A cold front had moved in over a windless night atop the ice. What might have been a quiet night in rural Maine was being disturbed by the loud revving of four stroke engines as a formation of snowmobiles tore across abandoned train tracks before a dam separating the ocean. They raced across the other side on the lake under full moonlight. Drivers that remained protected from wind, and sight with pitch-black clothing, helmets, and boots.

Nearby was the dark island with the small white beach sandwiched between the rocks jutting up out of the ice. Twenty unlit windows glared out at the waterfront from the massive mansion now reflecting the incoming headlights. A nested estate that had been perched directly above on a jagged cliff edge glaring down at anyone who dared venture below it. With precision not seen in many hobby operators, they pulled in behind the cover of rocks before flipping their kill switches in unison. Without a break climbing gear was assembled and thrown up as the men quickly began to follow the ropes dangling down the cliff edge.

One by one, three men pulled themselves onto a porch under a metal fence, into view of a waiting motion activated security camera. They turned around to look back down, before a struggle ensued as two strained to reach down with arms latched on as they hauled up the final posse member. The weak link crumpled to the ground, his metal grippers on his souls going into the air, as his body sprawled onto a bed of powdery snow as he ripped off his riding helmet to reveal an identity still concealed by white ski mask. In the mouth hole a cigarette was frantically inserted as the man struggled to get a spark on a matchbox to ignite. Relaxing for a second as he puffed away with deep breaths. The addiction was quenched before he finally took shape of the camera spying from above. A grainy pistol aimed up, as the video feed cut to a blue static image.

From another angle the crew was captured again as they trudged through the snow drifts, little gusts blowing white powder sticking to their black fatigues as four flashlights bounced with each step. For the last time their distant outlines were spotted at the edge of the frame before making way to the estate’s power building. A small brick shack with cracked cement, a rusted caked door, and aged plywood blocking the windows. The door that must have been kicked down, as the men broke and entered. It hadn't taken long for all the island's power from the mainland to be shut down, before the fire had been started.

*(Jack)*

I had trekked up to the crime scene hours after the video had been captured, on snowshoes when the black smoke was billowing in the morning air. Smelled it all the way from my cabin an hour walks away, but a twenty-minute sprint. The one thing I have a gut for is photography. With the phone call telling me I better get up here in the cold to get all I could capture as soon as possible. I had to run most of the distance coming up the steep hill to a group of waiting first responders winded. The sheriff had already managed to get the security footage before I had arrived, and they had all gathered to replay it on loop outside a small firetruck that had managed to make it over the ice without sinking in.

“Guess they didn't know about the night vision security,” said the large man decked in all Carhart clothing.

He had bent down to study a burned meter around the back. A man who had introduced himself to me in a rather rowdy phone call in the early morning as Steve Barnacle: the fireman, fire inspector, town selectman, and garbage man all for the town of Loony, Maine.

We both came around the front of the shed's entrance.

“That looks like an expensive rig you got there chief; it gets cold up here in this neck of the woods so be careful because stuff like that tends to freeze up” Steve said.

He pointed to the camera with fried electronics laying on the ground before looking over at my fancy digital again, before he entered.

“How do you figure that some of these cameras stayed up, anyway?” I asked as I joined him inside.

My eye was off the lens long enough to see his red swollen face on the other side of the cracked half wall. He was studying a pile of burnt wires and scrap metal for more clues.

“I don’t know. Technology isn’t involved with any of my jobs if I can help it. I'm just telling you what I hear from my kids''. Steve said, chuckling to himself as he headed for another barbecued generator.

“Must be powered by the solar batteries sitting in the basement” I replied before snapping more photos of the aftermath.

“How about that big hunk of metal, surely a relic from your time?” I said, pointing to a cast iron pump rusting, with its plastic pipes melted in the corner.

“Well, well ain't this a unit. Oh, she’s probably older than my father. It was a nice one at one point. I wouldn’t mind having myself one in good condition for the camp” he said inspecting it.

“Does your camp happen to be out here on this very lake”? I said, my feet crunching over broken glass from the blown out lights, and windows.

“No, no I can’t afford any camps anywhere here in Looney, nope not in this neck of the wood, she’s back on out, out and up by where you drove in Moosefly pond #3” he said.

“There’s 3 Moosefly ponds just in this area”?

“4 well more like 3 and a half as 3 and 4 are separated by a bridge and some beavers” said the Swiss army knife of a public servant. He let out a rattling cough as he headed for the exit.

“You finish up with your pictures here, my lungs aren’t what they used to be”

He vanished as my camera finished documenting the remainder of this small part of a much larger crime scene. Moving behind the generators, with pictures of it still burnt into mind, we followed on another snow covered path, a column of destruction further inside. The fence had been toppled over into snow, as the burned husk of the formerly standing mansion came into view.

"Hope you saved some film for this scene Jack" said Steve, chugging down molten black coffee from his gallon furnace.

"Arson!" escaped me as I made headway forward on the path running, snow drifts flying by the side of my boots before standing on solid melted ground seared by the heat. Facing down a chasm once a cellar with vintage wine, now a filled ashtray of burnt soot smoldering in the woods.

"The place has been cooked" Steve shouted my way, as he struggled following my impressions left behind.

The pictures spun on my camera a slow movie of images snapping fast. The remains of twisted metal from bed and box springs, the stones from a chimney cracked apart and scattered as they fell, and the peeled and blackened remains of red paint that used to have a different hue. A cold hand grabbed at me from behind.

"Now boy it's too early to confirm it's arson! That means it's too early to be talking about arson!"

Our eyes met, he now had a new character I hadn't seen before.

"Understand"? He finished, with his face strained aggressively on me.

As I looked away I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. The feeling that I had begun shoveling underneath a headstone with more than the single skeleton that was advertised as beneath.

"I understand not feeding any rumors or the press, the last thing we want is national attention to a quiet little town like this". I said looking back at the red faced, and red bearded humongous man to my left.

"Good idea" Steve said as a zipper loudly descended.

He grinned, removing a large plastic zipper bag from one of the many crevices, and storage areas hidden in his Xtra large coat, finally a lumpy looking donut emerged from dozens pressed together in the bag.

"How about the owner? Probably down somewhere in Florida this time of year?" I asked.

Steve had already finished one donut and had reached in for another. "You want one? My wife made a big batch of them homemade last night. They are better than anything you will see at our local market" he said, waving it on display.

"Sure, fine". The donut was both moist and buttery, but at the same time bland and without flavor.

"The owners. Oh they're off, on the family ranch in Tennessee I think riding horses or something to do with goats. Christ you know it's much too much too much to be here more than one month a year, the caretaker..burrp he lives up in a trailer on pine hill" Steve said, talking between big bites of his second baked victim.

"Should be out here eventually".

He pointed one empty, oversized hand at the half size 4x4 fire truck.

"Course no big fire trucks were ever getting up here till later with the gate down, and the roads plowed. We had to make do with a helicopter from the national guard. It wasn't until a few hours ago we could cut the gates open, and set off the loudest alarms you ever did hear, my ears are still ringing from those damn things".

The owner, having been alerted by local law sounding his alarm, had at some point summoned his caretaker, who hobbled in at 10:27 am. An older man with a curved belly, white whiskers and overhanging bent corncob, he immediately joined in the search of the property with a few grunts and a lit pipe.

"Nothing left, nothing at all" said the caretaker, limping along.

"I know Henry, damn shame, millions and millions have gone up in smoke" Steve replied as we kept along the blackened ground. More photos to form a complete picture from every angle. One section of the building had survived the blaze; a wall opened up to reveal a pair of stained wash and dryers under a partial roof.

"That's where the entry was," Henry muttered.

It was a quarter past 7 when three men found themselves stationed behind an aged maple dining booth at the Moorings cafe.

"I'll take the hogged harbor, some eggs over easy, coffee"

"I'll have the breakfast deluxe with blueberry pancakes, and grits" I said.

"I'll have my usual"

"Alright fellas, is that everything?" said the waiter, clicking his retractable pen repeatedly with a mild malice against the device.

"That's everything for me today Bradley"

"Yup"

"Oh shoot can I get a coffee with cream and sugar too please?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'll bring some out," said the waiter, already leaving.

I yelled to thank him who grunted once before entering the kitchen. The local etiquette was saving serious conversations until after the coffee was poured. I was left studying the placemat display advertising of local businesses. Options for HVac and plumbing and heating were numerous, as well as mechanics, boat supply, and used cars, however the one odd duckling that really caught my attention was a shuttered cathedral somewhere on the outskirts. It had recently been converted into a showcase area for many of the local artists to display intricately carved wood totem poles, every native state species stuffed, and mosaics of stained glass reclamation. Tours available on request!

The dinner was alive with hungry patrons, whether it be for the food, or the gossip about what really happened two nights ago on Meyberry island. The one few had ever set foot on since the massive metal barricades marked its borders. Borders it wasn't looking like we would be crossing again, not after state police had shoved us off them before the middle of yesterday. They wanted their own guys, and their own pictures, and this had the local egos receiving some inflammation.

"When the coffee is served it better be hot this time," said the man trapped in the dinner booths corner.

The man trapped by the local red bearded giant was the deputy sheriff of the entire county police department. A short and slim body, buzzed cut and dressed out in a classic navy blue uniform.

"Now this is what they call high up meddling, Ritchie rich don't any of our simple minds involved" he began after pipping liquid.

"Just the way the world goes now Majar". Steve grumbled digging in.

"I've made copies of what we have onto thumb drives as we discussed gentlemen " I said before reaching down into my pants pockets to double check they hadn't run off on me for the third time.

"Might as well toss them up the food chain and keep things professional, don't think anyone here wants a lawsuit so we'll all use discretion unless morally justified in case of a cover-up" I said handing off two of the three drives.

"Sunny we got families to feed, so you can take on the risk that comes with these higher morals" said the sheriff, leaning in on me, as I glared back.

"I can't say I disagree with that, Majar," said Steve, taking a thumb drive for himself.

"Well that's that" said the sheriff of Crust County.

His badge was shining as he leaned back, focused on eating the rest of his bacon. Steve had already finished his entire meal without a crumb remaining, put $50 on the table, and left.

I found myself staring at the TV by lunchtime, as a snow plow worked the nearby streets, scraping by one side road where I had rented a cabin at $750 a month in the dead of winter. I couldn't afford what they charged to stay in the summer, so my time staying was limited. An online ad had attracted my rudderless life here, an offer by the town, to do what they called official photography. This meant a lot of odd jobs but still that's much better than the odd wedding. After a stint spent doing nothing in the army, I'd smoked the rest of my youth away trying to say something with my pictures and trying to pay the bills with them too. Food, rent, gas, and the bar tab. Maybe I will make something of myself by age 30?, maybe not.

It was well past 2 before I got back to digesting the photos with hot burgers and beer. The best one was a picture within a picture, a still image of the masked man sitting in the snowbank on his smoke break captured by the hidden security camera. Surely it would soon be a prime piece of evidence involved in the process of locating the lowlifes and convicting them. What we had realized very early on and shared along with higher authority was the curious fact that the culprits hadn't seemed to have carried up their own accelerant, and the caretaker had said that what was stored, kept locked up, only the kerosene kept on hand to feed the generators. No signs of gasoline to be seen for such a large and hot burn Steve had said at some point in our examination.

It was safe to say I was spun deep into the mystery of who, what, and why this property was targeted in such a ruthlessly organized manner. The first step in finding out a motive for any enemies would be seeing if the owner had any. Any involvement in feuds or lawsuits in this area of the world or any other.

"Mr. Felt''. Known by search engines for his charity work and godly website showcasing it all. He had a global presence as CEO of technology firm Exitcorp. Eventually I dug up a local papers archive documenting Mr. Felt’s local lawsuits suing the marina, the town, and possibly a few others for mistreatment and defamation. Ten years ago he had wielded the top lawyers in the state of Maine on a legal warpath. Discrimination and mistreatment at his mooring due to his yachts large size, the sinking of his reputation with lies, as well as his skiff due to unfortunate circumstances. It was a clear motive for a vendetta. The Harbor master involved "Steven Barnacle'', and another "Nancy Foulmoth'' had been sued for defamation, while the town had settled.

It was looking like an inside job, a carefully planned act of concocted revenge. A tale as old as time when corrupt small-time officials were on a power trip that seems to be rapidly escalating. There's a good chance I have professional working relationships with most of the suspects. The next days and weeks would surely be stifled by anxiety and paranoia. I couldn't leave town, couldn't get caught in the crosshairs of suspicious behavior. I would have to live the same as before going to work for a gang of crony individuals, probably under heavy surveillance from the FBI, while staying uninvolved and appearing unaware.