Burn Out (4 page)

“
No, I
don’t know. I’m sure Jeff Stanton can tell you more.
I
can
tell
you the fire burned fast and hot, which is typical of an arson
fire. Some kind of accelerant was probably used. ” Mack hesitated
for a second. “We’ve had our share of arson related fires over the
last couple of months, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it was ruled
as arson.”

“
Do they know who started
the arson fires?”

“
No. It’s still under
investigation. Again, I think Jeff can give you more insight than I
can.”

Rachel looked down at her watch. “I
have a meeting with him in about fifteen minutes so I should get
going. Do you mind if I call you later?”

Mack wrote down his number on a piece
of paper. “Good luck with your meeting.” He handed her the paper.
“I hope you find Sam. She is special to a lot of
people.”

Rachel walked into the Santa Rosa
Beach Fire Marshal’s office at eight o’clock sharp. She told the
receptionist Jeff Stanton was expecting her.

The receptionist replied warmly, “Of
course. Just take this hallway down to the end. He is the last
office on the left.”

As Rachel walked down the hallway, she
couldn’t help but notice how nice the offices were. She expected
cold, drab décor of other government offices she had visited.
Gunmetal gray desks with beat- up file cabinets crossed her mind.
Instead she saw solid oak desks with pictures of families in nice
frames. The walls were adorned with certificates of achievements
and degrees.

She got to Investigator Jeff Stanton’s
office and the door was ajar. She knocked twice and poked her head
around the door. The first thing that struck her about Jeff was he
looked like Will Ferrell. Curly dark hair with blue eyes a little
too close to his nose.

“
Hi. You must be Rachel
Scott,” Jeff said as he stood up from his desk and shook her hand.
“Please have a seat.”

“
You have a very nice
office.”

“
Thank you. I inherited
most of this from the last investigator. I’ve only been here about
six months. Transferred from the Tallahassee office.” Jeff got down
to the business at hand. “So you want to help with Samantha Collins
case?”

“
Yes, I was contacted by
the family to see if I could help find her.” Rachel said. “Can you
tell me where you are on the investigation?”

“
Instead of telling you,
why don’t I show you? We can take a ride over to the site and then
I’ll tell you what we got so far.”

***

As they drove up to the
warehouse, Rachel saw a large wooden sign with Campbell’s Farmer’s
Market in big red letters. Underneath, it read
Family Owned and Operated For Over Fifty
Years
. Jagged pieces of the roof were
charred and the smell of smoke still hung in the air. Two yellow
forklifts and a bulldozer were parked along the edge of the parking
lot.

“
You wouldn’t know it, but
we have a lot of rural farms within a hundred miles of the beach.
Most of them contract with Campbell’s to sell their produce and
goods. It’s really busy during tourist season and weekends. Been
around for a long time,” Jeff said. “The front of the market has
stalls vendors can lease. The back of the warehouse has two offices
and a large storage area.”

“
It’s so sad to see it
burned down.”

As they got out and looked around,
Jeff said, “It took over twenty firefighters and five hours to put
out the fire. The fire was fueled by various materials stored in
the warehouse. Four stations responded to the call.”

“
How large is the
warehouse?”

“
It’s approximately
twenty-five thousand square feet and includes the offices and
storage space.”

“
This is the main
entrance?” Rachel asked pointing to the door.

“
Yes. Sam was last seen
here when they pulled out the owner’s son. We believe she somehow
made it to the rear entrance before disappearing.” Jeff shook his
head. “Strange. We have no idea what happened to her.”

“
Was any of her gear
found?” Rachel asked.

“
Just her helmet was found
in the rear parking lot. It’s like she vanished into thin
air.”

That was how most people responded to
her questions about missing loved ones. ‘They just vanished into
thin air’ was a common response.

Rachel followed Jeff around to the
back of the warehouse. “Have you searched the woods here?” Rachel
pointed to the large empty lot behind the warehouse, thick with
trees and underbrush.

“
The police department came
out Sunday with a couple of their search and rescue dogs, but they
didn’t turn up anything.”

“
Have you talked with any
of the neighbors?” Rachel noted the warehouse had a residence to
the west, an empty lot to the east, and a convenience store across
the street.

“
We interviewed the
neighbors next door and the clerk who was on duty at the
convenience store the night of the fire. No one remembers seeing
anything unusual.”

“
Take me through what
happened that night,” Rachel said. Even though she had heard the
story first from Nora, then from Mack, she wanted to make sure she
didn’t miss anything. Every detail was critical.

“
The call
went out around 6:30pm. Sam’s crew was the first to respond.
Because the owner said he thought his son, Mike, was in the
building, they went in first. Sam found Mike on the floor behind
the door of his office. Mack and Kevin dragged him out the front
door, which is about a thousand feet from the office.
W
hen Mike was pulled out, they
started performing CPR on him. Mack turned around to speak to Sam
and she wasn’t there. He took a quick look inside the front door
and didn’t see her anywhere. He immediately put in a mayday call.
Then the first explosion hit and the roof collapsed.”

Mack’s story matched with the
investigators, she thought. “How long was it until someone searched
the rear of the building?” Rachel asked.

“
The district chief was
first on scene with Station 3. He took an initial drive around the
building when they first arrived. He didn’t remember seeing
anything out of the ordinary. When Sam and her crew went in to
locate the victim, the chief stayed with the pump operator in front
of the warehouse. The fire department had two other trucks that
came in to assist with the fire. They arrived after the first
explosion.”

“
I met Mack Dixon this
morning. He was at the diner where I was having breakfast. He
mentioned you had some fires lately which were ruled as
arson.”

“
We’ve been investigating a
possible arsonist for the last couple months,” Jeff
confirmed.

“
You think the same person
started the warehouse fire?”

“
It’s too early to make that
assumption. We’re still waiting on the lab to come back with test
results and it takes awhile.”

“
What does your gut tell
you?”

“
Off the record…this could be the
work of the same person who set fire to a couple of properties last
month. The first fire was a beach house, thankfully vacant. It was
fully involved by the time firefighters got there. The arsonist
pried a door open and then used gasoline as an
accelerant.”

“
And the second one?”

“
That was at Nick’s Seafood
restaurant out on the beach highway. There were similarities
between the two fires. The restaurant was closed for the night and
the fire was started after midnight. Same thing…the back door was
pried opened and gasoline was used as an accelerant.”

“
Did Sam work those other
fires?”

“
Well, that is the interesting
thing. All the fires were on Sam’s shift. Coincidence? I don’t
know. But whoever set those fires either didn’t know what they were
doing or were just being plain careless. Gas is an easily traceable
accelerant,” Jeff explained. “It’s not uncommon, especially in this
economy, for people to set their property on fire to collect
insurance or get out from under the debt. There are other
accelerants which can be used that are harder to detect. This
person didn’t know what kind of accelerant to use or just didn’t
care.”

“
And the owners of the properties
checked out okay?”

“
Yep. The vacant house was paid for
and the owner didn’t have any debt or any motive to have started
the fire. The owners of the restaurant, though, were mortgaged to
the hilt. But, we didn’t find any evidence to point to their
involvement either.”

“
How did the arsonist gain access
again?”

“
They broke in through a back door
in both cases. We’re awaiting matches to the tool marks on all the
cases. After the warehouse fire, I put a rush on it. Sometimes it
takes awhile for forensics to come back with results. I should hear
something soon.”

“
No fingerprints or any other
evidence left at the crime scene?” Rachel asked.

“
Nope, not so far. I’m meeting with
police chief Gladstone tomorrow to go over the case file. I’ll let
you know what we come up with.”

They walked to the front of the
warehouse and stood in front his truck. Rachel took a camera out of
her pocket. “Do you mind if

I take some pictures?”

“
Sure. Go right ahead.”

While she took some shots
around the front of the warehouse, she asked him, “
I read
the article about Sam’s husband, Ken Collins, and his involvement
in the marijuana operation. It seems like Sam was under a lot of
pressure with the trial and everything else that was going on. Do
you think she saw an opportunity to run?”

“
We have thought about that
scenario, as well.”

“
She could’ve waited for an
opportunity and took off. A risky one, but it could have happened.
I have seen all kinds.” Rachel took a few more pictures of the
charred building.

“
Have you talked with Sam’s
family yet?” Jeff asked.

“
Actually, that is my next
stop.”

Santa Rosa Beach, County
Jail, Tuesday 9:30 AM

Ken lay on his bunk and stared at the
ceiling in his jail cell. He couldn’t believe Sam was missing. It
was his fault and there was nothing he could do about it. He had
never felt so helpless in his life.

He thought back to the day when his
life began to unravel. It started as a routine traffic stop. He was
training a new guy with the police department and it was midnight,
almost the end of their shift. They had pulled over a guy driving a
late model Camaro with a broken tail light.

His trainee approached the car and
after speaking with the driver, thought he smelled marijuana. The
driver of the car was a nineteen year old male named Jason Blum.
Jason had admitted he smoked a joint prior to being pulled
over.

After a search of the car revealed
several bags of marijuana in the trunk, Jason was arrested. Deals
were struck with Jason and he was given immunity in order to
disclose his source. The sting operation, which included the
police, sheriff’s office, and DEA, was the largest in the county.
It ultimately ended with the arrest of Pedro Gonzalez, who was a
part of the local Mexican drug cartel. They had been growing a
strain of marijuana called Cush, which was popular with teenagers
and college students. Cush was known to give a quick and
long-lasting high. It was expensive to grow, expensive to buy, but
the high it gave the user was worth the cost.

One night Ken and his buddies were
sitting around a fire in his backyard drinking beer and talking
about the sting operation. Paul Hart, a firefighter who worked with
Sam, said he’d watched a show on Discovery Channel about how to
manufacture marijuana. Ken mentioned to Paul how much money was
confiscated during Pedro’s arrest.

“
That’s a lot of moola. I
wonder who will take over the local marijuana market now that Pedro
is out?” Paul asked.

“
Maybe you should look into
it. You could finance your little real estate endeavor.” Brent, one
of Ken’s buddies said.

Paul was trying to save up his money
to put a down payment on a fixer-upper he planned to flip. “No way.
I don’t know anything about that stuff,” he said.

“
Well, I don’t know about
you, but thirty K a month profit would help me out,” Ken said. “I
could learn fast how to do it if I knew I was going to make that
much money.”

Ken made a decent salary at the police
department and Sam was doing well at the fire department, but with
the high cost of living in a beach community, they were
realistically just making ends meet. With two kids to raise and now
a second mortgage on the land, it was tempting.

After his buddies left, Ken couldn’t
get the idea out of his head. He got on the computer and researched
the equipment needed to get started growing marijuana. He was
amazed at all the websites which were dedicated on how to grow and
manufacture marijuana for profit.