saluted. “Yes, sir.”
Will and I had met for the first time that morning. He struck me as overly conscious of his good looks as well as patronizing. Bitter experience on the job had taught me to be cautious around male RCMP members. Bitter experience back in my native Boston had taught me to distrust men, period.
I strung police tape from tree to tree, creating a barrier between the firefighters and the spectators. Wet sooty snow settled like grey lace on the shoulders and bare heads of the men, women, and children I herded behind the tape. Many wore red or green padded work shirts or stained nylon parkas with their sweatpants or shiny polyester slacks.
A steady trickle of newcomers arrived to gape at the fire. I assumed they came from the nearby settlement of South Dare, an appalling stretch of dilapidated shacks and trailers a hundred yards beyond the edge of the clearing. When, after a long upward climb through rocky brush land and scraggly forest, our police car had hurtled through this hellhole toward the fire, Will must have noticed my astonishment because he said, “Welcome to the Mountain. They didn’t tell you about this when you signed up, did they?” South Dare looked like Appalachia or something from the Third World. The settlement both fascinated and repelled me. So did its residents.
A man with the wide-set eyes and flat nose typical of fetal alcohol syndrome ducked under the tape and sauntered toward Will. Following him, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Get behind the line, sir.”
The man’s brown eyes glistened with resentment. I gestured with my head and prodded him until he shuffled back under the tape. Power and the hint of danger heightened my senses, making me feel alive instead of numb. The inner flames I craved leapt up again. If only I could keep them from burning me out. Keep the flames, but under control like fire in a wood stove.
A van swished into the clearing. Eight or nine women wearing identical green parkas poured out of the vehicle.
“The Ladies’ Auxiliary is here,” one of the firefighters said. Under his yellow helmet sweat beaded his ruddy face. “Get yourself some coffee, hon.”
Hon! I wanted to roll more than my eyes – his head! – but I resisted. “Thanks. Maybe later.”
The women placed a big stainless steel coffee urn and plates of sandwiches at the back of the van. The locals tromped over to the food. Despite the snow few children wore hats or mittens, their ears and little hands red with cold. When had any of them eaten a decent meal?
I sloshed over to the man draped in the comforter. His untrimmed beard seemed to drag his long face down, and his wiry greying hair bushed out like an Old Testament prophet’s. Tall and lean, he stood six inches taller than my five foot eight. Will was searching the bushes between the burning house and the woods. I half expected him to barrel over and shove me aside as soon as he saw me doing an interview.
“This was your house, sir?” I slipped my notebook from the bulletproof vest under my parka. It took the man a moment to tear his eyes away from the fire. I could feel the heat on the side of my face.
“Yes.” He turned and his penetrating brown eyes seemed to bore right through me. I averted my eyes as a papery ash settled on my bare hand. When I tried to brush it off it disintegrated into an oily smear.
I searched my pockets for a tissue. “May I get you and your family some sandwiches? Coffee?”
“Someone’s bringing us something. Thanks, though.”
His deep voice rumbled. He told me their names: David and Anne Jordan.
“I’m Constable Linda Donner from the Sterling RCMP detachment. Are you all okay? Any injuries?”
Anne shook her head and bit her lip, tears clumping her eyelashes together.
I turned to David. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“About 6:30 this morning I heard glass breaking and a man shouting.”
“You were both upstairs?”
He shook his head. “No, I was in the kitchen. Anne was.”
“Did you recognize the voice? See anyone?”
Anne shook her head. “I was in the back bedroom with the baby.” She handed the squirming toddler to David who threw him fireman style over his shoulder.
“Where is or was the kitchen?”
The girl leaning against his leg began to cry and so did the baby. David handed the baby back to Anne, and picked up the girl whose light brown hair clung to her high rounded forehead.
He pointed to the right, near the scorched family car. “In that addition by the laneway.”
“The fire started there, on the opposite corner, right?”
“Yeah, in our parlour. I ran in there and found flames shooting up around a wine bottle lying on the rug. I tried to roll up the rug, but the flames were too high. Then the chesterfield burst into flames and so did the curtains.”
“Chesterfield?” My eyes darted over to see if Will was watching me. He was filming the crowd.
“The couch.”
A wet snowflake landed on my notebook paper, blurring the word “wine.”
“Describe the bottle. Was it broken?”
“Not broken. A regular green wine bottle full of kerosene with a rag stuck in the neck. A Molotov cocktail, I guess.”
“Kerosene? How did you know?”
“I could smell it. I ran upstairs, grabbed my daughter. Anne took the baby and we climbed out the back window over the woodshed. Once everyone was safe, I dashed into the kitchen to call the fire department and grab the coats and boots we kept by the side door. That’s when I heard gunshots.”
I wrote on the damp page. “You see anyone?”
“I was still indoors. My wife saw something.”
He flung his free arm over Anne’s shoulder.
She jerked away from him. “I heard noises like firecrackers going off and saw a flash of light off in the woods.”
David and I locked eyes. He knew his wife’s jerking away like that didn’t sit well with me. His stare was like an X-ray of thoughts and feelings flitting through my soul that I could barely see myself. He gave me the creeps.
“Who did this to you?”
“I don’t know.” He finally looked away.
Anne glared at him, trembling, her eyes bloodshot, her brown hair hanging in tangled wet strings. “You know it’s one of them. Tell her.”
The little girl in David’s arms shivered, a tiny furrow in her brow, her lower lip trembling. Her nylon parka was soaked. I had to get the family out of there. A group of men wearing dirty padded shirts and hostile expressions pressed around us.
I shoved past them, shepherding the family toward the police car. The men followed. Their filthy clothes, misshapen bodies, and expressions of hostile defiance matched the sickening squalor of South Dare.
Anne clutched my arm. “They never wanted us to start a church here. They threw rocks at us when we drove through. They came into our house when we weren’t home. They made threatening phone calls. They poisoned our dog.”
I waved my hand toward the road. “The building on the corner with a fresh coat of paint? That your church?”
“Yes.”
“These people want to give South Dare a bad name,” interrupted a pot-bellied man in a dirty red work shirt. The deformed fingers of his left hand were fused together like a lobster claw. “You cops only come this way to harass people. The pastor, he set fire to the house hisself.” A murky light flickered in his eyes.
Still holding the little girl David stepped toward him. “Gordon, why do you say these