California Fire and Life (3 page)

Jack steps back and photographs the house first with one camera and then the other. He has one loaded with color film and the other with black-and-white. Color is better for showing the damage, but some judges will only allow black-and-white shots into evidence, their theory being that color shots—especially in a fatal fire—are “prejudicially dramatic.”

Might
inflame
the jury, Jack thinks.

Jack thinks that most judges are dicks.

A lot of adjusters just take Polaroids. Jack uses 35 mm because the images enlarge so much better, which is important if you need them as exhibits in court.

So some bottom-feeding plaintiff’s attorney doesn’t take your shitty Polaroids and stick them up your ass.

“Polaroids are hemorrhoids.” Another of Goddamn Billy’s pithy sayings.

So just on the odd chance the file might end up in court, Jack’s covering all his bases. Which is why he keeps two 35s handy in the car, because it would be a waste of time to have to reload and then go take each shot again.

He grabs shots of the whole house with each camera and then jots down a note describing each shot and giving the time and date that he took the picture. He notes that he used Minolta cameras, notes the serial numbers of both cameras, the type of film and its ASA. He speaks the same information into the tape recorder, along with any observations he may want to have for his file.

Jack takes these notes because he knows that you
think
you’re going to remember what you took and why, but you won’t. You got maybe a hundred losses you’re working at any given point and you get them mixed up.

Or as Billy Hayes poetically puts it, “It’s writ, or it’s shit.”

Billy’s from Arizona.

So Jack says, “Frame One, shot of house taken from south angle. August 28, 1997. West wing of house shows severe damage. Exterior
walls standing but will probably have to be torn down and rebuilt. Windows blasted out. Hole in roof.”

The easiest way to the other side of the house is through the central section, so Jack lets himself in the front door.

Jack opens it and he’s looking straight out at the ocean like he’s going to fall into it, because there are big glass sliders with a view that stretches from Newport Beach to the right down to the Mexican islands to the left. Catalina Island straight ahead of you, Dana Strands just down to your left, and below that Dana Strand Beach.

And miles and miles of blue ocean and sky.

You’re talking two million bucks just for the view.

The big glass door opens onto a deck about the size of Rhode Island. Below the deck is a sloping lawn, a rectangle of green in all this blue, and in the green there’s another rectangle of blue, which is the swimming pool.

A brick wall borders the lawn. Trees and shrubs line the side walls, and the trees and shrubs are edged by a border of flowers. Down to the left there’s a pad with a clay tennis court.

The view is totally killer but the house—even this main section that didn’t burn—is a fucked-up mess. Drenched with water and the all-pervading acrid stench of smoke.

Jack takes some shots, notes the smoke and water damage on his tape and then goes out into the yard. Takes some shots from this angle and doesn’t see anything to change his mind that the fire started in the west wing, which must be the bedroom. He walks to the outside of the west wing, over to one of the windows, and carefully removes a shard of glass from the window frame.

First thing he notices is that it’s greasy.

There’s a thick, oily soot on the glass.

Jack makes this observation into the tape but what he doesn’t speak into the record is what he’s
thinking
. What he’s thinking is that a residue on the inside of the glass can mean the presence of some kind of hydrocarbon fuel inside the house. Also, the glass is cracked into small, irregular patterns, which means it was fairly near the origin of the fire and that the fire built up fast and hot. He doesn’t say any of this, either; all he says into the tape is strictly the physical details: “Glass shows greasy, sooty residue and small-pattern crazing. Radial fracture of glass indicates that it was broken by force of fire from inside the house.”

That’s all he says because that can’t be argued with—the evidence is the evidence. Jack won’t put his analysis or speculation on tape because
if a lawsuit happens and it goes to trial, the tape will be subpoenaed, and if his voice is on there speculating on potential hydrocarbon fuel in the house, the plaintiff’s lawyer will make it sound like he was prejudiced, that he was looking for evidence of arson and therefore skipped over evidence of an accidental fire.

He can just hear the lawyer: “You were focused on the possibility of arson from Moment One, weren’t you, Mr. Wade?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you say right here on your taped notes that you thought …”

So it’s better to leave your thoughts out of it.

It’s sloppy work to start thinking ahead of yourself, and anyway, there could be other explanations for the oily soot. If the wood inside the room didn’t burn completely, it might leave that kind of residue, or there could be any number of petroleum-based products in the house quite innocently.

Still, there’s that barking dog, which is really going at it now. And the bark is not an angry bark, either, not like a dog defending its turf. It’s a scared bark, more like a whine, and Jack figures the dog must be terrified. And thirsty. And hungry.

Shit, Jack thinks.

He photographs the piece of glass, labels it and puts it into a plastic evidence bag he keeps in a pocket of the overalls. Then, instead of going into the house—which is what he really wants to do—he goes to look for the dog.

The dog probably got out when the firemen broke in, and it’s probably traumatized. The Vale kids will be worried about the dog, and anyway, maybe it’ll help them feel a little better to get their dog back.

Jack kind of likes dogs.

It’s people he’s not so crazy about.

Nineteen years (seven with the Sheriff’s, twelve with the insurance company) of cleaning up after people’s accidents have taught him that people will do about anything. They’ll lie, steal, cheat, kill and litter. Dogs, however, have a certain sense of ethics.

He finds the Vales’ dog hiding under the lower limbs of a jacaranda
tree. It’s one of those little fru-fru dogs, a house dog, all big eyes and bark.

“Hey, pup,” Jack says softly. “It’s all right.”

It isn’t, but people will lie.

The dog doesn’t care. The dog is just happy to see a human being and hear a friendly voice. It comes out from under the tree and sniffs Jack’s hand for some kind of clue as to his identity and/or intentions.

“What’s your name?” Jack ask.

Like the dog’s going to answer, right? Jack thinks.

“Leo,” a voice says, and Jack about jumps out of his geeky paper overalls.

He looks up to see an older gentleman standing across the fence. A parrot sits on his shoulder.

“Leo,”
the parrot repeats.

Leo starts wagging his tail.

Which is what Yorkies do for a living.

“C’mere, Leo,” Jack says. “That’s a good dog.”

He picks Leo up and tucks him under one arm, scratching the top of his head, and walks over to the fence.

He can feel Leo trembling.

There’s that thing about people resembling their pets, or vice versa? Jack always thought that applied to just dogs, but the parrot and the older gentleman kind of look like each other. They both have beaks: the parrot’s being pretty self-explanatory and the older gentleman’s nose being shaped just like the parrot’s beak. The man and the bird are like some interspecies kind of Siamese twins, except that the parrot is green with patches of bright red and yellow, and the older gentleman is mostly white.

He has white hair and wears a white shirt and white slacks. Jack can’t see his shoes through the hedge, but he’s betting that they’re white, too.

“I’m Howard Meissner,” the old guy says. “You must be the man from Mars.”

“Close,” Jack says. He offers his left hand because he has Leo tucked under his right. “Jack Wade, California Fire and Life.”

“This is Eliot.”

Meaning the parrot.

Which says,
“Eliot, Eliot.”

“Pretty bird,” Jack says.

“Pretty bird, pretty bird.”

Jack guesses the parrot’s heard the “pretty bird” bit before.

“A shame about Pamela,” Meissner says. “I saw the stretcher go out.”

“Yeah.”

Meissner’s eyes get watery.

He reaches over the fence to pet Leo and says, “It’s all right, Leo. You did your best.”

Jack gives him a funny look and Meissner explains, “Leo’s barking woke me up. I looked out the window and saw the flames and dialed 911.”

“What time was that?”

“Four forty-four.”

“That’s pretty exact, Mr. Meissner.”

“Digital clock,” Meissner says. “You remember things like that. I called right away. But too late.”

“You did what you could.”

“I’m thinking Pamela is out of the house because Leo is.”

“Leo, Leo.”

“Leo was outside?” Jack asks.

“Yes.”

“When you heard him barking?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure about that, Mr. Meissner?”

“Pretty bird, pretty bird.”

Meissner nods. “I saw Leo standing out there. Barking at the house. I thought Pamela …”

“Did Leo usually sleep outside?” Jack asks.

“No, no,” Meissner says, like dismissively.

Jack knows it’s a stupid question. No one’s going to leave a little dog like this outside at night. He’s always seeing signs for lost Yorkies and cats, and with all the coyotes around here you know it’s like “B Company ain’t comin’ back.”

“Coyotes,” Jack says.

“Of course.”

Jack asks, “Mr. Meissner, did you see the flames?”

Meissner nods.

“What color were they?” Jack asks.

“Red.”

“Brick red, light red, bright red, cherry red?”

Meissner thinks about this for a second, then says, “Blood red. Blood red would describe it.”

“How about the smoke?”

No question about it, no hesitation.

“Black.”

“Mr. Meissner,” Jack asks, “do you know where the rest of the family was?”

“It was Nicky’s night with the kids,” he says. “A blessing.”

“They’re divorced?”

“Separated,” he says. “Nicky’s been staying with his mother.”

“Where does she—”

“Monarch Bay,” he says. “I told this to the police when they were here, so that they could notify.”

Except, Jack thinks, Bentley tells me they’re still looking.

“I feel for the kids,” says Meissner. He sighs one of those sighs that come only from advanced age. The man has seen too much.

“In and out. In and out,” Meissner says. “Chess pieces.”

“I know what you mean,” Jack says. “Well, thanks, Mr. Meissner.”

“Howard.”

“Howard,” Jack says. Then he asks, “Do you know why they were separated? What the issues were?”

“It was Pamela,” he says sadly. “She drank.”

So there it is, Jack thinks as he watches Meissner walk away. Pamela Vale has a night without the responsibility of the kids so she gets hammered. At some point she lets Leo out to go pee, forgets he’s out there and ends up in bed with a bottle and some cigs.

So Pamela Vale is drinking and smoking in bed. The vodka bottle tips over and most of the contents spills onto the floor. Pamela Vale either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Then, with a burning cigarette still in her hand, she passes out. The sleeping hand drops the cigarette onto the vodka. The alcohol ignites into a hot flame, which catches the sheets, and the blankets, and the room fills with smoke.

Normally it would take ten to fifteen minutes for the cigarette to ignite the sheets. Ten to fifteen minutes in which Pamela Vale might have smelled smoke, felt the heat, woke up and stamped her foot on the cigarette and that would have been that. But the vodka would ignite instantly, at a much greater heat than a smoldering cigarette—enough to ignite the sheets—and because she’s passed out she never has a chance.

It’s the smoke, not the flames, that kills Pamela Vale.

Jack can picture her lying in bed, passed out drunk, her respiratory system working even though her mind has shut down, and that respiratory
system just sucks in that smoke, and fills her lungs with it, until it’s too late.

She suffocates on smoke while she’s asleep.

Like a drunk choking on his own vomit.

So there’s that small blessing for Pamela Vale. She literally never knew what hit her.

They had to scrape her off the springs
, but she was dead before the intense heat merged her flesh into the metal. She never woke up, that’s all. The fire broke out, her system inhaled a lethal dose of smoke, and then the fire—fueled by all her belongings and her home—became fast and hot and strong enough to melt the bed around her.

An accidental fire, an accidental death.

It’s one of those cruel but kind ironies of a fatal house fire. Cruel in the sense that it chokes you with your own life. Takes those crucial physical things—your furniture, your sheets, your blankets, the paint on your walls, your clothes, your books, your papers, your photographs, all the intimate accumulations of a life, a marriage, a physical existence—and forces them down your throat and chokes you on them.

Most people who die in fires die from smoke inhalation. It’s like lethal injection—no, more like the gas chamber, because it’s really a gas, carbon monoxide, the old CO, that kills you—but in any case you’d prefer it to the electric chair.

The technical phrase in the fire biz is “CO asphyxiation.”

It sounds cruel, but the kind part is that you’d sure as hell prefer it to burning at the stake.

So there it is, Jack thinks.

An accidental fire and an accidental death.

It all fits.

Except you have the sooty glass.

And flames from burning wood aren’t blood red—they’re yellow or orange.

And the smoke should be gray or brown—not black.

But then again, Jack thinks, these are the observations of an old man in bad light.