“I knew you’d like the plan,” Hardie said.
Then he finally got a match to light.
Back in the small house below the Lowenbruck residence, Mann had a new narrative all prepared:
So that meant removing her body from the house and planting it out in the hills. Which was not a big deal; there were plenty of spots they already had mapped out without the slightest risk of discovery. The jogger would be one of their own people, with the requisite bulletproof background. Four days of exposure to the elements and wildlife would leave the body in an ideal state. And finally, Hardie could be left in the house for later discovery. Heart attack. Simple enough to arrange.
First, though, they needed the bodies.
And to do that, they’d gas them.
While Mann kept watch, A.D. crawled and ran a robot pig down the gas line and then restored service.
The pig was a piece of detection equipment that gas companies used to test the integrity of their lines—a cylindrical robot that looked like an unlit light saber from the
Mann’s pig, however, was modified to perform a few additional tasks. For one, it could force a crack in a gas line. It could also accelerate the delivery of the gas into the house, fill it in about a quarter of the normal time. Finally, the pig was equipped with a filter that could strip away the t-butyl mercaptan—the odorant additive that gives natural gas its distinctive smell. Natural has no scent. An entire room could be filled with natural gas and even those with the keenest of senses wouldn’t know it. Just like nature intended.
Once A.D. deployed the pig, O’Neal sat in the van and used a tablet computer to guide it to the oven near the top floor. This would be the easiest place to fake a leak. The pig could be used to compromise the connector joint. If forensic examiners ever looked at the pipe, faulty workmanship would be to blame.
But that was the worst-case scenario. What would happen was, the gas would overwhelm them—it would only take an hour or so before the fumes completely filled the house—and they’d recover the bodies. Maybe Hardie, a troubled, depressed cop who watched his best friend die, could even be set up as a suicide. Lane, meanwhile, would be transported elsewhere. No connection whatsoever. The windows could be opened; the air exchanged; the crack in the gas pipe connection mended.
The events of this horrible wretched day—erased.
Which was why Mann was completely stunned by the massive explosion that suddenly rocked the top of the house.
—Samuel Z. Arkhoff in conversation
with Brian Helgeland
VOMITING, LANE would later realize, probably saved her life.
She didn’t know that at the time. Midheave she felt something slam into her from behind. Immediately she started to choke, and when she was finally able to draw in some air, on her hands and knees in the middle of the hallway, Lane was overwhelmed with the odor of something burning.
Holy fuck—
It was Charlie.
Nausea and vomiting was immediately forgotten, as if her brain realized there were bigger things to deal with, hunched its shoulders, and said,
Half crying, Lane kicked the one door shut, then the other, then grabbed the pile of wet towels from the floor and slammed them into Charlie’s burning form. What was that line from grade school? Stop, drop, and roll. Well, Charlie was already stopped and dropped. Should she roll him? She should. She touched his sides and was stunned by the heat emanating from his body. She rolled him anyway.
“What the…?” Mann said, looking up at the fireball from down below.
O’Neal barked into his phone. “The hell did you do, A.D.?”
Directly underneath the house, A.D. missed the initial blast. He felt it rock his body, though. He rolled over until he was able to gaze up at the smoke and the fire licking the sides of the house. Did
“A.D., answer me! What the hell happened, man?”
“Wasn’t me,” A.D. said.
All of that dark smoke. So beautiful against the hazy gray skies.
Every year there are a handful of natural-gas explosions in the United States. Few of them are powerful enough to knock down a structure.
The injuries to anyone present inside can range from minor to moderate burns, depending on how many cubic feet of gas has accumulated inside before ignition.
Hardie groaned. He didn’t lose consciousness—at least he didn’t think so. He was just… confused. He couldn’t remember falling down the staircase or hitting the floor. And how did striking that wooden match spark a blast? There was no gas in the air, far as he could tell. Unless they pumped in something that was both undetectable
In which case they were kind of fucked.
Hardie could see the fire raging behind the double doors leading to the staircase. The doors were beginning to peel and warp. He could feel the heat radiating from them. They needed to move.
He rolled his head to the side in time to see Lane pausing in the doorway that led to the bottom floor. She seemed unable to make up her mind. Which was fine. He couldn’t blame her. Maybe she thought he was already dead, and had to figure out how to save herself. Lane made her way back to Hardie.
“Go,” he told her. “Get out of here now—I’ll be fine.”
“Go where? Outside to the people who are trying to kill me? This is them, trying to flush us out.”
“Well, it’s working,” Hardie said. Smoke was filling the room now, seeping under the door and through the soundproofing ceiling panels. “We can’t stay in here.”
Lane disappeared behind his head. The next thing he felt was the agony of her touch under his shoulders, trying to heave him up. Hardie screamed and rolled out of the way.
“I can do it, I can do it…”
“I was just trying to help!”
“I know, but it’s better if I do it.”
Pressing his palms to the carpet, Hardie pushed himself off the ground and staggered to his feet. He coughed. Fuck, the smoke worked fast. Lane led the way downstairs. Hardie followed, closing the door behind them. Not that
