Burning Man Read online

  I thought about the disparate figures in my vision. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had been shooting a sky hook. Then I’d seen that actress from the Seinfeld series. It took me a moment to remember her name: Julia Louis-Dreyfus. My vision had also featured Olivia Newton-John. I think I’d conjured up a memory of her from Grease. Daniel Day-Lewis, who had acted in one of my favorite films, The Last of the Mohicans, had also been in my lineup.

  Everyone I had envisioned, I realized, had a hyphenated name. Even the audio connection of my vision had hyphenated names: Rimsky-Korsakov and Kübler-Ross.

  There was something there, something I knew I should be picking up on. There was a current going off in my mind, a humming. Sometimes Seth and his groups chant in his backyard, and the vigor of their sounds and vibrations always amazes me. Their voices combine into this primal force. When their chanting is in full throat, it almost feels as if I can reach out and touch a live wire.

  Om...

  My neck suddenly prickled. I connected the familiar voice that I’d heard reciting the Kübler-Ross grief cycle with a name.

  Double om...

  “You want to go for a drive?” I asked Sirius.

  It was two thirty a.m., the wind was howling, and we had an hour’s drive ahead of us. My partner thought it was a great idea.

  CHAPTER 21:

  GONE WITH THE WIND

  Two minutes after I confirmed Dave Miller’s address, the power went off. I didn’t know whether only Sherman Oaks was affected, or if most of LA County was also in the dark.

  The so-called civilized world gets a lot scarier in the absence of light, especially on a night with the wind unleashed. In the darkness I debated my options. I had planned on calling Gump and Martinez, but with the power off I wasn’t able to call out with either my cell phone or house phone.

  I moved toward the front of the house, hoping that if I opened the curtains, the moonlight would help me to see. After all the years I’d lived in my house, you would think I’d know my way around in the dark, but that wasn’t the case. I played blindman’s bluff, tapping my way over to the front window. The curtain pulling didn’t do much good; there was only a sliver moon and it provided minimal illumination. What I could see wasn’t encouraging: trees were being pushed to their limits, and over the wind I listened to their groaning and cracking.

  Waiting would be the smart thing to do—for light, for backup, for the proper paperwork—but I have never been good at either waiting or doing the smart thing.

  I could still hear Dave Miller’s voice in my head talking about denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and murder. After the fact, everything was beginning to make sense. Miller’s son had been on Jason Davis’s bully list, but as Danny Marxmiller and not Danny Miller. What had thrown us off was Danny’s last name, which I was now certain should have been hyphenated as Marx-Miller.

  Dave Miller had killed the individual he thought was responsible for his son’s death. He had gotten his eye for an eye. Although Danny Marx-Miller had died from a drug overdose, his father must have learned there was more to that story. That’s why Miller had planted drugs on Klein. His son’s reputation had been sullied, and he wanted the same thing to happen to the young man he believed was his son’s murderer.

  There was a lot of supposition and guesswork in my theory, and yet in my gut I knew I was right. My subconscious—my visions—backed me up.

  “We can call Gump and Martinez from the road,” I told Sirius. “Between here and Temecula there will be plenty of cell towers still standing.”

  Sirius followed me while I stumbled around the house and seemed to think it was a great game. I played too much of that game until I found a flashlight with working batteries. Under its illumination I dressed. Before leaving, I holstered my backup gun.

  Almost ten million people live in Los Angeles County. Walking out into the darkness, it felt as if I was in one of those end-of-the-world movies. There was no sign of anyone. I could have been the last person on earth, except for the zombies that had to be lurking out there somewhere.

  I was wearing a windbreaker, which only seemed to encourage the wind. The fabric whipped and snapped and made me feel like the Michelin Man. There was a lot of static electricity in the air; maybe that was why I could feel the hair rising on my arms. Or maybe I was just afraid of the Santa Ana condition. I sniffed the air. Faintly, I could detect the smell of something burning. It wasn’t nearby, but the fire was out there and on the move.

  The right thing to do would have been to report to police headquarters. When the lights go out, the LAPD puts out a call for all the bodies it can muster. The brass would be worried about looting, or any appearance of lawlessness. It would want to send out as many squad cars as possible so as to give the appearance of a police presence. Tonight, though, they’d have to do that without me.

  In the absence of streetlights, my neighborhood seemed to have mostly disappeared. I backed out of the driveway and began driving. My headlights, even on bright, didn’t make much headway against the darkness. The strong winds were stirring everything around, and the shifting reflections played out on my windshield, making me feel as if I was taking in a black-and-white movie at a drive-in.

  I tuned in to KNX and was glad to hear the blackout hadn’t stopped it from broadcasting. A serious-sounding newscaster was talking about all the calamities affecting the Southland that had been caused by the Santa Ana winds.

  “It’s a mess out there,” he said. “Power lines are down all over the county and fallen trees are causing numerous road closures. Firefighters are currently battling multiple brushfires that are raging in Whittier, Covina, and Brentwood. If you don’t have to be out on the road, you are advised to stay home.”

  It was good advice, but I didn’t heed it.

  The freeways were still open. Usually a parade of big rigs travels the Los Angeles arteries at night, but not this night. The trucks were sitting it out. In all my years of LA driving, I’d never seen the highways so deserted. That should have made driving easy, except for the wind. I was driving like a drunk, unable to navigate a straight line. The wind kept blowing my sedan from one lane to another. The gusting increased as I traveled inland. I found myself leaning forward in my seat while keeping a tight grip on the wheel.

  There were patches of darkness and light that showed those areas with power and those without. Whenever I had cell service, I tried calling Gump and Martinez, but the calls didn’t go through, which probably meant the power was out where they lived. I could have gone through the LAPD switchboard to get a message to them, but it wasn’t a good night to ask for messenger service. Judging by what KNX was telling me, all city services were being stretched to the max.

  I tried not to think about the last time I’d braved the elements during a bad Santa Ana, but Ellis Haines kept invading my thoughts. Like it or not, our Santa Ana dance with death had intertwined our paths forever. I wanted out of our chain gang, but Haines wasn’t making that easy. The bastard had predicted this Santa Ana; he’d reveled in it. Killer winds, he’d told me. I knew it wasn’t by chance that he’d called me earlier. He had known my three attackers were dead. Later, when I was in the right frame of mind, I’d play back his message. I wasn’t sure whether Haines had called me directly or made a tape and managed to get it smuggled out of prison. If he’d made a tape, that meant in his own way Haines had managed to escape his cell, and that on his orders his confederate or confederates had obtained my unlisted number. It was possible they had my address and were monitoring me. At his trial and afterward, I had seen Haines’s freak show followers. The master was creepy enough; his disciples were almost as scary.

  It was more likely, though, that Haines had called me directly. Cell phones are contraband in prisons, but they can be had for a price even if you’re housed in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center. The FBI would be able to tell me if that was the case. Thinking about his call made me remember a line from an old AT&T ad campaign: “Reach out, reach out and touch some
one.” That’s what Haines had done. He had reached out with his toxic touch. But now of all times I couldn’t let Haines get into my head. That was exactly what he wanted, of course, but I couldn’t waste any more psychic energy on a bogeyman.

  Aloud, I said, “I thought I saw a puddy cat.”

  Sirius’s ears popped up at the c-word.

  “But I didn’t, I didn’t,” I added.

  Sirius settled down. I tried calling Martinez and then Gump but still had no luck reaching them. I was drawing ever closer to Miller’s home. My cop training told me to not proceed; my cop instinct said to keep going. Since being burned, I had come to rely more and more on that instinct. Something was about to happen, I knew, and I felt this need to get to Miller’s place without any delays. My fire walk had apparently burned away my common sense.

  The signs told me I was nearing the city of Temecula. The location of Temecula—roughly equidistant from LA, San Diego, and Orange County—had made it a popular bedroom community for all three when land and gas were cheap. There were still some references in the signage and billboards to the city’s not-too-distant ranching past, but nowadays the cowboys have forsaken the area. Not so the Indians, who according to several billboards were running a large casino in town.

  I exited the interstate and turned west on Rancho California Road. De Luz was above Temecula. I drove slowly, not because I wanted to but because conditions demanded that. My window was down and my head was out. Visibility was bad. It appeared as if the area was having a partial blackout, but it was hard to tell because the houses were spread out, with most of them sitting on so-called gentleman ranches, groves with acreage of avocado and citrus. Some of the area was undeveloped, and I passed by stretches of chaparral, coastal sage brush, and one of California’s big imports—eucalyptus trees.

  The ubiquitous eucs are an Australian import that date back to the nineteenth century. Gold rush settlers to California hadn’t liked the treeless nature of the land and had started planting seedlings of this “wonder tree” over 150 years ago. The Central Pacific Railroad had also gotten into the act, planting a million seedlings. Like so many other immigrants, eucalyptuses flourished in the Golden State.

  I am not a fan of eucalyptus, a prejudice borne from my fire walk. Many of my facial burns had come from flaming eucs. There’s a reason the trees are nicknamed nuke-alyptus. Few trees have as much oil in them as eucalyptuses. They’re highly flammable, so much so that during fires they sometimes explode. In every big Southern California fire, news crews invariably film dramatic footage of stands of eucalyptus trees torching upward like giant flamethrowers.

  The trees don’t do well in windstorms. Evidence of that could be seen in the leaves, bark, and branches that littered the road. As the wind pushed at a stand of eucalyptus, the susurration of dry branches sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. Then a gust came up, and the sound changed to that of bones rattling.

  The wind brought with it a scent I didn’t like, and I felt my chest tighten: there was smoke in the air. I looked around for any sign of fire, but it wasn’t showing itself, at least not yet. The area was probably a firefighter’s nightmare. Many of the estates were situated between the canyon hills. The wind was already whipping through those canyons. The wrong spark could mean a conflagration. According to my nose, that conflagration might already have started.

  I could turn around and in twenty minutes be in Temecula. From there I could get a squad car or two, and maybe even a fire engine, to accompany me to Miller’s avocado grove.

  There was no time, my little voice told me. I wanted to tell my little voice to shut up and that haste makes waste. I kept driving. It was my nose and not my little voice that told me I was driving toward a fire.

  I turned onto a cul-de-sac. Miller’s spread was supposed to be at the end of the street. The darkness and the smoke grew worse as I drove forward; the reason for the darkness quickly became apparent. A power line was down. It was acting like a snake with its head cut off but unaware that it was dead. The line arced and moved, and I had to carefully inch my car by it.

  Wetting my lips, I started whistling an off-key rendition of “Wichita Lineman.” I was whistling in the dark, while the wind was pushing hard and making all sorts of shadows jump. It struck me that maybe I should have packed a crucifix and a silver bullet.

  Sirius whined. He always senses when my moods turn dark. Or maybe he didn’t like the plaintive tune I was whistling. I was no Glen Campbell, but the wire he sang of was out there. I could hear its rattled threats.

  We reached the end of the cul-de-sac. There was a gated entry to Miller’s driveway and house. From what I could see, a chain-link fence stretched along the perimeter of the property.

  “End of the road,” I said to Sirius.

  My partner’s ears went up and he eagerly made circles in the backseat. He was ready to get moving. I didn’t quite share his enthusiasm. All around us was the beginning of a bad horror story: it was a dark and stormy night, or at least a blustery night. The gusts were hitting my parked car with such force it felt as if I had a case of delirium tremens.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” I told Sirius. “It’s a good thing you’re a dog.”

  We got out of the car. As we started our walk toward the fence I was greeted by the smell and sight of smoke. I still couldn’t see or hear the fire, but its presence couldn’t be ignored, and I had to fight the instinct to flee. The entry to the house was set back about seventy-five yards from a wrought-iron fence. From inside the house I could just make out a tiny, flickering orange glow.

  It was possible the house was on fire, but it was more likely that I was seeing the reflection of a candle. Still, I took the light as an invitation to proceed. If questioned, I would say it was probable cause for me to enter Miller’s property. Someone had to play the role of Smokey the Bear.

  I eyed the wrought-iron fence, and the best point of entry, and thought about leaving Sirius behind. He must have read my mind, because he started pacing and whining.

  “It’s better if you stay,” I said. “You smell what’s in the air? There’s a fire and I think it’s getting closer.”

  Sirius positioned himself between me and the fence. He was determined not to be left behind.

  “Anyone ever tell you how stubborn you are?” I muttered.

  My partner knew I was posing. I was glad he was with me, and the two of us went in search of a way to get him inside. The wrought-iron fence extended all along the front of the house, but the rest of the property line was set off by chain-link fencing. We looked for a chink in the chain link, and along the south side of the house found some give in a section passing over a small gully. I lifted up the fence from the bottom, clearing enough space for Sirius to shimmy under. He took the low road and I took the high, climbing up the six-foot fence and then hoisting myself over. The wind was blowing from the north to the east and played havoc with my dismount, dropping me to the ground like a winged bird. Luckily, I didn’t hit one of the many landmines—cacti that made up most of the front landscaping. With the flashlight and moonlight, I avoided the cacti. Sirius used his dog radar, moving in and out of the needled obstacles. We made it to the pathway and walked toward the house. I still wasn’t sure how to best approach Miller. My little voice was no longer talking to me.

  At the front of the house was the window where I’d seen the glowing reflection from inside. I put my hands up to the window and looked in. A single candle was lit at the dining room table. Sitting at that table in a low chair was Dave Miller. I wasn’t sure if he could see me in the shadows, but he seemed to be looking my way. Because I saw no point in hiding, I raised my hand and rapped on the window. Miller didn’t respond. It was possible he thought the sound was only the wind, so I tapped the pane even harder. Still he didn’t rise or motion but just continued to sit.

  Drawing my gun, I walked to the front door and knocked hard enough to be heard even over the noise of the wind. I took cover at the side of the house, wait
ing to see if Miller responded to my knocks. Paul Klein had died from a gunshot wound to the eye, and I had to assume Miller was still armed.

  When Miller didn’t come to the door, I retraced my steps to the front window and again looked inside. He hadn’t moved, so I once more waved and knocked to get his attention, but he ignored me. I was forced to again return to the front door. I expected it to be locked, but the handle turned and I swung the door open.

  I shouted so as to be heard over the wind: “Mr. Miller? I’m Detective Gideon. We talked the other day.”

  He didn’t respond. A heavy scent of paint fumes pervaded the house, and I wondered if those fumes had gone to Miller’s head.

  “May I come in, Mr. Miller? We need to talk.”

  Miller still didn’t answer. I entered the house, doing the kind of peek-a-boo with my head and gun that you see fake cops do on television, but without their panache. Miller wasn’t waiting for me with a gun. In fact, when I stepped into his sight, he barely gave me a glance.

  By that time my eyes were watering. It wasn’t only paint fumes in the air. There were multiple scents of varnish, solvents, and cleaners. There was just enough light that I could make out several drop cloths in the living room. A ladder was in the middle of the room and next to it was a work bench with paint.

  Miller broke his silence. “You and your dog need to leave,” he said. His words were slow and slightly slurred. An opened vodka bottle sitting at the table might have had something to do with that.

  “We’ll do that, but we’ll need you to come with us. There are some questions I have to ask you.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I didn’t like the vibe I was getting. I didn’t like the fumes in the air.

  “I am not asking. Mr. Miller, you are under arrest.”

  He interrupted me before I could finish and read him his Miranda rights. His hand was poised near the candle. “There’s furniture stripper on the table. You really don’t want this candle to fall over.”