white males.”
“So our twenty-year-old with a possible grudge against the Half Moon Lake FD is the perfect suspect, right?”
I nodded.
“But what are new studies indicating most serial arsonists do for a living?”
“Firefighters.” It was why they were harder to catch. They knew how to not get caught. I shrugged. “But since it hasn’t been tracked, there’s no way to know the exact percentage.”
Dylan stepped forward and handed me the folder in his hand.
I opened it and skimmed the information. “He’s older.”
“Probably why the investigators haven’t considered him.”
“Retired firefighter.” I continued to peruse his details before looking up at Dylan. “Connected to the Taylors?”
He nodded. “He’s the boys’ godfather.”
“So are we thinking they’re working together?”
Dylan pursed his lips and shook his head. “I think we play this as a new suspect. Let’s see if we can connect him to any of the fires, starting with the locations. I might have a chat with him tomorrow about the kid to see if I can get a read on him.”
He was right, we couldn't keep fixating on the son.
Not with him having at least one airtight alibi.
Camera footage from the convenience store verified he was nowhere near the BBQ joint when it burned down in May.
The same location where Logan had found the book of matches that led us to the Taylors to begin with.
“I want to go back to the beginning,” Dylan continued. “Going to ask the captain if I can pull some guys. Canvas neighbors and businesses around the locations. See if they recognize him. It’s worth a shot.”
I glanced back down at the file in my hand. “What do you need from me?”
“Can you look through some of the video footage we’ve collected? Make sure this guy isn’t on camera near any of the locations?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
I silently apologized to my eyes for the tedium I was about to put them through.
Maybe it was time to invest in a gallon jug of eye drops.
We really needed more help for a project like this, but the state had bigger fish to fry than a small-town serial arsonist. The only reason they weren’t more dedicated to this case was because there weren’t any casualties yet. Just our lovely close call.
Eventually that might change. But until then, we had to do the best we could with the resources we had.