Burn (34 page)

“I will, sir. Thanks. Thanks so much.”

“Don't spend any time packing up keepsakes, now. Grab your grandmother and get back on the road. An hour, hour and a half, you'll have big problems if you're not somewhere else.”

“Thank you, sir. Can't thank you enough.”

The trooper patted the roof of the car two times, then waved him through.

Denny turned off the highway at the next intersection and headed up into the bluffs.

The trooper hadn't been kidding about the smoke. It was thick and brown and it gave the air all around a dull yellow quality. Denny had the car buttoned up tight, and it still smelled like a campfire inside. The smoke got so thick in one spot that Denny almost missed the turn onto the winding street that led up into Rodney's cul-de-sac.

But he made it, and Rod's street finally led him out of the haze and into cleaner air. Denny parked in the driveway beside Rod's packed-up Escalade and hustled up to the front door.

He rang the bell a bunch of times, but nobody answered. He finally gave up and went around back.

Denny saw the hose and the ladder first. He followed them up to the roof with his eyes and saw Rodney there, in shorts and flip-flops and an oversize T-shirt, holding a loop of hose in one hand, a spray nozzle in the other. He was watering down the clay-tile shingles.

“Rod, ” Denny called out. “Shit, what you doing up there, man?”

Rod turned and saw him. He yelled something, but Denny couldn't hear what.

Denny cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “What?”

Rod dropped the extra loop of hose and made a hard motion with his hand. Denny looked and saw the second hose coiled in the lawn. He looked back up to Rod.

“Dude, forget about it, ” he shouted. “Come on down. It's time to roll outta here.”

Rod yelled something else, but Denny still couldn't make it out. He looked around. He looked at his watch. He looked up at Rod.

He started up the ladder. At the top, Denny stepped over the eave and scrambled up the roof on all fours. The rounded tiles were slick with all the water. He ducked more water when Rod swung the hose around.

“Rod, man, let it go, ” he said. “We gotta get outta here.”

“We? Who's we?” Rod gave him a look. “This is
my
house, you asshole. Don't tell me what I need to do. I've worked too goddamned hard for this to come back to a smoking goddamned hole in the ground.”

Denny could hardly believe what he was hearing. He grabbed Rod's arm and pointed.

“Dude. Look over there. You see that shit? All that orange shit over the hill? That's fire. Don't be crazy. You got insurance. Let it go.”

“That's three miles away.” Rod pulled away, moved to a new spot, and started drenching it down. “I've still got time.”

“Rod. Don't be crazy, man.”

“What the hell are you doing here anyway?” Rod snapped a tangle out of the hose and kept spraying. “Did I ask for your input? Did I ask?”

“Shit, bite my head off, ” Denny said. “I just came to see if you needed help.”

“If you want to help, ” Rod said, “quit wasting time, get back down that ladder, hook up that other hose around back, and start soaking down the siding. Otherwise, tuck your tail and quit bothering me.”

Denny looked at Rod. He looked at his watch again. He looked out into the distance, at the puddles of orange over the hill.

He said, “Half an hour. We'll get her soaked good as we can for that long. Then we're outta here whether you wanna leave or not. I'll come back up this ladder and drag your chubby ass down if I have to. Hear?”

He didn't know if Rod heard or not. Guy didn't even look at him. Rod just moved to another spot and kept the water coming.

Some damn kind of day,
Denny thought.

He dropped to his rear and scooted back to the ladder across the slick wet tiles quick as he could without sliding right over the edge.

Doren kept a loaded revolver in the locked bottom drawer of the big desk in his den. Todd promised Detective Timms that he'd shoot the housekeeper with it if anybody tried coming in.

“Believe that, ” he said into the receiver. “It's not a bluff. I don't want to hurt anybody. But I swear to you, if you send anybody in here, I'll shoot Rosa first, then I'll put a bullet in my own head. Have fun putting together
that
press release.”

He hung up the phone. Then he unplugged it from the wall so that it wouldn't ring anymore.

Todd broke the blade of Rosa's knife prying the desk drawer open. She screamed at him in Spanish from the floor where he'd bound her with extension cords from the kitchen.

At first, he'd been afraid he'd hit her harder than he'd intended. He was afraid he'd broken her hand with the golf club. But if he had, it didn't seem to bother her now. She worked constantly at the electrical cords around her wrists and ankles, berating him at the top of her lungs the whole time.

Todd finally sat down, unwound the bandage from his ankle, and gagged her with it.

He didn't want to hurt Rosa. But even with the gag, her voice was a rasp on his nerves. He couldn't take it anymore; he needed a little peace. Just a few moments of silence. Under the circumstances, he didn't think it was too much to ask.

He hit her on the back of the head with the butt of the revolver. The thud of the gun handle on bone vibrated through his hand, up his wrist. It was a sickening feeling. Rosa grunted and fell over. Todd didn't think she lost consciousness, but at least she stopped yelling. She didn't make another sound.

“Please, Rosa, ” he said. “Please.”

Slumped, face touching the floor, she nodded her head slowly.

Todd hopped to Doren's reading chair and fell into it. He raised his leg and rested his throbbing ankle on the footstool. He could see the fabric of the bandage still imprinted in the puffy, discolored skin of his foot. He focused on the granular patterns and tried to collect his thoughts.

From where he sat, he saw plenty of challenges. Not many opportunities. He didn't think he probably had time to sit around waiting for one to present itself.

He sat there anyway. Todd could smell the leather of the chair, the gun oil from the revolver in his hand. They were good smells, strong and soothing. Hypnotic. He was beginning to think he could sit in this spot for the rest of his life.

Todd looked around the room. He noticed one of Doren's pictures on the side table next to the chair. He picked up the frame and turned it over. He spent a while gazing at the photograph under the glass.

He was still looking at the photo when he heard the front door open.

Todd cocked the pistol with his thumb and pointed it at Rosa. She'd worked her way back up to a sitting position. When she saw the gun, her eyes widened. Then she closed them.

“Don't make me do it, ” he called out to whoever was listening. “I don't want to. But I will.”

He waited.

Nothing happened.

He looked over at Rosa and corrected his aim. The weight of the gun kept forcing his hand to drift. He'd never held one before. Todd had no idea they were so heavy. The revolver felt like it must have weighed ten pounds.

Todd heard movement and looked up quickly. He saw Doren watching him from the doorway.

He lowered the gun.

“That's better, ” Doren said.

Todd raised the gun again, this time pointing it at Doren's chest. “You should have stayed outside.”

Doren walked into the room. He walked straight toward Todd.

“Doren, stop. Please. I'm going to pull this trigger if you don't.”

In the background, Rosa began to wail through her gag. But Doren didn't stop coming.

Doren didn't stop, and Todd didn't pull the trigger. He tried, but he couldn't seem to make his finger cooperate.

Before he could raise his other hand to help, Doren reached forward and closed his hand over the top of the revolver, wedging his thumb between the hammer and the frame. He grabbed Todd's wrist and twisted the gun away.

Todd let his empty hand fall back into his lap.

Doren stepped back and looked at him. Somehow, the expression on his face hurt even worse than the expression he'd seen on Heather's just a short while ago. Todd felt Doren's anger all the way to his center. It was almost more than he could bear.

Yet Doren was the one with tears in his eyes. He seemed to pause a moment, allowing them. Then he blinked hard, one time, and they were gone.

Doren picked up the broken knife from the carpet and went to Rosa. He used what remained of the blade to slice through the cord around her feet. He helped her up. He whispered something in her ear. Then he sent her out.

Todd knew that he should be trying harder to regain control of the situation, but he couldn't seem to muster the will. He sat in the chair, picture frame in his lap, nine iron across his knees.

Doren came back and stood over him, looking down. For a few moments, he didn't say anything. When he finally did speak, his voice had a quality Todd had never heard in Doren's voice before:

Wounded.

“We treated you like family, ” he said.

Todd lowered his eyes. He sat there and felt Doren's gaze from above. He sat this way for a long while.

“You know, ” he finally said, without looking up, “there aren't any photos of me in this room.”

Silence.

“I never realized that before today.”

For one unexpected, tender moment, Todd felt Doren's thick heavy hand on the back of his head. He could feel the warmth of Doren's palm on his scalp. Then it went away.

“Don't make this worse for yourself than it already is, ” Doren said. “You need help, Todd. Let me help.”

Todd looked at the pebbled, swollen flesh of his bare ankle. He couldn't feel the throbbing anymore.

“Funny, ” he said. “When David needs your help, you find the best lawyers money can buy. When I need your help, you show up with the police. What member of the family
am
I, out of curiosity? A retarded cousin? Some neighborhood stray you fed a couple of times and can't get rid of?”

“Let's go outside, ” Doren said.

“I begged him to leave well enough alone, you know. If he'd stayed with me in the office that night, he would have had an alibi.”

“It's over, Todd. You don't need to do this. Not now.”

“Do you know what he told me? He told me to mind my own business.”

Doren said nothing.

“I'm sorry to say it, Doren. But your son is a whining brat who has no idea how lucky he is. He's never had the first clue. If he'd listened to me, we wouldn't be here now. I had a plan, you know. I would have taken care of everything.”

Todd finally looked up. The expression on Doren's face had changed. Todd didn't know which he preferred: the contempt he'd seen there at first, or the pity he saw there now.

He picked up the frame from his lap and tossed it to Doren.

“There's a family” he said. “Look at that family and answer this question: Who's not in the photo? Who isn't sitting at the table?”

Doren didn't look at the photograph. He said, “Let's go outside, Todd. I don't want to see you get hurt.”

“I was taking the picture, ” Todd said. “That's why I'm not
in
the picture. I get it now. I guess a picture really is worth a thousand words.”

He'd thought he was past emotion; he'd thought he'd gone numb through and through. Todd didn't know where the sudden anger came from, but it bubbled up and scalded him.

He grabbed the golf club and thrust himself up out of the chair. He took a few hops over to the bookcase. He drew the club back and swung it hard, clearing picture frames from one of the shelves in a crashing shower of bent metal and broken glass.

He moved to the next shelf and swung again. Todd decided he'd stop as soon as he found his own face.

He swung again. And he swung again. It turned out to take longer than he'd expected. There were pictures all over this room. The clatter was so loud in his ears that he never even heard Doren turn his back and leave.

But when he finally looked up from the mess he'd made, spent and empty, Todd saw that he was alone.

DENNY
figured they'd just about blown it. He really didn't think they had much of a chance.

When the fire came, it came hard and fast. It came roaring down the hill through the brush behind the house like a hell-bound train. They were ringed in before Denny even realized they were in trouble.

The world had gone dark, and it glowed orange.

The wood deck on the back of Rodney's place had already started to catch by the time Denny heard the tanker passing by overhead. He didn't think there was any hope in hell the guys in the helicopter could see them up on the roof through all the smoke, but they jumped up and down and waved like maniacs anyway, slipping and stumbling around on the wet clay tiles and holding on to each other for dear life.

Denny figured they were cooked for sure.

But then that big red baby banked, and came back around, and dropped a harness line right to the roof. Rod cheered beside him. Denny whooped and waved his arms.

He helped Rod strap on the harness, then toed into the extra loop and grabbed on tight himself.