The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (18 page)

The living room of Tammy Robsart's trailer was ten feet long, and was separated from the kitchen by a six-inch step and a wrought-iron rail flanking the kitchen table. The carpet was green and shabby, and the paneling was a bad imitation of pine, but she kept it clean and uncluttered. Better than most in the trailer park. In one corner of the room sat a straw clothes basket containing the toys of three-year-old Morgan. They had picked them up together before she sent him off to bed.

Now that it was dark and quiet, Tammy Robsart sat at the kitchen table, her hand cupped for warmth around a mug of coffee, watching its cloud of steam rise into the chill air of the trailer's living room. In the back bedroom, scarcely larger than the double bed itself, her Morgan was already asleep, tucked under a quilt and three blankets, fully clothed. It was too cold tonight for him to sleep in his own little room, so she had taken all the bed-271

clothes in the house and piled them on the double bed. Snuggling close to Morgan under all those covers would give them both extra warmth.

The wind rattled the sides of the trailer, making it shudder on its underpinnings, and driving drafts of searing cold through every seam and crack in the metal casing. It couldn't be much colder outside, Tammy thought, sipping the coffee. Its warmth in her throat was momentary, but still comforting in the icy silence. She was wearing her bathrobe on top of her jeans and sweatshirt, and two pairs of Dale's socks under her bedroom slippers, but the cold encased her, reddening her cheeks and making her every move a conscious effort. Things would be better in the morning, she told herself. At daybreak she could call someone to check out the old wall furnace and see why it wasn't working. Surely they couldn't be out of oil already? She had just put in a hundred dollars' worth in January, and she couldn't afford another tankful. Maybe the church had some sort of emergency fund, though, for fuel oil. Or the county. She hated to think of taking charity, but she didn't see any way around it. Pride was one thing, but she couldn't let Morgan freeze just because there wasn't any money. Why did it have to be so cold tonight? And why didn't the furnace quit earlier, when she could have thought up someplace else to go for the night? The little kerosene space heater that she'd set in front of the door was giving off some heat, but not enough to heat a twelve-by-forty trailer 272

in the dead of winter. It was better than nothing, though. She hoped the kerosene would last until morning.

Tammy's fingers itched for a cigarette, but there weren't any in the house. She'd given them up because they cost too much. She bought Morgan fresh orange juice instead. Dale still smoked, but in the Gulf they got cigarettes for free. Donated by the tobacco companies as a patriotic gesture. She tried not to begrudge him his warmth and his cigarettes; life couldn't be easy for him, either, and she couldn't blame him for not writing. At school, English had always been his worst subject, and he hated to put pen to paper, misspelling most of what he did write, and communicating next to nothing. But at least a letter would show that he still thought of them. Sometimes Tammy felt like one of those Middle Eastern hostages, all shut up in this jail of a trailer with no one but Morgan to talk to, and no money for anything except bills and groceries. When she was tired and sad, it was easy to believe that Dale didn't give a damn about them.

She was only twenty. She tried to imagine another forty years of such an existence, but her mind was too numb even for daydreams. She ought to go to bed and cuddle up with Morgan for warmth, but she wasn't sleepy yet, and to lie awake in the cold darkness would only make the day seem that much farther away. She might think too much about missing Dale and about how much Morgan had to do without, and then she would cry, which might wake him up 273

and frighten him. Morgan hated to see her cry. He always thought it was his fault, or else he'd cry, too, thinking surely things are hopeless if Mommy is crying.

No point in wasting time staring up at the ceiling, Tammy thought. She could write to Dale, but she would find it hard to talk about anything other than the cold and the misery she felt, so perhaps she ought to wait and write him when she could be more cheerful. She supposed that she could try to study the GED textbook. She had been going to a night tutoring class at the county extension building a couple of times a week. The high school equivalency exam would be given again in March. If she could pass that, things might begin to get better. She flipped her fingers through the pages of essays and multiple-choice questions, wondering what she felt up to studying.

Reading comprehension, then. That was easy enough. Read a paragraph, and then answer a bunch of questions about what you had read. She found one talking about the solar system, and began to work her way through the maze of words, her lips moving soundlessly as she read. She was just puzzling over the first question, wondering what heliocentric meant, when the blaze of light made her look up, and suddenly the cold was a rope around her heart and ice in the pit of her stomach.

The kerosene heater was a black hulk encircled by flames. Sprigs of fire had climbed the curtains and slid up the simulated-wood wall beside the door, and now around it, blocking 274

the exit. As dark smoke began to roll toward her, she felt the sting in her eyes, breaking the spell of shock. Morgan. An instant later, Tammy Robsart was running down the hall toward the back bedroom, screaming out the name of her son.

She ran past the trailer's other outside door, in the hall across from the tiny bathroom. There was a bookcase in front of it now, holding all of Dale's record albums, and her own collection of old textbooks and tattered paperbacks. There was no time to worry about it now. On the wall above the double bed was a narrow window, farthest from the fire. She would try to get them out that way. At least they were still dressed.

"Morgan, honey! Wake up!" She shook him, and he tried to burrow deeper under the pile of blankets. "No, hon. We have to get out of here."

The smoke was coming down the hall now. She kicked the bedroom door shut, and crawled over her son to crank open the metal window. It didn't lift up the way windows in a house did. Trailer windows opened outward at a downward slant. There wasn't much room to fit a person through the opening, but Morgan was tiny. He would go first.

She shook him again. She could feel the heat from the front part of the trailer. "Morgan! Get up now."

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "What?" His voice was a tired wail.

"Listen to me," said Tammy, forcing herself to speak calmly, not to cry. "I'm going to put you out that window, okay? And I want you to 275

run to Troy's house and beat on his door as hard as you can. Can you do that?" He was only three, but he was a smart little boy. He could memorize a commercial if he heard it twice. "I'm going to let you down out the window, and I want you to run away as fast as you can, Morgan."

He looked at her with big, sleep-smudged eyes. "Why?"

"Just do it. I'll come, too, but I don't want you to wait. You just run, okay?"

He nodded, no longer drowsy. The cold air from the open window made him shiver. "Run," he echoed.

"Run," said Tammy. "Fast as you can." She lifted him up to the window, and eased him through the slanted opening feet first, holding him first by the waist, then the shoulders, and finally lowering him by his wrists, so that his fall to the ground was only a few feet. "Run!" she screamed. She lay panting against the win-dowsill until she saw him get up, and stagger a bit away from the trailer. He looked back once, and called out something, but she screamed again, and he sprinted off toward the Etheridges' trailer, where his playmate Troy slept safely.

It had all taken less than two minutes, but to Tammy it seemed as if she had been living with the danger for hours, and she was weary of the terror. She pushed herself up, standing on the bed, and stuck her leg out the narrow opening. It wedged at the thigh. She pulled it out again, scarcely feeling the scrape of metal against her 276

leg. She could hear the fire now, roaring as it picked up speed from the fuel of pressed wood and pasteboard in its path. She tried to push herself out the window headfirst, but her breasts and shoulders held her fast. She could not afford to become stuck in the metal window frame, where she would burn like a pig on a spit. Not the window, then. How else to get out?

She eased open the bedroom door, hot to her touch. The back door, blocked by the bookcase, was only three feet away. The flames had not yet reached it. She had perhaps a minute to clear the exit and get out. She eased her way out of the bedroom, coughing as a wave of smoke reached her nostrils. She leaned into the bathroom, grabbed a wet washcloth, and pressed it against her face. Then she began to push at the bookcase, but it would not slide away from the door. Empty it, then. She tore at the records first, pulling them to the floor, and kicking them out of her path. Another push. Still too heavy. The books, then.

She longed for the cold she had felt before. Now the heat was a palpable thing, a wave pulsing toward her, and the spreading flames sent sparks at her from the living-room ceiling. Tammy screamed at the flick of cinders, and flung the books on the floor. The fire had climbed the wall and set alight the ceiling.

She rocked the bookcase. It was light enough to move now. Sobbing with pain and terror, she shoved the empty shelving aside, and fumbled at the lock on the metal knob. It gave. She was free. She dared not turn around to see how 277

close the flames had come. She was free now. One push would send her tumbling onto wet grass, and she would run and find Morgan and not look back. Suddenly, none of the possessions mattered.

She fell against the door, twisting the knob and sobbing with relief at her deliverance. It was like the final push when Morgan was born—one last great exertion at the end of rending pain, and then she would be free. The metal door swung outward. In an instant she felt the cold gust of night air, and she stretched her arms out toward the soothing chill. But as the cold wind reached her, it also reached the fire above her, suffusing it with oxygen. The flash of burgeoning flames engulfed the tiny corridor, and most of Tammy Robsart's body as she dived for the frosted grass.

She felt nothing in the first instant. It was only after she tumbled to the ground that she saw the flames and thought idly, as if everything were happening in slow motion, that the fires were still close, and she wondered if the grass were alight. Several more leisurely seconds seemed to pass before her eyes cleared, and she saw that it was her own bathrobe, her body that blazed in the cold darkness. She felt rather than heard herself scream, and then she began to roll and run away from the bonfire that had been her home. Had Morgan run far enough? She had to find him. Idly, she wondered when she would begin to hurt.

Spencer Arrowood was asleep when the call came. The night was cold, and he had burrowed down under his electric blanket, wishing that it wouldn't get light for two more days. He was that tired. He had spent a long day helping Joe LeDonne on a wild-goose chase. At the deputy's insistence, they had sent inquiries to the TBI, the FBI, and to the Nashville police department, checking for priors on Wake County's new citizen Justin Warren.

"You want to call Interpol, too, while we're at it?" asked Spencer, amused by LeDonne's intensity.

"I wouldn't mind," said LeDonne.

"It's not against the law to play soldier, Joe. Hell, it's not even against the law to screw a dog in Tennessee anymore." The repeal of the state's bestiality law was a running joke in Tennessee law enforcement.

The deputy shrugged. "Let's put in a request for Warren's service record while we're at it, okay?"

"It'll take a week or so, you know. We have to fax them on letterhead, and then wait until they feel like sending the information."

"Some things never change," said LeDonne.

After that, Spencer had night patrol around the county, checking out the Mockingbird for underage drinkers, and stopping a domestic war between a drunk and his enraged wife. By eleven o'clock, Spencer felt like he'd been dragged two miles down a gravel road. He was ready to go home and sleep for a week—or at least eight hours, which was equally rare. The call that pulled him out of bed at 1:00 a.m. was 279

from Millie Fortnum of the Wake County Rescue Squad. She called on his home number, meaning that it was urgent. Fire in the trailer park, she'd said. Meet you there.

He microwaved a plastic mug of coffee to wake him up as he drove. The trailer park: principal trouble spot of Wake County. That rural ghetto of aluminum racked up more than its share of domestic brawls, disorderly drunks, and petty thieves. He could put a name to almost every mobile home in the barren park. As he drove through the dark streets of Hamelin, Spencer idly wondered who tonight's victim was. Had Horton Wheeler got drunk again and fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth? Or did one of the old ladies overload the wiring in her tinderbox home?

He could see the red shine of a county fire engine as soon as he drove into the park. Near it, most of the population of the park was standing in a semicircle, staring at the smoldering remnants of somebody's home. His headlights illuminated old men in robes and striped pajama legs and a plump gaggle of women wearing bright head scarfs to cover nests of pink curlers. They opened a path for him, and he eased the cruiser through, and parked near the fire truck. The volunteers were still hosing down the fire, but not in an effort to salvage anything. There wasn't enough left of the mobile home to tell what it had been. Now the firemen's concern was to keep the wind from spreading the fire to the homes nearby.

In the glow of the embers Spencer could make 280

out Faro Weaver, chief of the volunteer brigade. He looked around for the rescue-squad van, but it was gone. That was a good sign, he thought. If Millie Fortnum was in a hurry, somebody must have survived the fire.

"Whose home was this?" Spencer called out as he got out of his car.