Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “Willa.”

  “Right. She says, ‘Like I told the reporter guy from the New York Times.’ This morning I go out to talk to this army vet, guy lives in the woods with the humongous dog.”

  “Louis. And he’s a Marine.”

  “Yeah. So Louis goes, ‘Like I told the reporter and his friend, the Marine.’ Who’s that, by the way?”

  “His name is Clair Varney. He lives in Prosperity.”

  “Louis was very impressed by him,” Scalabrini said.

  “The feeling was mutual,” I said.

  “Yeah, well. Let me see. The artist with the crazy statues. She tells me she calls you whenever she hears something relevant. Her word. You knew about this latest fire before I did. Anyway, I’m talking to the guy who owns the store. Harold. I bring up his felony record. He says, ‘I explained all that to Jack McMorrow.’ I’m talking to the guys from the fire department. The young kids you told me about. One of ’em is listing to the left. I say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ He says, ‘Nothing.’ We go back and forth and finally it comes out. Says you hit him with a lug wrench, cracked his collarbone.”

  I shrugged. “It was three on one.”

  “I’ll take your word for that, and besides, he said he didn’t want to file a complaint. So the fire chief here, just so you know—he doesn’t like you.”

  “Sure he does. Just has an odd way of showing it.”

  “But again, I say, ‘How well do you know these kids, Chief?’ He says, ‘Like I told that A-hole reporter.’ ”

  Scalabrini turned and looked at me for the first time since the conversation began.

  “So I figure, instead of chasing around after you, I’ll just go to the source.”

  I smiled. He didn’t, just kept his gaze fixed on me.

  “So, Mr. McMorrow. What do you know that I don’t?”

  “What’s wrong with reading it in the paper?” I said.

  “When’s that gonna be?”

  “Story’s for the Sunday Times Magazine. I don’t know which Sunday.”

  “And I’m trying to catch a stone-cold killer, torched a house with a man in it. Beat a kid to death. I don’t know why he did it, so I don’t know if he’s about to do it again. And as you’re aware, this is in a town targeted by a serial arsonist, which by definition is a murder waiting to happen.”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t usually—”

  “How long you been a journalist,” Scalabrini said.

  “Almost twenty years.”

  “Why do you do it? In ten words or less.”

  “To get to the truth.”

  “Me, too. And once I get to the truth, I throw somebody’s ass in jail. Punish the guilty, protect the innocent. You got a family?”

  I could see where he was going, but I answered anyway.

  “Yeah. A five-year-old daughter and a wife.”

  “How would you like it if they got hurt because a journalist refused to share information with a homicide investigator, information that will be taken in confidence, by the way.”

  “I guess I wouldn’t like that much.”

  “And if I’m reading you right, you’d probably go after the person who hurt your kid,” he said.

  “Or Clair would,” I said.

  “Well, let me save you or some other dad all that trouble. Whatcha got?”

  He turned away and took a swallow of coffee. Sniffed again. Sipped again. Turned back, his black eyes a little weepy.

  “Well?”

  “Tory Stevens’s real first name is Tommy. Thomas. He graduated from Bangor High School.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Wasn’t hard once I started looking. Found his high school picture online. Under Tommy.”

  “Okay. So he wanted a fancy name, better to sell houses to rich people.”

  “He looked sort of shocked when I brought it up. He’s got some story he made up about getting the nickname when he was three.”

  “Not the first person who’s embellished their past.”

  “I didn’t say everything I had was blockbuster news.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “This guy, Don Barbier.

  “The contractor guy?”

  “Right. I can’t find many Barbiers online. Just him, and a lawyer. And some dancer or something who clearly made up the name.”

  “People change their names all the time.”

  “Bought the house with cash.”

  “Maybe he’s hiding from an ex-wife.”

  “I don’t mean a check. Cash-cash. As in a stack of hundreds.”

  “Perfectly legal.”

  “Why Don Barbier? Why not David Jones? Or Darrell Smith?”

  “I don’t know,” Scalabrini said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “I did,” I said. “Sort of. About the name, I mean—how unusual it was.”

  “And he said?”

  “Somebody monkeyed with it when his grandparents came through Ellis Island.”

  “Makes sense. That happened all the time,” Scalabrini said. “I have a great-uncle, Guido Scala. Immigration guy filling out Guido’s papers didn’t have time for all those Eyetalian letters.”

  “Except most French-Canadians just came over the border. They didn’t come in through Ellis Island. French people from France came to Ellis Island, not French-Canadians.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I did a paper on Ellis Island in college,” I said.

  “I did a paper on Beowulf,” Scalabrini said. “Waiting for that to come in handy.”

  We sat. The motor idled behind us. The woods rustled. As always.

  “Maybe the story got mixed up as it got passed down,” Scalabrini said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Another long sit, the detective thinking. Finally I said, “Sorry I don’t have more for you.”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure this thing out, maybe get somewhere before somebody else gets killed.”

  “I understand.”

  “And you seem to know these people, so I figured I’d kinda pick your brain.”

  “But I don’t really,” I said. “I feel like I don’t really know anybody. I mean, I know them on the surface, but that’s all.”

  He didn’t reply, so I said, “It’s kind of the way I know you. Sort of, but not really.”

  That got him to turn his head.

  “What do you want to know?” he said.

  “What do you do for fun when you’re not doing this?”

  He thought for a few seconds, scrunching up his face like I’d asked him to do trigonometry.

  “Jeez. Well, I read books about World War Two. Just finished one on the Battle of Midway. You know we could’ve lost that one? Two fleets in the Pacific, Japanese trying to sneak through. Our guy happened to guess right.”

  “What else?”

  “I fish. Bass. And I’m trying to learn how to play the guitar. Probably a midlife thing. Always wanted to be a rock star.”

  “Married?”

  “Divorced. Cop thing.”

  “Kids?”

  “No.”

  “So is this case frustrating for you?”

  “Yeah. Because I feel the perpetrator is right in front of me. Has to be. I mean, who else is here? The one this morning. Weird, right? Breaks the pattern of rural and isolated locations.”

  “It did use the fuse thing, like the barn.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And it’s a good fire if you want to make sure you’re not a suspect,” I said. “No real damage. Lots of attention.”

  “Very good, Mr. McMorrow. You ever need a job . . .”

  A pause. He rubbed his eyes and it made a squishing sound.

  “So you don’t think it’s somebody from somewhere else?” I said.

  “Nah. I think it’s somebody local, maybe getting their jollies from torching stuff, or just benefiting from turning this town upside down. I a
lways go back to the cardinal rule of thumb: Who stands to benefit?”

  I felt a wave of uneasiness pass through me.

  “Maybe,” I said, “somebody who wanted the treasure to stay hidden.”

  Another pause, and then a car came into view, a cruiser, an unmarked brown Crown Vic. It slowed as it approached. As it passed I saw the dog mesh on the back window, the sign that said K-9 KEEP BACK.

  The cop at the wheel glanced at us and did a U-turn, pulled up behind my truck. As we sat, a Suburban came up the road, from the same direction. It approached and there was Derosby at the wheel. He did the U-turn and parked behind the cruiser.

  “A regular party,” I said.

  I watched in the mirror as the jumpsuited trooper got out and went to the back door of the cruiser and let the dog out. He woofed a couple of times, sniffed the ground, then bounded toward my truck.

  I looked at Scalabrini.

  “You mind?” he said. “Process of elimination.”

  “No. Go for it.”

  The dog was sniffing the side of the truck, then circling behind and doing the passenger side. As Derosby watched, the handler unlatched the tailgate and lowered it. He said something to the dog and the dog jumped up. He sniffed around the truck bed. I watched in the mirror as he sat. The handler gave him a treat. The dog jumped down.

  “Got the truck,” Scalabrini said. He glanced at my feet. “You wearing those shoes last night, riding with the militia there?”

  I looked down, too. I was wearing hiking boots from L.L. Bean.

  “Yup.”

  “Wearing those when you stepped in the gas at the store, or whatever it was?”

  I thought. That had been my New Balance running shoes.

  “No.”

  “Could the dog have a sniff?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But do you really think I may have burned Tory and Rita’s doorway?”

  “I don’t think anything. I just eliminate. Where’d you go after you got done with those guys?”

  He didn’t bother to make it sound like small talk.

  “Had a chat with Investigator Reynolds up at the store. I thought this was her case.”

  “We’re teaming up,” Scalabrini said. “I knew the dog was in town, figured they’d want to cross you off the list. As long as you were here. Would you mind getting out?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  I opened the door and the dog was there, panting and straining on his leash. I got out and stood. The handler, the same rangy kid with the chiseled face, let him in. The dog sniffed my shoes and jeans, then moved past me. The guy pulled him back and he gave me another sniff.

  No wag. No sit.

  I’d passed.

  I looked at Scalabrini. He looked at the dog guy. They all walked back to the car and the dog jumped back in his seat. Derosby was out of the Suburban and they talked, their backs to me. Then Scalabrini and Derosby walked back to my truck and looked in the bed. The handler came and joined them and pointed down into the truck.

  Derosby beckoned me over with his forefinger. He looked down into the bed of the truck. There were empty oil cans, a plastic jug of bar oil, a couple of rusty wrenches. The bottom of the bed was coated with a paste of wood chips and oil and dirt.

  “Spill gas in here recently, sir?”

  Sir. I looked down, leaned closer, and sniffed. I smelled it.

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “But I carry chain saws back here. I suppose one of them could have leaked.”

  “You carry saws yesterday?” Derosby said.

  “No,” I said. “Last time I worked in the woods was last week.”

  He leaned and sniffed, too. The gasoline odor was unmistakable.

  “That’s not last week,” Derosby said.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t need a dog to smell that.”

  “Where was your truck all night?”

  “Parked at the Quik-Mart on Route 17. They picked me up and dropped me off.”

  “You didn’t notice the smell?”

  “No. But I haven’t been back here. I usually ride in the front.”

  They looked at each other.

  “You got a minute more?” he said.

  He gave the trooper a look. The trooper went back to the car and got the dog out again. The dog bounded around, straining on his leash. Derosby asked me to step away from the truck and put my hands out.

  I did. The dog dug his way toward me, his toenails scratching at the pavement. He sniffed my hands, my feet again, swerved toward the truck. The handler tried again, but the dog wanted the truck, the treat.

  “Wash your hands this morning?” Derosby said.

  “Yeah. Brushed my teeth, too,” I said.

  And then they looked up and past me. A car was approaching and I turned, saw a silver SUV, a Mercedes. It was Tory, Rita beside him. They stared, first at the cops, then at me, our eyes locking as the car slowly passed.

  27

  It had turned colder, a front sweeping in from the northwest, dry Canadian air, as the weather forecasters liked to say.

  Roxanne had heated up some homemade tomato soup, the early tomatoes from the Varneys’ garden. Sophie was having lunch and had crushed most of a stack of saltines into the bowl and jabbed her spoon into the mound. Crackers and soup had spilled onto the table. I had just walked into the kitchen when I saw the mess, heard Sophie say “Oops.”

  And then she jabbed the soggy glop again, spilled more. Looked up at me, unrepentant.

  “Sophie,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a mess,” she said. “Why? Just eat your lunch. Where’s—”

  I looked for Roxanne, saw her standing on the deck. She was hunched over her phone, her thumbs twitching as she wrote a text. I grabbed a sponge, wet it at the sink, and went and wiped up crackers and pasta and carrots from the table.

  Roxanne turned, grim-faced, turned back.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “She’s flipping out,” Roxanne said.

  “Beth?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head, kept typing her message.

  “Well, what is it?” I snapped.

  I went to her side, looked down at the phone. I could see bits of the message: YOU KNOW THAT’S NOT GOING TO SOLVE . . . WE’VE TALKED ABOUT . . . DON’T MAKE THINGS WORSE FOR . . .

  Roxanne pressed the SEND button and looked up.

  “She’s threatening to kill herself,” she said.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Yes. But they can’t find her, either.”

  “A rough idea?”

  “Somewhere between here and Augusta.”

  “Here,” I said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. How long has this been going on?”

  “I got the first message at 10:33 this morning.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me?”

  “You were busy, Jack,” Roxanne said. “I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

  The words were carefully and precisely pronounced, the tone icy.

  “Who did you call? Does Clair know?”

  “Yes,” Roxanne said. “He’s been here.”

  “Where is he now?”

  She turned toward the woods. “Out there, somewhere. He said he’d take a look around.”

  “What about the office? Have you told them?”

  “Robert and Sandy know. So do the reporters, Caitlyn what’s-her-name from the TV station, Sam whatever from Bangor Daily.”

  “You called them?” I said.

  “No, Jack,” Roxanne said. “She’s been texting them, too. She’s texting all of us. Robert said the TV station is putting the texts up on its website. They put them on Facebook. They’re tweeting them. It’s unbelievable.”

  Roxanne started to cry, a dribble of tears that cascaded into sobs. I held her, took her phone from her hand. Over her shoulder, I read the messages.

 
NOBODY CARES ABT ME, JUST LIKE THEY DIDNT CARE ABT MY BABY. ITS JUST A F**N JOB FOR THEM. ROXANNE AND SANDY. KILL MY BABY + F**N WALK. OMFG WHAT A WORLD. I WANNA DIE NOW.

  “God,” I said. “This is going public?”

  I WISH I NVR GOT BORN. I WISH I NVR HAD RATCHET, SQUEEZIN HIM OUTTA ME FOR 19 F**N HOURS, HURT LIKE A BASTARD SO HE COULD LIVE ON THIS GD EARTH FOR 2 YRS BFOR THEY TOOK HIM AND KILLD HIM. IF I WAZ A RICH BI*** I WOULDA BEEN FINE, RATCHET WOULDA LIVED. BUT CUZ I WAZ POOR THEY CLD DO WHAT THEY WANT.

  EVEN WHEN I GOT CLEAN IT DINT MAKE NO DIFFERNC. SANDY WAS MAKIN HER MONEY, SHE WSNT GONNA GIVE HIM BACK. AND THEY R ALL IN IT TOGETHER, SANDY SH**HEAD AND ROXANNE HARD-ASS AND THE REST OF THE DHHS MAFIA. STEALN KIDS AND MAKING MONEY. PIMP THM KIDS OUT.

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  NOBODY CARES, NOT EVN THE NEWS MEDIA. WHERES THE STORY ABOUT ME N RATCHET, MY BABY KILLED BY DHHS??? WHERES THE STORY ABOUT MY LIFE BEING STOLE AWAY BY MASTERSON AND THE REST OF EM? I GET THE DEATH PENULTY, BUT WORSE CUZ I GET TO SEE MY BABY DIE FIRST. WELL NOW YOU CAN WATCH ME DIE. SEE WHAT YOU ALL DID.

  “She’s drunk,” I said.

  “Or high on something,” Roxanne said.

  “Or she’s just lost it,” I said.

  Roxanne eased away from me, her face drawn and streaked with dried tears. She looked toward Sophie, who was sitting at the table, eating saltines.

  “Where’s her soup?”

  “I took it from her. She was just playing with it, making a big mess.”

  “Well, she can’t just—”

  “Which cops did you call?” I said.

  “Foley. The state trooper. He called and said they were looking for her.”

  “Can’t trace the phone?”

  “She’s moving,” Roxanne said. “Driving around. They’re looking for her car.”

  “What if she’s in another car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if she’s got a gun? How’s she going to kill herself?”

  “I don’t know, Jack,” Roxanne said. “All I know is what I’ve told you. And Robert, he called the TV station, asked them to take the messages down, but they say they have that right because they were sent to them directly.”

  “They’re right. They’re like any other whacked-out letters to the editor.”

  The phone buzzed. Roxanne took it from me. I moved close beside her to read.