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“Oh, my God. There werenineof these fires total?” Lucy asked, her eyes saucer-wide.
“That we can attribute to this person for certain, yes,” Capelli said, nodding, “although there were three more suspected to have been set by the perpetrator, but never confirmed.”
Sam couldn’t help it. His jaw unhinged. “Twelve,” he managed. How could someone have settwelvefires, especially of this magnitude, and not have been a suspect in the case they were working?
Isabella, either being incredibly intuitive (possible, because,hello,seasoned detective) or just having read Sam’s expression (probable, because at this point, he had zero poker face), jumped in to answer.
“These nine fires were set in various parts of North Carolina, although the last three—the biggest ones—were here in Remington. But because they were pretty far back in the database and spread across at least three separate jurisdictions, it took some doing to find all of them and connect them to the same person.”
Xander spoke up from his spot at his nearby desk, gesturing to the images on the screen depicting closeups of the burn patterns. “Each of these incidents had the same setup as our warehouse fire. The locations were either vacant or abandoned buildings, or, in the case of the three businesses, they were unoccupied when the fires were set.”
“They were made to look like accidents,” Hollister said, taking the lead as Capelli clicked through another series of pictures, “or at the very least, to have inconclusive causes. Squatters. Old buildings with potentially faulty wiring. A careless cigarette tossed aside in a bad spot. Arson reports and photographic evidence showed burn patterns almost exactly like those we found in the warehouse, and responding firefighters all reported flames that spread incredibly fast. Obviously, the damage in all cases was pretty devastating, but it was difficult to find conclusive evidence that they’d been set intentionally.”
“Wait a minute,” Dallas said, his blond brows furrowing as he stepped in for a close examination of the monitors. “I remember this fire.” He pointed to a series of images. “This was the hotel that was being renovated, right? Old building, they were turning it into one of those…what do you call them? Boutique hotels?”
“Yes,” Capelli said, and Dallas swung a look at Sam.
“This was before you were even on squad. Seventeen ran backup on the call. None of us went in, but it was a real hairy fire. No one was hurt, thankfully, but it was still tough to forget, given the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Lucy asked.
Dallas’s eyes darted to Sinclair in a shared look Sam couldn’t decipher. “That fire, along with eight others, were set by a serial arsonist.”
Sam’s thoughts tilted before starting to spin at top speed. “Wait,” he said, closing his eyes to try and make better—or at least some—sense of his thoughts.Nope.“So you’re telling me that an arsonist set fire to a hotel in Remington eight years ago with a similar M.O. to the guy who tried to burn this warehouse down and blow up Lucy’s car, and you haven’t arrested him?”
“Yes,” Sinclair said, “but this is where the case gets complicated.”
He opened his mouth, presumably to elaborate, but Sam’s patience had already pulled an Elvis and left the fucking building. “What couldpossiblybe complicated about this? You already know he set all these other fires, right? Why the hell can’t you bring him in, at the very least to question him?”
It was Dallas who delivered the news that hit Sam even harder than a haymaker, knocking all the wind from his lungs.
“Because the man who set those fires eight years ago is dead, Sam. He has been for almost a year.”
26
The words sat on Lucy’s chest like an anvil, making it hard to breathe. “He’sdead?”
Isabella knew her well enough to realize Lucy was very close to her breaking point, and she stepped in closer to give up a small nod.
“Yes. This is Cyrus Yearwood.” She paused while Capelli pulled up a photo of a white fifty-something man with graying brown hair. His thin mouth was borderline cruel, his eyes hard and dark, and Lucy fought a shiver while Isabella continued.
“Yearwood died in Remington State Penitentiary last April after serving seven years of a ninety-year sentence for nine counts of felony arson. The judge closed the courtroom to keep the details of the fires—specifically, how they were planned and set—away from the press. She wasn’t too keen on having a how-to manual for setting large-scale fires on the public record. But that made the transcripts more difficult for us to access, too, and we had to dig pretty deep to finally find them. Add to it that the case spanned three separate jurisdictions…let’s just say, it took a lot of work.”
“But if this guy is dead and the court files were sealed, we still don’t have anything,” Sam said, exasperation sparking in his eyes. “The warehouse fire can’t even be a copycat if no one knows how these other fires were set.”
“Almost no one,” Sergeant Sinclair amended, and Lucy, Sam, and Dallas snapped their gazes toward him in unison. “As it turns out, Yearwood has a son.”
“A son,” Lucy breathed, her heart going haywire in her chest.
After a few keystrokes, Capelli said, “Malachi Yearwood. Twenty-three.”
The resemblance between the two men was strong. Same sharply angled face. Same worn-down mouth, set tightly in a frown. His eyes were a different color, lighter than his father’s, but otherwise it wasn’t difficult to see that they were direct relations.
“Wait,” Sam said, his stare caught on the screen, and Sinclair’s brows raised.
“Do you recognize him?”
“No,” Sam said, although there was a hint of a question in the word. “There’s something about him that looks…I don’t know. Familiar, but not exactly. A little like déjà vu, but not quite.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I know that doesn’t make much sense.”
