Shattered Shell (19 page)

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "I thought I smelled something. Is the stove still on?"

"Damn, I think you're right," she said, getting off the couch. “I’Il be right back."

She went out to the kitchen and just as quickly came back.

“Everything’s off. You know, I'm smelling something, too. Let me I hock the hallway. Mrs. Wilson from downstairs, sometimes she has the habit of burning her evening meal."

Something was tingling along my legs. I couldn't stay still. I went to the windows as Paula went out. The smell was stronger. I looked out at the winter landscape, saw the streetlights and the dark stretch of ocean, and the houses, and the motels ---

Paula came back and I said, "Quick. The name of the motel, next door here."

"The what?"

"Paula, damn it, the name of the motel right here. What is it?"

She clasped her hands in front of her. "The Crescent House. Why?"

I moved over to her, racing for my coat. "Call the fire department," I said, fiercely proud that my voice was calm and not shaking. "The Crescent House is on fire."

She went to the phone and I ran downstairs and then out, breathing in the cold air, gasping for a moment. I ran across the poorly plowed parking lot, almost falling down once, and got to my Range Rover and into the glove box and came out with a flashlight. From the parking lot I ran down High Street, about fifty feet or so, the light bobbing ahead of me, showing me the cold pavement and the frozen ice puddles and banks of snow. The Crescent House was on the left side of the street and built in a U-shape, with two stories. Smoke was billowing out of a set of downstairs windows. The parking lot was unplowed and the lower windows were boarded with plywood.

There were no lights on at the motel, but that didn't stop me from going to the front door and banging on it several times, yelling, “Fire! Get out now!" over and over again. An underreported story but a true one: Many homeless in this part of the state take up illegal winter residence in the closed motels and cottages of Tyler Beach.

There was no answer. The smoke was getting thicker. I moved around again, shining the light into the second-floor windows, hoping that no one was in there slumbering through a day's worth of booze or drugs. I could now hear the crackling of flames devouring wood, plastic, and plaster.

To the side of the motel now. There was shrubbery and some trees, masking the rear end of the motel from its neighbors. The pool was surrounded by a fence and the snow was quite deep. I shone the light closer to the snow, my breathing harsh, my chest burning with a cold stiffness. No footsteps in the snow. I moved the light around. No arsonists skulking in the shadows. Not a soul. The smoke was still billowing out, the orange light from the fire now making odd silhouettes on the snow. It seemed to be alive, seemed to be bent on consuming itself and everything surrounding it.

"Lewis!"

I turned and Paula was coming down the road, coat flapping behind her, slippers still on her feet. "I made the call," she said, stopping and gasping. "They're on their way."

She looked over at the hotel, hugging herself. "Jesus Christ, not this one.... "

"You know the owners?"

She nodded. "Retired couple. Old Greeks, came here years ago. Used to let me and the neighbors use the pool. The Kostens. Oh, Lewis, this will kill them, I know it will."

I couldn't think of anything to say. Paula was trembling from the cold, and in her gloveless hands she held a reporter's notebook and a Canon camera. She brought up the camera and started snapping off the pictures. A true professional. Cars started to slow down, pull over on the street, the occupants getting out, gaping at the sight of an untended fire.

"Where are they?" she said, almost talking through clenched teeth. "I called them minutes and minutes ago. They should be here now, damn it."

I put my arm around her shoulder. "They'll be here," I said. "Time's just playing tricks with you, that's all. They'll be here."

But even as I said that, it was hard to ignore the gnawing discomfort I felt at seeing the motel merrily bum, with no firefighters or fire trucks in sight. In my mind I knew that they were moving as fast as possible, that they were racing to their trucks, starting them up, maneuvering the heavy vehicles out of the station house, setting off the lights and sirens, and beating their way up here. Bill something was tugging at my heart, wondering if Paula had in fact made the call, if in fact had she given them the wrong address, because, God, it had been so long since we'd been out there.

Tricks, that's all. They would get here. It just seemed so long because of the fire right in front of us, and in crisis situations, seconds and minutes pass like hours.

A window on the second floor shattered with a loud bang, the shards of glass tumbling to the snow below, and Paula yelped. "Lewis, is somebody trying to get out?"

I aimed the light up to the window, where dark smoke billowed out, rolling up into the winter sky. "No, I think it's just the heat. That's all."

And with that, I began to feel the warmth from the flames on my face. Two more cars pulled to the side of the road, and just as I was going to ask Paula if she was sure she had called the Tyler Fire Department, and not the North Tyler Fire Department by mistake, there came the far-off sounds of sirens.

"They're coming," Paula said. "Christ, I hope they get here in time to save it."

Again, I didn't know what to say. Fire had broken through to the roof in two places and it didn't look good.

More sirens, from up the street. She turned and said, "They must have called mutual aid."

"Or it might be trucks from the uptown station. But I think the beach station is going to beat them."

Then the sirens became louder as a corner was turned to the east, and I saw the flashing red lights and bright red strobes of the fire trucks coming up High Street. The sound of the engine and the sirens mixed in a loud clamor that seemed to rattle my bones. A fire engine was first, followed by a ladder truck, and at about fifty feet away the fire engine stopped. Paula said, "What the hell?" and I said, "Just look. They're laying out the hose," which is exactly what happened.

One of the firefighters leaped from a side jump seat as the truck started up again, and hose spewed out like thick spaghetti from a pasta machine. He made his way to a shoveled-out hydrant and went to work, as the pumper truck screeched to a halt in front of the motel with a hiss of air brakes. The ladder truck pulled in closer, and seeing the firefighters at work was amazing, how they moved and worked with a minimum of yells and calls to each other. It looked like a very complex, choreographed, masculine ballet. A fire lieutenant came out of the truck's cab, dressed out in bunker gear, helmet, air pack, boots, and white helmet, and moved purposefully over to Paula and me.

"Anybody in there that you know of?" he asked. Like most firefighters in this state, he had a thick mustache.

"Not a one," I said. "Place is closed up for the winter."

"Yeah, that's for sure," he said, turning with a weariness, pulling on his gloves. "You know, I'm getting too old for this shit."

As he went back to his crew, there was another sound of sirens, and I turned to see two more fire engines coming down High Street, racing from the uptown fire station of the Tyler Fire Department. It soon became very crowded, with people streaming out of the neighboring houses, draping on coats and blankets, coming out to see this midwinter disaster in motion. Paula mentioned something about getting some more pictures and blended in with the crowd of people, and I stood by myself, watching the firefighters at work. The aerial ladder had maneuvered over the roof of the motel and was drenching water from a deluge gun, and a crew had broken in through the front door, carrying a hose line, and there was a burst of steam and gray smoke when the water hit.

Tyler police cruisers had blocked off both ends of High Street and uniformed cops in winter jackets got some sort of crowd control going, moving us away from the crumbling building. I looked around but didn't see Diane, and I felt guilty at feeling relieved. It had only been a day since we last talked, that disastrous time in the parking lot of the police station, but it seemed like weeks.

But then I did see something that bothered me, that shouldn't have concerned me, but that still stung.

Paula Quinn, standing at the edge of the parking lot, reaching over to kiss a bearded man, burdened by his camera bag and gear. Jerry Croteau. Looked like a nice couple, and I shouldn't have been bothered, but I still didn't like the sight. I looked over again, and they broke free from an embrace, and Paula went over and talked to a fire captain from Tyler.

Then Jerry got to work, taking photographs of the buming building, the crowd of people straining in to see what they could, and the hunched-over forms of the firefighters, hauling in hose lines, moving deliberately and forcefully, as the flames began to get beaten down and the smoke continued to billow out. With each picture he took, there was a brief flash of light, freezing everyone and everything in their spots, and I marveled for a moment at the directness of what he was doing. In my so-called job as a columnist for
Shoreline
, I had to look at things and fight with words to come up with a meaning of what I was seeing. But with his foreign tool in his cold hands, the images were there, waiting to be captured, waiting for someone with skill and drive.

Sounded like a hell of a job, but it still didn't mean I had to like him.

I looked for Paula and couldn't find her in the crowd of people and not liking being with so many of my fellow residents, I started heading out. A small red Chevette sputtered to a stop and Mike Ahern came out, shrugging on a fire jacket over his thick shoulders. He saw me and said, "Hell of a night, ain't it?"

"Sure is," I said. He shook his head and opened up the hatchback of the Chevette and said over his shoulder, "You'll excuse me if I don't stop to speak, but it looks like I have a goddamn fire on my hands."

I nodded and headed back to the parking lot, when there was a tap at my shoulder and I turned, seeing Paula waving some paperwork.

"Here's the files I gave you earlier," she said. "And I'll save you some time."

I took the papers from her cold hands, a little voice telling me that I should offer to warm her chilled fingers, and instead I said, "The Crescent House. It's on the list."

A nod. "Dear God, it certainly is. A proposal to turn it into elderly housing, six months ago. Look, I've got things to do. We'll talk later this week."

"We certainly will," I said, and I watched her for a moment, walking back to Jerry and the crowd and the firefighters, her slim figure silhouetted from the death of another dream and business, and I trudged back to the parking lot in the snow, the grumbling of the fire engines echoing among the buildings.

Chapter Thirteen

On Thursday, just a few days after the Crescent House burned down into a pile of rubble, Felix Tinios called and suggested a drink and mid-afternoon snack. I said that was fine and met him at the Lady Victoria House, a pleasant bed and breakfast with attached restaurant and bar near the North Tyler harbor. In summer the French doors at the Lady Victoria are opened to the sights and sounds of the harbor, but on this day a bank of snow prevented the doors from being opened by anyone with fresh air on his mind.

We sat in wicker chairs, me with a cup of coffee and cheesecake, Felix with Irish coffee and some strawberry dessert that looked designed to clog arteries.

As we ate, Felix said, "Haven't heard from you since your meet with Diane, and I was just wondering. Are we finished with this rape matter, or are we going ahead?"

"Diane doesn't want anything to do with us, and doesn't want us to have anything to do with Kara."

Felix scooped a bit of his dessert up in a spoon, winked, and swallowed. "Nice answer, but not the answer to my question. Are we done?"

I had my hands clasped around the warm coffee mug, looking out the windows at the snow-covered landscape. The restaurant was doing fairly well and most of the people at the bar or tables were cross-country skiers, having spent the day across the road at a golf course. But I couldn't focus on the happy skiers in their bright colors or warm woolen clothes. I just saw a frightened woman, lying on a hospital examining table, eyes wide and teary, holding the hand of someone who loved her dearly.

"No," I finally said. "Not by a long shot."

"So where do you want to go next?"

"Eventually, we might have to go to her family," I said. "But first, there's two places to start. First up is Kara's landlord. He's the only other witness so far as to what happened that night, and I think he deserves another round of questions."

"Deserves?" Felix asked. "What do you mean by that?"

"A couple of things," I said. "Things that don't add up. Jason Henry is retired merchant marine, and I had to raise my voice for him to hear me when I talked to him."

"So there's a problem with that?"

"Yeah, there is." I looked around the room, which was filled with laughing and rosy-cheeked people, and I was quite envious of them, thank you. "The problem is, he told me that he was in his bed when he heard the sounds upstairs."