John Ridley: What Fire Cannot Burn

"What kind of load you using?" Raddatz asked.

"Soledad's red clip. Slugs tipped with Semtex. Explodes on contact, so do yourself a favor and don't get caught in the cross fire."

"Do me a favor and don't get me caught in one."

The outside of the house-the junk, the weedy yard-was barely a primer for the level of charm the interior had been allowed to degenerate to. Newspapers everywhere. Magazines everywhere. Everywhere there were dirty dishes. Rotting food. Unseen but smelled was excrement. Maybe from the dog. Maybe from Carlin. Whichever. The stench was a sock in the face square to the nose. It was a funk so rank it actually hurt. The only smell Eddi had ever taken in more putrid was the stink of a decaying, rancid, bloated, gaseous floater she once had to stand watch over off the Santa Monica pier. She was a newbie. The vets made her do it, made her mind the body. The vets wanted to have some fun. Make Eddi puke. Eddi was not about to toss in front of "the boys." Eddi stood there. Took the smell. Told "the boys" if LACFSC wasn't around soon to pick up the body, they should order her some lunch. She'd eat it right where she was. The boys fucked with her much less after that. And if it weren't for that, if it weren't for that smell giving her a primer on how bad something could reek, at that moment Eddi might real well have lost it. Thank God, too, for the shaded windows of Carlin's house. The California sun roasting the rot in the joint would've made the air toxic as alien atmosphere.

"Nice," Eddi said, looking around. "Early American psycho."

"Guy's nuts," Raddatz assessed. "But that doesn't make him a freak killer."

"You're not thinking he's clean?"

Raddatz shook his head to the negative. "I just want to know it for a fact. Especially before he comes home and we have to figure how to explain breaking and entering on a guy just for being supersloppy."

"He beats his wife, beats his dog, lives like he thrives on shit-"

"You almost dropped me for the wrong reason. Let's just be sure."

Raddatz, Jesus… toeing the line between unilateral action and moral justification, to Eddi he was coming off like a badassed Quaker.

Again: "Lei's just be sure."

Raddatz pointed Eddi to a room off the entry that was, really, just a main trash area. He indicated he'd have a look into the kitchen.

All the while just outside, the dog-that poor kill-beast-barking. Snarling. Growling. Bleeding.

The room off the entry: papers, magazines and stench. Standard decor. And, in a corner, a tribe of roaches. The whole of it potential evidence to be sifted through.

And here was Eddi without any rubber gloves.

She started looking through some papers on a table. Might as well start high and work her way down. The paper at the very top of the mound was dated almost two years previously. So which was it: Carlin hadn't touched a paper in two years, or he read-actually sat and read -old papers? Eddi figured whichever was the crazier.

Digging through the mound: A paper sixteen months old. One that was outdated by another nineteen months. Five months. Sixteen, again. Four. Ten. Seven months. Not one fresher than three months. And not one that offered particular insight, that indicated a particular frame of mind. Nothing, that Eddi could see, regarding freak killings or MTac operations or cops getting hobbled by muties or obsessive consideration of any of that. Nothing more significant than yesterday's news.

Was there something else to be found? Elaborate plans for world domination merely left lying around? That was comic book stuff. That was the kind of thing La Femme would have done to taunt Nightshirt back in the day. It was the kind of thing disorganized serial killers did because they were too crazy, too sloppy in mind to do otherwise. But even the kookiest of criminals, shy of their desire for direct notoriety, generally liked being free of incarceration too much to just leave a pointing finger for the cops.

Still."..

Eddi kept looking. A Chicago Trib from, eight months prior. An old Time magazine. An older Better Homes and Gardens. Southern Living. Harper' s. A Chinese take-out.

menu.

A paper fetish. Maybe Carlin just had a paper fetish. And a metal fetish to go with his junk fetish. All around, as there'd been in the yard, were pipes and rods and siding. Welded. Twisted.

Art?

Didn't look like art. At least, if it. had artistic value, it wasn't apparent to Eddi's eye.

Eddi, yelling across the space to Raddatz: 'Anything?"

Raddatz yelling back: "Nothing."

The thing about metal sculpting, to Eddi it always seemed like a loopy kind of art-word used loosely-in the first place. You've got paint, you've got pencils. Clay. Even marble if you're desperate to chisel something. And marble work looked good when you were done with it. Looked classic. Metalwork? Looked like something the stoner kids did in some high school detention class. And this, what Carlin had…? This crap- this crap on top of all the other crap he had lying around-was just… welded. Twisted. Bent and rent.

And Carlin called this…

Not art.

it wasn't art.

Twisted metal. Melted metal. It was practice.

Picking up a pipe, turning to Raddatz, moving for him: "Hey, this might be-"

The floor became ten thousand killer bees. In its instantaneous fragmentation it formed a swarm. Tiny piece of flying oak. Inanimate, but seeming to possess an instinct for delivering pain. The swarm rode a concussive wave for Eddi, stung her with their splinters. Slashed her with their jagged edges. Bare flesh was lacerated flesh. Bleeding flesh. Eddi's hands went on the defensive, jumped up, sacrificed themselves to protect her face from what hit with the force of a good-sized gas explosion. A small bomb. What it really was: Carlin irrupting up into the room from a crawl space. Up into the room through the floor.

His maximum arrival kicked Eddi back. She went limp, took the force. Didn't fight it, let it ride her down. Hit the floor. More unforgiving wood waiting for her.

The moment she landed Eddi was already making a move. Trying to get up. She did a simultaneous self-diagnosis. Nothing broken. Nothing broken so bad as to gimp her. Probably, she was cut pretty nastily on her exposed flesh; the splintered wood having worked like razors over her skin. Felt warm blood flowing from cuts. She didn't feel any hurt. Adrenaline was blocking her lower pain receptors. It was revving her heart, getting her ready for a fight.

She tried to look, tried to get her bearings. Eddi's right eye was functionless. Wouldn't open.

She hoped that was the deal: Her eye'd caught some wood and refused to uncover itself. The alternative was the eye was punctured. Or gone altogether. Either way at the minute it was useless. Staying alive meant working with the one good eye she had left.

Eddi was twisting, bringing Soledad's piece around. Taking aim…

Across the room: gray sweat-suited, hood up. Carlin. Carlin was bear-hugging Raddatz. Raddatz, without a weapon, was trying to fight, trying to fight back. Fighting back amounted to good-for-nothing flailing. Weak slapping with his hook and hand. Carlin's grip would not yield. Beneath the drape of his sweats, Carlin's Power-Assist suit. The hiss of air pumps. His grip constricted. The pain inflicted feebled further Raddatz's slaps. Then from Carlin, for good measure, an electric shock settled Raddatz the fuck down.

And Raddatz was right where Eddi didn't want him to be: in the line of fire. "Raddatz!"

Raddatz turned. His face, beaten-power-punched- busted, was like a bloody rag.

Carlin turned. His face, darkened by the hood, wore a smile Eddi's blinded eye could not see but could real well sense.

Carlin torqued and Raddatz twisted. A scream. Raddatz's snapping spine. Impossible to tell if one preceded the. other.