California Fire and Life (13 page)

“I want the job.”

“Seven o’clock tomorrow morning,” Goddamn Billy says. “And leave the beer at home—”

“I will.”

“—unless you bring one for me.”

So Jack goes to work for Cal Fire and Life.

Twelve years later he’s sitting in Nicky Vale’s mommy’s driveway getting a phone call from the past.

There’s no smoke in Pamela Vale’s lungs.

Is what the woman whispers over the phone.

I shouldn’t be telling you this but I thought
someone
should know, the autopsy showed no smoke in her lungs
.

Dr. Winston Ng is thrilled to see Jack.

“Go away” is what Ng says when Jack appears in his office. Ng has just taken a minute to sit down and have a cup of old rancid coffee and he doesn’t want to be hassled. And Jack Wade is a hassle.

“You had a fire fatality in here this morning,” Jack says. “Mrs. Pamela Vale?”

“No kidding?”

Jack says, “She didn’t have any smoke in her lungs.”

“Who have
you
been talking to?”

I don’t know, Jack thinks. But he asks, “Did you test for carbon monoxide?”

Ng nods. “I tested her blood for a level of carboxyhemoglobin.”

Carbon monoxide loves red blood cells. CO enters the body, seeks out those red blood cells and goes there. In the body of a person who dies from CO asphyxiation, you’d expect to find, for instance, two hundred times more CO than oxygen in the red blood cells. You’d find a high level of carbon monoxide in the blood.

“What was the saturation level?” Jack asks.

“Under 9 percent,” Ng answers.

Which is negligible, Jack knows. A charred body will absorb small amounts of CO through the skin.

“Postmortem lividity?” Jack asks.

“Blue-black.”

“Should have been bright red,” Jack says. Carbon monoxide turns the blood bright red. “Blisters?”

“A few,” Ng answers. “Small, filled with air.”

Jack nods. It’s what he’d expect on a body that was dead before the fire. Otherwise the blisters would be larger and filled with fluid. He asks, “Rings?”

“No rings.”

Same thing. A live body in a fire develops inflamed rings around the blisters. Not so with a dead body.

“She was dead before the fire,” Jack says.

Ng pours a second cup of coffee, for Jack. Hands him the styrofoam cup and says, “You know she was or you wouldn’t be here busting my balls.”

“I’m not busting your balls.”

“Yeah you are.” Ng plops down on his old wooden desk chair. Slides open a drawer in the gray metal desk and takes out a file. Tosses it on the desk and says, “You didn’t see this.”

Jack opens the manila file and about pukes.

Photos of Pamela Vale.

Half of her anyway.

Her legs are pretty much burned off. Shinbones exposed. Her arms are bent and pulled up, her fingers clawed as if she’s trying to protect herself. Her face is intact, violet eyes open and staring.

Jack gags.

“Hey,” Ng says, “you come here busting my balls, you get what you ask for.”

“Shit,” Jack says.

“Indeed,” Ng says. “Any thoughts for me on why we have half of her intact?”

“The leg bones are exposed,” Jack says. It would take twenty-five to thirty minutes at 1,200°F for an average structural fire to burn through to the shinbones. Except this fire didn’t burn that long. But he says, “Fall-down effect, probably. Shielded her torso and face from the flames.”

“Lucky girl,” Ng says.

Jack makes himself look at the photos again and says, “She went pugilistic.”

He’s not talking about boxing exactly, except for the fact that when a human body is exposed to high heat its arm and leg muscles contract, the arms pulling up into a classic boxer’s pose. One reason that it wouldn’t do this would be if rigor mortis had set in.

“Rigor?”

“No.”

“No smoke in her lungs, no carbon smudges around her mouth, low carboxy, and she went pugilistic,” Jack says.

Ng says, “She died before the fire but not long before the fire.”

“Faceup or facedown?”

“Faceup.”

Most people who die
in
a fire are found facedown. It’s not a situation where you lie down on your back and wait for it.

“And this is an accidental death?” Jack asks.

“That’s what the cops say,” Ng says. “And the cops would never ever lie.”

“She had alcohol in her blood.”

“Yup.”

“A lot?”

“She would have been considered legally drunk.”

“Enough to pass out?”

“Hard to tell,” Ng says. “I also found traces of barbiturates.”

“So it could’ve happened,” Jack says. “She’s drinking and taking pills and smoking, she passes out, the cigarette ignites the alcohol …”

“Say she is unconscious,” Ng says. “She’s still breathing. She’s inhaling smoke. No, this woman was dead before the fire.”

“So how did she die?”

They sit there for a second, then Ng says, “There’s no bruising around the throat, no ligature marks, no apparent trauma to the trachea. There are no signs of a struggle, as they say on TV. I wanted to talk to the husband about it but his lawyer shut me down. The cops won’t pick it up. They say it’s an accidental fire, accidental death. Now you know what I know.”

“It doesn’t strike you as funny that a guy gets a call that his wife died in a fire and ten minutes later he has a lawyer?” Jack asks.

“I’m an ME. I don’t analyze live behavior,” Ng says. “Yes, of course it strikes me as funny.”

Jack asks, “Sexual activity?”

“Those parts were consumed by the fire,” Ng says. “Why?”

“Some sicko rapes her, sets a fire.”

Ng shrugs. Says, “I saved blood and tissue samples. If there’s interest I can send them off to a specialist, get an opinion on violent suffocation.”

“Can I see the body?” Jack asks.

“The body’s gone,” Ng says.

“Already?”

“I released it,” Ng says. Sees the look on Jack’s face and says, “Jack, what do you want me to do? I have a fire inspector’s report that says accidental, smoking in bed. I have a bloodstream juiced with alcohol and barbiturates—”

“She died
before
the fire.”

Ng nods. “She drops the cigarette, loses consciousness and ODs before the fire ignites. It’s all consistent. If you’re fishing for reasons to not pay the claim—”

“Fuck you, Winston.”

“I’m sorry,” Ng says. “It’s been a long shift. That was unworthy.”

“Yeah, it’s been a day. So …”

“So I’m calling it an overdose.”

An accidental fire and an accidental death.

“That’s cool, Winston. I just wanted an explanation.”

“No need to apologize.”

“How are the kids?”

“Fine,” Ng says. “I think they’ll be glad when school starts again. I know
I’ll
be glad when school starts again.”

“Elaine?”

“Busy,” Ng says. “I hardly see her. She’s in that EBD phase—‘everything but dissertation.’ ”

“Tell her I said hello.”

“You got it,” Ng says. “Hey, you want the End of a Long Day Dark-Humor Special?”

“Sure.”

“Mrs. Vale?” Ng says. “They’re going to cremate her.”

Jesus, Jack thinks.

Again?

Jack watches Pamela Vale walk around the house.

It’s pretty eerie. He’s sitting in an A-V room back at California Fire and Life, watching the video that Nicky had given him.

They had to scrape her off the springs
.

Now here she is, Pamela Vale walking around the same room that’s now full of cold, black ash. Where Jack saw her blood baked onto the melted bedsprings. Now she’s looking into the camera and talking to him.

Very weird, almost voyeuristic. He’s seen pictures of her charred, naked body—right down to the leg bones—and now she’s walking around talking to him.

Young and very beautiful
, is that how Nicky had put it? And no kidding, because Pam Vale is—

—was
, Jack reminds himself, a very beautiful young woman.

It’s sick, Jack thinks, because if you didn’t keep yourself aware that this woman is dead, you’d be falling in love with her. She’s wearing a print sundress that shows her body. She has black satin hair framing a heart-shaped face, but her eyes are what really get to you.

Purple.

Violet.

Some shade in there that he’s never seen before.

They grab the camera, they grab
your
eyes and hold them.

And her voice.

Is pure sex.

Even narrating this inventory that Nicky’s walking her through. He’s holding the camera and whispering instructions. But it’s not Nicky’s voice softly telling her what to do, it’s
her
voice describing, the television, the VCR, the paintings, the sculptures, the furniture, that gets to Jack. He expected it to be that high-pitched beach-girl trophy-wife kind of voice but it isn’t. It’s a woman’s voice—a woman who was a wife and a mother of two kids and a manager of an expensive, complicated household—it’s a voice with some real life experience behind it and it’s deeper than he expected, and fuller. It’s a mature woman’s voice and it’s pure sex.

Even in this video of Nicky’s, basically saying
Dig my possessions and this sexy woman is one of them
.

She knows it. You can see in her eyes that she knows what he’s about.

But she’s above it.

How? Jack wonders.

Maybe it’s the kids—she has the status as their mother and maybe that’s enough. Or maybe she’s just loaded, anesthetized into a pleasant zonk which gets her through the day. He decides the question is unanswerable and irrelevant and tries to concentrate on what she’s saying.

And on the room.

The video is invaluable to Jack because it shows the room before the fire.

It’s huge, of course, with high, peaked ceilings. There’s the center beam and the rafters coming down off it. Highly polished pine flooring. The wallpaper is white and rich with gold pattern striping. It shouldn’t work. Thick red draw curtains come over the sliders that lead onto the deck outside the bedroom. Oval, gilded mirrors and old English hunting prints in walnut frames complete the effect.

Jack rewinds the tape, takes out a notebook and stops and starts the tape as he jots down Pamela’s narration. He has Nicky’s inventory on his lap and he’s trying to match the descriptions up with the listed items and prices.

Of Nicky’s precious furniture.

She poses by a desk, gesturing with both hands. (“Show them what they’ll win, Vanna.”) At Nicky’s prompting she says, “This is a George III mahogany pedestal desk, made in about 1775. It has fluted columns at the corners, and note the unusual carved scroll feet.”

The camera pans down to the unusual carved scroll feet.

Jack scans the inventory and finds the desk.

Evaluated at $34,000.

Pam continues, “The mirror above it is a
Kent
mirror of carved gilded wood with a shell-backed neoclassical head. This piece was made in about 1830.”

Jack thinks she sounds like Jackie Kennedy giving a tour of the White House.

The mirror’s estimated at $28,000.

It goes on and on.

“This side table is circa 1730 and is clearly inspired by the Italian Renaissance with its carved gilded wood and gesso motifs. But also note
that the carved acanthus leaves on the curved legs point toward the neoclassical.”

$30,500.

“These are a pair of George I gilt chairs.”

$25,000.

“This is a George I card table.”

$28,000.

“This is one of our real treasures,” Pamela says. “A rare bombé-based red-lacquered and japanned bureau-cabinet from about 1730. It has clawed and hairy paw feet. Also, serpentine-shaped corners with attenuated acanthus leaves. A very rare piece.”

True enough, Jack thinks. Fifty-three grand worth of rare.

The camera lingers over the cabinet, and Jack has to admit that he admires the workmanship. It’s all fine furniture, lovingly and carefully built.

To last.

The tour goes on.

A pair of mahogany George II armless chairs.

$10,000.

A 1785 Hepplewhite with Prince of Wales feathers.

$14,000.

A 1745 gilded Matthias Lock rococo console table.

$18,000.

Jack’s scribbling notes and prices and he’s also noting what he should find when he does the sift.

He
should
find, he thinks, handles from the cabinets. Maybe some remnants from the thickest part of the wood furniture—from the balled and clawed feet and bases. Some fragments should have survived and should be found in the deep char.

Back to the tape.

Georgian furniture, even in the bathroom.

A George II dressing table. A bargain at $20,000.

A George III silent valet. A gimmick for $1,500.

The cabinetry in and around the twin sinks done in walnut to match the period. Expensive tiled cabinet tops in mock marble. The freakin’ towel racks done in scrolled acanthus walnut.

Then back to the bedroom for the
pièce de résistance
.

The bed.

Outrageous.

Calling it a four-poster, Jack thinks, is like calling the Great Wall of
China a fence. This bed has four posts all right, but each post has a gilded walnut base with royal-blue inlays. The bases support cylindrical posts of gilded mahogany leading up to rectangular walnut pedestals with carved angels on top. The top pedestals themselves are sheathed in heavy white silk with the coat of arms of what Jack figures had to be some duke or lord or something. The four posts support a frame from which hang two layers of heavy, draped gold fabric, very old and delicate. Judging from the video, there must have been supports across the top of the frame, because a cupola of sorts sits on top of the bed. The cupola is ringed with carved gilded eagles and topped off with a carved castle tower which grazes the ceiling. The bed canopy is tied off to each of the posts.

All of which, Jack thinks, would explain why the top part of Pam Vale’s body wasn’t burned in the fire. Doubtless the canopy burned early and dropped down on top of her, smothering the flames and protecting the top part of her body.