While Mack was drinking, Rachel took the time to admire his athletic build. He was a good looking guy. She could easily imagine him posing for one of those firefighter calendars which featured bare-chested men with nothing on but bunker gear pants and suspenders.
Mack continued. “Sam went in first and Kevin and I were right behind her. We made our way to where the office was located. After we found the son and pulled him out, I turned around to talk to Sam and she wasn’t there. I tried calling on the radio, but she didn’t answer. I alerted the chief to the situation, but by the time we called out a ‘mayday’, the roof started collapsing. I didn’t think she had made it.” Mack rubbed his face with his hands.
Rachel could tell he was devastated. Tears were welling up in his eyes.
“It was like losing my best friend.”
She thought about it for a minute and took a sip of her coffee. Her breakfast went untouched. Mack’s story was mesmerizing. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “Do you know how the fire started?”
“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.”
Chapter Seven
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. When 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 Nic
k’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.”
Chapter Eight
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.
It was very tempting to try it out. At first he thought of it as an experiment to see if he could get the plants to grow and produce a viable product. He couldn’t believe how easy it was to get started. Once he got a private post office box, he ordered the seeds and special lights for indoor growing through one of the websites. He didn’t want his wife or anyone else to find out what he was doing. Finding the perfect place to grow the marijuana was easy too – he had a nice, large pole barn on his fifteen acres of land. His wife never went out there and it was practically hidden from view with all the trees.
Within a few months, he had produced a viable plant to harvest. Now he just needed to figure out how to market the product. That was the tricky part. One wrong move could land him in jail.
One night he called Paul and invited him over. He wasn’t sure how Paul would react because they hadn’t talked much about it since that first night. He had known Paul since they were teenagers and sometimes Paul could be a little unpredictable at times. But Ken didn’t know anyone else who had the money to invest in such a big operation. After a few beers, Ken brought the subject up again.
“Hey, I have something to show you. Want to take a walk?” Ken asked.
“Um, sure buddy. As long as it involves keeping your clothes on,” Paul said.
“Come on, smart ass. It’s in the pole barn.”
As they walked along the trail which led to the barn, Ken asked him, “Remember the drug bust I did, back a few months ago?”
“Yes, the local Mexican mafia. Sure I remember. You got some of those guys hog-tied back in the barn?”
“Nope, something better.” Ken unlocked the door and they walked into the barn.
“Don’t tell me you are starting your own little grow operation back here.”
Ken switched on a light. The florescent lighting gave off an eerie, green glow. Three large rectangular pots filled with blooming, sweet smelling plants, sat in the middle of a long table. He could hear Paul swear under his breath
“What… the…hell?” Paul asked.
“It’s just a little experiment. These plants are maturing and I’ve already harvested one. Look over here.” Ken motioned excitedly to another smaller table. There were three small baggies of what looked like dried herb inside them.
“I sure hope that’s oregano you have in there.” Paul said.
Ken laughed. “I bought some seeds online and started my own little experiment. This is so easy to grow. You wouldn’t believe what they sell online. There is one small problem though.”
“What would that be?”
“I can’t test it. You know…random drug tests at the
department. It wouldn’t look good if I was tested and came up positive.”
“Don’t look at me buddy. You know I’m in the same situation. Are you really thinking of doing what I think you are doing?”
“Maybe. I dunno.” Ken shrugged his shoulders. “It seems like a good way to make some serious dough. And think about it. I’m a trusted officer at the police department. I know first-hand when a raid is going down. This is almost idiot proof.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
“To get started, I need a few thousand dollars for more seeds and equipment. I figure we could produce enough plants to net about fifty grand every couple of months.”
“I don’t know, Ken. Have you really thought this out? Who are you gonna sell too?”
Ken had thought about this for awhile. He had a plan worked out in his head. After arresting Jason and the rest of the drug cartel, he found out how the system worked and thought he could replicate it, but with better results. And less chance of getting caught.
“I’m going to sell to Jason Blum. He was the middleman who worked with Pedro. He was let off with probation as part of the sting.”
Paul looked at Ken with disbelief. “You really think that’s a smart thing to do?”
“Sure. We cut him in. He has all the contacts with the small time distributors. What else is the kid going to do? He knows no other trade other than selling dope,” Ken said, like it was all easy street.
“Sound like you really researched this. How do I fit in?” Paul asked. Before Ken could answer he said, “It better not be what I’m thinking.”
Burn Out Page 3
