Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

“Don’t you worry, darlin’,” I said. “Pokey will be just fine.”

  “You promise?” Sophie said.

  I thought of Clair out there in the dark, the Mauser locked and loaded. Beth out there in the dark, too. Someone in the dark in Sanctuary, with a gas can and a lighter. I hesitated and finally rolled the dice.

  “Yes. I promise.”

  Roxanne was cleaning up in the kitchen, wiping the counters and wiping them again. She arranged the chairs at the table, wiped the table down, too. Then the outside of the refrigerator, the stove, the inside of the microwave. I moved to her, put a hand on her back, and she jumped.

  “Easy,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” she said.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “If saying it made it true,” Roxanne said.

  “It’s all right. Clair’s outside. He’s gonna call my cell when he’s ready to head—”

  “Jack,” Roxanne said, scrubbing the gleaming counter some more. “Our friend is guarding our house with a rifle. A distraught crazy woman is driving around with a gun, saying she’s going to make me pay. Some nut is burning houses in a town barely twenty miles from here. Two people there are dead. A kid I was responsible for is dead. The dad escaped from prison and nobody can find him. Sophie told me she wants Pokey to stay in our shed so nobody can burn him up. And tonight she asked me if we’ll all live in the same house in Heaven.”

  “Honey,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  “And we’re practically broke and I should go back to work, but I don’t want to leave our daughter alone. Not for a minute.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  Roxanne turned, tears welling.

  “So it’s not all right, Jack,” she said. “It’s a lot of things, but all right isn’t one of them.”

  I gave her a hug but she was stiff, her shoulders tense. I gave her a kiss on the cheekbone and she frowned and tossed the cloth into the sink.

  “I’m going to bed,” Roxanne said. “I just want this fucking day to be over.”

  She used the word once a year.

  Roxanne moved past me and I heard her steps on the stairs, weighted and weary. I walked to the bottom of the staircase and listened. The water ran in the bathroom and then I heard her walk down the hall to Sophie’s room. After a minute I heard her come out. I heard the click of the lamp next to the bed. And I heard Roxanne begin to cry.

  In the study, the only light from the laptop screen, the loaded Glock on the desk by my notebooks, I started to write.

  Sanctuary, Maine wasn’t like a town in a magazine. It was one.

  Selected by American Living as one of twenty “hidden treasures,” the quiet community along the Sanctuary River was said to have it all: lovely historic homes, a close-knit collection of longtime residents and contented newcomers “from away,” a picturesque town common with a homespun general store that sells the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

  And then Sanctuary added another element to its hidden qualities. An arsonist who strikes in the dead of night, has set fire to barns, homes, a Main Street business—and has shaken the community to its core. The fires have residents eyeing each other as possible suspects, armed men in pickup trucks patrolling the back roads at night. A 16-year-old boy said by some to be a suspect died after he was beaten by an unknown assailant or assailants, fueling the tension running through the town.

  “So why us?” said Sanctuary real estate broker Rita Stevens, whose business was one of the properties targeted. “The short answer? I just don’t know.”

  A snap at the window screen. I put a hand on the Glock and turned. Listened. Heard the low hum of bugs. Then a soft rattle, a June bug fluttering on the deck. Another crash-landing on the screen and falling. I waited a moment, reminded myself that Clair was out there somewhere, turned back to the keyboard.

  Tory. I looked back at my notes. We don’t have enemies. We aren’t the target of lawsuits. We haven’t kept anyone’s deposit. We haven’t even had an argument, with anybody or with each other.

  But how unusual was this? How many arson fires were there in Maine each year? How many concentrated in a single town?

  I searched for Maine crime statistics, found the Uniform Crime Reports. Looked for arson. Found that the vast majority of arsonists arrested were male, that they were roughly split fifty-fifty, adults and juveniles.

  So burning stuff was a guy thing. But why?

  I leaned into the keyboard, typed. Up came a story in the Los Angeles Times. The hook: Someone deliberately set brush fires, the kind that burn thousands of acres and hundreds of homes. The lead: He is an angry young man—a loner with a troubled past and a bad self-image.

  Woodrow. Louis. Maybe one of the guys in the fire department. Half the other teenage boys in town.

  The story went on to cite a Finnish study that found links between arsonists and low serotonin, a chemical in the brain. Great, I thought. I just have to go around Sanctuary taking blood samples. Case closed.

  But was this a case of a chemical imbalance? Blind anger?

  No. There didn’t seem to be anything blind about it.

  Back to Maine.

  The state had roughly 250 arson fires a year, trending up and down like the stock market. They had them listed by county. Sanctuary was in Sagadahoc. Most of the set fires were in more-populated counties: Androscoggin, Cumberland, Penobscot.

  The beetles buzzed and banged at the screen. I turned. Listened. Turned back.

  I wanted to know if there had been any arson in Sanctuary before—other than Harold’s—but there was no breakdown by town or city that I could find. I reached for a pen, made a note to ask Davida Reynolds.

  Then I tried a general search for ARSON, SANCTUARY MAINE. I got the Harold story, four inches based on a guilty plea. My first story for the Times, and a rewrite by AP. That was it. And then I tried the same search for Portland, got a bunch going back years, two fatal. I tried Lewiston, got a few. I tried Bangor. Scrolled down the list. A guy convicted of torching his own house so his ex wouldn’t get it. A kid who burned a stolen truck.

  A house that exploded, two people killed, August 12, 1992. Reported in the Bangor Daily in 2009 in a story about unsolved murders.

  The victims were a twenty-six-year-old guy and a nineteen-year-old girl. They were ID’d through dental records. In other words, burned to a crisp. The house, on a dead-end street, went up in a fireball. Investigators at first suspected a malfunctioning propane stove. Then the fire marshal’s office determined that all of the burners were on. Stuff was strewn around the place (just metal skeletons left, like there’d been a fight). The victims—Ross Lucas and Julie Barber—had been alive when the fire started. They were found with soot in their lungs, according to the investigator, Linwood Penney.

  The reality of all these fires—a horrible way to go.

  I leaned back. Bangor, in 1992. Wasn’t Tory/Tommy there then? I wondered if he knew Russ Lucas. That would be another reason to be afraid of fire. I made a note to ask.

  And then I quit the web browser, tried to write.

  A description of the town, as depicted in the “Hidden Treasures” magazine story. Chief Frederick and Paulie and the boys, the town’s normal state of fire preparedness. Then the first arson, the second, the third, the townspeople assembled at Don’s barn—the fourth fire—a feeling that it was some strange fire-lit social event. A section on the investigation, Reynolds and Derosby. The fire at the Talbot house. The town turning on itself, Woodrow and Louis. Lasha guarding her studio with a shotgun.

  Word count: 2,400. Damn, this was going to be long. It was 12:35 a.m.

  I got up from the desk and went to the door. Maybe I’d sleep for a couple of hours, then spell Clair for a while. Prime crime time was between two and four a.m. I’d be rested and ready.

  I slid the glass door closed and locked it. Closed the laptop. Was on my way to the bathroom when I heard it.

  The boom of a deer rifle. I froze. Another shot.
>
  The bedroom door rattled open.

  “Jack,” Roxanne called.

  “Stay here,” I said. “And call 911.”

  I ran for the door.

  29

  There were headlights in the road in front of Clair’s house, the beams askew, aimed at the woods. I had the pistol out, held low, stayed close to the roadside as I ran.

  As I approached I saw something in front of the truck. I slowed, raised the gun higher. It was a guy on the ground, face in the gravel, hands clasped behind his neck.

  I moved around him, said, “Hey,” and he turned his head toward me.

  Ray-Ray, pebbles stuck to his cheek.

  From the other side of the truck I heard, “Okay, okay,” a young guy’s voice.

  And then, “I say when it’s okay. Down there with your buddy in the dirt.”

  Clair.

  He had Paulie at gunpoint, was shoving him up from the ditch. Paulie, hands raised, stumbled. Clair, the rifle under the crook of his arm, caught him by his waistband and yanked him back up. When Paulie had passed into the headlight beam, Clair hooked his foot around Paulie’s ankle and shoved. He fell forward onto the road.

  “Hands behind your goddamn neck,” Clair barked.

  “Yessir,” Paulie said, and complied.

  We stood over them like we were guarding prisoners of war.

  “Not Beth,” I said.

  “No,” Clair said.

  “Both shots yours?”

  “One warning. One front left tire.”

  “Wouldn’t stop?”

  “Kept right on coming.”

  “Dumb,” I said.

  “Callow youth,” Clair said, “as they say.”

  It was Trooper Foley who arrived on the scene first, the blue lights of his approaching cruiser visible for miles in the blackness of Knox Ridge. He slid the car to a halt, rolled out with his gun drawn. He saw me, then Clair, then the guys on the ground.

  Clair held out the rifle and Foley took it, then my Glock.

  “Until we can sort this out,” Foley said.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  Two more cruisers arrived, another trooper and a Waldo County deputy. The lights were blinding, like spaceships had landed. We could see Ray-Ray in the back of Foley’s car, his face grim in the strobes. Foley was going through the truck, handing items to the other trooper, a rangy short-haired woman: empty beer cans and an opened thirty-rack. Bud Ice. A sawed-off baseball bat, Louisville Slugger. A gallon of coffee brandy, two-thirds gone. A three-foot length of pipe, with some sort of leather grip.

  “What did I say about superior range?” Clair said.

  “What’d you tell Foley?”

  “That they saw me in the road, I held up my hands to stop them, and instead they accelerated like they were going to run me down.”

  “Warning shot was above and beyond.”

  “I’ve gone soft,” Clair said.

  The deputy transported Ray-Ray and Paulie to the Waldo County jail in Belfast, the two of them looking me in the eye as the cruiser passed. A wrecker arrived from Knox to haul the truck. Foley watched as the driver winched the truck up the ramp.

  When the wrecker pulled away, Foley walked over to us. He said the DA would review the statements, determine who’d be charged with what.

  “They said they came to even things out,” he said.

  “The best-laid plans,” I said.

  “The drunk-driving and alcohol charges will keep them overnight,” he said.

  “One down,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Foley said. “How many does that leave?”

  “I’m losing track,” I said.

  We stood, the three of us illuminated in the wigwag of the headlights, the blue glow.

  “Ms. Leserve,” Foley said.

  He looked at Clair.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “He knows everything I know.”

  “We’ve been told she’s started using bath salts, the street drug,” the trooper said.

  “Which would explain the rekindled paranoia,” I said.

  “People go literally insane,” he said.

  “She was close already,” I said.

  “So where is she now?” Clair said.

  “We don’t know,” Foley said. “We think we know what she’s driving. A stolen dark blue Nissan Pathfinder.”

  A long pause.

  “So you’ll be nearby?” Clair said.

  “Yes.”

  “Because there’s a little girl who’s caught in the middle of this,” Clair said.

  “I understand, Mr. Varney,” the trooper said.

  “And if there’s a real threat to her . . .” Clair said.

  “Just call 911. We’ll be here in a matter of a few minutes.”

  “Are you going to return our firearms?” Clair said.

  “What if I don’t?” Foley said.

  “I’ll have to go back to the house and get some more,” Clair said.

  The trooper looked at him. For a long moment we stood in the road in silence. And then Foley said, “Heck of a shot, taking that tire right out, in the dark, truck moving fast.”

  Clair shrugged. Foley went to the trunk of his cruiser and returned with the Mauser and Glock. I thanked him and he walked back to the cruiser. He wheeled the car around and started to ease past us, then stopped, his arm out the window. He reached over and turned the radio down, the laptop open.

  “Mr. McMorrow, you’re writing about these arson cases down in Sanctuary, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A fatal tonight.”

  “Car accident?”

  “Pickup,” Foley said. “Off the road and into a pond. Lady drowned before she could get out.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Who was it?”

  He turned to his laptop, scrolled up.

  “Driver was Eve C. Johnson, DOB June 13, 1984.”

  “My God. I know her, her kids.”

  “From what I hear she was alone in the vehicle. Looks like she swerved to avoid an oncoming vehicle, lost control.”

  “Other car stop?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “It wouldn’t,” I said. “Not in that town.”

  Foley nodded. The cruiser pulled away. Clair looked at me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, but I just saw her. In the store. I interviewed her for the story. Husband’s a trucker, in the fire department. Two little kids. Really, really nice person.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “I know. It’s awful. I can’t believe—”

  My words trailed off. We stood in the road and I looked at the sky, the lights on in the houses, Clair’s and mine. Above us the stars were glittering, cold and distant and unfeeling. Eve, her sweet kids, just like mine. Erased by some random act, a family without a mother, a dad suddenly weighted with grief and responsibility and crushing loneliness. All because somebody was on the phone. Or texting. Or reaching for the radio.

  “What is it with that place?” I said. “It’s like it’s cursed.”

  Like that article—only the Hidden Treasure was really the kiss of death.

  Roxanne was in bed with Sophie, the door ajar. I pushed it open wider, stepped in. At the side of the bed, I crouched down and whispered.

  “Kids from Sanctuary Fire Department,” I said. “No big deal.”

  “Nothing on Beth?”

  “No. They’re looking for her.”

  I told her about her new drug of choice.

  “That would explain the crazy texts,” Roxanne said.

  “Explain, but not excuse,” I said.

  No reply.

  “Another thing,” I said, and I told her about the accident and Eve Johnson, her nice kids, a family shattered.

  “Oh, my God,” Roxanne whispered. “It’s so sad.” And she teared up, turned and looked at Sophie. We could hear Sophie’s breathing, her shallow, rapid breaths, fragile as life.

  “She woke up,” Roxanne said.

  “I
figured.”

  “She’s worried about Pokey.”

  “If she wakes up again, tell her I went to visit him,” I said, and I kissed her cheek and stepped softly out of the room. In the hallway, I slipped my phone out, called Clair on my way down the stairs. He was walking the road, from his house to ours. I met him out front, where he slipped out of the darkness, rifle in hand.

  “Aren’t you going to sleep?” Clair said.

  “I was going to ask you that.”

  “No need,” he said. “Comes with advancing age.”

  “I can spell you.”

  We walked. I stepped on a branch and it cracked like a gunshot.

  “I think you might be better suited to daylight patrol,” Clair said.

  “You’re stuck with me,” I said.

  “Then maybe all the racket will scare her away.”

  We crossed the east side of our property at the tree line, followed it to the northeast corner, then turned west. Clair didn’t walk so much as glide. Every five or six steps we stopped and he would listen.

  At the northwest corner near the path through the woods to his barn, he put his hand out and stopped. We froze. There was a skittering noise, then a faint bump, like a cat had jumped onto a table. Clair slipped a flashlight from his vest, flicked it on. A flying squirrel skittered up the trunk of an ash tree.

  “Look at that,” Clair said. “That’s why we live here.”

  “Beth won’t come through the woods,” I said.

  “Maybe she knows that’s what you think. Maybe the drugs make her see in the dark. Maybe she’ll bring a friend who knows the woods.”

  “Prepare for the worst?” I said.

  We walked. My eyes were adjusted to the dark and I could see the blue-black shadows, the shades of gray where there had been only a thick blackness.

  I told Clair about Julie Barber, the girl who had died in the Bangor fire. I told him about the gas stove, the explosion.

  “If this Tommy fella knew her, could make him extra jumpy, somebody setting houses on fire,” he said.

  “Troubling,” I said. “I’m not sure why.”

  “I think it’s because you’re realizing you don’t know any of these people.

  The artist lady who drinks. The Marine in the woods. The fake CIA guy and these real estate people.”