Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  Other books by Gerry Boyle

  Jack McMorrow Mystery Series

  Deadline

  Bloodline

  Lifeline

  Potshot

  Borderline

  Cover Story

  Home Body

  Pretty Dead

  Damaged Goods

  ONCE BURNED

  A JACK MCMORROW MYSTERY

  GERRY BOYLE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Lyrics to “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music) reprinted with permission.

  ONCE BURNED

  A Jack McMorrow Mystery

  First Islandport Edition/March 2015

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2015 by Gerry Boyle

  ISBN: 978-1-939017-61-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014911176

  Islandport Press

  P.O. Box 10

  Yarmouth, Maine 04096

  www.islandportpress.com

  books@islandportpress.com

  Publisher: Dean Lunt

  Cover Design: Tom Morgan, Blue Design

  Interior Book Design: Teresa Lagrange, Islandport Press

  Cover image courtesy of Rynio Productions

  Printed in the USA

  For Vic. We sail on.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Postscript

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONCE BURNED could not have been written without the generous assistance of several people in the Maine law enforcement community, especially Sgt. Ken Grimes of the Office of the State Fire Marshal, and investigators under his supervision, including Ken MacMaster. The villain in ONCE BURNED would have been hard-pressed to evade Maine’s real-life professionals. I also want to thank John Morris, Maine commissioner of public safety and inveterate reader, for his readiness to hook me up with the right people.

  I’m also grateful to Genevieve Morgan, senior editor at Islandport Press, for her perceptive reading of the manuscript for ONCE BURNED and contagious enthusiasm for all things McMorrow, and to Dean Lunt, Islandport publisher, for reissuing the McMorrow novels and introducing Jack and friends to a new audience.

  Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son

  Who did you meet, my darling young one?

  I met a young child beside a dead pony

  I met a white man who walked a black dog

  I met a young woman whose body was burning

  I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

  I met one man who was wounded in love

  I met another man who was wounded in hatred

  And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

  And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

  —BOB DYLAN, “A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL”

  PREFACE

  He bought the wick online from a candle-supply shop in Houston, calling the people up first to ask which type of wick burned the hottest. The woman said to go with the paper core, as it burned much hotter than the zinc, but only to go with paper if he would be using it with very large containers. He said, Yes, as a matter of fact, he was. Very large containers.

  The idea was that he’d lay out six feet or so of wick so he’d be outside watching before the fire started. He’d timed it and found that six feet gave him twelve to fifteen minutes, the wick burning faster with no wax to slow it down. Fifteen minutes was plenty. He had time to get away but the gasoline hadn’t dissipated too much. He didn’t want an explosion—too quick—but he didn’t want a smoldering fire, either.

  He’d tried it first on a couple of abandoned outbuildings. They were half-collapsed sheds, tinder-dry, at the back of an overgrown lot behind a beatdown strip mall. The first one went up in minutes, snapping and crackling, embers floating into the sky like orange stars. The second, a bigger garage sort of thing, was filled with trash, and it burned slowly, with billowing clouds of gray smoke. That was when he noticed the colors.

  Sometimes he wanted to tell somebody, you know, you think flames are just yellow and orange, but they’re more than that. When the fire was just getting going there was red and orange, with flares of yellow and white. Later the flames would turn blue and green. He looked it up online and it had to do with the amount of soot. All this knowledge he couldn’t ever share.

  So there was always tension, whether to stay or go. It seemed a shame to miss the fire entirely, the wick burning down, the gas igniting, the flames hesitating, darting, pausing again, racing ahead. And that moment where the gas has almost burned off, a few seconds where you think maybe the fire is going out. And then a wisp of flame, a crackle of burning wood, and the flames reaching upward, uncoiling like some living thing.

  When they died in the fires, when he stood and listened to their screams, it was like their lives were carried upward with the smoke, the screams a cry for forgiveness that would never ever come. Because this was punishment for what they’d done, but it was a sacrifice, too. His offering to her. His way of showing that she would never be forgotten. He remembered. And they would remember.

  Because it was the last thing they felt. The heat. The flames. Skin and hair igniting like they were made of paper. The excruciating pain. The suffocating smoke. The searing hot gases sucked into their lungs until the last agonizing breath.

  It was hell on earth.

  1

  “You know we’re in the red,” Roxanne said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I kissed her bare shoulder. Then again.

  “As in, we’re spending more money than we’re taking in.”

  I pulled the sheet down and kissed the top of her breast.

  “Jack,” Roxanne said, pulling the sheet back up.

  “I never made love with an accountant before,” I said.

  “You just did. Now we need to talk about money.”

  “You know you’re sexy when you get all financial.”

  “When I think about money, I don’t feel sexy,” she said. “I feel stressed.”

  “You weren’t feeling stressed a little while ago.”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  “Can’t we bask a little longer in the afterglow?” I said.

  Roxanne reached for her wine. Sipped and put the glass down on the bedside table. Lay back and tucked the sheet under her chin.

  “Last month we were thirteen hundred in the hole. That’s coming out of savings. Which is just about gone.”

  She sighed.

  “I’ve got checks coming in,” I said.

 
“Twelve hundred from the Globe for the Trenton murder and the high-school bullying piece. Eight-fifty from the Times for the Hillyard trial.”

  “That’s all spent,” Roxanne said. “The house insurance and my car.”

  “The car was a one-time thing. It’s not like the transmission will go next month, too.”

  “It’ll be something else.”

  “Clair and I ought to see the next payment from the Martins pretty soon.”

  “Last time you cut wood for them it took weeks.”

  “They’re slow but reliable.”

  “Jack,” Roxanne said. “Sophie starts school soon. I’m thinking it’s time for me to go back to work.”

  “I could just write more.”

  “You say that, but you do the same amount of stories.”

  “The papers are shrinking,” I said. “They can only take so much.”

  “What happened to the ninety-three-year-old lobsterman?”

  I frowned.

  “I’ll wait ’til he’s a hundred. Better hook.”

  “Just because there’s no crime in it—”

  “No, I just have a better idea: This whack job down in Sanctuary has torched three old barns in three weeks. It was in the Press Herald. Just a brief. I’ll head down there and check it out.”

  Roxanne looked skeptical.

  “Sanctuary? The town in American Living? What was it? Top places to retire?”

  “No, it was ‘Hidden Treasures.’ The magazine’s big cover story. Subhead was something like, ‘Twenty American towns where it really is a beautiful day in the neighborhood.’ Ha. If you don’t mind the arsonist.”

  “Whoops,” Roxanne said.

  “Really. Like the Man of the Year turning out to be a child molester. The perfect community turns out to have some sicko out in the woods with a gas can and a lighter. A lot of times there’s a sexual thing connected to it. Some sort of twisted pyro/sexual perversion.”

  I smiled.

  “Wouldn’t you rather read about that than some crotchety old fisherman?” I said.

  Roxanne looked over at me, her beautiful eyes narrowed. She shook her head.

  “There’s something wrong with you, Jack McMorrow,” she said.

  I leaned over and kissed her shoulder.

  “I’ve never made love with a psychologist before.”

  It was six-thirty. Sophie had been up for an hour, rising with the sun.

  I’d given her breakfast—waffles and fresh strawberries, a glass of juice that she drank with two hands. She slipped down from her chair, ran to the back door, and sat to put on her boots. Little riding boots that Clair and Mary had given her. They’d come with a brown-and-white dappled pony, just two weeks before.

  “I have to go see Pokey,” Sophie said, struggling to get the boot on. I walked over and bent down and gave it a yank.

  “You sure Clair is up?”

  “Clair’s always up,” she said.

  “He must sleep sometimes,” I said, pushing her foot into the other boot.

  “No,” Sophie said. “He doesn’t have to sleep. He was in the Marines.”

  “Really,” I said. “Marines don’t have to sleep?”

  “Not Clair, ’cause he was a ’mando. I want to be a ’mando when I grow up.”

  As if on cue, there was a tap at the sliding-glass door.

  “Clair,” Sophie said, scrambling to her feet. She ran to the door and tugged. Clair slid the door open and stepped in. He was wearing a tan barn jacket and jeans. His cap was orange-yellow with STIHL and a chain saw on the front.

  “Is Pokey awake?” Sophie said.

  “Waiting for you, pumpkin,” Clair said.

  “I bet he’s hungry,” she said.

  “I bet you’re right.”

  Sophie ran to the table, dragged a chair to the counter, climbed up, and took an apple from the bowl.

  “Just hearing about my daughter’s career plans,” I said. “She wants to be a commando.”

  “Expanding role for women in the military,” Clair said.

  “Good to hear,” I said.

  Sophie trotted past us, boots clattering on the pine floor.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Clair, and was out the door, across the deck, down to the lawn.

  “Officer material,” Clair said. “Could be,” I said.

  “Supposed to rain pretty heavy later this morning.”

  “Yeah. Right call to stay out of the woods.”

  “You always say that,” Clair said. “Gonna do something constructive? Or just tippy-type one of your little stories?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll iron some doilies first.”

  “Attaboy,” he said.

  Sophie was back at the door.

  “Come on, Clair. Pokey’s starving.”

  “I’m coming, biscuit,” he said.

  He turned to me and smiled.

  “I’ll bring her back.”

  “Happy trails,” I said, and he was out the door, crossing the deck and the lawn in his long strides, Sophie trotting in front of him like a tumbling cub. I watched them until they disappeared down the trail through the trees, felt the bubbling over she gave me. I’d look at her, in mid-Sophie conversation, and lose track of what we were saying. Just look at her and grin. “Daddy,” she’d say. “You’re being silly.”

  So I was, yet again, and then I walked to the side door and outside to the drive. There were morning birds calling, and I stopped for a moment and listened: cardinal, hairy woodpecker, phoebe, chickadee, the usual crows. I kept going to the road, slipped the newspapers out of their boxes: Portland Press Herald, Bangor Daily News, and, this being Thursday, the Waldo County News.

  On the way back up the drive, I paused again and listened. Red-eyed vireo. Tufted titmouse. Flicker. Chestnut-sided warbler. A distant raven. To the east the sky was darkening and the air was heavy.

  I went inside and Roxanne was up, putting coffee in the machine. She was barefoot, wearing one of my flannel shirts. I patted her backside.

  “I’ve never made love with a barista before,” I said.

  She ignored me, started the drip, took her laptop from the counter.

  I went to the study and ran a finger down the bookshelf, past the homicide investigation and firearms manuals, and pulled out a textbook. Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations. It was the 2001 edition, picked up years back for another arson story, but I figured fire starters couldn’t have changed that much.

  I flipped the book open, skimmed. The general arson categories: excitement, vandalism, revenge, crime concealment, profit, terrorism. Subcategories of retaliation under revenge: personal, societal, institutional, group. Under excitement: thrill seeking, attention seeking, recognition, sexual gratification or perversion. Spree arson versus serial arson. (A cooling-off period between fires marks serial arson, like a serial killer.)

  I smiled. “Ready to rock and roll,” I said, setting the book on the desk and going back to the kitchen.

  We sat. I sipped my lukewarm tea and started on the papers. Roxanne flipped her laptop open and started reading. She began with the previous day’s New York Times, which I’d picked up for her in Belfast. I had the Waldo County News police blotter.

  “Break-ins over on the Hidden Valley Road,” I said. “They’re coming in during the day.”

  “Huh,” she said. “Syria is a nightmare.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  Roxanne got up, fixed her coffee, came back and sat, legs crossed. Very pretty legs. We sipped. The papers rustled. She tapped at the keys. I moved on to the Bangor Daily News. A big drug bust in Woodland, some guy with a meth lab in a parked woodchip trailer. A stabbing in Bangor proper, a melee outside a bar. Victim was stable. Fight was over a woman.

  I rustled the pages. Roxanne tapped the keys.

  “This budget goes through, I may not have an agency to go back to,” she said.

  “Here we go,” I said. “Another arson in Sanctuary.”

  “Oh, my God,” Rox
anne said. “Oh, my God.”

  2

  Roxanne’s face was gray, her mouth open. She closed it and swallowed. Her finger touched a single key.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “It’s Ratchet,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  “Ratchet the kid?”

  “Oh, my God,” she said again.

  “What?”

  “It’s under investigation. They’re interviewing Sandy.”

  A long pause as she read, her mouth hanging open.

  “Who’s Sandy?” I said again.

  “Ratchet’s foster mom,” Roxanne said, peering at the screen. “Oh, I can’t believe this.”

  “This is the kid with the junkie parents?”

  “Beth.”

  “And the boyfriend who gave him the weird name.”

  “Alphonse,” Roxanne said.

  “So what happened?”

  “Cause of death appears to be blunt force trauma. Oh, God.”

  “The foster mom? Would she do that? Aren’t they trained?”

  “She called 911. He wasn’t breathing.”

  Roxanne was shaking her head.

  “You knew this person, right?”

  “Sandy? For years. She was fine. A little rough around the edges.”

  “Are they saying she did it?”

  “It’s under investigation.”

  Roxanne started to take deep breaths. Her faced turned from gray to a sickly white.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said. “I feel sick.”

  I got up, put my arm around her shoulder.

  “It’s okay.”

  “But I pulled him,” Roxanne said.

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I helped place him.”

  “Nobody could have known that—”

  “He was three, Jack,” Roxanne said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Just this skinny little boy. He’d hang onto my legs.”

  She reached for the keyboard, touched a key, pressed her clenched fist to her mouth.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What?”

  “Beth.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s out of jail.”

  “For the robbery? The credit union?”

  “Oh, my God, I’m in here, Jack.”