The Siege (6 page)

Barbara nodded, and a small scowl appeared on her face. “I sure do,” she said softly. “I remember us arguing like cats over who was going to get it.”

Donna nodded. “Yeah, well, I figured now that I don’t have any place to live, and you’re so settled here…”

Barbara snorted. “Hell, I don’t think blasting powder will get us out of this town.”

“I decided to let you have it,” Donna said. Then, swallowing with difficulty, she added, “And I wanted to apologize for being such an asshole about it.”

“Oh, you don’t have to apologize,” Barbara said warmly. “I know how much that lamp meant to both of us, and I think we both just kinda used it to focus everything we were feeling about Mom and Dad being gone. Tell you what. You can use it in your room for as long as you like.”

Donna shook her head. “You have to use it in the living room where everyone can see it. Otherwise, I’ll take it back. Another thing I’m going to do, too. I’ll give you the money so you can finally get this driveway blacktopped.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t,” Donna said. “But I’ve been hearing you say you’re going to get that done for years now, and I figure, since you insist you won’t take any rent from me, that it’ll be one thing I can do to help you guys out.”

Barbara shrugged and cast a furtive glance at the gravel-strewn driveway. “Well, it
is
something I’ve wanted done for a long time.”

“It’s settled, then,” Donna said. “Call someone this afternoon and have them start tomorrow morning.” Bending down, she gripped a suitcase handle in each hand and, grunting, hefted them and started up the walkway toward the house. Barbara followed behind her with the box with the lamp in it.

After three more trips, the car was unloaded. Donna felt a measure of relief that that was all. After Brad had left her, she had quit her job at John Hancock in Boston, sublet her apartment until her lease expired, and sold most of her clothes and furniture to a secondhand store in Chelsea. Nestled into one corner of the small guest room in her sister’s house in Dyer, Maine, were her entire possessions. She was just about a vagabond, and, at least for now, that was all she wanted.

As the sun started its westward slide toward the horizon, the two sisters sat side by side on the front porch with their feet up on the railing and tall glasses of iced tea in hand. Their conversation wound in lazy loops and curves, like an old stream, as Barbara filled her sister in on the latest doings around town: who was married or divorced or cheating or whatever. All of Barbara’s children were off for the afternoon: Heather, who had just turned fourteen, was off to Houlton with some friends to see a movie, or she said. If Donna and Barbara guessed right, she was using that as an excuse to meet up with some boys somewhere. Kelly, the next in line, was taking piano lessons from Mrs. Plaisted, who played organ for the local Baptist church. And Al Junior, whose sixth birthday was only weeks away, had gone swimming with his friend’s family at Beaver Brook Pond.

Mention of Beaver Brook Pond sent a rippling chill up Donna’s back. The swimming hole was out on Mayall Road, the same road as the old homestead. When she and her sister were growing up, it was the site of hundreds of days of fun, the place for swimming in the summer and skating in the winter. But with those memories came memories of the house, once a thriving, warm, love-filled home. Now, Donna didn’t even want to think about it. Three years ago, when she came home for her father’s funeral, the place looked worn-out, tired and small. She tried not to imagine how it looked now, after three more years of desertion.

“Did you drive by the graves on your way in?” Barbara asked. She looked directly at Donna, but she didn’t seem to notice the crossfire of emotions Donna was sure were playing across her face.

“No, I came straight here. I’ve been driving since five o’clock this morning.”

“And here I am, talking your ear off,” Barbara said, shifting forward and standing up. “You should go inside and take a nap before everyone gets home. Then the house will sound like there’s an army in town.”

“No, no,” Donna said, waving her sister back down. “I’m comfortable right where I am.” She took a sip of iced tea and, as if in proof, smacked her lips with satisfaction.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive,” Donna said. “I wasn’t hinting or anything. If I was that tired, I’d tell you.”

“Well, I certainly hope so,” Barbara said. “After everything you’ve been through, I think you deserve to spoil yourself a little.”

Donna smiled and nodded, thinking to herself,
you don’t know the half of it, sister dear. Lucky you!
She hoped her voice didn’t betray her when she said, “I was thinking of driving out to the cemetery and maybe by the old house this afternoon, but I think I’ll wait ’til tomorrow.”

“I told you I was renting the fields to Higgins for growing potatoes, didn’t I? He doesn’t pay much, but every bit helps.”

Donna took another sip of tea. She tried to settle back deeper into the lounge chair, but one of the straps was digging into her back. “Old Sam Higgins,” she said. “Christ, he must own or rent pretty much every farm in the area by now.”

Barbara nodded agreement. “He’s got quite a business going. He was hounding me about selling the farm to him, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I still kinda have hopes you’ll move back to town for good.”

Donna looked down at the porch floor. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do. After what I’ve just been through, and what with Mom and Dad gone now… I don’t know.”

“I put flowers out whenever I can,” Barbara said, “but lately I’ve been so damned busy.”

While she was talking, a pickup truck drove slowly past the house, raising a fantail of dust as it went. Barbara followed the truck lazily, but then she suddenly cut herself off mid-sentence and bolted forward in her chair.

“What the dickens?” she muttered. One had gripped the porch edge so tightly her knuckles went white.

Donna looked quickly from her sister to the truck.

“I swear to God, that’s the strangest thing,” Barbara said softly, as if talking to herself. She eased back into her seat, but a deep, worried frown wrinkled her brow, and her eyes looked cold and hard, like ice caps, as she tracked the truck until it disappeared over the crest of a hill.

“I forgot to tell you something else. You remember Larry Cole, don’t you?”

Donna nodded. “Sure do. We went steady in junior high school, for a total of three days, as I recall. Remember? What, was that him?”

Still frowning, Barbara shook her head tightly from side to side. “No, no. I forgot to tell you. He died last night in a car accident out on the Haynesville Road.”

Now it was Donna’s turn to frown. “I thought he was working down in Augusta. Was he home visiting or something?”

Barbara shook her head again. “No, he was working for the State Transportation Department. I don’t know the whole story, but he was up here doing some survey work for a project to widen and straighten some of those roads.”

Donna didn’t really feel much emotion because of Larry’s death. True, they had known each other right up to graduation, but after their brief romance in junior high, they had drifted apart into their own circles of friends. She remembered that he had shown up at both her mother’s and father’s funerals, but that was to be expected, in such a small town as Dyer. Staring out to where the truck had disappeared, Donna thought she would probably attend
his
funeral.

“Was he married? Have a family or anything?” Donna asked once the sound of the passing truck had faded.

“No, I hadn’t heard that he was. Al will probably know more about it when he gets home from work. That’s the strangest thing, though,” Barbara said, still shaking her head. “I could swear that was him driving that truck.”

“It’s a nice trick if you can pull it off,” Donna said. She snorted a quick laugh, but after all this talk of deaths and funerals and the old home, she decided she would take a quick nap before Barbara’s family got home.

“The Secret Place”

I

J
eff Winfield, one of Dyer’s two full-time policemen, hated the first day of the morning shift after a week of third shift, especially after the fatal car accident on Route 2A, known locally as the Haynesville Woods Road, last night. What it all boiled down to was one long, sixteen-hour shift starting at midnight, and not even three cups of coffee at Kellerman’s at five A.M. could get him going. And after that last visit to his doctor, he decided not to chance a fourth cup because of the havoc it might wreak on his bladder. He was only forty-two years old, but nineteen years on the Dyer police force made him feel much older!

The morning was clear and cool, with a hint of oncoming autumn in the air as he steered into the parking lot beside the police station. He cut the engine and sat for a moment, gazing vacantly at the back lot behind the station. Beyond the ten-foot-high hurricane fence, a meaningless precaution in such a small town as Dyer, Winfield always thought, a thin screen of maple trees were already turning yellow and red, and it was only August! Beyond the maples, he could see a long expanse of potato fields, their dark green vines dying, waiting for the tractors to come and churn up their harvest. The sky was a dull, cloudless blue, overhanging everything with a hazy oppression.

The pressure in Winfield’s bladder demanded that he head into the station soon to relieve himself, but he took a minute to appreciate the scenery, thankful that for the past nineteen years he hadn’t had to work in the potato fields during harvest. That was back-breaking work, and he’d had enough dirt under his fingernails when he worked the fields through high school. Becoming a cop saved him from ending up like his father and older brother, working sixteen or more hours a day every day of the week with nothing to look forward to but decreasing yields, lower prices, increasing costs, and no hope for improvement.

It struck him as strange, though, that looking out over the potato fields made him feel so down. The harvest would start soon, and most everyone in town would pitch in to bring in the crop. Even school, which started in mid-August, would close for the few weeks of harvest so sons and daughters, and even teachers could help. Whatever jobs weren’t filled by local people would be taken by the migrant workers who followed harvests around the state from blueberry barrens to apple orchards to potato fields. As long as there wasn’t any trouble with the migrants, and there usually wasn’t, except for those unexplained disappearances last year up in Caribou. Things should be all right.

Of course, Winfield wouldn’t be expected to help with the harvest. As a police officer, he was expected to stay on duty and sometimes even put in a little overtime; with the influx of migrant workers and everyone working so damned hard during the day, nights and weekends downtown saw more action than usual, especially at Kellerman’s, the only local bar. Of course, Dyer at its most active would still strike someone from down south—say, Bangor or Portland—as a sleepy little town. And that’s just how Winfield liked it, sleepy and quiet. So quiet, in fact, that now more than ever he couldn’t see any need to double up shifts, especially for someone who had been with the force for as long as he had. Maybe today he would mention it to Chief Bates, again.

He swung open the cruiser door and stepped out, pocketed the keys as he stood up straight and then, yawning, stretched his arms over his head. A sudden twinge of pain shot through the small of his back, and he massaged it as he went up the walkway to the front door.

“Mornin’,” said Pam Lessard, barely looking up as the heavy front door slammed shut behind him.

Pam was the daytime desk officer and radio dispatcher who had been with the department almost as long as Winfield had. Still, in all those years, he felt as though he barely knew her. She was married and lived out on Ridge Road, past the town dump. She had two boys, both in high school now, and her husband had a job at one of the banks in Houlton, he knew that much. But Pam kept pretty much to herself; she did her job and went home at the stroke of four, and that was it. She never even made it to the few social events the department bad.

Winfield knew one thing, though, especially on days like this: he knew he envied the regularity of her work hours: seven to four, Monday through Friday, and a Saturday morning every now and then, like today, to help catch up. That’s police work the way it
should
be.

He nodded a greeting as he walked past her glass-fronted desk, heading toward the bathroom. He tried to walk without revealing the urgency he felt. “Oh, Jeff,” she said. Her voice was flat and nasal, and when she looked at him, her eyes seemed lifeless and dull. “This just came in over the wire. You might want to have a look at it.” She held a sheet of paper out through the slot in her window and gave it an impatient shake.

“Uh, yeah,” Winfield said, biting down on his lower lip. “Just a sec.”

He made it to the bathroom, just in time as far as he was concerned. He vowed he would limit himself to two cups in the morning from now on.

Back at the front desk, he looked for the teletype Pam had tried to give him. She had it on the edge of her desk and was sitting with her back to him, busily typing.

“So,” he said, feeling much relieved. “What’ve you got?”

“Nothing much,” Pam said. She stopped typing and, turning, handed him the paper. “A File-13 from Detective Maloney in Westbrook. Seems they’ve had a few suspicious fires down their way and they all sort of fit together. State fire marshal indicates they were all set the same way. No real serious damage, just a couple of abandoned warehouses and one old barn. But according to this, whoever’s setting them seems to be moving north.”

Winfield frowned as he quickly scanned the sheet of paper. A File-13 went out on the teletype to all police stations in New England as a general, informational bulletin. In these days of manpower shortages and budgetary restraints, not every crime could be pursued with full vigor. A File-13 was pretty much a catch-as-catch-can notice. If something happened to catch your eye, you could give the station of origin a call and offer what information you had. Usually, they just piled up and, after a week or so, made their way to the real File-13, the waste basket.

This particular bulletin concerned straight arson, and because no people so far had been hurt or killed, the FBI hadn’t been called in. In time, either the arsonist would stop and disappear, or he would do some serious damage, or someone would get hurt or killed. Then more effort would be exerted to bring him in.

What caught Winfield’s eye, though, was the warning to watch locally for a “cluster of suspicious fires.”

Westbrook’s had a few fires recently
, he thought.
So what? It could be coincidence just as easily as it could be someone setting those fires.

“I don’t get it,” Winfield said when he was finished reading. “Why does this detective think the arsonist is heading our way?”

Pam quickly returned to her typing, but she heard his question over the loud clattering sound she was making, and without slowing down, tilted her head toward the telephone on her desk. “I know as much as you do. Give him a call if you’re so interested.”

Winfield groaned as he massaged the small of his back with his fist. He glanced again at the File-13, his eyes getting caught once more by the phrase “cluster of suspicious fires.” Moving stiffly, he walked down the hallway to his office, unlocked the door, entered, kicked the door shut behind him, and sat down at his desk.

His eyes felt like they were dusted with powdered glass. From his top drawer, he took a bottle of Visine and squirted three drops into each eye, blinking rapidly as the fluid ran from his eyes and down his cheeks. It felt better, but not much. A solid eight hours of sleep was what he needed, and the last thing he wanted was for anything to happen today.

In spite of that, though, he picked up the phone and dialed the Westbrook police station. After eleven double rings, Detective Maloney picked up his receiver.

“Detective Maloney here,” said a sharp, clipped voice.

“Hello, this is Sergeant Winfield up in Dyer.”

“How may I help you, sir?” Maloney said, sounding as though he had come to the police force straight out of the Army.

“Well,” Winfield said, settling back in his chair, closing his eyes, and leaning his head back, “I just got your telex on the suspected arsons, and I had a couple of questions for you.”

“Shoot,” Maloney said, so quickly it almost sounded as though he had sneezed.

“Well, you say here to watch for a ‘cluster’ of fire, but I was wondering why you think this guy’s heading up this way.”

There was a short pause on the other end of the line, and Winfield could hear sheets of paper being turned. He leaned forward in his chair, bracing the phone with his shoulder.

“Since that went out, we heard from two more stations in Connecticut and another one in Massachusetts. All three of them reported several suspicious fires and putting them together with the others we’ve had, it appears as though they’re all the work of a person or persons heading north, up I-95.”

“What time frame are we dealing with here?” Winfield asked. It surprised him that, after listening to Maloney for only a few seconds, he adopted his military-sounding speech pattern.

“Each local incident has been a day or two apart for the space of approximately a week or so. The time between local incidents seems to vary between two and three weeks. My gut feeling is that whoever is doing this is travelling on foot or hitchhiking. Anyone travelling in a car would be too noticeable. They’d be in the local area too long.”

“But you’ve had no reports of any arson north of Portland recently, correct? Nothing around Augusta or Bangor?”

“Affirmative.”

Winfield nodded and, glancing up at the ceiling, blinked his eyes rapidly. The Visine was starting to work now, and the small dots on the overhead acoustic tiles no longer blurred together. The caffeine from Kellerman’s was finally starting to kick in, too, so he was actually beginning to think he might make it through the day without falling asleep over lunch.

“Look Sergeant Winfield, I have a call on the other line. I appreciate your call and any help you can give me.”

“Sure,” Winfield said, but before he could say goodbye, Maloney’s line went dead.

Winfield hung up the phone and, looking down at his desk, realized for the first time that he had been doodling on the telex the whole time he had been talking to Maloney. A faint smile curled his upper lip as he looked down at the face he had drawn at the bottom of the page, but he also felt slightly unsettled as he studied his drawing. On top of a smooth, rounded, rather sexless-looking face, a shock of thick, long hair streamed out in all directions. It took him a moment to realize that the hair looked, really, more like a raging fire than hair. The mouth he had drawn was open in a large oval that might have been a scream, but what unnerved him most of all were the eyes he had drawn, round, blank circles, opened wide with what?

Surprise?… Pain?… Fear?

In the middle of the message from Maloney in Westbrook, he had also underlined the phrase “clusters of suspicious fires” with heavy, dark lines. So heavy, in fact, his pen point had worn right through the paper and marked his ink blotter.

“Burn, baby, burn,” he whispered as he pushed his chair back with the backs of his legs and stood up. He clicked his pen shut, not even remembering when he took it from his pocket to begin doodling, and replaced it in his shirt pocket. Shaking his head as though waking up from a nap, he went down the corridor to the front desk.

“Any calls today?” he asked Pam, whose fingers still flew over the typewriter keyboard as though they had a mind of their own.

Pam shook her head and continued with her work.

“I guess I’ll take a swing through town,” Winfield said. “Maybe drive out by Higgins’ farm and see if he’s started harvesting yet. He’s usually the first.”

Pam nodded and kept typing.

“I won’t be far from the radio,” he said. He was just turning to go when the teletype beside Pam’s desk suddenly chattered into life. Between that sound and Pam’s typing, Winfield began to understand, maybe, why Pam was so anti-social. Fifteen years of that much noise was as bad as working with a drop-hammer in an iron forge.

The teletype finished its brief flurry of activity and then fell silent. When Pam made no move to tear off the bulletin and give it to him, Winfield came around the side of the desk and got it for himself. He read it quickly and then left it on the desk for Pam to file later. It was nothing important, just a File-13 on an assault and motor vehicle left in Holden early that morning:

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A RUST-RED 1967 FORD PICKUP. ASSAILANT OR ASSAILANTS UNKNOWN BUT CONSIDERED DANGEROUS ANY DEPT. HAVING INFO. PLS CONTACT:

SGT. MCCORMICK

HOLDEN 29 AUG 08:27

Winfield went out into the parking lot and got into his cruiser thinking, as usual, that it was the towns in the southern part of the state that got all the action, and that was just the way he liked it!

“Good luck finding your rust-red Ford pickup, McCormick,” he said as he started up the cruiser, backed around, and pulled out into the street.