Burning of the Devil (La Quema del Diablo)

Copyright 2012 Jeff Williams

CHAPTER 2 - A Fool Never Learns

There are communities in Florida euphemistically known as mobile home parks — flimsy homes densely packed in neat rows, well-maintained and peopled by meticulous folks who moved to Florida after retiring comfortably from careers in New England or the upper Midwest.

Other parks, however, are breeding grounds for redneck reality show hopefuls and their kin. These folks have led rough and troubled lives — the retired or occasionally-working poor who spend far too much of their money on lottery tickets, cheap beer, crystal meth, and nonfiltered cigarettes.

The fire scene in the trailer park was already fifteen degrees warmer than its surroundings on this sunny March morning. Nathan Brooks had worked fires in many such trailer parks before, and he expected to get sweaty today.

Aware that it was only going to get hotter by the minute, he wasted no time while preparing for his fire origin and cause investigation. Adjusting the settings on his camera, he pondered the oxidation patterns on the fire-charred Plymouth Fury in front of him.

He also observed a large hole, maybe four feet in diameter, melted through the flat aluminum roof of the carport. The void was directly over the rear of the burned out Plymouth. It was potentially an important clue.

"It says arson, Dad!

The exclamation startled Nathan. He had thought he was alone. It annoyed him that someone had entered the area without his noticing, and he turned to find the source of the outburst.

Two men now stood beside his car. One was a large, stocky fellow about twenty years old; the second, thinner man — was closer to seventy. Both stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed at a round white and red "California Conference of Arson Investigators" decal displayed on the driver side window.

Similar facial features suggested a close family relation, though the generation skip surprised Nathan. He would have guessed the much older man to be the grandfather — not the "dad".

The son lingered apprehensively at the car as the older man strode purposefully over to Nathan.

"Sir, we did not set this fire," said the father.

"Are you Ed Young?" Nathan asked.

"Yes sir, and that there’s my son Kenny. We was here when the fire started."

"I’m Nathan Brooks. Clearstate asked me to determine the cause of the fire, and I’d like to talk to you about it now that you’re here." Nathan offered his business card.

Ed studied the card carefully before stuffing it into the front pocket of his open flannel shirt. "So you ain’t no arson investigator?" he asked.

"I’m a fire investigator; I deal with all kinds of fires. Sometimes they turn out to be arson," said Nathan, shrugging, "but that’s not specifically why I’m here."

"Okay then, well — sure, we ain’t got nothin’ to hide," replied Ed.

"So tell me what happened."

Ed explained that the old Plymouth had been having electrical problems. Its fuel gauge failed because the gauge’s sender unit — an electrical component located in the fuel tank — needed replacement.

He had driven the car for months without a functioning gauge. The odds finally caught up to him late one night when the Plymouth ran out of gas during the whiskey-blurred drive home from a neighborhood bar.

"That was the last damn straw," said Ed. "Kenny had to come tow me home with his truck. The next day we got it jacked up on the blocks so we could work underneath it."

And then the fire started. Ed and Kenny watched helplessly as the car burned — and burned. The wailing sirens of the firetrucks stayed perpetually in the distance.

"The fire department couldn’t find us," he continued. "The joke in these parts is that if you’re lookin’ to find this here dirt road you pretty much gotta know ‘where the old Goolsby barn used to be’, and that ain’t no lie. It ain’t so funny now, though."

The fire chief, who managed the local Dairy Queen when he wasn’t on duty at the fire station, had explained to Nathan in a prior phone call that it had been nearly four years since the last significant property fire occurred in their jurisdiction, and his volunteer firefighters were a little rusty. Their inexperience — coupled with the delay caused by the confusing location of the mobile home park — allowed the fire to burn far longer than it should have.

After completing his post-fire investigation and witness interviews the chief determined that a shop light power cord "must have shorted" as Kenny used it to illuminate the shadowy space beneath the car.

The electrical failure supposedly sparked a fire that not only destroyed the decrepit Plymouth in the carport, but also burned through a large portion of Ed’s double wide mobile home. The radiant heat from the fire melted plastic on three neighboring homes and two pickup trucks as well. To further complicate matters, Ed’s closest neighbor had suffered a major heart attack as he anxiously sprayed an ineffective stream of water from a garden hose onto his own home to prevent it from catching fire.

If the unfortunate neighbor died, Clearstate Insurance Company faced a possible wrongful death lawsuit and was potentially on the hook for a lot of money. The company wanted to know whether the fire was accidental or intentional, so they assigned Nathan to this rundown trailer park to find the answer.

~~~  

Nathan listened carefully while the elder Young spoke, but became increasingly skeptical during the man’s edgy monologue. As the story unfolded he correctly suspected that the fire’s true cause had yet to be accurately identified.

"That’s all I know," concluded Ed. "Kenny could probably explain how the fire actually started. Better than I could, anyway." He fidgeted with his lighter. "Man, I gotta go get my smokes from the neighbor’s porch."

Nathan nodded with grudging acknowledgment and Ed quickly scurried off.

Donning a dark blue coverall, Nathan crawled beneath the Plymouth to examine the electrical cord. It was in surprisingly good shape considering it had lain underneath a flaming car. He scooted out into the sunlight and sat still a few moments to allow his eyes to re-adjust to the brightness.

He searched for Kenny and spotted the young man talking to neighbors. Nathan caught his attention and gestured with a little crooked pointer finger move that implied "c’mere, let’s chat".

"Are you really an arson investigator?" Kenny asked.

"Fire investigator. I just want to know how the fire started, period."

"Well, we didn’t do nothin’ wrong, Mr. Fire Investigator." Kenny’s cherubic face was beet red and missing both eyebrows.

"Okay. So, what happened?"

"Well, uh, I was up under the car, puttin’ in the new sender for the gauge — the gas gauge, but you probably know that. I was on my back, and uh, on the concrete underneath the gas tank there, and I was holdin’ the light talkin’ to Dad when — I swear to God! — it looked like a lightnin’ bolt flew between the light bulb and the gas tank, and everything blowed up."

Kenny’s eyes were wide as he related his harrowing experience, and he pointed at his forehead as proof. "My damn eyebrows burned off."

"Yeah, I can see that," said Nathan, empathetically.

After many years of observing deceptive people and comparing their versions of events with the known objective facts of the physical evidence, Nathan had become shrewdly adept at discerning telltale signs of behavior, body language, speech patterns, and word choice which often belied less than truthful descriptions and answers to pointed questions. Though he did not always know the truth, he usually knew the lie.

Kenny’s electrifying tale was a whopper with no realistic resemblance to science as Nathan knew it, and the "swear to God!" exclamation pegged the seasoned investigator’s finely-tuned BS detector. Further questioning might be required to determine what really happened here. At the very least, these folks would certainly be entertaining — though not necessarily forthright or voluntarily helpful.

~~~

At any typical fire scene, one of the first tasks for the fire investigator is a casual exploratory walk around and through the area of the burn. Smoke, heat and fire all affect materials and objects in unique and descriptive ways, and an experienced fire investigator can usually identify the basics of the situation during this initial inspection. Contrary to what some folks might think, there is no voodoo involved in the process.

During his walk, Nathan mentally ascertained the fire’s overall attack on the home, contents, and general surroundings. The fire’s effects told Nathan the fire had started outside in general, had progressed from the car in particular, and then burned into the home.

He strolled along the mobile home, studying its construction. When the home was first parked on this lot, years before, its steel frame had been elevated a few feet and supported by concrete cinder blocks. The entire area beneath the floor was a crawl space used for storage of mainly junk that would likely never again serve a useful purpose.

Nathan spotted a metal gasoline can ineptly hidden under a folded section of galvanized chain link fencing in an unburned area of the crawlspace. He carefully shifted the chalky fencing for a better look at the round red container. The paint was burned away from its upper half, and the screw cap was missing. At some point molten aluminum had flowed over the threaded opening where the cap should have been and re-solidified there when it cooled —conclusive evidence the screw cap was not in its proper place on the can during the fire. In the cool light of his LED flashlight he saw that some gasoline still remained inside.

Nathan finished his look-see tour and returned to the carport, where he encountered a crowd of nearly a dozen unkempt and variably-toothed people who had stumbled out

"Well, I’m curious about something, then," Nathan responded. Without elaborating he abruptly turned and walked to the rear of the home. Ed considered following him, but as Nathan disappeared around the corner he thought better of it and stayed put. 

Kenny and several neighbors ambled over to join Ed and Earlene. Everyone seemed to be talking at once in a low murmur, but all became silent when Nathan reappeared with the burned gasoline can.

Nathan held the container out to his side. "Where was this during the fire?" he asked, staring intently at Ed and Kenny.

Father and son looked at Nathan blankly, as their eighth grade educated brains raced to conjure at least a high school level explanation for the can’s obvious condition.

There was no telltale change in the old man’s facial expression. Kenny could manage only a weak shrug; he would also have arched his eyebrows if he still had them.

Ed was the faster thinker. "Back behind the house," he announced with an air of authority.

Nathan enjoyed challenging battles of wit, but in this instance he was clearly dueling with an unarmed opponent. He gestured to Ed with the "c’mere, let’s chat" finger, which was a very useful digit in Nathan’s line of work. The two men separated from the group and walked toward the Plymouth.

"Tell me about the gas can," said Nathan.

"Like what?" asked Ed, blankly.

"Ed, how was the gas can involved in the fire?"

"I don’t rightly know, and that’s the God’s honest truth."

Nathan stopped and tilted his head skeptically. "Ed..."

"It’s true."

"C’mon, Ed! You and I both know it was in the fire."

"I don’t, well....no, I don’t."

"Don’t what, Ed? Where was it? The carport?"

"It could have been — I’m not sure — maybe."

"Maybe what?"

"Oh, I don’t know!" Ed exclaimed.

Nathan placed the can on the ground near the Plymouth, outside the carport. "How about here?"

"Yeah, that’s about where it was," Ed confirmed, avoiding eye contact. He coughed hard and ugly with the hack of a seasoned chain smoker, then turned and spat on the ground.

Nathan searched in vain for his Nikon, mildly embarrassed that he had absentmindedly set it down somewhere. He finally spotted the camera on the shaded hood of the Plymouth and casually retrieved it. He knelt to photograph the open container of gasoline on the ground.

Still unnerved by the previous line of questioning, Ed poked another Lucky Strike into his mouth and fumbled in his breast pocket for the lighter.

"Not a good idea, Ed," barked Nathan. He rose to his feet, nudged Ed’s arm and guided him toward Kenny and the gaggle of attentive neighbors nearby. After only four steps he stopped abruptly and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coverall. Ed continued on but looked back curiously.

"You know what? I’m thinking that can may have been somewhere else," Nathan announced. All eyes were upon him as he retrieved his work broom and returned at a brisk pace to the burned Plymouth. Ed slowly and awkwardly trudged to his neighbor’s porch.

Nathan swept a light layer of charred rubble away from the concrete floor behind the car. Within seconds he uncovered a dark geometric stain on the concrete — a circle of charcoal and rust the size of a dinner plate. He picked up the can and placed it precisely on the ring. It was a perfect fit.

The bystanders gasped collectively in surprise. Ed’s face paled.

Kenny finally spoke. "You know who you remind me of? Columbo!"

"How would you know about Columbo?" asked a bemused Nathan. It wasn’t odd that Kenny would see a comparison between him and the seemingly addlebrained fictional TV detective, but it did surprise Nathan that such a young kid would even know who Columbo was. He wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted by the comparison.

"He’s on TV. They’re old reruns, but he’s on there," explained Kenny. "Like Gilligan’s Island."

Nathan wasn’t a detective like the fictional Columbo nor was he a private investigator, but he understood how Kenny could make the connection. Over the years he had developed a highly effective style of "working" the people involved in his cases. Nathan chatted openly and frankly with most folks, taking great care in his language and demeanor so as not to appear to be an arrogant "expert". Without a badge and without a uniform, his natural easygoing presence was not intimidating, and most of the people he spoke with felt comfortable in talking with him.

Nathan had long ago learned to appear somewhat ignorant occasionally, or even slow, while trolling for information. When he did so, people seemed to want to say more — as if to helpfully explain things to him.

Listening carefully as people spoke, Nathan mentally compared their story to the factual evidence he observed. This method was especially helpful in determining whether a fire or accident was intentional or not. People with nothing to hide opened up to him because of his laid back manner. People who had reason to be deceptive thought him scatterbrained like Columbo, and so underestimated Nathan as a threat. Accordingly, they would often say things they should not, or worse — they would attempt to outwit him.

Ed had decisively lost their mental duel; he’d also been caught in a lie in front of everyone. The question now was whether he was a possible arsonist, or simply careless. His deception clearly suggested the former, and Ed knew he had some heartfelt explaining to do.

"We didn’t do it on purpose, Mr. Columbo," said Kenny. His playful smirk and tone of voice hinted they were finally prepared to offer a more reasonable explanation for the fire.

"We didn’t do it on purpose," repeated Ed. 

"Are you hard of hearing, Ed?" Nathan asked, softly.

"What?"

"Are you hard of hearing?"

"A little, why?"

"Just curious."

"I swear we didn’t do it on purpose, but I figgered that Clearstate wouldn’t pay ‘cause I done somethin’ stupid," said Ed with his head bowed.

"Well, no," countered Nathan. "Stupidity is covered under your policy. But you shouldn’t have been smoking around gasoline, Ed — and you know that," he cajoled. "You also know you should have been more honest about this whole thing — both of you," he added, gesturing with a sweeping finger toward Ed and Kenny.

Kenny couldn’t contain his curiosity about Nathan. "How come they brung you all the way from California for this?"

Nathan was briefly stunned by the oddly knowledgeable question until he remembered the decal on his car. "I moved from California a year ago," he replied. "I live here now."

"I was wonderin’. So you got this all figgered out, Mr. Columbo?"

"Well, let’s see. The gas gauge sensor on this Plymouth is inside the gas tank, so you have to empty the tank in order to replace it. And since this is an older car you can still siphon the gas out with a hose, right?"

"Right."

"So you got your gas can and put it on the slab there, because that’s where the filler cap is on the car. You got a hose and, I’m guessing, you siphoned gas out of the tank and into the can. How am I doing so far?"

"Right on, Mr. Columbo."

"Okay, well, one concern I had was whether the fire was intentional or not. Gas was obviously involved, so the first question is: how was it involved? Was it poured? If you pour gasoline on the ground it’ll burn the car from the bottom up, which it didn’t do. Gasoline on the slab would have burned the shop light and the cord lying on the floor. But they were both intact. In fact, they were protected from the fire by being underneath the car."

"There are several other clues which told me how the fire actually began," he continued. "Like this can. Only the top half is burned, right? It’s still got red paint on the rest of it, so it wasn’t sitting in a pool of gasoline during the fire — because then the whole can would have been burned, bottom to top."

Nathan pointed to the large hole melted through the carport’s roof. "There’s another clue. The roof’s made of thin aluminum sheets which easily melt in a fire like this. Some of the aluminum up there melted during the fire and dripped down onto the top of the gas can, right over the threads where the cap should have been. That told me the cap wasn’t screwed on during the fire, and it’s also how I knew the can had been sitting on the slab at the rear of the car."

"Damn! Dude..." Kenny exclaimed.

"The clincher was the ring of rust on the floor. It was a perfect match for the bottom of the gas can."

"But how’d you know the can had somethin’ to do with the fire in the first place?" asked Kenny.

"Well, when you siphon gas it flows out of the tank, down through the hose and into the can, right? As the liquid gasoline fills the can it displaces gas vapors and forces them back out through the top. Gas vapors are heavier than air, so they collect all around the outside of the can, right here at the back bumper."

Nathan turned to speak to Ed. "Isn’t this about where you were standing while you were talking to Kenny?"

"Ed?"

Ed nodded affirmatively and absentmindedly scratched the back of his head.

"The thing is, liquid gasoline doesn’t burn. It’s the vapors that burn. You couldn’t hear Kenny very well so you knelt down, which put you even closer to the flammable vapors. While you’re kneeling there you tried to light up a Lucky Strike. How am I doing, Ed?"

The old man stayed quiet and appeared to be thinking hard about something. His left hand grasped the lower half of his glum, wrinkle-lined face.

"I saw the blister on your finger," added Nathan. "Next thing you know, there’s a big whoosh and you’ve got a flash fire feeding on the gas that’s still being drawn out of the tank. Kenny’s lucky he only lost his eyebrows."

Ed trembled visibly as he struggled to light another cigarette. Then he noticed Nathan’s disapproving stare and realized how close he was again to the gasoline in the open can. He dropped the lighter and cigarette in his shirt pocket and turned away in humiliation.

"Oh, and by the way, Ed," said Nathan, "Dale Earnhardt crashed on turn four."

~~~

Al, the insurance adjuster for Clearstate, listened attentively to Nathan’s initial verbal report, and then added that this was not the first time Ed had caused a fire due to careless smoking. Despite the prior claim, though, Al assured Nathan his company would still pay the man and his wife for their latest loss; Ed was merely foolish — not a criminal — and he’d suffered enough.

It’s been said that a wise man learns by others’ mistakes, and the fool learns by his own — but this is not entirely true. A wise man does indeed learn from the mistakes of others, and the average man generally learns from his own — but the fool never learns.