by Earl Emerson
Periodically, Stephanie mopped me with a towel. “Oh, God, Jim,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I just don’t believe Morgan would do anything like that. It’s crazy.”
“I only met her those few brief times, but I don’t think she would, either.”
I thought about the way Morgan had been looking daggers at Stephanie, thought about how hormones raced around inside a teenager, and then I wondered if I hadn’t underestimated her feelings for me. Was it possible Morgan had been so upset about Stephanie she’d decided to kill herself, and take my girls with her? Was that possible?
“It’s my fault,” I said. “This whole thing is my fault.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know that.”
“And yours.”
“How do you—?”
“This was never about saving me. You wanted to alleviate all that guilt you felt for not being part of your sister’s life. This has been about you from the beginning.”
“That’s not true. That’s—”
“Taking me to bed was about you, too. If we slept together, you could off-load some of that guilt you felt for all the crap you threw at me when we first met. I veg out and you’re guilt-free.”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“You fucked me in every way possible.”
“I’m sorry if you see it that way, but I was—”
“Keeping me from saving the lives of the only two people on this planet I ever loved.”
You had to give her points for sticking. I would have flown out of there like a broken promise. But then you already know I’m a stone-cold bastard. More and more I was realizing it, too.
A moment later we heard a disturbance in the dark field behind us, a volunteer from Snoqualmie’s department trying to turn back someone who was traipsing toward us across the grass from the paved road several hundred yards away. The interloper, a small, slender figure, went around the volunteer and proceeded directly toward our gathering.
It took me several moments to recognize her.
It was Morgan. My baby-sitter.
Morgan was alive.
Some yahoo blinded her with a spotlight from his pickup truck, causing her to stumble the last thirty yards. For the first time in almost an hour, I got up off the stump. When she got close, I hugged her. Out of gratitude, I guess, gratitude that she was alive. She hugged back with an uncertainty that was clear to all of us.
“Why weren’t you with my girls?”
“I . . . had to . . . What happened?” She was as confused as a butterfly at a cockfight. The fire investigators and the homicide detective approached, and all five of us began shooting questions at her simultaneously.
“Morgan,” Stephanie said, taking charge of the interrogation by virtue of her gender. “We thought you were in the house.”
“I was.” Morgan stepped out of my embrace and stared at the hulk that had been my home, her lower lip quivering. I knew what she was thinking, because I’d been thinking the same thing. She was thinking she’d just made the worst mistake of her life.
“Why did you leave my girls? And who did you leave them with?”
Turning to me in tears, Morgan said, “I didn’t leave them with anybody. We thought you were going to be home pretty soon. I didn’t mean to do anything—”
“If this is your baby-sitter, who the hell is in the backyard?” Stevenson asked.
“You have anything to do with setting this fire, young lady?” Shad glared at her.
“No. Of course not.”
Obviously Morgan had left my children with a friend while she’d gone off to be with a boyfriend or to a beer party or some such teenage nonsense. My girls were dead. I’d dragged the substitute baby-sitter out of the fire.
“Who was baby-sitting?” I asked.
“I was.”
“Who else?”
“Nobody else.”
“You didn’t leave my girls alone. I know that. We found her.”
“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.
&n
bsp; “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.<
br />
“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.
