Burning Meredith

by Elizabeth Gunn

  ‘So?’ Stuart’s mind was not really on the corpse.

  ‘So I know it’s not our job to figure out why that body showed up after the fire, but I just realized you might have part of the answer to one of those questions and not know it.’

  ‘Why me? You’ve heard everything I have.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not the one with the camera. Think about it, Stuart. The section of highway that the helicopters used for a runway, that was on the upwind side of the fire, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The one Jonesy talked about? Sure, it had to be. They wouldn’t land on the side where the fire was raging.’

  ‘Right. So you got on and off your rides on the north side of the fire, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Kind of north by northwest. That little flat place where the county road turns off the highway.’

  ‘Up there above Grizzly Gulch. Near Robbins Pass.’

  ‘Close. Couple of miles, I guess.’

  ‘And while you stood around and waited for rides on the whirly-birds, I bet you took plenty of pictures.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I mostly do when I stand next to a fire – take pictures.’ Hungry and chilly, they both had their coat collars turned up and were striding along briskly toward warm houses and food. But when he realized what she was asking, he turned to face her so abruptly she ran into him and let out a little yelp.

  ‘You’re thinking about that pickup, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. All those fire pictures you were evaluating at that point – you were looking for the most awesome views of fire, weren’t you? It’s not likely you paid much attention to random vehicles that wandered in and out of the shots, is it?’

  ‘Well, now … that’s very astute, Alice.’ The street lights were coming on all over town. Burgeoning light enhanced his craggy features as he turned away. ‘Now go to the head of the class and stop talking about it, please. We’ve been working like donkeys all week, and we just finished a twelve-hour shift on a Saturday. Give it a rest.’

  ‘I will. I am. All I’m saying is you weren’t looking for pickups at the time you took those pictures, and the rest of us only saw the pictures you decided to send us. There could be …’

  ‘Hundreds more shots! Dozens of pickups! And they’ll all stay safe and warm in the camera till Monday.’

  ‘Well, of course! Fine! Have you heard me suggest we should run right back to the newsroom and look at those pictures tonight?’

  ‘No, and I’m not going to, because you know good and well that if you said anything like that I would whip out my handy earbuds.’ He actually had a set in the big cargo pocket of his car coat. She watched in amazement as he pulled them out and held them up in the dim yellow light. ‘And render myself deaf to anything but the Chainsmokers until we reach your front door.’ He showed all his teeth in a wolfish grin.

  Alice’s laughter made a happy, inappropriate sound, along the cracked sidewalk of this stormy block of Veronica Street. ‘What a wonderful pocket. What else do you have in there? Chainsaw? Hedge trimmer?’

  ‘Sure. Can of paint thinner.’ Stuart nodded. ‘Case of porcelain door handles.’ They turned and walked again toward home, as companionable as before. But some new level of understanding had been reached. Stuart could be pushed too far.

  ‘What I’ve actually got,’ he said, after a companionable silence, ‘is all day tomorrow off. Think of that! I told Mort, “Don’t call me, no matter what catches fire.” I’ve got a date to spend the whole day with the coolest woman in Clark’s Fort, and I’m hoping if I can have that – one whole happy day playing in the snow with Judy Nolan – maybe I’ll be able to rouse my brain enough by Monday to go back to selling ads for low-rise jeans.’

  ‘That sounds like a plan,’ Alice said. But in a new, sad place that she had just found growing in her own brain, she thought, Hastings is gone and it’s never coming back. How am I ever going to wrap my brain around that?

  At that moment, a big gust of wind blew their hair straight up. As it settled, they heard an alarming roll of thunder. Stuart said, ‘Oh, now, wait a minute … thunder?’

  A light fall of sleet began. He pulled the hood of his parka up and fastened the cord. Alice fished a woolen watch cap out of one of her pockets, pulled it on, tied a wool scarf over it and tucked the ends in her collar.

  The sleet made a scraping noise that drowned out their voices as it struck the Dacron outer layer of their padded winter coats. To keep the tiny ice pellets out of their eyes, they both bent their heads, reducing visibility to a few feet ahead. Unable to talk anymore and almost blinded by the storm, they stumbled toward home, cold, hungry and getting very tired. Alice reached her gate first, muttered, ‘Night,’ and groped for her key.

  She looked back as she unlocked her door. The sleet was falling faster and in bigger chunks. Her street was disappearing into a white-out, and Stuart was running for home.

  Inside, in the mud room that her foyer became in winter, she disposed of wet garments over hooks and benches. In the living room, she lit a gas fire in the fireplace and huddled in front of it until she stopped shivering. When she was warm enough, she opened a can of clam chowder and ate the whole thing with corn bread and a bottle of Sam Adams on a tray in front of the fire. As soon as she finished eating, she put on bed socks and an ancient flannel nightgown with sleeves so full she could keep her hands inside them. Picking a novel she’d always meant to read off the shelf in the hall, she settled into bed, propped on several pillows, and was asleep before nine o’clock.

  Urgent bathroom calls woke her just after seven. A strange, dirty golden radiance filled the bedroom, the sun coming up behind a heavy snowfall. Besides not drawing the drapes, she saw, when she went to make coffee, that she had forgotten to lock the front door. But she had slept in perfect safety – her front door was totally blocked by a drift almost as high as a man’s head, up the front steps and across the porch. And, in fact, a man’s head was sidling up the front steps alongside it, wearing the plaid woolen cap with earflaps that Jamie Campbell always wore on Montana snow days. He carried a white baker’s box in his right hand. The jolly red pom-pom nodding up the steps behind him adorned a ski cap worn by his son Stuart, who carried the family snow shovel.

  Snow continued to fall on this tableau, and the drift was still growing, thanks to a snarky cold breeze that lifted the new snow and curled it along the top of the drift – and into her foyer, as long as she held the door open.

  ‘Morning, Alice,’ Jamie said. ‘Got the coffee pot on yet?’ His eyes wandered cheerfully around the frame of the doorway she stood in, avoiding details of the flannel nightgown that, except for a lost button, was every bit as good as it had been when she’d ordered it from the Vermont Country Store five years ago. A dutiful brother-in-law, in his other persona as a skillful money manager, he knew every last detail of Alice’s financial situation and did his level best to know nothing else about her, especially anything that could be discerned through the one missing button on the front of her gown.

  ‘Coffee’s cooking,’ she said. ‘Shall I take that?’ She reached across the snow drift and took the wonderful-smelling box of pastry from him. ‘Won’t you come in?’

  ‘In about ten minutes,’ Jamie said. ‘Soon as we clean up this mess you made on the porch.’ He was like that – jokey and given to nudges. His family gatherings often erupted into roars of laughter. Betsy was patient about it; she knew all her friends’ husbands and felt she had the pick of the pack.

  Alice went back inside and dressed in warm clothes while Stuart shoveled the drift off her porch and Jamie, using the blade he’d installed on his Jeep, cleared her sidewalk and driveway. She’d laid three places on the gate leg table in the library by then, and they enjoyed the apple turnovers and coffee, looking out the window at the relentless storm.

  ‘I won’t be surprised if we set some records today,’ Jamie said. ‘If it keeps snowing like this, by the time we get through with Judy’s place and then my two aunts, it’ll be about time
to do my own house again.’

  ‘What about the plans with Judy, though?’ Alice asked Stuart.

  He lifted his shoulders in a sad shrug. ‘The road to the ski hill is closed. Too much snow – they say they won’t try to clear it till the storm’s over.’

  ‘I see.’ She brought a bus box and began clearing the table. Stuart got up and helped. When Jamie started to get up and clear his own place, she put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Sit over there in my easy chair while we clear this up. Give your back a break.’ Betsy had told her about his new brace. Too many hours at the computer were taking their toll.

  By the kitchen sink, stacking plates, she asked Stuart softly, ‘Aren’t there other things for boys and girls to do together on a Sunday when the ski hill is closed?’

  He gave her the skinned-knee look that had persuaded her to edit his paper. ‘Dad likes to be the family helper,’ he said. ‘He’s so good to everybody, I don’t know how to refuse to tag along.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘He helps me all the time. But, surely, in the whole Campbell/MacKenzie clan there must be some other able-bodied young men who could assist in his good works?’

  ‘Plenty. But they try to dodge the duty because Dad’s kind of … hard to help.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Maybe a little … overzealous? Kind of a caped crusader?’

  ‘Ah.’ She sighed. ‘Even as a frequent beneficiary, I can see how he might be a little … taxing.’ She raised both hands in a teacher’s time-out gesture and considered before she said, ‘Call Judy from here, to explain what you need her to do, then go sit with your father and call her again. Pass the phone to him so she can say “I’m so very sorry but I overslept, can you please drink another cup of coffee before you come to my house, so I can be dressed properly to receive you?” Judy will do that if you ask her, won’t she?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good. I think your father will find it touching that your girlfriend wants to make a good impression. While you do that, I’m going to call your mother and ask her to fix this day for you.’

  ‘She can do that?’

  ‘Watch and learn.’

  ‘You’re not going to go all Lucy-and-Desi on me here, are you?’

  ‘Nothing even remotely tricky. Your mother will tell him the truth about some problems she usually keeps to herself, like being stuck at home with three teenage daughters on a snow day. It will be a genuine distress call; I’m sure you’re not the only Campbell who had other plans for today. Now, hurry and make the call. Keep it short or he’ll be out here saying it’s time to go save the world.’

  Alice loaded the dishwasher and made a fresh pot of coffee while Stuart called Judy. Having no choice but to eavesdrop in the small space, she heard the girl’s first pleased reaction to the news that their plans were back on, sort of. There were quick, puzzled questions after Stuart said there was a job to be done first, and a lot of giggling while he explained the problem and told her the plan. When the conversation devolved into muttered endearments, Alice leaned across the dishwasher and pointed to her watch. One minute later, Stuart put the phone in his pocket and headed for the library, and Alice called Betsy on her landline.

  She called her again to say thank you as the two men stomped off her clean-shoveled porch.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Betsy said. ‘I’m about to take a nice nap, for which I thank you very much. Jamie said he’d blade off the hockey rink, and the girls are calling all their friends to go skating. What are you going to do with this long, quiet day? You got plenty to read?’

  ‘Just starting a novel,’ Alice said. She didn’t want to explain the price she had demanded of Stuart.

  ‘As soon as you finish shoveling out your girlfriend,’ she had told him, ‘can you go get the camera out of the newsroom and bring it to me?’

  Stuart looked up incredulously from lacing his boots, rolled his eyes to the sky and muttered, ‘Jesus, you have gone over to the dark side, haven’t you?’

  He laced ferociously to the top, created an elegant bow and said, ‘But you don’t need the camera. I put all the fire pictures on a thumb drive. Made two copies, actually, so I can work on the story at home.’ He sent her his blackest glare. ‘You sure you remember how the review button works? I kill people who lose any of my pictures, you understand that?’

  ‘I know how to work a thumb drive, for heaven’s sake. Show some respect,’ Alice said.

  ‘Oh, you’re going to play the aunt card now?’

  ‘No. I’m going to play the card that says everybody else in the family is getting what they want today and now it’s my turn.’

  ‘Oh, God’ – his ferocity wilted – ‘you’re absolutely right.’ He straightened, not easy with one foot bare and one booted. Leaning forward from the waist, he kissed the hem of her sweatshirt. ‘Beyond any question, madam, you are the best editor I have ever hired.’

  Alice laughed. ‘Also the only one.’

  ‘The best except for that one regrettable flaw: a tendency to carp about small details.’

  Jamie poked his head in, earflaps swaying. ‘You going to be ready any time today?’

  ‘Only one boot to go, Batman. Coming right along.’ To Alice he said, ‘I’ll stop at home right after Judy’s place and fetch your thumb drive, OK?’

  ‘You won’t forget?’

  ‘The force be with you, O hard-charging paradigm.’

  In the next few hours, after Stuart followed his father out and later ducked back in with the gadget she’d requested, Alice discovered that even very good pictures can become tiresome if there are too many of them. She didn’t know which files to look for and had to scroll through all the views of smoke and flame before she found the series Stuart had taken while he waited for his helicopter ride over the fire. There were thirty-two pictures in the set, taken from the ground around an arc of about two hundred degrees on the northern edge of the fire. No pickup appeared in any of them.

  After that, she clicked her way, aghast, through the long, devastating string of raging over-the-fire pictures that he had taken from his perch behind the pilot. She’d seen four or five of these before – the ones Stuart had selected to send down – but they still took her breath away on second viewing.

  Having all day to look, she scrutinized every one thoroughly, hoping to glimpse a dirty farm truck. She never did, but examined so many steeply banked turning shots into the very teeth of the beast that she suffered vertigo a couple of times and had to go stand on the porch for a while, staring at the motionless horizon, to combat nausea.

  She kept at it, scrolling patiently through scenes of devastation until she arrived at a clear, peaceful picture of a wood-stake and barbed-wire fence. She knew where she was then – Stuart had stood in the middle of the gravel road and shot a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, turning five degrees to the right between each click.

  Starting at the easternmost edge of the north side of the fire, he had turned toward its center, taking pictures consistently across the front of the inferno and out along the smoky edge to where the fire was pushing through the rocky entrance into Grizzly Gulch. Stuart’s turning camera left the fire there and continued its circle, across a ridge and down into mostly clear air again, around him on the graveled road.

  The pickup appeared in the twenty-third shot – a dark shape coming up out of a smoky draw, on a distant two-track along a fence. It drove west along the bumpy track, travelling a little faster than the camera, outlined against the flames as it crossed the picture. Its full profile showed in eight frames – a dark, dirty-looking farm truck with a long bed and dual wheels on the rear, just as Jonesy had described it.

  In every shot, the truck got closer to the right edge of the picture but no closer to the camera, still a distant shape with no detail. In the next two frames, the truck turned a little more southerly, disappearing fast. But maybe if it turns just a little more left … Then smoke obscured it for two frames. The last clear glimpse Alice got w
as tantalizingly close to a full rear view – she could see the license plate but could not make out the numbers.

  She copied all the truck views into a separate folder, sent them to Stuart and herself in an email, then attached that to an email to Sheriff Tasker as well, with a message that read, I believe this is the truck that Jonesy told us about last week – link to the Guardian story attached. Too bad the license is too far away for the numbers to show. Do you think there’s a chance somebody at the dealership could ID the truck? I’m of course available to talk about this if there’s anything I didn’t make clear.

  She signed off and went into the kitchen, looking for a snack – it wasn’t quite lunchtime but, working so hard with the pictures, she had burned up the calories from Jamie’s pastries. She was holding the refrigerator door open, reaching for an apple, when the phone rang.

  ‘Alice?’ Jim Tasker said. ‘Is somebody playing a trick on me or did you just send me an email?’

  ‘No tricks, just me. I didn’t expect to get an answer till tomorrow, though. Do you always go to your office on Sunday? Even in a blizzard?’

  He laughed. ‘Makes me sound like a fanatic. No, I just got sick of looking at the weather and decided to go out and see how it felt. We haven’t had a blizzard like this for quite a while, have we?’

  ‘Years. I can’t remember the last one.’

  ‘I had to put chains on my van to get out of my driveway …’ He paused and they both chuckled. ‘But then getting to my office was easy. Most of downtown has been plowed, but some of it’s already drifting shut again. Well, I guess you know that.’

  ‘No, I’m at home.’ She explained about maneuvering Stuart into bringing her the thumb drive. ‘I just got thinking about that helicopter story, and decided to pass some of this long day looking at pictures.’

  ‘Good for you. I see what you mean about the license plate.’ He paused, then cleared his throat. ‘Uh … the projector I’ve got here might be able to show us the numbers. You want to see?’

  ‘Oh … you mean you’ve got one that enlarges …’