Shattered Shell (7 page)

"Does it have a statement from Kara?"

"Yeah, I'm sure it will."

"Let's say I come over Monday afternoon to read the paperwork at your place. Will Kara be there?"

"Of course she will," Diane said. "Why do you want to know?"

"So I can talk to her after I read her statement."

Then it was like a sudden storm had attacked the telephone system, for the phone line was quite quiet and the receiver was like ice in my hand. No sound.

"Diane?"

"Look," and her voice was strained, "she's been through a hell of a lot, and I don't think having her re-interviewed is going to be that helpful. What's the problem?"

"There's no problem." I took a deep breath. "Look, you've asked me to do something. I'm trying to find this guy and I want to talk to Kara after I read the report, make sure that there's nothing there I've missed. Okay? I'm just trying to do the best I can, and I'm sorry if it's painful, but I need to talk to Kara."

A sigh across the phone lines. "I know, I know, you're right. Look. Can it be the end of the week, then? Give her some more time to rest up?"

There are the days when you feel like a shit, and I guess this Saturday afternoon was going to be one of those. "Diane," I said, as gently as possible. "You've told me before, on cases you've worked on, that each minute, each hour, each day counts. Do you really want me to delay this for almost another whole week?"

"No," she snapped back, and I tried to talk some more, and after a couple of one-syllable answers I gave up and we agreed to talk again on Monday.

I rubbed at my forehead after hanging up the phone, remembering again why I was doing something that was going to the very edge of criminality. Friendship. And I was beginning to get scared of what was happening to this one.

Later that night I scraped off enough snow from the back deck so I could bring down my telescope. With the tripod it's one bulky piece of gear, and I took my time manhandling it from the upstairs bedroom. I had on a quilted winter jacket, wool cap, and wool gloves cut off at the fingertips, and I was chilled setting it up outside. Astronomy is always a venture of trade-offs, and this evening was no exception. The night was as clear and as crisp as only winter can bring, which meant that the stars shone hard and bright, but which also meant that my hands trembled with cold when setting up the lenses.

My target tonight was in the southeastern horizon: the constellation Orion, the hunter. It had risen above the horizon, and the light pollution was low enough that I could make out the three stars in his belt quite well, thank you. It was even so clear that the red star in his upper left shoulder shone bright indeed, and the star named hundreds of years ago by Arab astronomers, Betelgeuse, rose majestically up with the rest of the giant. At his right foot was the blue star Rigel, and the mighty hunter's sword and belt were also clear. Above him and over his shield is the constellation Taurus, the bull, and the two of them had been locked in combat for thousands of years, as long as the race called mankind looked up into the stars and thought and fantasized.

With some work I adjusted the scope and looked below the three stars of the belt. There is an odd, fuzzy patch of light that is visible there, especially on clear nights, and I could make it out just fine with the naked eye. It looked like part of the "sword" that was hanging down from Orion's belt. But when I aimed the telescope dead center at the patch, something glorious came into view: the Great Nebula of Orion, also known as M42. The faint green patch was a giant cloud of gas and dust, and I bet I was the only person on Tyler Beach looking at it this cold Saturday night.

Minutes dragged by as I kept watch on the Great Nebula, and I admit I was entranced by what I was seeing, and even the cold didn't seem to bother me. It's easy to lose oneself while stargazing, and this night was one of those times. I thought about these same stars, rising each winter, and how they had risen over thousands of years of history and horror on this little globe. Desert nomads, ancient Mayans, medieval Crusaders, Asian Cossacks --- these stars had been over the heads of them all. The Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Greeks all knew this constellation well, and whatever descendants still existed ten thousand years from now, they would still know that collection of stars, the fabled hunter, forever staving off a blow from the charging bull.

Then I heard something, off toward the beach, and the trance was broken.

I breathed, stamped my feet, looked up, and realized that my back was stiff and my fingers were numb. I cocked my head, pulled lip my hat to unveil my ears, and listened again. The sound of sirens, far off. From an ambulance or a police cruiser, perhaps.

Or from fire engines.

I looked south, trying to see if there was a faint pink glow to the sky, marking another pyre, another set of dreams destroyed, another unsolved arson on Tyler Beach. Hard to believe, but the "liter night's phone call from Diane had packed up my fears about the arsonist and had placed them in the attic. I hadn't thought of I he arsonist once this past day and a half, and it was easy to see why. Too many crises had shut down the brain. I waited for another few minutes, waiting to hear my phone ring, and I was pleased with the continued silence. Earlier I had made an arrangement with the night fire dispatcher to call me if any suspicious fires erupted, and I guess I was getting a night off.

"So who elected you defender of the faith?" I muttered, as I replaced the lens caps and prepared to go back in. I slid open the door and stripped off the heavy clothing, and then dragged the telescope back upstairs. From there I went into my office and switched on a couple of lights, and on my desk, next to my Apple computer, was a thick file. ARSONS was written on the tab. I blew air into my still-frigid hands and powered up the computer, and I started printing some files. As the files printed I went back downstairs and made a phone call to Paula Quinn of the
Chronicle.
It was about nine o'clock.

Her answering machine picked up after the third ring, and I tried to make my voice sound cheerful when I left her a message, and then I let my frown come back when I hung up. Out on a Saturday night. Why not? Isn't that what most normal people did, instead of standing outside in the cold, looking at the ten-thousand year-old light from a lump of gas and dust? She was probably out with her photographer friend, Jerry Croteau, maybe having dinner and seeing a movie, and why not?

"Knock it off," I muttered, and after another trip upstairs to shut down the computer and put the newly printed sheets of paper into the file folder, I came back to the living room. I knelt at the fireplace and reached in and opened the damper, and then crumpled up a few sheets of yesterday's
Globe
. A handful of sticks and a couple of logs and one match later, I had a fairly nice blaze building up in the fireplace, and the heat warmed my face and soothed me. I sat before the fire, feeding in another log, just watching the flames crackle up, seeing the red embers form and fall away, just watching the entire magic of having something as dangerous and as awful as fire, trapped and tamed in my living room.

Well, my phone message worked, which is why on Sunday morning I was with Paula, but instead of meeting for brunch as I had earlier offered, she wanted to pay a visit again to the burned bones of the Rocks Road Motel. I pulled in behind her Ford Escort and we both got out and she came over, smiling, her breath forming little clouds in the air. The day was clear and cold, and luckily, there was no wind.

"Thanks for meeting me here," she said, smiling, holding a reporter's notebook in her gloved hands. "I hate working on Sundays, but I figured if I got this taken care of first, I'd then take you up on your brunch offer."

"Hungry?" I asked, knowing the answer quite well. Paula has a much stronger appetite than I do, and her body is quite efficient at burning off calories, something I wish her body could teach mine.

"Starved," she said, still smiling, with a look that reached in and tickled me in a quiet way. "Let's go see what's up."

Last Friday night this street had been packed with fire gear, firefighters, and the typical crowd that always forms at a fire. Today I felt as if we were extras in a movie that took place in some winter apocalypse. Except for a red Chevette parked in front of the rubble that used to be the Rocks Road Motel, ours were the only vehicles on the street. The other motels had their windows and doorways boarded up with plywood. It was so quiet that the loudest sound was what our boots made, crunching through the snow.

Yet as we got closer to the Rocks Road Motel, there was the fumbling noise of an out-of-tune engine, and I saw gray tendrils of exhaust coming up from the Chevette's tailpipe. Mike Ahern was sitting in the front seat, smoking a cigarette and writing on a pad.  He had on his yellow turnout gear and he looked up at us and then went back to his paperwork as we got closer.

"I needed to talk to Mike and he said this was the best and only time to see him," Paula explained. "I think the little bastard thought I wasn't going to come out here on a Sunday morning to interview him."

"I guess he doesn't know you as well as I do."

Paula smiled. "He should live so long," she said, and I had to smile at that.

Mike dropped the cigarette on the snow, looked over, and said, "So how come I'm so lucky I get two reporters bothering me at the same time?"

"Luck has nothing to do with it," I said. "Maybe poor timing, and the fact Paula and I are friends, but I wouldn't say it's luck."

He sighed, scratched at his unshaven face. "No, I guess not, the way my luck has been running. Well, Miss Quinn of the
Tyler Chronicle
, now that you've managed to corner me, what can I do for you?"

Paula had dug out her pad and pencil and then gracefully went into her work mode, a process I've always admired. "The usual stuff, Mike. When I was here Friday night, all you said was that it looked like arson. You got anything more firm?"

"Well, I could say that it's a probable arson. What else?"

"What makes you think that?"

"The normal signs," Mike said, smiling, as if he were enjoying this little give and take, and for all I know, he was.

"Such as?"

"Accelerant signs," Mike explained. "Look ... well, shit, let me show you. Come with me, if you've got the time."

"Oh, I think we can do that," Paula said.

Mike got out of the car, carrying a large black flashlight, his fire coat flapping in the breeze. He trudged across the snow-covered lot, packed down from the fire engine tires of two nights ago. The ruins of the motel were covered with snow, the blackened beams poking out like the skeleton of some huge beast. Most of the windows were broken and there were new NO TRESPASSING PER TYLER F.D. signs nailed to the walls. One of the signs was near a larger sign that said, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING SEE YOU NEXT SEASON! and we climbed through the open main door. Inside, the smell of burnt debris was still quite strong. Mike clicked on the flashlight as we entered the lobby, past sodden piles of brochures and pamphlets, each promising a wonderful time at sunny Tyler Beach.

"Watch yourself," he said. "It's pretty icy back here."

His flashlight lit the way through a dirty hallway, the carpet blackened and hardened in some areas with ice. At one point we had to do some fancy stepping, over some crumpled beams and ceiling tiles, and Paula tripped and I grabbed her arm.

"You all right?" I asked, enjoying the sensation of holding her.

"Oh, I'm just fine, but I'm gonna hit up the paper for a cleaning bill later," she said. "I've got ashes on me and I know everything's going to reek when we're out of here."

After a few more yards we were in an area that looked like it might have been a storage room. It was almost impossible to make out what had been there earlier, for everything was a blackened mass of objects, some fused together. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, and Mike switched off the flashlight and stepped closer into the destroyed room.

"This is where I think it started, and the state fire marshal's office, God love 'em, is inclined to agree with me," Mike said. "Care to guess why?"

I spoke up. "This is where you found evidence of accelerants --- something like kerosene, gasoline, or lighter fluid. The ignition point."

Mike nodded. "That's right. This was Mr. Keller's office, the owner, and he also used it for paper goods storage. Fire started here and went up through the walls, and by the time we got here... well, our guys would have been hard-pressed to save the foundation."

"Did you take samples from here?" Paula asked, notebook stuck in her hand.

"We certainly did."

"And the samples told you that accelerants were present."

Mike grinned. "Nope. The report's not back from the state lab yet."

Paula looked up from her notebook, eyebrows furrowed. "So how do you know that gasoline or something else was used here?"

He tapped the flashlight against the side of his head, near the burned tissue. "I used my eyes. Here, let me show you something."

Mike squatted to the floor and ran his fingers across the scorched and blackened wood. "See this? Wooden floor, looks all burnt to hell. Right? Intense heat and flames. That's what you see on the surface, but I don't like to just look at the surface. Watch." From his coat pocket he took out a folding knife, which he undid, and then with the blade he dug at the floor. The knife looked tiny in his huge hands. He pulled up a couple of long slivers, and undamaged wood was exposed from under the charred covering.