by Earl Emerson
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.
53. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Nobody warned me Stevenson had been a running back on his high school football team or that Ron Holgate, who looked overweight, jogged five miles a night and competed in 10K races, that in the past five years he had twice run down suspects on foot. I found all this out later, after I dashed past the rubble that had been my house, past the two sad-eyed volunteers standing guard over Achara’s fire-stiffened body.
Lurching into the darkness in the field behind our house, I plotted a path toward the bank of the Middle Fork two hundred yards away. The moonlight was hazy under a pall of smoke that represented our vaporized house and belongings. There were firs in the middle of the field and a few more at the south end, but I was headed for the small cluster of deciduous trees on the riverbank.
The riverbed of the Middle Fork was mostly rock at this time of year, and you could wade across the stream in a multitude of places, although if you got caught in the deeper sections, the current could sweep you away. About once a summer we pulled a body out, usually some hapless local teenager who got trapped under a log and couldn’t escape because of the immense pressure of the flowing water.
“Stand in your tracks, asshole!” yelled Stevenson. I ran faster. He yelled twice more, as did Holgate, their voices giving away their positions. Both were close and getting closer, especially Stevenson, whose last words sounded as if they’d come from my hip pocket.
I swore to myself that if he knocked me down, I was going to fight. I had one day left on the planet, and I wasn’t going to let small-minded suspicions and bureaucratic megalomania steal those precious hours from my girls. I’d already robbed them of enough time myself.
I wasn’t the swiftest runner, but I was flying tonight.
Toward the center of the field, we would cross a series of furrows. Obscured by tall grasses, they would be hard to see even if you were expecting them. They were perilous during the day, worse in the dim moonlight.
I stepped into the first furrow, stumbled, righted myself, and leaped up onto the ridge beyond it, then down into the next ditch, quickly establishing an up-and-down rhythm, as if riding a miniature roller coaster. I was panting now, gasping for air, windmilling my arms wildly to maintain balance.
Behind me, one man screamed, “Oh, shit!” and I heard the thwack of a body striking the soft earth.
The other voice was still close. “You asshole!”
Stevenson didn’t sound nearly as winded as I was, but even so, I had gained ground on him. I could swear I was breathing so hard my lungs were bleeding. My legs were about to buck
le.
I was almost to the riverbank when I heard him closing in on me again.
Barely visible in the moonlight, the path ran downstream along the bank for maybe a hundred fifty yards before it came to a dead end. On hot summer afternoons teenagers jumped off the steep dead end into a deep greenish-blue pool, skinny-dipping and drinking beer. For years a rope swing had dangled over the pool. I could only hope it was still there tonight. Behind me, I heard Stevenson cursing as branches and blackberry vines slapped at him.
I was breathing so hard, I could hear only two things now, the air rushing in and out of my throat and the slap of Stevenson’s shoes on the rocky path as he closed in.
“Thought you were . . . going to . . . get . . . away . . . didn’t . . . you . . . ?” he said as I reached the end of the pathway and launched myself out into space over the river. I couldn’t see the rope swing, but I knew where it should be out there in the dark over the river, and as I sailed out on faith I reached out for it, clawing at the air like a drunken Superman, just as if I could see it, the rope, hoping some Good Samaritan hadn’t tied it up out of the way.
By some miracle I got a grip on the rope and swung almost in slow motion out over the black, moonlit pool. I could feel Stevenson brushing my backside. And then I was free. Free and swinging. Below, I heard him splash noisily into the pool. I could still hear him shouting and wallowing in the cold water long after I jogged downstream along the bank.
Forty minutes later I found myself in the brush off Reinig Road near Miss Squiggly’s favorite spot on earth. We locals called it Unemployment Beach; the county called it Three Forks Park. Easily one of the most panoramic sites in the area, Unemployment Beach was a sandy spot where the three forks of the Snoqualmie fed into one another; another mile and a half downstream, the river dropped almost three hundred feet over Snoqualmie Falls.
Several vehicles came past, including a volunteer fireman returning home from my place, a fire engine, and the tanker that had responded from Snoqualmie.
When I saw Holly’s red Pontiac, I stepped out into the headlights and waited. As the car pulled alongside, I leaned down to the half-open passenger-side window and greeted my sleepy daughters in the backseat. I looked at Stephanie, who said, “I know. I agree. Totally. Your time is too short. They knew that. They were being assholes. Excuse my French, girls. Where to?” Stephanie asked, after I climbed in.
“The Sunset Motel.”
“Oh, no. We’re not going to—”
“Just a visit.”
“You’re not going after them?”
“They have to be the ones.”
“Why can’t we just go to a hotel? What are you going to do? Beat them up?”
“I have no idea. Just go by the Sunset.”
We headed toward Snoqualmie on back roads. I was sore all over but hadn’t felt it until now. I had five or six smallish burns, including my knees, where I’d crawled over hot spots in the fire. My left knee was aching as a result of our footrace in the dark. My feet were wet and cold from crossing the river.
I turned around and peered into the backseat. Tilted against each other like stuffed animals on a shelf, both girls had fallen asleep under the blanket I’d tucked around their legs.
“They out?” Stephanie asked.
“Sawing z’s.”
“We were so damn lucky. Somebody tried to kill us. All of us.”
“I think I know who.”
“You think Hillburn and Dobson killed . . .” Stephanie looked over the seat back to ascertain whether the girls were really asleep.
“You saw them tonight. They looked guilty as hell. And Donovan was all over town asking questions. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t have known about her.”
“Jim, if you go there tonight, they’ll find you. You’ll be arrested. I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”
“You mean something I’ll regret for the rest of my life?”
Stephanie followed my directions and drove through Snoqualmie, past the high school, and back to North Bend on the old highway. I would be surprised if they hadn’t checked out, but if they hadn’t, I had no idea what I was going to do.
The Sunset Motel was lit up like a carnival ride, three county police cars crowding the street and entranceway, along with our own North Bend aid unit. Stephanie drove past while I slid down in the seat until only my eyes were above the window ledge. Hillburn and Dobson were standing outside in slacks and T-shirts, talking to the female evidence technician we’d seen at the fire.
“Maybe they’re arresting them?” Stephanie said.
“Not likely.” I saw a Latino man with blood on his shirt, a couple of hysterical Latina women screaming at him from across the courtyard. “There must have been a fight.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know why those bastards are still hanging around.”
“Let’s go to Seattle and put the girls to bed.”
“They must have figured their frame-up was perfect.”
“We’ll find a nice hotel with a pool.”
“It has to be them. The coincidence of the events in Chattanooga and here is too much. The syndrome is discovered. An explosion wipes out most of the survivors or, in our case, almost wipes us out. There’s a house fire in which key investigators are killed. Jane’s lies to me every time I talk to them. It’s gotta be those bastards.”
“We don’t have proof.”
“I don’t need proof.”
“Besides, if it’s Jane’s, those two are probably just errand boys. The real culprits are a thousand miles away.”
“You’re right. I’ll fly to California.”
“Jim . . .”
“I’m kidding. Let’s find a place to stay.”
“Jim? I love you.”
“Where did that come from?”
“We might not have a lot of time. I wanted to say it.”
I could have returned the sentiment, but right now I didn’t feel anything but relief that my daughters were alive and an irrepressible anger at the men who’d tried to take them from me.
“I wish things were different for you.”
“I’ve got one day left. A day is all I need. Most people don’t really live twenty-four hours. I never did. One day will be plenty.”
She didn’t say anything else, but it wasn’t too much later before I heard her crying in the dark.
DAY SIX
54. A BREEDING GROUND FOR NEUROTICS
In the morning I found her watching me with something akin to amusement in her dusty-blue eyes. There was no telling how long she’d been awake. I remembered we’d taken a suite at the Warwick in downtown Seattle. We’d situated the girls in a king-size bed in the other room in front of a television and an episode of Love Boat, one of their favorites; they wanted so much to believe in romance, particularly after the failure of mine with their mother. And also perhaps after the failure of mine with a long line of women after Lorie. Still, they were both asleep inside of a minute.
Stirring under the sheets, I quickly became aware that pajamas for the adults hadn’t been on the “to buy” list the night before. I glanced at the clock: nine-thirty. I was waking up later each morning. Tomorrow was day seven. I might not wake up at all tomorrow.
Stephanie’s skin was like liquid silk, her body warm when she rolled onto me, warm everywhere except her cold feet. Our lovemaking was ferocious, even more so than last evening at the Sunset Motel. This morning we had the added impetus of being on the run as well as the knowledge that time was running out. Afterward as I lay there recovering from the exertion, I said, “Me, too. I love you, too.”
She rolled her head over to look at me. We were lying side by side. “You don’t have to say it.”
“I’m a guy. Believe me, I know I don’t have to say it. I want to say it.”
“You know, you’re a lot nicer than you think you are.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“But you are.”
M
y ears were ringing louder than ever today. Besides the burns, there was a tweak in my right knee and another in my lower back. Minor quibbles. Except for these, I felt like a million bucks.
“Jim, I’ve been thinking. Do you still want to spend the whole day with your girls?”
“I do and I don’t. We need to work on this if there’s still a chance, but I can’t let my girls down, either. They need time with me. Especially if this is my last day.”
“Let me call Donovan and my aunt. This is Saturday, but I have cell phone numbers for both of them.”
“When you talk to Donovan, find out if he has Achara’s papers or if they were with her in the fire. I think she was on to something before she died. She gave me a string of numbers to memorize. They may be part of a chemical formula, maybe for an antidote. And I need to call Steding in Tennessee. He must have proof by now that JCP, Inc., was involved there. For me, that’s the final part to the puzzle. If Jane’s knows all about this, maybe there’s an antidote and they have it.”
“If they haven’t given it to us by now, they’re not likely to.”
“No.”
“Can I ask a favor, Jim?”
“What?”
“I know a lawyer here in town. I treated his son in Tacoma at the hospital. I’ve called him and he’s agreed to come out and write up some papers for us to sign.”
“What sort of papers?”
“I know how worried you are about your girls. . . . Well, if you don’t make it. I’d like you to assign me as their guardian.”
“You’d do that?”
“Listen. I’ve lived my life pretty much in a vacuum. I don’t go out. I don’t see people. I work and then I work some more. It’s been like that since high school, when my parents died. It took Holly and now you to open my eyes and make me realize I haven’t been living any kind of life. I love you. I love your girls. I want to be part of your family.”
