Burners (6 page)

“Nobody said you were.”

“I’m just trying to make a living, Officer. Nothing more to say. Now please excuse me while I cut your keys.”

He didn’t wait for my reply, and returned to the grinder and went at it like he was punishing the metal for its many sins.

While he did that, I went over to the plywood, which still had an order receipt stapled to it. I checked the date. He’d bought the boards a month ago, a full two months after Beniquez’s arrest.

That didn’t jibe with someone who thought the fires were going to stop.

  

Z
ack wasn’t technically
my
assistant. He was an intern and a gopher for the news department, a stand-up guy, and one of the people I trusted most at the
Record
. But none of that mattered now, since Zack had gone home for the day. I was due back at the courthouse by eight the next morning, so waiting until then was not an option.

I needed to get some background on this case. What I’d seen on this first day had not inspired confidence in the defense team. Sure, I knew I was supposed to go on the testimony and evidence alone. But if I was going to send a young man to jail for the rest of his life, I sure as hell was going to make sure he had it coming.

Though I could very easily go into the office myself and get on my computer, but that seemed a bit too brazen, even for me. I didn’t know to what extent the court might go to find out whether a juror had violated the judge’s orders, but I wasn’t going to take any more chances than I had to.

The rotating construction—now in its third year—tied up traffic on Randall Road. Exhaust from idling cars and the occasional pointless honking of a horn invaded my thoughts and I responded in the only way that made sense at the moment. I cranked the Bob Seger CD that I’d had in my player for the better part of a week.

Michigan’s native son was roaring through
You’ll Accomp’ny Me
when I struck on another plan. I dialed up the paper’s main number, and waited to hear Helen’s voice.

“
Chicago Record.
”

“Helen?”

“
Chicago Record.
”

I turned the volume down on Bob, having long ago concluded that the couple in that song didn’t make it in the end, anyhow.

“Helen, this is Alex Chapa.”

“Okay.”

The theory around the office was that Helen had been around since before the building got built, which was sometime during the Coolidge administration.

“I need you to tell me who might still be in the office right now.”

“Okay, here you go.”

Before I could stop her, Helen transferred my call. I was about to hang up and try calling back when someone picked up.

“Sports, this is Jerry.”

“Rossiter?”

“That’s right, can I help you?”

Jerry Rossiter was the senior sports reporter at the
Record
, a terrific writer, and an all-around decent guy who kept to himself more than most. But he didn’t figure to be someone who could help me right then. Though, in his capacity as a high school sports reporter, Jerry had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Fox Valley area.

“Hey, Jerry, this is Alex Chapa.”

“Alex, what’s up?”

“I was actually trying to reach someone in news. I’m looking for info on an arson investigation in Birch Grove.”

“Which one?”

Which one? There was more than one Birch Grove? As far as I was concerned one was plenty.

“What do you mean which one?”

“I mean that by my count there have been four unusual and suspicious fires in that town over the past two years.”

Now I vaguely recalled one of the other fires, but Rossiter had the lowdown on all of them.

He explained that three other shops had been burned, and how the police had come up empty until they caught Beniquez while he was watching the Laserquick fire.

“How do you know all this, Jerry?”

“I spend my nights sitting in bleachers, and people talk about all sorts of things like I’m not even there. Why don’t you remember these? You work in news, after all.”

I didn’t have a regular beat like most other reporters. At least not since I’d been given my own regular space in the paper several years ago. These days, any story I tagged typically involved a dead body, a crooked politician, or a dead crooked politician.

“You know how it is, Jerry, some stories just slip by. What have you got on the Laserquick fire, the one that killed—”

“Dennis Braun, the owner. His wife was a cheerleader at the high school way back when. Popular girl, if you know what I mean.”

I thought I did.

“Yeah, I know Tony Beniquez is on trial for that, Alex, but I’m not buying it.”

I nearly rear-ended a Mustang, a mistake that would’ve likely totaled my well-past-its-prime Toyota Celica, but Rossiter’s words were reverberating in my head.

“You still there, Alex?”

“Why aren’t you buying it?”

“Because I know the kid, interviewed him a few times when he was playing for the high school baseball team. A good player, too, third baseman, probably could’ve gone on to play Division III, but instead he went to work with his old man to help pay the bills.”

That came a lot closer to matching the impression that had been forming in my mind than anything the prosecution had asserted during its opening statement.

“What about getting into trouble? I understand there was some of that, too.”

I heard him cup the phone with his hand and spell out the name of some coach to another reporter in the room. I was starting to repeat myself when Rossiter turned his attention back my way and apologized for the interruption.

“When he was much younger, twelve, thirteen, he ran with some bangers on a couple of break-ins, got caught, finally. But I think he learned his lesson. As far as I understand, Tony changed a lot once he got into sports and when he started working with his dad.”

So maybe this was just what the defense had suggested. A story of a young man, the son of immigrants, turning his life around and starting to make good. Until an arrest for a crime he did not commit landed him in court. Maybe.

“I just can’t see him doing what they’re saying he did, Alex. But between you and me, in that town, once they’ve turned against you, you’re done. And they’ve certainly turned against Tony Beniquez.”

I’d wondered about that. Birch Grove wasn’t known for its diversity. As a Hispanic male with a history of problems with the law, Tony Beniquez would’ve made a perfect scapegoat.

Or could be Tony wasn’t a scapegoat at all, just a young punk who had committed one stupid crime too many. I knew Rossiter wasn’t the sort to put himself out for no reason, so the fact that he was coming to the kid’s defense meant something. Or maybe he was just a bit too close to be objective.

“Could he still have been running with a bad crowd? Could he have hidden that part of his life from his family? From coaches? Reporters?”

I heard Rossiter let out a deep sigh.

“Sure, I guess that might be possible, though it’s unlikely. Everyone has secrets, every place has them, too. And a town like Birch Grove has more than most. So yeah, he could’ve gotten mixed up with some bad characters. But like I said, I’m not buying it.”

Rossiter sounded like he was growing tired of answering questions, and I knew what that meant. He was about to turn the tables on me.

Though I was determined to learn all that I could, I didn’t know how much further I wanted to continue this discussion under false pretenses and risk putting a colleague, as well as myself, in a potentially difficult situation. Knowing that Rossiter was a very good reporter, sensing that as such he was about to start asking the questions instead of answering them, and not wanting to involve him in this in case it blew up on me, I thanked him, promised to buy him lunch sometime soon, and abruptly signed off.

  

A
t the library I discovered there had been four arsons in Birch Grove in the last twenty-two months. I also learned Beniquez played on the high school baseball team. I did a quick cross-reference between game dates and when the other arsons were committed, apparently trying to find an alibi for the kid, but didn’t find anything conclusive.

As with the print shop, the arsonist had used an accelerant in the other three blazes, in each case gasoline. There were no witnesses, and apparently no leads. Besides the shops I already knew about, a toy store off the main drag was also burned down. I jotted down names of vics and then grabbed a local phone book to look up numbers. The first one I got an answering machine. Second one no answer at all. Third was disconnected, but had a forwarding number. Area code 212, which I knew to be New York. I tried that and a man picked up on the second ring.