House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  She hopes they’re home—she’s antsy already, doing this, if she has to wait for long she’ll be the one who chickens out.

  She could park in front, nobody here knows her, but there’s a nagging itch about any kind of unnecessary visibility—she was surveilled before, by Miranda Sparks and who knows who else. If Miranda wasn’t behind the attack on her and Laura—which she tends to accept, Laura being Miranda’s daughter—then there was another party tailing her; and although Louis Pitts has given her a clean bill of health, she has to play this real cautiously. A good detective doesn’t trust anyone, as Carl is wont to remind her. You may not have too many friends, but you’ll live longer.

  She drives down the street, turns onto a narrow cross lane, and parks partway down the block facing forward, her car hidden in the gloom under a large eucalyptus tree.

  Glancing at her watch. Seven-twenty. She’s late.

  One last precaution. She takes her loaded pistol out of the glove compartment and slips it in her purse. Quietly, she slides out of her car, locks the doors. Keeping to the shadows, she walks down the street to the corner and turns in the direction of the house.

  Now that she’s actually doing this she can feel her heart beating. In her chest, her throat, down to the ends of her fingertips. Ka-boom, ka-boom, loud and hollow like a kettle drum.

  Go back to your car, she tells herself. Get in and drive home as fast as you can. This is not your life anymore. Leave it be.

  Running across the street in her heels which she wishes like hell she hadn’t worn, she hits the pavement, forcing herself to slow down, to walk as naturally as possible. No big deal, just a woman taking a walk along a street. Going to a friend’s house, going home, just going her merry, innocent way.

  The air around the house is still. Out back, down a short weed-infested concrete driveway, there’s a garage, the door up. The Nomad is parked inside.

  She walks up the path to the front of the house, up the two steps to the narrow wood-slat porch. She could sing out “Avon calling,” but levity doesn’t seem appropriate.

  The door is open. A few inches, no more. “Wes?” she calls out softly.

  There’s no answer. Maybe they’re in the back and didn’t hear.

  That’s bullshit. Something is wrong inside—her detective’s and woman’s intuition both ring the same warning bell. She stands stock-still, listening, the loudest sound her own heartbeat thumping like a conch shell echoing in her ears.

  If there’s anyone inside they’re frozen in position. Lying in wait for her, maybe? But who could it be, for that matter how could anyone know she’s coming? Unless Wes or Morgan tipped someone off, which doesn’t make sense.

  She removes the latex gloves from her purse, slips them on, her hands shaking so badly she almost rips one with a fingernail getting it on. Then she takes her gun out, flicks the safety off, and pushes the door open with her elbow.

  There’s blood on the walls. There’s blood everywhere. Wes lies on the floor, sprawled against the sofa. His head is matted with blood where the bullets exploded against the bone.

  Her hand goes to her mouth, an involuntary reflex, but she can’t stop the retching, she throws up on the floor, three fast heaves.

  Don’t step in it. Don’t step in the blood, which is still oozing out onto the floor. The room has been trashed, torn apart. Papers strewn all about, a chair overturned, the cushions ripped open with a knife. Someone was desperately looking for something.

  She steps around the corpse, towards the back hallway.

  Morgan lies in the doorway to the bedroom. Shot the same as Wes, bullets to the head. Alongside her body, a bloody pillow.

  She crouches down, looks at it. There are holes in the case, and what appears to be fresh powder burns. Somebody got here before she did; somebody who knew Wes and Morgan were going to meet her here.

  If she had been on time would there be three bullet-riddled bodies lying on the floor?

  You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know the answer to that one. The bell is tolling for her. Whoever did this has already come after her; this time they would have finished the job. Jackpot night—a three-for-one deal. But she didn’t show, so the killer went on a scavenger hunt.

  The big question is, did he find what he was looking for? Was there anything here worth killing for, anyway?

  She looks into the bedroom. It, too, has been tossed, everything thrown about in haste, all the drawers emptied onto the floor. In the corner she sees a four-drawer legal-size file cabinet. Its contents have been ransacked, papers and files strewn all over the place. She kneels on the floor, rapidly skimming through them. Nothing relevant.

  Her eye spots a small object under the bed, from this low angle catching a shard of moonlight coming in the window. She stretches her arm out, grasps it.

  A bullet shell—9 mm, from an automatic. The hitman missed it in his haste. She drops it into her purse.

  The bathroom. Did the killer know about the files in the bathroom?

  Ever so carefully, she pushes the bathroom door open. It doesn’t look like anyone’s gone through it. Some dry toothpaste is caked around the drain in the sink; there hasn’t been any water run through it for hours, probably since Wes and Morgan left this morning.

  Across from the sink is a small vanity. Morgan’s makeup covers the top. She crosses to it, squats down, and opens the louvered double doors. A small two-drawer file cabinet rests on the floor, unopened.

  She slides the top drawer out. File folders are crammed into the drawer, each with an identifying label: boat rentals, rent receipts, bank transactions, telephone bills. Her hands shaking badly, she pulls the bank folder, glances at the contents. Canceled checks, monthly statements. She skims through them, finding July and August, extracts those two months’ paperwork, which she jams into her purse.

  The bottom drawer contains stuff from the surf shop. She randomly looks through a few pieces. None of it seems appropriate to anything having to do with Rusty’s association with Frank Bascomb and the unknown backer.

  From off in the distance, approaching very fast, come the sounds of police sirens.

  Someone’s called this in. They couldn’t take the chance and wait around to kill her, so they set her up instead.

  She runs into the living room and looks out the window, keeping to the side so as not to be seen. Several sets of flashing lights are coming down the streets, descending on the house. Too late to leave the way she came in, through the front door.

  Blindly, she rushes into the kitchen. That door, too, leads to the front.

  There is no back door. She’s going to have to get out through the bedroom window.

  She pries it open enough to crawl out. What the hell is out there? She thinks, looking out, trying to gauge; it’s dark on this side of the house, the ocean side, she can see the moon reflecting on the ocean, but that’s in the distance, what’s right below her is unseen, unknown.

  The sirens are almost on top of her. She braces for the screech of rubber on asphalt.

  Fuck! She needs another file.

  She runs back into the bedroom, pulls the top file drawer open again, grabs all of the telephone bills, and stuffs them into her purse, thank God she brought her big baggy purse, the one she can put her life’s possessions in practically, jamming everything in as best she can, racing back into the bedroom, now the tires are squealing, feet out of cars, running up the pavement, up onto the porch.

  Perched for a second on the windowsill, trying to see what’s below her, purse tucked tightly under one arm, shoes held in the other hand. Too late to worry now; whatever’s out there, here she comes.

  The fall is about twenty feet down to the beach, she sees the sand rushing up at her as she’s hitting it, hard-packed sand and small sharp rocks, trying to tuck but not doing it well, hitting on the flats of her feet, falling forward in an awkward sprawl, sand covering her face, down her entire front. Her right ankle immediately begins to throb—if it’s broken she’s fucked, s
he’s dead. Gingerly putting her weight on it, she takes a step.

  It hurts, a strong dull ache. But she can walk on it. It’ll hurt a lot more tomorrow but that’s okay, it can fall off then for all she cares, because right now she’s going to run as fast as she can.

  Lights go on in the house, above her. Men shouting at each other.

  She runs along the beach, not feeling her ankle, not feeling anything, her blood is pumping like a racehorse’s, running away from the house as fast as she can.

  Two blocks away there’s a pathway that leads up to the road. Carefully, keeping a low crouch, she climbs it.

  The street is quiet. A couple of people have come out of their houses to see what’s going on. None of them pay any attention to a woman who scampers across the street and down the block, veering off onto the side street where she had parked.

  She sits in her old car with the lights off, deep-breathing. A couple of minutes pass. Her pulse starts to slow down, her breathing becomes more regular. Finally under enough control to function, she turns on the engine, puts the car in gear.

  The car eases down the street, stops at the intersection. It turns right, away from the house and the police swarming all over it. As she heads down the main street leaving the catastrophe behind, another phalanx of police cars come flying at her from the opposite direction, lights blazing, sirens screaming.

  She pulls over to let them by, then continues on, not one mile over the speed limit.

  In less than a minute she can’t hear the sirens anymore.

  18

  THE CASES FOR AND AGAINST

  SEAN REDBUCK SLAMS HIS gavel down with a bang. The weekly meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is now in session.

  The council chamber is packed beyond capacity. Not only is every seat filled, but people are standing against the walls at the sides and back, and others are congregating in the hallways outside, where television receivers have been set up to show the proceedings.

  Blake Hopkins sits in the front row, on the pro-oil side, of course. Seated on the other side of the aisle, also in the front row, are Miranda and Dorothy Sparks. Conspicuously ensconced between them is John Wilkerson, who flew in last night to attend at Miranda’s personal request.

  Redbuck announces the agenda: “Rainier Oil’s proposal to remove their drilling platforms in the Santa Barbara channel and replace them with an onshore extended-reach drilling operation; and to be given approval to place this operation on the Sparks family’s ranch, subject to the Sparks family’s willingness to be a party to this proposal, which this boards assumes has been under discussion between the two parties.”

  Dorothy Sparks grinds her teeth.

  “I know some of you want to talk to this subject, pro and con. Anyone who wishes to speak will be heard, no one will be shut out; we’ll stay all day and into the night if necessary. We do ask that unless you are a principal in this decision you keep your comments as brief as possible, that you not belabor points already made, and we urge everyone to refrain from making personal and inflammatory remarks.” He peers down over the top of the podium. “Mr. Hopkins, the floor is yours.”

  Hopkins gets up, walks to the speaker’s stand.

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ve already spoken my piece on this, so I’ll make my remarks brief. My company, Rainier Oil, is asking that in exchange for removing our offshore rigs from state waters we be permitted, subject to an Environmental Impact Report and a review of the state Coastal Commission, which has already given us unofficial approval, to set up an onshore extended-reach drilling operation, which would be placed on a small portion of the Sparks ranch north of this city.”

  He returns to his seat.

  Redbuck nods. Shifting his gaze, he turns to Miranda. “Mrs. Sparks. Do you wish to speak to this proposal?”

  Miranda stands at her seat. “Yes, Mr. Chairman, I do.”

  “Please proceed.”

  She smooths her skirt and comes forward. She has no notes in her hand.

  “To say that my family and I are between a rock and a hard place on this would be a gross understatement,” she begins, her voice low and serious. “As everyone in this chamber knows, we have been in the forefront of the opposition to petroleum development in this county for almost three decades. We have put our time and energy into this fight, and we’ve opened our purse strings as well, many times. It has been a cornerstone of our environmental attitude that oil development is not appropriate in this county, and on balance does much more harm than good.

  “That attitude is on the record. It is indisputable.

  “Now this comes up. Rainier Oil is saying they want to take all their rigs out of the channel. That should be cause for rejoicing, and in great part it is. No more possibilities of oil leaks or explosions from the rigs, no more chance of tankers spilling oil into the channel. Tremendous ecological benefits. The essence of what all of us in the anti-oil camp have been campaigning for, for years and years.

  “But then here comes this flip side. The dark side of the oil moon, as it were. They’ll take the rigs out, but they want to drill for more oil. And to rub our noses into it, even if inadvertently, they want to place their operation on our property. My husband’s, my mother-in-law’s, my daughter’s. Mine. And what’s really painful for us, excruciatingly so, is that this same corporation is giving our foundation tens of millions of dollars to build our dream, our central coast school of oceanography, a project in which much of the research, ironically, will be centered around oil drilling in our channel and how to preserve the ecology of the ocean in the face of it.”

  She pauses for a moment to make sure everyone’s up to speed with her. Then she continues.

  “Had we known three months ago that Rainier Oil was going to make this proposal, we would not have accepted their gift to our oceanography project. It is, as they announced at the time, an unconditional grant; MacAllister Browne, chairman of the board of Rainier, has assured us in writing that regardless of what happens with their oil-drilling proposal—even if our family, in the end, opposes it—their gift will stand. And I want to thank them for that. They don’t have to do that.

  “Even so, a donation of that enormity cannot be put aside or removed from the equation. We are their partners now, and will be for generations to come. Oil drilling has been a lamentable part of all our lives for the past thirty years, and this proposal will extend that another twenty-five or more—over half a century of unwanted drilling. But the work, the research, the positive discoveries that will come out of this future oceanography institution will have meaningful and powerful impacts on our lives not for generations but for centuries. For our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.”

  She looked behind her—at her mother-in-law, at Wilkerson, at everyone sitting and standing on her side of the aisle. Then she turns and looks at Hopkins—a hard, penetrating look.

  “We have decided not to oppose your project, Mr. Hopkins. It has been a tough, painful decision, and not taken lightly. We will, under the right conditions, allow you to place your drilling towers on a small, out-of-the-way section of our land.”

  She turns from him, looking again at the people on her side, her lifelong allies in the fight to get oil out of Santa Barbara.

  “We all know that oil companies lie, that the only reason they perform environmental good deeds is because of public pressure, or because they need something from us; that their only real concern is profits, and that they will devastate anything in their path for profit. Look at the disasters in the Amazon, for a chilling example.

  “I am making a pledge here today, to my friends here in this county: my family will hold Rainier Oil’s feet to the fire. We will ensure that they make this project as clean as is humanly possible, and that if it turns out that their proposal won’t improve our quality of life over what it is now, we will terminate our leases with them and kick them out, regardless of the consequences to our future.”

  She walks back to her seat and
sits down. Wilkerson leans over, places a comforting hand on hers.

  “Well stated,” he whispers in her ear, inhaling her perfume at the same time.

  “They hate me,” she replies between clenched teeth. “I’ve lost every friend I have.”

  “Not every friend,” he reassures her.

  She turns and smiles at him for a quick moment, then looks to the front.

  “Thank you,” Redbuck says. He looks out into the audience and smiles. “Mr. Pachinko. You’ve been champing at the bit. It’s your turn now; please don’t make your remarks personal. This is about policy, not people.”

  Marty Pachinko is sitting all the way in the back. He slowly walks up the aisle to the front, glancing at Miranda as he approaches the podium. She returns his gaze with a hard stare.

  Pachinko doesn’t look the wild-eyed environmental radical he did before: he’s under control. His hair is cut and combed, he’s wearing a suit and tie. He stands square to the podium, hands grasping the sides, feet planted, looking up to the supervisors.

  “I’m here today to speak against this proposal,” he begins, his voice low, modulated. “Which is no big secret; but I need to correct you on one thing, Mr. Chairman.”

  “What is that?” Redbuck interjects testily, leaning forward.

  “This debate may be about policy in the narrow sense,” Pachinko says, “but in the true sense, people is precisely what it’s about. The people who live in this county, who work in this county, who raise children in this county. How oil development and production affects people—their lives, their jobs, their happiness. Or unhappiness, as is too often the case.

  “The issue before us is not whether we should have any more oil drilling in the channel or on land. The issue is whether we should have any more oil drilling at all. The point of the bill on banning future oil drilling off the California coast, a bill which Pete Wilson, a conservative, pro-business Republican governor, endorsed and signed into law, was to stop oil drilling and production on our coastline. This is not about better or worse. It’s about yes or no.