Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “Have you talked to Longfellow? Louis, I mean?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “For the record? That the investigation is ongoing. We’re interviewing residents of Sanctuary in an effort to apprehend the perpetrator, or perpetrators, of these fires.”

  “Same MO each time?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Use an accelerant?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Buildings targeted are getting bigger with each fire. Is that part of the pattern for an arsonist?”

  I knew the answer from the book, but I needed Reynolds to say it for the story. She hesitated.

  “We’re talking generally?”

  “Right.”

  “For a thrill arsonist, it can be.”

  “What other kinds are there?”

  “Insurance fraud. Revenge. Cover up another crime. Extremist.”

  “Like somebody burns down churches because they don’t believe in God?”

  “Right.”

  “But a series of arson fires like this. That isn’t insurance.”

  “It would appear not. But maybe it’s a setup for the bigger fire, the one with the big insurance payout. Make it seem like a thrill arsonist to cover up the real motive, which is profit.”

  “Devious,” I said.

  “It happens.”

  “But not often,” I said.

  “No.”

  “So in this pattern, if you have a fire every week for three weeks, do you expect another one soon?”

  Reynolds paused, then said, “Hypothetically.”

  “Right.”

  “The thrill arsonist gets a release out of it. Like a serial killer.”

  “The sexual thing?”

  “Small minority get off sexually. Some like the excitement. Some like to be the hero—report the fire, help put it out. It can be like that. It makes them feel good. But for the real thrill arsonist, the same type of fire over and over loses its effect. They need to get bigger. Riskier. More dramatic. Like drugs. You need more to get the same effect.”

  I was writing it down. She looked away for a minute like somebody out in the woods might be listening. She looked back.

  “Off the record, I made some inquiries,” Reynolds said. “I heard things about you.”

  “You left out the word ‘good,’ ” I said.

  “Guys at State Police in Augusta say you sure know how to stir up the shit. Direct quote.”

  “Oh, they say that about all the reporters.”

  “No,” Reynolds said. “Actually, they don’t.”

  A pause, the two of us looking each other over.

  “Detective I talked to did say you’re a man of your word, though.”

  “Keeps things simple.”

  “And you throw yourself into a case and you don’t let go,” she said.

  “Why throw yourself in if you’re going to let go anyway?”

  She looked around: the funky house with the cozy dormers, the woods out back, just the tops of the trees showing. The leaves were a delicate shade of yellow-green, the setting sun illuminating them from the west. From the house we heard Sophie’s cackling laugh.

  “Yours?”

  “Yeah. She’s almost five.”

  “Country life, huh?”

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  “I grew up in a town called Milo. Milo, Maine.”

  “Milo—A Friendly Town.”

  “You’ve seen the sign.”

  “Yeah. Is it true?”

  “Was for me, but I was from there.”

  I smiled. A red-tailed hawk passed over, scanning the woods. We both glanced upward, then back down, our gazes coming to rest on each other.

  “So you were in Sanctuary for what, two hours?” Reynolds said.

  “Maybe a little more.”

  “You talked to a bunch of people, succeeded in getting at least one resident all wound up.”

  “That was unintentional,” I said.

  She looked away.

  “Listen, I know I can’t keep you from asking questions.”

  “Nope.”

  “But I need to have people comfortable with me, maybe confide things they’ve been keeping secret, or maybe things they didn’t think were important. They give me a call because they like that fire investigator lady. And they trust me. Small town, Mr. McMorrow. Sometimes people don’t want to be the ones ratting out their neighbors.”

  “And sometimes they can’t wait,” I said.

  “So the problem is, when somebody like you shows up, asking the same people the same questions, it can scare them off. They see their name in the paper, the rest of the press starts calling.”

  “Can’t be the first time you’ve had this situation.”

  “No,” Reynolds said. “But I haven’t had a reporter so much like—”

  She paused, hand on her hip, the one without the gun.

  “Like what?”

  “Like me,” she said.

  “Huh.”

  A pause, the two of us.

  “Play sports at Bowdoin College?”

  “Basketball.”

  “Point guard?”

  “You saying I’m short?”

  She smiled. I was starting to like her.

  “So you don’t like to lose,” I said.

  “No. And I don’t give up, either. So, Mr. McMorrow—”

  “Jack.”

  “So, Mr. McMorrow, how are we gonna keep from stepping all over each other’s toes?”

  I thought for a moment, two.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Small dance floor, Sanctuary. It may be unavoidable.”

  “But we have the same objective, right?” Reynolds said. “To see that this person is caught before someone gets hurt.”

  “That’s your objective. I just write stories.”

  Her expression hardened. She picked up the pad and put it in the pocket of her cargo pants.

  “Be a lot easier if I knew we were on the same team,” Reynolds said.

  “Easier for whom?” I said.

  “For both of us, Mr. McMorrow,” she said, and then she was past me, walking to the Suburban. She hoisted herself in, started the motor, and pulled away, leaving a faint plume of dust that from a distance looked like smoke.

  8

  Roxanne was reading to Sophie, the sound of their muffled voices coming from Sophie’s room above me. I got a can of Ballantine from the refrigerator, went to the study. Flipping the laptop open, I sipped the beer, then sat and started typing.

  I started with the fire station and the chief, typed everything I could remember about him, the conversation, the building, his office. The guys in the truck outside, what they said, did, looked like. Then I did the same for Harold at the store, the guys at the meat counter, Lasha up on the hill. I was just a phase, like the house in Maine.

  I paused. Typed two words, uppercase. ALONE. LONELY.

  A lot of that going around, I thought. Beth. Ratchet—who could have been more alone than him? Lasha and this Louis guy, probably. Hiding in the woods. All the lonely people, the Beatles sang. Where do they all belong? The Maine woods.

  Back to work. I typed in my recollection of my conversation with Woodrow. I did the same for Davida Reynolds, paraphrasing the conversation. When we went off the record, I noted that. But it was all recorded. You never knew where the story might lead, when and if there would be another fire. Or where.

  I drank some beer, got up and went to the kitchen to the wine rack on the counter. I took out a bottle of Malbec, found the corkscrew, and opened the wine. Then I got a glass from the cupboard and went back to the study with the bottle and the glass and waited.

  I heard the bedsprings squeak—Roxanne getting up—and then her footsteps in the hall. I started for the stairs, met her as she was coming down.

  “She wants to know who the police lady was, talking to Daddy,” Roxanne said.

  “Davida Reynolds, i
nvestigator, Fire Marshal’s Office.”

  “She says she wants to be a police lady if she doesn’t grow up to be a cowgirl.”

  “She didn’t say social worker?” I said.

  “God forbid,” Roxanne said, and she brushed by me and down the steps.

  I went up to Sophie’s room, on the back side of the house overlooking the yard and the woods. She had gotten out of bed and was sitting on her toy box, looking out the window.

  “Hey, doll,” I said. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”

  “I’m worried about Pokey,” Sophie said.

  “Pokey’s fine,” I said. “He’s sleeping in his cozy stall.”

  I picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her down. Then I pushed her stuffed animals up beside her pillow: Mittens the Kitten, Teddy the Bear, Rocky Raccoon.

  “That police lady had a big car,” Sophie said.

  “Yes,” I said. “She carries around all sorts of stuff. For fires.”

  “So she’s a fire lady?”

  “No, she’s a police lady. She tries to figure out how fires start.”

  “Matches,” Sophie said.

  “That’s right. And we don’t play with them.”

  “No,” Sophie said. “Or we get in trouble.”

  “Yes,” I said. “People who play with matches get in trouble. But you need to go to sleep. You were yawning at the picnic table.”

  Sophie was looking away, her eyes narrowing. She looked at me.

  “What if there was a fire in the barn? How would Pokey get out?”

  “Oh, there won’t be a fire. But if there was, we’d go get him.”

  “What if we weren’t home? What if me and Mommy went for a walk?”

  “Well, Clair would get him.”

  “What if Clair’s way out in the woods? What if you’re with him?”

  “Mary would be home.”

  “What if Mary—”

  I put my finger on her lips.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” I said.

  She looked up at me, pulled my finger aside.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do, honey. Daddy knows these things.”

  She looked at me harder.

  “Then why did the fire lady come here?”

  “It’s for a story I’m writing,” I said. “It’s for a story about a town far, far away.”

  Sophie didn’t answer.

  “And now you and your friends here have to go to sleep so you can get up early and go give Pokey his breakfast.”

  “He’ll be hungry,” she said, and I kissed her cheek and it was soft and smelled of soap. Her dark curls held the faintest whiff of hay.

  “Good night, darlin’,” I said.

  “Good night, Daddy,” she said.

  I reached for the lamp and turned it off. The room filled with twilight and she was a shadowy face in the bed. I got up and went to the door and said “Good night” again, and Sophie whispered something. I closed the door—and heard the knock.

  It was downstairs, the side door through the kitchen that led to the mudroom. It was three knocks, then nothing. As I started for the stairs I heard three more. If it had been Clair, he’d have let himself in by now. So who? Davida Reynolds, back to ask more questions?

  I was halfway down the stairs when I heard Roxanne’s footsteps. She was crossing the kitchen. I was in the hallway when I heard the door creak open.

  “Oh,” she said.

  There was a muffled response, a woman’s voice. Not Reynolds. Not Mary.

  I was in the kitchen. I heard Roxanne say, “Oh, let me get my husband, Jack. He’ll want to meet you.”

  And then I was at the door, Roxanne with her back to me, a young woman standing on the landing outside the door.

  Beth, in the flesh.

  She was taller than Roxanne, thin, wearing a hoodie.

  I stepped up, stood beside Roxanne.

  Beth looked at me. She smelled of cigarettes. Her skin was pale, her eyes deep and sunken like in the newspaper photo, but now framed in crude mascara. The rest of her was lost under the sweatshirt, black yoga pants, dirty white running shoes.

  “So this is your husband,” she said, like I wasn’t what she’d pictured.

  “Yes,” Roxanne said.

  “And you have children?”

  Roxanne nodded, hesitated. “Yes. One.”

  “Boy or girl?” the woman said. I smelled alcohol.

  “Girl,” I said. “And you are?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Jack,” Roxanne said. “I should have introduced you.”

  She turned back to the woman.

  “Jack,” she said, “this is Beth. Beth, this is my husband Jack.”

  Beth held out her hand and I glimpsed a scrawled jail tattoo, scars, and scratches. I took her hand and she held on, kept her eyes fixed to mine.

  “Good to meet you,” I said. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  She sat at the table in the kitchen and I sat across from her. Her hood was still up and her hands were in her pockets and her eyes—dark, wary, predacious—darted all around. The counter and cabinets. The den and my desk. Sophie’s drawings on the refrigerator door.

  Roxanne offered Beth coffee but she said no, that’s okay. Roxanne put the kettle on anyway.

  Then Beth started to take something out of her pocket and I half-rose from my chair. She caught it and smiled. Took out a can of Budweiser and put it on the table. Sixteen ounces.

  “May I?” she said.

  I nodded.

  Beth opened the beer. Her fingernails were dirty and unpainted. The tattoo on the top of her left hand said RATCHET. Beside the name someone had written in pen, RIP.

  Roxanne was at the counter, spooning coffee into two mugs. Beth took a long pull on the beer, her throat undulating as she gulped. The kettle hissed. Beth put the beer down, rotated it with two fingers.

  “We need to talk,” she said. She looked up at Roxanne. “You and me. But Jack, can he stay? Sure. Why not.”

  It was like she was having a conversation with herself.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Beth smiled. I saw that she was missing a tooth, bottom right. I wondered if Alphonse had punched it out. I wondered how many beers she’d had when she’d set out to find us.

  The kettle started to whistle and Roxanne took it off the burner. I heard the water pour, kept my eyes on Beth, her left hand still in her pocket. Roxanne went to the refrigerator, took out milk, added it to the coffee. She brought the mugs to the table and set them down. She sat beside me.

  “You know, Beth,” Roxanne said, “I couldn’t feel any worse about this. I—”

  “Stop,” Beth snapped.

  Roxanne did. I tensed. Beth held up her hands like she was calming us.

  “Sorry. But please don’t tell me you know how I feel.”

  “I wasn’t going—”

  “Because you don’t. Your little girl is here? Where is she—sleeping? In some nice little room?”

  She looked to me. I didn’t reply.

  “My baby’s fucking dead,” Beth said. “He’s fucking gone. I’ll never see him again. Not ever.”

  “I’m sorry,” Roxanne said.

  “That bitch foster lady killed my little boy. That bitch, she . . .” Beth stopped. Closed her eyes. Took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Again.

  “I can’t do that. They told me. In anger management. They said think about your breathing. Concentrate on that. Let the fucking anger fall away.”

  She kept her eyes closed, did the breathing thing a couple of more times. Opened her eyes.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Yeah. I mean, I’m okay. Except—”

  She started to cry, a melting, sagging wail that began deep inside her and bubbled over.

  “Beth,” Roxanne said. She put her hand on Beth’s sweatshirted arm. “Easy now.”

  Beth started to sob.

  “I was trying. I was trying to be a mom. You remember? You re
member how I went three days?”

  “I know, but then you relapsed,” Roxanne said. “It was one step forward and two steps back. And it was dangerous for Ratchet to be there. Something could have—”

  “Dangerous,” Beth said, snapping upright. “Dangerous like what? Like one time I forgot to get his supper? Yeah, well, look at what this bitch did. I wasn’t fit to be his mom and then this bitch who kills little kids—how fit was she, huh? This fucking baby killer, this motherfucking piece of—”

  “Beth,” I said.

  She paused, out of breath.

  “Please don’t use that language here.”

  Roxanne looked at me, her eyes saying Don’t go there.

  “So we can talk,” I said, “but if you keep that up, you’re going to have to leave.”

  Beth’s mouth hung open, the gap showing. And then she closed her eyes and did the breathing thing. It was a moment of silence, but not in Ratchet’s memory.

  Beth’s hands were over her mouth, scratches and scrawling and the blue jailhouse tattoo. On the left hand, across from RATCHET, was ALPHONSE. The “o” was a crude heart.

  Beth dropped her hands. Looked at Roxanne.

  “Alphonse is getting out,” she said.

  “I thought he had two more years.”

  Roxanne looked at me. “Alphonse is Ratchet’s father, Jack. He’s in prison for aggravated assault and drug trafficking. He beat Beth with a chair leg. Broke her collarbone, bruised her lungs, and—”

  “And lacerated my liver, too,” Beth said. “He was wicked messed-up on crank.”

  She drank. We waited.

  “They’re letting him out to go to the funeral. It’s tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock.”

  “I see,” Roxanne said.

  “You think I’m pissed.”

  “You have every reason to be,” Roxanne said, “and so does Alphonse. But what you have to try to understand—”

  “But I coulda cleaned up. I coulda gotten my shit together. I coulda been a good mom, all loving and everything. Look at me now. I’m fine.”

  We did. She lifted the can and drank, a long swallow. Put the can down.

  “I’m totally clean. I coulda done it, you gave me more of a chance. Coulda had a nice place like this for my little boy, pictures on the refrigerator and—”

  There was a noise. A shuffle. We turned.

  Sophie was standing at the end of the hallway, her blanket in one hand, a stuffed animal in the other. Mittens the Kitten.