Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “No. We have no right to do that.”

  “Do you carry a gun?”

  “Well, Jack, I really can’t say. Off the record?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “In this business you’re often in empty houses, miles from anyone, with complete strangers. Sometimes it seems prudent to take certain precautions. Women are especially vulnerable.”

  “Huh. So your local real estate agent might be packing?”

  “Can we just sort of dance around that one?”

  “I guess so, for now. So the patrols are getting under way and the assault on this young man hasn’t changed that.”

  “Not in the least, Jack,” Tory said, smiling as he felt the interview coming to an end. “We will protect our community until it is absolutely clear that this threat has been eradicated, with the perpetrator behind bars.”

  “Are you surprised that you have to be doing this in little Sanctuary, Maine?”

  “I am shocked and amazed, Jack,” Tory said. “But I remain convinced that this person is only one of nearly two thousand law-abiding, kind, and generous residents of this special community. We—I mean law enforcement, with the community’s help—will apprehend this person and bring him to justice. We will survive this and emerge the stronger for it. Sanctuary, Maine, will continue to be a wonderful place to raise a family, retire, or invest in a one-of-a-kind home.”

  He smiled.

  “How was that, Jack?” Tory said.

  “Very good,” I said.

  He beamed. “Glad to help out.”

  I photographed Tory standing at attention by the “Sanctuary Opportunities” board out front, the one with the snapshots of new listings. In his blue Sanctuary Brokers polo, he struck a vaguely military pose, like he was about to depart for the D-Day invasion and had just kissed his sweetheart good-bye.

  I left him on the pillared porch and walked across the common, past the monuments and geraniums. The store was busy but it was almost eleven, and I had enough for a follow up. Tory. Scalabrini. The Johnsons.

  And a family to protect, too.

  I climbed into the truck, unloaded my gear on the passenger seat. Backing out, I waited for a car to ease past, saw that it was Russell, ex-CIA or whatever the hell he was supposed to be. I considered stopping, getting a quote from him, too, then looked at my watch, decided no. He parked and I pulled out, circled the common, drove past the big houses, the bunting-draped theater and café, and headed for home.

  A mile out of town, woods on my right, the river at the bottom of the little valley to my left. I had my phone out, pressing “H” for home, when I heard a motor roar. A pickup in the rearview, big and white, pulling out to pass. I eased over to let it by, glanced at the truck as it passed.

  An old Dodge Ram, white with rust on the fenders, mud spatters behind the wheel wells. I recognized it from one of the fires, the two youngs guys, too, their baseball caps on backwards. They looked at me, pointed to the roadside. Ten feet ahead, they pulled right and slowed. I braked and heard another roar behind me.

  Another truck in the rearview, this one familiar. The primer-black Chevy from the fire station. Ray and Paulie.

  There was a turnoff at the edge of the woods. I swung in, Ray and Paulie behind me, the Dodge skidding off onto the gravel and wheeling around. The trucks pulled up beside me, parked nose to nose, blocking the view from the road.

  I got out. Ray-Ray opened the passenger door of the Chevy and a beer can fell out. Bud Ice. He slid down and stood in front of me, scowling, fists clenched at his sides, swaying slightly in his unlaced work boots. Paulie came around the back of the truck, stood to my left. I could see myself in his mirrored sunglasses. The guys in the Dodge stayed put.

  “Starting a little early, Ray-Ray?” I said.

  “None of your fucking business,” Ray-Ray said.

  “Well, at least you brought a designated driver. Way to step up, Paulie.”

  “Shut the hell up,” Ray-Ray said. His fists were clenching and unclenching and he was rocking in place, took a step forward. I stood my ground. He stopped.

  “You talked to the state cop. Gave him my name.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said I blamed that freakin’ Goth geek for the fires.”

  “Correct.”

  “Now that statie thinks I was the one beat the crap out of the kid.”

  “Did you?”

  “No fucking way. I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  “Well, good for you. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “He don’t believe me. Said he’s gonna be watching me, talking to other people about me.”

  “That’s his job.”

  “Cop said if he can prove I did it, I’ll get ten years.”

  “Woodrow dies, whoever did it could get twenty-five,” I said.

  “I ain’t done nothin’,” Ray-Ray said.

  “Then you can sleep easy, your conscience clear.”

  “If I’m gonna friggin’ take a fall when I ain’t done nothin’ wrong, I might as well do something wrong anyway.”

  He was rocking more, the right arm bending. Even as I got ready I felt a pang of pity, a kid probably talked into this by his buddies, and now there was no way out.

  “That makes no sense, but whatever, Ray-Ray.”

  “You’re done.”

  “Maybe you’re drunk. Maybe you’re just foolish. Maybe both. But you’re really only hurting yourself here.”

  He shuffled a foot closer, turned his left shoulder toward me. One of the guys from the Dodge shouted, “Take him, Ray-Ray,” and held up the phone. A video called “Reporter Beatdown” was about to go viral.

  Paulie looked nervous.

  “Your dad gonna like this, Paulie?” I said.

  “Shut up,” Paulie said, and moved to flank me, blocking my escape. I looked at him.

  “Don’t worry, chump. I’m not running. What I’m doing is going home to my family. And I’ll go through you guys. Over you. Whatever it takes.”

  “Come on, Ray-Ray,” the Dodge kid said. “Shut his mouth.”

  “Some things you can’t let somebody get away with saying,” Ray-Ray said. “And payback’s a bitch.” He launched himself at me, the right coming over, catching my shoulder, and then I was in tight, got my arm around him, his punches hitting my back. We spun and he got a shot in, hit me in the ear, the pain electric, someone yelling “Get him, Ray” as I drove Ray-Ray into the side of my truck, bent him back over the bed.

  He whipped back, lithe and strong, and I punched him in the throat before he could get his weight on his feet. He sagged and I felt Paulie coming, a punch to the back of my head, arms pulling at me. I elbowed him, caught his face, shoulder. Ray-Ray was up again, swinging wildly, both arms, and I drove into him, arms in front of my face. His punches hit my forearms, jolted them numb, and I backhanded him in the throat again but he threw me back against the truck.

  Ray-Ray was coming, fist cocked, bobbing and weaving like a boxer. The guys from the Dodge were close, phones up, and Paulie grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me away from the truck. He had me by the shoulders, tried to trip me, spin me to the ground. I stumbled, stomped his foot, hit him in the face, got loose, stepped back to the truck bed, came up with a lug wrench.

  They backed away.

  “That ain’t a fair fight, dude,” one of the Dodge boys said, and the other started for their truck.

  “You ain’t got the balls to use that,” Ray-Ray said, and he lunged at me and I swung the wrench, hit him hard on the collarbone and he grimaced, dropped to his knees.

  The Dodge boy was pulling something from behind the truck seat and I moved, rammed the door into him, heard him grunt. I ran for my truck, got the door closed, the motor started. Paulie reached through the open window, got both hands on my throat, and I jabbed him in the chest with the sharp end of the wrench, jammed the shifter down, floored the truck, and he fell away. The truck crashed through the brush on the edge of the woods, bounced over a r
ock, and fishtailed onto the road.

  In the rearview I could see Paulie getting up from the ground, Ray-Ray on his knees, clutching his shoulder. One Dodge boy was by Ray-Ray, the other in the cab of the truck. I rounded the curve, reached for my phone.

  I punched in the numbers: 9 . . . 1 . . .

  I paused. If I was part of the story, I couldn’t write it. And I wasn’t giving this one up.

  I put the phone back down. Blood dripped from my nose down my chin and onto my lap and I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I picked up the recorder. Pressed the button and talked.

  “In an interview, Ray-Ray denied any involvement in the assault on Woodrow Harvey. ‘I ain’t done nothin’, Ray-Ray said.”

  15

  “You gotta be more careful,” Sophie said. “If I’m not careful, I fall down, too.”

  She walked gingerly across the kitchen like she was on a tightrope.

  “Like that, Daddy,” she said.

  “Okay, honey,” I said. “I’ll remember that.”

  She turned, kept tightrope-walking into the hallway and up the stairs.

  “Well?” Roxanne said. Clair stood at the counter behind her. He was sipping coffee and eating an M&M cookie.

  “Not everyone in Sanctuary appreciates my presence,” I said. I moved to the table, took a cookie from the plate. A bite.

  “Very good,” I said.

  “You remember what I told you about leading with your left,” Clair said.

  “Two of them. I wasn’t sure who I was leading at,” I said.

  “Two of them?” Roxanne said. “Did you call the police?”

  “That’s what got them all riled up to begin with.”

  Roxanne gave a short sigh.

  “So this is going to be one of those stories?” she said.

  “Gripping and compelling?” I said.

  “I was thinking more like dangerous and disruptive,” Roxanne said.

  “Ah, they were just kids,” I said.

  “The firebugs?” Clair said.

  “Who the hell knows,” I said.

  I told them the bare-bones story. Woodrow and the assault. Scalabrini rousting Ray-Ray. Tory and his concerned citizens. Ray-Ray and friends accosting me to demonstrate his innocence.

  “A flaw in that boy’s logic,” Clair said.

  “But the best of intentions,” I said.

  “You don’t think he attacked this other kid?”

  “If he did, he’s a hell of a liar, and I don’t think he’s smart enough for that. About as complex as a Labrador.”

  “Somebody did it,” Clair said.

  “And somebody is setting the fires,” I said.

  “Clear as mud,” Clair said.

  “That it is,” I said.

  Roxanne got up from her chair.

  “Nothing from Foley?” I said.

  She shook her head again, moved to the sink and started washing the mixing bowl, the cookie sheets. There was clanging and banging and Clair looked at me, said he’d head home, if it was okay. Roxanne paused, turned to him and said, “Thanks, Clair.”

  “Anytime,” he said.

  We stepped out onto the deck. The sun slipped behind fast-moving clouds, then back out again.

  “Hope you gave as good as you got,” Clair said.

  “Took a lug wrench to get them off,” I said.

  “Good thing you had your Sears and Roebuck roadside tool kit.”

  “You’d be visiting me in the hospital.”

  “No cops?”

  “I get paid to write the stories,” I said. “I don’t get paid if I’m in them.”

  We stood for a moment, watched the scudding clouds. Beyond them two jets left contrails against the blue. London to New York. Dublin to Boston. To the passengers peering out the cabin windows, we were invisible in a sea of green.

  “How was Roxanne?” I said.

  “Fine, as long as she’s distracting the little one. Keeps both their minds off it.”

  “See you got out the Glock.”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “Your intimidating presence would probably be enough.”

  “Not taking a chance,” Clair said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But he sounds like a coward.”

  “Even cowards,” he said, “can have a flair for the dramatic.”

  “And telling a real threat from melodrama?”

  “Not my problem,” Clair said, and he went down the steps, across the yard, and down the path into the woods. Just as it had been in Vietnam all those years ago, in seconds he was invisible.

  I looked in, saw Roxanne and Sophie reading on the bed in Sophie’s room. Scuffy the Tugboat, a tattered copy. Roxanne looked up and I mouthed a silent kiss. She managed half a smile, kept reading. Sophie turned the page.

  I went back downstairs to the study, sat down in the chair, flipped the laptop open, picked up my notebook. There was dried blood on the cover, a smear from my hand. I touched my lip and began to work.

  First thing was a call to Kerry at the Times. Vanessa the editorial assistant said Kerry was in a news meeting; no, she was out. I waited, heard clicks as the call was transferred.

  “McMorrow,” she said.

  “O’Brien,” I said.

  “Your story’s going outside,” she said. “Everybody likes it. The idyllic Maine town, residents grappling with an arsonist in their midst.”

  “They’re doing more than grappling,” I said.

  I recounted the day’s events, sans the altercation.

  “So they’re policing themselves,” she said.

  “Trying,” I said.

  “Self-reliant Mainers.”

  “Except half of them are from away. There’s a whole crew from inside the Beltway.”

  “Maybe when you move there you take on the characteristics of the natives,” Kerry said.

  I thought of Ray-Ray and Paulie, the Dodge boys.

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Can you do it in three hundred words? I’ll offer it as a sidebar. Three hundred bucks.”

  “You got it.”

  “And we need to get to this teenage boy, or at least his family. I’m picturing a photo of them outside their pretty Maine house. Did Fred Lawn call you? I’m going to send him up to shoot. I mean, did they think moving to this small town was going to save their troubled son?”

  “Not yet, and I don’t know,” I said.

  “But you’ll find out.”

  “I will.”

  “Let’s do that one for Wednesday, Jack. Six hundred words?”

  I thought of Roxanne, Alphonse, having to enlist Clair again. The money.

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  “You’re really rocking this one, McMorrow.”

  I touched the scrape on my neck.

  “We aim to please,” I said.

  “Oh, by the way—how’s that thing with Roxanne going? The kid who died in custody?”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “AP,” Kerry said.

  “There’s more,” I said. I told her about Alphonse escaping from the funeral.

  “No shit. How’d he do that?”

  “Bathroom window.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. Good times.”

  “Jeez, Jack,” Kerry said. “I thought Maine was supposed to be such a nice place.”

  I got to work, pausing now and then to listen to the sound of Roxanne reading, Sophie’s chirpy voice chiming in. I couldn’t hear the words but I could imagine them. “I like this part. . . . That horse looks like Pokey. . . . If we read Pokey a book, would he understand?”

  And then it was quiet and I listened. Still nothing. I eased out of my chair, crept up the stairs, poked my head in. They both were asleep, Sophie’s head on Roxanne’s chest. I smiled, went back to work on the sidebar: VIOLENCE ERUPTS AS TOWN TURNS ON ITSELF.

  The trick was including a description of the town, the landscape, the window boxes and gray-painted porches, but not hitt
ing the readers over the head with it. I toyed with different leads, decided to write it straight:

  SANCTUARY, MAINE—A teenage boy rumored to be a suspect in a spate of arson fires here was savagely beaten Monday and left for dead on the edge of a logging road.

  Woodrow Harvey, 17, who recently moved with this family to this seemingly peaceful community along the Sanctuary River, was in critical condition at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, where he was flown from the scene by emergency helicopter.

  He was found by loggers as they arrived for work early Monday morning.

  “This was not a fistfight,” said Detective Arthur Scalabrini of the Maine State Police. “It appears that someone intended to do serious damage.”

  From there I added a general description of the town, moved into Tory saying that the citizen patrol would get under way as soon as possible.

  He said many town residents have permits to carry concealed firearms, but he did not know whether they would be armed while patrolling.

  Stevens said the attack on Woodrow Harvey would not affect the patrol’s plans to police the town’s roadways at night. “Until the authorities declare that they have a suspect in custody, then we will remain vigilant,” he said. “I don’t know that this young man has perpetrated any of these crimes. And if he didn’t, somebody else did, and they’re still out there.”

  There was more. Tory vouching for the community, two thousand upright citizens, etc. That’s the kind of people we are.

  But exactly what kind of people were they? Certainly not the kind that Tory described in his brochures; not all of them. I licked my lip. The swelling was gone, but it was still sore.

  More time on the phone. Calling the hospital. Woodrow still listed as critical. Were his parents there? They could not provide that information. Could he get a message to them? No, but maybe a call to the floor. I called, the phone rang. No answer in ICU.

  A message left on Scalabrini’s cell phone with questions I should have asked earlier. Too concerned with being a witness. I scowled, waited for the beep. Would State Police be adding to its patrols in Sanctuary? How many detectives were on the investigation? Was it legal for citizen patrol members to carry weapons? Was he concerned that the assault on Woodrow Harvey was the beginning of vigilante activity in the town?