Flipping off the water seemed to turn the volume of the rest of the world back up.
Cheeto was still screeching away out there. Livid. The barks came faster now. More urgent.
And then the dog’s cries hit a higher note and cut out all at once.
Again Camacho’s skin crawled.
Shit. That didn’t sound good.
No. Worse than that, he told himself.
Wrong. It sounded wrong.
He stood still. Listening. No further sounds came.
Staying so light on his feet so as to remain soundless, he crept back out to the living room, moved to the front window, standing so he just peeked through the slitted space over the top of the curtains.
He peered out into the places where the streetlights gouged openings into the darkness. The shapes out there took a moment to make sense to his eyes, the contours at first seeming to craft some abstract painting of light and darkness before the shapes of the parked cars on the street came into focus.
He held his breath. Waited a few seconds. Watched that street portrait for any sign of movement.
Nothing stirred out there that he could see. Maybe the sound wasn’t wrong after all. Just the normal routine. The squirrel went home and the dog laid back down. Or maybe Gus Miller did the unthinkable and let his goddamn dog inside for once so it’d stop screaming at the whole neighborhood willy-nilly. Anything was possible, Camacho figured, even if the likelihood of Gus Miller lifting a finger for the good of others seemed quite a stretch.
But then something did move.
A flitting of the shadows along the cars. Something low to the ground. Too big to be an animal, he thought, but it moved like one.
He squinted. Looked for it. Now he couldn’t see anything but the cars.
Shit.
His heart hammered in his chest, squeezing harder and faster with every breath. He thought of his gun, locked up in his bedroom. Then he considered the notion that his sleepy mind was playing tricks on him, his imagination already half-sauced with dreams, but no. No.
He’d seen something out there. He was certain of that.
He stared into the blackest gap between the streetlights, where he’d last seen movement. Fixed his eyes there with such intensity that he started to see those squiggly lines and pink blotches he sometimes saw in the dark.
Again something moved. Not an animal. A man.
He squinted harder. Pushed his nose right up to the glass. Chewed his lip as an outlet for the anticipation, teeth gnawing right up to the edge of pain and holding steady there.
His chest ached to take a breath. Not yet. Not yet. Something was happening here. Something.
Wasn’t it?
Bright light burst from the nothingness, and Camacho flinched, sucking in a breath at last in shock.
A writhing wall of orange whooshed up from the blackness all at once.
Chapter 19
Luck and Darger arrived on the scene outside of Miguel Camacho’s home within two minutes of each other. Darger hadn’t quite made it to her hotel parking lot when she got the call. She figured Luck hadn’t made it home, either.
The fire itself had done no real damage, apart from frying some grass and leaving a dark splotch on the street that looked wet.
Still, Camacho was rattled, chest heaving, eyes darting everywhere. She imagined seeing a blaze whoosh to life outside one’s place of residence had that effect on people, especially after one of the detectives spotted the Sierra Mist bottle that even now reeked of gasoline lying in the grass near the Mustang. That close of a call would shake anyone up.
Luck bent over a table set up by the crime scene techs, studying the bottle where it sat in its plastic baggie shroud.
“Might get lucky and get something off it,” he said. “Prints or DNA.”
At his words, a new realization dawned on her. Darger sighed.
“No.”
“What’s that?”
“We won’t find anything on the bottle.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he left it on purpose,” she said. “Intentional or not in the earlier fires, this is his calling card now. He dumped it because he wanted us to know this was his work.”
His gaze went from her and back to the evidence baggie.
“Christ,” was all he could say.
Another moment passed before he spoke again.
“Ready to talk to Camacho?”
“Let’s do it,” she said.
Luck pulled the officer aside from all the twirling lights out front and had him sit on the couch in the living room. Darger closed the curtains to block out all the commotion the best they could.
She thought he looked calmer inside, but it was hard to be sure. She figured it best to launch right into it. Maybe he’d heard the screech of the serpentine belt.
“Did you hear anything suspicious before the fire?”
“Yeah, actually. Neighbor’s dog was screamin’ his damn head off just before. He’s a noisy fucker as a rule, but this was next level barking.”
“What about other sounds?” she asked.
She had to be careful here. Couldn’t lead him. The last thing she wanted was to put the idea of a noisy car in his head.
“I mean… like what?” He shook his head. “Jesus! It’s weird as hell to be on this side of the table. I’m supposed to be the one taking witness statements. Not giving them.”
“You’re doing fine.”
He chuckled.
“Don’t feel like it. I feel like my memories are all jumbled up.”
“That’s the adrenaline. Sometimes it helps to go through things step by step, so let’s do that,” Darger suggested.
After a nod from Camacho, she went on.
“You’re on the couch, watching football. You notice your neighbor’s dog barking. Then what?”
“I was clearing some of the crap from the coffee table. Rinsing dishes in the sink when—”
Camacho’s face tensed.
“What is it?”
“Cheeto stopped barking.”
“Cheeto? That’s your neighbor’s dog?”
Nodding, Camacho rubbed his knuckles along the side of his face.
“Jesus, I hope nothing bad happened to the little guy. He’s an annoying little shit, but, I mean… dogs are innocent creatures, man.”
“What happened next?”
“I went back out to the living room. To look out the window.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing at first. Just blackness. And then something moved.”
Darger waited. She could tell by the way Camacho’s eyes moved up to stare at a blank space on the kitchen wall that he was in full-on memory mode, and she didn’t want to interrupt that.
“The way it moved, at first I thought it was an animal. But it was too big. I waited. And then I saw it again. It was a man.”
“Could you see what he was doing?”
“It was a split second. Just his silhouette moving past a light in the distance. If I would have blinked, I would have missed it.”
“And then?”
“And then I was practically blinded by the light of the fire. It was so bright and it went up so fast. Just whoosh! And then flames. I thought my car was toast for sure.”
“Did you hear him at all? His footsteps as he ran away? A car door slamming?”
Camacho’s brow furrowed so deep it was almost comical.
“Nuh-uh. No.” He swiveled his gaze to meet Darger’s. “And that’s kind of weird, isn’t it? To hear nothing? No car door? No engine? That means he got away on foot.”
“So he parked somewhere else,” Luck suggested.
Darger was still staring at Camacho. She knew what he was thinking.
“Or he didn’t drive here at all,” Darger said.
“Because he lives close by,” Camacho finished.
Luck screwed up his face. “Seems like a bit of a leap.”
“Not if you pair it with what we got
earlier,” she said, then turned back to Camacho. “You know the sound a car makes when it has a bad serpentine belt?”
Camacho nodded. “Yeah. It’s like a constant high-pitched cricket noise. Almost as annoying as that little mutt Cheeto.”
“Have you heard that around here recently? Someone driving by your house at night, maybe?”
“No,” Camacho answered, frowning. “Why?”
“We think our guy might drive an SUV with a bad serpentine belt. Both Caroline Galitis and her mother heard it driving by the house in the nights leading up to the fire,” she explained. “And it’s like I said before, these guys are creatures of habit. If he scoped out the Galitis house before he started that fire, he would have done the same here. Except you haven’t heard a bad serpentine belt.”
“Because he walked here,” Camacho slammed a fist on the table triumphantly. Then his look soured. “Jesus, though… does that mean this guy’s been watching me and shit? That’s creepy as hell.”
Chapter 20
The SUV creeps through downtown Los Angeles, another dark shape blurring past like all the rest. Unnoticed. Anonymous. For now.
Maybe someday the whole world will know his name. Maybe. That is the goal out here in Hollywood, right? To see your name in lights. To plaster yourself on billboards, posters, the cover of magazines. He smiles a little at the thought.
He can still see the fire flickering on the ground just shy of the Mustang every time he closes his eyes. Nothing too dramatic tonight — it didn’t so much as blister the paint on the car — but the excitement still throbs when he remembers, the flames putting him right back under their spell.
After the church, it’s probably better to lay low anyway. Take it easy. Just a little pick me up, one little jolt. Like the jump scare fake-out in the horror movie to reset the tension before the next big reveal. That’s what tonight was.
Yeah. A jump scare. He likes that. He likes that a lot.
With the window all the way down, the air rushes in, blasts its cool against his cheeks, ruffles his hair. Makes him feel alive. In motion. Unstoppable. Restless. Important.
Driving through the city always feels this way. Like its foreshadowing something big.
He works long hours — real work, not some showbiz puffery — and when he’s done, he’s too wired to relax, too amped to shut his head off. So he drives. Swoops down and around random streets. Shoots through alleys. Spirals and zigs and zags every which way. Only ever able to see as far ahead as the headlights show, which is fine by him. Better to live life that half a block at a time, forget the rest of the world.
Be here now. All the way here.
He circles the city like there’s a drain at the center, the whirlpool spinning, slowly pulling until it swallows him, until it swallows everyone. He can almost see it when he closes his eyes — the grate at the center of Los Angeles, the hole that eventually sucks down all of the scum and flushes it out into the sea.
Or maybe some nights he circles it like a vulture. Sniffing around for freshly dead meat, which the city offers up daily. Shot. Stabbed. Crushed in cars. Drunk and drowned and washing up on the beach. Or best yet — burned to a blackened husk. Well done, you could say.
So bring out your dead. Offer up your humble sacrifices. Because the god of Los Angeles? He’s no merciful deity. He is out for fucking blood.
Again, he smiles at these thoughts, at how deeply people misunderstand the city he was born and raised in.
This city does not care about you. It does not care what happens to you. It’s chasing its own dream, serving only its own desires. Looking out for number one. It will gladly grind its heel into your skull to get that one step higher toward the top of the heap. And still the masses flock here to get trampled. Fresh meat for the grinder every year, every month, every day.
Here it feels like the concrete never ends. You could drive forever and never reach the end of the city, never find the edge. Zooming past skyscrapers, zipping beneath underpasses, coiling around corner after corner, the periodic tree jutting up from the cement for decorative purposes.
He weaves a circuitous path through the city. No particular place to go. Just time to burn. Intersections to hurtle through.
Red light. Yellow light. Green light.
He lights a cigarette, cups his hands around the lighter’s flame to shield it from the wind sucking into the window. Loves everything about this little ritual. The feel of the fresh cigarette filter clenched in his lips, the tangy smell of the unlit tobacco, the little snick of the lighter wheel, the fire’s bright glow flickering just under his chin.
He breathes smoke, hears a little click in his throat as he inhales, hesitates with the swirling gray cloud in his chest, and then he lets it come spilling out, his nostrils turned to two chimneys for this moment.
People mill along the sidewalks here, clusters of humanity huddling outside of gas stations and liquor stores, partially lit in oranges and yellows by the streetlights and store signs. He watches them as he rushes past. Sees faces and forgets them just as quickly. Three seconds of their lives witnessed, noted, and erased forever.
He loves Los Angeles at night. The bustling dark sprawl. Endless and pointless. Positively brimming with emptiness. Movie stars and murder. The biggest stars in the world flock to the same few restaurants here, living the dream, and a few blocks from them? A bunch of toothless nobodies whose last remaining dream comes spiraling down the glass tube of a crack pipe.
The dream and the nightmare unfolding on the same street, sometimes on the same block. Welcome to fucking Hollywood.
As if on cue, a bum stumbles out of an alley, picking at his last couple teeth with his fingernails, all scrawny with that big swollen belly one gets from malnourishment. He brings a paper bag housing what looks to be a pint bottle to his lips, tips his head back and freezes there, pouring cheap liquor down his gullet. A brutal image, startling, but after the customary three seconds, he’s past it. Moving on. Never looking back.
Good thing I don’t give a fuck about anybody but me, he reassures himself, chuckling a little between hits on his cigarette. It’d suck to have worry about such things for real. To actually care. Of course, I know empathy is important. That’s why I have so much of it for myself.
Thinking of it that way makes it seem funny, the city as a whole. Absurd. Ludicrous.
L.A. is all well and good during the day, he thinks, but the city is a different animal at night. Something that can’t be tamed. Something wicked that glitters with bad intent when all those lights flick on — all fluorescent glow and flitting shadows.
Through his windshield, he sees it all. Watches it all. The pimps and prostitutes. The thugs. The junkies. The drunks. The rapists and pushers and pedophiles. They all come creeping out at night.
And the killers who walk among them. So many killers.
This is the place where the Manson family roamed, where the Night Stalker stalked, where Robert Kennedy took a bullet to the skull just like his brother did, where OJ Simpson just about sliced his ex-wife’s head off, allegedly. Black Dahlia. The Menendez brothers. The Wonderland murders. The list of famous L.A. murders goes on and on.
The way he sees it, Los Angeles is a monument to this kind of savagery. A city perhaps best captured in the footage of the Rodney King beating, in the videos of the riots that ensued.
A city that burns.
Periodically, the hills catch on fire. The Santa Ana winds carry the blaze far and wide until driving down the highway into the city looks like driving through the gates of Hell — walls of flame stretching vertically up the slopes, consuming everything on both sides of the asphalt. Sad little highway signs that seem suspended in the middle of all of that fire, hovering in the little gap above the blacktop. A furious orange glow surrounds everything, all the world’s hatred focused here, made real, spontaneously combusting, burning out and trying to take the rest of the world with it.
Destruction.
He drives out in the hills wit
h the wind in his hair now. A few miles south of here, the Manson family butchered Sharon Tate one summer night. Scrawled their piggy messages on the walls like the blood of the dead was finger paint. Off to the east, the Night Stalker carved a bloody path from Sun Valley to Whittier to Diamond Bar, peeled the screens off of windows to crawl into suburban homes and wipe out families as they slept. Ravaging the suburbs, robbing and raping and killing, etching his name into pop culture immortality just like all the movie stars.
It fits, he thinks. All the violence feels right.
The basest appetites rule this place. Lust. Greed. Wrath. It’s a place that offers up worship of a kind. Worship for a god who demands a blood sacrifice, a god who wants his pound of flesh, a god who will make you a star if you come sit on the casting couch with him for a little while.
He sees the ones who’ve been used up by the Hollywood machine, too. The has-beens and the never-wases crawling all over this place, the ones still competing for the love of strangers, the ones who’d drink a bottle of Drano to book a Geico commercial, wearing their sad stories in the lines in their faces, waiting for something that’s never coming.
The dream. The spectacle. The audience’s stamp of approval that validates it once and for all: you are special. You do matter. You really are here.
He watches it all through panes of glass. One side, the tinsel, he sees come through the TV screen, but the real shit he sees through the windshield, through the driver’s side window, through the portals sliced in the sides of the buildings that expose the insides. When he drives down through it, he sees the real thing.
He sucks on his cigarette butt, feels the smoke twirl inside him again.
You can see so much if you really watch, he thinks, if you pay attention to people. You see secrets in the way a woman angles herself away from her lover. See the unasked question in her chewed lip. See the reservations in the way her arms stay folded tight to her chest, as though clutching one’s torso might keep them safe. Not in this place.
If you focus your eyes, you can look right through people. Stare holes clean through to the meat of them, to the innards, all the way through.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 11