Burn (31 page)

Denny asked around.

Most of the crew guys were too busy trying to break down their equipment and keep it from blowing away to pay him much attention. He spotted Cammie and Vivian hanging out with some of the other extras under a gigantic, flapping shade umbrella that looked just about ready to give over to the wind.

“Hey. Vivian.” He hustled over. “How you doin’? Damn, you're lookin’ great. Say, what's the deal, anyway? Where's everybody going?”

She pretended she didn't even see him standing there. She looked sexy as hell in her new
To the Max
sports bra/top thingy and bun huggers. Denny thought she also looked kind of peeved.

He turned to the taller one, Cammie. He was kind of starting to get a little wood just thinking back. But he forced himself to stay on task.

“Hey, ” he said. “Where's Rod, anyway?”

Cammie glared at him. “Piss up a rope.”

Denny leaned back. This was kind of starting to sting.

“Jesus, what's you guys's problem?”

Cammie turned her back on him and mumbled something. One of the pretty boys stepped to him.

“I don't think she wants to talk to you, there, Security. Take the hint, huh?”

Denny looked the guy in the face and had to work hard to restrain himself. Especially the way the guy said the word
Security.
Like it was some joke. He wanted to bust a hint off this nutless Ken doll's pearly white teeth for him.

But he had more important things to do at the moment. He left the umbrella, walked around, finally found one of the sound guys he got along with okay.

“Yo, Jake, ” he called out. “What's happening?”

Jake looked up from what he was doing. He had his Oakleys on the top of his head, bright orange sunblocker on his nose and bottom lip. Denny could hear the daily Hot Spot report coming out of the little transistor sport radio Jake wore strapped on his arm.

“What isn't?” Jake picked up a patch cable and started winding it up. “You hear about Junior yet?”

“Lomax? Shit, yeah.” Denny had caught it on the radio in the car on the way down. This was turning out to be some kind of day. “How ’bout that?”

“Crazy.”

“That how come everybody's buggin’ out? Where's Rodney? He take off already?”

“Hasn't even been here.”

“No kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Where's he at, anybody know?”

Jake raised his radio arm while he worked. “Packing, I figure. Packing real fast.”

“Yo, Jake. You're losin’ me.”

“You didn't hear?”

“Hear what?”

“They're evacuating, ” Jake said. “Malibu to the Palisades. Fire's headed right through the middle, dude.”

Denny blinked. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

Denny stood there and listened to Jake's arm radio for a minute. The sun beat down, the ocean shimmered, and the hot wind blew.

“By the way, man—what's up with your buddy Vines? I heard he got caught breaking into some dude's house last night. Got shot like five times. Is that really true?”

Definitely some kind of day.

“Only got shot once as far as I know, ” Denny said.

“Man.” Jake shook his head and started winding up more cable. “Man-oh-man. I gotta find a new job. Can you believe the shit that goes on around here?”

“Not hardly, ” Denny said, already turning to head back to the car.

ANDREW
waited at a table in a room.

He'd never personally been at one of these tables in one of these rooms before now. He guessed he hadn't been missing much. There wasn't much to it.

Peter Jeffries, in a sharp-looking pale-gray suit today waited with Andrew for all of forty-five minutes before his cell phone rang. Jeffries spoke to the caller in clipped tones at first, then in smooth reassurances.

Andrew got the impression that a higher-rolling client than himself had developed some sort of emergency. After a minute, Jeffries hung up and told Andrew they'd have to reschedule for later. He'd talk to the cops, very sorry, this thing could wait and the other couldn't.

Andrew told him he'd just as soon get it over with and get out of there. Jeffries took one look at him and seemed to intuit the futility of arguing the point. He left Andrew with instructions.

“Cooperate, ” he said. “But don't tell 'em anything you don't need to tell 'em. You seem like a bright guy you ought to be fine. Call me if you need anything.”

Andrew could have used a sandwich, but he didn't mention it. He watched his new lawyer leave.

He sat at the table and waited some more.

Finally, around three o'clock in the afternoon, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman in a suit almost as sharp as the one Peter Jeffries had been wearing stuck her head in.

“Hi. You Kindler?”

Andrew said, “Hello.”

She came in and shut the door. She seemed to be on her way somewhere else. “I'm Detective Munoz. Sorry for the wait.”

“That's okay, ” he said.

“You can go ahead and go home, ” she told him. “We're leaving your case with Santa Monica PD. If we need to follow up, we'll be in touch.”

Andrew wasn't sure what to say to that. He said, “Oh.”

“Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for coming in.”

“No problem.”

“Normally I'd help you find your way out, but I'm a little short on spare minutes.” The detective looked at him. “You're not going to hold the station hostage or set off a bomb or anything, are you?”

“I guess not, ” he said.

“I didn't think so. Take care.”

With that, Detective Munoz opened the door and left the room again.

Andrew sat for a minute. He thought:
That was easy.

Maybe he was going to be able to handle this regular-citizen thing after all.

He went ahead and got out of there.

Last night, after the hospital, after the cops and the questions, after Andrew had told Caroline everything about these past four days, this week that stretched back ten years and beyond, his kid cousin had had a moment. She'd just sort of blurted out fat tears for half a minute or so.

Misperceiving a simple expulsion of stress for some kind of moral crisis, Andrew had tried to comfort her, calm her nerves, limp her through what he'd assumed was just a moment of reflex guilt over putting a bullet in a fellow human, center mass.

So he'd told her how lucky it was that she'd happened along when she did. He'd told her that for once this week, thanks to her, fate had been on his side.

But she'd already stopped crying by that time. It hadn't even been crying, really. She'd kissed him on the cheek and put her forehead against his.

You don't believe in fate,
she'd reminded him.

He'd smiled. A damned lucky coincidence, then.

And Caroline had said:
There are no coincidences. Only moments and choices. Twenty-eight years of choices led me to that moment, Drew. In that moment, I had another choice to make, and I made it. That's all.

Full of coincidence as this past week had seemed along the way, thinking back over specific events only seemed to prove Caroline right. Everything seemed somehow connected to something else.

Moments and choices.

That was what Andrew was thinking when he ran into Heather Lomax on his way out of the headquarters building of the Los Angeles Police Department.

What were the odds?

Sure, they both happened to be on the same floor of the same building at the same time. Hell, he'd even
known
she was somewhere in the vicinity, or at least he'd assumed so, based on what he'd seen on the news at Caroline's. Maybe part of him had even hoped he might see her. He could admit that.

But suppose Detective Munoz had shown up ten minutes sooner. What if he'd left the station with Jeffries earlier in the day?

What if he'd never called Benjy Corbin or Travis Plum? What if he'd left Baltimore and driven to Alaska instead of California? What if he'd kept his nose out of Caroline's business all those years ago?

What if he'd gotten a job mowing yards instead of going to work carrying envelopes with Larry in the first place?

What choice had he made as a child that led him to this particular moment in this hallway?

What choice had she?

He saw her down the hall, bending over a water fountain. Fitting, Andrew thought, considering it had been over a water fountain they'd first met face-to-face. She straightened and hiked her purse strap on her shoulder. She gripped her elbows and headed toward him, eyes toward the floor.

He was trying to decide whether or not to say something when she looked up and saw him.

“Oh, ” she said. “Hi.”

The girl looked beat and sounded the same. The bags under her eyes looked like they carried more than the one on her shoulder.

“Hi, ” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

Andrew smiled. “Wasting my day, apparently.”

She looked at his sling. “What happened to your arm?”

He thought about how to answer. If she didn't already know, he didn't see the point in telling her. She seemed to have enough on her mind.

He'd already decided, by the rational light of day that he wouldn't be taking the matter up with her father after all. He didn't see the point of that, either.

So he told her nothing. He said, “No big deal.”

Her expression seemed to grow concerned. “I didn't do that, did I?”

Andrew laughed, thinking back to the car yesterday, realizing the arm now wearing the cast was the same one she'd braced when he'd tried to grab her keyring away from her.

“No, ” he said. “Don't worry, I did this all by myself.”

She looked sideways at the cast but didn't say anything more about it.

“You found your brother, ” he said.

Heather nodded. “Yeah.”

“I'm glad.”

She said David was still being questioned. Benjy had just driven her father to the office to meet more cops there. Something new had come up. She didn't say what, and Andrew didn't ask. She said she was just stretching her legs. Getting a drink. Going back to wait for David.

Andrew nodded back. “Well. Good luck to you, Heather. Really. I hope everything works out.”

“Thank you, ” she said. “You, too.”

It seemed like there ought to be something more, but Andrew knew it was only the awkwardness of the moment. There really wasn't much more to say.

He was glad when Heather's purse started ringing.
For some reason, he was having trouble wrapping up the moment on his own.

Heather sighed. She unshouldered her purse. She dug around, then held up her phone like a toy that had lost its novelty. She said, “Hello?”

Andrew touched her once on the shoulder and walked on down the hall, toward the elevators.

HE
was still waiting for the doors to open when Heather Lomax came hustling around the corner.

She had her cell phone in her hand and a strange look on her face. Her expression seemed caught between confusion and concern. She stopped and looked at the floor-indicator lights above the doors. She looked at her watch. She didn't look at him.

He said, “Everything okay?”

“Hm? Yes. Everything's fine.” She shook her head. “I guess. I don't know. I'm fine.”

He watched her. She opened her phone and started punching in a number, then seemed to think better of it. She closed the phone again.

Andrew stood by. Common sense told him to keep standing by. Instinct agreed.

He wasn't sure which part of him went back to the
question she'd asked him yesterday in the car, on their way to the storage unit.

Do you think it's possible to change yourself?

He'd brushed off the question at the time. If she asked again, he'd do the same.

But suddenly, standing there next to her, waiting for the elevator to arrive, Andrew realized that it wasn't that easy. Because at the end of the day—at the end of your days—it was one thing or the other, period.

Is it possible?

He either believed the answer was yes, or he was kidding himself.

“Listen, ” he said. “Do you need anything?”

The bell dinged, and the doors opened. She finally looked at him.

“Do you mean it?”

“I wouldn't have asked.”

Heather reached out and pressed the door bumper with the heel of her hand, holding the elevator.

“Would you mind letting me take this one? I'm sorry to ask. I just… would you mind waiting for the next?”

She spoke casually, as if they'd hailed the same cab. But Andrew looked in her eyes. What had impressed him about Heather Lomax from the first was the directness he'd seen there, the clarity. It was a cliché, but only because it was true: With people, it was all in the eyes.

Right now, her eyes were troubled, and she was trying to hide it, but she couldn't. The eyes had it.

So did he.

Moments and choices.

Andrew made one.

“PLEASE,
” she said. “I'm not kidding. Didn't you tell me you didn't want to play games?”

“I did.”

“Why start now?”

“I'm not playing games, ” he said.

Andrew got in the passenger side of her little yellow Z3 and shut the door.