Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [45]
“That looks like my jacket.”
“This is your jacket?”
“Looks like it.”
G. A. glanced at Kub and then swung his gaze back onto Finney. “You running around setting fires on me, John?”
“I’m just saying that looks like my jacket.” It was his jacket but he hadn’t worn it in weeks. The last time he saw it, it was in his locker back at the station.
Kub said, “Could you have left it here the other day?”
Finney said nothing. He knew he hadn’t been wearing it the other day.
“If it had been out in the elements, it would be damp,” G. A. said. “Even if the fire had dried the top part, it was folded over pretty good and the bottom side would have been damp. It wasn’t. This was left here today. This morning.”
G. A. Montgomery and Kub both looked at Finney for several beats before Finney said, “You don’t think I had anything to do with this.”
“What I’ve learned over the years is that nobody’s ever quite what you imagine they are. This is the property you told us was set to burn. Maybe you didn’t think we were taking you seriously.”
“You can’t mean that. Even if by some incredible stretch of improbability I did do this—which I didn’t—I wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave anything at the scene.”
“You’re saying somebody else was stupid enough to leave your jacket here?”
“If I’d set this, why would I come back and drag Annie out?”
“Any sick son of a bitch can get a sudden attack of conscience. Or you mighta got bit by the hero complex. You see a chance for a medal and you go for it. You couldn’t help yourself. I’ve seen that before. Maybe you even put her in there just so you could come back and save her.”
“Someone took that jacket out of my station locker and planted it. Somebody knew I was talking to you about this place, and they wanted to discredit me.”
“I’d say you’ve been discredited.”
“You told somebody,” Finney said. “You must have given the address to somebody.”
“Sure. I spoke to Charlie last night right after you left.”
“Charlie Reese?”
“I called him at home. You think the chief of the department set this fire and framed you for it?”
“You tell him about my theory?”
“I told him. He said he was going to set up a committee to look into it. As soon as he found the time.” G. A. rotated the toothpick around his mouth a couple of times. “I doubt he’ll find the time now.”
“This was not my doing.”
“Put yourself in my shoes. You tell us about this building. Next day it burns down. At the scene, we find your coat, which you claim was stolen from your locker, a locker, I might add, that’s in a secure fire station. You know the stairs are gone when nobody else seems to, and then you go off and make a lone-wolf rescue without telling anybody.”
“I told Gary—”
“And now the victim tells us she talked to a firefighter on the street before the fire. I’ll bet a nickel against a dollar you can’t account for your whereabouts before you signed into the daybook this morning.”
Across the yard two firefighters were yelling at each other playfully, some sort of joke concerning their nervous wait at the drawbridge during the drive to the fire. Finney knew if he told G. A. where he’d been that morning, he’d be in handcuffs before he finished the sentence.
“You were here, weren’t you?” G. A. asked.
“I didn’t set this fire.”
“Everybody knows that mentally you’ve been all over the map since Leary Way. Now you get turned down for lieutenant. I don’t blame you for getting a little pissy, trying to get back at the department.”
“I didn’t do this. You know me.”
“Do I? Does anybody know anybody? A serial killer gets arrested. His neighbors show up at the trial as character witnesses. Did they know him? Not any better than I know you.”
“This is a setup. Can’t you see that?” He might have told them about the phone call last night, but then he would have had to admit he’d been here this morning.
“Maybe next time you’ll listen when somebody tells you to stop poking around a fire that’s already been investigated.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means if you hadn’t had your head