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The night before, I’d delivered the man I caught to city lockup. He went into a holding tank where he could stew in his own juices until I was ready to talk to him. Instead of a ten by ten cement box, I went home to sleep in my own bed. But we met each other again early in the morning, after I checked in on my mom and had a cup of coffee to wake up.
“Sleep well”—I asked him, checking his file for his name—“Dennis?”
“Go to hell,” Dennis sneered.
“Not yet,” I declined the invitation. “I’m looking for information on Silvio Rossi.”
“I don’t have it.” He nearly cut me off, so eager to deny his involvement in the crime.
“Does this look like you?” I showed him a tablet and hit play to jump start the video. On screen, Dennis and another guy snuck into the utility room of the apartment building from several nights ago, carrying gas cans.
Dennis turned away, knowing he was caught but not wanting to admit it. He had no way out, but the reality of his situation hadn’t dawned on him yet. I pulled the tablet back and switched over to his personal file. Surprisingly, there were no prior charges to be seen, which was suspicious in and of itself.
“You’ve got no priors,” I told him. “Why would you up and decide to commit arson?”
“I didn’t,” he pleaded, his eyes darting around like a trapped animal’s.
“We’re not interested in you,” I leveled with him. “If you cooperate, I’m sure I can get you a good deal.”
“No way,” he snapped, bouncing back and forth between aggressive and terrified.
“I see you’ve got a wife,” I said, returning to the sparse details in the file.
“That’s right,” he asserted.
“Would you like to call her?” I knew that he hadn’t received his obligatory phone call. Sometimes the formality was lost in the shuffle, and Dennis had been locked up straight from my custody without going through all the procedures.
He didn’t answer immediately, so I could tell that was a sore spot. Either he had a tenuous relationship with his wife, or he didn’t want her to know where he was. I could use both of those situations as leverage to make him talk.
“Does she know what you’re up to?” I asked pointedly.
Dennis shook his head. “You can’t tell her.”
“You’re going to have to tell her that you were a guest of the city last night,” I reported. “She’ll learn about the trial eventually.”
“What if there wasn’t a trial?” he asked hopefully.
“That might be possible,” I allowed. “Depending on the information you can give me.”
He sighed. “What do you want to know?”
“Can you identify Rossi as the man who gave you instructions to light the fire?” I got straight to the point.
He wavered, not wanting to put his neck on the line, but needing to hide his culpability from his wife. Finally, he nodded.
“What were the circumstances?” I asked, hitting the transcription button on the tablet so that the software would record his statement.
“He tricked me,” Dennis related, his head hanging down. “I went to this party where I thought he was providing hookers out of the kindness of his heart.”
“As people so often do.” I couldn’t help adding my own dry comment.
“I’ve been to plenty of parties where there were hookers,” Dennis defended himself. “It’s just the mark of a good party.”
“Good to know,” I replied.
“But at this party, Rossi was taking photos,” Dennis continued. “I thought we were just having a good time, but then he turned around and said he was going to send the photos to my wife if I didn’t do what he asked.”
“And when he told you he wanted you to set fire to two buildings?” I asked, feeling contempt for the scum sitting before me. He was the one who’d played footsie with the hired help, and then wanted to cry about getting caught. “Was it two, or three, or more?”
“Just one!” the man yelled, jumping back in his chair as if he had been slapped. “I only set fire to one building.”
I had him on record admitting to the crime, but per my previous claim, I couldn’t pursue that charge. Bringing Rossi down was more important, and if I had to make a deal with a minor devil to do it, I would.
“Bullshit,” I snapped. “I’ve got you on tape at one crime scene, and I caught you red-handed at another.”
“I heard about the fire last night, but I didn’t set it,” Dennis complained.
“Prove it,” I demanded. “I want names and phone numbers, addresses, whatever you’ve got on anyone else Rossi was blackmailing.” I pushed a pad of paper and a pencil across the table at him.
He picked up the pencil and began writing, still thinking that he could hide all of this from his wife. I had a minor sense of justice knowing that to follow through with our deal, he was going to have to testify to the blackmail. I would make sure to invite the wife to court that day. That was if we could finally catch Rossi and bring him to trial.
I had to stay positive. With every passing day, we got a little bit closer. What I really needed was someone who was in so deep that they knew where Rossi was hiding. That wasn’t Stacia, and it wasn’t Mike. I could already tell Dennis wasn’t the trusted companion who was going to crack the case for us. But that didn’t mean he had nothing to offer.
“When was the last time you spoke to Rossi?” I asked.
“Himself?” Dennis countered. “About a month ago.”
“Then who told you to light the fire earlier this week?” I asked.
“It came as a text message,” Dennis replied. “It was an unknown number, but I’m sure it was him or someone close to him.”
“Do you have any idea where he’s hiding?” I pushed the last, most important question out into the air between us, hoping that I was going to get a bite.
“I have no idea.” Dennis destroyed my hopes.
I sighed, reaching for my tablet. “I’ll communicate with the district attorney, let them know about our arrangement.”
“And I can be home today?” Dennis asked hopefully.
“We’ll see,” I said, unwilling to promise anything.
Though I wanted Dennis to drive the nail into Rossi’s coffin, the lawyers might not see it that way. He had, after all, started a fire that had nearly killed people. It was going to take a certain amount of convincing to make them go easy on him, a task that would be facilitated if only I could get my hands on the ringleader.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said, snatching up the pad of paper that held his contacts.
I had a lot of work ahead of me, running down all the names he’d shared. Maybe one of them would prove to be the key to unraveling the whole mystery. Someone had to know where Rossi was. I highly doubted that he was in some underground bunker all by himself. We knew that he was taking phone calls because he had picked up when Mike called. And we knew that he was directing arsons from behind the scenes. He was tapped into his criminal network, and that was how we were going to catch him, I was sure.
I walked out of the city jail, feeling disappointed. It was back to the drawing board. We were no closer to catching Rossi than we had been the night before, and I was getting very tired of playing catch-up.
