California Fire And Life

7

He's seen the house maybe a million times from the water but he hadn't recognized the address.

Built back in the '30s, it's one of the older homes on the bluff above Dana Point – a heavy-timbered wood frame job with cedar shake walls and a shake roof.

A damn shame, Jack thinks, because this house is one of the survivors of the old days when most of the Dana headlands was just open grass hillside. A product of the days when they really built houses.

This house, Jack thinks, has survived hurricanes and monsoons and the Santa Ana winds that sweep these hills with firestorms. Even more remarkably, it's survived real estate developers, hotel planners, and tax boards. This sweet old lady of a house has presided over the ocean through all that, and all it takes is one woman with a bottle of vodka and a cigarette to do her in.

Which is a shame, Jack thinks, because he's sat on his board looking at this house from the ocean all his damn life and always thought that it was one of the coolest houses ever built.

For one thing, it's made of wood, not stucco or some phony adobe composite. And they didn't use green lumber to frame it up either. In the days when they built houses, they used kiln-dried lumber. And they used real log shakes on the exterior and were content to let the ocean weather it to a color somewhere between brown and gray so that the house became a part of the seascape, like driftwood that had been washed up on the shore. And a lot of driftwood, too, because it's a big old place for a single-story building. A big central structure flanked by two large wings set at about a thirty-degree angle toward the ocean.

Standing there looking at it, Jack can see that the central and left sections of the house are still intact. Smoke damaged, water damaged, but otherwise they look structurally sound.

The wing to the right – the west wing – is a different story.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the fire started in the west wing. Generally speaking, the part of a house that suffers the most damage is where the fire started. You know this because that's where the fire burned the longest.

Jack steps back and photographs the house first with one camera and then the other. He has one loaded with color film and the other with black-and-white. Color is better for showing the damage, but some judges will only allow black-and-white shots into evidence, their theory being that color shots – especially in a fatal fire – are "prejudicially dramatic."

Might inflame the jury, Jack thinks.

Jack thinks that most judges are dicks.

A lot of adjusters just take Polaroids. Jack uses 35 mm because the images enlarge so much better, which is important if you need them as exhibits in court.

So some bottom-feeding plaintiff's attorney doesn't take your shitty Polaroids and stick them up your ass.

"Polaroids are hemorrhoids." Another of Goddamn Billy's pithy sayings.

So just on the odd chance the file might end up in court, Jack's covering all his bases. Which is why he keeps two 35s handy in the car, because it would be a waste of time to have to reload and then go take each shot again.

He grabs shots of the whole house with each camera and then jots down a note describing each shot and giving the time and date that he took the picture. He notes that he used Minolta cameras, notes the serial numbers of both cameras, the type of film and its ASA. He speaks the same information into the tape recorder, along with any observations he may want to have for his file.

Jack takes these notes because he knows that you think you're going to remember what you took and why, but you won't. You got maybe a hundred losses you're working at any given point and you get them mixed up.

Or as Billy Hayes poetically puts it, "It's writ, or it's shit."

Billy's from Arizona.

So Jack says, "Frame One, shot of house taken from south angle. August 28, 1997. West wing of house shows severe damage. Exterior walls standing but will probably have to be torn down and rebuilt. Windows blasted out. Hole in roof."

The easiest way to the other side of the house is through the central section, so Jack lets himself in the front door.

Jack opens it and he's looking straight out at the ocean like he's going to fall into it, because there are big glass sliders with a view that stretches from Newport Beach right down to the Mexican islands to the left. Catalina Island straight ahead of you, Dana Strands just down to your left, and below that Dana Strand Beach.

And miles and miles of blue ocean and sky.

You're talking two million bucks just for the view.

The big glass door opens onto a deck about the size of Rhode Island. Below the deck is a sloping lawn, a rectangle of green in all this blue, and in the green there's another rectangle of blue, which is the swimming pool.

A brick wall borders the lawn. Trees and shrubs line the side walls, and the trees and shrubs are edged by a border of flowers. Down to the left there's a pad with a clay tennis court.

The view is totally killer but the house – even this main section that didn't burn – is a fucked-up mess. Drenched with water and the all-pervading acrid stench of smoke.

Jack takes some shots, notes the smoke and water damage on his tape, and then goes out into the yard. Takes some shots from this angle and doesn't see anything to change his mind that the fire started in the west wing, which must be the bedroom. He walks to the outside of the west wing, over to one of the windows, and carefully removes a shard of glass from the window frame.

First thing he notices is that it's greasy.

There's a thick, oily soot on the glass.

Jack makes this observation into the tape but what he doesn't speak into the record is what he's thinking. What he's thinking is that a residue on the inside of the glass can mean the presence of some kind of hydrocarbon fuel inside the house. Also, the glass is cracked into small, irregular patterns, which means it was fairly near the origin of the fire and that the fire built up fast and hot. He doesn't say any of this, either; all he says into the tape is strictly the physical details: "Glass shows greasy, sooty residue and small-pattern crazing. Radial fracture of glass indicates that it was broken by force of fire from inside the house."

That's all he says because that can't be argued with – the evidence is the evidence. Jack won't put his analysis or speculation on tape because if a lawsuit happens and it goes to trial, the tape will be subpoenaed, and if his voice is on there speculating on potential hydrocarbon fuel in the house, the plaintiff's lawyer will make it sound like he was prejudiced, that he was looking for evidence of arson and therefore skipped over evidence of an accidental fire.

He can just hear the lawyer: "You were focused on the possibility of arson from Moment One, weren't you, Mr. Wade?"

"No, sir."

"Well, you say right here on your taped notes that you thought…"

So it's better to leave your thoughts out of it.

It's sloppy work to start thinking ahead of yourself, and anyway, there could be other explanations for the oily soot. If the wood inside the room didn't burn completely, it might leave that kind of residue, or there could be any number of petroleum-based products in the house quite innocently.

Still, there's that barking dog, which is really going at it now. And the bark is not an angry bark, either, not like a dog defending its turf. It's a scared bark, more like a whine, and Jack figures the dog must be terrified. And thirsty. And hungry.

Shit, Jack thinks.

He photographs the piece of glass, labels it and puts it into a plastic evidence bag he keeps in a pocket of the overalls. Then, instead of going into the house – which is what he really wants to do – he goes to look for the dog.