Heaven's Fire (24 page)

Not that there was much to investigate. The source of the fire was evident even from where Simon stood above. The burned and burst paint cans, the scorch marks, the glass of the basement window shattered next to the furnace, the--

Wait. Even in his current funk, Simon knew that was wrong. The glass should have exploded
out
from the heat like the glass wall had, not in toward the furnace. That meant...
"
Someone lobbed something through the window.
"

Simon said it out loud, and the man in the basement jumped at the sound of his voice. Simon recognized him from the local fire department--Jensen, Jansen, something like that.

"
I’d say so.
"
Jensen/Jansen stuck his hand up.
"
Don’t know if you remember me. Walt Johannsen.
"

Yeah, that was it. Simon got down on what was left of the floor to reach through and shake Johannsen’s hand.
"
Sure, thanks for coming out.
"
He stuck his head down between the joists to get a better look.

Johannsen obliged by shining his light around.
"
Looks to me like someone broke the window from the outside, like you said, and tossed in an incendiary device.
"

"
Can you tell what it was?
"

Johannsen shrugged.
"
I found an old Zippo lighter outside and there's thick green bottle glass in here. I'm thinking somebody lobbed a Molotov cocktail in your window. Hard to tell about the accelerant, though, with everything else down here.

Simon sniffed. Was he getting a whiff of gasoline? Johannsen was right, it was hard to tell. The basement was filled with paint and thinner cans warped from the heat, soggy cardboard file boxes, scorched skeletons of overstuffed furniture, and sagging duct work. It reeked of all of those things, torched and then wet down and left to ferment.

"For what it's worth," Simon said, pulling back a little to get away from the stink, "there wasn't any gasoline stored down here. Just regular thinner and oil paint." Latex just never covered as well.

There was that "stupid fuck" look again, this time from Johannsen. Simon passed his card down. "My RAC is going to want to be kept informed, since this appears to be arson."

Johannsen was looking surly, all of a sudden. "ATF taking over?"

Simon shrugged. "Maybe. But I've found the best way to keep my RAC out of something is to keep him up to speed." Handy little phrase.

The fire investigator grunted and went back to sifting through garbage. You'd think he'd jump at the chance to dump this all on ATF, Simon thought, standing up.

He looked around the study and wanted to laugh. Jesus, what a mess. The only damn wall that had survived was the one next to the doorway. The one he’d covered with swath after swath of paint.

Blue. That was it. He should have picked blue.

Simon walked the perimeter of the room, looking for anything that could be recovered. The couch was reduced to metal springs and ashes, the rug that he and Jake had made love on, melted into the floor boards. His TV--his beautiful big-screen TV--was melted, too, into a big-screen hunk of tortured black plastic. Next to it was a metal shelving unit holding two rectangular hunks of melted plastic. The DVD player and the VCR--the DVD player topped with a small hill of melted clear plastic DVD jewel-cases, and the VCR, a dollop of destroyed videotapes.

The tapes Jake had given him. Damn it all to hell and back.

*****

Jake tried to occupy herself with the rundown of the show, expecting Luis to reappear any minute. It took twenty-three minutes.

"
Jake.
"

Jake jumped. See Jake jump, she thought. See Jake jump and run.

The fact that she was taking mental cues from her kindergarten reading primer probably wasn't a good sign. She was going to have to do better if she was going to brazen her way through this.

"
Yes?
"
Jake raised her eyebrows at him.

Luis’s eyebrows, in contrast, were hanging low and ominous. He held up the tape.
"
Where’s my close-up footage?
"

"
Close-up footage?
"

He came in and slapped the tape down on her desk.
"
You know damn well what I mean. Firenze going up to relight the fuse. There's a tornado on here.
"

"
Tornado? Are you sure?
"

"
Am I sure? Hell yes, I’m sure. Now, you better have another copy.
"
He was standing very close, and he was very angry.

Feeling threatened, Jake got angry, too.
"
Why? So you can get a raise? A better job?
"
Jake was on her feet now, toe-to-toe with Luis who only had about six inches on her.

She’d taken on bigger and better. She poked him in the chest with her finger.
"
Does it bother you at all that you’re using a man’s death to further your career?
"

Luis backed up.
"
You really did it, didn’t you? You ruined my tape.
"

"
So what if I did?
"
Ahh, kindergarten rears its ugly head again.

"
So, so...
"
He was red in the face.
"
So, I’m going to tell Gwen!
"

Jake watched him race down the hall, intent on telling teacher. What a weenie.

It didn’t take twenty-three minutes for the other shoe to drop, that shoe being Gwen, and Gwen’s office being just a few doors down.

Since the tape was still sitting on Jake’s desk, Gwen didn’t come in and slam it down for effect. She did the power equivalent. She had her secretary call Jake to her office.

Jake answered the summons.

*****

It took Simon less than an hour to walk through the rest of the house. He was having this weird push-pull, yin-yang reaction: the nearly uncontrollable need to get away, versus the admittedly macabre attraction of picking through the debris, looking for something familiar that remained. That tooth amongst the ashes in the cremation urn.

The house was a total loss, including the bedroom from which he and Jake had escaped. What wasn’t burned by the fire or ruined by the water, was so smelly Simon couldn't have stood to have it in his truck, much less his home. If he had one.

His bed was a sodden shadow of its former self. The dresser, a pile of burnt plywood and genuine "solid oak" laminate, the contents charred beyond recognition, except for a bottle of Versace cologne he'd been given--ironically by a woman who suggested it would counteract the smell of smoke that seemed to follow him everywhere. It figured that the cologne would be the one thing that survived, when what he really needed was a clean pair of undershorts.

When Simon finally left the house, carrying only the VCR with the tapes welded to the top, he exited by the front door, shutting it carefully behind him. He had his keys in his hand and came
that
close to locking the door out of habit. Stuffing the keys back in his pocket and feeling stupid, he walked down the sidewalk and put the VCR in the Explorer before turning to look back.

Eerie. From this angle, assuming you ignored the black scorching under the windows, you could scarcely tell there had been a fire. Freshly painted door, gleaming brass house numbers, pink shrub roses still blooming hopefully out front.

Just a facade, thought Simon again. Normal on the surface, but empty, burned out, within.

Like him.

Jake was sitting in one of the two visitors chairs in front of Gwen’s desk, and the news director had come around to sit in the other. Gwen believed that sitting behind her desk was too hierarchical, too chain of command. She thought this felt friendlier. Jake thought it felt condescending.

Gwen Sonntag had been around TV news for a lot of years, first as a reporter in Cincinnati, then as an anchor. She’d come to TV8 as news director about the same time Jake had started at the station.

Everyone, Gwen included, had assumed she would move into the station manager’s job when it opened up last year. Instead, the owners had pulled Bill Laverenz in from a sister station. Gwen had been furious, though she covered it well.

Since then, though, Jake had noticed a subtle shift on Gwen’s part toward the company line--which was, of course, the bottom line. Gwen wasn’t going to be bypassed again.

And that didn’t bode well for Jake’s future, given her boss’s current state of mind toward her.

Gwen was talking now, knee-to-knee with Jake and looking her directly in the eye. Firm, yet sympathetic.

"
Jake, I’m not going to kid you. We’ve both been around long enough to know you can’t pull this kind of thing. That tape was the station’s property. You had no right to alter it.
"

Jake knew she should just take her whacks, apologize and move on. Or better yet, lie and say it was an accident. But noooo:
"
I’m a producer, an editor. That’s what I do. Edit tapes. I made an editorial decision that the footage was too graphic.
"

"
It wasn’t your decision to make, Jake. It was mine.
"

Jake got up and crossed to the file cabinet by the door before turning back to the news director.
"
Fine, Gwen, I'll grant you that. So tell me what you would have done--and whether it's different from what you would have done five years ago.
"

Gwen sat back in her chair and sighed.
"
I know you think I've sold out, Jake, but local news is different today. The threshold for acceptable violence has gone way up, I don't have to tell you that. Viewers want to see things as they happen, not be told about them later. And whether we like it or not, if we don't attract and retain viewers, we won't be here tomorrow to tell any of our stories. As for the close-up footage of the blast, I don't know. Maybe I would have canned it, too. But I sure as hell wouldn’t have destroyed it.
"

Jake thought about telling Gwen there still was one copy intact, the copy she had given Simon. Then again, Simon had taken the videotapes into the house last night, so maybe it wasn't so "intact."

But the news director was asking a question and it was a good one.
"
...you’re the one who showed the tape the night of the explosion. Why?
"

"
Sometimes I…
"
Jake hesitated, searching for a way to explain the push-pull she felt.
"
…sometimes I revert to reporter-mode. I still want that rush you get when you’re the first one to put something on the air.
"

Gwen was nodding and Jake realized all of a sudden what she doing. Dancing. Giving Gwen the answer the program director could understand, respect even. Thing was, it wasn’t true. Not this time.

Jake took a deep breath.
"
But this wasn’t one of those times, Gwen.
"

Gwen stopped nodding.

"
Truth is, I screwed up. I didn't preview the entire segment, and I didn't realize it was as graphic as it turned out to be.
"
Jake leaned forward, wanting to make the point.
"
But what is 'acceptable violence'? Is any amount of violence acceptable, if it involves your husband or your father or your child? I hate the way we’re turning news into one big reality show. Live car chases and gun battles. What's next? Public executions? Feeding Christians to the lions?
"

Gwen started to speak, but Jake held up her hand. To her dismay, it was shaking.
"
Wait. Let me say this, then if you want to fire me, do it.

"
We crawl into people’s lives, Gwen. We climb all over them, like so many bugs. The famous. The tragic. The tragically famous, it doesn’t matter. We consume them, and then we’re on to something else. More ‘news.’"

Jake tried to laugh deridingly, but it came out just this side of maniacal to her ears.
"
We leave them with nothing. We've taken it all--their images, their words, their dignity--and used them as sound bites. We're modern versions of carny workers and they're our side-show." This last was barely audible.

"
You're talking about yourself, Jake. Nobody else.
"
Gwen got up and came over to her at the file cabinet.
"
You
felt on display,
you
felt like we had taken something from you.
"

Jake met the news director's eyes and saw pity. She hated pity.