Quentin's Redemption

Chapter 1

It was a balmy spring day in 1947, not the sort of day one would expect trouble. I’d been the top cop in remote Nyssa, Oregon near the Idaho border for exactly one year.

My nose caught the harsh smell of smoke. I was some three blocks from the office. When I pulled up Jean was standing out front squinting at a dirty brown cloud rising quickly from the west to the east, being caught a hundred feet up by a cold breeze. Jean elbowed into my cruiser window before I had the chance to get out.

Another fire, Quentin. This time old man Reynold’s cottage. I called it into the hook and ladder boys and they sirened past here five minutes ago.

Elmer Reynolds finished his high school teaching career some fifteen years before. Everyone under thirty had slaved in his English classes back when, including my live-in love interest, Piper Needham.

I’ll head right over. Anything else that’s urgent?

"What else could be more urgent than a fire?’

Kidnapping, rape, abduction, hatchet murder, or you having a date ….

Get on you monkey! That arson job last week’s likely connected. Get hopping Chief Quick — live up to your nickname.

I winked at Jean, the best office manager any small town chief cop ever had, and patched out leaving Jean coughing melodramatically in a cloud of dust. She was barely five feet, if that, built like a fire plug with silver hair clipped short. At every wrong turn taken, I was a greenhorn digging for rebirth from a dark past. Jean was always there with friendly nudges to common sense directions. I called her my silver compass.

Elmer Reynolds was a retiree on Elm Avenue, northeast corner of Nyssa. I’d talked to Elmer a few times at the Thunderegg Café, though he spent most of his spare time at the Brown Barrel pub. I’d been lassoed into the chief role since George Ledbetter died of a stroke. I was a green deputy, sworn in as fidgety over-anxious head of a one man police department. One became two as deputy Roger Rogers joined in my first month of duty. He said his mother named him Roger as a joke, what with his surname being Rogers. His mother wasn’t far off about the kid’s nature. One joke after another.

I’d never intended for Nyssa to be my destination, but a wise old owl named Gus Hooligan and his psychic calico Sophie snagged and channeled me to the deputy opening, when then current deputy, Chester Goode, was packing for the call of the wild in the Yukon. After being assaulted in a soft way by various local females who saw me as catch of the year, I threw my shoes under Piper Needham’s bed. I wasn’t sorry.

My love affair with Piper was progressing nicely. She was my best friend and therapist and passion flower. We spent long hours remodeling a shack we picked up for a song from the son of another ancient who spent his last days in a Boise rest home. Most of the town’s seniors had either lost sons to the Pacific theater or had children who escaped Nyssa for the bright lights of big cities, some to Portland, some to Los Angeles. With no one local to prop them up, parents they often found their way to drab rest homes in Boise, waiting to die.

In the year I’d been top cop of this dusty burg in the middle of nowhere, I’d come a long way with the townspeople, solving a peeping Tom case and one homicide in a place where neither crime had been reported in decades. Originally from Oklahoma, I spent a year in the Three C’s in Wyoming and three years in the shipyards in Portland where I met my wife, Mattie Andrews. After a whirlwind romance which included fighting off a platinum blonde torch singer shadowed by a mob boss, I married Mattie and enjoyed three months of ecstasy before she was killed by a head on eighteen wheeler accident. Broken in mind and spirit I fled east without destination until coaxed by Gus Hooligan, a crusty owl who introduced me to Chief George. I’ve been top cop since George passed.

I pulled up a half block from the Reynolds place.

The fire was pretty much under control but a fist of onlookers included neighbors was craning to see what firemen were doing. I noted Maria with son Pepito at the back of the crowd. Her eyes were wide with shocked amazement. I’d barely escaped Maria’s seduction efforts the year before, just as I was about to commit to Piper. Maria, a divorcee, was unquestionably the most stunning female in three states. Trouble was, she knew it.

A crew was sifting through the rubble and hosing hot spots, making wisps of steam and smoke that danced away like drunken hula girls. The house was one of the oldest in Nyssa, not much more than a shack added onto several times — a firetrap for certain.

I got out of my cruiser and approached fire chief Leonard McElroy. Lennie as everyone called him, was forty and the only full time firefighter in the town of two thousand. He made it through the Pacific Theater giving only two fingers on his left hand for the country. He often said he was luckier than most of his buddies.

Lennie.

Q.

What do we have?

Not certain yet. Looks like smoking in bed maybe.

No connection to that small blaze last week at the Arbogast place?

Claude Arbogast had been away when his two bedroom bungalow went up in flames. It was rare for him to leave the house unless he had help, what with his deteriorating knees. It came out his daughter took him to see barrel races in Idaho.

Lennie wiped his sooty brow, peeled off his helmet and ran his hand over his scalp. The temperature was already in the 80s and his hair was soaked.

He looked me in the eye then turned his gaze to his crew, busy putting out the remaining danger spots. Smoke had mostly cleared. A nasty smell permeated everything.

Connection? I repeated.

Can’t say yet. I do know the Arbogast fire was arson. Recovered two cans of lighter fluid and a definite ignition point in the back porch. Nothing like that here so far.

A thought passed that the arsonist might have figured the fire would kill Claude. After his place was destroyed his daughter came and took him to live with her in Pendleton. I was told he cried like a baby when he left, the only friends here were survivors of old age in Nyssa, including my friend Gus.

Nothing so obvious?

Give us a day or two. Afraid the bungalow’s a total loss. Too old, too dry.

Any sign of Reynolds?

He looked down and made a face like he’d just tasted something dirty.

Body’s a pretty big clue. The old boy didn’t get out. Maybe you’d like to call the county homicide gang. Two fires inside of a week on older structures might be coincidence but …

Coincidence doesn’t leave us much to investigate. Intent does.

I thanked Lennie and asked him to stop by when he knew more. I agreed to call Gerald Marks the homicide detective for Malheur County. Marks had been great help on the first murder in Nyssa since the early twenties.

My gut told me we had a serial arsonist on our hands. The quicker I could get a leg up on who it might be, the less danger to folks in my bailiwick. Learning how to be a good police chief was at the top of my list, right under being a good man for Piper.

The balmy spring day had brought the worst kind of trouble to my doorstep. Back then I always worried about being up to the test.

Chapter 2

Back at the office I sent Deputy RR as I called him to tape off the fire scene, one I suspected to be a murder scene. I told him to wait there until either Gerald Marks arrived or I’d relieve him.

As I was about to close the office, fire chief McElroy drove up.

I must look like smashed shit, he said, running his hand through encrusted black hair. That’s how I feel. A tough one. I figure the place was engulfed in a matter of minutes, nothing we could have done to save Elmer.

He told me the meat wagon boys hauled off Elmer Reynolds, though I hadn’t yet heard from Marks, the county homicide dick. I knew I might take heat for not making sure the body stayed in place until Marks arrived.

Arson?

He nodded and stared at his boots. Definite signs of accelerant against the west wall. Given Elmer’s handicaps he didn’t have a chance.

That fast means it couldn’t have been set in the middle of the night.

I figure around five a.m.

Just before dawn. Half the town was awake at that hour, including workers at the sugar beet factory and most farmers, not to mention the early crowd at the Thunderegg Café.

I’ll head up and see if Marks is there and relieve my deputy. Appreciate your dedication chief.

He shrugged and headed out to his truck. I locked the door and got in my cruiser just as Gerald Marks rolled up in his shiny black Ford. Marks was proud of the rig, a ’46 job given as reward for twenty years of fine service. After the war cars were still in short supply and in high demand. Cars often sold for twice what they normally would have.

Need to come in?

No bother. Just wanted to pass on the fire chief’s assessment that the fire was clearly arson. Heard about the Arbogast blaze from Mac. No body in that one so no alarm for my office.

That’s so.

Two arson jobs in two weeks in Nyssa. You raisin’ fire bugs in these parts?

Targets both elderly men. Arbogast was lucky enough to have his daughter take him to Idaho that weekend. You’ll be wanting my report.

No rush. Tomorrow’s fine. Chief Mac said both jobs set from an lean-to shed on the west wall. Thought this last might have been smoking in bed, but on further squinting he changed his mind. The source of the blazes says it’s the same fire bug.

Guess you got there after I did. McElroy was bushed and didn’t take the time to fill me in.

Marks offered to buy me a brew but I needed to save energy for some sheetrock Piper and I were hanging before it got too late. I knew she’d been slaving on the place all day and if it hadn’t been for the fire I would have stopped by for lunch. The girl outworked me two to one, and was as handy with a hammer as a genuine carpenter. Early on I could see her talent and suggested she be the foreman while I volunteered as her grunt.

Does that mean I get on top for our drilling exercises? she’d said.

That’s a question a man should never answer with more than a grin.

Marks drove off and I remembered my jacket was still in the office. It was chilly, as winter was still hanging on at night with frost. I unlocked the door and retrieved the jacket and slipped it on. Passing Jean’s desk I noted she’d left a yellow pad out with her fine angled writing listing the two arson victims. At the top of the page 1925 was written large and circled dozens of times. Below the number, which I took to be the year, Gladys Hartwell Rape Case, followed by a numbered list: Claude Arbogast, Elmer Reynolds, Cody Marshall.

I didn’t know the case but from the color of the jacket I could tell it was old. Why had Jean pulled it?

I hadn’t spoken to Jean since arriving that morning and the note wasn’t left on my desk, as she would have done should it be information I needed to know, but the notes made me wonder why she’d scribbled them down. Jean wasn’t beyond doing a little sleuthing on her own nickel, but she wasn’t the secretive type, and if she was digging around about Reynolds, she clearly had an angle. I felt certain whatever her angle she’d share it with me the next morning. I made a mental note to grill her first thing in the a.m.

Chapter 3

It was one of those beautiful desert days where the sky blinks bleached blue at the dusty brown hills and you have to remind yourself to feel glad you’re alive.

I heard Piper clanking pans in the kitchen and I reached over to a warm depression in the wasted mattress as if to will her back to bed.

She came in and lifted a tray beside me with steaming coffee, eggs over easy the way I like them, and sourdough toast with her mother’s strawberry jam. If the tray hadn’t been between us I would have reached for her and that broad smile of hers that always lit me up. I liked waking up to that smile. I felt I’d never tire of it, even though I sensed some disquiet deeper in her that never surfaced. Maybe I was being too sensitive to Piper, but I never wanted to overlook any ripple of dissatisfaction in our togetherness, any fault line that might be hiding. She was a huge chunk of my rehabilitation from deep grief.

We hadn’t been living together more than a few months but already I couldn’t imagine being anywhere but with her. There were times we sat on the half-assed leaning porch watching the sun disappear over seemingly dead hills that I saw into her on a deeper level. When questions came, either about her past or how she reconciled being with a man still in love with his dead wife, questions I shied from laying at her feet in fear of upsetting what was becoming a perfect union.

Love is a process, wise old Gus told me when I first moved into the decrepit shack with Piper, her enthusiasm brimming over into the daily struggle that it took to put the place in order. Only when it came to plumbing and wiring did we seek outside help. We rebuilt leaning walls in the same way we resurrected our leaning hopes, based on nothing more than the magic chemistry that sparked between us.

Grub in bed — such service.

Don’t get used to it Q. I was feeling extra domestic is all. When you’re done I have a surprise to show you in the front.

I nodded, piercing the egg yokes and mixing the orange goo into the crispy hash browns, much like the mixing of Piper’s clear heart and my suspicious one. Death of a loved one changes a fellow and I wasn’t immune from the scars of grief.

Piper knew how to cook. What’s more she knew just how I liked things, like eggs, my steak, and even how much cheese I wanted in meatloaf. She also knew how to rub her essence into my darker side. Her admiration and encouragement were a balm to my misgivings. I relaxed as I would have under the hands of a world-class masseuse.

You’re going to make me fat.

More to love.

You need more?

More’s always good.

I have something more under the covers here.

Promises, promises.

Want a break from remodeling?

With you it’d be half a day break.

Quickie?

No short changes for this country girl.

Compromise?

Finish your eggs. We’re wasting daylight.

I pulled on my blue jeans, t-shirt and chief’s blouse and padded into the kitchen.

Voila! she said singsongy like gesturing into what would be our living room, or parlor as townsfolk called it.

I walked through the doorway and nearly fell over. The entire room, walls and ceilings were covered with new sheetrock, even taped and scraped.

How —

I hired the Kennedy boy to help. Gave him twenty for a couple hours work. I did the taping myself.

Piper was nothing if not a careful worker and resourceful. I’d planned on spending the morning helping with the sheetrock, but that was before the fire. I knew I’d have things waiting at the office, including the old case Jean had pulled. Her notes had pestered my mind the night before, holding off sleep past midnight.

So, you get by with teen boys and don’t need my help.

"You can