When Alethea Papadakis nearly stepped in a puddle of drain cleaner in the alley behind her house, she’d had enough. For seven decades Alethea had lived in this part of central Los Angeles. She’d watched her street’s long, slow decline, and at her age, she had no ambition of seeing it reversed. A year ago, the dilapidated two-story townhome next door went into foreclosure. It stood empty for months. She imagined a nice young family moving in and fixing up the place. But a nice family didn’t move in. The bank sold the building for a song to a real estate speculator from another state. The house was now occupied by an indiscernible number of anonymous residents who were so secretive that every window in the house was covered, day and night. Instead of improving, the property continued to decay, blighting the neighborhood and Alethea’s hopes.
She was resigned to ignore the newcomers, leaving them alone if they left her alone. But they—or at least their activities—were hard to ignore. Strangers came and went from the house at all hours of the night. People smoked outside and left piles of cigarette butts on the ground. And the smells—strange, chemical odors that at times reminded her of nail polish remover, at other times, of cat urine—emanated from the house strongly enough that once in a while she had to close her windows.
To all of this, she was willing to turn a blind eye, but a spilled bottle of drain cleaner could injure or kill the stray cats she fed a bowl of kibbles to every day. She was a tough woman who could tolerate a great deal herself, but she couldn’t allow those people to hurt her kitties.
So she called the police.
Alethea reported the suspicious activities she’d observed. As she spoke, the bits of information formed an unmistakable pattern of illegality that she had refused to acknowledge until now. The dispatcher promised a squad car would investigate. Fearful that one of the cats would stick its nose in the poison while she waited for the police, Alethea took a bucket and filled it with water at the tap on the side of her house. She hauled the bucket into the alley to wash away the caustic liquid, and grimaced at the stink in the air.
What are they up to now, she wondered. The odor seemed familiar, yet it was different from any of the smells she’d noticed coming from the house before.
She poured the water into the drain cleaner, diluting and spreading it. One bucket obviously wasn’t going to be enough. She cursed the faceless hooligans next door for making an old woman carry gallons of water like a mule in the midday heat. She trudged back to the tap, winded from the exertion. As she waited for the bucket to fill, she heard a shout from behind the curtained windows of the troublesome property.
The explosion followed less than a second later. It blew out every wall on the first floor of the flimsy wood-frame structure. Whether from the force of the blast, the heat of the fire, or the crush of rocketing debris, Alethea Papadakis died instantly.
#
Los Angeles Police Department officer Javier Gomez was waiting on a red light not far from the Papadakis residence when he heard the explosion. His partner in the passenger seat, who’d survived two tours of duty in Iraq with the Army Reserve, ducked for cover in about a millisecond. Gomez lacked such a highly developed self-preservation reflex. For a moment he stared dumbly at the fireball and smoke that billowed from a residential street just a few blocks ahead.
“Jesus, that’s where the call came from,” he said, turning on the cruiser’s siren and lights and speeding through the intersection.
As far as a block away from the epicenter of the blast, the pavement was strewn with a bizarre collection of laboratory-style paraphernalia. Gomez had to steer his car around bottles, funnels, plastic tubing, and propane tanks as well as ordinary construction materials from the shattered building. Some of the debris was burning. By the time he pulled up near the blaze, area residents and passersby were gathering on the street. Gomez leaped out of the car while his partner radioed for fire and ambulance support.
At least three buildings were in flames; the one in the center was completely engulfed. Something flung upward from the fire was tangled and burning in the fronds of a tall, smooth-trunked palm tree, making it look like a giant torch. The air was filled with smoke, dust, and the acrid odor of scorched chemicals. Gomez and his partner looked in vain for Mrs. Papadakis or any other injured survivors needing rescue. He saw no one, and the fires were too fierce for him to try to enter one of the burning houses. He concentrated on clearing the area for the emergency workers whose sirens he could hear approaching.
Within eight minutes, firefighters were battling the blazes. Within twelve minutes, Gomez’s superior, Police Lieutenant Jerry Branson, was on the scene.
Branson, a trim and muscular officer with a severe bearing, wandered around the edge of the chaos searching the ground. He bent down to pick something up, and cornered Gomez.
“You were the first man on the scene, correct?” Branson asked.
“Yes, sir. We were responding to a call at this location and only missed the explosion by maybe a minute,” Gomez replied.
“Fucking tweaker lab,” Branson said, holding a miraculously unscathed package of over-the-counter pseudoephedrine, one of the main ingredients for cooking crystal meth. “Took out their own sorry asses and half the neighborhood with them. Blast probably sprayed toxic chemicals over a quarter mile.”
Gomez glanced uneasily at the growing crowd of onlookers who carelessly stood gawking at the disaster like it was on TV. “Sir, if that’s the case…”
Branson nodded.
“Get those people out of here,” he barked at any officers within hearing range. “I’ll call in a hazmat team.”
#
The firefighters extinguished the blazes before dark. Lieutenant Branson helped set up emergency spotlights in the last glimmer of the late sunset. Even with the fires out, he knew it was going to be a long night.
The hazmat crew finished its survey and declared the area safe. Branson approached the wreckage for a preliminary look around. Contorted beams and collapsed walls cast spooky shadows under the glare of the spotlights. The air smelled of smoke.
He studied the pattern of destruction. The building in the center of the wreckage was completely demolished; the blackened remains of its second story had collapsed onto the ground floor. He guessed the explosion originated there. The property to the right side was still standing, but just barely. They wouldn’t need a wrecking ball to bring it down; one puff from the Big Bad Wolf ought to do it.
The citizen who’d called LAPD that morning owned the house to the left. Sadly, Branson turned and watched a team of workers in disposable white suits extract some charred human remains from the debris.
Too bad she didn’t call yesterday.
A firefighter wearing a captain’s insignia approached. Office Gomez was with him.
“Can I have a word with you, Lieutenant?” the fireman said. “Gomez here tells me LAPD thinks this was a meth lab accident.”
Branson snorted. “Is there traffic on the four-oh-five? Of course it was.”
“That may not be the whole story.”
“Did ya miss the broken glassware and Bunsen burners?” Branson said.
“No, I agree there was a meth lab here. But it was a pretty big blast for a small-scale operation.”
“Maybe they were scaling up, had a stock of sodium or ammonia sitting around.”
“Yeah,” the Captain said, rubbing his chin. “But look at the old lady’s house.”
“You mean what’s left of it.”
“The blast came from the east side of the structure. With a single source explosion, the debris should be thrown in a radial pattern away from the source.”
“I guess,” Branson agreed, shoving a fragment of broken ductwork with his foot.
“But we see pieces of the lady’s east wall in the debris of the drug house.”
“Where?” Branson said, surprised.
The firefighter pointed. Branson looked at the rubble.
“I’ll be damned. What do you make of that?”
“Officer Gomez has a suggestion.”
Branson turned to his subordinate with an expectant look.
“I heard two explosions,” Gomez said. “Almost at the same time, but I’m pretty sure they were separate.”
“A second blast, originating in the lady’s house, could explain the debris pattern,” the Captain said.
“Are you suggesting grandma had a little hobby of her own?” Branson said, snickering. “Maybe she called LAPD to shut down the competition?”
The firefighter ignored his sarcasm. “I’m just giving you a head’s up that the Fire Department’s report might raise some questions that can’t be answered by blaming a simple crank dealer. Keep that in mind while you do your investigation.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Branson said, walking away. He had a headache from breathing chemical fumes all afternoon, and it was irritating to think he might have to use his brain on this one.