Before the Storm (20 page)

Sara finally got to her feet. “You must be Marcus,” she said,

reaching out a hand. “I’m Sara Weston.”

Marcus shook her hand. I could smell booze on him from

where I sat.

“You’re the babysitter,” Marcus said.

“Right. I just stopped over to—”

“To tell me I’m a basket case and a shitty mother,” I said.

“Laurel!” Sara said. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I asked her to go but she won’t leave,” I said to Marcus,

barely able to believe my own rudeness.

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“You should go,” Marcus said to her.

Sara raised her hands in surrender, as if trying to keep us

calm. “I’m going,” she said, heading for the door. She turned

one more time before leaving. “The casserole goes in a three-

hundred-fifty-degree oven for half an hour.”

That night, Maggie started getting a cold. Her nose ran and

her throat must have hurt because she screamed from nine

o’clock until two in the morning. By that time, Jamie and I

were both completely exhausted. I fell into a sleep so deep that

when the phone rang, I thought it was the smoke alarm and I

leaped out of bed and ran into the nursery—one very rare,

small sign that I did indeed care about my baby girl.

I came back to the bedroom as Jamie was picking up the

phone from the nightstand. I listened to his end of the conversation and knew it was Marcus.

“No, damn it, you can wait there until morning!” Jamie

shouted before slamming the receiver into the cradle.

I sat down on the bed. “Marcus?”

“I’ve
had
it with him!” Jamie got out of bed and opened the

dresser drawer, pulling out a T-shirt. “He got another DUI,” he

said.“He’s at the jail in Jacksonville. Wants me to come bail him

out.”

“Are you going now?”

“Yes.” He sounded tired. “I can’t leave him there. But this is

it, Laurel. This is the end. He’s out of this house.”

I knew Jamie was right. Kicking him out had seemed inevitable from the start.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jamie said as he sat down on

the bed to put on his sandals. “He’s a big part of the problem.”

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“What problem?” I asked.

“With you. With your tiredness and everything.You have to

worry about him as well as Maggie and me.You have to clean

up after him.You can never predict what he’ll do next, what

woman he’ll drag home with him. He wakes the baby up with

his music. He’s never sober. When’s the last time you’ve seen

him sober?”

I tried to think, but then realized Jamie wasn’t really after

an answer.

“He’s keeping us from becoming a family. You, me and

Maggie. And this is it. It’s over. The great save-Marcus-fromhimself experiment comes to an end tonight.”

Marcus left The Sea Tender the following day. He packed

up his stereo, his CDs, his clothes and his beer and moved into

another of his father’s many properties—Talos, the house next

door to ours.

FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE FIRE, I took my kayak out on

the sound at sunrise. Not a ripple in the water. The air full of

marshland and salt. I was able to put the fire out of my mind

for forty minutes while I paddled hard. Sometimes out there,

I felt a bit of what Jamie called “experiencing God.” I thought

he was so full of it back then. I wished I could tell him I was

wrong.

I lived in one of the old Operation Bumblebee towers that

I’d converted into a house, and I made it home in time to catch

Andy and Laurel’s interview on the
Today
show. I was taping

it just in case, but I got a kick out of seeing them live. Andy’s

knee jumped the whole time. He handled Ann Curry’s questions like a pro. Laurel got her bit in, of course. Maggie’d

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already e-mailed me about the lighter fiasco, but I still got

queasy hearing Laurel describe what happened. I’d have to have

a talk with Andy about smoking. They both
looked
fantastic.

Laurel had her hair down and she smiled a lot, which made me

realize she doesn’t smile much around me. And Andy was a

good-looking kid. So young, though. More like twelve than

fifteen.

Then it was back to reality at the fire station. I poured my

first mug of coffee and was heading across the hall to my office

when I collided—literally—with good ol’ Reverend William

Jesperson. Ordinarily, Reverend Bill and I went out of our way

to avoid each other, but my shoulder connecting with his chest

made that impossible.

“’Scuse me.” I was glad I didn’t spill on him. Wouldn’t put

it past him to sue my sorry Lockwood ass.

He looked down the hall toward Pete’s office. “The chief

in?” he asked.

“Just stepped out,” I said. “Is this about the fire? Because if

it is, it’s me you should be talking to anyway.”

He scowled. “Now come on, Lockwood.You know I’m not

going to talk with you, so just tell Pete to call me.”

Pete picked that moment to walk in the door carrying coffee

and a pastry bag from Jabeen’s. He stopped in the hall and

looked from me to Reverend Bill and back again.

“Can I help you, Reverend?” he asked.

“You have any leads yet?” Reverend Bill asked him.

“You know we’ll tell you soon’s we know anything,” Pete said.

“Oh, come on,” Reverend Bill said. “You fellas know more

than you’re saying, and I think I have a right to know what your

investigation’s turned up so far, don’t you?”

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“It’s ongoing, Reverend,” I said. “Nothing solid yet.” That

was putting it mildly.

“Did you see his nephew on TV this morning?” Reverend

Bill jerked his head in my direction.

“I missed it.” Pete took a sip from his coffee. I knew he was

itching to get at whatever he had in the bag.

“Well, it was quite informative,” Reverend Bill said. “For

example, did you know that Andy Lockwood got kicked off his

flight to NewYork for concealing a cigarette lighter in his sock?”

Pete raised his eyebrows at me. “Andy?”

Son of a bitch. “He didn’t get kicked off, Pete.You know

what Andy’s like. He saw the sign saying you couldn’t carry a

lighter onboard, so he stuck it in his sock.”

“And they didn’t let him board,” Reverend Bill said.

“Security needed to talk to him, so he and Laurel
missed
their

plane. They got on the next one.”

Pete’s jaw had dropped sometime during the back and forth.

“The boy carries a
lighter
around with him,” Reverend Bill

said. “And he turned out to be the big hero at the lock-in.

Doesn’t that seem a bit suspicious?”

“Andy’s experimenting like every other fifteen-year-old,” I

said. “Didn’t you try smoking when you were a kid?”

“Frankly, no. I thought it was disgusting then and I still

think so now.”

Bullshit. He grew up in tobacco country and never lit up?

“Look,” I said, “we haven’t ruled anyone out at this point.”

“I’m really talking to Pete here, Mr. Lockwood.” Reverend

Bill cut his eyes at me.

“And I appreciate you bringing this to our attention,” Pete

said. “Like Marcus told you, we haven’t ruled anyone out.” He

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ushered Reverend Bill toward the door, his hand in a death grip

on the pastry bag. “If you think of anything else, please don’t

hesitate to let us know.”

Reverend Bill held his ground. “You know, it’s easy for y’all

to take this lightly,” he said. “It wasn’t
your
church that burned

to the ground.”

Now I was pissed. “Three people died,” I said. “We didn’t

take the fire lightly when we were fighting it and you can bet

we’re not taking it lightly now.” I turned and walked into my

office, steam coming out of my ears.

As far as I was concerned, Reverend Bill looked like a

mighty good suspect himself. He’d been bitchin’ and moanin’

about his raggedy old church for years, and his congregation

was still a good bit shy of their fund-raising goal to build a new

one. Why not set fire to his church, collect the insurance

money for a new one and pass the guilt along to some innocent

kid? Andy was a perfect target. Theory didn’t hold water,

though. Even Reverend Bill wasn’t callous enough to burn the

church with kids in it. Or stupid enough. Lawyers were

already sniffing around for negligence. And the ATF agent said

the good Reverend was at a parishioner’s house when the fire

broke out, anyway. Airtight alibi, he said.

The forensic evidence was slight so far. We’d cut portions

of the remaining clapboard and sent it to the lab. It looked like

the accelerant was a mix of gasoline and diesel. That set off

lightbulbs in all our heads: the same mixture had been used in

a fire in Wilmington about six months ago. Old black church

slated to be turned into a museum, so they’d figured that one

for a hate crime. Plus, that building was abandoned. No one

was hurt. This fire was definitely different.

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From the burn pattern, it looked like the mixture had been

poured all around the perimeter, as I’d figured out from my

walk-around. The only place no accelerant had been spread was

between the air-conditioning unit Andy’d climbed over and the

building.

“Why’s that fella hate your guts?” Pete walked into my office

and sat down across from me. He pulled a blueberry muffin

from the bag and took a bite. Pete’d come to the department

a year ago from Atlanta. He didn’t know much when it came

to the island’s history.

“He hated my brother, and I’m a relation.” I didn’t add that

Reverend Bill, like a handful of the old-timers, also had me

figured for a murderer.

“Your brother who had that Free Seekers Chapel?”

“Uh-huh. Ol’ Bill didn’t like the competition.”

“Do you think there’s anything to his concern?”

I looked at him over the rim of my mug. “About Andy?”

He nodded. “Does he smoke?”

“I didn’t think so,” I said. “He might just carry a lighter to

be cool. To fit in. One thing for sure is that Andy’d never intentionally hurt anyone.”

“Well, he did fight with that kid, Keith Weston.” Pete wiped

his fingers on a napkin. “Roughed
him
up a bit.”

“Pete,” I said with a laugh, “that dog don’t hunt.”

There were only two people from the lock-in we hadn’t been

able to interview: Keith Weston, still in a medicated coma, and

Emily Carmichael. Emily’d been tight in the grip of posttraumatic stress and wouldn’t even look at us, much less talk.

But that afternoon, Robin Carmichael called, saying she thought

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her daughter was well enough to answer our questions now.

We’d already spoken with Robin, who’d been a chaperone at the

lock-in.

“Could you bring her in after school tomorrow?” I held the

phone between my chin and shoulder as I poured a tube of

peanuts into a bottle of Coke.

“She’s not
in
school,” Robin said. “She’s got separation

anxiety somethin’ terrible. Won’t leave my side. But you can

talk to her here, if that suits you.”

I changed into street clothes before picking up Flip Cates,

the Surf City detective involved in the investigation. I figured

it’d be easier on Emily if I wasn’t wearing a uniform. Flip apparently had the same idea. So when we walked into the

Carmichaels’ Sneads Ferry living room, with its dark paneling

and the cloudy mirror above the sofa, we looked like your

average guys on the street.

“Emily, you remember Andy’s Uncle Marcus,” Robin said.

“And this is Detective Cates.”

“Hey, Emily,” I said, as Flip and I sat down on the sofa.

Emily sat in an old threadbare wing chair, hands folded in

her lap. She looked at me with her good eye. She had on a pink

T-shirt, inside out, and white capris. No shoes or socks.

Every time I saw Emily, I felt for her and her parents. There

was a prettiness behind the funny eyes and repaired cleft palate.

Couldn’t they operate on that eye? Give her a chance at a

normal teenage life? Not much money in this house, though.

And not much normal about Emily.

“Robin,” I said, “can we try talking to Emily alone?”

“No!”
Emily wailed.

Well, it had been worth a shot.

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Robin shrugged her apology as she sat down on an ottoman

near her daughter.

“Tell us everything you remember from the time you

arrived at the lock-in, Emily,” Flip asked.

Emily looked at her mother. “It got moved,” she said.

“Right,” Flip said. “Did you notice anything unusual when

you got to the church?”

“We walked there.”

“Right. From the youth building.” Flip had a notepad open

on his thigh, but so far, the page was blank. “Did you see

anyone you didn’t know hanging around the church?”

“I didn’t know lots of kids. They came from all over.”

“Did you see anyone pouring or spraying something around