Shattered Shell

by Brendan DuBois

  The wind continued to howl, and in my lap the radio and antenna trembled as the house shook. I thought of how Paula was doing. I hoped that she was done with her stories and was back home. And poor Diane. She was no doubt at work in foul-weather gear, helping evacuate people from the beachfront cottages and motels, setting up cots and such, not doing any detective work but serving her town. And what of her lover, Kara? Huddled in a dark home with a candle flickering, probably nervous and scared.

  After listening to the radio for a while I switched it off, tiring of the reports of ongoing doom and gloom. It was time to read a little and then blow out the candles about me and go to sleep, and then I realized something: I was trapped. One of my many faults is that I have to read before I go to sleep. Something about reading the printed page --- even if it's only a few paragraphs on a night when I'm exhausted --- manages to shift my mind into another gear, and it allows me to doze off. But there were no books or magazines ill easy reach. I was undressed in my sleeping bag on the couch, warm and comfortable, and I could feel that even with the fire burning merrily away just a few feet from me, the room was beginning to get quite cold.

  Trapped.

  I reached down with my fingers, looking again for an old Newsweek or Astronomy, and I found the manila folder. I stifled q yawn. This would definitely do the trick. I opened up the folder, and in the uneven light from the fire and the candles I began to read, vowing to start right at the beginning and end when my eyelids couldn't stay open.

  Nice plan, but it didn't work.

  Five minutes into the planning board documents, I was sitting straight up, looking at a name on the pages that was quite familiar, one that I didn't expect to see:

  Fire Inspector Mike Ahern. Speaking out against the conversion of the Snug Harbor Inn into condominiums. One of the motels that had burned down.

  I flipped through the rest of the pages with cold and trembling fingers. Each motel that had been up for review and which had later burned down --- the Crescent House, the Rocks Road Motel, the SeaView, the Tyler Tower Motel, and the Snug Harbor inn --- was the subject of some condemning language, and all from the same person.

  Mike Ahern.

  His comments were at the very end of each set of minutes, for the time set aside for general citizen comments. Most of them were quite similar, like this one:

  Speaking on behalf of himself and not as a member of the Tyler Fire Department, MICHAEL AHERN said he was opposed to the conversion of the Rocks Road Motel into condominiums. MR. AHERN said it was time that the Board stop approving every single renovation or construction proposal that came before it. The purpose of the Board, MR. AHERN said, was not to protect and promote big business, but to protect the general welfare of the citizens of Tyler. Adding to the growth and putting a strain on water and sewer and other town resources was hurting the town. It was time for the Board, MR. AHERN said, to change its philosophy, to stop shilling for big business.

  The Rocks Road Motel, the same place where Mike Ahern Ilild flippantly dismissed the concerns of the business owners. Something about "screw 'em, that's what insurance is for," Mike had said, when Paula and I had visited the burnt ruins.

  I held the sheets of paper close to my chest. A lot of questions wore racing around in my mind, and I could not, would not allow myself to start leaping ahead. I had to start somewhere, and I had to start at the beginning, and right now, the beginning meant trying to get some sleep. I put the papers back into the folder, blew out the nearby candles, and burrowed farther into my sleeping bag. I lay awake, listening to the wind and the noise of the snow and frozen rain racing against the house, sounding like sand being tossed down from above, and also listening to the contented crackle and hiss of the fire.

  I stared at the fire, thinking of what I had just read, trying to remember what I could about Mike Ahern, and knowing I would have to do some serious digging, and soon. Maybe there was nothing there at all. Maybe just coincidence. But I didn't like the tone of his voice when he talked about Diane, I didn't like that flip comment when looking at the destroyed dream of a Tyler Beach family, and I didn't like his words in the Planning Board minutes. For each motel he spoke against had eventually burned down.

  Some coincidence.

  Then the investigation kicks into high gear, and something awful happens to the lover of the chief police investigator on the case, a woman who's not well-liked by the preachy fire inspector.

  Some coincidence number two.

  I needed to learn more, but most of all, I needed to sleep. Eventually I closed my eyes, feeling the heat from the flames upon my face.

  I woke up in the middle of the night, throat so dry that my tongue was sticking to the roof of my mouth. I tried to ignore the sensation, tried to get some saliva going by chewing on my tongue, but my mouth still felt sticky and awful. I shifted on the couch and looked out to the living room. There was a steady glow coming from the orange coals in the fireplace. My nose and cheeks were quite cold, and about then I realized that my bladder was in need of some relief.

  Damn. Time to get out of my warm cocoon.

  I zipped open and tossed aside the sleeping bag, and yelped as I swung to the floor. I slipped on a pair of socks and raced upstairs to the bathroom, where I quickly took care of task number one, knowing that I looked quite ridiculous in just a pair of socks, but also knowing with a firm sense of righteousness that no one would see me.

  As I came back downstairs, shivering, I stopped at the closet and pulled on my down jacket, and shook and shivered some more. I went over to the fireplace and opened up the chain grate and I tossed in four more chunks of wood, and I stoked the embers with a poker until the flames came back. Next stop was the kitchen, where the lemonade I always keep in the refrigerator was cool to my lips, and I gratefully chugged down a few swallows, feeling the wonderful acid taste of the lemonade scour my night mouth clean.

  Then something odd came to me, as I put the lemonade jug away.

  It was quiet.

  No, not silent, but there was no howling of wind, no shaking of the house, no sandpapery sound of snow slamming into the windows. I leaned over the sink and looked outside. I could see stars. I went back to the closet and put on a pair of boots, and then slumped my way back to the rear sliding glass doors. I tried to open the door. It was stuck. I put my feet against the kitchen counter and leaned into it, pushing hard with both hands, and the frozen door literally popped open, and then slid a few inches. Cold wind blew through the opening, swirling around my exposed legs. I pushed a few more times, until it was wide enough to slide through, and then I was outside, standing on my deck.

  I stood in at least a foot of snow and I tilted my head back and looked up. The storm clouds had finally blown free and the night sky was dark and crisp with the cold air. To the west Orion was still there, shield and club always at the ready. Out over the ocean was the familiar Big Dipper and at its rear, Bootes, son of Jupiter and Callisto. Off to the southeast Venus was so bright it almost hurt to stare at it, and hanging below it, bright enough in its own glory, was the king of the planets, Jupiter. The night sky was magnificent, and was made even more so by the darkness below.

  I lowered my head and looked up and down the coast, and shivered. Not a light to be seen. The power was still out. Usually the lights of Tyler and the beaches and the North Shore sprawl of Massachusetts set up a steady glow to the south, and to the north you could always count on the lights from the city of Porter. But there was none of that on this night, just the shadow shapes of the hills and land.

  Another shiver, this time on the back of my neck. I was seeing something I would never forget, and that I would probably never see again: the New Hampshire coastline at night, looking as it did four hundred years ago, when the land belonged to the Micmacs, Algonquins, and Pennacooks, before men and women with fire and iron landed here in leaky boats, to begin their conquest of a continent. I looked up and down the coastline again, willing myself to remember everything I saw. In a way I was
privileged to be a time traveler, being put in a spot to see what it had been, what it had looked like, and how it had sounded.

  After a few minutes the practical part of my nature took over, and I got to work, shoveling off the accumulation of snow from the rear deck. But even with this exertion, I would stop and rest ever: few minutes, just to look at the awe-inspiring sight of darkness fallen upon a settled land that was home to thousands, and that now had been transported back to the sixteenth century.

  When I was done I gave the stars and planets and the cold and quiet coastline one more look, and then I went back inside ant I back to sleep.

  The next morning, I trod along in my snowshoes, heading north into the woods of the Samson Point State Wildlife Preserve. As I moved I felt tired and soiled. The power was still out and I had built up the fire again in the fireplace, which had warmed up the first floor of the house. No shower, of course, and while I was hungry for a nice big breakfast, I didn't like the idea of washing those dishes one by one through heated hot water, and I made do with hot oatmeal and half-burnt toast cooked in the fireplace.

  The radio reports I listened to as I ate were slightly less hysterical than last night. The storm was now making trouble for upstate Maine. New Hampshire and Massachusetts were digging out. The fishing boat from Tyler had been located, and the search was still on for the fishermen out of Gloucester. People evacuated over night from the beaches were returning home. Roads were slowly returning to normal. The president was considering officially declaring the region a disaster area.

  And I was outside, not enjoying being cooped up in a cold and powerless house.

  I moved through the woods, snow from the overhanging branches trembling and falling as I went deeper into the silence, and then came the sound of the ocean, as I reached my favorite sitting spot. The rock was covered with snow and I waited, knowing that I should be enjoying these few minutes of solitude. No power, no phone, and no way of leaving the house and dealing with the arsons, Kara, Mike Ahern, or anything else.

  I should have enjoyed the solitude, but instead I was conscious that it was cold, I needed a shave, and my skin felt dirty. The air was clean and cold and the snow was a white, virginal blanket over everything, but the beauty of the winter landscape was wasted on me, and I turned and trudged back home.

  When I got back and walked through the front door, I froze, hearing voices. Someone had broken in, and I was ready to back out and try to assess what the hell was going on when I started to hear music.

  Music?

  I walked into the living room and smiled goofily at what I had been panicked over. The television was on, that's all. I must have left it on....

  Yesterday afternoon, when the power went out. Now the power was back.

  Power.

  I dropped everything in a bundle on the floor and went to the thermostat and clicked it up, and I was rewarded with the gruff grumble of the oil heater starting up. I turned on the faucet in the kitchen and was rewarded with steaming hot water, and then I raced upstairs, stripping off my sweaty and snow-sodden clothes, leaving drips and puddles of water on the wooden risers. In the bathroom I started trembling from the cold, because the second floor was still frigid, but there was a welcome blast of warm air coming from the register set in the floor.

  A minute later I was under the hot streams of water, washing away more than two days' worth of dirt and grime, and for no reason at all, I started singing what little I remembered of a song I had learned way back in high school, when I had been a bashful member of the chorus, but a proud member of the crew of the H.M.S Pinafore.

  Silly, yes, but cleanliness and hot water can sometimes do strange things to you.

  An hour later I was on my couch, the oil heater still plugging away, dressed in clean clothes and before a small, crackling fire, which was now there more for atmosphere than warmth, and I had a cup of tea in one hand and my phone in the other. It took a couple of tries, but I managed to connect with Paula at her office just before noon.

  "How's it going with you?" I asked.

  "Hellish but improving," she said. "Me and Jerry, we spent the night at an evacuation center set up at the junior high school. We spent most of the day getting stories and pictures from the downtown yesterday, and when we were finished at the junior high, the cops strongly advised us about going out."

  "Really?"

  "Really," she said. "One of those cops happened to be your detective friend, and I was going to make a fuss until Diane told me that even if I wanted to, I couldn't get home --- the part of High Street where my apartment building is located was covered in two feet of water. That plus the snow and ice ... well, me and Jerry bunked for the night."

  "In separate bunks?" I asked, trying to put an innocent inquiring tone to my voice, which Paula threw back at me.

  "Spare me the jealous talk, Lewis. We were stuck in a gym with about fifty or so people, complete with crying kids, people snoring, and people coughing, trying to sleep on bunks that must have been designed back when Civil Defense was first set up. Still, it made for a great first-person story that AP in Concord bought from me. How did you do?"

  "Lost power and phone yesterday afternoon, and I thought the tide might carry the homestead away with a couple of good waves, but the house is high enough off the beach. I'm just glad the fireplace still worked. Up to getting together for lunch tomorrow?"

  "I don't know about tomorrow, but --"

  "It's about the arson case."

  "Oh, anything you want to tell me over the phone?"

  "No, not really. Something I want to tell you face-to-face," I said.

  "Oh," she repeated. "Sounds intriguing."

  "Actually, it sounds pretty nutty, which is why I want to see you in person."

  "You got it."

  We talked for a few minutes more and after we both hung lip, I sat on my couch, quite content, cup of tea warm in my hand. I felt clean and refreshed, the house was warm, and the electric lights were bright indeed. I still remembered that sense of awe last night in seeing the darkened miles of seacoast, but that had been a temporary adventure, and just as well.

  Time travel had been fun, but as one Kansas girl once said, there's no place like home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time I got to the Chronicle on Tuesday, I was sweaty, irritable, and late. It had taken me longer than I expected to shovel a path from my house to the garage. Then, getting out was also a challenge, even with the Rover's four-wheel drive, and I clawed up the unplowed driveway until I reached the Lafayette House parking lot, where I found the expert plowers had stripped the lot of snow nearly down to bare pavement. However, they had also created a mound of snow and ice that blocked my way and was damn near as tall as me. At first I had attacked the mound with the folding shovel that's always in the back, but after several long and sweaty minutes, it became quite clear that if I continued, I would make it to the Chronicle in time for dinner. So I trudged back down to the house ---- falling down once in the process ---and trudged back up with a larger shovel. Another dreary set of minutes later, I was able to plow through the parking lot by using the vehicle as a blood battering ram, and I left the parking lot a mess of snow and ice, and by then I didn't care.

  The drive along the beach was educational, seeing what had happened when the low-lying areas had been swept over by the storm tide. The snow banks were peppered with rocks, some the size of my fist, and a little cool sensation went along the back of my hands when I realized that the rocks had been thrown up here from the beach and over the concrete seawall. Several cottages had been stove in, like a giant hand had crumpled them with the ease of crushing cardboard, and along one portion of the road, abandoned cars were off to the side, fenders and doors crumpled in, as the plows last night had pushed them to the side to keep the roadway clear.

  The ride uptown was almost as educational, with huge mounds of snow and my Tyler neighbors, busy at work, shoveling or snowblowing their way clear. A few trees had tumbled over a
nd I could hear the incessant chattering of chain saws at work.

  The downtown traffic light was still on blinking yellow. I parked near the rear of the Tyler Professional Building, which houses the Chronicle, and carrying a manila envelope, I went through the rear door. Inside it was a wet and cluttered chaos, with ringing phones and the green industrial-strength carpet soiled and puddled with melted snow. There were metal desks jammed together and mounds of newspapers and blue-and-white plastic mailhoxes for the Chronicle. Rollie Grandmaison, the editor, was at his desk by the far wall, and there were three or four others at other workstations. Paula was at her desk, talking to her photographer friend Jerry as I went over.

  "Sorry I'm late," I said. "Even with four-wheel drive, it was tough getting out."

  She looked up at a clock. "Then we're stuck here for lunch. The governor's press secretary is supposed to be calling me back, and I have to stick around."

  I held up the envelope. "We're going to be hungry, because this is all I brought."

  She smiled at me and then at Jerry, who was sitting in a chair by her desk, holding some photos and contact sheets. "That's all right, I've got it covered. Hey, Frank?"

  At that a young man at a far desk looked up and came over. He looked to be in his early twenties, with hair in a bit of a ponytail and wearing patched jeans and a rag sweater. "What do you need, Paula?"

  "Lunch for two," she said, pulling a menu out from her desk and handing it over to me. "Lewis, is there something here you like?"

  I scanned the menu --- which was from the High Street Cafe, a short walk away --- and said sure, and after the two of us had given the uncomplaining Frank our lunch orders, he put on a winter coat and went out, and I said, "What was that all about?"