Once Burned Read online

  “What?”

  Roxanne fell back in the chair, swallowed hard. I turned the laptop and read:

  Contacted Wednesday, the child’s mother, Beth Leserve, 22, of Portland, said the State Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) was responsible for the child’s death. In addition to Sandra St. John, the foster parent, Leserve faulted DHHS caseworker Roxanne Masterson for removing the boy from Leserve’s home and placing him in State custody.

  “They said I wasn’t a fit mother,” Leserve said. “And they give my son to a murderer?”

  She said she was following an action plan, devised by Masterson. “I was trying,” Leserve said. “Working real hard at it. Then one day they just freakin’ pull the plug.”

  After her child was taken into State custody, she was so distraught that she had a relapse, she said, returning to her abuse of prescription medications, which led to heroin use. She ended up in prison for robbing a credit union in an attempt to get drug money. Leserve said she was released from prison three weeks ago, had gotten off drugs, and was trying to regain custody of her son when news came of his death.

  “I know I’m not perfect,” she said. “But the State killed my son. They killed him. They took my baby and gave him to this murderer. My baby’s blood is on their [expletive] hands.”

  According to DHHS spokesperson Anthony Shea, Masterson had worked as a child protective caseworker for nine years. She resigned from her position with the agency last November for personal reasons. Masterson could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

  “She was just totally strung out,” Roxanne said, to me, to herself, to nobody. “She’d forget to feed him. Change his diaper. And the people in the house, my God, they were all addicts, substance abusers, junkies. I mean, he would have died if he’d stayed there. Malnutrition, getting stepped on, something. What choice did I have? We tried working with her for a year. More than a year. I mean, you remember.”

  “It’s okay. She’s just feeling guilty, taking it out on everyone else.”

  I put my hand over Roxanne’s and squeezed.

  “We did have a plan. An action plan. She’d promise she’d get clean, but she could never pull it together. Three or four days, right back to it, needle in her arm.”

  “I remember.”

  I looked at the story, scrolled down.

  There was a photo of Beth, the mom. Dark hair, attractive in a tough, I-could-kick-your-ass sort of way. But what struck me was her eyes: hollow, tired, sunken in shadows. Eyes that spoke of years of drama, and tumult, and disappointment. And now this. She was clutching a teddy bear to her chest and staring mournfully into the camera. Next to that was a Facebook-looking photo of Sandy St. John, the foster mom. She was smiling brightly, with perky, pointed features, hair still in high-school bangs.

  I tapped the keys.

  And there was Roxanne, a newspaper file photo. It was winter, the collar of her black leather jacket turned up, angry eyes, mouth curled in a snarl.

  “I look like a criminal,” she said.

  “From when you were outside court in Galway.”

  “We were coming out, after the Eddy trial. I was telling the photographers they couldn’t take pictures of the kids. And that one jerk wouldn’t stop.”

  “I remember.”

  She reached for the keyboard, looked at the screen.

  “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “Beth says she’s going to get a lawyer,” Roxanne said. “How can she afford that? She doesn’t have ten cents.”

  “They’ll take thirty percent, if they think they can force a settlement.”

  “From us? But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Wrong’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “Wrong is in the eyes of the jury.”

  “Jury?” Roxanne said, burying her face in her hands, shaking her head. “Oh, Jack.”

  The phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” I said.

  We sat and waited for the answering machine to click on. It did. A woman’s voice—young, earnest, and sympathetic. “Hi. This is Caitlin Carpenter. I’m a reporter for the Portland Advertiser? I’m trying to reach Roxanne Masterson, formerly a child protective worker for DHHS? Roxanne, could you call me back on my cell? My number is—”

  Roxanne picked up a pen. I reached over and took it away.

  The phone rang most of the morning. Caitlin Carpenter called four times. A reporter for the Bangor Record, Sam something, rang up twice. Two TV reporters called, one breathless young guy saying he was preparing a report for the six o’clock news and on a tight deadline.

  “Tell somebody who cares,” I said.

  The phone stopped ringing only when Roxanne was on it. She talked to her former supervisor, David, and a DHHS lawyer named Sylvia, Roxanne alternating between defending herself and beating herself up. I went out on the deck and stood under the overhang of the roof and watched the rain. It was falling steadily, noisy on the trees at the edge of the grass, the smell of summer welling up from the woods. Ordinarily I loved days like this, the hush that fell over the green-walled woods, everything softened by the gauze of rain. But not today. The woods seemed dismal and dark, like the sadness in the house had spilled out, the melancholy spreading.

  And then Roxanne was off the phone. I slid the door open and went back in. She came toward me, phone in her hand, looking slightly relieved.

  “Dave says I shouldn’t worry; it’ll sort itself out.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I’m sure it will.”

  “He says Sandy thinks Ratchet tried to climb up on the kitchen counter while she was in the bathroom. She heard the noise and found him on the floor. He must’ve fallen and landed wrong.”

  “So it was a freak accident?”

  “She was out of the room for three minutes.”

  “Climbed up to get a cookie or something?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “He didn’t say.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “Dave and the lawyer say they don’t think Beth has much of a case. I mean, it’s tragic, but it’s not negligence. You can’t tie a four-year-old down every time you leave the room.”

  “Or they get you for that,” I said.

  Roxanne walked over and stood beside me. We looked out at the rain, the grass, the green wall of the sad woods.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I’m sorry for your troubles.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, too.”

  She took a long breath and exhaled and it came out a trembling sigh.

  “He was so sweet. This sweet little boy, in spite of it all.”

  “I remember you saying that,” I said. “How he was a bit of light in that mess of a house.”

  “Trusting. I mean, with all that had happened to him, he still would look at you and just smile. That was his first reaction to people. Me. His mom’s junkie friends. His dad, that piece of garbage.”

  She wiped her tears. My eyes started to well.

  “He never got any breaks,” I said.

  “And now this,” Roxanne said. “He didn’t deserve this.”

  “He didn’t deserve any of it.”

  “And Beth didn’t deserve whatever it was that made her. She had some awful story, being molested by her uncle or somebody.”

  “Evil begets evil,” I said. “Passed down like a gene.”

  She turned to me, her cheeks glistening.

  “But you know what was funny, Jack? It was Ratchet, this skinny little kid with a weird do-it-yourself haircut and too-small clothes, he was the one who seemed to break the cycle. He just loved everybody.”

  “Like Sophie,” I said.

  “Yes,” Roxanne said. “Like Sophie.”

  “Who’s gotten all the breaks.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this little guy,” I said. “He got no breaks at all.”

  She bit her lip, and the tears squeezed out. “Maybe if I’d left him there. Maybe if I
’d let Beth try a little longer. Maybe—”

  “Stop,” I said, and I took her in my arms and she sobbed and shook.

  After a while, we separated and Roxanne sighed and I said, “Wonder how Clair’s doing with our cowgirl?”

  “We should get her home for lunch,” she said.

  “They won’t call if you don’t. And she’ll stay with Pokey for days.”

  “Yeah.”

  A long pause, the rain coming down, the leaves trembling like they were about to burst into tears.

  I broke the silence. “You don’t think . . . I don’t know . . . that Sandy could have lost it or something?”

  It had to be said.

  “I can’t imagine. I mean, I know Ratchet was pretty hyper, ADD and who knows what else. Beth was using so much when she was pregnant—he was born addicted—and then he was on meds. And it could get to you, how he could never get enough attention, how he just never settled down. But hit him? I don’t think so.”

  “What if Sandy just pushed him and he fell? Hit his head on the side of a table or something?”

  I could feel Roxanne deflate.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I just never quite believe the party line. And your bosses have reason to circle the wagons.”

  Roxanne turned to me.

  “Jack, they’re not liars.”

  I shrugged. She turned away again.

  “You think we need a lawyer, then?” she said.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to talk to somebody,” I said. “In case she pushes it.”

  “Where are we going to get the money for that?”

  “I’ll get to work,” I said.

  “It’ll take you two days to make what a lawyer makes in two hours,” Roxanne said.

  “Then maybe I’d better get started.”

  3

  I pulled into Clair’s on my way out. There were lights on in the barn, and as I approached the door I could hear Vivaldi playing. The Four Seasons. “Summer.”

  “Hey,” I called. “Where are you cowpokes?”

  “Daddy,” Sophie called, from the back of the barn. “In here.”

  I walked through the shop, slid the wooden door aside, and started for the box stalls. Halfway down on the left a door was open. I stepped into the stall, saw Clair brushing Pokey, Sophie standing by the pony’s head, holding the halter and stroking his nose.

  “We’re making Pokey beautiful,” she said.

  He was stumpy and swaybacked, with a shaggy mane, doleful eyes.

  “He’s looking great,” I said.

  “One fine piece of horseflesh,” Clair said.

  I gave him the look.

  He said, “Honey, I think Pokey’s earned a carrot.”

  “I’ll get it,” Sophie said, and she handed me the halter and slipped out of the stall, her boot steps echoing down the wooden walkway.

  Clair kept brushing as I told him about Roxanne and Ratchet and Sandy.

  “Little guy never had a chance,” he said. “In the war, the kids were what tore at me. Didn’t deserve any of it. Parents gone, eating garbage in the streets. You wanted to pick them up, as many as you could carry, and take them home.”

  “To a place like this,” I said.

  “Yes,” Clair said. “I even looked into it. They threw up all kinds of roadblocks. Maybe should have tried harder.”

  “I’m sure you did what you could.”

  He was quiet, mind racing into the past.

  “You know, for a little while there I used to keep a count. Number of enemy I killed. Number of kids I should have saved.”

  “Wipe the slate clean?”

  “Cleaner, maybe. Nobody comes out of war clean.”

  We stood for a minute. Pokey looked over at me and snorted.

  “I’ve got to go do some work,” I said.

  Clair said, “I’ll shore her up.”

  “I doubt any reporters would make it this far.”

  “If they do, I’ll shoo them along,” Clair said.

  “I mean, Roxanne. Really. Of all the people to get caught up in something like this,” I said.

  “Of all the people.”

  “Not fair,” I said.

  “Fairness is an abstraction, a human invention,” Clair said. “Justice is elusive, random, and accidental.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did,” he said.

  I smiled.

  “Should’ve taught college instead of wasting your time crawling around in the jungle.”

  “They wouldn’t like my research methods.”

  “Or your penchant for firearms,” I said.

  “So here we are,” Clair said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Here we are.”

  Boots clattered and Sophie slipped back into the stall with a long, thick carrot clutched in her fist. Pokey stirred and snorted. She held it out and he bit the end off and chewed. She held out the carrot again.

  “I’ve got to go do some work, honey,” I said.

  “Okay, Daddy,” she said. “I’ll just be here, making sure Pokey’s all set.”

  Another chomp, Sophie yanking her little fingers back with the remnant of the carrot. Pokey chewed. I bent and gave Sophie a kiss on the cheek and left. Vivaldi escorted me out.

  Sanctuary is west of Rockland, on the banks of the Sanctuary River, which runs eight miles south to the sea. I’d been through it, in my meandering, remembered a town square surrounded by black-shuttered colonial houses and marked by monuments to Sanctuary’s war dead. I had stopped one rainy fall afternoon and checked out the monuments. I remembered being impressed that somebody in the town had made sure to include the dead from recent wars that had never quite been declared: Iraq, times two, Afghanistan, a war without end.

  I took the overland route from Prosperity, driving back roads through Knox and Morrill, slogging the pickup down muddy tracks through Searsmont and Appleton. The roads were marked by four corners named for settlers who had died off and, in many of these deserted tracts, had never been replaced. Their houses stood empty, paint scoured away by wind and rain, barns collapsed like a tornado had spun through, when really it was just the twister of time.

  But not in Sanctuary, which was close enough to the allure of the coast to keep people and money in good supply. The magazine story had listed it as one of twenty “Hidden Treasures,” coming in at number seven, between Black Mountain, North Carolina, and Prescott Valley, Arizona. A town where you can have your boat out back, motor to the sea in a half-hour. A town where the general store sells live bait and the Wall Street Journal. A town where a horse farm goes for the price of a mobile home in bluegrass country. A town where your neighbor’s family may have lived in Sanctuary for five generations, or she may have just retired from a Foreign Service post in Oman.

  Or she may be an arsonist—but not likely. Most arsonists are male.

  The treasure remained hidden as I crossed Route 17 and continued south past scruffy ranch houses and a gun shop. Then after a few miles, the town emerged—first a few farmhouses perched on roadside knolls, and then bigger houses, the square, the store and post office.

  The fire station.

  It was a big, brick building with four bays, a paved parking lot, and a sign with a painted thermometer that said the fire danger was moderate. I wondered if that meant forest fires or arson. I pulled in and looked for someone to ask.

  There were two big pickups parked by the side door: a jacked-up Chevy painted flat black, a NASCAR #88 plate in the back window, and a gleaming red Tahoe with SANCTUARY VFD on the door and CHIEF in an embossed tag above the license plate.

  I eased my Toyota truck between them, grabbed my notebook, got out, and walked to the door. I opened it and stepped inside.

  The firehouse was cool and dimly lit, smelling of soap and wax and rubber hoses. A teenage guy in jeans and work boots and a dark-blue T-shirt was crouched next to the wheel of the closest truck. He was polishing a big chrome valve sort of thing. I walked up behind him and could hear him grunting along w
ith whatever music was streaming from his iPod.

  “Hi, there,” I said.

  He kept polishing. I tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled, reached reflexively for the knife in the sheath on his belt, next to the fireman’s pager.

  “Easy,” I said

  He was wiry, muscled, with a tan that ended above the elbow like he’d dipped his forearms in stain. His hair was a grown-out buzz cut, and his face was long with a mouth set in a stoic frown.

  He yanked one earbud out, said, “Shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that.”

  “Shouldn’t listen to music that loud. You’ll make yourself deaf.”

  He ignored the advice, said, “You need something?”

  “Chief here?”

  “Chief’s my dad.”

  He said it like it gave him clout.

  “Good for you,” I said. “He around?”

  He looked at me more closely.

  “Who’s asking?” he said.

  “I’m Jack McMorrow. I’m a reporter.”

  His eyes narrowed with distaste.

  “Chief’s in his office.”

  “Where’s that?”

  He jerked his thumb toward the rear of the building.

  “Carry on,” I said, and headed that way, walking past the red pumper. Its chrome was polished like the brass on a yacht, and the floor was damp in places, freshly washed. When I looked to my left I saw two more young guys polishing a red-and-white rescue truck. Behind the trucks was an office with windows facing the truck bays. A man seated at a desk. The sign on the door said CHIEF FREDERICK.

  I knocked and he said, “Yeah.”

  I opened the door and stepped in and smiled. He was fiftyish. Cropped gray hair and ruddy drinker’s cheeks. Thin lips. The same blue outfit as his kid. Handsome, in a beer-commercial sort of way. He didn’t get up.

  “Chief Frederick,” I said. “I’m Jack McMorrow. Newspaper reporter.”

  He continued shuffling through papers covered with columns and numbers. He didn’t look up. Or reply. I kept going.

  “I live up in Prosperity. I saw the news briefs about the arson fires.”

  A flicker in the eyebrows. His version of dialogue.

  “So I’m interested in knowing more about that.”

  He didn’t answer. This time I didn’t help him out. He stared up at me and I thought of the kids’ game where you stare at each other until one of you breaks down and laughs.