Shattered Shell

by Brendan DuBois

  I was getting tired. I raised up my coffee cup to him. "I'll think about it."

  Felix shook his head, whether in disgust or despair I wasn't sure. "You better think pretty hard. I'd hate to miss your funeral service, among other things."

  "Thanks for being so thoughtful," I said, and that was it.

  Later I stood by the window and looked out at the dim lights of Porter Harbor, still dressed in my bathrobe. Dinner had been a light snack and even though I had slept away most of the day, I was still tired. The bed was nice and wide and with thin, soft pillows, the kind that makes me fall fight asleep. But I still had things to do, and I cranked open the window and let some of the cold air drift in, helping keep me awake.

  There was a knock at the door. I looked at the clock. Eight p.m., right on the dot.

  I walked over and opened the door and Diane Woods looked at me, cold and her face taut. She came in and I closed the door and I said, "Can I get you some coffee?"

  She shook her head, staying a comfortable distance away from me. She tugged off a pair of gloves. Snow was melting around her leather boots, and she had on jeans and her thick parka. "I'm doing a surveillance tonight, down at the beach, so I can only stay for a minute. Some kids supposedly breaking into a house. What's going on?"

  I looked over at her. "You hear about a fracas over at Plum lsland last night?"

  "Yeah, West Newbury cops arrested a couple of --- Hold on. You?"

  "And Felix."

  She stared right at me. "You're getting close, right?"

  I nodded. "Quite."

  "What do you need?"

  "Some support. Maybe to bail me out, maybe just a quick call for an extra set of hands. Felix is going out of town for a while."

  "You've got it, any time of the day," and then she reached up with her fist and placed it against her mouth. "You sure you're getting close?"

  "Yeah, I am. But no promises. It still might fall apart, just when I think I'm almost there."

  She gave me a quick nod. "I understand."

  "How's Kara?"

  I think she pretended not to hear me. She looked down at her wrist and said, "Jesus, I'm running out of time. Lewis, thanks, thanks for everything."

  Within a minute she was gone. The carpet was still wet where she had stood. I remained there for a while, and then walked back to the open window. The lights of the harbor were still there, but something new and heavy was in my chest, something that had just been left there when Diane departed. I took a deep breath, smelling a lot of things --- the salt air, diesel fuel, old food, and things cooking --- and I spoke out loud to Felix, who was hurrying his way south to Logan Airport. He wanted me to lay low, wanted me to do nothing, but I couldn't do that, not with Diane.

  "Promises," I said quietly. "Promises."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Promises. Three days later I was back in Newburyport. I was now mobile, having rented a Ford Explorer from Felix's contact. I was also about twenty miles and several hundred dollars away from my lodgings at the Straggler Inn. I was staying at "The Lincoln House- Efficiency Rooms to Rent" and my room could have taken lip half of the suite back in Porter.

  There was a sagging bed against one wall, a counter with a hot plate and mini-fridge, and my own bathroom. The radiator clanked at night and the toilet often drained itself for no apparent reason, and my showers had to be quick, for the hot water lasted only a few minutes. I had to pay extra for the private bath and that was worth it, but the real value was the room's location: directly across the street from the Brick Yard Pub. I had pulled a chair up to the window and looked down at the building and the street. I had a good view and could see everyone moving in and out of the front door.

  I had been here for two days and was content to stay just as long as I had to. So far Doug had not shown up, but I was sure he would. Everything had started from here. Everything. Felix and I had scoured Kara's neighborhood and had talked to friends, neighbors, family, and employers, and the only time anything got going was when I had followed Doug to this bar. Staying in the snow outside of his house on the other end of town hadn't done much. This was the center, the place that I was sure would hold, and I had books, magazines, radio, and enough food to last for quite a long while.

  Felix might be gone, but I was certainly not going to wait.

  With the help of a nap that afternoon and a shortwave radio that was bringing in an odd broadcast from Tennessee --- some guy claiming thousands of Chinese troops were training in the high desert of Nevada, ready to help the government repeal the Second Amendment --- I was awake when the pub began to get active. I sat in a tubular metal chair near the window, and there was a constant draft of cold air sliding past me. At my side was a tripod, and on it was a distant cousin of the night-vision scopes Felix and I had used a few nights ago. A quick drive to a sporting goods shop in Maine had provided the gear, which gave me the same ghostly green glow of the landscape below me.

  I recognized Angela, the woman who had served me a couple of beers, and Harry, the muscular guy who had warned me away from the backroom. One or two of Doug's friends I also thought I recognized. But I was sure of one thing: no Doug.

  I watched the people walk into the pub and, most often, stumble out. At about midnight a guy came out holding the hand of a younger woman. They embraced by the door and then slipped and walked to the parking lot, where they climbed into a van. The engine started up, but the van didn't move. After a few minutes it began gently swaying back and forth. "Such a cliché," I whispered, and my eyes went back to the pub's entrance.

  About an hour later the door burst open and two guys flew out, and they tussled in the snow, moving almost in slow motion, fighting and cursing at each other. Lights from inside the pub made the snow brighter, and people gathered outside, cheering them on. Someone obviously made a call, for a Newburyport police cruiser came by, blue lights flashing, and the two guys got up from the snow, staggering a bit. The cop came over and talked to them, and there was a lot of head-shaking and finger-pointing. Then the cop went back into his cruiser, wrote up some paperwork, and then answered his radio and sped away, blue lights still flashing. A more important call, I'm sure.

  The spectators either drifted back inside or went to their cars or trucks. The two guys that had been fighting were standing at the other end of the building by a snowbank, casually urinating into the snow. They talked to each other as they did their business, like two old New England farmers chatting over a stone wall. More people came out and then the lights were off and the parking lot was empty. I stood up and stretched, the muscles and ligaments in my hack popping and creaking in protest.

  After splashing some cold water on my face I stripped and crawled into the strange bed, and I slept fitfully, wondering how long it would be until I could get home,

  Late in the afternoon on the next day, I came back from a walk along a plowed sidewalk near the Merrimack River, and made a phone call from outside a convenience store. Two messages were on my answering machine, along with a bunch of hang-up clicks.

  The message was from Diane, and was to the point: "Call me if you have any news." The other was from Paula Quinn: "Give me a call, will you? It's been a while."

  So I did, and I caught her at the paper. "How've you been?" she asked, and I had to pause for a moment, censoring through everything that had happened to me in the past few days. After this long pause I said, "Okay, I guess. And you?"

  "Bored out of my mind. Want to take me out to dinner tonight?"

  I should have been dedicated and said no, but I was tired of eating out of cans and cooking on a hot plate, and dinner with Paula would mean real food from a restaurant, and even if I got back at seven, I would still be able to put in a few hours of surveillance.

  "You've convinced me," I said.

  “Great. Stop by the paper at around six. I'm trying to wrap up a feature story."

  I said that was fine, and I hurried back to my rented room, hoping I would have enough hot water for a pre-
dinner shower.

  At The Tyler Chronicle, the back door was open and I went past the circulation and distribution area, past bundled copies of the newspaper. Most of the lights were off and Paula was at her desk, tapping at her computer keyboard. She looked up and smiled and said, "Just a couple more minutes."

  "Fine," I said, and I sat across from her and picked up an old Union Leader and started flipping through the pages.

  It felt a bit odd, being in a newspaper office after hours. It was like you could sense the distant echo of phones ringing, the keyboards being tapped and stories being created, and the nervous energy of news being gathered and presented. There was a slight sense of power in this room, and I'm sure Paula thrived on it, as best she could on her paycheck. Except for a few places, newspaper work doesn't pay that much.

  "I ran into Mike Ahern the other day at the town hall," she said, staring at her computer screen. "Didn't say much. Just sneered at me. Damn him."

  I turned the page. "Can't hardly blame him, considering what we were thinking."

  "Well, I'm still suspicious," she said, her fingers flying. "Ever since we started sniffing at him, nothing's burned down in Tyler, Maybe we spooked him."

  I smiled. "Maybe so." I put the paper down and looked over at the desk in the center of the office, which was covered with papers and film rolls and scraps of paper towel. "Where's your photographer friend?"

  She turned away from the screen for a moment. "Urn, he's in Pennsylvania. Visiting his parents."

  “Oh." Now the dinner invitation made more sense. I had done way too much sitting down these past few days, so I got up went over to Jerry's desk. I looked over some of his stuff and saw a collection of contact sheets. I picked one up. It showed a series of photographs of the last arson fire, at the Crescent House. Little snapshots of the disaster that Paula and I had witnessed. Pictures of the fire trucks, of the firefighters dragging in hose along the snow, and the crowds of people out there watching.

  So many faces. Watching the hotel bum. Faces. Watching.

  "Paula?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

  "Hmmm," she answered, still typing away. "Almost done?"

  "Yeah, why, are you hungry?"

  I held on to the contact sheet. "No, curious. What do you know about arsonists?"

  She stopped typing and looked up. "Besides the fact they usually do it for money or for thrills, and that this particular one is making my life miserable and is scaring the shit out of the residents, you tell me. What's there to know about arsonists?"

  "Setting the fire is part of the adventure, but seeing the fire b where it's at. They enjoy seeing things bum, seeing the firefightors, seeing the lights and all the excitement. They get a kick out of knowing that they're responsible."

  "Makes sense," she said.

  "You trying to make a point?"

  "That I am," I said. "Once the fire is set, they usually stick around to see what's going on." I waved the contact sheet at her. "Your photographer friend, besides taking pictures of the fires, also lakes pictures of the crowds. This is one of the contact sheets. You think you could get your hands on the others?"

  She moved away from her desk, now nodding in excitement.

  "I see what you mean. Sure, Jerry takes a lot of pictures, a lot. All we have to do is go through the contact sheets and see if there are Ilny familiar faces, faces that show up more than once. Hell, Tyler's a small town, but not that small. All of these fires, late at night in winter... we see someone in every picture.."

  "Still feel like going out of dinner?" I asked.

  "The hell I do," she said, standing up. "Let's get to work."

  A while later we had moved into the newspaper's conference room and had spread the contact sheets out on the polished table. Paula had shuttled back and forth from the basement darkroom, bringing up black binders that contained the contact sheets.

  "Jerry can be a bit of a slob, but he's a perfectionist when it comes to his photos," Paula explained, as she flipped through the stiff sheets of paper. "He keeps them all up to date and marks each sheet with the date and place that he shot."

  Rocks Road Motel. The SeaView. The Tyler Tower Motel. The Snug Harbor Inn. The Crescent House. It was like looking at old autopsy photos as we began scanning the contact sheets. We both used eye loupes to help magnify the images, and we both kept pads of paper, writing down faces we thought looked familiar from one fire to the next.

  As we worked there was a creepy feeling along my back, seeing all those faces, all that emotion and anguish and curiosity, frozen forever on this nine-inch by twelve-inch piece of paper.

  A couple of hours later we were finished. The room smelled of old photo paper and pizza. We had gone into the work for an hour before we both realized dinnertime was slipping away, and Paula ordered us take-out pizza and drinks. The pizzas had arrived -- and I had made sure that I paid for them and tipped the delivery boy well enough --- and I had a plain cheese pizza while Paula had something called "the works."

  I felt queasy as I saw her eat the mess of vegetables that was tossed across the cheese and tomato sauce. "How can you eat something like that?" I had asked.

  "Easy," she had said. "I know pizza is fattening, so I convince myself that all of the vegetables I eat will cancel out the fattening stuff. Just like skipping breakfast means you can have a fudge sundae for dessert later on. Basic science of a woman's diet. Being a man, you wouldn't know."

  Being a man, I had agreed, and we went back to work.

  Now we were done, our eyes achy and watery, and my back was also groaning from the stress of bending over the table. The pads of paper were filled with scratched-out numbers and a collection of names, and the contact sheets had been placed into five piles, ready for their return to their binders.

  "So," Paula said, stifling a yawn. "That's it."

  "Certainly is."

  "I gave up a good dinner and interesting conversation for messy pizza and three hours of overtime work that Rollie will never agree to pay for, and for what?"

  I looked down at my pad. "For not much, it looks like."

  "Yep. A face here and a face there, but there's no evil-eyed arsonist in the crowd, drooling with excitement."

  "Your man Kyle shows up in two," I said.

  She doodled on a pad. "Kyle Sinclair. Member of the zoning board, and someone who lived near the Rocks Road Motel and the SeaView. You'd expect him to show up. No mystery there, though I will check into it. It's the only thing we've got going."

  "Sorry to kill a night."

  She smiled that same damnable smile that could make something tingle inside of me. "Not to worry. It was a good idea. Here, let’s clean up and get out of here, all right?"

  "You've got it."

  Paula got up and cleared away the remains of our dinner, and I started shuffling through the contact sheets. As I returned one set I looked again at the series of photos for the Rocks Road Motel. 'The first three frames were scenic shots of Tyler Beach --- probably at the start of a new roll. Then a picture of the Rocks Road Motel, and then the subsequent photos of the fire engines, the spectators, the hoses, the burning building, and there, standing glum and alone, Mike Ahern.

  Mike, on the job, just like in the other four sets of photographs.

  I then snapped the binder shut, and as Paula walked out I froze and looked again at the Rocks Road Motel pictures, and then at other four sets.

  "Damn me," I whispered. There it was, in all five sets. Paula came back in and I went back to work, my heart racing just a bit. A theory, that's all it was, but I wasn't going to say a word, I had struck out a couple of times before and had gotten Paula and me excited at the thought we were so close, and I didn't want to do that again.

  But damn, there it was.

  "All set?" she asked.

  "Sure, let's get out of here."

  Paula gathered up the binders and went out of the conference room and then downstairs, and I gathered up my coat and hers and walked with her to the back door
. As we got dressed for the outdoors I asked, "Feel up to some coffee and dessert?"

  Another quick smile. "How about a rain check?"

  "A snow check?"

  I opened the door. "Being polite, or do you mean it?"

  She closed the door behind us as we walked out into the parking lot and then she was in my arms, kissing me and holding me tight, and saying, "There. Believe me now?"

  I was cold and felt like a bath and my back was still aching, but it was quite nice indeed to have her in my arms. "Gosh, I guess I do, Miss Quinn," and I kissed her again.

  She giggled and said, "Lewis, really, good night."

  "Fine. Your rain check's safe with me." We clasped hands briefly as we walked across the lot. "Your photographer friend? Are things all right?"

  She squeezed my hand and sighed. "Oh, it's all right, but there are these odd stresses and strains. I mean, it's hard going out with someone that you work with day in and out. Sometimes you get at each other's throat."

  "I imagine his beard must tickle."

  "Stop imagining so much."

  She got to her Ford Escort and looked around the lot.

  "Where's the Rover?"

  Oops. Time for another quick one. "Engine trouble. I'm renting for a few days."

  “Oh, all right. Good night, then."

  "Sure." I got into my own Ford product and followed her out of the lot, and then she turned north to her home, and I headed south to Newburyport.

  Yes, all in all, a good night. If I could just prove it.

  The next morning I woke up stiff and sore. I had gotten back to my rented room and had yawned through a couple of more hours of surveillance. Nothing much happened except for a fight between two women, and when the pub lights had sputtered out, I went to bed. But there was a loud television going on from the room downstairs, and I suppose I should have complained, but that would have gotten me noticed. I didn't want any attention, not at all, so I tried to sleep with a pillow wrapped around my ears and I stared up lit the ceiling, and little things kept racing through my head. The scent of Paula in my arms. The contact sheets with their black-and-white secrets. Kara, shivering and alone in a hospital examining room. The damn snow and cold. Felix, winging his way south to the Cayman Islands. Me, alone in a smelly and dirty room in Newburyport.