Site Unseen

by Dana Cameron

  Chapter 8

  BEFORE THE TRUCK HAD EVEN STOPPED, I HAD FUMBLED my way out of my safety belt and was running toward the house. The heat hit me like a brick wall and slowed me down, threatening to steal my breath away. When the wind shifted, driving the smoke away momentarily, I could see the paint bubbling and peeling near the windows, flecks of soot and ash sticking to it. The flames were huge, unaffected by the powerful stream of water that the fireman aimed at it. Even before a fireman intercepted me, I had stopped, fascinated by the horrible conflagration.

  “You can’t go in there!” he shouted. “Get those vehicles out of here! We need room.”

  “This is my friend’s house,” I said. “What’s—?”

  He asked quickly, “Are they at home?”

  “No, she’s away, in Boston.”

  “Anyone else in there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good, now get those trucks away, down the road, past that telephone pole.”

  I ran back and told Neal and Alan, in the other truck, to pull away, not interfere. I know Neal said something, but I couldn’t make myself focus on it. I barely recognized him.

  The fireman spoke into his walkie-talkie, then gestured at me again.

  “Who are you?”

  “Emma Fielding. I’m…I’m a friend of Pauline’s.”

  “Can you tell me what is going on down on the lawn? Is there anything we need to know about? Pipelines or anything in those holes in the ground?”

  I looked where he was pointing, down at the tarps, and realized that the site was just sitting there, waiting for attention while the house burned. A momentary panic seized me, as I tried to imagine whether the fire could affect it in any way. “No, they’re…just holes in the ground. I’ve been conducting archaeological research here.”

  “No kidding?” For a moment he was impressed, then the radio crackled again and he began shouting a response into it. I couldn’t make anything out over the monstrous noise of the house burning. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before, so huge and destructive, and yet almost fiendishly reminiscent of a campfire.

  It was unreal. All of it was unreal.

  I watched as the firefighters worked feverishly, a sort of modern dance, where there seemed to be nothing but chaos at first glance, but after a moment of study, deeper logic was revealed. They dragged a hose across the lawn toward the front of the house to attack the fire from another direction.

  “Oh! Be careful—” I cried, then caught myself and cursed.

  The fireman grabbed my wrist. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “No, no I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “There’s nothing. I just wanted them to be careful of the flowers. Pauline’s worked so hard—” I began to cry uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, my God, I’m so sorry, this is so stupid, worrying about the stupid goddamned flowers…”

  “Don’t worry about it. I see it all the time. Just sit down over here, stay out of the way, and when things calm down, we’ll figure out how to reach your friend.”

  So I sat there on the bumper of the chief’s truck and watched the house burn down. I knew I was still crying because I could feel how puffy my face was growing. I had to blink every so often, but I couldn’t for the life of me feel the tears running down my cheeks. The air was just too hot. I tried not to think about all the memories I had here. I tried not to think about telling Pauline. She was rooted in this place; it was a part of her and I couldn’t imagine her anywhere else.

  I was so busy trying not to think about so many things that time seemed to evaporate around me, swirled away and scattered over the river with the smoke. After what seemed like a long time, I realized that I no longer saw flames shooting out through the broken windows and out a ragged hole that left the rafters exposed in the remaining roof. The next thing I noticed was the relative quiet: The roaring had died away and all that remained was the sound of running water dripping and hissing as it hit hot surfaces, the shouts of the firefighters, and the noise of equipment being deployed or stowed away.

  I looked up and saw Dave Stannard standing next to me, his eyes glued to the wreck of the house. He looked down. “You okay?”

  “No.” I sniffed loudly and wiped my eyes on my shirtsleeves; my handkerchief had been rendered useless long ago. “But I’m okay.” I thought about how stupid that was and almost grinned.

  “A hell of a hot fire,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. “With all that rain we got? Even with most of the exterior shell still standing, Ms. Westlake’s going to have to rebuild.”

  “She’s going to be devastated,” I said. “She’ll be heartbroken. But she’ll rebuild, all right, she’s like that.” A sudden thought seized me. “Oh damn, the students!” I whipped my head around, trying to see if they were still waiting. “I completely forgot about them!”

  I started to head back up the driveway when the sheriff stopped me. “They’re fine, I sent them home a while ago. Told them I’d get you a ride back.”

  “Thanks.” I sniffed again and surveyed the ruin of Greycliff. “Oh hell. What a mess.”

  Stannard nodded. “I’m going to check with Jimmy in there, see if he can tell what started this all.”

  Suddenly a shout came from where the firemen were examining the inside of the house. That bred more shouting, which seemed to move from person to person up the drive, until I was finally able to make out the words.

  “A stretcher! Get a stretcher in here!”

  I looked over to where the action was, confused. Two firemen rushed back and were met by a couple of paramedics who, with unbelievable, practiced ease, moved a heavy-looking gurney down to the house and through the opened back door.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Why do they need a stretcher?”

  “Probably one of the firefighters got hurt,” Stannard said, frowning. “You stay put and I’ll—”

  The shouting increased, the buzz of activity increased, and unconsciously, I began to follow the sheriff toward the house. Raincoated firefighters began to stream out of the house, and I saw one of the paramedics leading the foot of the gurney out. I could see black rubber on the stretcher, but it did not resolve itself into the boots that I expected—

  As I stared I heard a shout: “Jesus Christ! Somebody get her out of here!”

  The black continued to emerge from the house until the other paramedic came out at the head of the stretcher. Or where the head should have been. It was just a formless stretch of black plastic, all the way along the stretcher.

  I stepped forward involuntarily. Time once again slowed and I heard a keening moan that seemed to continue endlessly. Some part of me realized that I must have been making the noise, but even with that knowledge, I felt myself collapsing; my knees turned to rubber and I stumbled, the world suddenly seeming to spin around me, my vision awhirl.

  The more I tried to deny it, the more I knew it was true. I couldn’t have said how I knew, but as soon as I recognized the body bag for what it was, I also knew, as sure as my life, that it was Pauline they were carrying out of the burned ruin.

  Chapter 9

  “DR. FIELDING? EMMA? YOU FAINTED,” A VOICE SAID.

  “I don’t faint. I’ve never fainted,” I insisted, as if from a distance. My words sounded blurred and with that recognition, time suddenly snapped back into its proper pace. I sat up.

  “Oh my God, Pauline!”

  Dave Stannard nodded grimly. “It’s Pauline Westlake. I’m sorry.”

  “But there’s no car in the driveway,” I said perversely, automatically refusing to believe him and trying to deny what I already knew was true. I shoved myself up and stumbled a couple of steps to check. Just as I’d remembered: There was no sign of Pauline’s Volvo wagon. I turned back to Stannard, frantic to prove him wrong. “How do you know it’s Pauline? It could be anyone—anyone!—we don’t know for sure.”

  The sheriff paused. “I recognized her rings. Everything else…was in pretty bad shape. We’ll have to do an…conduct further inv
estigation, but I’m pretty sure. I thought she was in Boston this week?”

  “She was supposed to be back next Wednesday,” I said miserably. “She was visiting her sister, I think, among other things.”

  “Do you know her sister’s name?”

  I wracked my brain. “Claudette. Peirce, I think is her last name. She lives somewhere in Boston.”

  He looked pale. “How did you know it was Ms. Westlake?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Tears began to leak out again when there couldn’t possibly have been any left. “I just knew. Something told me.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to get this place sealed up and a crime lab team in here. Once that’s done, why don’t you come back to the station with me? I’ll take another statement from you, we’ll try to contact Claudette Peirce. Then I’ll drop you back wherever you need to go. Okay?”

  I nodded. Something in the back of my mind told me he didn’t actually need to be so polite, but I didn’t care.

  “Okay. Why don’t we see if any of these guys has a drink of water, or something, then we’ll get started.”

  Pulling up to the dorm that afternoon, I had to take a moment to recognize the kids sitting on the dorm steps. I saw Meg and Neal, both still wearing their dig clothes, and I began to resent them for looking like they did every day. I knew I must look a mess, my eyes were dry now but burned like hell, and my face felt swollen to about twice its normal size. The smell of smoke that clung to my hair and was soaked into my own clothes was a ghastly, tangible reminder of what I’d seen.

  I leaned my head against the glass, trying to gather my wits, summon a little emotional wherewithal: I was going to have to tell them that Pauline was dead, that she was inside her house when she should have been safely tucked away in Boston at Claudette’s or the museum or having a good whiskey in the bar at the Ritz overlooking the Public Gardens. I knew as soon as I opened my mouth, I would have to deal with their questions and their shock too. I wasn’t ready for it, but then, really, I never would be, I thought numbly.

  “You okay? You need a hand?” The storklike Deputy Sheehan, who had driven me home, was good at concern. I hoped for his sake that he had never read Washington Irving.

  “Yeah, I’m good. Thanks for the lift.”

  “I’m real sorry about your loss. Miss Westlake was a nice lady.” He was just a kid, I thought dismissively; he looked like a Cub Scout in his uniform. I couldn’t imagine anyone taking him seriously as a peace officer. I felt a flicker of annoyance toward him—what could he possibly know of my loss?—then quashed it. I nodded and got out of the car.

  I tried to take a couple of deep breaths, but I couldn’t seem to get enough air; weird, when I felt so hollow inside. If I could only breathe, I thought, I would be able to handle this. My baseball cap was still stuck on my head, where it had been all day; I felt stupid and childish with it on, but I left it there, needing the snugness of it to feel like something was holding me together.

  I guess I took too long to collect myself, because the students exchanged a look and started to get up. I held up a hand; for some reason, it was very important to me that they stay put, where I wanted them. If I could control that, maybe I could control myself as well.

  As I walked to the doorway, I thought of how I should put it, how I could tell them. They already knew, as soon as they saw me up close, that something else was wrong, and so it just came out. “It’s bad news,” I said. “Pauline’s dead. They found her inside.”

  “My God.”

  “How could they have—?”

  I didn’t even look at them, I couldn’t distinguish their voices. I needed as much distance as I could get from this moment. “Her sister said that she’d left early,” I recited, “she’d finished up some business that she was taking care of. She said that Paul was going to have her car looked at—it was making a rattling noise, or something. The sheriff called the guy at the garage in town and he said that he gave her a lift home yesterday.”

  “God, Em, I’m sorry.” I recognized Neal’s voice this time. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Anything we can do?” Meg echoed. She sounded so queer that I looked at her. She was positively green.

  “I don’t know. We’ve only got a week left, but…it’s still a week. But there’s going to be an investigation, I’ve got to stick around for that, help with questions until her sister gets up here. Really, I’m the only link with Paul’s life outside Maine. There’s going to be a funeral, of course, and we’ll go to that, but I just don’t know about the work…”

  I was pleased that my voice sounded so normal, but then realized that I was starting to wander. I tried to get to the point, attempting to keep a tight leash on my emotions, but it was just no good. I threw up my hands.

  “I can’t go back there,” I said in bitter disbelief. “I can’t go back there now, not with Pauline not there, and the house, the house is gone, it’s just a blackened wreck, and I know I should be brave and finish up the work, for her or whatever, and I will, we’ll go back and we’ll make her proud, but I can’t do it now, I just can’t! I mean, goddamn it, Pauline’s dead, and she taught me everything, and she’s gone and Oscar’s gone, and they put her in this god-awful plastic bag, and it’s just too bloody bad if I can’t suck it up enough to go back there for a while! I mean, it’s not just me, the sheriff’s guys have got to do their stuff and they asked me to hold off for a bit anyway, to keep out of the way—”

  I think it was that thought, that I would be in the way at Pauline’s house. It just came tearing out of me and suddenly I really didn’t care who was there. “I can’t believe this, this is just so wrong! I mean, I know she was old, I knew she was, she was an old lady, and that was fine, I could deal with the fact that one day I’d lose her, but not like this. Never like this, not a stupid accident, it just goes against everything she is, was, oh shit!”

  I leaned against the railing, head in hands, willing time to freeze because when I looked up, I would be forced to come to grips with their sympathy. But not yet. Someone put a hand on my shoulder and I just shoved it away. I knew I’d have to apologize later, to whoever it was, but I didn’t care, I couldn’t face it now. I opened the door and ran up to my room.

  I dropped my bag outside my door and just kept going down the hall to the phone. I tried to remember what the date was, what time it would be in California, and realized it didn’t matter. I was devastated when the phone just rang and rang and Brian never answered.

  I leaned against the brick, trying to take it all in, make some sort of plan, but the smell of someone’s lunch cooking reached me and made me gag, and I fled into my room before anyone could offer me a meal I couldn’t eat. I peeled off my work clothes, still clean but for a couple of smuts and some soot, and climbed into the shower to wash the day from me, but it didn’t help. Everything I looked at just reminded me that Pauline was dead. I tried to recall our last conversation and whether she’d smiled at all. Finally I got into bed with my bathrobe on and my hair still wet, but a few minutes later climbed back out again. I put my work clothes and my backpack outside my door and locked it, then pulled the covers over my head and tried to fall asleep without the smell of smoke in my nose.

  Chapter 10

  I FELL IN AND OUT OF SLEEP ALL THAT DAY AND NIGHT and finally resisted the futile urge to try again around four A.M. As unaccustomed as I was to rising early of my own volition, I got dressed, made some coffee, made a few lists, paced a lot, and cried a little more, until I found that I had no tears left. About seven Tuesday morning I heard the others stirring, so I took a deep breath, armed myself with my notes, and went out to inform the crew about my decisions. I felt ancient and raw, inside and out, as if I’d been scoured with pumice.

  Everyone was getting his breakfast and before any of them could say anything, I grabbed a cup of coffee and started right in with my speech. Among my many other reasons for being glad of the coffee, the cup also gave me a useful prop, a distraction when it was needed
.

  “You probably all know by now that Pauline Westlake was found in the house and that she is dead. I should have told the rest of you myself yesterday, but I couldn’t…if Pauline wasn’t actually a relation, she did as much as anyone to make me who I am today, and, well, it’s been a shock for everyone. I’ve decided that we’re going to stop where we are—”

  A few surprised noises came from the students and I held up a hand.

  “For now. We are close enough to the end of most of the active units to finish and map them in a day or two and so we’ll wrap them up and not start any new ones. We’d only get another meter or two done this last week anyway, and if we come across anything really big, well, either it will keep until next season, or we can manage by getting it out on weekends, before the semester is in full swing. So we haven’t lost much time, really, and you all will get your full stipends. What we’ll do in the meantime is work on getting the artifacts washed and labeled, so we can make the most of our time here and still be around so that if the deputies say we can go back to backfill, we’ll be here. There has to be some investigation into the source of the fire, and they won’t want us kicking up dust around their data, same as we wouldn’t want anyone messing up ours.”

  That sparked a sudden, panicky thought in me, and I hurriedly set it aside. Not now.

  Dian spoke up, and I noticed for the first time that her eyes were reddened. “I know I speak for everyone, Em, when I say how sorry we are for you, your loss, I mean.” She looked around and the other students nodded silently. “Pauline was great and we all loved her.”

  “Thanks.” It was easier to deal with sympathy now that I’d had a little time to deal with my own grief. “So. The weather looks iffy, but the order of the day is getting things sorted out to go back to the department. I’ll probably be in and out”—my breath caught here, but I was able to master myself—“as I may need to help with the sheriff’s investigation.”