The Arsonist (14 page)

There was a collective gasp among the few who hadn’t heard this news yet, and then a low buzz of conversation here and there as they took it in, as they, too, speculated on what it meant. It quieted as Davey went on to explain it: the Enrights’ place. Pretty much totaled, like the others. He said that in any case three fires were three too many. Someone in back yelled, “Louder!”

Davey cleared his throat, raised his voice. “We’re … concerned, I guess you could say, about this. We’ve asked for the state arson investigators to come in and have a good look around.”

There was another stir in the room—at someone’s saying the word
arson
in an official capacity, Bud assumed—and Davey looked up. His eyes moved around the room quickly. “Don’t anybody get worked up about this though. This is … precautionary, just to be sure.”

He drew a deep breath. “Meantime—” he started, but someone in the crowd called out, “Why’s the state coming in? Why don’t
you
guys have a look around?”

Davey was stopped, momentarily. He nodded a few times, as if to say,
Okay, that’s fair
. Then he said, “Well, the thing is, we don’t one of us volunteers know a thing about arson. Our job is just to fight fires, to put
them out. These state guys, they know what signs to look for. How to say where it started, for instance. If there were accelerants used, that type of thing. That’s something you need training for, and our training is just to be firefighters, EMTs, that kind of thing.” He made an apologetic gesture, a lifting of his hands. Then he cleared his throat again. “But what I want to suggest in the meantime is that you think about alarm systems, all of you, the kind that get tied into your smoke detectors. That way, the way it works, as soon as anything starts up, the smoke detectors trigger the alarm, and the alarm would go in to the alarm company, and then they’d call us. Just precautionary, but, for instance, in these three fires, if we coulda had that kind of heads-up, we coulda put them out before they did all the damage they did.”

Someone’s hand was up.

“Samuel,” Davey said.

Samuel Weed stood up, tall, tweedy, a great mop of white hair. Distinguished. A fine poet, or so they said. “Speaking of this alarm system,” he rumbled now. “How much would such a thing cost?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Meaning, you don’t have one,” Samuel said. He seemed amused by this as he sat down.

Davey sighed. “I live in town, Samuel. It’s different when you’re out a way like you are. If I was you, I’d get one. I’m just saying that if these three houses had had such a system, they might still be standing. Or partially standing.” His mouth tightened. “More of them than is now, anyway.”

Annie Flowers rose slowly, more or less
unfolding
herself to her full height. In her gentle, cultivated voice, she asked, “But why would
anyone
be deliberately burning houses? It makes no sense.” She looked around for an answer.

After a few seconds, when no one else had responded, Davey said, “Well, I guess you could say arson makes no sense. Unless there’s some motive like insurance?”

“Well,” Annie said.

“Are you suggesting the Olsens or the Ludlows set their own houses on fire?” This was Ed Carter.

“I’m not in the business of suggesting anything,” Davey said. “I’m saying it’s a common motivation.” He gestured. “Bob,” he said.

Bob Bigelow stood in the third row and turned sideways so that the largest possible number of people could hear him. “Not to say I’m an expert or anything, but I believe there are pathologies that result in arsonous behavior. Theoretically anyway. That it’s not necessarily something that does make sense to other people. My understanding is that it’s a compulsion, the expression of deep-seated psychological disturbances.”

Adrian Snell had turned to see Bob behind him. Now, without standing, he said, “Okay, there’s that explanation.” His voice boomed. “But there’s insurance, too. I bet half of arson fires are insurance fires.”

Davey said that it hadn’t been established that any of the fires were arson.

There was a silence. No one else stood up.

“So that’s what we’re doing,” Davey said. You could hear the relief in his voice, Bud thought—it was almost over, his stint. “We’re calling in the state arson squad. Plus, we’re going to have us a kind of skeleton crew at the fire station twenty-four-seven until we’re clear what this is. And Bob, Bob Bigelow”—he gestured—“is organizing a rotating night watch, with a group of men who’ve volunteered. Three men a night, just driving around in a couple of shifts. Since he’s putting this together, we’ll let him talk.”

Talk he did, for more than ten minutes, ignoring the various hands that had gone up almost immediately.
There are people who love a meeting
, Bud thought, and Bob was one. Though he was a kind man, Bud knew. And he sometimes wrote a thoroughly researched piece for the paper, usually a discussion of local flora or fauna—bird sightings, the location of certain rare mushrooms. Now he explained in detail how he and several others had come up with this proposal, and asked for volunteers to sign up after the meeting.

Others followed him. Louise Hinton was starting a list of rental possibilities for those whose homes had burned, so they wouldn’t miss the summer up here. Jay McMahon needed volunteers to clear the burn sites once the arson squad was done—haul away the debris and charred timber.
The town was making the garbage truck available for free, and there was a call for more volunteers.

There was an overelaborated discussion of timing and logistics for these efforts. Someone objected to the private use of the garbage truck, and there was a prolonged discussion of that and how it might affect the town budget.

Bud had been taking notes throughout all this—he was planning to use them for an article that would appear in next week’s paper—but at some point, he stopped. He looked around slowly. What was going on here? He was struck by the imbalance: the people talking, the people taking over the meeting, were summer people. It was true that a couple of the year-round residents had called out a question or two, but the others who’d stood, who’d asked questions or volunteered opinions or had their own agendas, were all summer folk or people who’d been summer folk and then retired here.

Sitting there, he thought that it was likely he hadn’t seen this dynamic before because he hadn’t seen this mix of the town’s population before. At the town meetings, especially the big ones in March, it was only the year-round people who came, who voted. And in the summer, the events were always organized by the summer residents, for the summer residents.

This was interesting to him, this meeting, because of the kind of
deference
, he supposed you’d have to say, that the year-round people were showing to the summer people and their projects.

As he was thinking about this, he realized that his gaze had settled on Frankie. Her head was tilted to the side, she was apparently listening to Bob, who was speaking again. But then, as if she felt Bud’s eyes on her, her head swung slowly in his direction and she met his gaze, still frowning in concentration, her mouth slightly open.

He raised his hand as inconspicuously as possible in greeting. Her mouth closed, she nodded and turned away. He watched as a deep redhead’s blush rose from her neck and flooded her cheeks.

Davey Swann was standing up again. “No one else?” he asked, looking around. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’m going to turn things over now to the police chief, Loren Spader.”

Spader got up from the third or fourth row, a large man, his belly slung like a bulging sack over his low belt. He came slowly up the center aisle, giving everyone ample time to view his backside. His uniform pants were wide and low, bagging off his butt. His bald spot was clearly visible. He came to the front and looked around thoroughly, nodding at a few people, palpably more comfortable than Davey. He had no notes. He stood to the side of the lectern, resting one hand on it.

“Okay, folks,” he said. “What we have here is maybe nothing. A coincidence. Or maybe just some kids, you know, a coupla pranks that got out of hand. Or maybe some kind of firebug thing that we need to be thinking about proactively. And maybe the state arson squad can answer some of these questions. But for now, here’s what I think all of you should be doing. First …” He paused, milking the moment for all he could get from it, Bud thought. “Stay in touch with your neighbors, and be watchful for your neighbors. If you’re going out for the evening, or you’re going to be away, okay?” He raised his eyebrows, looked around. “Let. A. Neighbor. Know. And let these guys on the fire watch know, so they can swing by your place maybe more often. That would mean calling Bob. Right? Bob?”

Bob stood again. Yes. Yes, he’d take those calls. He supposed that the procedure would be that he’d relay this information. He gave out his phone number—various people in the audience wrote it down—and said he’d pass along any relevant information he received to the appropriate patrollers.

Loren went on. Bud was watching him, taking in what he said, but he was fixed on Frankie, his thoughts were of her, even while he was recording what Loren was saying—asking them now to leave lights on, day and night. He talked about installing floodlights with sensors outside, about leaving a car parked conspicuously, even when you weren’t home.

“And here’s another thing. Lock. Things. Up.” He hit the lectern with his fist on each word. “At night, for example, before you go to bed, lock your doors. Lock your windows. When you go out, lock all the windows on the first floor. Lock the doors, okay? Let’s take this seriously. Let’s be proactive. Those are easy things to do, and you should all be doing them.”

Annie Flowers stood up again. “But I have never in my
life
locked my doors, Loren. Not once, all these years, all summer.”

Leonard Cott followed. “I hate to tell you, Loren, but we don’t even have a lock. We just padlock the doors when we leave in the fall, and then unpadlock them when we come back in June. So there’s our situation.” A self-satisfied smile moved quickly over his face, and he sat down.

Summer people again, Bud thought, making notes of their comments.

The smile on Loren’s face had changed in its nature, its warm condescension losing all heat. He was silent a moment, looking around with a half smile. Then he said, “Maybe you all need to make the acquaintance of a locksmith.”

Someone called out, a woman’s voice, “This is
not
why we come here.” There was something threatening in this tonally, inflectively, as if to say,
If you can’t manage this better, we
won’t
come here anymore
.

Everyone heard it. The room was quiet. Loren Spader’s smile had gone icy now. “This is life,” he said, nodding rapidly. “Get some locks.” He walked back to his seat.

After a long moment of surprised silence, Davey got up again. “Well!” he said brightly. “I guess we should adjourn, unless there’s anything else.” He looked around, clearly hoping there wouldn’t be. And it seemed there was enough discomfort at the way the woman had spoken to Loren, and surprise at Loren’s rudeness in return, that no one wanted to prolong things further. “Okay, then,” Davey said. “Bob will be waiting to collect names for a night watch.” He waved behind him at the table. “And Louise, too, if you’ve got a house you could let someone stay in for a bit. And Jay, to help with the cleanup, right?” He nodded in agreement with himself several times. “All right, then, we’re adjourned.”

Bud sat for a moment in the window as his neighbors filed past, talking to one another, occasionally one of them greeting him in passing. Some moved forward, to sign up with one of the organizers, but most were headed for the open double doors. The night was twilit beyond them.

As he slid from the windowsill he’d been perched on, Bud could see Frankie’s head above the crowd, and her swan’s neck, but he was pinned in place by the crowd moving into the open aisle between the rows of seats and the windows.

And now here was Loren coming out of his row, moving toward Bud. People were giving him space, undoubtedly because he’d startled them with his rudeness. Bud fell in next to him. “That was an interesting thing to watch,” he said.

“Fucking flatlanders,” Loren answered, not bothering to lower his voice very much.

“Hey,” Bud said. “Watch who you’re confiding your deepest feelings to.”

Loren raised a hand, part apology, part dismissal. “It is what it is. Still, I didn’t hear you complaining about having to lock your door.”

“Well, the thing is, I’ll have to find my
key
first,” Bud said. “I know it’s in there somewhere.”

Loren barked a kind of laugh. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “And good luck with those civilian patrols. We got fifty square miles of country in this town, and half the houses up some long, hilly driveway?” He shook his head. “No way they’re catching anyone.”

They were almost at the open doorway. Bud could feel the cool evening air.

They stepped outside. Loren raised his hand in a kind of farewell without looking at Bud again and walked away, down the steps and along the edge of the road. Bud watched him moving quickly up the road, past the clusters of chatting townspeople, to his cruiser, the only car parked on the grass of the town green. He didn’t stop to speak to anyone.

Now Bud looked around for Frankie. Gone. Probably just as well. He wasn’t sure what he would have said to her. He was afraid that whatever his opening, he’d come across as what he was—a guy on the prowl.

The light from the building fell on the last few groups of people still talking below him. Someone laughed loudly, and one of the groups broke up, people ambling off into the near dark in different directions, calling their echoing good-nights to one another.

Bud stood there alone for a minute or two. The air felt soft, fresh. The darkening sky was still a pale almost lilac blue at the western horizon. Behind him in the town hall, Bud could hear the clatter of people folding the chairs up, stacking them against the wall.

He should go back into the hot room and help. This was how he had
come to know people in Pomeroy, how he had made himself at home here—hanging out with people, joining a reading group, attending meetings of the historical society, of the school committee, of the Pomeroy Thespian Troupe. And volunteering, first at the school, where he helped with the student paper, then at the library, where he taught a tiny journalism class in the winter months.