Fun and Games - Duane Swierczynski [51]
Phil, meanwhile, unpackaged the box cutter, quickly loaded a blade, and then looked up at everyone.
“Okay, who’s ready for some fun and games?”
Jane nodded. There was a happy, toothy grin on her tiny face.
18
Perhaps we can dispense with the fun and games now, yes?
—Taylor Negron, The Last Boy Scout
Hollywood Hills—Now
AFTER THE fire burned for another fifteen minutes, and the engines started to assemble and tap into water mains, and there was no sign of any living thing inside or outside the house, Mann resigned herself to the new narrative.
Now they had a fire story.
Mann took a few fast deep breaths to clear her mind, to blow the fatigue out of her skull. Timing was everything now, as was sharp thinking. Arson investigators were shrewd and tenacious. You might think that fire was nature’s eraser, destroying everything in its path and wiping the slate clean. An arson investigator would tell you that you were being an idiot. Fire told a story like nothing else. It was simple, elemental, predictable, and utterly traceable. Mann knew that if you were using fire in your narrative, you’d better know how to tell a fire story.
That was why she considered it a last resort. Untraceable poisons were the best—the heart-attack stuff, for instance, was a godsend. Car crashes could be investigated, but it wasn’t too difficult to have a vehicle do what you wanted. Falls were good, too, in a pinch. Bathtub drownings.
Fires, though, were a motherfucker.
She needed facts. Something that would help her firm up the new narrative. It shouldn’t be difficult; she knew how the story would end:
Recovering starlet with history of drug abuse gets into a car wreck, freaks out, flees the scene, goes to a boyfriend’s house in the Hollywood Hills, is overwhelmed with guilt, shoots up again, and then sets the house on fire in a fit of drug-addled psychosis, thinking she can cover her tracks.
Not Mann’s best story line ever, but considering this whole early-morning abortion of a job, it would have to do. But did the facts support it? Would they support the actress lighting the house on fire?
And where did Charlie Hardie fit in?
She had no idea.
Where would the bodies be? What were they trying to do as the fire raged on? How did the fire even start? Was it one of those freak events where a charge from a cell phone ignited the gas in the air? Or did Hardie decide to light one up while he was waiting them out? No. Hardie didn’t smoke, according to Factboy, not for three years. Neither did the actress. So, what, then? Did they cause the blast?
Were they dead or alive?
O’Neal, up in the front of the van, was trying to figure that out. He used the dash-mounted scanner and a pair of headphones to listen to the progress of the firefighters just down the street. The fire was worst on the top floor, as expected, but smoke was everywhere. As they cleared each room, he waited for mention of a body. Either body would be welcome. Any sign of progress in this long, tortured morning.
Finally there was excitement on the line. They’d discovered someone. Cries went out for medical assistance.
O’Neal told Mann, “They’re pulling out somebody. Still alive.”
“Okay,” Mann said. “Which one?”
O’Neal held up an index finger, kept listening to the scanner chatter, trying to put the pieces together.
“Tell me it’s the actress.”
“Hold on. Male,