Fun and Games - Duane Swierczynski [56]
Would that be enough?
She’d soon know.
O’Neal pulled the scanner out of the dash and hooked it to his belt. No sign of any other bodies in the house, which was really starting to bother him. The rescue teams should have found something by now. Even a pair of barbecued bodies.
Then again, he and A.D. weren’t able to find the actress when they did a full sweep of the house. They’d been interrupted by Hardie, but still—they should have found her. What were they missing? What was wrong with this picture?
A small, paranoid part of O’Neal wondered if the actress had even been inside. He hadn’t laid eyes on her since the chase through the canyon. Mann said she’d heard her voice, using the wall-penetrating omnidirectional mics, but that sound could have been something else. Someone else.
Was she inside?
Or had she already escaped them hours ago?
Oh, for this fucking day to be over. The original production should have wrapped in a matter of seconds. Now it had ballooned into this big, sprawling, opened-ended thing—the worst kind of production. He’d been on a few messy jobs before, but nothing like this.
Well, nothing to do but listen. Maybe he could get a few questions answered once he was on top of this castle.
O’Neal was about to step out of the van, when the front door of the castle burst open and two firefighters came stumbling outside. They seemed confused, as if they’d spent the last few minutes in a carnival funhouse, forced their way through a small door, and ended up in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Smoke poured out behind the firefighters; the entire first floor seemed like it was engulfed.
Was the castle on fire, too?
No. That didn’t make sense, unless a ribbon of fire had leaped over Alta Brea Drive and crashed down on the roof of the Smiley Castle like a flaming meteor. The wheels in O’Neal’s mind spun, and after a few seconds he suddenly understood—both the presence of smoke and why they hadn’t found any bodies yet. O’Neal pulled the van door shut and, shifting gears, hauled ass down the front driveway and rocketed back up Durand Drive.
“Mann, I think I know where they are.”
Static popped in his ear. “How sure are you?”
O’Neal quickly explained what he’d seen, what he thought.
“How the fuck did we miss this?” Mann asked.
“Don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“I’ll be right up.”
“No time. I’m already on my way.”
As Hardie chugged up past the intersection of Durand and Heather, he noticed someone had mounted three signs—bright yellow triangles, each with the image of a stick figure falling. He asked Lane to hang on for a minute. They paused in front of the signs to give Hardie a chance to catch his breath. He leaned forward, pressed down on the tops of his thighs, then straightened up again.
“Is that a joke?” Hardie asked. “Do people actually fall off the road enough to warrant a goddamned traffic sign?”
“No, it’s real,” Lane said. “I read about these. A while back a guy on a bike took a spill. Ended up paralyzed and filed a lawsuit against the homeowners in the area. So they put up these signs.”
After a few seconds of frenzied rest, they continued their ascent, up the winding road. Dirt spilled out from the cracked and broken sides of the road, as if the hills were slowly trying to shuck themselves of the asphalt.
Each time Hardie felt like they’d finally reached the peak, there would be another bend in the road, and he’d see more of Durand curving up into the sky. There were no other pedestrians. Just houses, with no signs of life inside them, and cars wedged in every available space.
“We’re almost at the reservoir.”
Finally, across a valley and through the haze, he could see the ghostly letters of the Hollywood sign. Durand’s name changed at some point. Hardie missed the sign, if there even was one. But now he felt like he was at the top of all of creation. Behind him, Mt. Lee and the sign. In front of him, shimmering in the woozy afternoon, was downtown Los Angeles, so faint as to almost seem like a matte painting