schizophrenic. With a prior medical history and the attorneys he can afford, the worst he’s likely to get for tonight’s foray is a little vacation time in some country club psych ward.”
I knew that Catheryn realized I was bartering for our lives, twisting facts to suit my purpose. But I could also tell she knew there was an element of truth to everything I’d said.
Seconds passed. The first whiffs of tear gas started seeping up from below.
“What’s it going to be, Carns?” I asked.
“I told you to shut up!” Carns shouted, his eyes wild now, trapped, sweat ringing his armpits. The smell of gas grew stronger, along with a hint of something worse.
Smoke.
I had seen teargas canisters touch off blazes more than once during my career. I knew we didn’t have much time. “It’s a simple choice, Carns,” I said. “A police bullet, or a nice cushy stay at a psychiatric facility. Play it smart and walk out of here. You have about ten seconds to decide.”
Carns vacillated a moment longer. By then, mixing with the gas from below, tendrils of oily black smoke had started seeping into the room. Abruptly coming to a decision, Carns began ripping at the tape binding his hand to the gun. “You’re right,” he said, a grin splitting his face like a knife. “They’ll never convict me. Not in a million years.”
Carns stepped back, leaving the. 25 automatic still dangling from my head. “They have new techniques for treating the mentally ill nowadays,” he added with a smirk. “I could be better before you know it. And when I get out-”
Carns caught himself, but not in time. I knew what he’d been thinking. I saw something change in Catheryn’s expression, and I knew she had read his venomous thoughts as well, as clearly as if he’d spoken them aloud. And when I get out, his malignant eyes had glittered, maybe I’ll come visit sometime.
“That’s not going to happen,” Catheryn said softly.
I saw it rising in her and knew it for what it was. Carns did, too. “No!” he screamed, shoving me toward Catheryn and lunging for her gun.
My injured leg buckled. I went down hard at Catheryn’s feet. Carns rushed in behind. The pistol bucked in Catheryn’s hands. A deafening explosion rocked the room as an orange fireball spat from the muzzle, lighting the chamber in a searing flash. The. 38-caliber slug caught Carns high on his left shoulder, sending a spray of blood against the far wall.
With a howl Carns staggered back, staring uncomprehendingly at the red bloom staining his shirt. He turned again toward Catheryn, eyes blazing with malevolence. Then with a motion nearly too fast to follow, he backhanded Allison and snatched the knife from her grasp.
Catheryn fired again as Allison fell, blood gushing from her nose. Catheryn’s second shot went high, grazing Carns’s scalp and splintering the wood paneling behind his head. Knife held low, Carns dodged and with blinding speed rushed forward, clearly intending to gut Catheryn where she stood.
My hands still cuffed behind me, I was unable to regain my feet. Instead I rolled, trying to take Carns’s legs out from under him. At the edge of my vision I saw Travis rushing in, wielding his length of pipe. Before either of us could reach Carns, Catheryn fired a third shot. She missed.
With a scream of rage Carns fell back, teeth bared, blood from his head wound streaming down his face. Catlike, he sidestepped a blow from Travis’s pipe. His movements a blur, he crabbed left to put Travis between himself and Catheryn’s revolver. For an instant he glanced at Allison, who was struggling to her feet behind me. Then his eyes settled on the other gun in the room.
Again in a blinding rush almost to fast to register, Carns feinted a knife thrust at Travis and went for the pistol still taped to my head.
I tried to scramble away from his reach. He was too fast. I’ve never seen anyone move that quickly. An instant before his hand closed on the automatic attached to my head, Catheryn’s next shot caught him in the center of his chest.
Carns reeled, a gout of blood erupting from his mouth, painting his lips with a froth of red. Blinking like a lizard, he stood in shock, watching as his life began running out onto the carpet. He glared at Catheryn, his expression turning from hatred, to surprise, and finally disbelief. Catheryn held his gaze for a long moment. Then again the gun spoke in her hands.
She pulled the trigger until the hammer clicked on empty.
Four Los Angeles County Fire Department stations responded to the alarm. Two units from Carbon Canyon got there first. Four minutes later Engine and Squad 88 arrived from the Malibu Colony station, followed by Engine 69 from Topanga and Truck 125 from Calabasas. By then flames had completely engulfed our tinder-dry home.
And Carns’s body with it.
Favoring my injured leg, I sat on the hillside across the highway, watching as firemen fought to knock down the blaze. Illuminated by the flames, Catheryn stood nearby, our children gathered somberly around her. I regarded them without speaking, heartsick at the loss I saw in their faces. Though we were all grateful to be alive, nearly everything we treasured-photos, mementos, and a hundred other irreplaceable possessions that had chronicled the course of our life together-all of it was gone. And our home. From time to time we had all joked about our ramshackle house, but we had all loved it as well, for despite its flaws, it had been the linchpin of our lives, a communal vessel that had carried us together through the years.
Finally I turned back to the groaning, shifting inferno that had once been our home, watching as it slowly settled to a pile of glowing embers. And as sparks from the pyre spiraled into the night, I gazed once more at Catheryn, realizing with heartrending certainty that over the past days and weeks and months, I had lost something far more precious than my home.
Epilogue
A tropical low that had been threatening for days finally moved onshore the following morning. The storm started as a light drizzle just before dawn, changing to a steady, soaking rain by the time the first floats in the Tournament of Roses Parade headed down Colorado Boulevard. The weather map showed a second storm gathering over the Pacific, and a third behind that, portending another soggy January for the Southland.
After being released from the hospital, I drove north later that afternoon, morosely thinking that although the waterlogged cliffs skirting the coastline had yet to resume their inexorable slide to the sea, it was merely a matter of time. Mud cleared from culverts and drains lay piled on the shoulders, sandbags littered low-lying areas, and plywood barriers covered windows, doors, and garages. Business as usual in Malibu.
Shortly after three PM, I arrived at what was left of our house. Stopping across the highway, I surveyed the stark remnants, wondering why I’d come. Catheryn’s burned-out Volvo still sat out front, Travis’s charred Bronco a dozen feet behind. For some reason a portion of one wall of the house had come through the blaze still standing. Otherwise, nothing remained. With the familiar structure now gone, I could see to the ocean beyond, its slate-gray waters whipped by quartering winds.
After waiting for a break in traffic, I made a U-turn, pulling in behind an unfamiliar car parked in back of the Bronco. I cut my engine and sat for several seconds, trying to accept the reality of what had happened. I hadn’t slept, my left knee had started to throb again, and the rest of me felt like I’d been in a train wreck. With a sigh, I reached into the backseat and retrieved the crutches they had given me at the hospital. Part of me didn’t want to proceed; another part needed to.
Wishing I had brought a raincoat, or at least a hat, I climbed from the car and hobbled through the downpour to the edge of the highway embankment. Fifteen feet below, in a fire-ravaged chaos of char and ash, lay the remnants of our home.
Rain beating at my head and shoulders, I forced myself to look.
Catheryn was there.
