The Arson at Happy Jack

by Charles Williamson

  After our conversation with Major Ross, Chad and I went to see Sheriff Taylor. The sheriff was supportive of the proposed closure of 89A through Oak Creek Canyon and volunteered to coordinate the enforcement with other agencies if the arson steering committee agreed. It would take a lot of manpower to close every forest service road in the proposed areas, and that would push the budget further into the red. It also meant that there would not be enough manpower to provide double or triple coverage to all twelve members of the Muslim Student Association who were in Flagstaff for the summer. Car surveillance often involved a whole squad of deputies who would trade off after following a suspect’s car for a few blocks. I agreed to prioritize the list of foreign students before Saturday.

  After meeting with the sheriff, I called Alexander Peeps of the state crime lab. I asked about the spray paint used to paint Zayd’s truck green.

  “Glad to learn you’re interested in the paint,” he said. “Major Ross didn’t seem very interested. I’ve taken samples of every green spray paint I could buy and found the perfect match. It was repainted with Rust-Oleum Gloss Protective Enamel. The color of forest green is one of their standard ones, and the paint is carried in every store I checked.”

  “Do you have a guess about how many cans were used? Is there anything else you learned?” I asked.

  “It was painted in two coats, probably about ten cans of paint. The first layer of paint is quite thick. It was over-sprayed with a light coat to give it a car-like shine. They used a lot of masking tape to keep the paint off areas where it didn’t belong. There are still traces of the tape in a few spots. There were probably two or more people painting it. They used different types of hand motion to apply the paint. One of them was left handed,” he said.

  “Excellent. Is there anything else that might help? Major Ross said you believed it had carried an ATV and a two wheeled apparatus.”

  “This paint is not as strong as the original baked-on enamel. I found evidence of the ATV on the floor of the truck bed. The road vibrations caused the vehicle tires to scuff the paint. I was able to measure the exact distances between the wheels on this ATV and also on the two-wheeled trailer. This afternoon, I’ve been trying to match the dimensions to the ATV type.”

  His lively enthusiasm indicated a man who loved his work. He continued, “The truck was carefully washed before it was dumped, but I also found ponderosa needles in the hinge of the tailgate. I confirmed that this truck has been in the forest and carried something that leaked gas. It still has an NAU campus parking sticker in the window. All prints were wiped except for the two sets I found on the gas cap. One belonged to the deceased and the other is not a match with anything in our data base. The ignition had been hot-wired in an amateur fashion, but there was no evidence of forcible entry. Detective, I’m convinced it was our arsonist’s truck.”

  I thanked him and gave him my cell phone number and asked him to call with any additional information.

  “Chad, if you wanted to buy ten cans of spray paint and not be remembered by the seller, where would you go in Flagstaff?” I asked as we walked to my Explorer.

  “One of the two Wal-Marts. Most of the town is in one sometime during the week. There’s no way they’d remember me two months later. I’d avoid any small hardware stores.”

  “Do you know what American business has the best inventory control system in the world?” I asked.

  “Wal-Mart?”

  “That’s right. They can search for any large sale of forest green Rust-Oleum for Flagstaff or other Arizona stores, and the date and time of each purchase will pop right out.”

  The manager of the nearby Flagstaff Wal-Mart was extremely interested when he learned we were working on the Saturday Night Arsonist case. He lived in a neighborhood on the south side of town, and his wife had called minutes earlier to tell him they’d been asked to evacuate. He had an assistant manager help us while he went home to pack.

  Chad and I went to lunch at a nearby East Indian buffet while the assistant manager, Monica Beghay, called their headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas to ask for the OK to search records across the state of Arizona for any purchase of eight or more cans of the appropriate paint. Monica said she’d have an answer before we finished our tandoori chicken.

  The store was packed with noisy shoppers when we returned, and there was a low hum of near panic. Every cart seemed to have bottled water and food that needed no cooking. The noon news had carried the orders for about two thousand residents to evacuate areas along Lake Mary Road and extreme southeastern Flagstaff.

  “It’s really gotten crazy. We’ve already sold every storage box in the store and given away every cardboard one in the back. People are frantic to pack their valuables into any kind of container. Do you think the Happy Jack fire will make it into town?” Monica asked.

  “There are strong winds in tonight’s forecast,” Chad said. “It’s reasonable to put people’s safety first.”

  “They’ve had time to build a wide fire line south of town. Let’s hope it’ll hold or that the wind dies quickly,” I said. “There should be no danger on this side of I-17. The risk is to the southeastern part of town.” I knew that the ponderosa forest was within a few blocks of the Wal-Mart Shopping center. Embers, driven by strong winds, could easily carry far enough to land on this huge tar roof, but the danger was low in this part of town as long as the fire was only east of I-17. About fifteen thousand residents live in the part of town at highest risk.

  “I think I found what you’re looking for,” Monica said. “This was the only store in Arizona that sold that many cans of green paint in a single order. Here are the details.”

  She handed me a page that showed the purchase of eleven cans of green Rust-Oleum paint, two rolls of masking tape, a plastic painter’s drop cloth, a razor scraper, and a two-pound box of Russell Stover chocolates.

  “Can you determine which associate handled this order?” I asked.

  “Certainly. It was Emily Madison. Shall I ask her to join us?” Monica asked.

  “I know it was two months ago, but there’s always a chance,” I said. I noticed the date of the sale. It was a Saturday two weeks after Zayd’s abduction, about the time he would have died of thirst. I thought that was significant, but I wasn’t sure why. Emily had no recollection of the sale. Of course, the buyer had paid in cash.

  CHAPTER 25

  We drove to the NAU Campus Security office. Chad knew the man in charge, Tyler Boyd. Since Zayd’s truck wasn’t painted for two weeks after his abduction, I wondered if the vehicle might have been left on campus during that period. I was uncomfortable with the report that the vehicle had been hotwired. Why was that necessary if the same person was involved in both crimes? Zayd’s murderer would have had easy access to his keys. Maybe I’d been too hasty in connecting the crimes. Everyone on the taskforce thought my terrorist theory was paranoid.

  After checking some computer records, Tyler explained, “We go by the student’s window stickers, and Zayd Jabran wasn’t enrolled for the summer session. We check each lot a few days after the school term for expired stickers, and his vehicle wasn’t in the lot when we checked the Thursday after finals.”

  “His vehicle was hotwired. That makes us suspect it might not have been taken at the same time as Zayd was abducted.”

  “We’ve had only a couple of genuine stolen cars in the past five years,” Tyler said. “Our normal report turns out to be a roommate or friend who borrows a car without asking. You’d be surprised how many reports are from drunks who can’t remember where they left their cars the next morning. Normally, there are too many people around campus to make it a good place for stealing cars.”

  “But another student wouldn’t seem out of place,” I said. “We have no proof that it was stolen from campus, but I’d like to ask around.”

  “After two months, people will not remember anything about a white truck in a dorm parking lot, but you’re welcome to talk to any of my patrol officers,” Tyle
r said.

  Chad and I spent the rest of the afternoon talking to campus security and to students who lived in Zayd’s dorm. A security officer recalled that the truck was left overnight in the loading space directly next to the front door. He considered giving the student a citation because of the one-hour limit at that parking spot, but he decided to wait and see if the vehicle was still there in the morning. It was gone from the lot when he checked at 9:00 Monday morning.

  Our best information was from a young man who was in the room on the second floor directly above the parking spot where the truck had been left overnight. He was certain that the GMC truck was parked in the loading area when he left the dorm at 8:00 and that it was gone when he returned from breakfast at 9:00. He knew Zayd because he was also a forestry major, and he assumed that Zayd left for Oregon as planned. However, no one saw Zayd that Sunday evening or on Monday morning. We called Zayd’s roommate at his home in Tucson, and he was sure that Zayd had not spent Sunday night in their room.

  “What’s your current theory?” Chad asked as we headed back to Sedona.

  “It’s only a few blocks from the dorm to Interstate 40 so it looks impossible to highjack the truck before he got on the highway, plus a random hijacker would have no reason to kill him in that bizarre manner. I think he was taken Sunday night. He either walked somewhere or was picked up by someone. That person removed his truck from the parking lot to make it appear that he left town on schedule. It was someone who knew his plans in detail. Ashley Campbell and her family and perhaps a couple of dozen of Zayd’s college friends knew he expected to leave Monday morning for a job that would keep him out of touch all summer.”

  “There’s no way that Ashley had anything to do with it. Where did that idea come from?” Chad said.

  “I’m not ready to dismiss anyone yet, but it’s her father I was thinking of.”

  “He’s an ordained minister who was trying to help Zayd convert to Christianity. He has no motive,” Chad said with confidence. “You’re just playing with me again. We both know it was one of the Arab terrorists.”

  “Maybe so. They’re still high on my list, but you didn’t see what came floating out of Ashley’s window when she was having that argument with her dad,” I said.

  “Are you serious? What difference could that make?”

  I smiled and waited a few seconds before answering. “It was a black cloth exactly like those we saw on the two women in Zayd’s father’s airplane. It was a Saudi woman’s abaya covering. Maybe it wasn’t Zayd who was planning to convert.”

  Chad said something rather un-Christian about my ancestry and changed the subject as he often did when he wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Mike, I’ve been thinking about those two cost reduction lists you showed me. They’re complete BS. The sheriff will never let you cut yourself, but I’d like to suggest another change. Steven Bradley is really a hard worker with a lot of potential. It would be better to keep him and cut someone else who’s just coasting like Jimmy White.”

  “I’ll make that change before the sheriff sees the recommendations.” I was glad Chad was thinking about the future of the Sedona Substation since he would probably be managing it soon.

  As we neared the switchbacks above Oak Creek Canyon, I could see the enormous black smoke cloud dominating the sky to the east. Orange light tinted the bottom, and the cloud was bent over toward Flagstaff by the wind. Far to the south beyond the Verde Valley, I could see the white tops of thunderclouds.

  Chad turned on KNAU to hear the latest fire news at 6:00. He was born in Sedona and lived his whole life in northern Arizona. Chad and his father had hunted elk a dozen times near Happy Jack and Mormon Lake. It was difficult to comprehend how changed the forest lands south of Flagstaff would be. It would be two generations before those areas looked anything like the forest that Chad had always known.

  The news was not good. A front was moving rapidly north from the Sea of Cortez, the first major monsoon storm of the summer. It would reach the Flagstaff area after sunset. Higher nighttime humidity would be more than offset by the strong winds from the south, which would drive the fire straight at the fire lines that had been so laboriously created south of Flagstaff. Lightning was likely, and new fires were probable.

  The news also reported that Highway 89A would be closed at noon tomorrow to all but homeowners and visitors with confirmed reservations at one of the few motels in Oak Creek Canyon. The governor was calling out the National Guard to help patrol areas south of Flagstaff that had already been evacuated. Depending on the progress of the fire tonight, all areas south of I-40 and east of I-17 might be evacuated tomorrow. Heavy smoke would make it likely that there would be long delays on I-40 east of Flagstaff tonight and tomorrow.

  I spent half an hour at the office working on the duty schedule for closing forest roads and Highway 89A. Each time I wrote in a name, I wondered if that deputy would still be employed by the county next month. At 7:00 I headed home for dinner. The thunderclouds were now huge on the southern horizon. A warm breeze blew the smell of moisture ahead of the approaching front. I could see lightning flashes among the clouds. If those cumulus clouds were the start of the summer monsoons, we might get a break from the fire danger. The high country around Flagstaff normally gets regular afternoon and evening rains in late July and August. If the storm only brought wind and lightning, things could get much worse.

  CHAPTER 26

  My home has always been my sanctuary and place of restoration, but as I entered, I couldn’t escape a sensation of foreboding. After a tighter than normal hug, I knew that Margaret shared my apprehension.

  “The evacuation of south Flagstaff began at noon,” she said. “Most of the Channel Twelve newscast concentrated on the fire risk and the advancing monsoon storm that might bring forty mile an hour winds.”

  “The incident commander is confident that the fire lines will hold,” I said with a certainty that I didn’t believe. I had a hollow feeling like I’d experienced before a drug raid in Watts in the 80’s. The conflict was imminent and preparations were complete. It was the worst time.

  “Let’s enjoy our dinner before we talk of troubling things. John called to see how we’re doing,” she said. John is our only son. He and his family live in New York, but I was certain that the fire risk was in the national news too. He was checking up on our morale.

  “Are Sue and the grandkids doing well?” I asked, pretending that I didn’t know why he’d called.

  “Everything is fine in New York. I’m making one of your favorite dinners,” she replied.

  We enjoyed a delicious dinner of Brazilian seafood stew, pear and walnut tossed salad, and French bread on the deck as we watched the storm approach. The wind grew too strong about 8:30, so we went inside for German chocolate cake and coffee. Lightning accented the sky over the Verde Valley, and the front was upon us. A terra cotta pot with a three-foot Texas sage tumbled over on the the deck when the wind began, and I went out to right it. The smell of smoke had been replaced by the hint of moisture carried by the blustery winds.

  “Now tell me about your day, Sweetie,” she said over dessert.

  I explained everything that had happened as we sat in the living room watching the lightning and listening to the storm. I told her of the recently stolen vehicles in the area, and she seemed glad that we’d followed up on her suggestions. She nodded and asked a few questions until I got to my conversation about the possibility of a second fire west of Interstate 17. When I mentioned Major Ross’s comment about the risk of losing all of Flagstaff, I heard a small gasp and she said, “You won’t let that happen.”

  Margaret showed relief when I explained the closing of Highway 89A and all forest roads in the area. She listened carefully as I described my conversations with the Campbells. She didn’t’ seemed surprised at Morgan Campbell’s comments about Satan and the Arabs, but when I explained the grade school friendship between Muhammad al-Mukhtar, formerly Tommy Gunderson, and Ashley Campbell, Margaret interrup
ted.

  “You first learned about a girl named Ashley from a conversation the night we were at Storytellers, but you didn’t know her last name until Chad’s friend found her in a high school yearbook,” she said.

  “Yes, there were four blondes named Ashley, and Chad called them until we found the right one.”

  “Wasn’t that first conversation with Muhammad al-Mukhtar?” I understood her point even before she finished the sentence. Muhammad had mentioned that he’d seen Zayd with a local girl named Ashley, but he’d claimed not to know her last name. They were only a year apart in school. It was a small school, and they were neighbors.

  “Why did he pretend not to know her?” I said.

  “Maybe he was being gallant because he knew Ashley’s father disliked him, or maybe there was more to their relationship than is clear yet. The fact that Ashley had an abaya that got tossed out the window is also intriguing. Zayd was teaching Arabic to Mohammad, and now it turns out that all three of them probably knew each other fairly well. Maybe Ashley is more interested in Islam than she’s admitting. I think you should spend some more time talking to Muhammad,” she said.

  It was when I mentioned Morgan Campbell’s comment that Margaret seemed most surprised. He had said, “I just hope that Zayd had a chance to repent of that evil satanic doctrine before he passed on.”

  “How can he preach Christianity and be that callous about his daughter’s feelings for her love?” she asked. “I don’t like that man even if he’s a minister.”

  I explained that Zayd’s truck had been hotwired, which left me confused as to whether the car thief/arsonist and Zayd’s abductor were the same person.