“You sure?” Roger Elway asked. “The smoke looks at least a mile further on.”
“Trust me. I’ve been out here before, back when Tru Mayweather considered himself a full-time trailer pimp and a part-time gentleman pot grower. I guess he moved up in the world.”
Unit Four skidded on the dirt, and then the tires caught hold. Roger bucketed along at forty, the county car sometimes bottoming out in spite of the heavy suspension. High weeds growing up the center hump whickered against the undercarriage. Now they could smell the smoke.
Terry grabbed the mic. “Unit Four to Base, Base, this is Four.”
“Four, this is Base,” Linny responded.
“We’ll be at the scene in three, as long as Roger doesn’t put us in the ditch.” Roger raised one hand from the wheel long enough to flash his partner the finger. “What’s the status on the FD?”
“They’re rolling all four engines, plus the ambo. Some of the volunteer guys, too. Should be right behind you. Watch out for the Avon Lady.”
“Avon Lady, got it. Four is out.”
Terry racked the mic just as the cruiser took a bounce that rendered them momentarily airborne. Roger brought the car to a skidding halt. The road ahead was littered with scraps of corrugated roofing, shattered propane canisters, plastic jugs, and shredded paper, some of it smoldering. He spotted a black and white disc that looked like a stove dial.
One wall of a shed was leaning against a dead tree that was blazing like a Tiki torch. Two pine trees close to what had been the rear of the shed were also on fire. So were the scrub bushes lining the side of the road.
Roger popped the trunk, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and began spraying white foam onto the undergrowth. Terry got the fire blanket and began flapping at the flaming debris in the road. FD would be here soon; the job right now was containment.
Roger trotted over, holding the extinguisher. “I’m empty, and you’re not doing shit. Let’s scat out of here before we get rear-ended, what do you think?”
“I think that’s an excellent idea. Let’s see what’s up at chez Mayweather.”
Sweat beaded across Roger’s forehead and glimmered in the sparse hairs of his pale yellow flattop. He squinted. “Shay what?”
Terry liked his partner all right, but he wouldn’t have wanted Roger on his Wednesday Quiz Bowl team down at the Squeaky Wheel. “Never mind. Drive.”
Roger threw himself behind the wheel. Terry scooted to the passenger side. A Dooling FD pumper came swaying around the turn forty yards behind them, its high sides brushing the boughs of the trees crowding the road. Terry waved to them, then unlocked the shotgun beneath the dash. Better safe than sorry.
They arrived in a clearing where a trailer painted the hideous turquoise of aquarium pebbles sat on jacklifters. The steps were concrete blocks. A rust-eaten F-150 sat on a pair of flat tires. A woman slumped on the tailgate, mousy brown hair hiding her face. She wore jeans and a halter top. Much of the skin on display was decorated with tattoos. Terry could read LOVE running down her right forearm. Her feet were bare and caked with dirt. She was scrawny to the point of emaciation.
“Terry . . .” Roger inhaled and made a throat-clearing noise that was close to a retch. “Over there.”
What Terry saw made him think of a county fair midway game he’d played as a boy. A man stuck his head through a cardboard cutout of Popeye, and for a dime you could throw three plastic bags of colored water at him. Only that wasn’t colored water below the head protruding from the trailer’s wall.
An immense weariness filled Terry. His entire body seemed to gain weight, as if his innards had been turned to concrete. He had suffered this before, mostly at the scene of bad car accidents, and knew the feeling was transitory, but while it lasted, it was hellish. There was that moment when you looked at a child still strapped into his car seat but with his little body torn open like a laundry bag—or when you looked at a head sticking out of a trailer wall, the skin peeled down the cheeks by its cataclysmic passage—and you wondered why in the hell the world had been created in the first place. Good things were in short supply, and so much of the rest was downright rancid.
The woman sitting on the tailgate raised her head. Her face was pale, her eyes ringed with dark circles. She held out her arms to them, then immediately lowered them to her thighs again as if they were too heavy, just too heavy. Terry knew her; she’d been one of Tru Mayweather’s girls before he had gone into the meth business. Perhaps she was still here because she had been promoted to quasi-girlfriend—if you could call that a promotion.
He got out of the cruiser. She slid down from the tailgate, and would have gone to her knees if Terry hadn’t caught her around the middle. The skin under his hands was chilly, and he could feel every rib. This close, he saw that some of her tattoos were actually bruises. She clung to him and began to cry.
“Hey, now,” Terry said. “Hey, now, girl. You’re okay. Whatever happened here, it’s over.”
Under other circumstances, he would have considered the sole survivor the prime suspect, and all that blather about the Avon Lady so much bullshit, but the bag of bones in his arms could never have put that guy’s head through the trailer wall. Terry didn’t know how long Tiffany had been getting high on Truman’s supply, but in her current condition he thought just blowing her nose would have taken a major effort.
Roger strolled over, looking oddly cheerful. “Did you make the call, ma’am?”
“Yes . . .”
Roger took out his notebook. “Your name?”
“This is Tiffany Jones,” Terry said. “That’s right, isn’t it, Tiff?”
“Yeah. I seen you before, sir. When I come get Tru out of jail that time. I remember. You were nice.”
“And that guy? Who’s he?” Roger waved his notebook at the protruding head, a casual gesture, as if he were pointing out an interesting local landmark, and not a ruined human being. His casualness was appalling—and Terry envied it. If he could learn to adjust to such sights as easily as Roger, he thought he’d be a happier man, and maybe better police.
“Don’t know,” Tiffany said. “He was just Trume’s friend. Or cousin, maybe. He come up from Arkansas last week. Or maybe it was the week before.”
From down the road, firemen were shouting and water was whooshing—presumably from a tanker truck; there was no city water out here. Terry saw a momentary rainbow in the air, floating in front of smoke that was now turning white.
Terry took Tiffany gently by her stick-thin wrists and looked into her bloodshot eyes. “What about the woman who did this? You told the dispatcher it was a woman.”
“Tru’s friend called her the Avon Lady, but she sure wasn’t one of those.” A little emotion surfaced through Tiffany’s shock. She straightened up and looked around fearfully. “She gone, ain’t she? She better be.”
“What did she look like?”