I slapped together two pieces of bread in the kitchen, a wedge of cheese between them. Gobbling it down like a wild thing, I fixed another, and ate that, too. I drank a tall glass of juice. Then I grabbed my sack and went out.
The world was quiet and calm, snow falling in a gentle cascade. My car slid through it like a body between blankets, whispery, rustly, still. It climbed Roister Road without mishap, and I turned into the lot. Then I got out amidst a sweep of pillowy flakes.
The barracks were steamy with artificial heat. Only one cop was inside, which, although a plus for my errand, made me wonder what might be taking place. The Chief’s door was shut and Club wasn’t in his cubicle.
Tim Lurcquer rose from his seat and came forward. His squinty eyes got even smaller as he identified me. “Nora. Hi.”
I returned the greeting.
“Looking for someone?”
“Club?” I suggested, then was struck by the obvious alternative. “Or Dave?”
Tim shook his head. He wasn’t much taller than I was; I could look right into his eyes.
“Is something going on today?” I began to glance around the streamlined department, the gleaming silver computers. The place was spare in its efficiency, no forms in triplicate or overflowing filing cabinets.
“There’s always something going on,” Tim replied.
I decided to play it straight. “Tim, do you have a log for shifts?”
He sat down on a corner of desk. I was struck by the difference between Tim in that position, and Ned, who had assumed it a few hours earlier on the counter at his house. Ned was taller; Tim’s legs would’ve dangled in Ned’s kitchen. But it was more than height that lent Ned an appearance of surety and strength, someone who could get things done, while Tim simply looked bland, uncaring.
“A shift log? Sure,” he said. “State requires us to keep a paper record.”
“Could I look at it?”
“Why would you want to do that?” Tim began tapping stubby fingers upon the desk. I was suddenly sure that he was toying with me, for his own fun, that despite his flat manner of speaking, he was perhaps the least straightforward of any of the five cops on the force.
“I just—I want to know what Brendan was doing. In the time before he died.”
Tim got to his feet, idly, looking around. Then he crossed the room so slowly that I wondered whether he had any intention of coming back. But he did return, carrying a book that looked out of place in this updated shop, as old-fashioned as a rotary phone. The faux leather volume was awkward, overlarge, in Tim’s grasp. He tossed it down carelessly, as if nothing inside could possibly be of interest or importance, and the thwack it made caused me to jump.
I flipped through the thin sheets of paper, the all-but-illegible notes, until I found the sixteenth. There was information there, and it stung my eyes with tears, but not because it was especially significant. Instead, the few lines were mundane, referring to things Brendan used to complain about, the nuisances and wrinkles of a cop’s everyday life. There’d been an accident on the Northway and—if I was reading the rapid squiggles correctly—the driver had posed something of a threat. The cops had been called into town at a late hour for a Drunk and Disorderly. I was no better off, no more informed, than I’d been before being granted access to this. If I’d hoped for some stark, dramatic line of text pointing to a felony or other obvious event, then I was in for a letdown.
Tim remained beside me. I was going to ask him about either the accident or the D&D, for sheer lack of any better thing to do, when the door to the inner room of the station banged open, and the newest addition to the force strolled in.
“Two-oh-one’s just about clear,” he said.
Tim reached down and slid the log into a desk drawer.
Gilbert saw me then.
“Nora here was just looking for Club,” Tim said. “He on his way?”
“Few more minutes maybe.”
I had never bothered memorizing the codes. “What’s a two-oh-one?”
The cops exchanged glances. “There was a fire today.”
“Oh no. Where?”
Another quick exchange of looks.
“Five-twelve Queek Pond Lane.”
I jumped to my feet, wondering if Tim or Gilbert would know that I knew.
It was Ned Kramer’s house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Everything was still chaos when I arrived—having driven too fast along snow-strewn roads—but the fire appeared to be pretty much over. Black plumes of smoke gusted out of the shattered first-floor windows of Ned’s house, like the breath of some hellish beast, and long strips of clapboard had peeled away, exposing the core. The fire seemed to have been contained down there; the second and third stories appeared to be untouched.
Two neon yellow fire trucks stood close to the house, with firefighters walking around, checking for hot spots. A generator was running, plus the Hotshot, used for thawing outdoor pipes. In wintertime, lack of ready water was the number one reason for a fire blazing out of control.
I braked to a halt at the end of the long drive. Tim and Gilbert had followed me from the station; they joined Vern and Dave in a ragged cluster of gray-clad bodies.
There was also a runner, dressed head to toe in a second, blue skin, and jogging in place.
Where was Ned? At work? Did he know what had happened?
A single, hard thump sounded against my window. I jumped, turning toward it. Club’s thick fist still lingered on the glass. I started to pull at the door handle, and he stepped back, asking before the door was even fully open, “What are you doing here?”
I raised my head. “I’m working on this house.” It was almost true. About to be true.
He raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? You’ve been here recently?”
This perhaps inevitable reaction hadn’t occurred to me. I nodded.
“Step over here then,” Club said, all cop now, not a friend, even though I noticed he wasn’t in uniform. “Let’s have a word.”
I stood patiently for his questions: the last time I had been here, what I had done, whether I’d seen anything. I volunteered that the only appliance we had touched was the microwave, then asked, “Does Ned know what happened?”
Club frowned. “We don’t know what happened,” he replied.
At that moment Weekend bounded up, frolicking about his master, poking his moist snout into my palm. I rubbed him absently. “You brought your dog?”
Club shrugged large shoulders. “I wasn’t on duty. We were on our way back from an outing when the call came in.” In a moment of solicitousness, he explained, “Week likes to listen to the police channel in the car.” Then he pointed somewhere off in the white, smoky distance, and I spotted his civilian car, a Jimmy. The dog gave a bark of assent, and Club lowered a hand to quiet him.
I glanced toward the house again. It was smoking as it cooled, and the sight brought about an almost physical pain. The house was like someone recently admitted to the hospital, once hulking and imposing, but now laid low, vulnerable. Another board fell away, offering a glimpse to the structure’s maimed insides.
Dave Weathers walked up. He extended the hand that had been depressing a button on his radio, letting forth a blurp of static before he could fumble it silent. His face stained red, and he looked like he didn’t know what to do with the offending hand.
I took it.
“Hi, Mrs. H.,” he said in a friendly tone.
“You get a statement from that jogger?” Club asked. There was derision in his tone, but I couldn’t tell if it was meant for the runner or Dave.
Dave jutted his chin up and down.
“Let him go then,” Club commanded, and Dave began to back away, still nodding.
Weekend had abandoned Club and come to sit by me, upright on his haunches, silky ears perked. Drenched stalks of grass that had been washed clean of snow were already beginning to ice over. The firefighters were rolling up flat lengths of hoses, shouting instructions, stepping b
ack from the drifts that billowed up when the hose nozzles hit them. Someone was nailing sheets of plywood over gaping holes in the exterior.
Club was watching his dog. “Can you look after him for me? For a few hours?”
“You want me to take Weekend?” I responded, becoming aware of something then. Weekend was close enough for me to feel his heaving flank, but even though I hadn’t yet cracked open my new medicine, I hadn’t sneezed once. I wiggled my nose, testing it while breathing in the smell of damp dog, but didn’t feel so much as a single sniffle.
“Can’t stay off duty now,” Club said, while one gloved hand checked that his gun was in place. “There’ll be things to do.”
And then Club’s eyes narrowed and he folded his arms across his chest. He was so well-built that muscles could be seen through the thick coat of his uniform.
I turned in the direction he was staring. Ned Kramer had just driven up.
Ned got out of his car and crossed the broken plains of snow. “What the hell is going on?”
Club stepped forward and I backed away with Weekend, listening to Club’s low rumbling explanation, and Ned’s louder rejoinder.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “Go see for yourself, if there’s anything left to see. I’m hardly living in this place. I don’t even have a fucking stove.” My heart squeezed at the raw pain in his voice. He scrubbed a hand across his face.
The Chief had arrived at Club’s side. “Mr. Kramer, I wish I could say your situation was unusual,” he said. “But we see this from time to time. Folks move up, occupy these big old houses, wired back in a different age. A circuit gets overloaded, and boom, before you know it you got …” The Chief extended an arm toward the smoldering house.
Ned was staring at him. “I just said I’m not even using the stove.”
The Chief looked back levelly. “Craig McAllister, the fire chief, wants to talk to you, sir. I’m afraid me and the boys got work to do at the station.”
I hadn’t known if Ned realized I was there, but as he turned and went in search of the fire chief, he paused. “Hold on for a bit, Nora, will you?”
I flinched at the brokenness in his tone.
“Take good care of my dog,” Club said, as he headed toward his Jimmy.
The other cops were dispersing as well.
Vern rolled down his window as he got into his car. “You get out of here now, honey. There’ll be other houses for you to decorate. This place is unsafe in a dozen different ways.”
I promised, and Vern gave a single wave of his hand, his face creased with worry as he drove off.
I struggled to lead Weekend away by his leash. Club had said he should visit a tree before we left. A shallow perimeter of field, now snow-veiled, had been mowed around Ned’s house. Once it ended, thick woods encroached upon the land. We entered them, Weekend eager for his break, sniffing one tree trunk after another.
His hind and forelegs were soon buried. The snow in the woods was deep. Weekend was still looking for a tree that pleased him when he let out a loud bark. I looked up to see Ned stomping through the snow after us. We had come quite a ways.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, as Ned neared. Weekend seemed to have abandoned his search for the perfect tree, twining himself between my knees.
“I didn’t have this in me,” Ned replied, his voice low, and rough with something like anger. “I didn’t have this in me to lose.”
“I understand,” I said softly, “when a house is hurt. I think I feel the injuries myself.”
Ned accepted that with a nod.
Weekend was starting to move a bit agitatedly, and I bent down. “Go on, boy. It’s okay.” He turned liquid eyes on me—you could’ve sworn he was making sure—before trotting off.
“You haven’t lost it, you know,” I went on. “I think the structure is all right. And it’s not like it didn’t need some pretty major attention before this.”
“There were hard copies,” Ned said after a moment. “That burned. Nothing I don’t have backup for. But still—my office suffered the worst damage.”
Vern’s words returned on a gust of wind, overloaded circuits, houses not upgraded for their new purposes. I considered the flammability of paper. Could this have been Ned’s fault after all? In some ways, the untended nature of the house made it more vulnerable. There must’ve been whole rooms he never even entered. But not his office.
Ned was looking off into the distance. I heard some faraway banging. There came the heaving sound of fire truck engines departing, and a car engine gunned as well.
“What did the fire chief say?” I asked.
“A lot of stuff while saying nothing at all. You know? How it is when there’s nothing to say?”
I couldn’t stop tears from welling up. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
Ned was starting to turn. “I’d better go check if my old cabin is rented this week.”
“Look,” I called, hearing my voice pitch and yaw. I didn’t want Ned to leave like this. It didn’t matter who was to blame, if anyone even was. “I can match the remaining clapboards. We could do a real painted-lady exterior.”
Ned paused while mounting a drift of snow.
“I’ll make some calls,” I shouted. “Disaster repair first, there must be a lot of water and smoke in there. And someone to come seal things up better.”
“Yeah?” He was still clambering upward, but at least he was calling over his shoulder, engaged in our exchange. “You really think this could still turn out okay?”
“Better than okay!” I shouted, beginning to laugh as Ned skidded down the embankment, one hand raised, giving a thumbs-up, as the rest of him disappeared.
I opened my sack and jotted a few notes, people to call, materials to order. I was getting back to work, for real, and I thought Brendan would be glad.
Then I huffed on my hands, drawing my thick gloves back on. I had gotten cold suddenly; the warmth of the trek out here had worn off. I looked around for Weekend. I could see soft mounds of snow he must have kicked up, but no sign of the dog.
“Weekend?” I called. “Week?”
The dog’s coat was pure ebony; he should’ve been easy to spot. But I didn’t see him anywhere in the winter woods. I started to walk, scouting for paw prints in the deep drifts. When I found some, I followed their trail.
The tracks ended abruptly at the perimeter of trees that formed a moat around Ned’s house. I stopped, using one hand to shield my eyes against the few flakes that flew, and squinted at the scene, which had cleared out. All was still, cold, and blankly white.
I looked about for Ned but he had beaten me out here and taken off. Probably couldn’t bear to remain for one minute longer than necessary near his house.
“Weekend! Come here, boy!” I shouted, wondering if the tremor in my voice would scare him off, or summon him. If he was here to be summoned. Had Club taken his dog after all? And then I heard a whine. It came from the direction of Ned’s house.
The house was steaming in places, with a few tendrils of smoke curling up. I took another look around, hunting for a last, straggling fireman to ask if it was safe to approach. But no one was left.
And still that high whine persisted, almost a yipping.
The house didn’t look in danger of collapsing; the fire’s reach hadn’t extended to the support beams or outer walls. And it didn’t matter anyway.
I set off at a run, boots clumsy in the snow, sending up clods. Relative to the frigid air, you could still feel heat coming off the house, and everything was a sodden mess, shrubbery trampled, dirt that wouldn’t normally have been exposed for another three months turned to mud.
“Weekend?” I called, tramping through the muck and debris.
A floor-to-ceiling window had either blown out or been shattered to gain access; someone with a more astute eye than mine could probably have said which. A sheet of plywood had been hastily nailed up in place of the glass, and as I neared it the whining grew louder.
“Weekend!”
I shouted. Still he didn’t bark, which somehow frightened me most of all.
I started to attack the nails. Gloves made my hands less precise, but at least their padding was able to withstand the slit of the nail heads. The nails hadn’t been that well secured; I was able to tug them out without a claw. Once I had freed all but the lowermost ones, I tore off the sheet of plywood, and left it dangling.
An overwhelming smell of smoke and char assailed me. I had to reel away, momentarily dizzy, scrubbing at my eyes. The second my vision cleared, I peered into the house.
Weekend crouched as close to the outer wall as he could get, a length of rope drawn taut between his collar and a heavy table that had partially burned. He had been able to drag the table some ways, as evidenced by marks on a ruined rug, but had apparently reached the limits of his endurance, or else given up.
The dog was terrified. He was trembling, fur rippling as his body quaked. When he saw me, he immediately ceased whining, gazing up with dark, confused eyes.
“Oh, Weekend,” I murmured. “Oh, you poor thing. Who did this to you?” I continued clucking words of reproach meant for someone else, which seemed to soothe him, as I stripped off my gloves and picked at the knot in the rope that bound his neck.
And then I saw a note tucked under the cruel collar.
The scrap of paper held three words: Stop asking questions.
Weekend stared silently as I extricated the piece of paper. It was evidence, wasn’t it? I could show it to someone. But who? The police? And evidence of what?
Weekend’s chest was quivering beneath my fingers. I hadn’t realized I was stroking it.
“I’m sorry, boy,” I murmured, getting back to work.
My hand stung with the cold. The plywood had been a slap job, but this rope had been well knotted.
When he was finally loosed, I led Weekend through the frame of the window, shielding him from its jagged glass teeth. His flanks were heaving in uneven bursts, but he didn’t lope away from the site of his imprisonment. Something in him had changed. He huddled by my side, and I couldn’t tell if he was offering me protection from some unnamed threat, or still too scared to make a move.
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