Guilty Until Proven Innocent (2 page)

She was right. I didn’t know one person in this town who I thought would be capable of murder. Well. Murder by arson, anyway. We have a lot of hunters in town, who come back after a day in the woods, a buck sprawled lifeless in the back of their pickup. They parade through the streets like they’ve taken down the beast, rifles slung triumphantly over their shoulders.

If it was murder by gun, I honestly wouldn’t have such a hard time believing it.

But Peter wasn’t like that.

After an uncomfortable silence, glances slipping and sliding all over the café it was almost a health and safety issue, Brent Fisher sculled the dregs of his orange juice, slammed it down on the table and said “How well do we really know our neighbors, anyway? How well do we know each other? The neighbors of serial killers always say what a nice guy he was, wouldn’t hurt a fly. That is until the bags of chopped up corpses are dug up from his backyard.”

As if the atmosphere hadn’t been uncomfortable already.

“You’re right, Brent,” Frances said. “Who knows what he’s capable of. Or any of us.”

After I flipped the lights off at the end of the night and Noah locked the front door, we left Bodecker counting the takings and we strolled down the empty main street, homeward bound.

“Peter couldn’t have done it,” I said.

“What?” Noah frowned at me, confused as I pulled him from his own thoughts.

“Set his house on fire. He loves Shana. Anyone can see that. And he’d never do that to his kids.”

“I guess.”

“So where is he, do you think?” I said. “It can’t be a coincidence that his house burns down and he’s missing, right?”

Noah shrugged. “I don’t know where the dude would be.”

“Did you see him yesterday?”

“Could have, I guess. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I don’t know what the guy looks like, so…”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “How do you not know what he looks like?” I said. “Peter.”

“Yeah.”

“Peter Gabarski.”

“Yeah man, I know his name. I’ve been hearing it all day. I just don’t know the dude.”

“He works at Darwin and Sons. He grew up here.”

“I dunno, man. I always thought that old guy with the pet raccoons lived there.”

“You mean Morty Lohman?”

“Yeah, him.”

“No, he’s over on Roman Avenue.”

“Oh.”

Noah wasn’t born and raised here, but he’d appeared on Bodecker’s doorstep looking for work six years ago. He said he didn’t belong back wherever he came from, but he belonged here. He was as much a local as anyone. I couldn’t believe there were people in our tiny edge of the world that he didn’t know. “You know Shana, right?”

He shrugged.

“Dude, she comes into Bodecker’s all the time.”

He stared at me, patiently. He didn’t even know
Shana
?

“She’s about your height, blond and it’s always in a ponytail. She wears cargo pants a lot.”

He held his hands up to his chest, cupping imaginary breasts. “Is she kind of lacking in the boobage department? Wears an ugly rugby sweater a lot?”

“Yes.” I said. Not how I would have described her, but to each their own. “Yes, that’s her.”

“Caramel macchiato,” he said.

“Come again?”

“She’s the caramel macchiato. That’s what she gets. And a dollop of irish cream.”

“Okay, well it was her house that burned down.”

“Far out.”

We reached the intersection of Main and Bridge and paused to say our goodbyes. We paused longer than every other night. Both of our gazes peered into the darkness down Bridge Street. The streetlights hadn’t worked in forever and I wasn’t sure there were even plans for them to be fixed. Maybe now that someone had crept around in the dark without being caught, they would be.

From the intersection, the Gabarski’s house down at number 24 looked fairly normal. The whole street did, like three people hadn’t lost their home and nearly lost their lives last night. The abandoned street was a big difference to the smoke, the crackling and orange shadows. To the danger and bustling activity of fire fighters, police and paramedics. Of rubbernecking over the mass of heads in the crowd.

Now it was just a street.

A street with room to move and take a good long look without the pushing and shoving and worry. The danger was over. I’d always wondered what a house fire really looked like, after the fire was gone. What sort of damage unimaginable heat could truly do.

“Want to take a look?”

Noah smirked. “Why, man? The excitement’s over. It’s just a burnt out house.”

“You don’t think that’s interesting?”

He scuffed his sneaker on the pavement. “Nah, man,”

“Alright. Later, then. I’m going in,” I said, heading toward the house.

“Isn’t it illegal or something?”

“How come?”

“Dude,” Noah said. “It’s a crime scene.”

“Oh,” I said. I guess he had a point. “Right.”

“Noah’s cell phone beeped and he fished it from his pocket. As he read the text message it illuminated a smile creeping onto his face. He started backing away toward Yarmuckle Street.

“Later, man,” he said.

“Booty call?” I asked with a smile.

Noah’s mouth fell open in protest. “Dude, it hurts me that you would think that. I have a high level of respect for the ladies. Super high respect.”

I nodded, watching him go. Then I repeated: “Booty call?”

He didn’t even turn around. Instead, he gave me a peace sign over his shoulder. “See you on the flip side, brother.”

I was right. Booty call. Or his mom. Whatever.

I strolled down Bridge Street toward the house. You couldn’t miss it. Mrs. P was right about the police tape around the house, it gave the house a wide berth, all the way to the front fence line.

The house was darker than its neighbors, even the ones with the lights off. There was just something inkier, blacker about the Gabarski’s. It was the soot. The front windows had blown out and black marks licked up the weatherboards, the fresh, once cream paint was now either blackened or a dull grey, the paint peeled and popped from the intense heat.

I sighed to myself, running a hand through my hair.

Scary. Thank God they were okay. Though who knew about Peter. I wondered if they had reached him yet, told him about his home, his family. That they were okay, but homeless. I ran the plastic police tape between my fingers, walking along the edge of the property. Where on Earth was he?

Sometimes he’d go into the city overnight for meetings and I could always tell when he was gone because Shana would treat the kids to burgers at Bodecker’s and maybe a movie at the drive in or bowling or something. She didn’t like being without him so she packed up the kids and spent the night with people, keeping their minds off wishing he was there. They were 100% the happiest family I knew.

I just didn’t get why he of all people would want to kill his family? There was just no way. That being said, there had to be a reason he was missing, a reason why he wasn’t by his family’s side comforting and protecting them.

I grimaced. There was definitely something off about the whole thing. As I took one last look at the charred exterior before heading for home, I wondered what the forensic investigators had found.

*

“Definitely arson,” Garry Saunders said, as he swung open the glass door the next morning. He limped on arthritic legs to his regular table with Mrs. P. in the silence his statement had created. The coffee pot hovered above Theo Pagoulia’s cup as I completely forgot what I was doing.

“Where’d you get your intel, dude?” Noah said, wiping sprinkles off the counter.

“Just spoke with one of the deputies. The new one,” Garry said. “Young fella with that stupid-looking patch of fuzz on his chin.”

“Macnamara.”

“That’s the one. Macnamara. Told me the arson team said there was no doubting it. The fire had been lit deliberately. In the living room, I think. That makes it attempted murder for sure, doesn’t it.”

“Poor Shana.”

“It has to have been Peter then, doesn’t it. I never would have believed it.”

“Here’s the proof, I guess.”

“I heard Darwin’s was struggling. Maybe he was getting the flick.”

“They were behind on their mortgage, too,” Mr. Windofska, the manager of Carringwood’s only bank looked guiltily at the edge of his table. He picked determinedly at a crack in the corner. “I shouldn’t be telling you all this,” he said, not looking up. “But it’s true.”

“Peter’s an insurance guy,” Garry said. “Any bets he had a hefty life insurance policy out on Shana and the girls.”

“Set himself up for life, knocking off his family.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said, putting the coffee pot on the counter. This was getting out of hand.

“That’s it then,” Mrs. P said. “Peter did it. I hope he rots in jail.”

The room murmured angry agreement. I couldn’t believe my ears. Who needed a judge, the jury of his peers had found him guilty. I was glad they weren’t in charge of the real investigation. If they had been, there wouldn’t be an investigation.
Peter, where the hell are you?

*

Within a week, the crime scene tape was down and rumor was that Shana and the kids were packing up the plentiful second-hand donated goods and meager amount of belongings they’d salvaged from the house and heading to Shana’s mom’s place in Kentucky.

With Peter in the wind, and nothing new to report, the gossip mill slowed down. Unfortunately for Peter, the investigators came to the same conclusion as the rumor mill: Peter was a wanted man. I didn’t like it, but at least they had evidence to back it up that was a little more credible than hearsay.

I never knew Peter that well. He was a decade ahead of me at the high school and tended to gravitate more toward the white collar folks in town, the people from his office, the bank and realtor. And other parents. But I had a relationship with him that no one else had. I saw him down at the lake sometimes, out before dawn like me with his fishing rod and bait, basking in the pre-dawn quiet time and bird calls. The time to think.

We stood on the bank in companionable silence, celebrating each other’s catch with a smile and a nod. Not friends as such, but we nodded, said hello to each other as we passed by in the market. I remember he sat by me in the town meeting one time and we spent the night muttering mockeries of the council to each other to ease the tedium of the obligatory snorefest.

And he never had any intention of eating or doing anything with the fish he caught so he threw every single one of them back into the lake to live another day.

Yet even his friends, his family believed he tried to murder his wife and daughters. For insurance money, really? I wondered what Shana thought, but she hadn’t been to Bodecker’s since the fire. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t been anywhere near the rumor mill. The unofficial headquarters of all things ‘Peter Gabarski tried to murder his family’. I hadn’t seen her at all since Paddy bundled her up in a blanket and sat her down on the back step of the ambulance with an oxygen mask over her face.

No. Wait. I had seen her since then. She was in the passenger seat of her cousin’s Range Rover, they drove past as I was mediating the battle between the key to Bodecker’s and the lock. She looked okay. Just…haunted. I imagine she was looking forward to getting to Kentucky, where she would be a stranger. Where she could breathe and not have the town buzz about it.

Soon she’d be gone forever with a fresh start. And Carringwood will be that little bit emptier. Die that little bit sooner. Population 199. At least until the house insurance claim came through. If it came through. I have no idea what happens with insurance in arson cases. I don’t have any.

Peter would know.

*

After closing that night, the sky turning from blue to pink to purple, I found myself standing in the middle of Bridge Street, in front of number twenty-four. There was a new sign on the door. I squinted at it from the street, but couldn’t make out the thick black letters, cast in shadow from the stoop. Glancing both ways down the street, I listened. Number twenty-two, the Tams were watching an action movie, light from the TV flickering against the blinds. Number twenty-six was dark, Ethel and Graham were early risers.

Across the street, the front porch light was off, Toyota was in the driveway and little Helen’s nightlight made her upstairs window glow purple.

Cars were bedded in driveways. Dogs were already walked and dinner had been delivered. Everyone was home, settled inside and away from the windows.

I hurried across the front lawn, past the singed rose bush and up the front steps.

Demolition. They sure weren’t screwing around. Soon the ugly tarnish of malice and terror would be scrubbed clean with a fresh new home. A home with no history, no messy stories the realtor would have to stuff under the new carpet.

A fresh new home that let the sunshine back into Bridge Street, into Carringwood as a whole. Put the whole town at ease again, made us feel safe. Made us forget.

Shards of glass littered the stoop from the broken front window that had blown out in the fire. Or Shana had broken out in her escape. Or the fire fighters had broken in.

I stepped up to the window and peered into the dark. The full moon illuminated the living room. Halfway up the once cream walls, they blackened and bubbled. The green and white striped feature wallpaper hung from the wall in strips. There was an unrecognizable lump of melted plastic stuck to the carpet in front of it.

I paused for a moment, considering. Then I just did it. It wasn’t a crime scene anymore, and tomorrow it would be completely gone. I gingerly braced myself against the weatherboards, finding a good handhold on the window frame, a section free of jutting spikes of glass, and climbed through the window. Lifting and sliding my legs, my body clear of the broken edges, I was in. I was in Peter’s old house. Shana’s living room. A former crime scene.

I was officially trespassing.

I didn’t know what to feel. I shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be here. But at the same time, I had to go forward. Who was I hurting, anyway? I stepped carefully into the room and let my eyes adjust to the severe darkness of the black walls and black ceiling. I spotted a puddle of light on the muddied carpet. Beside the light was a lump of white plastic, like melted wax. It was stuck good. Stuck in that carpet forever. Looking up, hunting out the light source, I laughed to myself in the silence. The skylight. There was a hole open to the sky now, with plastic having dribbled and dried like stalactites. Like man-made icicles in the middle of an inferno.