Into the Inferno (27 page)

“You found who? I didn’t leave them. I would never leave them.”

“Then where were you?”

“I was—”

“Daddy! Daddy!”

I turned around so fast I almost twisted an ankle.

Like broken-field runners, the two of them raced through the line of vehicles in the long driveway leading to our house, Britney barely able to keep pace with Allyson, Allyson sprinting in and out of the various groups of firefighters, who were drinking Gatorade and chucking down cookies. I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating or not.

When I started to run toward them, Shad must have thought I was trying to flee the scene, because he leaped in front of me waving both arms. I knocked him down so fast I didn’t get to see the look of surprise on his face. Later, they told me he went down like a mousetrapped stop sign under a truck.

And then they were in my arms, Allyson and Britney.

And I was swinging them around and hugging them, and we were all alive again. The three of us.

We were a family again. I couldn’t believe it.

51. RECONSTITUTED PIZZA AND COKE

“Where were you?” I asked, setting them on the ground and kneeling between them, holding them. I was afraid this was another hallucination. During the last hour, had I renounced my atheism and prayed to God, I would have given anything in exchange for my daughters. Instead, here they were free of charge. Maybe there was a God.

“Daddy, what happened to our house?” Allyson couldn’t tear her eyes away from the smoldering ruins.

“I don’t know.”

Wide-eyed and mute, Britney refused to let go of me. I held her close, Allyson alone in front, her eyes vaguely accusatory, as if I or someone else on scene were responsible.

“It’s all burned up,” Allyson said.

“Yes, it is. And you know what? I thought you were in there.”

“Daddy, that’s silly. We were at a movie.”

“Why did it burn up?” Britney asked.

“You were at a movie until . . .” I glanced at my watch. “Almost one in the morning?”

“We had a flat on the freeway,” Morgan said. “We had to wait for the patrol. We waited, like, forever.”

“The
State
Patrol,” corrected Britney. I gave her another little squeeze. She squeezed back, as if I were the one in need of comfort. What a paradise I’d fallen into, embracing her skinny little body, feeling her bony ribs expand and contract as she breathed. Life was such a goddamn miracle. I gazed into Allyson’s eyes. Her mother had been able to read my feelings, too, often before I knew them myself. Allyson stepped forward and kissed my sooty cheek.

“You must have been worried.” With those words of comfort from a nine-year-old, life began to flow back into me.

“Yeah, and they never came,” said Britney. “The State Patrol never came.”

“Why didn’t you guys take my truck? I left the keys with Morgan.”

“We started to. We drove all the way into town, but Brit threw up in it,” Allyson said.

“She what?”

“I think she had too much pizza and Coke.”

Britney made a face. “It was the Coke. I can eat any amount of pizza without throwing up. At Lindy’s party I ate three and a half slices. I held the record.”

“You threw up there, too,” Allyson said.

“Yeah. From the Coke.”

“You all right now, pumpkin?” I asked.

“I’m fine. We didn’t want to take the truck after I threw up in it.”

“You guys must have been off in the truck when Stephanie and I came by the first time. You get the flat fixed?”

“Morgan didn’t know how,” Allyson said. “Finally one of the boys on Morgan’s tennis team saw us, and him and his mom gave us a ride. Then we saw all these fire trucks.” Britney put her cheek against mine.

“Where’s my stuff?” Allyson said. Always ready to stick up for herself, Allyson wasn’t inclined to let this affront to her perfect summer slide.

“I’m afraid it’s all inside, sweetheart. Everything’s still in there.”

“Not Miss Squiggly?” Britney said. She’d been dragging Miss Squiggly around since she was two. The doll was a mess. No hair. One eye. One leg.

“Even Miss Squiggly. We’re going to have to start from scratch.”

“I don’t want to start from scratch,” Allyson said defiantly.

“I need Miss Squiggly.” Britney burst into tears.

When I hugged them both again, Allyson started crying, too. “Look, you guys. We’re all together and nobody got hurt. Right now that’s the important thing. Nobody got hurt.”

Even as I said it, in my mind’s eye I saw the corpse in the backyard. If it wasn’t Morgan, who was it? Could it have been one of my old girlfriends, someone who’d come carrying a grudge and a can of gasoline? Maybe one of the Suzannes?

Or Lorie? For the corpse to have been Lorie’s, she would have had to lose some weight, but then, I hadn’t seen her in three years. She could have lost plenty of weight in that time. I wanted to go around the building and look at the corpse again, but I wasn’t about to let go of my daughters.

“What about my new sandals?” Allyson asked.

“We’ll get you some more.”

“I was going to wear those tomorrow.”

“I want my Miss Squiggly,” said Britney, slipping her thumb into her mouth. She hadn’t sucked her thumb since just after her mother left.

“Allyson,” I said. “Did you guys have anybody over at the house?”

Measuring the question, Allyson stopped crying and arched a look up at me. “No.”

“You sure?”

“Nobody.”

“Morgan, you didn’t have any friends visit?”

Morgan said, “No. We got pizza and headed out for the movie. Then Brit threw up. We came back and took my mom’s car, and then on the way home we got that flat and waited for the patrol.”

“
State
Patrol,” corrected Britney.

A shadow fell across us as Stephanie approached, eyes moist. She hugged the girls. I said, “Stephanie, I’m so sorry for what I said. Can you forgive me?”

“Forgive what?”

Clasping her to me, I said, “I’d give anything to erase what I said.”

“Forget it.”

“At least let me plead temporary insanity?”

“Stop apologizing. Your daughters are safe. That’s what counts.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Stevenson said, stepping forward. “This is all peachy keen. Hi, girls. Glad you could make it.” He fixed his dark eyes on me. “Mind if we ask some questions without this circus breathing down our necks?”

I stepped off a few paces into the field with Shad, Stevenson, and Holgate. It was so dark, I could barely see their eyes. Holgate said, “I’m glad your daughters showed up.”

“Thanks.”

“The question now is, who’s the prizefighter in the backyard? You originally thought it was that young lady over there, right?”

“My baby-sitter, yes.”

“I can see they’re about the same size. Easy mistake to make. But who’s in your backyard, really?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re going to have to question the baby-sitter. And your girls.”

“Like hell.”

“It’s a matter of routine that—”

“Ain’t going to happen. You’re not talking to my girls.”

“At least your baby-sitter,” said Shad, more irritated with me than ever.

“You’ll have to see her and her mother about that.” As he gawked at Morgan’s bare legs, a shriek came from that direction. Helen Neumann had just come out of her house and spotted her daughter. Why Helen had thought her daughter was in the fire when she hadn’t yet returned her car was beyond me, but then, Helen had always been prone to panic.

“You want to know how we think this went down?” Shad asked.

“I do. Yeah.”

“You did it.”

“Here we go again.”

“No, bear with me. We got a telephone call from a woman. Maybe two hours ago. Said you were real depressed. That you guys weren’t getting anywhere trying to find a cure for whatever it is you think you’ve got. That right?”

“We haven’t found a cure. That part’s right.”

“Said you were going to take yourself out. That you might want to take your family out at the same time.”

“Another anonymous caller?”

“A woman. I think she was the same one I spoke to after the trailer explosion. Only this time she called from a pay phone in Bellevue. You know anybody in Bellevue?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“It fits your MO perfectly.”

“What does? Setting my house on fire? Give me a break.”

“No,” Shad said. “Not setting the fire. Chickening out. You’ve done it once already. With the trailer. You set it up to kill yourself. And then at the last second you get the butterflies and run away.”

“Look. Surely you can figure out who made the call.”

“Wish we could,” Stevenson said. “It was a pay phone.”

“You got an explanation for all this?” Shad asked.

“Sure. Somebody’s setting me up.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re going to go through the rest of the house,” Stevenson said. “And then we’re going to come back and talk to you again.”

“He was with me,” Stephanie said. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“You guys really got a call about me tonight?” I asked.

Shad tipped his head toward his taller partner. “He did.”

“But you didn’t do anything about it, did you?” I said. “You didn’t believe her, did you?”

“I believe her now. Stick around. We’re coming back.”

“Anyone who knew two hours ago that my house was going to burn down was in on it.”

As I spoke, an evidence technician from the county approached, a young woman with short chestnut hair and heavy eyebrows. She wore the green-brown uniform of a King County deputy and held a partially burned driver’s license by the edges.

“Anybody know this person?” she asked.

52. MISS SQUIGGLY HEADS FOR THE BEACH

Without taking it from the technician’s fingers, each of the three investigators leaned forward in turn and examined the license:
Carpenter, Achara. Sex F. Height 5
′0".
Weight 95 pounds. Eyes brn. Birth date 090969.
Along the right side of the license on a blue background was a picture of Achara.

A wave of nausea flooded my stomach. Things had made a horrible kind of sense when I thought the corpse belonged to Morgan, but what on earth had Achara been doing in my house?

Maybe Donovan was somewhere in the burned-out hulk, too. But if that were true, their black Suburban would have been outside. Besides, we’d seen Donovan minutes before the fire.

Carl Steding had told me the story of the daughter of one of the downed firefighters in Chattanooga, who’d coincidentally died in a house fire. They never caught the killer-arsonist. The assumption had been made that it had been unrelated to her investigation of the syndrome. Unrelated to the downed firefighters. But it hadn’t been. This was too damn similar. It was those two bastards from Jane’s we’d seen at the motel.

“You know her?” Shad said.

“Works as a chemist at Canyon View Systems. In Redmond.”

“You want to explain what she was doing on your living-room floor?”

“I have no idea. As far as I know, she didn’t even know where I lived.”

“Somebody knew.”

Stevenson pulled out a toothpick and put it into his mouth. “She have any reason to burn you out?”

“No, of course not.”

“What about that vehicle the neighbors saw?” Stevenson asked no one in particular.

“Talk to the neighbors.”

“What about the ladies?” Stevenson asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“I hear you like the ladies.”

“I like all sorts of people.”

“How long have you known this Achara Carpenter?” He mispronounced her first name, calling her
Akra
.

“Two days.”

He smirked. “From what they tell me, two days would be about all you would need.”

“He
says
he was with the doctor,” Shad reminded him.

“That wouldn’t stop an operator, would it, Jimbo? From what they tell me, you’re a first-class operator. How did you have it figured? You bang the doctor in the motel and then come home and pork the chemist?”

“Why don’t you go wash your mouth out with soap?”

Stevenson’s Cupid-bow mouth pursed into what some would have called a shit-eating grin. The others stared at me in the dark. Then all three stepped back and conferred with one another, glancing from time to time at the fire building, at my charred pickup truck, and at me.

I walked back over to the girls and gave Morgan a long hug. I gave Helen Neumann one, too, the first time I believe we had ever touched.

“We were scared waiting on the freeway,” Morgan said.

Karrie Haston approached the investigating team, handing a sheet of paper to Stevenson, who held it aloft and read it by the fringe light from a spotlight on a King County deputy’s car. When he was finished, he gave it to Shad.

After Shad read it, he asked Karrie a question and then all four of them looked at me. Touching my back from behind, Stephanie said, “What’s that all about?”

“No idea.”

When they reached us, Shad and Stevenson stood a little too close. Karrie kept her distance. Holgate hung back, too.

“We were just wondering what this was doing pinned to the firehouse door,” Stevenson said, stretching the sheet of paper gingerly between the index fingers and thumbs of both hands. When I reached for it, he jerked it away and said, “Uh-uh. No touchee. Just read it.”

The note was typewritten.

To whom it may concern,

I, Jim Swope, being of sound mind and clean heart do solemnly swear that I have killed myself and my family on this night of June 19. For reasons best known to myself, I’m taking Achara Carpenter with me. It is better this way. My life has come to an end and my children’s lives will never be what they should. Nobody should be an orphan or live the kind of fucked-up life I’ve led. To those behind, I apologize for any trouble I may have caused.

J. Swope

“You can see right away any fool could have written this. It’s typed. Even the signature.”

“It’s only got one fool’s name on it.”

“It could have the president’s name on it and it wouldn’t mean shit.”

“Funny coincidence, wouldn’t you say?” said Shad, stepping closer, “that this note was found the same night your house burned down.”

“There’s nothing funny about it. It’s a frame-up.”

“That woman you dragged outside, the one only
you
seemed to know was in there? How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I went in after my daughters.”

Ron Holgate straightened his rep tie with one hand. “Where was the note found?”

“On the front door of the firehouse,” Karrie replied.

“Logical place to put it if it was legit,” Holgate said.

“Logical place to put it if it was a frame-up,” I said.

The three investigators stared at me with various degrees of indictment clouding their eyes. “It’s pretty obvious,” Shad said. “You wrote the note, set the fire, and then got out of the house at the last minute.” Stevenson nodded. Holgate pursed his lips and looked at his feet.

“Wouldn’t be the first time somebody backed out of a murder-suicide after the murder part,” said Stevenson. “You probably did the same thing two days ago with the trailer.”

“What are you talking about?” Stephanie said. “He was with me all night.”

“You got any independent proof of that?” Stevenson asked.

“The Sunset Motel,” Stephanie said. “Go check their records.”

Shad looked Stephanie up and down. I wished she hadn’t been wearing one of my ex-wife’s summer dresses, the material thin enough that lights behind her worked as X rays.

“You got a phone number for the motel?” Holgate asked. Stephanie dug through her wallet and pulled out a receipt, while Holgate pulled a cell phone off his belt.

Meanwhile, the two fire investigators stared me down. From the moment they met me at Caputo’s, neither of these guys had liked me.

Holgate rejoined the group. “They checked in all right. At least she did. Nobody saw him.”

“My in-laws saw me leaving a few minutes before we got here.”

“Your in-laws?” Shad said. “Cute.”

“They with you the whole time?” Stevenson smirked.

“Of course not.”

“I was,” said Stephanie. “Up until he went into the fire.”

“You’ll swear to that?” Holgate asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Not good enough,” Shad said, squinting at Stevenson. “Not with everything else that’s been going on.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Stephanie asked.

Stevenson said, “We expect you to lie for him.”

“I just met Achara yesterday,” I said. “I don’t have a motive. Are you guys even listening?”

“When did you meet the good doctor?” Shad asked.

He had me on that.

“Other thing we’re thinking about, King County just told us a woman matching the description of Achara Carpenter filled up a five-gallon can at the Texaco station a couple of hours ago. She was with a man, but nobody could give a description. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“I think we’re going to have to take you in for questioning,” Stevenson said.

“Without finishing the house?”

“Just go over there and sit in the back of our vehicle until we’re through.”

“Not bloody likely.”

“You want me to arrest you? Is that it?” Shad asked. “Consider yourself under arrest.”

“On what charge?” Stephanie asked.

“Suspicion of arson.”

“It’s not going to stick,” I said.

“Then we’ll hold you as a material witness. You’ve been disappearing on us all week. This way at least we’ll know where you are. Maybe this will encourage you to answer a few questions.”

“I answered your questions.”

“Yeah?” Shad said. “Why was this Achara person in your house at midnight?”

“I told you, I don’t know. You guys really get paid for this?”

Before I could stop him, Shad slapped handcuffs around one of my wrists. As he reached for my other wrist, Stephanie said, “What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you see he’s burned?”

Shad examined my left wrist. There were more burns on my right wrist. Removing the handcuffs, he began walking me toward the King County deputy’s car, his intent to lock me in the cage in the backseat. Britney ran in front of us. “Where are you going, Daddy?”

Bending low, I spoke softly. “Tell Stephanie to look for me at Miss Squiggly’s favorite spot.”

“But why, Daddy?”

“Shhhh. Tell you later.” I winked, gave her a kiss, and walked to the squad car with Shad.

He opened the back door, then reached up to force my head inside. Instead of moving with him, I grabbed his wrist, threw a quick elbow lock on him, and levered him into the backseat on his face. It was the last thing he expected. To tell you the truth, it was almost the last thing
I
expected.

I ran thirty paces in the direction of my house before I heard the first shouts of alarm behind, oddly enough from my own daughter.