Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “Don’t forget Don, our guy out of a pickup truck commercial who landed here from Georgia.”

  “When it comes right down to it,” Clair said, “we give people occasional glimpses through whatever windows we care or need to open. Other than that, we’re strangers shaping other strangers to fit our needs.”

  He glanced at me. “Present company excepted.”

  “Likewise,” I said. “You and me, we’re a couple of open books.”

  We walked as far as the paddock and the barn, turned toward the road, and made our way out to Clair’s house. Then we reversed course, did half the loop, and turned back. Did a quarter of the loop and turned again.

  “Never want to let the enemy see a pattern,” Clair said. “If you set one, break it. You want to be unpredictable.”

  The next hour passed in silence. The next. And then it was 4:15 and the sky was brightening to the east. On the road in front of our house, Clair said he was ready to turn in, sleep two or three hours until breakfast.

  “Unless Mary’s had the locks changed,” he said, smiling.

  He walked up the road, his usual pace. I turned to our house, the nightlight glowing in the bathroom. I walked east again, went through the back half of the loop. I was thinking that I should get my deer rifle next time—that the Glock seemed small against the wall of trees and tangle.

  I crossed the back lawn and went up onto the deck, unlocked the padlock on the mudroom door, and let myself in. The house was quiet, the kitchen clock ticking, the refrigerator humming.

  I went to the closet, got the rifle out, the box of thirty-aught cartridges. I unlocked the trigger lock, loaded the rifle, then went back outside to the deck. I sat in an Adirondack chair, the rifle across my lap, and listened to the building crescendo of songbirds. Their world had none of this mayhem, I thought, then caught myself. They could be killed or eaten at any moment, not necessarily in that order.

  I mulled it over. What sort of world was Sophie living in, sheltered as much as humanly possible? In two or three years, she’d be aware of all of it. The world of my stories and Roxanne’s work. I wrote about people who were flawed, weak, struggling. Roxanne tried to minimize the damage in those lives. In the process, did we bring those people into Sophie’s life? Did we expose her to the underbelly of country life? And maybe the reality of Clair’s years as a commando would be revealed—that the grandfatherly man who had bought her a pony was trained to kill, and was very good at it.

  But for now, it was a fairy tale she lived in Prosperity, Maine. Mom and Dad. Clair and Mary. Pokey, the wonder pony. Her outfit for the first day of school. A false idyll.

  I watched the sky turn pink to the east, like it was a sponge sucking up a rose-colored sea. Heard crows hectoring a hawk or an owl.

  Smelled smoke.

  30

  I walked to the door, poked my head inside, and sniffed. Nothing.

  I turned back outside, head raised to the wind. I leapt off the stairs, rifle still in my hand. Crossed the grass. The smell was stronger to the west, toward Clair’s. I looked to the woods, the brush, the path.

  Started to run.

  Down the path, sprinting until the barn came into sight, nothing showing. I slowed, trotted through the dooryard, the smell stronger now. A brush fire? A woodstove fire? I rounded the barn, ran around the paddock, heard Pokey kicking in his stall. Turned the corner, saw flames. Screamed to Clair, “Fire! The barn!” Pointed the Glock to the sky and pulled the trigger.

  The flames were at the base of the building, the door that led to the open area below Pokey. Clair burst out of the house as I ran for the workshop and shouted, “Back doors—flames showing!”

  I slammed the door open, saw the workshop dim with smoke. I ran across the shop, grabbed an extinguisher off the bench, another from the wall. Slamming the shop doors open, I ran deeper into the barn, the smoke dense and acrid.

  At Pokey’s stall, I wrestled the door open, found him circling and snorting. I dropped the extinguishers, grabbed his mane and yanked him, but he fought and bit and lashed out with his front hooves, scraping my shin. I got beside him and held him and ran him toward the door and he twisted to get free, whinnied, and dug in. I ran him again, like a football tackle and this time he went partway through the door, started to run toward the light. I was behind him as he hit the half-door to the paddock, kicked at it. I backed into him, felt hooves slash at my legs, a bite at my back. Got the latch free, threw the door open. Pokey knocked me aside and ran into the paddock, circling and shaking his head.

  Clair was running for the back of the barn, pulling a hose, so I turned, and ran back into the stall and out, grabbing the extinguishers. At the last stall, I moved across the floor, yanked the trap door open, and saw flames. I aimed one extinguisher in, fired it off. The flames turned to smoke and I heard hissing as Clair trained the water on the fire from outside. I emptied the second extinguisher, fell back from the smoke.

  Coughing, I ran in a crouch to the paddock door, plunged out into the clean air, climbed the fence, and half fell off the other side. I stumbled to the back corner of the building, turned, and saw the hose leading into the open double doors. I slid around the corner in the muck.

  Clair had turned the hose off and was standing in the dim light, water dripping from the ceiling onto his head and shoulders. He pointed to hay bales that had been dragged to the corner of the dirt-floored room.

  And lit on fire.

  “Meant to be a warning,” Clair said. “He could’ve torched the wall. Hay was burning, but it was going to take a while.”

  “Tell Pokey that,” I said.

  “Somebody’s liking this. Showing you they can walk right into your backyard. Could have killed your daughter’s pony.”

  “Got past both of us.”

  “When the guard changes, the most vulnerable point.”

  “He’s not stupid,” I said.

  “No,” Clair said. “But not as smart as he thinks he is.”

  I looked at him, his silver hair plastered to his head, his face smudged.

  “Torched a man’s property,” he said. “Coulda killed that pony.”

  He trained the hose on the bales, squeezed the nozzle. Water came out in a steady stream, beating on the hay.

  “Gonna run this guy to ground,” Clair said, not to me but to himself.

  “Or she,” I said.

  It was getting to be a regular thing, standing in a huddle of cops, staring at some burned stuff. The usual cast: Reynolds, Derosby, Foley, the trooper bending low to ease under the beams. Reynolds was squatting, eyeing the hay bales. She shone a flashlight on the bales, the manure and mud.

  “Always this soft?” she said.

  Clair nodded.

  “Here we go. Footprints, back toward the field.” Reynolds bent close to the sodden and charred hay. She sniffed. “Charcoal lighter,” Reynolds said. “He was rubbing your nose in it. Smoky fire like that.”

  She looked at Clair.

  “Where was the hay?”

  “Out back. I put a few bales out for the deer in the fall. Had some stacked by the door.”

  Reynolds rose and turned and we all went with her, moving out from under the barn and toward the woods, fifty feet back. She stepped into the burdocks, scuffed around with her boot, then bent and parted the bushes. There was a red-and-white plastic bottle standing upright, a Bic gas charcoal lighter sticking out of the spout.

  “Didn’t want to carry those too far,” she said. “We’ll process them, but I’ll bet they’re clean.”

  She stood.

  “So what the hell, Mr. McMorrow. Why drive all the way up here to light a fire that’s barely a fire? I mean, he can do houses and whole barns, have fire trucks and sirens and crowds watching. Why burn a soggy hay bale?”

  “To show that next time it might not be just hay,” Clair said.

  “Make me sweat a little,” I said.

  “But why?” Reynolds said. “What’s the fun in that? People who do this, they
like to see the towering inferno, you know? They want fire, baby. Flames shooting into the sky.”

  “Doesn’t fit,” Derosby said.

  “Not a classic serial arsonist?” I said.

  “This is somebody with something else going on,” Clair said.

  “Right,” Reynolds said with unabashed relish. “This sort of psychological game, toying with people’s heads. That goes beyond a typical thrill arsonist. They get off on the fire, the power. And sure, there’s the excitement of getting away with it.”

  “But this person doesn’t seem to always need the fire,” I said.

  “Right,” Reynolds said. “It’s like the fire is part of it, but there’s something bigger in the background.”

  “Never worked on a case where it seemed like the idea was more to jerk people around,” Derosby said.

  “Killing a kid,” I said. “That’s serious jerking.”

  Clair took off his Stihl hat, put it back on and adjusted it. We looked at him and waited.

  “Vietcong,” he said. “They’d mix it up. Burn a village. Disappear the leaders. Poison the well. People wake up, the head of the village leader is on a stake outside his house. You never knew what was coming. That’s what kept people terrorized.”

  “But who does he want to frighten?” I said.

  “Maybe he has an ax to grind with the whole town,” Reynolds said.

  “Or,” Clair said, “maybe there’s one target.”

  “Lasha. Dr. Talbot. Don Barbier,” I said.

  “Arson to cover up another crime?” Derosby said.

  “Then a lot of people are in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said.

  We told Sophie that Pokey didn’t feel good and needed to have a quiet day in the paddock, a break from being ridden. She and Roxanne filled a small bag with apples and carrots. Roxanne said she could bring Pokey’s special treat—sugar cubes. When the bag was full, we started out the door onto the deck but then we steered Sophie toward the driveway and the road. The brush along the path offered too much cover.

  When we got to the house, Mary was standing at the paddock fence, rubbing Pokey’s muzzle. Clair came out of the barn, said, “Hey, pumpkin. Pokey was just asking where you’ve been.”

  “He can’t talk human being,” Sophie said.

  “But I can talk pony,” Clair said, and he snorted and whinnied and Sophie laughed and ran to Pokey. Mary lifted her to the top of the fence and she held out a carrot and Pokey, recovered from his morning, started to munch.

  We stood, the three of us.

  Clair said to Roxanne, “How you doing, honey?” and she said she was doing okay.

  “We’ll get him,” he said.

  “State Police dog tracked him all the way back to the ridge, then along there to a logging road, and then back to where he parked,” I said.

  “How’d he find his way right to that spot?” Roxanne said.

  “GPS, probably,” Clair said.

  “Don Barbier said he scouted out his house on Google Earth,” I said. “Knew the terrain on his property right down to the bush before he set foot in Maine.”

  Nobody answered.

  Sophie jumped down from the fence and scurried toward Roxanne, who had the bag of carrots.

  “Daddy, you need a haircut,” Sophie said. “Go to the barber.”

  I looked at her. She said it again.

  Barbier. Julie Barber. Dead in a fire, Julie Barber.

  “What does ‘Barbier’ mean? In French?”

  “Barber,” Roxanne said.

  “Listen,” I said. “Can you guys stay here with Sophie and Pokey? For a couple of hours?”

  Nods from Clair and Roxanne.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  I took the path. Out of their sight, I broke into a trot. Sparrows flushed and dove back into the brambles ahead of me. A red squirrel flashed into the woods, chirred as I passed. And then I was crossing the yard, unlocking the door to the mudroom. I closed it behind me, stood in the dim coolness and listened. Nothing. I moved to the inside door, unlocked that, too. Eased the door open and stepped into the still of the house.

  Into the kitchen, the study. Went to the laptop and flipped it open. Searched for DONALD BARBIER, BANGOR, MAINE.

  One hit. A lawyer. Palmer, Cloutier, and Barbier. I searched for the JULIE BARBER OBITUARY, clicked through.

  She was survived by her mother, Nancy M. Barber, one brother, Terrence J. Barber.

  I went on to the State Police website, scrolled down to the Bangor arson. Deceased: Julie Barber and Ross Lucas. Status: Open. Investigator: Davida Reynolds.

  I leaned back in my chair, slipped my phone from my pocket, and called her.

  “Hey,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “Driving,” Reynolds said. “Route 17, near Jefferson. Headed for Augusta.”

  “Turn around and head back this way,” I said.

  I watched Reynolds back the Suburban in next to the propane tanks behind the Quik-Mart. She walked over and got into my truck, saying, “You don’t mind meeting here? Saves me from having to go back to my office.” She eased into the seat as I pulled a notebook out from under her butt.

  “Sorry. Hey, you know your hay burner raked the gravel behind his car after he pulled onto the pavement? Didn’t want tire impressions.”

  “No dope,” I said. “Ex-cop?”

  “Or watches a lot of CSI. Either way, I’m liking this.”

  The ex-jock, the challenge.

  “You’re assigned to an old arson fatality in Bangor,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Cold case. We divide ’em up.”

  “Dead girl was Julie Barber, from Bucksport.”

  “Right.”

  “Any idea who did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No theories?”

  “I think the file says the guy killed with her was some sort of low-level drug dealer. I don’t remember his name.”

  “Ross Lucas,” I said.

  “Right. Investigators at the time thought it was retribution.”

  “For what?”

  Reynolds paused, that long hesitation while a cop decides whether to trust a reporter.

  “Skimmed some of the product?” I prodded. “Faked a robbery?”

  “You missed one,” she said.

  “Ratting somebody out?”

  “Maybe you should’ve been a cop, Mr. McMorrow.”

  “I have trouble picking sides,” I said. “Even if it is the good guys. So if the drug dealers knocked Lucas and Barber off—”

  “Why didn’t we catch them?” Reynolds said. “Maybe they hadn’t been quite ratted out yet.”

  “So you had the informants on the line but hadn’t yet set the hook?”

  “Not me. I was in kindergarten. Investigator who worked it for us was in his last year before retirement.”

  “You ever talk to him?”

  “Once. As I recall, they had names, three or four guys, possible suspects. But nothing close to concrete, and they scattered.”

  “This investigator still around?”

  “Yeah, but he may not be very helpful. He has some sort of dementia.”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “Yeah, must be hard on the family.”

  “For the case, I meant. Can I see the file?”

  She gave me her bemused look, like she was impressed by my chutzpah.

  “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  “Sounds pretty closed to me,” I said. “Twenty years old, investigator has Alzheimer’s, you’re assigned to it, and you haven’t thought about it in—”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Lately?”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Just a peek.”

  “No can do, Mr. McMorrow.”

  “Who’s the investigator?”

  “Linwood Penney.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Assisted living.”

  “Where?”

  “Jeesh
, Mr. McMorrow. Why so interested in a cold case when you’ve got hot ones popping up all around you?”

  It was my turn to hesitate. Would Reynolds think I was nuts, playing a hunch from a five-year-old’s chatter? She leaned forward in her seat so she could fix her eyes on mine. And she smiled.

  “Come on, Mr. McMorrow,” Reynolds said. “Spit it out.”

  I took a breath, then told her about Barbier, the French, Sophie’s suggestion that I get a haircut.

  “Bit of a reach,” she said.

  “She had a brother,” I said. “Terrence.”

  “So you start with Barber, change it to Barbier?” she said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And if our Don’s sister died in an arson fire, don’t you think he’d be a lot more upset? I’ve talked to the guy. He seems to take it all in stride.”

  “Seems,” I said.

  “Why hide it, if he’s this Terrence Barber?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I just think it’s an odd coincidence.”

  Reynolds looked at me, cocked an eyebrow.

  “You’re not putting this in your story, are you?”

  “No, I’m just curious.”

  “Hey, I’m curious, too, Mr. McMorrow. But I’m more curious about what’s going on today, in the here and now. Like who set your friend’s barn on fire.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “But there’s something eating me about this town.”

  “Yes, there is,” she said. “Somebody’s trying to burn it down.”

  She shifted in the seat, readying to go. “Always good to chat with you, Mr. McMorrow,” she said. “And I mean that.” She reached for the latch, popped the door, and climbed out.

  “Hey,” I said, “where’s this assisted-living place?”

  Reynolds was standing by the open door. She turned back over her shoulder. “Bucksport,” she said.

  “Like the girl who died?”

  “Coincidence. Penney lived in Brewer. They stick these people anywhere they can find a room.”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Mr. McMorrow. Last time I went to visit, he thought I was his daughter.”

  Bucksport was thirty miles up the coast, where the Penobscot River flowed on its way to the bay. As I watched Reynolds’s Suburban pull away, I looked at my watch; it was 3:35 p.m. Forty-five minutes to get there, call on the way and find out which of the assisted-living places had a Mr. Linwood Penney. Find Mr. Penney and sit with him long enough to figure out whether he remembered anything about the Julie Barber murder. I had a couple of hours before I needed to be back to relieve Clair, settle in for the night.