“I’ll be glad to help if I can, inspector. I just don’t see how—” His voice trailed off.
Kesey began gently. “I want you to tell me exactly what happened last Monday night. Did you hear the explosion?”
“Oh yes. I was just getting ready to leave the Mehan house next door. The blast shook the whole building. I stepped out onto the porch and saw the flames from Number 17. It reminded me—”
“Yes.” Kesey didn’t want the priest going back in time. “What did you do next?”
“I — well, it occurred to me that I should help. I ran over to the burning house.”
“Tell me exactly what you saw,” Kesey prompted.
Father Thomas closed his eyes. “Part of the building was in flames. There was a lot of smoke. A young woman and a child were on the grass. The woman was hurt.” He paused, opened his eyes and frowned.
“Take your time, Father. What happened next?”
An expression of pain crossed the priest’s face. “The man was there. He said, ‘Jump!’ ”
“And then what happened?”
Father Thomas shook his head. “I couldn’t! It was too high! My mother was lying on the floor. Something was wrong with her! My sister was screaming — the fire was getting closer...”
Sweat poured down his face. His words came out in little gasps and jerks. “The man shouted ‘Jump!’ again, but I couldn’t!” He looked at Kesey and finished very softly, “Then my father picked me up and threw me out the window.” He began to sob.
The nurse came over and put her hand on Kesey’s arm. “I think he’s had enough,” she said quietly.
Kesey nodded. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t been able to keep Father Thomas in the present long enough. The priest had gone back to 1941, and that was no help with the case of Number 17 Porter Street.
What had set him off? Kesey wondered as he headed back to his office. Mentally, he went over the priest’s story. Somewhere in it was the key that unlocked the metal door. Something had thrown Father Thomas back into the past.
On impulse, Kesey detoured to the public library and asked to see their microfilms of the 1941 newspapers. Maybe he would see something McCarthy hadn’t.
And he did. It was right there, staring at him from the microfilm account of the old fire. A young man’s face above the words, “Local hero.” The face had changed with the years, but the eyes were the same.
Back in his office, Kesey tapped McCarthy on the shoulder. “Get in touch with the naval authorities. I want Charlie Planter’s fingerprints.”
“Charlie Planter?”
“He’s our man. Changed his name after he’d deserted, of course. But you know something funny about deserters? Deep inside, they all want to come home. And Charlie eventually did. There really wasn’t much danger. When you think about it, a big metropolitan area like Boston has lots of little neighborhoods that are self-sufficient. You could grow up in South Boston, for instance, then move up north to Chelsea, and with a little care you might never run into anyone who knew you before. Even if you did, after all those years, chances are no one would recognize you. Not unless they were looking for the resemblance, as I was this afternoon. Or unless they happened to see you in exactly the same circumstances they’d seen you in forty-four years ago!”
McCarthy looked as though the light had dawned. “Is that what set Father Thomas off?”
Kesey nodded. “He saw Charlie Planter standing beside a burning house, shouting, ‘Jump!’ ”
“Are you saying that Planter set the bomb? But why?”
“Ah! The motive! That’s what had me stumped until today. I kept looking at everyone in the case and asking myself who had something to gain. But nobody had anything to gain. But when I saw that picture of Charlie Planter, I looked at things from his point of view.
“Think about it. He was a loser. Everything he did went sour. Except once. One night, forty-four years ago, he did something right. And for a short while, life was sweet. Commendations and medals and recognition. Then he went back to being plain old Charlie, and everything went sour again. How often do you think he wished he could relive that time? Be somebody important again?”
“That’s why he did it?”
“I’ll bet next year’s salary on it. He never thought anyone would get hurt. The first time, everyone except Mrs. Thomas ended up unhurt — physically anyhow — and Mrs. Thomas died only because she had a heart condition. But no one at Number 17 had a bad heart, so he figured everything was going to be okay. He’d be there to save them, just like before.
“Trouble is, a fellow like Planter doesn’t anticipate. He never considered the possibility that Mrs. Werner might take so much sedative she couldn’t be awakened. Or that anyone would be in the cellar at that hour.”
McCarthy reached for the phone.
“Shall I have Planter — Olson — picked up?”
Kesey looked at him. “No, McCarthy! It’s not hardworking, conscientious Olson — Olson who doesn’t even take off sick. I’m talking about Werner.”
“Werner? But he didn’t rescue anybody!”
“That was another thing he didn’t anticipate — that before he could get his wife out and start saving the tenants, someone else would come along and save them.”
“And he really didn’t want his wife to die?”
“Oh, no. She was the one he wanted to be a hero for. He was going to put an end to that nagging once and for all. He’d be somebody again.”
“That’s all? All that suffering... just because he wanted to be somebody?” McCarthy was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly, “Sometimes it’s a hell of a world, sir.”
“Yes, McCarthy. Sometimes it is.”
Yard Sale
by David Braly
“Does this work?”
Horace turned and looked at the man who had asked the question. The man was about forty, unshaven, dressed in faded bluejeans and a T-shirt. A cigarette dangled from his mouth.
Horace smiled and walked over to him. The man looked down at the television set he’d asked about. It was a large portable RCA set with a nineteen inch screen.
“Yes, it works,” said Horace. “Great picture.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. We’ve never had any trouble with it, except once when a fuse blew in it. That only put it in the shop for one day. We bought that set several years ago from J and T Electronics for one-fifty I think. It crackles some, especially late at night, but works fine.”
“Crackles?”
“Electronically, like the tubes were sputtering or something. But it’s always done that. I asked the repairman about it when the fuse blew, and he said some sets just crackle like that.”
The man in the T-shirt nodded, still looking at the set. “One-fifty, huh?”
“Yes. It was used, but J and T had rebuilt it. Great picture. Never any trouble with it other than that one time.”
“Why are you getting rid of it, then?”
“We got a new set. Color, with a larger screen.”
The man in the T-shirt walked around the set, looking closely at every part of it. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and held it between the fingers of his right hand while he rested both thumbs in his pants pockets.
“What’re you asking?” he said at last.
“Eighty.”
“I’ll give you fifty.”
“Sold,” said Horace.
They walked over to the table, waited for Horace’s wife June to finish with a customer, and then Horace wrote out a receipt while the man in the T-shirt counted out five tens.