Burning Man (15 page)

“Playing with fire is what first brought the two of us together.”

“Haven’t you had enough of the burning?”

His question was too close to home. “I’m trying to douse it,” I said, draining my beer, “but it’s a stubborn fire.”

“I am glad you have a guardian spirit,” Seth said, looking at Sirius.

Seth was convinced that ever since the fire Sirius had been transformed into Canis Major or something like that. My shaman was certain that Sirius was looking out for me.

“Do all guardian spirits have as much gas as this one?” I asked.

The shaman found that funny, and that effectively stopped him from shaking his rattles anymore in my direction. I hadn’t told him about my burning dreams, but I had this feeling he already knew about them. Maybe he’d heard me crying out in the middle of the night; maybe he really was a witch doctor. One thing I knew for sure was he was a friend, and that’s a rare commodity.

We’d had enough heavy topics for the night, so we turned to the usual topics of sports, sex, and politics, frequently interspersed by laughter. It was typical guy talk, but yeah, it felt good for my soul.

CHAPTER 9:
A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

When I went to bed I said, “Not tonight.” I am sure Father Pat wouldn’t have thought that much of a prayer, but it was about as good as I could muster. It wasn’t good enough, though. Once again the flames came, and I burned.

Like all my other burning nightmares, the fire was real to me. You would think after reliving the horror so many times that I would have some clue I’m just dreaming, but that’s not the way it works. As always I was thrust back into the fiery pit.

Even in hell some smells are worse than others. The reek of burning rubber assaulted my nostrils.

It was probably a burning tire, which had been dumped in the canyon. Or maybe, just maybe, the fire had spread to the street and one of the cars was going up in flames. My pulse quickened. Hope made me breathe faster. By following the stench we might find our way out. It was a straw to grasp before it burned into a husk.

The smoke was thick. It pushed and pummeled. For the sake of my partner, I stopped running from it. Sirius had been too still for too long. The Strangler was gasping as loudly as I was. He looked at me, hoping I would give him permission to drop his burden. While I lived—and he lived—that wouldn’t happen.

I leaned closer to Sirius. “We’re almost there, boy,” I lied. “We’re almost there. Just hold on.”

Through the smoke, Sirius’s eyes opened. They were glazed. He was almost no longer there.

I swiveled my head, trying to get a bead on the burning rubber. It was coming from somewhere nearby. I had to find its source. And then it became all too apparent what was burning: the bottoms of my shoes were smoldering. I was fire walking.

“Shit!” I yelled. “Shit!”

I jumped up and down, stamping my feet. Tears came with my dance moves, the pain traveling up and down my body. There was a reason I’d been dragging my feet around: when you’ve been shot in the leg, you tend to do that. My hot foot gyrations were the equivalent of driving a hot poker into my wound. Adding insult to injury was the fact that my dance wasn’t helping to put the fire out on my soles. The ground was too damn hot. The fire in my shoes wasn’t going out.

I awoke to all the sheets kicked off the bed. It felt as if the soles of my feet had been pressed by a hot iron. My heart was racing, my flight instinct in overdrive. Sirius kept nudging me, making sure I was all right. I took a few heaving breaths, and he licked my sweaty brow, vanquishing the demons for another night.

When you escape hell, you are not supposed to look back. Orpheus made that mistake. Whenever I escape the fire I try to not dwell on the pain, preferring to float away on a cloud of relief, but before that happens I experience my moment after.

Dinah Hakimi was looking at me. In the background of my vision I could hear a familiar tune, the Beatles singing “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Dinah was exaggeratedly mouthing the words that she got by with a little help from her friends. As she
lip-synched she was smiling and not trying to hide her protruding front teeth. Behind her teeth, though, something else was hidden, and reluctantly she reached behind them to reveal a razor blade.

And then Dinah reached for a piece of paper, and I could see it was the card she had left at the tower of hope. She took the razor blade and cut into where she had written “You made my life HELL,” and blood started flowing from the page.

The image was surreal and disturbing, and I doubt whether I would have been able to fall back to sleep save for another image that came to mind. Lisbet Keane was smiling at me and imparted a peace that had long escaped me. I inhaled the aroma of something nice, something that reminded me of Thanksgiving, and then I slept.

When I awakened a few hours later, I stayed in bed thinking about the moment after I had experienced. I was fairly certain the razor blade symbolized Dinah’s contemplation of suicide. The young woman had sought out help, I remembered. Too many desperate young people never do that, thinking they can get by on their own. Dinah had gotten by with a little help from one of the suicide hotline counselors. She had said he was a good man.

I decided it was worth seeing if she was right about that.

I called Dinah’s cell phone, but when she didn’t pick up I left a voice message. A few minutes later I received a text from her. The message said, “I’ll call u in half an hour.” It was likely that she didn’t want to talk to me with her family around and wouldn’t call until she reached school.

When she phoned back I could hear the background noise of youthful chatter. Dinah talked as she walked and said, “I only have a few minutes before class begins.”

“This shouldn’t take long. I need the name and number of the man at the Community Crisis Line that counseled you.”

“Why do you want to bother him?”

“It’s necessary background.”

“Our talks were confidential.”

“I am not going to ask him about what you talked about.”

“It still feels like an invasion of privacy.”

“What do you think a police investigation is? Is there a reason you don’t want me to talk to him?”

“I don’t want him to get into any trouble.”

“Why would he get in trouble?”

“He went out of his way to help me.”

“And how did he do that?”

“We talked on the phone a few times when he wasn’t working at the help line. And he met with me once or twice.”

“And I’m assuming personal calls and meetings aren’t allowed?”

“He only did those things because he was afraid I might do something drastic and wanted to make sure I was all right.”

“Where did the meetings take place?”

“We talked in his car.”

“You met with him in his car?”

“That’s where I asked to meet. I didn’t want anyone seeing us.”

“Was there any physical contact between the two of you?”

Dinah’s answer was shrill: “Of course not! All he did was try and help me. See, I was right. I knew you’d make it look like he did something wrong.”

“It seems to me he would have helped you a lot more by reporting the bullying to the school administration.”

“He wanted to, but I convinced him not to.”

“I need his name, Dinah.”

“He never gave it to me. The help lines are anonymous.”

Her voice tailed off. Even she knew her lie sounded lame. “You know, with one phone call I can get his name, but do you want me to do that? It would mean involving other people, including your family.”

“Can’t you understand that I don’t want to betray a confidence?”

“If you call him now and explain the situation, he’ll understand you don’t have a choice. And after you do that I want you to have him call me back at this number.”

Dinah sighed and then clicked off.

Two minutes later my phone rang. A male voice asked me if he was speaking with Detective Gideon, and when I told him he was, the man said, “This is Dave Miller. Dinah Hakimi said you wanted to talk with me.”

“You’re her counselor?”

“I am not a licensed counselor. I am a volunteer at the Community Crisis Line.”

“How long have you been advising Dinah?”

“We first started talking about a year ago.”

“Dinah didn’t want to give me your name. She was afraid of getting you into trouble.”

“I’ve already reassured her about that. I told her that I brought any trouble on myself by breaking the rules.”

“So why is it that you thought you were above the rules?”

“That’s not what I thought or think. I understand the reasoning behind the rules. I know counselors need to maintain boundaries between themselves and those they are trying to help. And in the eighteen months I’ve worked at the Community Crisis Line, I never violated those rules. In Dinah’s case, though, I felt the need to intervene. I tried to refer her to specialists, but she refused to talk to anyone but me. When she threatened to kill herself, I agreed to meet with her in person.”

“Was she crying wolf?”

“I don’t think so. But I still should have found a better way to help her other than by meeting with her.”

“I’d like a face-to-face with you—today, if possible.”

“Since today is my volunteer day, I am going to be in the LA area anyway. I can talk with you in the early afternoon, but I am scheduled to be on the phones beginning at three.”

“Where are the offices of the Community Crisis Line?”

“Culver City.”

“And where are you driving from?”

“I live just above Temecula.”

Temecula is in the south of Riverside County and nowhere near Culver City. “That’s a long commute.”

“I only do it one or two days a week. When I first started volunteering at the Community Crisis Line, I lived in West LA and then last year moved to De Luz. It’s a bit of a drive, but I didn’t want to quit the help line.”

“Let’s meet in Culver City at two then. Do you know a good spot to talk?”

He thought a moment and then said, “Are you familiar with the lobby bar in the Culver Hotel?”

I almost said something about following the yellow brick road but refrained. I had frequented the Tiny Town retreat a few times and told him I would be there at two.

Over a cup of coffee and a piece of burned toast, I googled “bullying causes teen suicide.” I was sorry to see there were so many hits and so many sad stories. According to what I gleaned, there are about five thousand teen suicides in the United States every year, but in some ways that’s only the tip of the iceberg; for every successful suicide, there are many, many attempts. There is even a word for a suicide caused by bullying: “bullycide.”

Among teens, suicide is the third leading cause of death, and sensitive children are especially vulnerable to bullies. I wondered if the bullying pack sensed that, and if they targeted the vulnerable just like animals of prey did. Even the mental health professionals aren’t sure of which comes first: the depression that worsens from the teasing, or the teasing that causes depression. What isn’t in question is that the bullying makes it worse for the suffering victim. Even someone strong like Dinah Hakimi had been beaten down by her tormentors.

Unfortunately, home is no longer a place to be safe from the bullies. Cyberbullying can be just as bad, if not worse, than being
physically bullied. Electronic character assassinations are all too commonplace. Young people don’t have the coping mechanisms that come with age, and I read about suicides that had resulted from poison-pen websites and devastating instant messages and anonymous posts. One mother had gotten involved in her daughter’s fight and posed as a sixteen-year-old boy to lure in her daughter’s rival. After pretending friendship, the mother had written devastating comments about the girl, who ultimately committed suicide.

Those stories and others dominated my thoughts during my drive to the Police Administration Building. Gump and Martinez were holed up on the fifth floor, the home for Robbery-Homicide. We met in a conference room and went over where we were with the case.