Who Likes Fire?
The flames jumped into the sky from the building as Jeff watched from across the street. He had been called out after the fire started, but his job wouldn’t start till it was extinguished. The paint store seemed like a likely candidate for an accidental fire. He knew the place well, he had done several inspections there when he was the towns fire inspector, and he had written them up several times for storing old paint in a closed in space. This was going to be an easy one.
When the fire started to die down Jeff walked across the street to talk to Mike, the fire chief. He was a heavy set man with a mustache that he thought made him look distinguished, but most people thought made him look ridiculous. Still he was well liked and had been doing this job for almost 20 years.
“Hey Mike, what do you think?” Jeff asked, “I think those idiots probably stored their paint inappropriately again and it finally caught up with them.” Mike said sarcastically. Jeff knew he would know more when he got a chance to look at the evidence himself.
The owner of the paint store was standing over by what used to be the door and was shaking his head in disgust, Jeff thought maybe it was an act but would talk to him to see what he had to say first.
“Hey Bill, sorry about the fire.” He said as Jeff shook his hand. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now? We had just put in the ventilation room for the old paint before we would send it out for recycling like you had suggested in the past.” Jeff looked surprised and asked “You had the paint separated? Why hadn’t you done that earlier?”, “We couldn’t afford it when you were the inspector but our business started to take off and we could finally afford the extra cost.” Jeff nodded and knew that maybe this would be more difficult than he thought.
Walking into the charred remains of the building he went to where the new room had been built and noticed the remnants of the ventilation system Bill had mentioned. It was true they had put it in, so maybe this was just a freak accident or arson, but he didn’t notice anything that looked like the start of a fire in the new room. He walked over to the front of the building behind what had been the front desk area and that is when he saw it, the cause of the fire.
Leaning down Jeff picked up the remains of a plastic container and what looked like burn marks up the sides of the counter area. Jeff ran his finger along the burn marks and smelled his finger, kerosene. It burned hot and fast, and was a great accelerant for fires. Someone had started this fire, but who and why.
He was going to have to walk out and tell the fire chief that he suspected arson, and a further investigation was going to be necessary. The firemen where going to have to wait to clean any more of the debri out of the ruins for now, and he wasn’t going to be able to talk to Bill since it was possible he was the one that started the fire for maybe insurance money. He thought that was unlikely only because he was finally having success with his business.
“Hey Mike come here.” He yelled. “What’s up Jeff?”, “I think we have an arson.” Then he showed Mike the piece of the kerosene container that he found. Mike looked at him and then at the piece of red plastic he had in his hand. “Wow, I bet he is the one that did it for the insurance money.” Jeff then explained to him that he didn’t think so since Bill was saying that his business was finally starting to do well. Mike nodded and said he needed to head back to his car so he could call his wife and tell him he would be late.
Jeff looked back down at the plastic piece and thought to himself, _Who would want to do this? _He looked up to where Mike’s car was and saw him pull something out of the back of his car. “No way” he said under his breath. Mike had just pulled out a red container out of his back seat and put it in his trunk, and it looked as though it was missing a chunk out of it…_I hope this isn’t going to end like I think it is _he thought to himself as he walked over to Mike.