Shattered Shell (27 page)

"How's it going with you?" I asked.

"Hellish but improving," she said. "Me and Jerry, we spent the night at an evacuation center set up at the junior high school. We spent most of the day getting stories and pictures from the downtown yesterday, and when we were finished at the junior high, the cops strongly advised us about going out."

"Really?"

"Really," she said. "One of those cops happened to be your detective friend, and I was going to make a fuss until Diane told me that even if I wanted to, I couldn't get home --- the part of High Street where my apartment building is located was covered in two feet of water. That plus the snow and ice ... well, me and Jerry bunked for the night."

"In separate bunks?" I asked, trying to put an innocent inquiring tone to my voice, which Paula threw back at me.

"Spare me the jealous talk, Lewis. We were stuck in a gym with about fifty or so people, complete with crying kids, people snoring, and people coughing, trying to sleep on bunks that must have been designed back when Civil Defense was first set up. Still, it made for a great first-person story that AP in Concord bought from me. How did you do?"

"Lost power and phone yesterday afternoon, and I thought the tide might carry the homestead away with a couple of good waves, but the house is high enough off the beach. I'm just glad the fireplace still worked. Up to getting together for lunch tomorrow?"

"I don't know about tomorrow, but --"

"It's about the arson case."

"Oh, anything you want to tell me over the phone?"

"No, not really. Something I want to tell you face-to-face," I said.

"Oh," she repeated. "Sounds intriguing."

"Actually, it sounds pretty nutty, which is why I want to see you in person."

"You got it."

We talked for a few minutes more and after we both hung lip, I sat on my couch, quite content, cup of tea warm in my hand. I felt clean and refreshed, the house was warm, and the electric lights were bright indeed. I still remembered that sense of awe last night in seeing the darkened miles of seacoast, but that had been a temporary adventure, and just as well.

Time travel had been fun, but as one Kansas girl once said, there's no place like home.

Chapter Seventeen

By the time I got to the
Chronicle
on Tuesday, I was sweaty, irritable, and late. It had taken me longer than I expected to shovel a path from my house to the garage. Then, getting out was also a challenge, even with the Rover's four-wheel drive, and I clawed up the unplowed driveway until I reached the Lafayette House parking lot, where I found the expert plowers had stripped the lot of snow nearly down to bare pavement. However, they had also created a mound of snow and ice that blocked my way and was damn near as tall as me. At first I had attacked the mound with the folding shovel that's always in the back, but after several long and sweaty minutes, it became quite clear that if I continued, I would make it to the
Chronicle
in time for dinner. So I trudged back down to the house ---- falling down once in the process ---and trudged back up with a larger shovel. Another dreary set of minutes later, I was able to plow through the parking lot by using the vehicle as a blood battering ram, and I left the parking lot a mess of snow and ice, and by then I didn't care.

The drive along the beach was educational, seeing what had happened when the low-lying areas had been swept over by the storm tide. The snow banks were peppered with rocks, some the size of my fist, and a little cool sensation went along the back of my hands when I realized that the rocks had been thrown up here from the beach and over the concrete seawall. Several cottages had been stove in, like a giant hand had crumpled them with the ease of crushing cardboard, and along one portion of the road, abandoned cars were off to the side, fenders and doors crumpled in, as the plows last night had pushed them to the side to keep the roadway clear.

The ride uptown was almost as educational, with huge mounds of snow and my Tyler neighbors, busy at work, shoveling or snowblowing their way clear. A few trees had tumbled over and I could hear the incessant chattering of chain saws at work.

The downtown traffic light was still on blinking yellow. I parked near the rear of the Tyler Professional Building, which houses the
Chronicle
, and carrying a manila envelope, I went through the rear door. Inside it was a wet and cluttered chaos, with ringing phones and the green industrial-strength carpet soiled and puddled with melted snow. There were metal desks jammed together and mounds of newspapers and blue-and-white plastic mailhoxes for the
Chronicle
. Rollie Grandmaison, the editor, was at his desk by the far wall, and there were three or four others at other workstations. Paula was at her desk, talking to her photographer friend Jerry as I went over.

"Sorry I'm late," I said. "Even with four-wheel drive, it was tough getting out."

She looked up at a clock. "Then we're stuck here for lunch.  The governor's press secretary is supposed to be calling me back, and I have to stick around."

I held up the envelope. "We're going to be hungry, because this is all I brought."

She smiled at me and then at Jerry, who was sitting in a chair by her desk, holding some photos and contact sheets. "That's all right, I've got it covered. Hey, Frank?"

At that a young man at a far desk looked up and came over. He looked to be in his early twenties, with hair in a bit of a ponytail and wearing patched jeans and a rag sweater. "What do you need, Paula?"

"Lunch for two," she said, pulling a menu out from her desk and handing it over to me. "Lewis, is there something here you like?"

I scanned the menu --- which was from the High Street Cafe, a short walk away --- and said sure, and after the two of us had given the uncomplaining Frank our lunch orders, he put on a winter coat and went out, and I said, "What was that all about?"

She had a wicked smile on her face. "Frank's our college intern for the spring term from UNH. Call me cruel, call me unfair. but I remember when I was an intern, I had to do the same thing.  So just consider this passing on a tradition."

"All right," I said, "I won't call you unfair."

She wiggled her nose at me and said, "I'll go clean up the conference room. We can eat in there. Jerry, show Lewis your stuff from the storm."

Paula got up and walked out to the paper's conference room. Phones were ringing and computer keyboards were being tapped, and I took off my own coat and draped it across an empty desk, and then sat down in Paula's chair. It was pleasingly warm, and I saw something that made me smile. On her desk was a photo of Paula and Jerry in the audience at some news conference, but taped to a filing cabinet drawer --- and only visible from her seat -- was a picture of me, snapped last summer on the rear deck of my house.  I didn't try to read anything into it, anything deep or philosophical It was just nice.

Jerry spoke up, saying, "Make it through the storm all right?" I turned. He had on a thick brown sweater and jeans and hi brown hair and beard were neat and trimmed. Maybe this budding romance was helping his grooming habits.

"I did pretty fine, but I hear that you and Paula had some adventures."

"Sure did. Look at this stuff," he said, passing over some: eight-by-ten black-and-white prints. I was going to give them II quick courtesy glance, but I slowed down in an instant. I looked II)' at him and said, "Jerry, these are really good."

I think he blushed. "Thanks."

"No, I really mean it," I said. "These are great."

An embarrassed nod. "Well, the AP Concord Bureau did pick up the last shot, so that's on the wires. I'll be happy to see where it ends up."

I went through each print. There were two of the beach, showing the waves exploding over the seawall, a couple of cars and a plow being inundated. Another showed a wide-eyed elderly woman being carried by two Tyler cops to a National Guard truck, he cops knee-deep in water and slush. And another showed an older man bent over a shovel, a snowbank near him that was over his head, and a small dog on top of the mound looking down quizzically at his master. In each photo, he had framed it so you were looking at the faces of the people, their expressions, their fears, their exhaustion.

The last photo was the best of the bunch. It was taken from a height and showed the center of Tyler Beach, the Strip. Jammed with thousands of tourists every summer night, in this picture there were just two men in the foreground, tugging at a canvas awning in front of a closed-up building, trying to prevent it from blowing away. They were staring up at the awning, hands tense, struggling. Behind them a snowplow was approaching, and a wave of snow was being tossed up, and you knew that in a matter of seconds those two men were going to get covered with the snow.

"Did they save the awning?" I asked.

"Nope," Jerry said. "They got socked by the snow and fell, and the wind just took that awning and whipped it away. The guys were all right, but the last I saw that awning, it was heading toward Falconer. Here, you can see the series."

He handed over a contact sheet, which was an eight-by-ten sheet of strips of negatives, each photo just a bit larger than a postage stamp. I saw what he meant and saw that there were about a half dozen shots in the series, starting with the guys working, the plow approaching, the guys getting knocked down and then standing up, cursing at the plow. Out of all the shots, Jerry had picked the best.

"Nice vantage point," I said. "Where were you to get these pictures?"

He looked sheepish. "I was on top of the Chamber of Commerce building."

I stared at him. "How in hell did you get up there?"

Jerry shrugged. "The Tyler cops were in there, getting some gear from the state. I let myself in and went up, and there was an access hatch to the roof. I figured I might get some good stuff up there. The hatch was frozen shut, but I managed to beat my way through it, and when I got up on the roof, you wouldn't believe the view I had."

Oh, I could believe it. Last summer I was up on the same roof with Diane, as she was tailing some drug dealers that wore working on the Strip. We both lay flat on the roof, and even there, with no wind, no snow, and no slippery conditions, I was uncomfortable. The roof was built at a sharp angle and I dug in with elbows and heels to keep position, and I was never happier that evening than when we both climbed back down.

"How did you stay in one place?" I asked.

"Just stubbornness, I guess."

"You could have fallen and broken your neck."

Another shrug, a bearded smile. "I got the shot, didn't I?"

"But you could have fallen."

The smile remained as he picked up the photos and contact sheet, and then quickly turned his head. "But I got the shot. Look like someone's waiting for you."

I looked up and Paula was beckoning to me, and Jerry got up and walked to the stairway that went down to the cellar, which held the paper's morgue and darkroom. I went forward, past Rollie Grandmaison, who was pencil-whipping his way through a press release from the Friends of the Tyler Harbor. His tan sweater was wearing through the elbows and his strands of light brown hair were flattened atop his freckled skull.

"How's the editor biz, Rollie?" I asked as I went by.

He didn't lift his head and the eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses didn't move as he said, "Still sucks, Lewis."

I followed Paula into a conference room, again admiring the way she filled out her blue jeans. Her ears were still poking through her hair, but I was too polite to mention it. I raised my eyebrows and she sighed and went up to the door and closed it.

"Well," she said, sitting down, legal pad in hand. "Got something good, I hope."

"You tell me," I said, passing over the envelope. She pulled out the planning board minutes, and I looked up at the paneled walls. There were some framed photos there, of the governor with Rollie and a few of some senators and congressmen, passing their way through here on that bumpy and detour-filled road to the White House.

She looked up after a couple of minutes, face set. "You must think I'm an idiot."

"No. I think you're overworked, and I think you looked at the obvious paths. Nothing stupid about that."

Paula looked back down at the minutes, where I had highlighted where Mike Ahern had made his points. "This is insane. Do you really think Mike's behind these arsons?"

I folded my hands. "I don't know. On the surface it does sound crazy, that Mike would be involved and leave such a paper I rail. But in your line of work you know what crazy things people do, every day. Murderers who videotape their own exploits. Mothers who kill their children and blame it on witchcraft or mysterious black men. Sex offenders who call their victims later, looking for a date. It happens."

"All right, it happens," she said. "Plus, I don't think he's the most balanced person I've ever met. So. What's next?"

"Research," I said. "I'd like to find out more about our town's fire inspector. He's been here, what, a year? Would like to know more about where he's been, what he did before he came to Tyler, what other towns he worked in."