Page 14 of Into the Fire

When he heard the front door close, he swung out into the hall and walked toward the foyer.

Michelle turned as he neared. “I’m sorry. Like I said, she’s out of her head right now.”

Max said, “How could she not be?”

Michelle gave a sad smile. She caught him noticing her belly again, took his hand, and moved to rest it on her bump. He pulled his hand back more sharply than he intended, an instinctive recoil he instantly regretted. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“I get it,” she said. “Just … don’t be a stranger. You’re the only one in this family I actually like.”

He felt his breath tangle in his throat. He blinked hard and turned quickly away.

She shut the door behind him, ratcheting out the bright light of the foyer. He stepped off the porch, enfolded by the darkness, with an address in his pocket and little else.

7

Like Torn Rubber

Lorraine Lennox lived in an Elysian Park bungalow at the lip of a canyon fold, a loud street in a neighborhood lively with music and front-yard barbecues. In the distance the stadium was uplit for a concert, the grandstand glowing Dodger blue.

Standing on the cracked doorstep, Max double-checked the address. After calling Lennox’s cell a handful of times and getting dumped into voice mail, he’d worked up his courage and driven over.

He rang the doorbell, waited, rang it again.

A clacking drew his attention to the side of the house. A gate, loose in the breeze. He walked over to it.

The latch slapped against the catch nervously. Through the fence he could hear people talking in the backyard.

A shift in the wind sent the Boss’s gravelly voice rolling across Chavez Ravine, blasting from the stadium speakers: Everybody’s got a secret, Sonny …

Max knuckled the gate open. “Hello?”

He drifted up the alley, blading past recycling bins.

“Hi, there! I’m not a robber! I’m just Grant Merriweather’s cousin.”

He emerged onto the square of browning grass that passed for a backyard. A few lawn chairs with tattered straps were arrayed around a fire pit.

Empty.

Gas flames leapt through the lava rocks, a reverse waterfall of orange and pale blue. The rear sliding-glass door had been laid open, and he realized now that the voices he’d heard weren’t voices at all but a too-loud television blaring from the living room.

As Max edged forward, he spotted the back of a woman’s head poking up over an armchair facing the flat-screen.

The lights were off in the bungalow. The flicker of the screen and the strobing flames behind him had an unsettling effect, the walls fluid and alive, the foundation no longer fixed.

“Hello? Lorraine?”

Max stepped across the threshold into the chill of the house.

“Lorraine? I’m sorry to barge in—” The words died in his throat.

Her head was cocked at an odd angle. As he circled the chair, the noise of the television predominated—Pat Sajak smarmy in syndication, praying for that big money, big money. Max knew that something was terribly wrong, but his legs wouldn’t stop carrying him onward. The game show was wanting for reception, the contestants’ words fuzzed at the edges. Despite the chill, sweat trickled down his ribs.

The sight of Lorraine Lennox inched into view, her throat bared, her head tilted back from the violence of the gunshot. Her tight black hair gave way to a thumb-size hole in her crown, the ebony skin jagged at the edges like torn rubber.

It seemed to be pulsing, the hole, and then he realized that the TV reception wasn’t weak at all, that the buzzing he was hearing was flies.

His stomach lurched. A few quick strides brought him to the kitchen sink barely in time. Gripping the Formica counter, he emptied his stomach.