Shattered Shell (42 page)

"You've convinced me," I said.

“Great. Stop by the paper at around six. I'm trying to wrap up a feature story."

I said that was fine, and I hurried back to my rented room, hoping I would have enough hot water for a pre-dinner shower.

At
The Tyler Chronicle
, the back door was open and I went past the circulation and distribution area, past bundled copies of the newspaper. Most of the lights were off and Paula was at her desk, tapping at her computer keyboard. She looked up and smiled and said, "Just a couple more minutes."

"Fine," I said, and I sat across from her and picked up an old
Union Leader
and started flipping through the pages.

It felt a bit odd, being in a newspaper office after hours. It was like you could sense the distant echo of phones ringing, the keyboards being tapped and stories being created, and the nervous energy of news being gathered and presented. There was a slight sense of power in this room, and I'm sure Paula thrived on it, as best she could on her paycheck. Except for a few places, newspaper work doesn't pay that much.

"I ran into Mike Ahern the other day at the town hall," she said, staring at her computer screen. "Didn't say much. Just sneered at me. Damn him."

I turned the page. "Can't hardly blame him, considering what we were thinking."

"Well, I'm still suspicious," she said, her fingers flying. "Ever since we started sniffing at him, nothing's burned down in Tyler, Maybe we spooked him."

I smiled. "Maybe so." I put the paper down and looked over at the desk in the center of the office, which was covered with papers and film rolls and scraps of paper towel. "Where's your photographer friend?"

She turned away from the screen for a moment. "Urn, he's in Pennsylvania. Visiting his parents."

“Oh." Now the dinner invitation made more sense. I had done way too much sitting down these past few days, so I got up went over to Jerry's desk. I looked over some of his stuff and saw a collection of contact sheets. I picked one up. It showed a series of photographs of the last arson fire, at the Crescent House. Little snapshots of the disaster that Paula and I had witnessed. Pictures of the fire trucks, of the firefighters dragging in hose along the snow, and the crowds of people out there watching.

So many faces. Watching the hotel bum. Faces. Watching.

"Paula?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

"Hmmm," she answered, still typing away. "Almost done?"

"Yeah, why, are you hungry?"

I held on to the contact sheet. "No, curious. What do you know about arsonists?"

She stopped typing and looked up. "Besides the fact they usually do it for money or for thrills, and that this particular one is making my life miserable and is scaring the shit out of the residents, you tell me. What's there to know about arsonists?"

"Setting the fire is part of the adventure, but seeing the fire b where it's at. They enjoy seeing things bum, seeing the firefightors, seeing the lights and all the excitement. They get a kick out of knowing that they're responsible."

"Makes sense," she said.

"You trying to make a point?"

"That I am," I said. "Once the fire is set, they usually stick around to see what's going on." I waved the contact sheet at her. "Your photographer friend, besides taking pictures of the fires, also lakes pictures of the crowds. This is one of the contact sheets. You think you could get your hands on the others?"

She moved away from her desk, now nodding in excitement.

"I see what you mean. Sure, Jerry takes a lot of pictures, a lot. All we have to do is go through the contact sheets and see if there are Ilny familiar faces, faces that show up more than once. Hell, Tyler's a small town, but not that small. All of these fires, late at night in winter... we see someone in every picture.."

"Still feel like going out of dinner?" I asked.

"The hell I do," she said, standing up. "Let's get to work."

A while later we had moved into the newspaper's conference room and had spread the contact sheets out on the polished table. Paula had shuttled back and forth from the basement darkroom, bringing up black binders that contained the contact sheets.

"Jerry can be a bit of a slob, but he's a perfectionist when it comes to his photos," Paula explained, as she flipped through the stiff sheets of paper. "He keeps them all up to date and marks each sheet with the date and place that he shot."

Rocks Road Motel. The SeaView. The Tyler Tower Motel. The Snug Harbor Inn. The Crescent House. It was like looking at old autopsy photos as we began scanning the contact sheets. We both used eye loupes to help magnify the images, and we both kept pads of paper, writing down faces we thought looked familiar from one fire to the next.

As we worked there was a creepy feeling along my back, seeing all those faces, all that emotion and anguish and curiosity, frozen forever on this nine-inch by twelve-inch piece of paper.

A couple of hours later we were finished. The room smelled of old photo paper and pizza. We had gone into the work for an hour before we both realized dinnertime was slipping away, and Paula ordered us take-out pizza and drinks. The pizzas had arrived -- and I had made sure that I paid for them and tipped the delivery boy well enough --- and I had a plain cheese pizza while Paula had something called "the works."

I felt queasy as I saw her eat the mess of vegetables that was tossed across the cheese and tomato sauce. "How can you eat something like that?" I had asked.

"Easy," she had said. "I know pizza is fattening, so I convince myself that all of the vegetables I eat will cancel out the fattening stuff. Just like skipping breakfast means you can have a fudge sundae for dessert later on. Basic science of a woman's diet. Being a man, you wouldn't know."

Being a man, I had agreed, and we went back to work.

Now we were done, our eyes achy and watery, and my back was also groaning from the stress of bending over the table. The pads of paper were filled with scratched-out numbers and a collection of names, and the contact sheets had been placed into five piles, ready for their return to their binders.

"So," Paula said, stifling a yawn. "That's it."

"Certainly is."

"I gave up a good dinner and interesting conversation for messy pizza and three hours of overtime work that Rollie will never agree to pay for, and for what?"

I looked down at my pad. "For not much, it looks like."

"Yep. A face here and a face there, but there's no evil-eyed arsonist in the crowd, drooling with excitement."

"Your man Kyle shows up in two," I said.

She doodled on a pad. "Kyle Sinclair. Member of the zoning board, and someone who lived near the Rocks Road Motel and the SeaView. You'd expect him to show up. No mystery there, though I will check into it. It's the only thing we've got going."

"Sorry to kill a night."

She smiled that same damnable smile that could make something tingle inside of me. "Not to worry. It was a good idea. Here, let’s clean up and get out of here, all right?"

"You've got it."

Paula got up and cleared away the remains of our dinner, and I started shuffling through the contact sheets. As I returned one set I looked again at the series of photos for the Rocks Road Motel. 'The first three frames were scenic shots of Tyler Beach --- probably at the start of a new roll. Then a picture of the Rocks Road Motel, and then the subsequent photos of the fire engines, the spectators, the hoses, the burning building, and there, standing glum and alone, Mike Ahern.

Mike, on the job, just like in the other four sets of photographs.

I then snapped the binder shut, and as Paula walked out I froze and looked again at the Rocks Road Motel pictures, and then at other four sets.

"Damn me," I whispered. There it was, in all five sets. Paula came back in and I went back to work, my heart racing just a bit. A theory, that's all it was, but I wasn't going to say a word, I had struck out a couple of times before and had gotten Paula and me excited at the thought we were so close, and I didn't want to do that again.

But damn, there it was.

"All set?" she asked.

"Sure, let's get out of here."

Paula gathered up the binders and went out of the conference room and then downstairs, and I gathered up my coat and hers and walked with her to the back door. As we got dressed for the outdoors I asked, "Feel up to some coffee and dessert?"

Another quick smile. "How about a rain check?"

"A snow check?"

I opened the door. "Being polite, or do you mean it?"

She closed the door behind us as we walked out into the parking lot and then she was in my arms, kissing me and holding me tight, and saying, "There. Believe me now?"

I was cold and felt like a bath and my back was still aching, but it was quite nice indeed to have her in my arms. "Gosh, I guess I do, Miss Quinn," and I kissed her again.

She giggled and said, "Lewis, really, good night."

"Fine. Your rain check's safe with me." We clasped hands briefly as we walked across the lot. "Your photographer friend? Are things all right?"

She squeezed my hand and sighed. "Oh, it's all right, but there are these odd stresses and strains. I mean, it's hard going out with someone that you work with day in and out. Sometimes you get at each other's throat."

"I imagine his beard must tickle."

"Stop imagining so much."

She got to her Ford Escort and looked around the lot.

"Where's the Rover?"

Oops. Time for another quick one. "Engine trouble. I'm renting for a few days."

“Oh, all right. Good night, then."

"Sure." I got into my own Ford product and followed her out of the lot, and then she turned north to her home, and I headed south to Newburyport.

Yes, all in all, a good night. If I could just prove it.

The next morning I woke up stiff and sore. I had gotten back to my rented room and had yawned through a couple of more hours of surveillance. Nothing much happened except for a fight between two women, and when the pub lights had sputtered out, I went to bed. But there was a loud television going on from the room downstairs, and I suppose I should have complained, but that would have gotten me noticed. I didn't want any attention, not at all, so I tried to sleep with a pillow wrapped around my ears and I stared up lit the ceiling, and little things kept racing through my head. The scent of Paula in my arms. The contact sheets with their black-and-white secrets. Kara, shivering and alone in a hospital examining room. The damn snow and cold. Felix, winging his way south to the Cayman Islands. Me, alone in a smelly and dirty room in Newburyport.

I suppose I must have slept, though I would have been hard pressed to say when.

When I got up and did my morning bathroom routine, I sat on the edge of the bed, yawning and going through a duffel bag at my feet, trying to determine what to wear for the day. I was running out of clean clothes. I set a kettle of hot water on the hot plate for a cup of tea, and then I went to the window to check the weather outside, and when I looked down at the street, there was Doug Miles, standing all alone, outside of the Brick Yard Pub.

I went away from the window and burned my fingers, trying to get the kettle off the hot plate, and then I went back, sitting on a kitchen chair, looking at Doug through a pair of binoculars. He had on jeans, work boots, and a dull orange parka, and he stood alone, kicking his feet and breathing into his hands. He looked cold. He also looked up and down the street, and it was easy to see that he was waiting for someone.

Someone important, I hoped.

I quickly got dressed and I also tossed a few supplies in my duffel bag, and taking a gamble, I left the room and ran down the wooden stairs, making a hell of a racket, and then I walked across the rooming house's parking lot. I got into the Ford Explorer and switched on the engine and hunkered down, keeping an eye on Doug.

He was still there.

I left the radio off. No distractions.

Doug looked up and down the street, breathing again into his hands.

"Pretty impatient," I whispered. "Must be someone important enough to get you here alone by the pub. Someone who wants to see you, Dougie. Okay, then, who is it?"

The parking lot was empty, so he hadn't driven here, Dropped off? Or maybe he had spent the night in the Lincoln House. That would be funny in a perverse sense, if old Doug had cooped up last night and was the one with the loud television, someone with a sense of humor could have a lot of fun with that-

Doug stopped fidgeting. He put his hands in his pockets. A black Trans Am rolled by, and then glided to a stop. It looked like there was one guy in the car, the driver. Doug went around to the driver's side and started talking. Still hunched down, I lifted up my binoculars and tried to sneak a glance. Not much. Doug was shaking his head, talking a lot, moving his hands back and forth. I couldn't make out much of the guy in the car. Doug was blocking my view. Then Doug threw his hands up in the air and walked around to the other side of the car and got in.