Mourning Gloria

by Susan Wittig Albert

  To give myself credit, I wasn’t driving fast and I’d had nothing to drink but a couple of glasses of iced tea. It was a warm evening, and I rolled the windows down to enjoy the cedar-scented air. There was no moon, and I was cruising along one of those snaky, up-down segments of road, just past the clanky old iron bridge over Cedar Creek, about seven or eight miles from town. I was watching for deer, which have a nasty habit of jumping out in front of you and causing much grief, for themselves and for you. A solid hit or even a swerve can cause you to lose control of the car and end up off the road or smashed against a tree. In fact, I was so focused on potential deer disasters that the first orange flickers off to my right and up the hill barely registered. But then the road went around a sharp curve and the trees opened up to a rocky hillside. I saw the flames and smelled the smoke at the same time and jammed on my brakes.

  A single-wide house trailer was perched on the side of the steep hill, a couple of hundred yards off the road, mostly hidden behind a screen of trees. I had driven past the place twice a day, five or six days a week, noticing the trailer but not really seeing it. Back in late April or early May, it looked like the renters had moved out. Trash was piled in the garbage pickup area beside the mailbox and there was a new For Rent sign near the road, with a yellow Students OK banner posted across it. Sometime in the past week, though, the sign had come down. Maybe it was rented again.

  If it was, the occupant was in trouble. Almost half of the trailer was engulfed in flames, the fire leaping twenty, thirty feet into the sky, showering the surrounding junipers with sparks. I pulled over to the side of the road, as far as I could get off the pavement, just past the narrow gravel driveway that climbed diagonally up the hill. Hurriedly, I fished my cell phone out of my purse and flipped it open. The signal is spotty along Limekiln Road—in some places I can get three or four bars, in other places nothing. Tonight, here, I had one bar. Not much of a signal, but enough, I hoped. I thumbed 9-1-1 and got the Adams County emergency dispatcher.

  “Fire!” I exclaimed. “There’s a trailer on fire on Limekiln Road! Get a truck out here, fast!”

  “Address?” The dispatcher’s voice was flat, clipped, professional.

  Address, address. I looked up. The lights of my Toyota caught on the mailbox just ahead, four painted numerals barely visible. “Limekiln Road, Eighteen-eleven. One-eight-one-one. Just west of the old iron bridge. On the right, up the hill.”

  “Casualties?”

  I stopped breathing. “Casualties?”

  “Anybody injured in the fire?”

  “I don’t . . .” I swallowed. “I haven’t tried to look.”

  Damn, what was I thinking? There was no car in front of the trailer, but the For Rent sign was gone and it was possible that the place was occupied. Maybe somebody was in there, burning to death, while I was jabbering on the phone. I opened the car door.

  “Don’t put yourself in danger,” the dispatcher said sharply. “Keep away from the fire. There’s nothing you can do. You by yourself?”

  “Yes.” I was suddenly very glad that Caitlin had stayed at Amy’s. After all her trauma, she didn’t need to see this. Especially if somebody was—

  “The truck is on the way,” the dispatcher said, adding sternly, “Stay with your car. And stay on the line with me. You hear me? Stay on the line. I need to know what’s—”

  But I was already out of the car and running, the cell phone in my hand. I headed straight up the hill, which was totally stupid because it was steep and littered with ankle-turning loose rocks. I fell and grasped at a bush to keep from sliding backward, gouging a deep scrape into my forearm, knowing I should’ve gone up the drive—farther to go but easier, faster. Picked myself up and began to scramble again. By the time I made my way through the trees and reached the trailer, I was gasping for breath and there was a sharp pain in my side.

  The flames had already eaten their way from the eastern end of the trailer almost to the center. They were as loud and fierce as a windstorm, lunging and roaring and snapping like something alive. I could feel the heat of the fire on my face and the air was thick with choking black smoke, but I ran up the three steps to the door, and twisted the knob. Hot. The door was hot and the knob wouldn’t turn.

  I banged on the door. “Anybody in there?” I shouted. “Anybody there?” No answer. I tried again. “Anybody in there?”

  I was turning away when I heard it. “Help! Help me!” A panicky cry, high-pitched, shrill with terror. A woman or a kid, maybe even a teenaged boy. “I can’t get out. Help, please help!”

  Frantically, I twisted the door knob again and put my shoulder to it. Nothing doing. It wouldn’t budge. But there was a window just to my left. If I could find something—a heavy club, a tire iron, a rock—I could break it. A rock! That was what I needed. I turned and took a step down, looking for a big, heavy rock I could heave—

  WHOOOMPH!

  The window exploded outward and a fiery fist shoved me off the step, slamming me to the ground in front of the trailer. My forehead hit a rock and I saw stars, but I struggled to my knees, groggy. There was another explosion, louder this time, and I turned to look. The entire structure was engulfed in a sunburst of flame, so bright and hot that it burned my eyes. The heat seared my face and singed my eyebrows and hair.

  “Hello, hello!” I became aware that I was still holding my cell phone in my left hand. The dispatcher was shouting at me. “Caller, what’s going on? What happened? Talk to me!”

  “It blew up,” I said groggily. My right knee was bleeding through a rip in my jeans. My right forearm was bloody. “The trailer just . . . it just blew up.” I sniffed. “Smells like something I . . . smells like camp stove . . .” My voice trailed off. “Camp stove fuel,” I managed.

  “You’re okay?” the dispatcher was asking urgently. “Caller, you’re okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, and then I remembered. “But there’s somebody inside, yelling for help!” I cried, getting to my feet. “A woman, maybe, or a kid. I heard it. Just before . . . before the trailer blew up.”

  “Sending an ambulance,” the dispatcher said crisply.

  With a heavy metallic sigh, the roof slumped inward, like a cake falling in the center. I shuddered and broke the connection. Whoever was in that trailer wouldn’t need an ambulance.

  The trucks from the nearby local volunteer fire department got there first. A white-painted tanker truck (there’s no city water out this far, and no hydrants) pulled up in front of the trailer. Two guys in T-shirts and jeans jumped out, turned on the pumps, pulled out a hose, and began pouring water onto the burning structure. A couple of minutes later, a red ladder truck roared up the drive and stopped behind the first. Working deliberately, the driver climbed out and pulled a hose off the truck, hooked it to the tanker truck, and began pumping. Two men, already suited up in bulky gray firefighters’ garb, jumped down.

  By this time the water from the tanker truck had put a damper on the trailer fire, turning it into pillars of steam and black smoke. The suited-up firefighters were pulling on helmets. I ran over to them.

  “There’s somebody in there,” I rasped. “I could hear her crying. Or maybe it was a kid. I couldn’t really tell. I tried . . .” I looked at my right hand. There were blisters forming on my palm. “I tried to get the door open. But there was an explosion. Like a bomb going off. And another explosion after that.”

  “Where’s the victim?” one of the men asked. He pulled a heavy ax off the tool rack. “Which end of the structure?”

  “I was at the front door when I heard her.” I looked at the ruined trailer. The metal skin was crumpled and blackened, the door buckled in. It would be a miracle if anybody was still alive in there.

  Working deliberately, with practiced skill, the firefighters were fastening masks over their faces and adjusting the packs on each other’s backs. “I’ll go first,” one said, and stepped up the stairs to the twisted front door. He shoved it with his gloved hand and it fell in, huff
ing out a thick cloud of acrid smoke. The second firefighter was right behind him. The tanker truck continued to pour water onto the flames.

  My hand was beginning to throb, but that was a small thing. Somebody had just burned to death in front of my eyes. I bent over and threw up into the weeds.

  The ambulance was next, a wailing siren announcing its arrival before the vehicle pulled up the drive and stopped behind the second fire truck. A uniformed medic jumped out just as the two firefighters came out of the trailer.

  The first firefighter pushed up his face mask. “One fatality,” he said tersely to the medic. “Nobody’s going in for recovery until the guys get the place cooled down.” He looked at me. “Somebody you know?”

  Mutely, I shook my head. I could still hear the voice, frantic, frightened. Help me! . . . Help, please help! I swallowed and tried to find my voice. “I was just driving past and saw the fire. The place went up so fast. It just exploded.”

  Another siren. I turned to see an Adams County brown-and-white sheriff’s car braking to a hard stop along the side of the road, behind my Toyota, the siren cutting off with an abrupt yelp. A moment later, Blackie was standing beside me. He was wearing a blue plaid cotton shirt and neatly pressed khakis, and I wondered if the fire had pulled him away from an evening with Sheila.

  “I thought that was your car,” he said. “What’s happened here?”

  “I was driving past when I saw the flames.” I was ridiculously glad to see him. Sheriff Blackwell almost always has that effect on me. He’s tough, stern, capable, utterly dependable, enormously compassionate. I coughed hard, tasting the vomit, and the tears came to my eyes. Blackie put a friend’s hand on my shoulder.

  “You okay, China?” he asked gently.

  “Yeah. But there was somebody in there.”

  All sheriff now, Blackie dropped his hand and turned to the firefighter. “Dead?”

  The firefighter nodded. “Smoke’s still bad. We’ll bring the body out when it clears a little.”

  Blackie turned back to me. “Do you know who it was?”

  “No. I could hear her—I thought it was a woman, or maybe a teenager—but I couldn’t get in.” I looked at the trailer. If I’d been successful in breaking that window, I would’ve been inside when the place blew up. I’d be dead right now. My knees felt shaky.

  Blackie sniffed. “Smell that?” he asked the firefighters.

  “Yeah. Stronger inside,” one said. “I’m thinking arson. Fire marshal’s on his way.”

  Arson! I’d been so involved in what was happening that I hadn’t caught the possible significance of the odor I had smelled.

  “Okay, guys,” Blackie said. “The body stays where it is until the marshal has a look.” With a grim expression, he turned to assess the vehicles parked in front of the trailer and I knew he was thinking about tire tracks. It had rained the night before, and tracks were a possibility. But if there had been any, the fire trucks and EMS vehicle had likely obliterated them. He reached for the cell phone hooked to his belt. “I’ll get the crime-scene team out here.”

  The crime scene team. I sucked in my breath. A murder had taken place here. Arson-homicide. And the victim was conscious until the awful, incomprehensible end. She knew what was happening to her. She knew there was no escape. Was she tied up? Injured? I shivered, suddenly cold. How could one human being do this to another?

  Blackie clicked his phone shut and turned to me. “See anybody when you got here, China, or on the way? A vehicle, maybe?”

  A vehicle. Did I remember a vehicle? Lights coming at me a time or two, but nothing specific, nothing I could identify. Anyway, the arsonist could have driven away in the opposite direction.

  I swallowed, trying to firm up my trembling voice. “I don’t remember seeing anybody on the road. This place has been empty. In fact, it had a For Rent sign out front until earlier this week. I really didn’t expect to find anybody inside. I just banged on the door and heard—”

  I was blathering. I closed my eyes. Help me! . . . Help, please help! I’d hear that plea until my dying day.

  “Stay put for a few minutes, China,” Blackie said. “I want to make sure you’re okay.” I opened my eyes to see him signaling to the medic.

  “I’m fine,” I said stoutly. “Don’t worry about me.”

  The medic came up, eyeing me. “Looks like you got a little too close to the fire,” he said. He took my arm, inspecting the scrape, and lifted the hair off my forehead, to see where I’d banged my head. “Come on over here. Let’s clean you up and see what we’ve got.”

  I tried to protest, but not very hard. Ten minutes later, my face was clean, my forehead and knee wore Band-Aids, my burned hand was swabbed with a salve, and my arm had been treated to a stinging dose of antiseptic and a bandage. Then the kindly medic handed me a steaming cup of coffee, poured from a Thermos. He reached into a cabinet, produced a bottle of gin, and added a healthy slug.

  “Dutch courage,” he said. I didn’t argue. Gin and coffee seemed like a great idea. I was sipping it gratefully when another, smaller truck came roaring up the hill, a cab-top light flashing. A team of four brushfire fighters jumped out, grabbed equipment, and headed up the ridge behind the trailer. It didn’t look like the fire up there was making much headway, but if it was, they’d take care of it.

  Blackie had been walking around the trailer with a flashlight, making a careful visual inspection. I knew what he was looking for. Footprints, places where an accelerant might have been splashed, matches, a cigarette, an incendiary device. A little later, he was back.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Find anything?”

  “Maybe.” He paused. “Any idea who owns the place?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  He nodded. “I don’t think we’ll need a statement. Your 9-1-1 call establishes the time. If we want anything else, we’ll get in touch.” He glanced down at the bandage on my arm. “You going to be able to drive yourself home?”

  “Of course. It’s only three or four miles.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll let you go home if you promise me you’ll pour yourself a good stiff drink when you get there.”

  I knew that Blackie would be here for hours, until he finished his part of the investigation and was confident that he’d gotten all the information the site could yield. After that, he’d have one of his deputies canvass the neighbors up and down the road, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything suspicious. But it wouldn’t be an easy investigation. Arson never is. I knew that from my days as a lawyer.

  I nodded, trying not to think of what I had heard in that fiery hell. Help, please help! “I’ll get that drink as soon as I fix Howard’s dinner. The poor guy has been waiting for hours.” It felt somehow trivial to talk about a dog, standing next to the place where a human had been incinerated.

  Blackie chuckled. “Howard Cosell gets more regular meals than I do.”

  I took a deep breath, focusing on what we were saying. Small talk, comforting talk. Talk about a normal world of everyday affairs. “That’ll change after Sheila moves in.”

  He switched on a flashlight. “I doubt it. She doesn’t have any more time to cook than I do. Two cops in the family—one’s always gone when it’s time to eat. Come on, China. I’ll walk you down the hill to your car.”

  I took the driveway this time. I wasn’t going to risk making a fool of myself by sliding down that hill on my butt.

  I looked in my rearview mirror when I drove off. Blackie was sitting in his car, talking on the radio. My night was about to come to an end. His was just beginning.

  HOWARD was waiting for me when I unlocked the kitchen door and went in. He wore a reproachful look (bassets are recognized champions in the canine reproach division), and thumped his tail accusingly on the floor.

  “The sheriff says you get more regular meals than he does,” I told him. He was not impressed. I apologized, made his dinner, and added a few slivers of leftover chicken to atone for m
y dereliction of duty. While he ate, I fixed myself a stiff gin and tonic, thinking that I could use a little more Dutch courage. Then I sat down in my favorite chair in the living room, put my feet up on the hassock, and called McQuaid.

  “You found what?” he yelped, so loud that I might’ve been able to hear him without the phone, all the way from Memphis. “Jeez, China. Can’t I leave you alone for three days without your looking for trouble?”

  “I wasn’t looking for it,” I protested. “I was just driving along the road when I saw it. The trailer, just past the Cedar Creek bridge, on the right. Up the hill, behind the trees.”

  He paused. “Oh, yeah? I know that place.” He sounded more reasonable now. “It belongs to Scott Sheridan.”

  I was surprised. “You know the owner?”

  “Yeah, sure. Scottie owns A-Plus Auto Parts, just past the Dairy Queen on your way into town. That’s where I get truck parts for the Beast.” McQuaid’s ancient pickup is affectionately named the Blue Beast. It’s a genuine antique, but it still runs, thanks to a lot of tender loving care—and enough replacement parts for a full rebuild. “He asked me not long ago if I knew any students looking for a place to live. Said he’d just bought the place and evicted the pair that had been living there. They were into drugs. So what happened when you saw the trailer on fire?”

  “I stopped and ran up the hill and banged on the door. That’s when I heard—”

  “Why the hell didn’t you just call 9-1-1? You know better than to go running up to a—”

  “Hush up and listen,” I snapped, and managed to get the whole story out with only a couple more interruptions. I didn’t exaggerate any of it, either. The situation was grim enough without trying to make it sound grimmer.

  “You’re okay, I hope,” he said when I was finished. I could hear the relief in his voice and loved him for it. “You’re back home?”

  “I’m back home and I’m okay,” I said. I got up and went to the mirror over the table in the hallway. It was the first time I’d seen myself since the fire, and my scorched face, looking oddly bereft, stared back at me. “Except that my eyebrows are gone. And my hair is singed.”