2000 Mercury Mountaineer Won't Start

Engine Mechanical problem
2000 Mercury Mountaineer V8 All Wheel Drive Automatic

Ok I'll try to give as much detail as possible to the problem. This is my dad's car so I don't have the year correct on the car because I can't remember.

The problem is the car will not turn over or start. I noticed the problem when I tried to start it over the winter and it took it a couple cranks to get it to start. After driving the car for the day, it would crank/start with no problems. Then the next day, I would go into the same routine with it having trouble starting with multiple cranks. I concluded that if the car sat parked for a while it would have trouble starting. If I took the car to the gas station, turned it off, filled it with gas, it would crank with no problems at all. If the car sat in a parking place for 5 or more hours, it would take some time to actually crank/start.

Fast forward to now. I drove it one day, and parked it for the night. The next morning it wouldn't crank at all. It would constantly turn over but never fire. We took the spark plug caps off and looked for a spark. 1 out of 3 times there was an arc. After that nothing. The car has sat so long, that the battery is dead now. The local garage wants $55 to tow and $50 to hook it up to a computer. We have checked the fuses and the battery is fine. So the only thing I can think that it could be is the Fuel Pump or some type of electrical problem.