Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “It’s big, Jack.”

  “I guessed that, too.”

  “It’s just hard to know where to begin.”

  “Just plunge in,” I said.

  “Off the record,” he said.

  I didn’t answer. Tory took a deep breath, clenched his paper coffee cup.

  “I’ve worked hard to build the business. Both of us have.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I mean, I started with nothing. No dad in the picture. My mom worked in a store like this place. Four bucks an hour. I started working when I was fourteen. Had to pull my weight, you know? If I didn’t nobody else would.”

  I waited. He hadn’t come here to tell me his Horatio Alger story.

  “When I was in college—I got a scholarship to go to the University of Maine—I got a job in a bar.”

  Here we go, I thought.

  “With Julie Barber,” I said.

  He stared.

  “How did you know that? Jesus Christ, I’m glad we’re having this talk.”

  “Likewise,” I said.

  “Yeah, so I worked with Julie. Washing dishes, making sandwiches, scrubbing the floors. Didn’t make much. My spending money, you know? But then—”

  I waited.

  “But then, there was this guy who was sort of the assistant manager. Used to be a student. Got kicked out or something, and he—”

  Tory paused, took a breath.

  “Was selling drugs,” I said. “Ross Lucas.”

  He looked at me, startled.

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  “Just people. Keep going.”

  “Wow. Okay. Well, you can probably guess the rest.”

  “Not all of it,” I said.

  “Right. Well, I got involved in drugs. I mean, I was just a kid. I’d worked so much in high school, never had time for that sort of thing. But there it was, you know. So I started in. At first it was free, we were just partying. A few lines, you know, after the bar closed.”

  “Uh-huh.” “And then this guy, he said he needed some money, couldn’t give the stuff away anymore. I’d give him half my check. And then that wasn’t enough. He said his suppliers were squeezing him, jacking up the price. I mean, a hundred a gram adds up.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “So I started selling a little. In the dorm, nothing major. But I’m a good salesman.”

  He looked at me for confirmation.

  “Yes, you are,” I said. The old guy walked by with a fist full of tickets, went out to his truck. Tory waited, looked to make sure the woman behind the counter was still there. He leaned forward.

  “It got kind of out of control. I mean, I was making, like, five hundred a week. Clear. More money than I’d ever seen.”

  “Living the dream,” I said.

  “Right. Me and Julie dated a few times, but she was pretty straight and was going back to her boyfriend anyway. This guy Derek Mays, still in high school. I never met the guy, but I could tell she was still really into him. So it never went anywhere. But then,” he began. Stopped.

  “And then, what?”

  “These guys showed up in Orono. They were the suppliers’ suppliers. I mean, real hard-asses. Had been in prison, connected to some biker gang. I mean, scary.”

  “Cheech, Bear, and Kiko,” I said.

  Tory looked stunned.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  He looked around, down at his coffee, over to the woman behind the counter. Anywhere but at me.

  “One night,” Tory said.

  Another pause.

  “One night we were closing up. Me, Julie, Lucas. Those three guys came in. They said they were through fooling around. I mean, they kind of pushed us up against the bar. Lucas was saying, ‘I can get it, I can get it.’ I’m saying, ‘This isn’t my fight.’ Julie is crying.”

  A long breath. A sip of coffee.

  “One of them has a gun and they herd us out of there, into a van. Lucas is freaking now, Julie is hysterical. I’m thinking of diving through the window or something. But then we go a few miles, on the edge of town, toward Bangor. They pull into this driveway. Looks like nobody’s been at the house for a long time. Take us in, the two of them crying now, I’m thinking, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. They take tape and do Lucas and Julie, hands and feet. Two of the guys want to, you know, molest Julie, but the boss guy with the gun, he says no. I’m thinking. maybe there’s hope.”

  I waited.

  “And then he tells me to just stand there. They sit Julie and Lucas on the chairs. In the kitchen, I mean. And one of them goes to the stove and opens the oven door and reaches in and jiggles something and then turns on the propane. And it comes billowing out. The smell, I mean. And then the other of the two guys, without the gun, he takes out a candle and he puts it on the table. And he lights it. I’m thinking, are you crazy? And then they push me out of the house and leave Julie and Lucas in there. They say to me, ‘You’re the witness.’

  “So we drive in the van down the street and stop. And we wait. I don’t know how long. Five minutes? Ten? It seemed like forever. I’m saying, ‘Let’s go back. They get the message. We all do.’ They hit me in the face, tell me to shut up and watch.”

  He paused, shook his head.

  “And then it just—it just blew up. The whole house. This huge boom, flames blowing out of the windows.”

  “And then what?”

  “They said something like, ‘Now you get the message. Go get the money.’ ”

  “How much?” I said.

  “Seventy-three hundred dollars.”

  “For that they incinerate two people.”

  “I know. It was surreal. Like a movie, except it didn’t end.”

  “Did you get the money?”

  “You kidding? I took off. I didn’t look back until I was in Utah.”

  Tory paused.

  “In a way, I’ve been running ever since.”

  I’ll bet you have, I thought. I looked at him. Stared hard. He smiled, a reflex he couldn’t control.

  “Why stop now?”

  “Because, Jack. Because something happened.”

  “A lot’s been happening.”

  “Something else. Yesterday we got a call. Buyer wanted to look at a property. Woman said she was an artist, lived on Deer Isle. Getting inconvenient, wanted to be closer to Portland. The restaurants and all that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We showed her three properties. Probably a little high for her price range, it turns out. She’s thinking low threes. These were all mid-three and up, though one you could probably get—”

  “Tory.”

  “Right. So we’re doing this, late morning, stop at the store, a little community ambiance. She meets Harold, he gives her the shtick. She says, ‘People are so nice here. I thought with all these fires it was gonna be weird.’

  “And then it gets better. She meets Lasha. Turns out they know each other from artist stuff, galleries or whatever. So they’re talking. And then we’re standing in the parking lot of the store, just chatting, and Don drives by, waves.”

  “Don Barbier.”

  “Right. Don. And she says—her name is Constance, not Connie, Constance—and she says, ‘Wow. Small world. I think I know him, too.’ I say, ‘You know Don?’ She says, ‘Oh, I thought it was somebody else. A guy named Derek.’ ”

  “Derek Mays,” I said.

  “Right. The boyfriend. Julie’s boyfriend. Talk about a blast from the past.”

  “And he’s here,” I said.

  “Yes,” Tory said. “And it’s no coincidence.”

  “I know,” I said. “No coincidence at all.”

  I thought for a second.

  “Who did she say this to?”

  “Me, Lasha, Rita.”

  “Did Don see her?”

  “Oh, yeah. Slowed down, gave us a big wave, a smile. Constance waved back.”

  “Did he recognize her?”

  “They kind of locked in. I mean, she
said she knew him from high school. He was a big jock, and he used to flirt with her in study hall or something. She said he looked different, but it was still him. I’m guessing she was secretly obsessed with him or something.”

  “And Don kept going?”

  “The rest of us, too.”

  “Did you tell Rita any of this?”

  Tory shook his head.

  “Where is she?”

  “Closing at a bank in Augusta. This retired three-star general from Maryland, he’s buying—”

  “What did Lasha say?”

  “At the store? She sort of listened, said something like, ‘Nobody here is what they seem.’ I’m like, ‘That’s no way to sell our town, Lasha,’ and I’m laughing. But not on the inside.”

  “No,” I said. “On the inside you were—”

  “Scared, to be honest.”

  I thought for a moment, took out my phone and tapped down the list, dialed a number.

  Lasha didn’t answer.

  “Tory,” I said. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

  “Because ever since then, the thing at the store, Don’s been sort of—I don’t know. Stalking me. Wherever I go, there’s his truck.”

  “Did he follow you here? Does he know we’re talking?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I took the Ridge Road, made a couple of turns.”

  I looked out of the store window at the silver Mercedes, the Sanctuary Brokers sign on the door. Way to go incognito.

  “Maybe I’m losing it,” Tory said. “I mean, all these fires, the Woodrow kid—it gets to you. And Louis, the army guy?”

  “Marines.”

  “Right. I swear he’s been following me, too. Drives this Jeep, big tires. So with all of that, you think to yourself, maybe I’m just cracking up. The stress. Carrying all this debt. And Don, I mean, I worked with the guy. Maybe it is some bizarre coincidence. Or he’s just this Derek guy’s look-alike, or—”

  “Tory,” I said, “No more bullshit.”

  He looked at me.

  “Cheech and Bear and Kiko,” I said. “They’re all dead, aren’t they.”

  “Yeah, well, drug dealers, not like they have a long shelf life. You know that. Eventually they run into somebody tougher than—”

  “You know they died in fires. Arson fires. Somebody torched them, Tory. I know the whole story, so cut the crap.”

  He went pale. Swallowed hard. The glad-hander mask melted away and he looked wan and small.

  “I’ve been running for years, Jack. I’m so tired. Keeping it all inside. I mean, I couldn’t tell Rita anything. So it’s just all on me, all the time. It’s like I haven’t slept, I mean, really slept, in forever.”

  “For good reason,” I said, thinking of the way Julie died. She never got the choice to run. “Three down, one to go.”

  Tory looked at me, his mind grasping for the next move. Even then he managed a half-smile. “Yeah, but now that I’m telling you, I’m safer, right?” he said, clinging to the power of positive thinking.

  “No,” I said. “Just makes for a better story after you’re gone.”

  36

  Tory insisted he ride along with me as I drove into Sanctuary to Lasha’s. We left the store, crossed Route 17, and followed the Sanctuary River south. The sun was moving from cloud to cloud overhead and the shadowed woods on both sides seemed not lush and green, but dark and dangerous. Even Tory, sitting beside me with his legs crossed and boat shoe dangling, seemed oddly lethal, the smiling real estate guy who had watched two people—one innocent—burn to death.

  I glanced at him, quiet for once. Was he worried about Rita? And what did the deaths of the three drug dealers mean to him? It was in his best interest that the last three witnesses to the Julie Barber killing had been eliminated. His word against—nobody’s.

  We were approaching Lasha’s drive, the mailbox tilting from the raspberry brambles at the roadside. I swung in, bounced up the rutted drive, and emerged in the grassy clearing. Lasha’s Jeep was parked by the open studio door and I pulled in beside it and shut off the motor. Reaching down beside the seat, I took out Clair’s Glock.

  Tory looked at me, said “Jesus.”

  We got out and I slipped the gun in my waistband, went to the studio door, and peered in. The lights were on. The menagerie was still.

  “Lasha,” I called. “You home?”

  No reply. Then a rustle as the cat slipped around the back corner of the shed and hurried toward us. I walked that way, waiting for Tory to catch up, keeping him in my view. He was wary, the salesman’s smile vanished. We rounded the corner of the shed. Crossed the grass. I called again. “Lasha.”

  Nothing. Lasha’s lookout chair was empty, the only movement yellow goldfinches twittering in the burdocks at the edge of the woods. I stopped, started to turn back, saying, “She must be inside.”

  And stopped.

  A bit of something, in the undergrowth beyond the chair. Something that didn’t look right.

  I slipped the gun out, pulled the slide back. “You stay with me,” I said, and let Tory get a half-step ahead. We crossed the grass and the something turned into skin. Then a bare foot, the leg leading into the grass.

  We approached, slowing. The foot was pointed upward.

  The leg, a skirt.

  Lasha.

  “Oh, my God,” Tory said.

  She was on her back, arms thrown up, the shotgun beside her. There were bruises on her throat and her eyes were open, frozen in an unblinking stare, just like her creatures.

  I bent to her, dropped to my knees. Touched her cheek. It was cold and gray, the life drained.

  “Oh, Lasha,” I said, then eased to my feet.

  Tory was already backing away. I scanned the woods once, then followed, the gun raised. At the corner of the shed my phone buzzed.

  I took it out. Looked.

  Roxanne.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Jack,” Roxanne said.

  Her voice, something wrong.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “There’s somebody here,” she said.

  Alphonse. The bastard.

  “Who is it? Alphonse? Call Clair. What is he—”

  A clatter, the phone being passed.

  “Jack.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Don. Don Barbier. We need to talk.”

  37

  I had the gun in one hand, the phone in the other. Tory watched me from the other side of the truck and listened.

  “I’m looking for Tory,” Don said.

  I looked at him.

  “I’m sure he’s around,” I said.

  “I asked the girl at the Quik-Mart if she’d seen him today. She said he was in there with the reporter guy. The one with the blue Toyota pickup. She said Tory and the reporter had coffee. Talked for a long time.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I’m figuring you had lots to talk about.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “Where exactly are you?”

  “Standing in your kitchen,” Barbier said. “Just met your lovely daughter. And your beautiful wife.”

  I didn’t reply. Waited.

  “So Jack, I’m thinking you have something I want. And you know I definitely have something you want. So I propose that we just trade. For you it’s a hell of a deal. Two for one.”

  I looked at Tory, who was listening intently. I made the decision.

  “Okay. I’ll be there in a half-hour or so.”

  “Great, Jack,” Don said. “Call when you’re five miles out. The three of us, we’ll be waiting.”

  “Right.”

  “And Jack. Anybody else shows, I’m done and they’re going with me. No cops. Nobody.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I lowered the phone.

  “What?” Tory said.

  “I’m gonna head home.”

  “What about the cops? Aren’t you gonna call them?”

  “I’ll call them on the way.”

>   “Shouldn’t we wait for them or something?”

  “Nothing we can do here. Lasha’s gone.”

  “I know, but shouldn’t we just—”

  I raised the gun and pointed it at him.

  “We’re going,” I said. “You drive.”

  I called Clair, both numbers. Got voice mail.

  We were on Route 17, headed west, Tory driving the speed limit. Hills rose to the north, pastures shorn from the woods. There were decaying businesses, sagging barns, trailers flanked by broken-down trucks. I saw none of it, just Tory at the wheel, the Glock heavy in my hand. He started to slow and I said, “Faster. If you try to bail out, I’ll shoot you.”

  He sped up, eyes fixed on the road. I told him to take a right and he did, onto the back road we’d follow all the way to Prosperity. More woods, a farm. He got the truck up to speed, rattling over potholes. I switched gun hands, my right going numb.

  “You’re trading me, aren’t you,” Tory said. “Me for your family.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “He’s nuts, you know. Have to be, hold a grudge this long.”

  “If someone tied Rita up and burned her to death, what would you do?”

  He was quiet, hands massaging the steering wheel.

  “I guess he couldn’t find Rita,” Tory said. “That would have been the simplest thing.” He swallowed hard. “I was afraid it was coming. Sometime. I just didn’t know who it would be. I kept checking, once I found out their real names. I’d Google them. Then I just put them on my Google alerts. And up they came, one by one. Like you said: Dead in fires. Burned.”

  Another swallow, his hands twisting on the steering wheel. “But then I thought, well, who knows how many enemies these guys have. Live by the gun, die by the gun, and all that. Hey, these cartel types. They’ll torture you, cut your head off, whatever. Burning somebody. That would be nothing.”

  “Faster,” I said.

  “So after one, I thought, probably has nothing to do with me. Then two, I’m thinking, this is not good. After the third guy was killed, we sold everything and moved. I told Rita we were on the bubble in Chesapeake, time to cash in before it burst.”

  So here we are, I thought. The end of the line, Don desperate to keep his cover from being blown before he finishes the job.

  “There’s gotta be some way to deal with this,” Tory said. “I mean, maybe if you go talk to him alone—”