Touched by Fire (5 page)

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said calmly, packing up her briefcase. “We’ll leave together, okay? Soon as I make a pit stop.”

Marge groaned and followed her to the bathroom. “So, anything going on?” she asked coyly.

“No, really, he’s holding his own.”

“I meant you, Lilah. You know. Dating. Maybe a boyfriend or something?”

“I’m afraid ‘or something’ is where it’s at, Mom,” Lilah replied, forcing a laugh.

“I’m serious, Lilah. I mean, it’d be nice to have a grand-child before your father . . .” She paused and used her eyes to finish the thought. “You’re his only chance, Lilah. How much time does he have?”

“Not enough, Mom,” Lilah replied sadly, her soft blue eyes reflecting her frustration. She slipped into the bathroom, closed the door, and sighed, taking refuge in the silence; then she scrubbed her hands and threw some cold water on her face, running her wet fingers through her flame-colored hair. Her lips were chapped from the hot winds, and she was applying moisturizer when she paused and tilted her head curiously, studying her face in the stained mirror.

How many hours had she spent in front of it? she wondered. How many fleeting moments had it captured? How many different Lilahs had it reflected and reassured over the years? The hormone-charged teenager aglow with the euphoria of her first sexual experience one minute—beset by nagging uncertainty the next; the cocky junior high schooler smoking her first cigarette; the awkward adolescent watching herself bud and blossom into a young woman; the precocious six-year-old playing with her mother’s makeup, piling her hair on top of her head, her innocent, but knowing eyes now staring back at Lilah from the mirror, triggering waves of anxiety that washed over her in a numbing rush and struck a disturbing chord—a chord whose resonance eluded her.

Lilah pondered it for a moment, to no avail; then, without thought or hesitation, she took a vacutainer kit
from her briefcase and began carefully aligning the components on the counter next to the sink. When finished. she methodically tore open the alcohol prep and swabbed the bend in her arm, then picked up the vacutainer holder, uncapped the needle, and made a fist.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Marge Graham was waiting outside the bathroom when Lilah emerged. “I’m saying it for your own good,” she said, picking up where she’d left off.

Lilah sighed indulgently and went into the den to say good-bye to her father.

“A family is important, Lilah,” her mother persisted.

“I want a husband, I want kids,” Lilah said defensively, the sincerity in her voice leaving no doubt she meant it. “When I meet the right guy and have the time to work at a relationship.”

“Work? It’s supposed to be fun. Whatever happened to falling in love?”

“
Marge?
”
Doug Graham growled over the TV. “
Marge?
Lilah’s right. She has important work to do first.”

“So do I,” Marge lamented. “I’m going to be late.”

“Give us a hug, princess,” her father said.

Lilah stepped behind the recliner and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She’d done it often recently. Each time, the hard-packed muscles she’d hugged as a child were what she expected; and each time, the bag of bones she embraced came as a troubling surprise.

“You’re my girl, Lilah,” her father said softly,

“I know I am, Daddy.”

Doug Graham beamed with pride. He always felt energized after his checkup, after Lilah’s gentle hands had spent those quiet moments gliding across his skin, bringing his drug-deadened senses back to life. He was sitting more forward in the recliner now, his attention, along with Lilah’s, drawn to the rising sound of a helicopter that came from the television.

They watched intently as the chopper circled over the ocean and landed in the parking lot where Chief Decker had set up field headquarters. It was still settling down when exhausted firemen began stumbling out the door into the arms of paramedics. Merrick was the last to emerge. He was fatigued but wasn’t injured, and unlike the others, walked without assistance. The media closed in, shoving microphones and video cams in his soot-blackened face.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant Merrick!” one reporter called out over the whomp of rotors. “We understand you risked your life to save those firefighters!”

Merrick shrugged wearily.

“What happened up there?” another shouted.

“They were trapped. I went in with a hose and brought them out.”

“Just like that?”

“Come on, Lieutenant, you’re a hero!”

“People want to know what you did to—”

“I did my job.” Merrick pushed on, making no effort to hide his discomfort, which was swiftly turning to disdain.

Doug Graham nodded in approval. “My kind of guy.”

“Knew you were going to say that,” Lilah said. She hugged him again and headed for the door.

“Drink your juice, Doug,” Marge commanded as she fetched her purse and followed, checking that she had her
beeper. “Beep me if you need anything.” Doug aimed his remote control at her in reply and began frantically thumbing one of the buttons as if trying to shut her off. Lilah backed the Jaguar out of the driveway, then waved to her mother in the station wagon and drove off. She was halfway up the hill when she caught a whiff of something. Alcohol? From her arm? No, it was more pungent than that. Nail polish remover? Gasoline? Old Jags were notorious for emitting vapors. Whatever the source, the faint odor was quickly expelled by the air conditioner; and just as quickly forgotten by Lilah, who was preoccupied with more pressing matters. Indeed, she had neither time nor reason to suspect it came from the package in the backseat; no way of knowing what it contained, no way of knowing that the charcoal lighter had vaporized and-despite the obsessive burnishing—acted as a solvent for the adhesive, loosening a strip of plastic packing tape, allowing some fumes to escape.

CHAPTER NINE

Merrick fought his way past the media and headed for the barricade that cordoned off field headquarters.

“Is there an official reason why you’re not being more cooperative?” one of the reporters asked.

“Yeah, I’m starving, I haven’t slept in two days, and I need a shower.”

“Any chance those men shouldn’t have been sent in there in the first place?” another needled.

“Were safety procedures disregarded?”

“Should they have had backup?”

Merrick quickened his pace and slipped through the barricade that kept them from following.

“Merrick?” Chief Decker called out, waving him over. “Merrick, you okay?”

“Hey, they didn’t get into my divorce, sex habits, or tax returns—it’s your ass they’re after, Roscoe.”

“Well, we know
you’re
not covering it, don’t we?”

Merrick smiled smugly. “Something on your mind?”

“I hear you took a chance up there. A dumb one. You’ve always been a pain in
the ass, but you’ve never been stupid.”

“Thanks. It’s kinda the opposite with you.”

“Fuck you, Merrick.”

“That’s what she was doing,” Merrick replied with a little smile.

He grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep, then collected Fletcher and Logan, who had returned in the Blazer, and headed back into the canyon. Free-standing brick fire-places and chimneys dotted the scorched terrain, which had the look of a nuclear desert. Like every other house in the area, the one the witness had located on the map had burned to the foundation. Merrick stuck a cigarette in his mouth, left it unlit, and began walking through smoldering rubble that had once been a gourmet kitchen.

“What’re we looking for?” Fletcher asked.

“The kitchen sink,” Merrick replied. “Any ideas how to find it?”

“Plumbing,” the rookie A.I. replied.

Merrick and Logan exchanged looks and nodded.

“Okay . . . Why the sink?” Fletcher asked, wishing he’d figured it out for himself.

“Witness was looking out the window when he saw the van. Be nice to know where it was parked.” Merrick crossed to a thicket of twisted pipes that came from the charred remains of an exterior wall.

This narrowed the search area to Merrick’s field of vision. The three men left the burned-out kitchen and walked slowly up the hill, their eyes sweeping the ground for clues; but there were no tire impressions in the rock-hard soil, nor crushed areas of ground cover to be found. Bum pattern and wind direction finally led Merrick to a patch of scorched earth about 150 feet uphill from the house—the point from where the wind-driven inferno had started. “Looks like we got us a flash point here.”

Logan donned a pressed-fiber mask and surgical gloves;
then, using a device that resembled a window screen, he began sifting the ashes for the remains of the igniter. Road flares, Molotov cocktails, butane lighters, matchbooks and cigarettes were the most common; and they often contained fingerprints or traces of saliva from which an arsonist’s DNA and then blood could be typed.

Fletcher went about cordoning off the area with crime scene tape. Strung between charred stumps, the yellow streamers crisscrossed the blackened hillside, fluttering in the wind like bands of flashing neon.

Merrick knew the vortex of a rapidly expanding fire could transport the igniter vast distances from the flash point, and he drifted off in search of it. He stepped gingerly between charred boulders and blackened trees to avoid destroying or further burying anything concealed by the ash that covered the ground like gray snow. The desert-dry surface eagerly absorbed the drops of sweat that rolled from his face each time he bent to examine a piece of debris. His eyes were methodically sweeping across the terrain when they suddenly locked on to something.

The small rectangular shape was barely visible, but its right angles and sharp edges were clearly out of place amid the coal-like chunks of wood, cinders, blackened roots, and stones. He got down on all fours, pursed his lips as if kissing the ground, and gently blew a thin layer of ash aside, revealing a matchbook. The charred cover seemed on the verge of disintegrating. No advertisement for bar, bowling alley, or restaurant was visible.

Merrick’s pulse quickened as he picked it up with a pair of tweezers and turned the edge to the light. Captured between the burned match heads and charred cover, he saw what he thought were a few shards of tobacco, powerfully suggesting this was the igniter.

Though darkened by intense heat, the back cover was intact; and, as with most safety matches, that’s where the friction strip was located. This meant that the matchbook had to be turned over before a match could be struck; and there, bonded to the varnish used to give the cover its slick shiny finish, there, where the arsonist held it while striking a match, Merrick’s weary eyes detected the pale ghost of a thumbprint.

CHAPTER TEN

The Jaguar accelerated into the parking garage and began circling up to the next level. Midway down the aisle, it swerved into a space, almost clipping Cardenas, who was leaning against the concrete lattice in his lab coat. The car was still settling when Lilah popped the door and leaped from behind the wheel. “Sorry about that, Ruben.”

“Hey, no problem, I work for a doctor.”

Lilah smiled at him and opened the back door. “Thanks for coming down.”

“Anytime, boss. What do you need?”

“A thirty-hour day.” Lilah took her briefcase from the backseat, set it on the roof, and removed three blood specimen tubes from one of the pockets. “This one goes to the medical lab. . . .”

Cardenas squinted at the label. “What’s that say?”

“Douglas C. Graham.”

“It does?” Cardenas groaned, pulling a sleeve across his face that glistened with perspiration. “I’ll never get into med school, my handwriting’s too legible.”

“Give it time.”

“The usual? CBC and plasma? Reports to you and Dr. Koppel?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How’s your dad doing by the way?”

“Holding his own,” Lilah replied, handing Cardenas the other specimen tubes. “I scored these for OX-A.”

Cardenas brightened, then raised a curious brow. One tube had a consent form rubber-banded around it. The other didn’t. “We’re missing a C.F. here, Doc.”

“I ran out.”

“Okay. I’ll hold it till you have a chance to—”

“I don’t know,” Lilah interrupted “This conference is breathing down my neck. Better get it in the works.”

“Without a number?”

“I really need you to do this for me, Ruben,” she pleaded, asking for a favor instead of pulling rank. “Get a blank C.F. from the file, put a bar-code sticker on the specimen, have Serena log it in, and leave the form on my desk. I’ll take care of it soon as I can.”

Cardenas nodded and slipped the three tubes into the pocket of his lab coat.

“Thanks a bunch. Oh, and put this in my office, will you?” She took the package addressed to Lilah E. Graham from the car and handed it to him, then hurried to the medical school.

Lilah spent the afternoon teaching class. Darkness had fallen by the time she finished. She hurried to the gym and threw herself into a series of exercises designed to defy gravity and the onslaught of genetic coding that she feared was turning her into her mother.

About an hour later she’d showered and was toweling off in front of her locker when her cellular twittered. She draped the towel around her neck, then took the phone from her briefcase. “Hello?”

“Lilah? Lilah, it’s Paul.”

“Paul?” she wondered, pretending she didn’t recognize the name. “Paul? Gee, I don’t think I—”

“I know, I know,” Schaefer groaned contritely. “I should’ve gotten back to you sooner, but I’ve been up to my ass and—” A chorus of female voices screeched through the phone from her end, interrupting him. “Lilah? Lilah, where are you?”

“I’m in the buff,” she replied with a giggle, as a group of towel-snapping students sauntered past. “I just got out of the shower and—”

“
Lilah,
”
Schaefer admonished. He sat up straighter and set his glasses on the desk. “Don’t start, Lilah.”

“I’m not starting,” she purred in a sexy whisper. “I’m standing in front of my locker . . . massaging my breasts with your favorite moisturizer. You know . . . the smooth, silky stuff that really gets me going whenever you—”

“No, and I don’t recall dialing a nine-hundred number, either.”

“This
is
the guy who said I could always turn to phone sex if my career went south, isn’t it?”

“Look, Lilah,” Schaefer said sharply, sensing a clinical reply had the best chance of neutralizing her. “You left me a very businesslike message, and I was very pleased by it. The emotional detachment and strength in your voice indicated you’d made some progress; but what I’m hearing now suggests otherwise. If you can’t keep this on a professional plane, I’m afraid we’ll have to forget it.”

“Of course I can,” Lilah said, forcing a laugh. She pulled the towel around her torso, disappointed in herself, disappointed that after being detached and strong, she’d blown it the first chance she got.

“Good,” he said, glad she couldn’t see the relief in his eyes. “You mentioned the prison study is a go . . .”

“Uh-huh. We’re due up there at ten on Monday.”

Schaefer’s brows arched with concern. “You’re right, we’d better make sure we’re on the same page.”

A half hour later they were in a booth at Mario’s, a pasta palace on the comer of Broxton that had treated the neighborhood to the heady odor of garlic for more than twenty-five years. The waiters were so surly and the decor so offensive that the food had to be cheap and good, which was why the place was always packed.

“Monday . . .” Schaefer mused, twirling a forkful of angel hair with one hand and accessing an organizer with the other. It had a calendar, phone directory, memo pad, calculator, fax modem, and interface for exchanging data with computers. “My weekend’s jammed. We’re taking the kids to Sea World. No time to prepare. Maybe if you—”

“Don’t back out of this, Paul,” Lilah interrupted, assuming the worst, her soft blue eyes pleading from beneath perfectly arched brows. “Don’t do this to me.”

“Let me finish,” Schaefer intoned reassuringly. “I was going to say, if you go up there alone on Monday and knock off all the blood specimens, it’d buy me until the next session to get up to speed.”

Lilah vehemently shook her bead no, sending her damp ponytail snapping from side to side. “Bad idea. We have to do each prisoner from beginning to end, and we have to do them together.”

Schaefer’s fork paused in mid-twirl. “Why? I just told you I’m up to my ass.”

“Let
me
finish, okay? These guys,” Lilah resumed, lowering her voice, “these fucking rapists and child abusers, they signed up for this study but they don’t have a clue what’s coming next, right?”

Schaefer dabbed at his mustache with a napkin, then nodded impatiently. “I’m fully able to empathize.”

Lilah smiled good-naturedly. “The point is, each one of these—these degenerates who’s taken a child’s innocence or a woman’s dignity, maybe their sanity, is going to be a little anxious when he enters a room and finds a woman there. A woman who’s going to take something from
him.
”

Schaefer frowned and cocked his head skeptically.

Lilah pressed on, undaunted. “A woman who orders him to roll up his sleeve, ties a tourniquet around his arm, and stabs him with a needle.”

“Jeezus,” Schaefer exclaimed, taken aback. “You make drawing blood sound like an act of violence.”

Lilah nodded mischievously. “Hey, who knows what buttons it might push?”

“I’d like to know what’s pushing yours.”

“My genes,” she replied with a laugh. “Come on, this thing’s been controversial from the get-go anyway.”

“I don’t know. It’s an extremely risky concept.”

“You make that sound like a negative,” Lilah joked, her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. “I didn’t get where I am by playing it safe. Neither did you.”

Schaefer studied her for a moment, captured by the infectious spirit and willingness to take risks that had first attracted him to her, then broke into a wry smile. “You know, Lilah, as mad scientists go—”

“I’m the maddest. I know. Come on, what do you say?”

“Well,” Schaefer mused, warming to the idea, “it could provoke some intriguing behavioral dynamics.” Lilah was beaming in triumph when he glanced at his watch and began to slide from the booth. “I have to make a call.”

“Use my cellular.”

“Thanks. Need to make a pit stop too.”

He’s calling his wife, Lilah thought as Schaefer moved off. She was toying with a piece of grilled shrimp when snippets of conversation about “tissue sections” and “mast cells” drew her attention to a group of medical students who had entered the restaurant. The cavelike darkness and thickets of plastic vegetation allowed her only fleeting glimpses at first, but as the students made their way to a table, the glow from a cluster of illuminated grapes raked their faces, confirming that the lean, curly-haired guy hitting on his twenty-something classmate with the pouty lips and perky breasts was exactly who Lilah thought it was.

Thankful for the garish divider that concealed her, Lilah sighed and stared at the shrimp impaled on her fork. Nothing could fill the hollowness now. Nothing could satisfy the gut-wrenching emptiness that rocked her. Not even Mario’s legendary gamberetti a l’aglio. She knew it was childish, knew Kauffman was a meaningless roll in the sack. Even he was mature enough to know all she was doing was getting her rocks off. She was a grown woman who’d survived more than her share of busted relationships. Why did it always hurt so much? she wondered. Why did she always feel so vulnerable and anxious? Why this overwhelming sense of impending doom that always came over her when she felt rejected, or found herself manless?

She was still lost in her thoughts when Schaefer emerged from the restaurant’s dingy recesses. “I’ve got piles of work to do before Monday,” she said, anxious to leave before Kauffman spotted them. “And I’m dying for a cigarette. Cover the check, and we’ll settle up later. Okay?”

Lilah left the restaurant, digging the pack of Virginia Slims from her briefcase. She lit up as she walked, and
charged down Weyburn oblivious to the glow of wildfires streaking skyward behind the mountains. The winds were still blistering hot, and the streets were jammed with students seeking refuge in the movie houses and eateries. After several blocks she flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the gutter and took an air-conditioned shortcut through Bullock’s. Like most Southern California department stores, the longtime Westwood landmark—which had recently been bought by, and renamed, Macy’s—remained open till nine
P.M.

Its 1950s fieldstone facade spanned the entire block on two levels, with entrances from Weyburn on the lower, where Lilah entered, and Le Conte on the upper—devoted to women’s clothing, accessories, fragrances, and the like—where Lilah exited opposite the Stein Eye Institute. The latter, one of UCLA’s many prestigious medical facilities, had been founded by Dr. Jules Stein who—personifying the Hollywood adage that everyone in L.A. has two businesses, their own and the movies—had also founded MCA/Universal Studios.

Lilah crossed the street, taking another shortcut between a brick wall and a towering stand of pines to where a section of fence had been removed, providing mid-block access to the campus. The respite from the heat was momentary, and she was drenched with perspiration by the time she arrived at Mac-Med.

“Been shopping again, Dr. Graham?” the security guard said cheerily, drawing her attention to the Macy’s shopping bag clutched in her fist.

Lilah stared at it for a long moment, having no recollection whatsoever of making a purchase, then forced a confused smile and entered the elevator. The instant the door closed, she reached into the bag and removed something
wrapped in tissue paper, something that appeared to be shiny and red. She was about to tear off the tissue when the elevator stopped and the door opened to reveal Serena striding down the corridor toward her. Lilah quickly shoved whatever it was back into the shopping bag and hurried from the elevator.

“Lilah . . .” Serena called out cheerily in her mild accent; then, never missing an opportunity to needle her boss, she added, “I can’t remember the last time I ran into you here at this hour.”

“Sounds like the onset of Alzheimer’s to me,” Lilah teased without breaking stride.

“Really? I distinctly recall leaving a consent form on your desk—a blank one,” Serena said pointedly. “Ruben said you’d take care of it straightaway.”

“Straightaway,” Lilah echoed, too distracted by the mysterious purchase to talk shop.

“I flagged it in the computer in case you . . .” Serena let it trail off and shrugged resignedly as Lilah turned the corner, heading toward her office.

Lilah went straight to her desk, without noticing the package with the bold angry printing that Cardenas had put on the table beneath the bookshelves. She set the shopping bag down and removed the contents. Wrapped in the tissue she found a silk, fire-engine-red teddy. It had a peekaboo bodice, fluttery side slits, and a $350 price tag that made her gasp. She pinched the thin straps between thumb and forefinger and held the slinky garment out in front of her as if she’d never seen it before, let alone purchased it.

Stunned and shaken, she stuffed the teddy back into the shopping bag, then dropped into her chair, steadying her hands long enough to light a cigarette. Her lips were
pursed to blow out the match when her eyes became drawn to the flame, and she began rocking back and forth like a hyperactive child unable to sit still in class; then she began swiveling left and right until it seemed as if the chair was spinning one way and the room the other—spinning faster and faster in opposite directions until everything began to blur in horizontal streaks that ended with a head-long rush into the all too familiar explosions of colored light, leaving her dazed and disoriented.

The next thing Lilah knew, the cellular was in her hand—she’d evidently already made some calls: among them, one to her service and one to the answering machine in her condo, because there was a short list of messages jotted on a pad—and now it dawned on her that she must have also just autodialed her parents’ number because she could hear her mother’s voice saying, “Hello? Hello, is anyone there?”

“Oh—oh yeah . . . hi. Mom, it’s me,” Lilah said, blinking at the ftuorescents as she came out of it. “Is Daddy there?”

“Of course. Hold on a sec.”

“No, no don’t bother him, it’s okay.”

“I don’t understand, Lilah. You asked for your father but you don’t want to talk to him?”

“I just wanted to know if he was there.”

“Where else would he be?”

“How would I know?” Lilah replied weakly, feeling confused. “Listen, I have to go,” she said, suddenly struck by an overwhelming desire to get out of there. “Yeah, I’m still at the office . . . No, no don’t worry, I won’t.”