The Arsonist (38 page)

Neither of them wanted dinner. Frankie, who felt vaguely ill after all the cookie dough she’d eaten, had a glass of milk. Sylvia had crackers and
cheese and a glass of gin. She looked up and said to Frankie, “Do you realize neither of us has mentioned the fires, all day?”

“That’s true,” Frankie said.

“What an accomplishment for Alfie.” She smiled quickly.

At about seven someone knocked on the back door again. Frankie went to open it. It was Bud. He was back from Whitehall with his papers and about to spend the evening with his helpers inserting the circulars and ads into them. He said he’d stopped below, but they had nothing to report to him.

Sylvia offered him coffee or a drink, but he said he had to get going. They stood awkwardly for a moment, all three of them, and then Bud looked directly at Frankie and said, “Will you walk me out to the car?”

“Oh. Sure,” she said.

“Oh, yes!” said Sylvia, as though she’d been stupid not to suggest it herself. “Go on.”

The rain had started, lightly. They’d taken only a few steps from the porch when they turned to each other. He held Frankie so tightly that she felt small, she felt engulfed. “I’ve missed you so much today,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I wish I didn’t have this fucking civic obligation. I just …”

“I know,” she said.

“Will you call me?” He pulled his head back to look at her. His breath was warm on her face. “Anytime,” he said. “The office or the car or home. Just, if you hear anything, if anything happens, call.”

“I will.” Frankie wanted to stop him, to tell him she needed him, he couldn’t go.

They turned together to walk the few steps to his car, their arms around each other’s waists. “I told Davey that Alfie overheard what Sylvia said, about not loving him.”

“Because …?”

“Because it seemed to me all of a sudden that he must have heard her that night, and that he may not want to be found. That this may be, really, suicidal, this …”

“Yes? You think so?”

“I don’t know, but …”

They were by his car. He held her again. She could feel his lips, his
breath, on her hair, her ear. “Jesus, I’m sorry to leave you. For this ridiculous … chore.”

“It’s all right. Sylvia and I can’t think of a thing to say to each other, and you and I would probably just sit there, too. It’s just impossible, waiting.” She lifted her shoulders and tried to smile. “And maybe he’s fine. He could be fine.”

“But cold.”

“But cold,” she agreed.

“I could come back. This’ll be a few hours, and then …”

“I’ll call,” she said.

“Okay.” He stepped back, and she felt cold. She crossed her arms, hunched her shoulders. He reached out and touched her face. “Sweetheart,” he said.

She turned her face and kissed his hand quickly, then stepped away and walked back to the house, hearing the car start up as she went inside.

Byron Morrell stopped by again at nine or so, still with nothing to report, except that the helicopter had stopped for the night. After he’d left, Frankie lay down on the couch with another one of her father’s books. Sylvia said she would read, too. In the bedroom, if Frankie didn’t mind.

“No,” Frankie said. “No, of course not.”

And the next thing she was aware of was someone lightly shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes. Sylvia was bending over her, her face oddly pouched by gravity, by fatigue, saying, “They found him. I’m going in.”

“ ‘Going in’ …?”

“To the hospital.” She had her coat on, she was holding her purse.

Frankie sat up. “Is he all right?”

“He’s alive, anyway. Byron thinks he may have had a heart attack or something. He’s unconscious. That’s really all he knew. They took him in right away.”

Frankie was licking her lips, swinging her legs down. “I’ll come, too,” she said.

Sylvia shook her head. “No. No, no. You stay here. Get some sleep. I’m sure … I’ll call you, either here or at Liz’s, if you want to go back down there. I’d rather … I’d like to be alone with him right now.”

Frankie looked at her mother. Her face was firm, decided. After a moment, she asked, “Where was he?”

“Not far,” Sylvia said. “By the beaver dam. Curled up, under some leaves, they said. Perhaps trying to stay warm.”

“Yes,” Frankie said, though she was thinking that he was hiding, he must have been hiding.

Sylvia leaned forward and kissed her quickly. “I will, I’ll call, first bit of news.” She started to move away, toward the kitchen.

“Shall I … shall I call Liz?” Frankie asked.

“Oh. Yes.” She stopped. “Well, no. It’s almost four.” She sighed, heavily. “Well, but even if she’s trying to sleep, I suppose she’d sleep better knowing. So yes. Yes, call her.” And she left.

Frankie called Liz immediately. As soon as she got off the phone with her, she telephoned Bud at home.

“Frankie?” he said. His voice was whispery, sleepy.

“He’s alive,” she said. “They took him to the hospital.”

He cleared his throat. “Where are you?”

“Here. At my mother’s.”

“Can I come over?”

“It’s four o’clock.”

“How is that relevant?”

18

B
UD COULD FEEL IT HAPPENING
, the shift in Frankie, starting with her call to him after her father was found. He’d driven over to her mother’s house and stayed with her, but only for a few hours—he had to start delivering the papers at six. They’d gone upstairs to the guest bedroom and lain down on the coverlet, pulling the spare blanket over them. Frankie was wired, unable to sleep, alternately relieved, even excited, about Alfie’s having been found, and then worried about how he was doing, whether he would recover, and what this episode might mean for him, for his care, going forward.

Bud let her talk, not saying much. He drifted off more than once, but then would wake, wake to Frankie’s pressured voice. “I mean, don’t you think this is it? That he’s just got to have more supervision. That Sylvia … that she can’t …”

And Bud would stroke her arm, her hair, and make his noises of agreement, feeling a kind of sleepy joy. A joy that rode with him through the day—first delivering the papers, and then talking to Davey Swann to get the details of the rescue operation.

Even as he sat in his office in the afternoon and finished the article he’d been working on before Alfie disappeared—even then he could feel it: that she had let go of something that had kept her pulling away from him, away from the possibility of commitment, of staying.

In the evening, he drove over to her house—her sister’s house. She’d spent the day with her mother at the hospital, talking to doctors and sitting with her father. At Liz’s, he helped her push the furniture back in place and clean up. Then sex, gentle and conventional and sweet, they were both so tired. And in all of that, there was the same newly eased quality to their interactions that he’d felt the night before.

He’d come home at almost midnight. He’d thought about just staying over, but he was reluctant to seem to push anything, to assert any claim. And he was more and more certain he didn’t need to. He wasn’t going to need to.

So he was moving slowly this morning. He’d just made his first cup of coffee when the phone rang. He almost didn’t pick it up, he was so reluctant to start his day. But after three rings, he turned the radio off and lifted the receiver from its cradle.

The voice on the phone was Loren’s. He said, “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

Bud wasn’t happy to hear from him. Bad news of some sort, he assumed. “What exactly is it you’re doing for me?” he asked.

“This call. What I’m doing right now.”

“What’s the big deal?” he asked.

“We’ve got Tink.” Loren’s voice was thick with self-satisfaction.

“What do you mean, got him?”

“We’re gonna arrest him.”

Bud set his coffee down. “Who? Who’s going to arrest him?”

“The state police. They’re taking him over to Greenwood.”

“When did they pick him up?”

“Yesterday. They were waiting for him at the brother-in-law’s house there after Rowley was found. Took him down to Black Mountain for questioning. Had him there all day yesterday and into the night and he confessed.”

“He confessed.”

“Signed, sealed, delivered.”

Bud could hear how much he was enjoying this. “Did he have a lawyer?” Bud asked.

“He didn’t
ask
for no lawyer. He just confessed.”

After a moment, Bud asked, “After how long?”

“How long what?”

“How long were you questioning him?”

There was a pause, and Loren said, “I guess maybe twenty, twenty-four hours or so.”

“Jesus, Loren!”

“What?”

“This is fucked up. You know that.”

“I don’t know any such thing.” He sounded offended.

Bud told himself to hold it in. After a moment, he said, “So they took him in. Where?”

“They’re just taking him now. Greenwood. You get over there fast enough, you can watch it.”

“Okay,” Bud said. And then, not quite an afterthought, “Thanks.”

“I’m always looking out for you.”

“Yes, you are.” And he hung up.

So much for a slow morning. He’d been planning on getting Alfie’s story written. He’d been thinking it would be on the front page. Now it would be pushed below the fold anyway, and maybe farther back. This week would be all Tink. All Tink all the time—for the foreseeable future, anyway.

He rinsed his cup in the sink and got out some bread. While it was toasting, he called Sam Pitkin and Georgie Morrell to see if someone could cover the high school soccer game this afternoon.

The toast had flung itself onto the counter and was cold by the time he reached it. An omen.

And sure enough, it started to rain on the way over to Greenwood. Bud’s wipers were not all they should have been, and he had to slow down to see through the streaks they made on the windshield. He had the radio on, listening to the news, but mostly he was thinking of Tink Snell.

He’d gone back and forth in his own mind about the kid’s possible guilt. For a long time, as he’d told Frankie and whoever else he was talking about it with, he had thought it wasn’t likely. He’d thought Tink was too slow to have eluded the police and the arson investigators as long as he would have had to. But the fire at Sylvia and Alfie’s had changed all that, and Bud had been suspicious of him ever since.

And, it was clear, so had the various investigators, since it was after that that the serious surveillance had started. In spite of which there had been six more fires set. On the one hand this would argue against its being Tink who’d set them. How could he, with all that attention focused on him? Though it was also possible that he was pissed off enough at being so closely monitored that he’d been inspired to new heights. And
maybe there was an added element to his rage because people didn’t seem to have
bought
his heroism at the Rowleys’ fire.
After what I did to save the house, you’re watching me? Me? Fuck you. See if you can watch me set
this
one, or
this
one. Or this one
.

What Bud wondered was what might have happened if they
had
bought it, presuming Tink had been the arsonist all along. Might that have been gratifying enough to stop him? To heal whatever wound the fires were intended to serve as a poultice to?

Now, monitoring his wipers, trying to keep the white line at the edge of the road in sight, Bud let his thoughts float freely, sometimes turning to Frankie’s long white body coiled in the quilt last night, to her legs opening to wrap around him, to his sense of her new ease with him; sometimes to Tink, lost now for sure if he hadn’t been before.

The main room at the Greenwood police station was crowded—with other local newspapermen, with a dozen or so people Bud didn’t know, with folks from Pomeroy that Loren or someone else must have alerted. Bud saw Harlan and Gavin. Kevin O’Hara. A few others. Adrian was up near the front. Bud had come so late that he had to push his way over to the side of the room in hopes of a better angle. He’d brought his camera.

There was a stir at the doorway, and the murmurs, “They’re
here
!” “Here he comes!” And then he watched as three heads moved through the crowd, the two state troopers wearing their hats, and Tink, looking tired and confused, stumbling in between them, visible only in quick glimpses through the crowd. He was wearing his usual outfit, a plaid flannel shirt, jeans, work boots. He’d lost his jacket somewhere along the way, the jacket he’d been wearing in the search for Alfie. His hands were cuffed behind his back.

They marched him up to the counter at the front of the room. A man Bud took to be the arresting officer sat behind it, fat, tired-looking, his glasses swung up to the top of his head.

Yes, now Bud could hear him speaking to Tink, telling him he was under arrest. He looked up sharply, then across the counter, and asked, “Do you understand this?”

Bud couldn’t hear Tink’s reply. Or very much else the officer said after that. Enough to know Tink was told of his rights, and then several times asked the question again: “Do you understand this?”