Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  He dropped the trouser legs, sat back down. Pointed at my notebook.

  “So am I a troubled veteran? Yeah, maybe I am. Do I have a thing about fire? Yessir. Wake up at night with my legs on fire all over again. So would I go around town burning down buildings?”

  He leaned back in his chair, watched me scrawling in the notebook. The dog sighed.

  “You all are the experts,” Louis said. “You tell me.”

  24

  The sky darkened overhead and the rain did come; wind, too. It blew in gusts and the rain drummed on the roof of the truck, skittered across the parking lot of the Sanctuary General Store. Clair had been quiet on the ride back down the ridge and into town, and now we sat as I went over my notes, rewriting phrases, picking out the best quotes. Some guys got tattoos.

  I waited and finally Clair spoke.

  “It’s eating him up,” he said. “Some vets are like that. They chew on it, ruminate on it, steep themselves in it.”

  “Bitterness.”

  “More that they can’t reconcile what they’ve gone through,” Clair said. “You try to find a way to make it make sense. The death. The destruction. The horror. You need a reason.”

  “But you came through it. Why not Louis?”

  “Troubled to begin with, maybe? Less to fall back on when the Marine Corps was taken away. I had Mary.”

  “Think he’s the fire starter?” I said.

  “Would be a certain symmetry to it.”

  “Society burned him, so now he’s burning it back.”

  “And he didn’t deny it,” Clair said.

  “He could have just lied,” I said.

  “Marines don’t usually lie to other Marines.”

  “Semper Fi.”

  “Yes,” Clair said. “Speaking of which—”

  “You’ve got to get back to Mary.”

  “And I’ll check in on Roxanne. And my little girl.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be home after the patrol.”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “Oh, I think it’s going to be just riding around, talking.”

  “Well, you ought to be fine then,” Clair said, “Mr. Chatterbox.”

  He smiled. I climbed down out of his truck and walked to mine. The big Ford rumbled off. I followed him as far as Route 17, where he went right and I went left, as far as the Quik-Mart. I pulled into the back of the lot and parked.

  It was 6:20 and I was hungry and thirsty, so I went into the store and bought a ham-and-cheese sandwich, a bottle of water, and a coffee. I took it out to the truck and laid it all out on the passenger seat: my dinner, my notebooks. I ate and drank and listened to jazz on public radio. A show about Chet Baker. I took a blank legal pad and put it across the steering wheel.

  Made a list, starting with the three most recent structures that had burned. Then a rough map of Sanctuary, with X’s for their locations. Barbier’s barn and the Talbot house on the east side of the river, the poultry barn on the west. Woodrow was attacked on the west side, south of the town center just a couple of miles from the shed. Would the arsonist start close to his home and then go farther afield? Would he start farther away and grow less cautious as the need for fires increased?

  Maybe Woodrow was beaten by Ray-Ray and Paulie, payback for starting all this trouble. Or what if Woodrow had been attacked by the arsonist himself? Were arsonists violent in other ways? Burning the house with Dr. Talbot in it—that was very different from beating somebody with a club. This would be a good question for Investigator Reynolds.

  What were they focusing on? A question for Trooper Foley.

  I finished the sandwich. Took the lid off the coffee. Sipped. It was strong, a little burned, but it was hot, and it was raw in the rain, even though it was August. I sipped again, the cup in front of my face as Don Barbier’s truck—a big black Dodge with ladder racks and toolboxes—pulled in and up to the gas pumps. He got out, reached for the hose. Tory got out of the passenger side, said something to Barbier. They both were wearing black—jeans and T-shirts.

  He didn’t look over as he walked into the store. Barbier stood at the pumps. Gassing up for the patrol? Tory going in to get supplies? Coffee and doughnuts? Some rope for the lynching?

  I put the pad down and, taking my coffee with me, got out of the truck and walked over.

  “Don,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  He looked up, startled, but only for a moment.

  “Jack,” he said. “Hear you’re going to be joining us.”

  “That’s right, if you don’t mind.”

  “Hey, the more the merrier. And maybe we can pick your brain a little on this thing.”

  He eased the nozzle out of the truck and hung it back on the pump, looked over my shoulder.

  “Tory,” he said. “Jack’s ready to roll.”

  I turned. Tory had a cardboard tray with two coffees and several hot dogs.

  “Shit,” he said. “I forgot the napkins.”

  “I’ll go, bro,” Don said. He turned to me.

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Black.” I’d almost finished my other cup, and knew I’d need the caffeine.

  “You got it.”

  Don jogged to the store, swung the door open, and went inside. Tory leaned into the truck and arranged the food on the console between the front seats. I stood by the open back door and waited.

  “Ever expect you’d be doing this sort of thing in Sanctuary, Maine?” I said, slipping the notebook out.

  “Heck, no,” Tory said. “Gorgeous setting, pretty little town that’s gotten some national press. Who would’ve thought somebody would want to burn it down?”

  “Where did you and Rita come from?”

  “Chesapeake Bay area. South of Annapolis. Opportunities there had flattened out. You need a place on the upswing, ride the crest of that wave.”

  “To make money, you mean,” I said.

  “To be successful.”

  “What’s all this doing to the wave?”

  Tory looked at the notebook.

  “Just a blip, Jack,” he said. “This area is coming on like gangbusters. The wave is sweeping in from the coast. Camden. Belfast. Rockland. Those have peaked out. People are realizing that this is just a wonderful area.”

  “So, catch this person, get back to business?”

  “You got it, Jack,” Tory said. “Rita and I, really, it’s our calling, to bring people to Sanctuary and enhance their lifestyle. A couple of months, this will all be forgotten. Ancient history. Like the Romans or whatever.”

  The Romans. I wrote that one down, was still scribbling when Don came back with my coffee. “One for you, Jack,” he said, and then, to Tory: “Gonna have to watch what we say, with a reporter in the truck. Jack, you keep writing about this fire stuff, and nobody will ever want to move here.”

  “Well, that’s why we have to nail this frigging clown,” Tory said. “Nail his ass.”

  An urgency in his tone, beyond the guy talk. I guess if I was losing money by the minute . . .

  “Let’s roll,” Don said. I walked back to my truck, collected my stuff, and came back. I got in the back, driver’s side. I looked up, saw two rifles on the gun rack.

  “What season is it?” I said.

  “Varmint,” Don said.

  We roared off, turning on the Sanctuary Road. Sitting in the back, in the dark, I reached for my notebook and wrote that down, too. Tory had turned and he saw me writing and seemed to wince, probably feeling property values plummet with each good quote. I decided not to mention the Times Magazine.

  Russell and Harold were waiting in the parking lot by the common in Sanctuary, dressed in black, too. I felt like I was headed for a poetry slam.

  I moved to the middle and Harold got in beside me, gave me a knowing look. He’d fulfilled his side of the bargain. Russell got into the truck on the other side, putting a black canvas duffel bag on the seat beside us. He nodded at me, said, “Mr. McMorrow.” I nodded back, said, “Russell. So
what’s in the bag?”

  He looked at me, seemed a little irritated. I wondered how Harold had twisted their arms into letting me come along.

  “Spotlight,” he said. “Some other equipment.”

  “Like what?” I said. “Just curious. What do you bring on a citizen patrol?”

  A little sigh, an eye roll. But he unzipped the bag, took out a spotlight, one of those million-candlepower lights that plugs into the cigarette lighter. A plastic bag that had 89977-RESTRAINTS USGOV stamped on the outside. Inside were plastic handcuffs, the kind you saw used on insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. He reached into the bag and took out another item: a pair of bulging goggles. Night-vision.

  “Wow,” I said. “Serious business.”

  “This is no game,” Russell said. “Ask Dr. Talbot. Oh, sorry; too late. Remember, Mr. McMorrow: The only difference between arson and murder is luck.”

  I held up my notebook.

  “May I quote you?”

  “Do I get to vet the story?” Russell said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you have to use my name?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’d rather just be described as a former government operative.”

  “What did you actually do, Russell?” Tory said.

  “I’d rather just be described as a former government operative.”

  “Tell him what you really did, Russell,” Tory said.

  “Classified,” Russell said, his lips clenched tightly.

  “You heard of black ops, Jack?” Don said.

  “Easy,” Russell said.

  Don smiled, said, “This piece of shit isn’t gonna know what hit him.”

  We rumbled out of the town center, headed southwest. It was dusk, misty and overcast, and soon we were on a country road with only a few houses. Tory got out a map and unfolded it. He reached up and hit the overhead light and said he’d marked the houses he and Rita had on the market.

  We drove down and along the river, pulling in where Tory pointed out vacant houses for sale. Don and Harold stood by the truck, the motor idling and lights on, a rifle in hand, while Russell, Tory, and I walked around the houses, looking for signs of any sort of intrusion. Russell shone the spotlight on surrounding yards and fields, illuminating deer, foxes, raccoons, and a skunk.

  After two hours, we’d finished Tory’s list and had made a complete circle of the town. It was after ten and Russell said, “Now we sweep for suspicious persons. Parked cars.”

  Away we went again, Russell grim, Tory seemingly buoyed by the idea of actually rousting someone. In fifteen minutes we found our first car, a gray Honda parked on a back road, half in the ditch. We all got out and Russell shone the light in, saw empty beer bottles on the floor. I held my recorder under my notebook, hit the button. Tory wrote the plate number down in a black notebook. Don felt the hood. “Still warm,” he said. We turned to the dark woods and Russell played the light.

  A pair of eyes.

  Watching us from the first line of brush.

  Don trained the rifle on the figure.

  Russell said, “Citizen patrol. Come out slowly and show your hands.”

  There was a crunching, crashing sound as the person pushed through the brush. A teenage boy, his hands on his head. His white face was pale, his eyes squinting in the glare of the spotlight. He lurched toward us, stopped six feet away. He was wearing a baseball cap, red basketball shorts, a T-shirt that said FENWAY PARK.

  “What is this?” he said. “Who are you guys?” He saw Harold, standing in the back.

  “Harold,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Harold didn’t answer. Russell stepped up to the kid, shone the light in his face.

  “What were you doing in there?” Russell said.

  “Taking a leak,” the kid said.

  Russell stepped around behind him. He patted the kid down, said, “Clear.”

  “You sure you’re allowed to do this?” the kid said.

  Russell came around to face the kid, said, “Sanctuary Citizens’ Arson Prevention Patrol.”

  “Arson?” the kid said. “I was just taking a piss.”

  “So you are aware of the arson fires,” Russell said.

  “Sure, but—”

  Tory stepped closer.

  “Hold out your hands,” he barked.

  The kid took his hands off his head, held them out. “I know you,” he said. “You’re the real estate guy.”

  Tory took the kid’s left wrist, held the hand up to his nose, and sniffed. Then he did the other one.

  “No gas,” he said.

  “Please open the trunk,” Russell said.

  “What are you guys doing? I ain’t gonna . . .” He looked at Don, the rifle by his side.

  “If you don’t cooperate, we have the legal right to restrain you as an imminent threat to the community,” Russell said. “We have the legal right to exercise a citizen’s arrest.”

  He reached into his back pocket and took out the plastic restraints.

  “All right, all right, but there’s nothing in there. The spare, some shit.”

  The kid walked to the car, opened the driver’s door, leaned down, and pulled a lever. The trunk popped open. He walked to the rear of the car and pulled the trunk open. Russell shone the light in. There was a spare tire. A jack. A two-gallon gasoline can. Plastic.

  “What’s that for?” Russell said.

  “In case I run out.”

  “Please take it out,” Russell ordered.

  The kid did as he was told. Russell took the can and shook it. “Empty,” he said.

  Russell put the can down, walked to the side of the car, and flashed the light inside. “Why do you have a lighter in there?”

  “I smoke sometimes,” the kid said.

  “I don’t see any cigarettes,” Tory said.

  “I’m out,” the kid said.

  “What were you hiding in the woods for?” Russell said.

  “I wasn’t hiding. I told you, I was taking a leak.”

  “ID,” Russell said, holding out his hand.

  The kid fished in the pocket of his shorts and took out a leather wallet. He slipped a license from a pocket and handed it to Russell. Russell read it aloud as Tory scribbled in the black notebook. “At 2235 hours . . .”

  The kid’s name was Curtis Quinn. He was sixteen, and lived on the River Road, four miles away. Russell took out his phone and took the kid’s picture.

  “We’ll be turning your name over to the office of the State Fire Marshal,” Russell said.

  “For taking a piss?” Curtis Quinn said.

  Russell was partway through an explanation of emergency measures in extraordinary and life-threatening circumstances when my phone rang. I turned away, put a hand over my ear, said “Hello.”

  Nothing, then a rustling. Lasha, I thought. Drunk again.

  “Hello,” I said again. “Is this—”

  “Mr. McMorrow.”

  A girl’s voice. Willa.

  “We met at the hospital.”

  I walked away from the group, past the idling truck and onto the dark road.

  “Yes, Willa,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Not very good,” she said. “My brother.”

  A pause. A sniff. The scritch of a hand over the receiver.

  “Woodrow?” I said. “What about him, Willa?”

  “Woodrow . . . he’s dead. And, well, I think you should put that in the paper. Say how this town, these awful people—”

  Willa sobbed, the words sputtering out one by one.

  “—they . . . killed . . . my . . . brother.”

  25

  She was gone. I felt sick to my stomach, couldn’t get a breath. I closed my eyes, said, “Son of a bitch.” Turned back to the guys, playing policemen. “Son of a fucking bitch.”

  The kid was getting in his car. Don was putting the rifle back on the rack. Russell was taking pictures of the back of the Taurus with his phone. Harold got into the truc
k, followed by the rest of them. Russell got into the front seat and said, “I think he goes on the A list.”

  Don was nodding, reaching for the key when I said, “I have something to tell you.”

  They turned to me, waited. The recorder was on.

  “Woodrow, the kid who was beaten. He died.”

  “No shit,” Don said.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “So now it’s two murders,” Russell said.

  “Just what we need,” Tory said.

  “You going to write about this?” Harold said. “For the paper?”

  “A teenage boy was beaten to death. What do you think?”

  Tory said. “Of course it’s a terrible tragedy. It’s just that—”

  “This shouldn’t affect this patrol,” Russell said, like a boy dying shouldn’t spoil the fun.

  “But you know he may have been killed because somebody in town thought he was the arsonist,” I said. “And he wasn’t.”

  “We’re not vigilantes,” Russell said.

  “When did he die?” Harold said.

  “Tonight,” I said. “His sister just called me. She said the town killed her brother.”

  “I thought he was just in a coma,” Don said.

  “I guess he didn’t come out of it,” I said.

  We were quiet for a moment, even chatty Tory. The Taurus pulled away, spraying gravel.

  “He came into the store once in a while,” Harold said. “Never said much. Always had on that big black coat. Real quiet kid.”

  “He was autistic, on the spectrum,” I said. “I heard the kids in school teased him, picked fights, tried to get him to lose his temper.”

  “Kids can be pretty damn rough,” Don said.

  “Could have been a drug deal gone bad,” Russell said. “Might not have had anything to do with the fires.”

  “Now we’ve got drugs, too?” Tory said.

  “What was he doing out there anyway?” Harold said. “In the middle of the night? You know he was always out walking the roads, in that black coat. Surprised he wasn’t killed long before this just by getting run over.”

  “Could have been intending to steal stuff,” Don said. “If it was drugs, this opiate stuff, they’ll steal anything that isn’t nailed down.”