Perfectly Good Crime

by Dete Meserve

  “As a fire rages in an estate in Holmby Hills, all lanes of traffic through this exclusive neighborhood are closed. Over one hundred firefighters are battling the blaze,” I said. “Traffic is backed up throughout Westwood and Beverly Hills, creating a nightmare for commuters during the busy rush hour. At this time there are no confirmed reports that a high-stakes burglary has also taken place at the Holmby Hills estate, but we will continue to investigate further, given the recent series of multimillion-dollar heists in high-end properties.”

  Anchor Maria Vargas then cut to Stan McCort in Chopper Eleven, who was flying over the estate giving viewers a bird’s-eye view of the fire billowing out of the second-story windows of the massive colonial-style mansion.

  “We’re just getting word that the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue is working to rescue a man trapped in the fire. The man is believed to be a resident of the estate,” Stan said.

  I jolted to attention. If Urban Search and Rescue was on the scene, Eric was probably there too. No doubt his at-home recovery from Hurricane Juanita had been cut short, because I couldn’t imagine he’d sit out a rescue like this.

  Chopper Eleven’s camera zoomed in as gray smoke billowed out of a second-story window and two rescuers scrambled up a ladder and into the mansion. Moments later, the smoke became thick and black and there was no sign of the rescuers. My pulse shot up as I watched for any suggestion of movement at the window. Nothing. And as each second ticked by and the smoke became heavier, the rescuers’ return seemed less and less likely. I sucked in a breath, unable to ward off the shaking fear that Eric was one of the rescuers in the fire. Then, out of a shroud of smoke, the rescuers appeared at the window and handed the victim to two firefighters on the ladder who quickly carried him to a waiting ambulance.

  “We’ve just heard that the victim is alive and being taken to UCLA Medical Center,” Stan said.

  Minutes later, Josh and I headed to UCLA. I texted Eric to let him know I was headed that way. Traffic was in a complete snarl, and even though Josh found a faster route that wound through a sleepy one-way street in Westwood, it still took over half an hour to travel three miles.

  The six o’clock newscast was already underway by the time Eric and the Urban Search and Rescue task force stepped out of the travertine marble-clad towers of the UCLA Medical Center. His jaw was now covered in a five o’clock shadow, but he looked surprisingly energized as he walked out of the building into the circular plaza, where a sea of reporters descended on him. I watched him scan the crowd—looking for me, I assumed—but it was already dark and Josh and I were in the back of the reporter camp.

  “The incident commander will be out here in about five minutes to give you all an update,” a firefighter with thick blond hair announced. Then Eric and his team headed toward a fire department SUV parked on a side street.

  Josh and I quietly slipped away from the pack and headed in the SUV’s direction. Eric smiled when he saw me. “This is getting to be a habit, you stalking me for interviews on big stories.”

  “Actually, you haven’t given me one single interview since the rescue of the boy in Malibu Canyon. Want to break your streak?”

  He put his hand on the small of my back. “That could be a yes.” He motioned to another firefighter getting into the SUV. “Give me a couple of minutes.”

  The firefighter turned to look at me. “Don’t listen to the captain, because no matter what, he’s going to give credit for the rescue to someone else on the crew. But he’s the one that pulled that guy out.”

  Eric smiled. “Ignore him. This one’s nuts.”

  The firefighter, bright blue eyes on a face smudged with dirt and sweat, grinned. “Here’s how it went down, ’cause I was there. There was a deadly river of flames rolling across that ceiling and smoke on the floor. Can’t see nothin’ but black everywhere. But we can hear someone calling for help. And there the captain goes past me in the smoke—like he’s got x-ray vision or something—and homes right in on the victim. Next thing I know—’cause I’m searching for the guy too—here comes the captain dragging him past me. I hear him through his mask. ‘Grab his legs.’ We pulled that guy out just as the fire lit up.”

  “I think she’s heard enough,” Eric said with a laugh, clearly uncomfortable being the focus of the crewmember’s praise.

  Josh called the news desk to ask them if they wanted a report from one of the rescuers and whether they had time in the already-jammed cast. He flashed me a thumbs-up.

  “Two minutes,” he said. “We’re next after they come out of this piece about a multicar crash in the Crenshaw district.” I put on the earpiece that connected me with the newsroom and quickly applied some lipstick as Josh set up the camera.

  “Any idea how our photo made it into the tabloids?” Eric whispered.

  “All my reports about the heists are putting the super wealthy in a bad light. Some well-connected individuals are trying to discredit me by making it appear that I’m some kind of party girl who runs off with unidentified men at expensive fundraisers.”

  “Well, we know it’s not unidentified men,” he said with a smile. “But practically every reporter is covering that story. Why did they only target you?”

  “My dad is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He thinks the people behind this photo leak want to make sure he knows what kind of damage they can inflict if he doesn’t make the ‘right’ decisions about tax reform for the rich.”

  “So putting our photo in the trashy tabloids is about getting your dad’s attention too,” he said. “My crew has been giving me all kinds of heat about the photo. Getting in the tabloids isn’t usually part of a fire captain’s job description.”

  My guilt skyrocketed. In the macho world of the fire department, I imagined that a captain making the tabloids for kissing someone at a political fundraiser probably would be met with endless teasing. “Your life would be a lot less complicated if I weren’t a senator’s daughter and a news reporter.”

  “My life is better with you in it.” His eyes met mine. “Besides, I liked the way you look in the photograph. I’m keeping that one.”

  “One minute,” Josh interrupted, handing me a microphone.

  “Ready?” I said to Eric.

  He nodded, blinking in the glare of the camera lights. After years doing hundreds of live reports, I felt a quick kick of nervous energy as the clock ticked down. The report started out fine, but the way Eric was smiling at me was distracting.

  “There’s gratitude and a sense of relief among residents after a fire raged through an estate here in Holmby Hills,” I started, but my voice wavered. I actually sounded…flustered. “With me is Eric Hayes, captain of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue Team, who freed a man trapped in the estate. How did you rescue the man?”

  “We used ladders to get to the second story of the home and we located the victim in the north bedroom. Once inside, the room was black with smoke. We crawled on the floor, staying close to the wall, until we reached the victim. We had about two minutes to get him out before that part of the house was engulfed in flames.”

  I looked at him while he was speaking and felt my focus drift. Everything about him was throwing me off—from the warm, authoritative way he spoke to how he looked in his snug blue uniform to the bandage peeking out of his collar, proof of his past bravery. His story was riveting, but I was actually having a hard time focusing on what he was saying.

  “So there was only one man inside the house?” I asked firmly, determined to get my mind back on track.

  He shot me a sly smile. I could see he was enjoying the effect he was having on me. “One man. He was heavy, so once I found him, it took two of us to lift him. In order to get them down the ladder, we had to dump everything out of his pockets.”

  My focus sharpened. “What was in his pockets?”

  “He had two specially made pockets that ran the length of his legs
. They were loaded with watches and small jewelry.”

  Chapter Eight

  Eric and the USAR team had rescued one of the thieves. They had gone in there thinking they were rescuing a resident trapped in the fire, but they had actually rescued a burglar.

  “Once you realized he was one of the thieves, did that make you angry you’d risked your life to save him?” I asked, when the interview was over.

  He looked at me as though the concept was foreign to him. “We’re saving lives. We don’t make assessments about who’s worthy or not.”

  I admired that about him. I struggled with bias on every story I covered. When a high-level member of the MS-13 gang was killed in a car accident in Echo Park over the July Fourth weekend last year, I reported that story with less empathy than when a family of four was killed in a similar accident. And viewers were equally conflicted. When Channel Eleven aired a story about a prostitute who was beaten by a customer in Hollywood, many viewers wrote in questioning the newsworthiness of a story about someone injured while engaging in criminal activity.

  “What makes you willing to risk your life to save someone who was in the midst of committing a crime?” I said. “You must have altruism DNA the rest of us are missing.”

  He broke into a smile. “There you go again. Seeing something more in me.”

  The final tally of the Holmby Hills haul was far greater than the jewelry and watches firefighters found in the victim’s pants. Several small art pieces were stolen off the walls in the living room along with numerous purses—a Hermès Scheherazade clutch worth $25,000, a Gucci crocodile soft shoulder bag, which once sold for $30,000, and an ostrich leather tote by Prada worth $10,000. And in addition to the watches found in the victim’s pants, several others were stolen, including a Cartier, a Patek Philippe, and a Jaeger-LeCoultre Tourbillon.

  Early the next morning, police called a press conference downtown to issue a statement. As Josh and I raced to get there on time, I texted Jake once more: “R U there?!”

  Still no response.

  About two dozen reporters gathered in front of police headquarters as the chief, Charlie Harris, spoke. Flanked by two uniformed officers and standing in front of a screen emblazoned with the LAPD logo, Harris delivered his statement dressed in a light gray suit and striped red tie.

  “At approximately eleven o’clock yesterday morning, thieves forced their way into a Holmby Hills estate, breaking and entering, stealing over five million dollars in valuables, and setting the estate on fire.” He looked up from his notes and addressed the reporters directly. “UCLA Medical Center just informed us that the victim in yesterday’s fire is in a medically induced coma as doctors work to treat him for head injuries sustained when he fell while trapped by the fire. The man has not yet been identified, but we have evidence to believe he was one of several individuals robbing the home. Investigators have determined that the fire was deliberately and maliciously started and caused over seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in damage,” Harris said firmly. But despite his efforts to only state the facts, his rising tone made it clear he was angry.

  “We are offering a five-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for the capture of the key suspects involved in this escalating crime,” he continued. “Funds are coming from various private and public donors, including the owners of the properties that have been robbed.”

  He paused for effect. The only sound in the room was the clicking of the digital cameras. Then he brought out the main attraction. On a screen to his right, he played a brief and pixelated video clip of a man walking past a security camera. For a brief moment, the man looked in the direction of the camera and we got a glimpse of him: about thirty, with closely cropped blond hair and muscled shoulders. The image of his face was too blurry to get any sense of what he looked like otherwise. Then he quickly pulled down his ski mask and exited the room.

  Police Chief Harris looked into the dozens of television cameras and issued a warning to the man on the screen: “This is one of the men involved in the Holmby Hills heist who is still at large. Let me be clear, we will not tolerate this reign of terror. It’s not a matter of if we catch you, but when. We will be vigilant and we will be steadfast. We will not allow you to remain at large and will expend all resources to capture you.”

  The crowd of reporters erupted with questions after that, but one thing was clear. The story that had started out as a string of multimillion-dollar heists had now taken a bitter turn as arson was added to the list.

  It took me three attempts to be heard over other reporters’ questions. “Some of the estate owners say police are withholding information, that they’re not sharing key evidence found at the scene.”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely false. We share everything we can, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize the investigation.”

  “You say the thieves ‘forced their way’ into the estate. What were the signs of forced entry?”

  “It was a forced entry. That’s all we can say at this time.”

  Harris tried to motion to another reporter but I kept talking. “An estate owner claims that some police officers are actually responsible for the burglaries.”

  I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. “I’m not even going to respond to such absurd speculation. Next.”

  I wondered what Stephen Bening would say. I dialed his number, but an efficient assistant on the other end of the line informed me he was in meetings and would have to return my call.

  I flopped in a haze of exhaustion on Eric’s leather couch later that evening. But my fatigue was nothing compared to what he’d gone through. After his six-day round-the-clock stint battling Hurricane Juanita, he hadn’t been back in LA for more than twelve hours before he and his crew had been called out to rescue the man at the Holmby Hills estate fire. Despite all that, he seemed completely relaxed on the couch, looking at some photos on his iPad, the bandage on his neck being the only visible sign of his hurricane ordeal.

  I doubt I’ll ever get used to coming home to a firefighter on the couch in shorts and a T-shirt. Ever. Damn, did he look good. He wasn’t one of the overmuscled heroes the media thought we women admired—the ones with the giant pecs and the bulging veins in their necks, with thighs the size of tree trunks pumped up from endless hours spent in the gym. Eric looked like he earned his muscles doing real work. Authentic.

  I kicked off my heels and snuggled next to him, luxuriating in the feeling of having his arm around me again. I’d missed him—missed this—more than I expected. I looked at him and suddenly felt hot.

  What was wrong with me? Every time I was with him, I had the attention span of a kid in kindergarten. I was also pretty sure I had a perpetual dopey grin on my face. I felt a bit crazy, yet exhilarated, and wondered if he felt the same way.

  Even Josh teased me about how flustered I was during my interview with Eric after the Holmby Hills fire. “You are rock solid out there when you interview the police chief or the mayor, then you’re like a nervous cub reporter when you interview that fire captain guy.”

  I hadn’t told Josh about my relationship with Eric, but once he saw us together at the interview, he put two and two together and realized that the guy in the tabloid photo with me was Eric Hayes. I didn’t want him to know that when I was staring out the van window or seemed distracted, I might be thinking about Eric, not mulling over a story. Besides, I rarely shared private information with him or any of the news photographers. “In politics and in life, what matters is what isn’t said,” my dad had often reminded me.

  After the Good Sam story, Eric had proposed to me on his sailboat, Andromeda. It was what we later called a “soft” proposal, not an official one, and we’d both decided that we weren’t ready to rush into anything yet. In the months since then, I expected we’d settle into some kind of predictable routine—that the excitement might even wane a little—but our work schedules kept getting in the way, making our reunions more exciting, not less.

  I glanced at h
is iPad and realized he was looking through photos of the devastation from Hurricane Juanita.

  “Looks bad,” I said as he flipped to a photo of a house that had been ripped from its foundation and dragged to the middle of the street.

  “We were operating on three hours’ sleep most of the time, rescuing people trapped in cars, trucks, attics. We could handle the water, but then we’d have five-foot-tall piles of debris or fallen trees blocking the roads. The stuff we saw…homes reduced to rubble, drowning victims. It still stays with me.”

  “Was yours the search and rescue team trapped at the collapsed school building?”

  He nodded, his eyes darkening. “Ramirez broke his leg in three places when part of that building collapsed. We went in to get him. With the wind howling and the chaos of water and debris inside, there was a point there where I wondered if we’d all make it out alive. Once we got him, all I kept thinking was that I had to make it back home. To you.”

  My eyes met his and I wanted to stay in the moment forever. Then my phone buzzed and dinged, alerting me to a text and breaking the spell. A text at ten o’clock at night probably meant I was going to be sent to cover some breaking-news event. Reluctantly, I pulled the phone out of my purse. The text was from Andrew Wright. “Cleared with Bonnie. Want you on James Russell’s show tomorrow. Can you do it?”

  I glanced out the window at the streetlamps casting shadows through the trees on Eric’s street. This was really happening.

  “Everything okay?” Eric asked.

  “I’m going to be a guest reporter on James Russell’s show on ANC tomorrow to talk about the heists.” I sounded casual, like it was an everyday occurrence to be on a national news show, even though it wasn’t.

  “Wow, James Russell? A lot of people watch his show. That’s big.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t sound excited.”