Bloodline (24 page)

And they were thinking I was dirty.

Everybody stood around at three in the morning and looked at the blackened shell that was my sole means of transportation, assuming Clair wouldn't let me take his John Deere to town. There was some spitting and cursing and picking at the bones, and then a man sidled up to me and said he was the assistant fire chief. He apologized for the fact that the chief wasn't able to come.

“Got a daughter in the hospital,” he said.

“No problem,” I said. “It was nice of all you guys to come out in the middle of the night like this.”

“No problem,” the assistant chief said.

He was forty-five, maybe, in shape and good-looking in a lean sort of way. A hundred bucks said he was a high school basketball star and married a cheerleader. A hundred more said their girls were cheerleaders, too. Married to volunteer firemen.

It was all very small-town, very endearing, and it left me wishing I truly was one of the boys. I wasn't.

I told the assistant fire chief the truck had been set afire. One look at the wreck told him it wasn't an insurance job. He looked puzzled for a second, then his eyes narrowed.

“So why do you think anybody would want to burn your truck up?” he said slowly.

“Good question.”

“Long story, huh?”

“Could be,” I said.

We stood there as the fire guys loaded their hose back on the truck. A couple of pickups revved and spun gravel as they turned and headed back down the road into the darkness. They beeped farewell to each other and waved.

“Lived up here long?” the assistant chief said.

“No. A few months.”

“You from nearby?”

“Androscoggin. Western part of the state. Before that, New York.”

“What part?”

“New York City,” I said.

“Got a son stationed in Plattsburgh. Can't wait to get out.”

“Don't blame him.”

He looked away.

“Live down there long?”

“Yeah. Until I came up here,” I said.

“What do you do here?”

“I'm a writer.”

He looked skeptical.

“What do you write?”

“Magazine stories.”

He looked skeptical about that, too.

“You like it here?”

“Yeah.”

“But you found some trouble.”

“Or it found me.”

It was a fine distinction to make, and I didn't expect them to make it.

In fact, I figured they'd tag me as one of two things. Either somebody who couldn't keep it in his pants and was scooping somebody's wife, or somebody who ran on the other side of the law. In most cases, there's a reason you know people who burn people's cars. And it isn't because you're a Boy Scout.

So the firemen went about their business and wondered about the nature of mine. Nobody said anything to me, but they all looked up when Poole arrived in his unmarked cruiser. I wondered if he confirmed or confounded their suspicions.

Poole got out, dressed in the same outfit—jeans, khaki jacket, plaid shirt, tan work boots—he'd worn every other time we'd met. Maybe it was sewn together. He put it on in one piece and his wife zipped it up the back.

He skirted the truck hulk and came up beside me.

“You couldn't sleep either?” I said.

Poole smiled, barely.

“It's the caffeine,” I said. “You cops drink too much coffee, too late at night. And you should watch what you eat.”

Again the smile.

“So what's your excuse?” Poole asked, still staring at the blackened truck.

“I've got a lot on my mind.”

“Bats in your belfry?”

“They're out,” I said. “But should be home soon.”

“So what'd you see?”

“Didn't see anything. Not a person, I mean. I heard a clang, not real loud. A minute or two later I saw flames. Came out and saw something hanging out of the filler spout, burning.”

“Rag?”

“Looked like it. Soaked with something, I guess. I went back to get a bucket and the whole thing went up.”

“Kenny?” Poole asked.

“I don't know. I can't think of anybody else I've pissed off.”

“Maybe Missy Hewett thought that, too.”

I stopped and looked at him. He was calm and inscrutable as ever, watching the truck like he was watching a dry fly flick across the surface of some pond.

“You think these things are connected?” I said.

“I don't know, Mr. McMorrow. All I know is, for a newspaper writer or whatever you are now, you sure lead an exciting life.”

“Not by choice.”

“I'm not so sure,” Poole said quietly. “These aren't what you'd call random crimes.”

“A kid who takes a dislike to me and decides to harass me? I didn't ask for that.”

“Nope.”

“A girl who gets killed in the city eighty miles away. I talked to her once in my life.”

“But she wanted to talk some more.”

“So? That's what I do. I ask people to talk to me.”

“And they end up dead.”

“Not they. She. One girl. And you don't know that had anything to do with me.”

“No, we don't, Mr. McMorrow,” Poole said, looking at me for the first time. “No, we don't.”

The “yet” was very much implied.

Poole stuck around fifteen more minutes and talked to the assistant chief. They talked in Poole's cruiser while I stood by the wreck and felt my ears burn. As I was standing there watching them talk about me, a figure appeared behind me from out of the darkness.

“You never turn your back on the night,” a voice said.

“Who said that?” I asked. “Dylan Thomas?”

“Clair Varney. And I think maybe you ought to start listening to him.”

“Why would I want to listen to that old coot?”

“Because it beats getting shot in the back.”

“Now that's what I call being damned by faint praise.”

Clair came up and stood beside me. He looked at the truck.

“I don't think it'll take a safety sticker,” he said.

“How 'bout an unsafety sticker?”

“We ought to stick one of those on you.”

We watched as Poole and the assistant fire chief got out of the cruiser and came back to my truck. They poked around the door next to the gas filler and Poole scraped something into a white envelope.

“Aren't you gonna dust it for fingerprints?” I said.

Poole looked over at me. His smile was so faint I could have imagined it. Clair watched, the old general holding his tongue. He said nothing as they poked and scraped. We both stood there as the
pumper truck started up and eased off down the road. The pickups went all at once, like a departing pack of wolves. Finally Poole waved over, said “Be in touch,” and walked to his car. Only when his tail-lights had faded into the darkness did Clair speak.

“I'm going to ask you something, Jack,” he said. His voice was quiet and serious. Almost grave.

“What's that?”

He hesitated and I looked over at him. His jaw was clenched, his face muscular, his hair full of silver glints. For a moment, I felt I could picture him in Vietnam, in the jungle, in the dark.

“Jack, are you into something that I don't know about?”

I answered deliberately, knowing full well what he meant. Was I a drug dealer? Was there a side of me that he didn't know? Was there some other reason why somebody would blow out my windows and burn my truck?

“No,” I said. “This is me. This is all there is.”

Clair nodded.

“Glad to hear it. And I apologize for feeling I had to ask.”

“Apology accepted.”

“I won't ask again,” Clair said. “What I will ask is for you to come down to my place in the morning. Mary'll make us breakfast and then we'll head out back. You can't just sit here and take this anymore.”

“Nope,” I said.

“There comes a time,” Clair said. And he nodded and turned and walked off down the road. I stood alone in the dark and watched him disappear.

22

I
n the bright light of a sunny morning, the truck was like something from a bad dream, a blackened souvenir of a nightmare. I walked around it, eyed the charred seat springs, the tires burned right off the rims. Hell, I wouldn't haul it off. I'd just take a picture of it and send it to Millie Tint. She could have it for her gallery.

Leaving the art world behind, I headed down the road to Clair's. The grass was damp, the trunks of the trees were dark and wet, and the leaves, orange and yellow and red, were like something hung out to dry. As I walked, a band of chickadees tumbled along in the brush beside me. A nuthatch gave a nasal
ank
and spilled down the trunk of an old broken maple, one that wore crimson like a dowager in an old ball gown.

For a moment, and only a moment, I forgot everything that had happened and saw only the pastoral dirt road, the timeless beauty of autumn in New England. Just call me Robert Frost.

But even the stillness of the morning and the palette of the woods couldn't keep everything away. By the time I hit Clair's barn, persistent little Missy Hewett had elbowed her way back into my mind, demanding my attention. I'm trying, I thought. I'm trying.

I went up the brick walk to the back porch, knocked once, and went into the kitchen. Mary, at the stove, turned over her shoulder and smiled.

“Mornin', Jack,” she said. “What did we do for excitement around here before you moved in?”

“Sorry about that. You wake up last night?”

“I wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Clair, rattling around in the dark, looking for his boots. Fun waking up to the sound of an old man cursing.”

“What's that, woman?” Clair said, coming into the kitchen from the shed. “God almighty, I'm barely old enough to be your husband.”

“Too old,” Mary said, turning a thick slice of French toast. “I'm gonna trade you in for—what do they call them? Oh, I saw it at the supermarket the other day. One of those checkout magazines. Oh, a boy toy. That's what they called it. Some movie star with this kid half her age, probably came to clean the pool.”

“Well, forget the pool then, if that's what happens,” Clair said.

“Were we putting one in, dear?”

“Yeah, I was gonna skim the lily pads off the farm pond. Get you one of those floating chairs with the holders for your drinks. Just keep your feet up 'cause of the leeches.”

“And I say you never do anything for me.”

“Take it all back, Mare. Take it all back.”

I smiled. Clair went to the counter and grabbed three mugs from their hooks under the cabinet. He poured three cups of coffee from the electric coffeemaker, handed me one, black, and motioned toward the table.

“Woman,” he said, “you've got a couple of very hungry men here.”

“Well,” Mary said, sliding toast onto a platter, “when I've finished making myself breakfast, they can see if there's any corn flakes in the cupboard.”

Corn flakes weren't on the menu. Mary served us French toast made with homemade bread, sprinkled with nutmeg, and doused with real maple syrup from the Varney sugar bush. There were fried Varney potatoes, jam and toast, a bowl of sliced apples and oranges, and more coffee.

I ate like a starving man. Clair did the same, and Mary dabbed at fruit and coffee.

Nobody said much. Mary said their daughter, Susan, in North Carolina, had called the day before and said it was 85 degrees in Charlotte. Susan didn't like this because she was pregnant, her first, and she was in the early stage where you feel tired and sick. Mary said she remembered it well, feeling miserable before their girls were born. Two summer babies, she said.

Babies, babies everywhere, I thought.

I thought of Missy, wondered when her baby was born. Did she feel sick? I made a mental note to go back to her mother. But could I go see her, now that I was considered some sort of suspect?

“You're thinking of that girl, aren't you?” Clair said, bringing me back.

“Yeah,” I said. “Kind of hard not to.”

“That's your trouble. You sit around and think too much. Your brain's pickled in its own juice. Let's go out back.”

I carried my plate to the counter and Clair did the same. I thanked Mary, and she got up and started clearing the table, while Clair grabbed a stack of paper plates from the shelf, a staple gun from the drawer, and went into the den off the kitchen. It was a nice room,
white walls and dark green trim and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf full of books. Clair went to the closet next to the shelf, opened the door, and leaned in. When he came out, he was holding two rifles, two plastic ear protectors.

He handed me one of each.

We went back through the kitchen to the backyard. Clair carried his rifle comfortably in the crook of his arm. I carried mine at arm's length, like a live bomb.

I followed Clair out past the vegetable garden and into the back field. Across the field, on the edge of the woods, a piece of weathered plywood was nailed to two cedar posts. Attached to the center of the plywood was what appeared to be a trash-can lid.