Fire Lover (2002) Page 14

  Mike Matassa said, "Let's see him chalk it all up to coincidence. Let's see him produce an alibi witness for even one of them."

  The U. S. Attorney's Office was talking about affidavits for search warrants as the time to arrest John Orr drew near. The lawyers wanted Mike Matassa, for the record, to specifically ask Marvin Casey of Bakersfield if Captain John Orr of the Glendale Fire Department ever could have touched the notebook paper that Casey had collected back in January of 1987. And that meant that Marvin Casey had to be let in on the secret.

  Mike Matassa called Marv Casey and asked the question and was given the expected negative answer, and Matassa explained how he would like to have informed Casey sooner, and Casey asked to be allowed to take part in the arrest of John Orr. Understandably, he felt a proprietary interest in the case and wanted a piece of it. Mike Matassa told him that he'd be in touch when the time came.

  And when he'd hung up, Marvin Casey at long last had his vindication. They had scoffed for years, even ATF agents. And now an ATF agent had phoned to say that Casey had been right all along. Marv Casey wondered if he'd ever be given proper credit for what he had done. He doubted it, feds being feds.

  Around the first of October the task force was reminded of something that Battalion Chief Gray of the Glendale Fire Department had advised them of back in April: John Orr was writing a novel about fire fighting called Points of Origin. What piqued their interest for the first time was that Gray had found his secretary doing some typing for John. It was a cover letter that he was sending to publishers.

  Gray took a look and discovered that in his letter John indicated that the novel was about a fireman who is also a serial arsonist. When Gray relayed this to the task force, it was decided that they should find a way to take a peek at his literary effort. They thought there just might be something in it after all.

  They lost Ken Croke that month to an assignment back at the academy for two months of new-agent training. Mike Matassa told Croke they'd try not to pop John Orr until he returned.

  On October 2, on a hot and dry Indian summer afternoon, another brush fire broke out in Glendale, in Chevy Chase Canyon, where so many had occurred in the past. This fire's point of origin was determined to be just off the street, in a gully that formed a perfect chimney to take the flames up the hill in the direction of a house perched nice and high with plenty of brush around it. The house was a sitting duck for an arsonist.

  Deputy Rich Edwards of the L. A. Sheriff's Department arrived twenty-five to thirty minutes after the alarm was given, but by then the house on Kennington Road was completely engulfed. Edwards was one of the sheriff's arson investigators who'd learned back in August, when the Teletrac was installed, that John Orr was the one and only suspect of the Pillow Pyro Task Force. He looked for John at the fire scene but at first did not see him.

  Five minutes later, John arrived in his city car, got out and accompanied Rich Edwards to the point of origin. The fire had begun beside Chevy Chase and had swooped up the hill in a classic V pattern. Both Rich Edwards and John Orr concurred that it was an arson fire. Nobody had been in the house at the time of the fire, but the dwelling had burned to the ground.

  What do cops in L. A. do when they're up against a tough situation? They draw on Hollywood, except it usually comes in the form of movie memories. "Here's how Bruce Willis did it." Or, "Remember how Mel Gibson drove in that movie?"

  Well, this time they went directly to Tinseltown. Producer-writer-director John Herzfeld was a friend of Hollywood Mike Camello of the task force. He was fascinated by arson and fire-related themes, and had met Camello when he'd made a fire-fighting film.

  The task force thought that Herzfeld might feign some interest in John Orr's literary effort and get his hands on the manuscript on the pretext of movie possibilities. They invited John Herzfeld to the L. A. police academy for lunch, where they gave him a general overview, then took him to the U. S. Attorney's Office in downtown Los Angeles for a confidential meeting. They told him some of it, as much as they had to, and he seemed very curious.

  And then an assistant US. attorney started talking about confidential grand jury information, and warned that a leak could be considered obstruction of justice. But it still looked as if Herzfeld was on board. Then the assistant U. S. attorney used a word that Mike Matassa wanted to grab out of the air and shove back in the lawyer's mouth. He said to Herzfeld, "You'll become an informant."

  And there it was: The Informer! Victor McLaglen dying on a Dublin street, gunned down by the IRA. The informer was always gunned down, or had his throat cut, or worse. And was always despised as a rat. The producer thanked everybody and said adios, as Matassa knew he would. You don't use the word informant around any respectable witness, let alone a guy who's in a business where the snitch is always tits up in the last fucking reel!

  They had to come up with another plan, and John Orr helped them do it. A week after the Hollywood debacle, John himself called the L. A. Fire Department to find out if they had a firefighter by the name of Aaron Stiles, or any firefighter named Stiles. He said that he was writing a novel and one of his characters was an L. A. city firefighter. He didn't want to be sued for using the name of a real fireman.

  The task force couldn't believe his timing. They knew of a retired LAFD arson investigator. A. A. Jackubowski, who lived in Santa Maria and was himself a writer. And John Orr knew him too. The task force had Jackubowski call the Glendale arson captain and say that he'd heard that John was writing a novel and was glad to hear it, and wondered if there was anything he could do to help a fellow firefighter get published. And that maybe they could exchange and compare manuscripts.

  Jackubowski told John he was in Hollywood for the day and could meet him in a restaurant, but for once John couldn't get out of Glendale. However, he was clearly excited, and he sent a copy of the manuscript by overnight mail to Jackubowski in Santa Maria. And the day after that Points of Origin was being photocopied at task-force headquarters, about to be eagerly read by Mike Matassa, Glen Lucero, and a couple of assistant U. S. attorneys.

  A memorable moment happened during the copying of the manuscript. The assistant special agent in charge of the ATF office was pulling out pages as they flew into the paper tray, and it got very interesting very quickly. Mike Matassa received a phone call from that ASAC, who said, "Believe it or not, John Orr is writing in detail about the very fires we're investigating!"

  In a matter of minutes everyone was ganging up on the machine operator, grabbing at copies. In chapter 6 the author described how his villain set an arson fire at "Cal's," a hardware business in a "small community south of Pasadena." In the novel, five people died in that fire, one of them a little boy named Matthew.

  The residential fire on Kennington Drive in Glendale was not brought to the attention of the Pillow Pyro Task Force, or if it was, nobody paid much attention to it. They were working on M. O. crimes, and the M. O. of their man had to do with fires at retail stores, not brush fires, even if they did take place in John Orr's bailiwick and destroyed houses.

  By then the task force had enlisted the aid of behavioral analysts who did serial-arson profiles at the FBI Academy in Quantico,Virginia. It was surprising to learn that government profilers had studied only half a dozen organized serial arsonists who had been caught and incarcerated. All of the others they'd studied fell into the disorganized category, mostly young men who torched random targets of opportunity, unsophisticated loners with poor social skills. Often they were nocturnal walkers who would just set a fire by applying open flame to anything combustible.

  The organized serial arsonists, the few they'd studied, went through a target-selection process. The task force was told that retail stores open for business would represent one of the most risk-filled, hence most fulfilling, of targets. The organized serial arsonist didn't just want to start a fire, he wanted to start the fire, his own fire, his way. He was a somewhat older offender with experience. He had unlimited mobility, and sometimes drove fo
r miles selecting targets. It had to be the best fire possible to meet his needs. A fire set in foam material, the task force was told, would certainly provide that kind of bigger, faster, better fire.

  The organized serial arsonist was generally employed and often vain about his appearance. He might project an image of authority, even cocksure competence in his other life, but his personal life was dismal. There were no monogamous relationships among those they'd studied.

  The serial arsonist, like other violent serial offenders, was conscienceless, egocentric, manipulative, cunning, and indifferent to societal rules and restrictions, with a compulsive need for excitement. In short, his was the classic psychopathic personality, with a unique component: the fire.

  Only the fire could temporarily satisfy the lust for power and control and possession. Only the flames could provide the irresistible thrill, the indescribable reward. The fire. The best fire. His fire.

  Having been installed in John Orr's car during a "routine maintenance," the Teletrac was up and running and being monitored on Friday, November 22, 1991. The system sent out signals from some forty towers covering the Los Angeles basin and far beyond. The signal was coded and got picked up by the transmitter on the target vehicle. The system measured the time it took a signal to travel from the target vehicle to the towers, after which a telephone line sent all information to a master computer, and then out to the star center at the L. A. County Sheriff's Department.

  At the star center the deputies could watch on screen as the target moved on a computer map, and could tell within one hundred feet where the target vehicle was located. There were some Teletrac printouts that afternoon that soon caught the attention of the task force.

  It was about 3:30 p. M. when a Burbank fire inspector was driving his city car toward his office and spotted a plume, a column of smoke rising in the air. He drove toward it and heard on his radio a full alarm assignment being dispatched to Warner Brothers Studios.

  By the time the fire inspector arrived through the studio gate there was already a Warner Brothers fire engine at the scene laying out lines, while other engines from the Burbank Fire Department were on the way. A large facade in the form of a house, barn, sawmill, and chicken coop, which had been used by The Waltons TV series, was engulfed, and a crowd of studio employees had gathered to watch.

  After several minutes, the fire inspector was joined by Captain Steve Patterson, the lead arson investigator for the city of Burbank. As the two men began looking for possible causes of the blaze they examined electrical substation boxes and found no obvious short circuits. But the fire inspector thought it was probably an electrical fire.

  Patterson found burn patterns on the floor of the chicken coop that resembled residue from flammable liquid, and he saw a tree next to the coop that was burned more on one side than the other, which puzzled him as to the direction of the fire.

  Steve Patterson, who had only eighteen months' experience as an investigator, felt he needed some assistance in solving this one. He used the studio phone to call a colleague, Captain John Orr, who had hosted an arson-investigation class in Glendale which Patterson had attended that very day. Patterson was five years older, but considered the more experienced John Orr his mentor.

  John returned Patterson's call, and was told by his friend that he could use some help investigating a fire at Warner Brothers Studios. John said that, coincidentally, he happened to be just a short distance away having dinner with a friend, and he'd be there in a jiffy. He told Patterson he was at Oak and Hollywood Way and asked for directions.

  Steve Patterson said, "Well, if you're at Oak and Hollywood Way, you just proceed south on Hollywood Way to Olive, and make a left turn and ... I can't recall the first street you come to, but there you make a right turn and . . ."

  John interrupted him and said, "You know, your directions are somewhat complicated. Would you mind going out and meeting me on Warner Boulevard?"

  "Sure, John," Patterson said. "See you there."

  John added, "Make sure you have a flashlight. If you see a car coming your way, flash the light at me so I'll know where you're standing."

  Steve Patterson waited five minutes and looked at his watch. He looked again after ten minutes had passed. After fifteen minutes, he went to his car, got on the radio and contacted John, asking his colleague if he'd gotten lost. John told him not at all, that he was actually inside the studio at the Waltons set.

  As Patterson drove back to the fire scene he was puzzled. John had said he didn't know how to get there and needed directions, yet he was inside at the fire scene. But Patterson didn't question his colleague about why he'd been left standing outside in the dark with a flashlight; he was too glad to have his help.

  The two arson investigators pretty much reached agreement, as they assessed the cause and origin of the fire, that it was arson. Nothing was said to Patterson by John as to how he'd found his way in, or about having been in the vicinity earlier in the day.

  At a later time, John reported that after giving his partner, Joe Lopez, that afternoon off, he had to go to the school of his lady friend's daughter for a parent-teacher meeting, and the school was only a mile from the fire. He'd seen a header of smoke and heard the fire call over his car radio, and since he was fifteen minutes early he'd decided to drive to the fire for "videotaping possibilities." But due to traffic and time constraints he'd returned to the school and the parent-teacher conference. He also added that because he'd seen the header of smoke earlier, he knew approximately where to go, and had arrived quickly at the fire scene after leaving word for Patterson with a gate guard.

  He later denied that he'd agreed with Patterson's assessment of arson, but that he was tired and hungry and "placated Steve, instead of arguing with him." They both agreed to call for Blanche, the FIRST organization's arson dog, to come the next morning and sniff for traces of any flammable liquid.

  But Steve Patterson never did learn from his colleague that evening that Wanda Orr worked at Warner Brothers, or that he'd been to Warner Brothers many times. And Patterson didn't hear that Jack Egger, the studio's director of security, said he'd seen John Orr badge his way through the pedestrian gate sometime before 4:00 p. M., when the fire was still raging, and that for a few minutes John had watched it burn.

  When the task force learned about the Warner Brothers fire that burned down John Boy Walton's house, barn, sawmill, and chicken coop, and that John Orr had been there, somebody said, "So now our John Boy's a TV critic?"

  But the task-force supervisors weren't laughing. This was the first suspicious blaze at which they could place him since the inception of the Pillow Pyro Task Force. And the Teletrac hadn't been very helpful. The printout showed him in the Warner Brothers parking lot at 6:18 p. M. when he came to assist Steve Patterson. It did not show him there prior to the fire's ignition at about 3:30 p. M., but only in the vicinity.

  Had the Teletrac malfunctioned? Or did he have two cars? Did he drive his girlfriend's car there at 3:10 p. M., set a delay device, leave for a quick run to the girl's school one mile away, then return to be seen by the security director prior to 4:00 p. M.? If so, why two cars? Did he guess there was some sort of tracking device on his city car once again? Or had he gotten in and out between the raindrops, during the fifteen-minute window in Teletrac "hits"?

  They had many questions, but one certain answer: he was dissembling. He pretended to Steve Patterson that he didn't know the way, and yet he had been there two hours earlier when the fire was burning, according to the director of security.

  The day after the Warner Brothers fire, while certain members of the task force were just hearing about it and trying to get their hands on Captain Steve Patterson's report, Gary Seidel, a past captain of the LAFD's arson investigation section, was driving east on the Foothill Freeway in his red-and-white city car. He was getting ready to turn off on Ocean View Avenue when he saw a white car next to him, driven by John Orr. Seidel had his son and three other kids with him when he honk
ed at John, who honked back.

  Seidel happened to be one on the growing list of people who knew that John Orr was the suspect in the task-force investigation, so he watched John turning south. Fifteen minutes later, Seidel saw a column of smoke, and saw fire engines heading toward the Foothill Freeway. He asked his son to jot down some notes regarding the time and location of John Orr's sighting. It was 2:25 p. M.

  A minute or two before Seidel asked his son to record the time, a dispatcher at the Verdugo Fire Communication Center had received a call regarding smoke in the area of San Augustine Drive. The call was dispatched to Engine 23, but after additional calls came in, the fire was upgraded to a full brush-fire response that called for additional engines and a battalion chief. With all brush fires, the Glendale arson team was automatically notified, and as the dispatcher was in the process of paging him, John acknowledged the San Augustine dispatch on his radio.

  Then the dispatcher received another fire call, but this was at a different location, on Hilldale Avenue. The dispatcher redirected Engine 29 to the Hilldale fire and did not redirect any other units to Hilldale, but one unit rerouted himself, the arson investigator, John Orr, who did not inform the communication center.

  A firefighter from Engine 31 in Pasadena, Denis Imler, responded to the first brush-fire call on San Augustine Drive, but he never made it there. His engine spotted the fire at a different location. It was on Figueroa Street, down slope from the house on San Augustine Drive that was threatened. The fire had burned from the edge of the road and was running up the hill, but Engine 31 managed to suppress it within three minutes.