by Jesse Reiss
Chapter 26
Once the fire was declared out, Angelina explained to the fire department investigators and Officer Stanley the events that occurred up to where they were now, starting with the breaking glass and air rushing into the room.
Their conclusion was that it sounded like Molotov cocktails were thrown through the window — a gasoline bomb made with a liquor bottle. They explained rioters and terrorist groups use them to blow up cars or small buildings. Angelina, Mac and witnesses answered questions as several fire trucks pulled away. The media were on the scene by this point and were interviewing authorities from the fire department at a distance from the house. Angelina made sure she wasn’t in their camera sights.
Around 6:00 a.m. neighbors from across the street brought over breakfast sandwiches and coffee and tea for the remaining Fire Department personnel and Angelina, Neil and Mac helped themselves.
It was around 8:00 that investigators had finished their initial investigation through the wreckage, taking photos and bringing out some shards of glass and other black objects in plastic bags. Angelina and Neil were given facemasks and flashlights and allowed into the house to collect the personal belongings they could salvage.
Angelina stood in the empty doorway for a moment, taking in the sight. She was shocked to see the damage. Hardly anything was recognizable. The air was still grey with smoke residue. The charred wood and melted plastic smell was heavy. Water covered everything, putting a sheen over the blackened remains of what was once a comely and modest family home.
Furniture once made with light wood colors and living room sofas with tan leather were stripped bare of their upholstery and now a black mess of charred wood and metal springs. Where upholstery hadn’t burned all the way through, the fire department had torn into it with their axes. Appliances from the flat screen TV to the stereo were so burned and melted they were hardly recognizable. Huge gashes had been made at intervals in the drywall with axes to verify there was no live fire climbing through the walls. Family photos and artwork on the walls were all but destroyed.
She stepped into the kitchen and saw Lynx’s yellow food bowl had been melted to a puddle on the kitchen floor. A once white and steel grey kitchen was now black. She opened the refrigerator door and was surprised to see it perfectly white inside and the food items exactly as she had seen them last.
Neil seemed more curious about what the home used to look like, trying to picture how things were and asking various questions about this and that to get a better idea. He studied over the bookshelf, trying to decipher the DVD library titles, which had all melted into one. He asked about pictures that were on the wall and wiped the soot on the glass off some family portraits that hadn’t burned all the way through.
“There’s nothing salvageable here,” Angelina said. “Let’s go upstairs and get our stuff.”
The fire had left the second floor untouched, but covered in grey soot. The air was clearer and they no longer had to wear their masks. As they walked down the hallway, she pointed to the doors. “That’s my mom’s room and this here is my room.” She opened the door to her room and her heart sank when she saw it was covered with a thin grey layer of ash. She tried the lights, but nothing turned on. She walked over and opened the curtains to allow light in.
“So this is your room,” Neil said slowly as he walked in surveying the place, as if placing her on trial. It was a third the size of his room and contained nowhere near as much. She nodded her head and gave him a half smile, feeling embarrassed as he looked over the walls, taking in the boy band and diva posters. He went to her bookshelf and perused the titles, wiping some soot off as he went.
“Oh yeah, books,” she said. “Your favorite thing. Probably kindergarten reading level for you, I’m sure.”
“No, you have some good ones here. I’ve read a lot of these, but not the teenage romance stuff, which you don’t seem to have that much of. I see you’re a Nicholas Sparks fan.”
“Yeah, I like his writing.”
“Me too. Can’t say I’ve read much of it though.” He bent down and looked over the bottom shelf where she had several books on the history of Native Americans, biographies on Ella Fitzgerald, Fredrick Douglass and James Dean and culturally significant books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird and Black Like Me. He nodded, impressed.
She went over to her computer and jiggled the mouse. Nothing happened. She remembered that the power to the house was disconnected.
Her closet door had been open and ash was all over her clothes. She opened one of the dresser drawers and saw that her shirts inside were clean. She picked one up and tried to smell it, unable to detect whether it did or didn’t smell of smoke, but decided it must.
She went into the bathroom and when she saw herself in the mirror, she shrieked. “Oh, my God! Why didn’t you tell me I look so ugly!?”
Neil stepped into the bathroom and laughed. “You’re hardly ugly, you’ve just got some ash on you, that’s all.”
“I look completely hideous! Oh, my God! I can’t believe you are seeing me like this. And look at what I’m wearing! It’s like twenty times too big for me! And I’m not even wearing a bra!”
Neil bent over, laughing.
“Why are you laughing?” She was smiling and starting to laugh with him too and trying to keep a straight face at the same time. “This is serious!”
Neil gasped for breath and settled himself. “Because you just got a tour of your burned down house and all your belongings turned to ash and the one thing that upsets you the most is you’ve got soot on your face! I think it’s great!”
“Oh my God, you have no idea, do you?” She was laughing with him too now. “You are such a guy.”
He sat down on the bed and continued to laugh while Angelina fished out underwear, a T-shirt and jeans from her dresser. “Stop laughing!” she yelled as she did her best to suppress her own laughter.
She went into the bathroom with the flashlight so she could clean up and change. Luckily the water was still running and the towels in the bathroom closet were clean. She washed her hair, face and arms and got into some proper fitting clothes. She applied some make-up and a little perfume and using the flashlight, inspected herself in the mirror from all angles. It’d have to do.
“Oh, now I recognize you!” Neil said as she stepped from the bathroom.
She threw her mom’s clothes at him and smirked.
“Can we bring this with us?” he asked, holding up the wooden owl carving.
Angelina looked at it, remembering all it represented. “Yes, of course. Absolutely.”
“Good. It reminds me of that owl we saw at the sanctuary. Looks just like her.”
“It is she.”
He nodded, impressed. “How did you get it?”
“A long story. Maybe I’ll tell you one day.”
They agreed the first thing to remove from the house was her mom’s jewelry. The large cabinet, which housed everything, was built into the room and would have to be disassembled if it were to be moved. They found a large storage trunk in her walk-in closet and dumped out the contents — all shoes. Using towels as cushions and dividers, they filled it with the jewelry cabinet contents. Neil commented many times in amazement about how much there was and how exquisite it looked. They dragged the chest down the stairs and loaded it into his SUV, which Lee had gone back and gotten with his partner when he went to change for work.
By noon they had packed the SUV further with several bags filled with clothes, toiletries and a small two-drawer cabinet filled with personal and valuable documents.
They had lunch with Mac at his house, who was delighted to see Angelina in such good spirits after the fire. He realized it was due to the handsome boy she had helping her.
As they sat on his porch and ate sandwiches, Angelina’s phone rang. It was Ken from the bird sanctuary. “Hey! Just checking in with you. Your bird is doing really well. Calmest and smartest owl we’ve got. Recovering great.”
“Cool,” Angelina responded.
“Yeah. We’ve been getting some queries about it as the rumors are starting to fly that it attacked a guy to save some girl. I’m assuming this is you, but I’m not confirming anything to anyone. But this bird is sure generating some interest.”
“Well, don’t let anyone touch her or move her anywhere without letting me know.”
“No problem. Hey, by the way, I took that coin to a dealer in Burbank and he offered me five thousand dollars for it! Can you believe that?!”
“Yeah, sounds about right,” she said.
“You need anything else from me, let me know. I’m here at your service.”
After she hung up with him she placed a call to Paula, who by this time had received tests to determine she hadn’t fractured or broken anything else besides the arm and was scheduled for an operation in an hour to get it reset and in a cast.
As Angelina hung up, an unmarked police vehicle pulled up and Detective Marley got out with another gentleman. He approached Mac’s house with a satchel on his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the Russells’ smoldering home, his head shaking.
He introduced himself to Mac and Neil, asking if he might join them for a minute. “Miss Russell, hopefully I don’t ruin your lunch, but I’d like you to please look at these photos so we can confirm the identity of the man that attacked you.” He pulled an envelope from a satchel and removed several mug shots.
Angelina needed to take a glance at one photo to confirm it was the man. She nodded and pushed them back to the detective, not wanting to see the face for a second more than she needed to. “That’s him. No doubt.”
The detective nodded and put the picture away. “Thank you. His name is Malcolm Lyons — a career criminal. We’re onto him and pulling out all stops to track him down.”
She thanked him and he returned to the car after confirming Angelina was going to be with Neil the rest of the day and kept out of harm’s way.
After seeing the photos and realizing the magnitude of what the Russells were up against, Neil felt an innate masculine duty to protect Angelina. His responsibility for her safety dawned on him, setting his stomach doing flips. He began to fantasize about what he would do to protect her if she were attacked again. Scenarios of him executing daring Hollywood movie-style heroics to protect her began playing through his head, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
It was Angelina, looking at him with raised eyebrows and an endearing smile. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah,” he said, blushing as he came out his daydream.
They drove down Franklin and Los Feliz and up the mountainside to the Stanley’s home where they deposited the SUV’s contents into the garage. It was only then that they could tell the stench of the fire was strong over everything. They started one washing machine load going while they went back for more.
As they passed the Immaculate Heart School, Angelina’s friends were pouring out onto the sidewalk. She ducked down in the seat to avoid being seen, explaining to Neil how her cell phone would start ringing incessantly if they saw her.
By mid afternoon and two more trips to the house and back, they called it quits and headed to the hospital to pick up Paula. By this time it was clear to them both that the idle chitchat had turned to open flirting and they made feeble attempts to check themselves and display a more conservative manner.
While driving Neil pointed to the golden acorn that sat around her neck. “That is unlike any jewelry I’ve seen, but you always have it on. What is it?”
“It’s an acorn. My mom gilded it and coated it in glass for me as a gift. It came from a special tree in Griffith Park.”
“What’s so special about an acorn?”
“The tree was my father’s favorite spot to go and meditate, maunder about life or just sit and relax. It is one of the oldest trees around and actually is probably the oldest living thing in all Los Angeles County.”
“The oldest living thing in all Los Angeles County?” he repeated with an impressed nod.
“When my father died we spread his ashes under the tree and as we were done, this acorn fell into the empty urn. It reminds me of him so I always wear it.”
“That’s quite something. Did you say your Mom was part Native American?”
She turned in her seat to face him, a cunning smile forming on her face. “Yeah, Tongva Indian. Tongva means ‘People of the Earth’. Okay, smarty pants, did you know that the Tongva Indians were the first settlers in the Los Angeles area, over 5,000 years ago?”
“No!” he said impressed.
“And did you know that the Tongva sustained themselves mostly through grinding and cooking acorns from the oak trees that are abundant through this region?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And did you know that it wasn’t until about only 350 years ago that the first Spanish settlers arrived and made the Tongva Indians work as slaves in their missions?”
“No!”
She was on fire now, thrilled that she had found something she knew that could impress him. “And did you know that the first humans to ever evolve on Earth, back in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, lived off acorns as their main food source? And that without the oak tree to feed people, build ships, houses and provide firewood, human civilization probably wouldn’t exist?”
“Wow. I didn’t know that. Where did you learn all this?”
“My Mom sparked my interest in the subject as she is so proud of her Native American heritage. She is always joining campaigns to get the Tongva Indians recognized in Los Angeles. There are only 300 members of the tribe still living in LA today, down from tens of thousands when the Spanish settlers first arrived. And they have to go to court regularly to try to preserve the last few sacred sites that haven’t yet been dug up and destroyed. They aren’t a federally recognized tribe and you can’t go find a reservation or architectural creation made by them. They were peaceful people that moved their villages from place to place as the LA River crisscrossed over the land during winter floods. As they depended on this ever-changing river for water, they never built a final resting place for their villages and so there is no set location in LA which they can claim is legally theirs.”
“I didn’t know that. So white men came and took over all their land and left them with nothing?”
“Basically, but they are peaceful as I said and tried to adapt.”
“They sound like wonderful people.”
“They are,” she said quietly and bolted up again, ready to impress him further. “Okay, and did you know that native American Indians living today in California are the last traces of people on this Earth that still grind and eat acorn meal as a main sustenance — and get this — in some areas they still do it in the same unchanged manner as the very first humans on Earth did it several hundred thousand years ago?”
“Damn!”
Angelina didn’t let up. She kept at it, throwing anthropological facts at him until his jaw was slack and he was shaking his head in amazement.
