Once Burned

by Gerry Boyle

  “Nope.”

  “You sound tired,” I said.

  “Well,” Roxanne said, “it’s been a tough stretch.”

  She paused.

  “Not for you, apparently,” she said. “You sound pretty chipper.”

  An edge in her voice.

  “I went to the fire. Tory and Rita’s house. Someone torched it.”

  “That’s one messed-up town,” Roxanne said.

  “Somebody else was just saying that.”

  “Who’s that? Your artist friend?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Glad you’re having these heart-to-hearts with her.”

  “It’s not like that, honey,” I said. “She’s just a source.”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “When are you coming home?”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “Soon, as in you’re on your way? Or soon, as in don’t wait up?”

  “In between. If you’re okay, I think I want to check on a couple of things. Is Clair there?”

  “He took Mary to breakfast at the restaurant at Knox Ridge.”

  “What? He left?”

  “I told him we were going shopping in Bangor. There was nobody around at all. So we left and then we got a mile down the road and Sophie felt car sick. So we came back home.”

  “Did you call him to come back?”

  “He’ll be back soon, I’m sure. We’re fine.” Away from the phone she said, “I think that’s enough brushing, honey. I think Pokey’s getting crabby.”

  “I gotta go,” she said.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “Me and Pokey,” she said. “We’re getting close to the end of our rope.”

  “They took Louis into custody,” I said.

  “Good,” Roxanne said. “The fire department can get a rest. You can come home to your family.”

  “I hope so.”

  “So where are you going now?”

  “Lincolnville.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter if I mind,” Roxanne said. “I can tell by your voice that’s you’re going. You’re like a dog on a scent or something. Your nose takes over.”

  “No, I can come home.”

  “Go, Jack. Talk to your people. They got the guy, so you’re near the end, right?”

  I hesitated. Roxanne said, “Oh, honey, no.” Then to me, “I’ve got to go. She slipped and there’s horse poop—honey, don’t touch it.”

  And they were gone.

  I leaned back. A log truck roared by, its load swaying precariously. I waited, tossed the phone on the seat, and pulled out. Home was north. I drove east. I was ten miles out when the phone buzzed. I picked it up and glanced at it. Lasha.

  The voice-mail beep.

  “Jack. I’m in town. Something happened that I think you’ll find very interesting. Call me. I’m gonna go do some more digging.”

  I put the phone down, thought of Roxanne, and drove.

  The house was gleaming white, with a screened-in porch on the front. Mrs. Penney’s Toyota sedan was parked loyally beside what I assumed was her husband’s pickup. I was out of the car, Mrs. Penney standing expectantly at the side door, when my phone buzzed. I looked at it: Lasha again.

  Mrs. Penney was dressed in khaki slacks and a white cotton blouse that matched her hair. Her lipstick was fresh, and she had rosy makeup on her cheeks. Gussied up for company. She held the screen door open and I followed her into an immaculate kitchen, scoured for surgery. There were photos on the refrigerator door. Cats—two of them, one gray and one white—were eating out of a bowl on the floor.

  “Company for me,” she said, then turned and looked at me hard. “My husband thinks you worked with him back in the old days. He said you might need help with an investigation.”

  “To write a story. But the same result, if I get the story right. Somebody gets locked up, maybe.”

  She looked at me. “You won’t make him look bad, because he never caught them?”

  “I think he’s a hero for trying,” I said.

  Mrs. Penney took a deep breath, pursed her lips. Her lipstick smudged. And then she reached for a door, opened it, and turned on a light showing stairs going down.

  “He was very organized,” she said. “If her name is Barber, it’s probably in the left-side file cabinet, under B.” She turned away and left me to descend.

  The basement was cool and damp, like the cabin of a boat. The dark green metal file cabinet stood by a dark green metal desk. The desk was against a wall. On the wall were a couple of plaques and a couple more framed certificates. FBI investigator’s school. The Institute of Fire Science. Scant recognition for a long career.

  The bottom drawer was A through H. Kneeling on the clammy carpet, I flipped to B. Inside was a folder that was thicker than most, the tab well worn. It said J. BARBER in careful printing. I opened it, saw transcribed interviews, some typed on a typewriter, some from a dot matrix printer, the pages torn from the continuous feed. I pulled a paper out, started reading: JOSHUA M. COE. DOB 6/5/68. INTERVIEW: BANGOR, MAINE, 10/18/93.

  I met the subject, Joshua “Josh” Coe, at his place of employment, Johnny B’s, a restaurant and tavern in Bangor, Maine. Mr. Coe consented to the interview being recorded.

  DP: How well did you know Julie Barber?

  JC: Pretty well, for, you know, someone you work with. Not like I hung out with her, like, outside of the restaurant. She was a little out of my league that way, you know what I’m saying?

  The phone rang upstairs, a harsh jangle. Mrs. Penney crossed the kitchen, said, “Hi, dear. No, it’s okay. Someone’s here. A reporter, looking at Dad’s files. . . . The Barber case . . . You know how hard Daddy worked on that one.”

  I tucked the file under my arm and slid the file drawer shut. When I stepped into the kitchen Mrs. Penney was saying, “I love you, too. I’ll call you right back.” She hung up, held the phone against her chest.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Penney,” I said. “I’ll be sure to return it.”

  “No, that’s okay. I trust you.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I think I have pretty good people judgment. Linwood did, too. Well, for his job, he had to know who was telling the truth.”

  “But he never found the truth in this case?”

  “Oh, I think he knew the truth. He just ran out of time. His work was everything to him, you know. He used to say, ‘What else would I do? I don’t make birdhouses, and I suck at golf.’ ”

  I took a step toward the door.

  “But I can tell you, Mr. McMorrow, he wanted those people. The ones who killed that girl. Our oldest—that was her on the phone—was about the same age, so it hit him very hard. He’d say, ‘The world’s not big enough for them to hide.’ Then one of them died, actually. In a fire, too. Linwood felt cheated, I think.”

  “Really.”

  “He said he wanted to use one to get to the others. He said, ‘He’s no good to me dead.’ ”

  “What sort of fire?” I said. “Accidental?”

  “I’m not sure. Burned up in a car, maybe?”

  “Did he say anything else when the one guy burned up in the car?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. It was a while ago. So much has happened. I just remember he said he had to hurry. He had no idea he was the one running out of time.”

  And then the phone rang and I said good-bye, hurried to the truck, got out of there before the daughter told her not to give Daddy’s files away.

  The road went past hayfields, a dairy farm, a smattering of mobile homes. I drove three miles, took a right, and headed down a gravel road that cut through grown-over farmland, small poplars and birches threaded with flattened stone walls. There was a muddy slash into the brush and I stopped, backed the truck in, and parked facing the road, like a dog protecting a bone.

  I shut the motor off. Picked the folder up and propped it against the steering wheel. Opened it and started reading,
from the beginning. There were reports from the scene, description of the house. The oven open. The evidence of melted wax. The two deceased found together, remnants of what appeared to be duct tape on their ankles and wrists, and the same adhesive in the area of their mouths.

  I flipped the pages.

  Report of neighbors hearing a loud explosion, then seeing flames from the house. A sketch of the room, the location of the bodies marked by X’s. Transcriptions of interviews. A neighbor seeing a truck leave the area at high speed; he wasn’t able to ascertain the make or model, but said it had loud exhaust.

  It was chronological, the investigation unfolding: Julie Barber, a part-time waitress and student at the University of Maine at Orono. Ross Lucas, a university dropout and bartender at Johnny B’s; had attended the university but dropped out. They were believed to have dated but she had broken it off a month before. Reported to have remained friends, Penney had written.

  More pages, a lot of repetition. And then, probably days or weeks into the investigation, the interview with Coe, then another and another.

  Penney was persistent.

  Weeks went by. Penney interviewed Julie’s friends at the college. They said she had been dating Lucas but had decided to break up with him. They said he was a bad influence. Julie stated to the subject, Lori Kay Poulin, that Lucas was doing bad things that scared her, and she was afraid she’d get in trouble.

  Then the first mention of Derek Mays, interviewed at his parents’ residence in Bucksport, Maine. Mays said he had dated Julie for several years, starting in ninth grade. They had split up when Julie had gone to college, so they could date other people, but were getting back together at the time of the fire. Mays hadn’t met Lucas, but understood Julie had dated him a few times, after they’d met at the restaurant. Mays stated that Julie had told him Lucas was a drug user and was also known to sell drugs, and this scared her. She had told Mays that she did not want to be involved in his drug activities, and thus had ended the relationship.

  A truck passed, a dilapidated pickup. The guy slowed and stared but kept going. I read on.

  Penney had a confidential informant. I guessed it was Coe, the waiter. The CI, identified as No. 2, said Lucas had been selling cocaine out of the bar, “usually grams, but a few ounces too.” He said most of his customers were students, but there were also some townies. The CI stated he did not know where Lucas obtained the cocaine.

  In a subsequent interview, his memory got better. I figured Penney was squeezing him harder. CI No. 2 reported that three subjects had come into the bar and talked to Lucas on multiple occasions. They were in their late twenties and early thirties. One had a teardrop tattoo on his face and Lucas referred to him as “Cheech.” The other two subjects were known as as “Kiko” and “Bear.”

  Street names.

  I flipped the pages, as I sat there in the brush. Affidavits. CI Nos. 3, 4, and 5. Penney working it hard. An informant saying he knew Kiko and Bear from the Mad Dog, a biker bar in Lewiston. Kiko’s real first name was Lester.

  Bear’s was Alfred. More pages. More interviews. Then real names. When shown photographs of Kiko and Bear, another subject stated that she knew them as Lester Pope and Alfred Potvin.

  I looked up, surprised to see the woods still there, the empty road. Plunged back in.

  Pope’s mother, Lucinda, interviewed at her home in Leeds, Maine, outside of Lewiston. She knew Bear. He and Lester had dropped out of high school together. She said she knew her son used drugs, “but denied he was violent or capable of hurting anyone.”

  Alfred Potvin’s brother, James “J-Man” Potvin, interviewed at the Maine State Prison in Warren, where he was currently incarcerated. J-Man was four months into five to eight years for aggravated assault and probation violation.

  J-Man admitted that he knew Bear. And Cheech.

  A car passed. This time I didn’t look up. I flipped the pages. I began to see question marks, scrawled hard in pen. Frustration with his forgetfulness?

  It took Penney six separate visits, probably working a deal that didn’t make the notes, but J-Man came through. He ID’d Cheech as Laney Watts. Watts was the next link on the supply chain, from Lawrence, Massachusetts. Cheech was the brains, Kiko and Bear, the muscle.

  “Here we go,” I said.

  They all worked with Lucas. Lucas knew college kids. He lined up a couple of them to bring in the other college kids, for a small percentage. Find a buyer for an ounce, get 10 percent. A few grams for a frat party, get a few bucks. Like a finder’s fee.

  “It was business, very smooth,” James Potvin stated. Asked if he could identify the university students who were working with the aforementioned drug suppliers, subject James Potvin said he only knew one by a real name. Tommy Stevens.

  I fell back in my seat. “Oh, my God.”

  I read it again.

  Then a third time.

  Then the next paragraph.

  Asked if he was aware of the whereabouts of Pope, Potvin, Watts, or Stevens, James Potvin said his brother and Pope and Watts all scattered after the fire. He said he believed they moved out of state, maybe out west. He said he didn’t hear from his brother or the other subjects after the fire. He said he didn’t know if they were connected to the murders. “I have no friggin’ idea,” James Potvin stated.

  I went back.

  Tommy Stevens.

  A student. That would make him the right age. The right town.

  Tommy. Tory.

  I looked out at the woods, my mind racing. Tommy was Tory. Tommy was connected to the guys thought to have killed Lucas the bartender and Julie Barber, who were said to have been dating. Don was Julie’s high school boyfriend. But Don/Derek couldn’t have known Tory/Tommy, could he? Don/Derek was in high school. Tory/Tommy had only a tangential connection to Coe, the guy who worked at the same bar as Julie. Another guy who was dealing drugs; like Tommy, a low man in the supply chain. But if Tory and Don were both connected in some way to Julie, then how had they come together after all these years? Did they even know? If so, did they commiserate? Were they accomplices in the Bangor arson case?

  And if that were the case, what about the arson fires happening now?

  I looked through the papers again, but they came to an end with a flight reservation to LAX. No notes in the file about what Penney had found there, if anything. Was it in a separate file? Would Penney even know? His wife?

  I reached for my phone, searched. Lester Pope.

  Waited.

  Hundreds came back. A professional skateboarder. An engineering firm. A guy who died in 1907.

  I tried again, pounding the keys. Lester Pope . . . Maine . . . drugs.

  A pharmaceutical company. A kid blogging about rehab. He was nineteen in 2010. Pope Francis.

  A third time. Lester Pope . . . fire . . . arson.

  I looked at the screen and froze.

  Typed Alfred Potvin . . . arson. Hit return. Waited. The results came up. I opened one.

  “My God,” I said.

  And then Laney Watts and arson. Same result.

  I fell back in the seat. Arson fires. All fatal.

  “He’s killing them,” I said. “Knocking them off, one by one.”

  35

  The stories said Watts died in Milner, Georgia, in 2008; Potvin in Camp Verde, Arizona, in 2002, just south of Jerome. Pope died in Ranchos De Taos, New Mexico, in 1995. All of them died in arson fires.

  Pope was found in the backseat of a torched car. He was identified by dental records. Potvin died in a trailer fire, the doors nailed shut. Watts had been shot in the leg, then burned alive.

  Don Barbier had been in Milner; I’d seen the electric bill. He’d lived close to where each of the three had died.

  But why all the fires in Sanctuary? Why not just go after Tory directly, I thought—but not for long. Barbier was playing with him, like a cat with a mouse. “This,” I said aloud to myself, “is his way of making Tory sweat.” The only question now was, why?

  I lo
oked out at the road, the woods, the raspberry brambles on both sides of the truck. Phone still in my hand, I started the motor and pulled out of the brush, weeds raking the bottom of the truck. I turned right, headed up a long upgrade.

  The phone buzzed. I answered.

  “Jack.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tory.”

  I hesitated, all of it still running through my mind.

  “How you doing, Tory?”

  “Okay. How are you?”

  His tone was slightly breathless, like he was nervous, working his way up to something.

  “Jack,” he said. “We have to talk.”

  “We are,” I said.

  “In person, I mean.”

  I hesitated. My turf or his.

  “Sure. I’m not near Sanctuary, though.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Forty minutes north.”

  “Split the difference?”

  “I can come to your office,” I said.

  “No,” Tory blurted.

  So he didn’t want Rita around.

  “The Quik-Mart on Route 17,” I said. “We can get a coffee.”

  “Awesome,” Tory said. “I’ll buy.”

  He did, two large coffees with milk. We sat down in a booth by the front window. Tory looked a little flushed, his skin pink against the blue Sanctuary Brokers shirt. His hand was shaking.

  “So,” I said.

  “Yeah, so thanks, Jack. I mean, for taking the time. I know you’re a hell of a busy guy.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “How’s the story coming?”

  He looked at me expectantly, like my answer might reveal something.

  “It’s coming,” I said. And I waited. He sipped his coffee, the cup trembling as it touched his lips.

  I waited some more. An old guy came in, green Dickies and a trucker’s hat. He nodded to us, went to the counter, and started choosing scratch tickets from the rack. The woman behind the counter waited, one eye on a game show on the TV on the wall. Tory glanced at the TV, took a swallow of coffee.

  “Spit it out,” I said.

  Tory smiled, looked at me with his full-eye-contact stare.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” he said.

  “I gathered that.”