“It's more than that. You have that look.”
So much for lies.
“What look?”
Lacy stared at me the way a parent would at a teenager they knew was lying.
“What happened?”
I would have to tell her something.
“An arrest went badly last night. LAPD killed our suspect as we were trying to take him in.”
I pulled onto Sunset and headed toward the 405, trying to decide how much to tell her. A part of me still wanted to protect her from the uglier bits of the world, even though she already knew more about that darkness than most people ever would in a lifetime.
“I'm okay,” I said. “Tell me about college.”
As we drove over the pass to the valley she told me about her classes, the dorm, her roommate, the food, and the number of men who had already hit on her. I wanted her to be like every other college kid. But I knew she wasn't.
“No matter how hard I try, I know I'm different from everyone else,” she said. “I haven't figured out how to tell a guy on the first date about being kidnapped and having a bomb strapped around my neck.”
She wasn't searching for sympathy. She knew I understood. It was simply her realityâour reality. The idea of burdening her with any more right now seemed too much. The news about what kind of man my father was or wasn't, or if he was even alive, could wait, at least until I knew what that news was.
There was still no electricity in the neighborhood when we reached the bottom of Mariposa. As I started up the street past my neighbors' homes, the moonlight was just bright enough to illuminate what was no longer there. No walls on this lot, no roof on that one, nothing more than ash and brick on another, a lone picture window standing intact, smoke rising out of the charred rubble around it. Neither of us said a word.
I made the gentle curve and my lights swept the end of the cul-de-sac. The house to the north of ours had been reduced to a chimney and a water heater lying on its side. A house across the street was intact except for the south wall, which was gone, the wood frame exposed like the bones on the back of a hand. I pulled to a stop in my driveway and got out, leaving the headlights on. A charred lemon tree next door filled the air with a bitter citrus scent.
Lacy walked around to my side of the car and took my hand.
“I didn't think I would care this much,” she said softly.
The hillside of ivy sloping down to the street had been burned down to the roots. The grass was little more than a blanket of ash. I stopped on the front walk as my heart began to pound in my chest. I thought I had prepared myself for any possibility, but I was wrong. The fire had swept around the house, leaving it untouched.
I walked back to the car, turned off the headlights, and removed a flashlight. At the front door I stood holding the key in my hand, staring at the lock for nearly a minute before slipping it into the slot.
Why, of all the houses on the block, would ours still be standing? I couldn't imagine. It certainly wasn't because what had taken place here over the years merited a level of grace that my neighbors didn't deserve. The pile of rubble next door belonged to a couple with two children in grade school. The mother was a teacher, the father an emergency room doctor. But it did nothing to protect them. The doctor would understand that. He saw it every day, just as I did. The good are hurt, and even die, while the bad walk away. It would be more difficult for his wife. The teacher in her would try to find the fairness in it so she could understand it. And the more she questioned it, the less sense it would make.
“Doesn't seem . . .” Lacy started to say but stopped.
I pushed open the door and we stepped into the entryway. Fine particles of what appeared to be ash drifted on air currents in the middle of the room. The air tasted almost metallic and was as lifeless as the surrounding landscape. The room was covered in powdery gray ash.
I stepped over to the dining room. A window that had blown in from the heat explained the ash. The screen on the window had melted and hung like strings of pasta. I started to take a step toward the kitchen and stopped.
On the top of the dining room table was a handprint in the ash, nothing else, just a print. It was bigger than my own by a couple of glove sizes. The fingers were long and thin.
“Oh, my God,” Lacy said.
I switched on the flashlight and swept the room. There were footprints on the floor, moving all about the room. In the darkness I hadn't noticed, but the walls of the living room, the furniture, even the ceiling were covered in graffiti. The metallic residue I smelled was from the spray paint. Our house had survived the fire only to be trashed by vandals.
“Fucking assholes,” Lacy whispered.
I turned off the light and was about to sit when I heard a soft bumping sound coming from the dark hallway leading to the bedrooms. I reached down and slipped my Glock from the holster on my waist and moved cautiously across the living room to the edge of the hallway.
“Go wait in the car and lock the doors,” I said.
Lacy looked at me, wanting to argue, but didn't.
“You hear something that doesn't sound right, or I don't come out, you call nine-one-one and wait for a squad.”
She nodded and rushed outside.
One hand on the flashlight, the other holding the weapon, I spun around and flipped on the light. The beam cut through the darkness to my bedroom door. The hallway had the look of a New York subway car that had been abandoned and left to taggers.
The same sound I had heard before, a soft thumping, was coming from behind my closed bedroom door. I shone the light on the floor, where a set of footprints disappeared into my bedroom.
With the light focused on the handle of the door to watch for movement, I walked to the end, past the bathroom and Lacy's room. From inside there was another soft
thump
, and then another as I took hold of the door handle.
Now
, said the voice in my head.
Go
.
I pushed the door open as violently as I could. It hit the wall with a loud crack as I raised the flashlight and my weapon. Out of the darkness something flew through the beam of light toward me and I swung the Glock, my finger tightening on the trigger. It swept past me again and I felt a rush of air on the side of my face and then it hit the window with a flutter of wings.
In the circle of light from the flashlight I saw a small bird sitting on the windowsill, stunned from the impact. I gripped my weapon as hard as I could and swept the room, then relaxed and lowered it to my side. The footprints in the ash led to and from the window where the bird had tried to get out.
I holstered the Glock, turned out the flashlight, and walked over to the window and raised it. The bird made no attempt to fly out. I reached down and gently cupped it in my hands and lifted it out into the night air. The sparrow's head swung around as the bird got its bearings. It shook its wings free of dust and flew off into the darkness. In the grass along the back of the house I could just make out the footprints leading from around the corner.
I closed the window and looked over the room. The walls were the same as the hallway and living room. The paint moved from bed, to headboard, to wall, to ceiling. The room was no more recognizable to me than the pile of ash that used to be my neighbor's home. I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. I knew I should begin to go through the house, do an inventory, see if the vandals had stolen anything, but I didn't. I just stared at the slashes and swirls of orange and red and black paint.
“You bastardsâ” I started to say, but stopped myself. There was something else there, obscured or masked by the spray paint. It appeared to stretch across the entire length of the ceiling.
I walked over to the corner of the room where it seemed to begin and turned on the flashlight. It was like looking at a picture puzzleâfind the rabbit in the witch's face.
“Letters,” I said softly.
They looked to be written in pencil or gray marker. The first letter was
T
, the second
H
, each one at least two feet across. I followed it the length of the ceiling, the letters revealing themselves slowly until they formed the last word.
This is what it's like in my head
.
This was no gang tagging or the idle fun of a bored teenager. But what was it? I stared at it for a moment, and then noticed there was more writing hidden under the paint. It looked to be half the size of the other words. And it was everywhere. It was all over the ceiling, the walls, the paint hiding it like camouflage, letter after letter of it, hundreds of words. I followed a line of writing across the ceiling and then down the wall, where it stopped above the headboard. As I looked closer I realized not all the writing spelled actual words. Most of it was just the swirl of the marker, like a child would do trying to imitate a parent's handwriting. But there was no innocence to it. Instead there was a frantic quality. Like the automatic writing of someone in the throes of religious ecstasy, speaking in tongues.
I directed the light onto the center of the ceiling and traced the script back down along the wall. Just above the headboard the gibberish turned to words again. It took me a moment to recognize the shapes of letters among the swirls of paint.
Help me, help me, help me
.
I stared for a moment until I was certain I had read it correctly.
“Who are you?” I said into the darkness.
The swirls of paint seemed to come spiraling out at me. Then I recognized more words in the center of the ceiling.
“
Stop them
,” I whispered.
The words sent a chill through me. This wasn't just paint and lines of writing. It was the clearest picture of madness I had ever seen. My bedroom had become the interior of a disturbed psyche. I turned the flashlight off and sat down on the bed.
Was this my father's world? Were these the two voices in his head shouting instructions as he dragged a young actress across a stage? The first one filled with terror while the second, softer one begged for forgiveness. Was I looking at the horror he'd kept locked away for eighteen years until he could no longer contain the monster that had killed his own son?
Or was this the work of Danny Fisher's troubled mind? A call for help in the midst of chaos?
I looked around for something I may have missedâ something definitive that would identify who had done this. The slashes and swirls of paint quickly became like a thousand voices shouting at me, demanding to be heard, and I couldn't quiet them. I tried closing my eyes, but it didn't help. I saw the image of my father holding my mother by the throat as her feet struggled to touch the floor.
“Mom.”
I turned and Lacy was standing in the door.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded and Lacy walked over and sat down next to me.
“I think your room is untouched,” I said.
Lacy took a long look around the room.
“Maybe it's time for a new house,” she said. “Too much has happened here.”
I looked over the mess that used to be my bedroom and couldn't help but think it reminded me of the wreckage that was my family history.
“I had a half brother that I never knew about,” I said. “He was murdered four days ago.”
Lacy looked at me in disbelief.
“I don't understand. How is that possible?” Lacy asked.
“My father . . .” I started to say, but I was no closer to understanding it than I was to deciphering the words written on my bedroom ceiling. I gripped my daughter's hand and shook my head.
“My father is a mystery,” I said.
Lacy glanced at the ceiling for a moment. “This has something to do with it, doesn't it? This isn't just random. ”
I nodded. “I think it's what's left when all you have is secrets.”
“Let's get out of here,” Lacy said.
“I'll be out in a second.”
Lacy held my hand for another moment, then walked out. I looked around the room, trying to think of one good memory to take away, but I couldn't.
I lingered to take one last look around, then followed Lacy out. As I stepped out the front door I heard my daughter's voice, barely above a whisper.
“Can you tell me your name?” she said.
In the darkness I could barely see the figure standing five feet from Lacy on the front walk, his arms held out wide at his sides as if he wanted to take hold of her. I pulled my weapon and raised it.
“Step away from her,” I said.
Lacy looked at me and shook her head.
“Step away,” I repeated.
The figure took a step closer to her.
“I said step away from my daughter.”
He inched still closer, now little more than three feet from her.
“Don't.”
He started to reach out toward Lacy.
“Mom,” Lacy said, her voice rising.
“Step away from her,” I said again.
He shook his head.
“Do it now!”
His hand stopped a few inches from Lacy. Danny Fisher was shirtless, the skin of his hands, arms, and chest stained with slashes of bright orange and black paint, giving the rest of his white skin an unnatural, ghostly appearance. His eyes were wide open with a wild look that I had never seen in a human being before. If he had slept at all in days it couldn't have been for more than a few fleeting hours.
“He's not going to hurt me,” Lacy said, turning toward him.
Danny looked at my daughter as if those were the first words he had ever heard in his life. He then stared at his hands as if he had no idea how they had become covered in paint.