Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  I wrote that down. Frederick and the deputy approached, the deputy giving me a hard look, like I’d dodged him this time. Frederick said, “We’re gonna have to talk.”

  “Anytime,” I said, but he kept walking to his truck, the red Tahoe still gleaming, the gold lettering glittering even at a fire scene. The radio blared chatter and static. The deputy put his cruiser in gear and sprayed gravel as he pulled away. Frederick followed. The birds called. Davida Reynolds walked up, her boots crunching in the gravel. She stood in front of me for a moment, then turned to look back at the burned barn.

  “Like a giant puzzle?” I said.

  “Oh, this is just part of it. In fact, in some ways this is the easy part.”

  “The how?”

  “Right. Now we need the who and the why.”

  Her dark hair was wet where it protruded from her blue cap, the curls stuck to her neck. Her boots and the bottoms of her trousers were covered with black grime and soot, and she smelled of the rubble. But her eyes were bright.

  “You love your job, don’t you?” I said.

  She looked at me.

  “You ask weird questions, Mr. McMorrow,” she said.

  “More an observation than a question,” I said.

  She glanced at me, turned back to the barn.

  “Yeah, I do. Each investigation is unique. A new case.”

  “So you solve the puzzle—and you get the satisfaction of putting a bad guy away.”

  “That’s the goal,” Reynolds said.

  “And in the process maybe you’re saving somebody’s life.”

  “If you stop somebody before they burn a house down with somebody in it,” she said.

  “I can see why you’d like it,” I said.

  “Most of the time.”

  I waited a beat, then said, “What’s with the fuse? Is that unusual? I thought most arsonists just poured gas on the place and lit it.”

  “Splash and dash,” Reynolds said. “Problem is, it’s almost impossible not to get gasoline on your shoes, your clothes, your hands.”

  “So this one is smarter.”

  She looked at me.

  “Is this how you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get people to talk. You get them chatting, figure out what interests them, what gets them revved up. And once the conversation is rolling along, you slip in the question you really want answered.”

  I smiled.

  “Don’t you do the same thing? With witnesses, I mean.”

  She eyed me.

  “Yeah. And I’m pretty good at it,” Reynolds said. “But I think maybe I can learn a trick or two from you.”

  “I don’t think of it as tricks,” I said. “I think of it as putting people at ease. And I’m generally curious about people, what makes them tick. Aren’t you?”

  “You’re doing it right now.”

  I shrugged.

  “The fuse,” I said.

  “That’s information we’re not releasing at this time. It would jeopardize the investigation, if the suspect knows we know.”

  “Right. But I know.”

  “So here’s where we come to some sort of arrangement,” Reynolds said.

  I waited.

  “How ’bout you leave that off the record until we make an arrest.”

  “What if that takes months?” I said.

  “What if I keep you abreast of my progress in the meantime?”

  “I don’t like to withhold things from the readers.”

  “But you’ll have a lot more to tell them if you wait,” Reynolds said. “In the long run, the readers benefit.”

  I thought about it. The smoke rose. The birds called. In the house, a pan clanged. Barbier putting on coffee?

  “You talking to anybody else? Reporters?” I said.

  “I will be later. They’ll be calling.”

  “They get the bare-minimum official line, I get the real stuff. But I don’t pull the trigger until you arrest somebody, or you decide you want something out there.”

  “Competitive, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do I get out of it?” Reynolds said.

  “I’ll be talking to people,” I said.

  “Like who?”

  “Like the people in town starting a citizen patrol.”

  “A what?” Reynolds said. “Oh, shit.”

  “They have suspects, you know. The Goth kid, the army vet out in the woods.”

  “I heard about them. Didn’t know about the patrol.”

  “The fuse,” I said.

  “Our agreement?”

  She peeled a latex glove off of her right hand and held it out. I took it and we shook.

  “Okay.”

  “The fuse buys the arsonist time. He—or she, but they’re almost always a he—can melt back into the crowd, be sitting at home, in the office when the place goes up.”

  “Unusual?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Goth kid and the army vet don’t have offices,” I said.

  “No,” Reynolds said. “They don’t.”

  “So your list of suspects—”

  “More like a list of all of the people who live around here,” she said. “Now we start crossing them off.”

  Reynolds threw me my bone. She took me back to the barn and showed me how she figured out the fire’s point of origin. It looked like stinking rubble to me, but she pointed to ways the fire had burned. There was talk of movement patterns and intensity, depth of char on the standing beams.

  “So you consider all of that and come up with the footprint of the fire,” she said. “In this case it’s relatively simple: The fire started at the base of the back wall. It climbed the wall, moved up the cedar shingles, and into the ceiling. Then it worked its way to the front.”

  We moved to the front of the building and she pointed to a charred beam, the back side more intact. “Fire went up and over,” she said, “then worked its way back down.”

  “All this old wood,” I said. “Must really go up.”

  “Not really,” Reynolds said. “People think that, but wood just absorbs ambient moisture. Once it’s dry, doesn’t matter if it’s from 1800 or if it’s kilndried stuff you bought last week.”

  I scrawled.

  “That’ll make some people feel better,” I said.

  “When you get to houses, modern construction makes a big difference,” she said. “Fire stops, drywall.”

  She kept moving, pointing at the mess with a pen. I stepped back and took her photo and she flinched but didn’t object.

  “So you’ve got your secondary heat sources. Here, it was stored paint and gasoline. But the paint cans are more burned closer to the rear of the barn. The gas was in the front half of the building, and that didn’t blow until the building was fully involved.”

  “Which all tells you what?” I said.

  “Point of origin.”

  “Plain English?”

  “Somebody set the back of the barn on fire.”

  “No accelerant?”

  “We’ll get the dog in, but I don’t think so.”

  We rounded what would have been the corner of the building, had it been standing.

  “I think it might have been a bunch of twigs and sticks piled up against the back wall,” Reynolds said. She bent and stared at a scattering of light-gray cinders. “Maybe some broken-up cedar shingles on top of that.”

  She picked with the pen, turned up a charred nail. “Shingle nails. From the burning wall? Maybe, but these are a foot back, may have toppled from the pile of combustibles.”

  “Light the fuse and—”

  “But we’re not saying that.”

  “Yet,” I said.

  “Yet,” she said.

  “But you’re ruling this a set fire?”

  Reynolds hesitated, composing her statement. “All indications are the fire was of human origin,” she said.

  We were back in the dooryard. Reynolds took off her cap and pushed h
er hair back. I had a flash of a girl who had grown up playing with older brothers.

  “So what do you think?” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Is this a thrill arson, or whatever it is you call it?”

  Reynolds thought for a moment, scanned the mess.

  “Same time of day, three to four a.m. Similar buildings. Another common denominator is that they’re out of the way, easily approachable from the woods. Arsonists tend to stick to their comfort zone.”

  “But getting closer,” I said.

  She glanced at the house.

  “Yes, we’re getting closer. So if it’s a serial arsonist, he may be looking for a bigger thrill. Lighting it up with someone sleeping in the house right over there.”

  “The risk.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Reynolds said. “Half the fun of doing something wrong is getting away with it.”

  “And then having your secret,” I said.

  “Why most arsonists can’t resist watching. Stand back and watch the BRTs.”

  “BRTs?”

  “Big red trucks,” she said.

  I pictured the crowd. Eve and her kids. The real estate couple, Tory and Rita. Barbier—but it was his barn. Random others drawn to the most exciting thing happening in Sanctuary that morning.

  “The Goth kid, Woodrow, wasn’t here. The crazy vet.”

  “I never said they were suspects,” Reynolds said.

  “But the people here—”

  “—aren’t investigating these fires,” she said. “I am.”

  “They’re going to be doing their own patrols,” I said.

  Reynolds frowned.

  “Yeah, well . . . we’d rather leave law enforcement to law enforcement,” she said.

  I smiled.

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  I drove out to the road, headed north. There were cars moving slowly in front of me and I eased back, slipped my phone out, tried Roxanne.

  The phone beeped. No service. I tried twice more on the way back to the center of town, finally connected as I approached the common.

  No answer.

  I tried her cell. It went to voice mail. I said I was checking in, to call when she had a chance. I pulled into the lot in front of the general store and parked. Tried Clair’s house. No one picked up. I tried Clair’s cell, left a message.

  I sat for a minute, then took out my notebook and flipped through the pages. I found the best quotes, filled in the places where my shorthand hadn’t kept up. Some quotes got stars. Some were underlined. Some were both.

  I considered what I had: Reynolds confirming the arson. Barbier saying he thought Sanctuary was a nice New England town, Eve saying she was worried about being home alone, Tory talking about the community patrol.

  I tried to anticipate Kerry’s questions: They’re going to just drive around all night? Will they be armed? How do they know where to go? Who are these suspects? Can we get someone to say that they have some? At some point, we should talk to this veteran guy. You went off the record with this investigator person? Oh, Jack, I wish you hadn’t told me that. You know how I feel about withholding information from the readers.

  I frowned, looked out at the store. A few people were coming and going, stopping for coffee, a newspaper. The first two or three I didn’t recognize. Tradesmen types getting into pickups. And then the blue Audi rolled up and Russell from the Think Tank got out.

  I cut him off at the door.

  “Russell,” I said.

  He turned and stopped, looked at me and said, “New York Times.”

  “Yes. Jack McMorrow.”

  “Must be a slow news day,” Russell said, “the Times covering Sanctuary, Maine.”

  “No, I think it’s a good story,” I said.

  “The pumpkin festival?” he said, with a patronizing grin. He was a smug sort of fellow, in his pink Brooks Brothers polo shirt, iron-gray hair combed straight back.

  “The arson fires,” I said. “The citizen patrol.”

  The grin fell away. A guy came out of the door with a coffee and we stepped aside. Russell kept stepping and I stayed with him. He looked around the parking lot like we were exchanging classified information.

  “Yeah, well, we’d like to keep that on the down low,” he said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You don’t divulge your field strategy to the enemy,” he said.

  “Is that the way you think of it? A military campaign?”

  “Is this off the record?” Russell said.

  Here we go again, I thought.

  “Do you want it to be?”

  “I try to keep a low profile,” he said. “Google, you know.”

  “You don’t want your past coming back to haunt you?”

  “In a word, no,” Russell said. “And I’m not the one running the operation.”

  “Who is?”

  “I’m not in a position to reveal that.”

  “Who is in a position?”

  “I can’t say. Maybe I could take your number and pass it on. No promises.”

  “What is this? Pakistan? Covert ops?”

  He shrugged, gave me a knowing smile.

  “Okay,” I said. “How ’bout if I just attribute this to someone familiar with the patrol planning?”

  Russell took a couple of steps, turned away from the store entrance. I did the same.

  “I just want to get it right, Russell,” I said. “If it’s not you, I may have to use a less-reliable source.”

  He took a deep breath, looked left and right.

  “I’m writing the story either way,” I said.

  Another breath. Another sideways glance. When he spoke it was out of the side of his mouth, like someone might read his lips.

  “Okay, Mr. McMorrow,” Russell said. “Ask your questions.”

  “There are patrols planned?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many people involved?”

  “On the ground, a dozen. Maybe more.”

  I paused and scrawled, getting it down verbatim.

  “When do you begin?”

  “Soon.”

  “Will you be armed?”

  “No comment.”

  “Will you be targeting any particular individuals?”

  “No comment.”

  “Why not leave it to the police?”

  “This country was founded by people who protected their own rights. We’re just doing the same. And law enforcement in this area is terribly overburdened.”

  “So is this a militia?”

  “That’s a loaded word. This is just a group of concerned citizens trying to protect lives and property.”

  “So what will you do if you come upon a suspect?”

  “There are protocols,” Russell said.

  “Hold the person for the police?”

  “That’s a situational decision.”

  “What’s that mean in English?”

  “There are protocols,” he said, “but they have to be flexible. For the safety of the patrol personnel.”

  “So your guys are prepared to defend themselves.”

  “To not do so would be irresponsible.”

  I wrote that down. He waited, eyes darting all around like he was Jason Bourne. The spy come in from the cold? These ex-CIA types were slippery.

  “One last question, Russell,” I said.

  He gave me a quick nod.

  “What’s your last name?”

  “I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not for print. I just need to know who I’m talking to,” I said.

  “Then just Russell is fine,” he said, and he turned and walked to the door and went into the store.

  I waited a minute and followed him. Inside, I could see him at the back of the aisle, by the meat counter. There was a teenage girl at the register and I turned to her and smiled. She was leaning against the counter in her green Sanctuary General Store apron. She smiled back.

  “You know Russel
l, right?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “You know his last name?”

  “Yeah—Witkin.”

  “Thanks,” I said. And I turned and walked out the door.

  11

  “Ten to one he was a pencil pusher,” Clair said.

  “He and his buddies are going to be pistol pushers now,” I said.

  “Just what you need, middle of the night—civilians with firearms rousting an Iraq vet with PTSD.”

  “I’m not betting on this Witkin guy surviving that firefight.”

  “No,” Clair said. “That wouldn’t be smart money.”

  I had just rolled in and we were leaning against the fence of the paddock out behind his barn. Roxanne was standing in the center of the ring and had Pokey on a long tether. Pokey was plodding along like he was pulling a plow. Sophie, crouched on Pokey’s back, hung on like it was the Preakness.

  “Faster, Pokey,” she said. “Do your gallop.”

  Pokey hadn’t galloped since President Bush. The first one.

  “This is fine for now, honey,” Roxanne said. “We don’t want Pokey to wear himself out.”

  Little chance of that, but we erred on the side of caution.

  “No calls?” I said.

  “Don’t know,” Clair said. “Been out here most of the morning. Take her mind off sad things.”

  “Working?”

  “Hard to be sad when the little one’s so darned happy,” Clair said.

  “Luck of the draw,” I said.

  “Yes,” Clair said. “In the grand scheme, Sophie hit the jackpot.”

  He looked at me.

  “With Roxanne for a mom, I mean.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Pokey walked on in his circular path, like he was attached to a winch and hauling up an anchor. Sophie leaned back in her saddle, held the reins in front of her. Roxanne said, “That’s right. Just relax.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “It should be long over,” I said. “The memorial service.”

  “Right. Where was it?”

  “Gardiner.”

  “Poor kid,” Clair said.

  “No jackpot for him,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “In the random crapshoot, he lost. Not right. Not right at all. And no way to fix it.”