Harmon smiled at that. “Right. No vigilantes. My editors will be dismayed. Guess I’ll have to pitch them a piece about a crazy town with a big heart.”
“Guess so,” and with that phrase, never had I been so proud to be a resident of Purmort.
That night, after my supper, I sat in front of my first-floor woodstove and watched the trapped flames flicker and dance, knowing my home was safe.
But I was up on Timber-swamp Road, shivering in the late night cold, watching the hard gray in the east signal a slow-approaching dawn. I remembered how I talked to the county dispatcher, Norma Quentin, and how she hesitated when I asked her about this fire and Tate Burnham. The smell of the smoke was mixed with something else, a harsh, greasy smell, and I made my way farther up the hill, finding my way easily enough in the lights from the firetrucks and the police cruisers. Chief Parnell was there, with two of his officers, and I nudged past them, looking at the crest of the hill where the grass had burned away.
There was no wreckage there, no blackened timbers from a house or a barn. In the middle of the burnt-out grass patch was an oak tree, its trunk scorched by the flames. Next to the trunk was a gasoline can, turned on one side, its paint bubbled and smeared away. Wrapped around the base of the tree was a chain, and the chain ran down the hill a short way, where it ended up wrapped around the legs of a charred carcass, which at first looked like a cow or a goat or a...
Only by turning my head quickly and stepping away was I able to avoid getting sick. I breathed through my mouth, not wanting to smell that horrible, greasy odor again. Chief Parnell came over to me and grabbed my arm, and we walked a bit, down the darkened road, until my head cleared.
The chief said, “Got here quick enough.”
“My sources. You know that.” I looked back up the hill, and just as quickly looked at the chief. “Who is it?”
The chief shrugged. “Not an official I.D., but based on what we know and who was reported missing last night, I’ll have to say Tate Burnham.”
“Tate Burnham...” I turned and saw the chain again, imagining what it must’ve been like, to be chained there and engulfed in flames, not being able to escape or even move. I looked back at the chief and noticed the firefighters and the two other Purmort police officers, standing in a loose circle, all staring at me.
I said, “Who do you think did this to him?”
Again that casual shrug, and though the sun was beginning to rise, I was feeling colder. “Himself, I imagine,” the chief said, his voice even.
“Himself?” I demanded, my voice rising. “Chief, you’re saying he did it to himself?”
The chief’s eyes narrowed and he said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Jerry. The man knew we had him nailed to the wall, knew he wasn’t going to escape a guilty verdict, knew he could never live in these parts again. Me, I think — and I’m gonna tell the state police this — I think he came up here, depressed as hell, and he killed himself, just like those monks in Vietnam back in the sixties.”
“Chief, the chain...”
The chief just raised an eyebrow. “He probably did it to himself, make sure he couldn’t chicken out. Jerry, it makes sense, now, don’t it?”
I tried to catch my breath and failed. My head seemed like it would burst, and I felt like grabbing the chief’s shoulders for some reason. The firefighters and the police officers had stepped closer to me, still standing in that loose circle, and all of them were looking at me, and their expressions were all the same, a very cold expression, of a group or tribe looking at a dangerous outsider. For a moment I almost felt like laughing, remembering how suckered we had all been, at the so-called miracle as the townspeople lined up to pay for Tate Burnham’s bail. Sure, out of the goodness of their hearts, to free Tate Burnham from the grasp of the state and to bring him back to the town where he belonged. I remembered what the road agent, Wayne Ferguson, had said: We take care of our own here.
They certainly do. The group of firefighters and police officers were closer, and again I felt like laughing at the horror of it all. I could live here for another ten or twenty or thirty years, and never would I belong, never would I be a part of what went on here in Purmort, below the surface and behind the headlines. I looked at all their faces, old and young, and they all looked like brothers.
I spoke up, loud enough so everyone could hear. “If you say so, but it’s a pity, chief. A real pity, that he died this way.”
There were some smiles given to me by the group after that, and in a minute or so, I began walking quickly back to my truck, and once I glanced behind me, and I was happy to see I was alone. I went into my truck and locked both doors and before starting the engine, I placed my head on the steering wheel and wept.
I had lost my home.
A Meaningful Relationship
by C. J. Hursch
Reggie walked in just as I finished setting up an appointment with the police. His long face spelled trouble, but at that point, I didn’t know how much.
“Coffee time,” he squawked brightly. “Want me to get you some, Jane?”
“I’ve already had my shot of caffeine for the day,” I told him.
“Do you mind,” he asked with a woebegone look, “if I have mine here? I’ve just got to talk to somebody.”
How could I refuse? He looked like a sorry tomcat in his dull black suit, wilted white collar, and modestly striped gray tie. Reggie had an office just down the hall from my detective setup where he plied the psychologist’s trade for all it was worth. You’d know right away what his profession was because he always put out a lot of those hocus-pocus words some shrinks use to befuddle the rest of us about why we do what we do.
He often dropped in to my office to loosen his tie and try to be a human being. And because he amused me, I often let him. But right now I had other things on my mind, namely the spate of jewelry store robberies that the police had called me in on.
“What’s your problem?” I shot at him, not wanting to wait through a half hour of aimless chatter until he got to it.
He looked up, startled. “Does it show?” he asked. “I suppose you noticed my lowered affect.”
“No. I noticed that you looked like you’d just lost your last friend,” I told him.
“I may have,” he said, nodding solemnly. “I can’t find Violet.”
“Not Violet, your purple passion!” I exclaimed, hardly able to smother a giggle.
Violet was at the other end of the universe from Reggie. She was curvy and vivacious, wore long drippy earrings, dozens of silver and gold bangles on her arms, and a large silver star pasted to her forehead. She was into witchcraft, and she had a riotous laugh that could knock the pigeons off the roof.
“She’s probably deep in her coven issuing incantations,” I answered without much sympathy.
“No,” he assured me solemnly. “She only does that during the full moon, and that’s long past. It’s something else.”
There were countless possibilities as to why the flamboyant Violet was unavailable to dour Reggie, but most of them would have shocked him silly as he sat there stiffly balancing his coffee cup on his bony knee. So I just tried to soothe him. “She’ll probably call you soon,” I said.
“No, she won’t. She never calls me — she has a weak ego system,” he said gravely. “We were supposed to get together last night, but I went to her apartment and got no answer. I even called at six this morning, and she’s still not there. Look,” he said, focusing his red-rimmed eyes on me, “does your private investigating work include finding a missing person?”
“Have you reported her missing to the police?” I asked.