The Room of White Fire Page 12

  Up a wide dirt road, atop a gentle hill, surrounded by row after row of grapevines, stood a boxy, standard-issue 1950s stucco house. A pickup truck and a minivan parked in front. A child’s bike resting against a porch beam. Two big oaks towered over the house for shade, a tire swing hanging from one of them.

  The wind whipped a dust devil across the road and the bright green grape leaves fluttered and swayed. Zinfandel, Vasquez had told me—certified organic. Pride in his voice. Not far from the house stood a large yellow barn. Its breezeway door was open and the top half of the paddock door had come unlatched. Opening and slamming shut in the wind.

  In Fallujah in 2004—in April, in fact, this same month—just after the Blackwater contractors were killed, dragged through the streets and hung off a bridge over the Euphrates, we Marines spent days trying to find those responsible. Tall order, considering we were the enemy and even the Shiites, who had suffered so long under Saddam, were beginning to hate us. At one point it was our job to go door-to-door, handing out leaflets, asking for Fallujahns to help us root out the guilty. It was a very strange time in the war, a turning point—they say now—during which “insurgents” from all around the Middle East began moving in to fight us. It was no longer the U.S. “liberating” Iraq from Saddam. It was the U.S. “occupying” a sovereign Muslim nation—which had become a deafening call for jihad.

  This was when we realized we were targets, not liberators. Going door-to-door with those pamphlets had suddenly struck me as both optimistic and groundless, an example of the very American idea that anything can be fixed by throwing enough hope and force at it. Late on that first day of pamphleteering in Fallujah we pounded on an already beaten wooden door in a poor section of the city, and something in the silence that came from behind that door told us that we were about to be greeted by something terrible.

  The family—mother, father, three young children—had been hacked to death. Recently. The bloodshed was indescribable and the pain in that house was like a living thing. Some strong men lost their stomachs there. I lost something else. Some portion of belief. Because I knew that this family had been murdered for helping us. Whether they actually had helped us, or not. The slaughter was their price for the Iraqi freedom we were dying to deliver.

  One month later, in May, we turned over operations to the newly formed Fallujah Brigade. We armed them to the teeth, then withdrew. America had lost twenty-seven servicemen in that first battle of Fallujah, and the four Blackwater men. The news said we had killed two hundred insurgents and five hundred civilians. By September, the Fallujah Brigade had surrendered all the weapons we’d given them to the insurgency. Now Fallujah was back in the news. Under siege again. As if the Blackwater civilians and the Marines and the slaughtered family and everyone else who lost their lives in that ancient, cultured city in the war of 2004 had died for—what? Nothing?

  Standing in the shadeport now, I had the same feeling I’d had outside that house in Fallujah. Maybe it was the slamming of the Dutch door. Or the wind in the grapes, or the way the tire swing turned on its rope. I’ve had that same eerie feeling several times since Fallujah and found nothing wrong at all. Other times, well . . . I waited a few minutes, ground out my smoke, and kicked some good rich Mendocino County grape-growing soil over it.

  Then I opened up Hall Pass 2, slipped my sidearm behind the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back. I own four handguns. This one was a Model 1911 .45 ACP with a standard single-stack magazine that holds eight rounds.

  Up the dirt road to the barn. Wind strong, crows wheeling over the grapes. The Dutch door banged and the weather vane on the roof kept shifting directions. I caught the top door mid-slam and latched it open. The sun was behind me, lighting the interior: two full-sized tractors, one with a backhoe and the other with an auger for setting line stakes. A mud-spattered Bobcat sat beside them like a dirty infant. Tools, implements, more tools.

  Inside smelled of gasoline and sulfur. I walked lightly, noting the pallets of supplies—bird netting, shade cloth, training stakes, end posts, crossarms, a drip irrigation line, connectors, and emitters. A workbench lined one wall, with a mounted table saw, a drill press, a grinder/polisher, and overhead fluorescent shop lights for the craftsman.

  Nothing seemed unusual or out of place to me until I came to the shiny puddle on the cement floor. The puddle sat in a well-used parking place, judging by the old oil and power-steering and transmission-fluid stains around it. Decades of faint black tire tracks lined up perfectly with the sliding breezeway doors—easy in and easy out. I squatted and touched my fingers to the liquid, which was neither oily nor coolant-green. Condensation from the air-conditioner compressor, I thought. Like any vehicle would leave. Left recently, however. Recently enough that it hadn’t evaporated. I watched through the open Dutch door while I called John Vazquez again. No answer, didn’t leave a message.

  Then to the house, past the oak trees and the truck tire turning slowly in the breeze. The pickup truck out front was older and had a ZIN LIVES! bumper sticker. The minivan was late-model and there was a child seat in the second row, behind the driver. The family must be home.

  The house blinds were drawn. No one answered my knock so I used the doorbell and waited. The knob turned freely and I pushed open the door. “John! John Vazquez!”

  Silence.

  No sound from the back of the house, no lights. Sunset was half an hour away but the western hills blocked most of the sunlight. The entry and living room stood half in darkness.

  I stepped in and called his name again. I saw the baby grand piano covered with framed pictures, and the wood-burning stove and sofas and the big TV. A ceiling fan whirred and the control chains swayed and twitched. I saw a door, ajar, and what looked like a half bath. On the far side of the living room was a small breakfast counter and three bar stools, and beyond that the kitchen and a dining room. On the dining room floor was a dark colored carpet and on the carpet, lying still, was a man. I dropped to one knee, gun raised in both hands, viewing the world beyond a sight notch and a vertical post. A gun in your hand changes who you are. Heart thumping fast, I was thoughtless but sensory. Movement beyond the man: a white cat outside, looking at me through a sliding glass door. Movement above the cat: the breeze in a pine tree. Oddities of the door glass: two round shatters around two small holes.

  I scrambled across the floor. The man was faceup—arms out and legs spread as if he’d landed mid-stride. A revolver lay a few inches away from his open right hand. His eyes were open to the ceiling. I pressed two fingers to his neck—no reaction, no pulse. Through the glass the cat looked at me, tail twitching. I reached over with my .45 and nudged the revolver away. He was trim-faced, dark haired, thirty-something. Dead eyes. I saw the family in Fallujah. And blood on the hardwood kitchen floor. I sat there on my haunches for a minute, low and partially covered by the wall of the breakfast bar, listening and thinking. Outside, the wind hissed in the oaks. The cat paced, head low, looking in. The glass surrounding the bullet holes looked like frost.

  Then a sound came, carried in by the wind it seemed—a faint vocal tone that at first sounded very much like the way I hear Justine’s voice now. A tone and syllables but no words. Next was a dull thump—something dropped, maybe—but barely audible over the breeze and my steady heartbeat. The wind whooshed through the trees, and when it stopped the house was quiet again.

  19

  I set my gun on the floor and worked the wallet from the man’s back pocket. His driver’s license was in a flap with a clear window: John A. Vazquez, brown and brown, 5’11”, 185 pounds. His DOB made him thirty-one. In the photo he was smiling.

  I heard the sound again. Slightly clearer now while the wind caught its breath. It sounded as if it were coming from somewhere closer—not from the outside at all, but from inside.

  I stood and looked down at John A. Vazquez. His T-shirt was light blue and he’d been shot several times. I saw entry and
exit wounds on his front torso, which could mean the gunman shot Vazquez coming and going. Or two gunmen. The thing I learned about death by gunshot—both with the San Diego Sheriff’s and in combat in Iraq—is the absolute chaos that gunfire causes, especially in tight quarters. The facts of ballistics are complicated by astonishing bullet speeds; physical variables, from bones to belt buckles; as well as human reactions that often border on the impossible. I ran my gaze along the kitchen cabinets and walls, looking for more holes. Saw none.

  I heard the thump again, something being dropped or struck. It seemed to come from under me. Gun up and finger on the trigger, I moved slowly and quietly down the hallway. Room to room. Cleared a home office, what looked like a spare bedroom, and a young boy’s room. I looked at the Transformers toys and plastic weapons and the bats and balls and plastic dinosaurs littering the floor. I wanted very badly not to see that boy, lying like his father was. I didn’t.

  The master bedroom was spacious. The bed was made and there were no bodies. I’d worked myself up about that: no more bodies.

  The voice came clear but faint. “John? John!”

  Again the thump, which now sounded like a hard object being pounded on a wall or door. It came from below me, and no more than twenty or thirty feet away. Into the master bath: toilet room, twin basins, and a Roman tub. Off the bath was a big spa room with a whirlpool, skylights, and cedar walls sprouting bromeliads and orchids. There was a door. Bromeliads and orchids on it, too. If not for the slender pull handle, I might not have seen it. The sauna, of course. I pulled open the door and found not a sauna but a landing, and a steep spiral staircase, leading down. Being in wine country, I understood.

  The voice was clearer now, and much closer. “John? Is that you? Please be you.”

  “I’m a friend of Clay Hickman.” Silence. “I’m coming down, Mrs. Vazquez. Don’t shoot me. I’m a friend of Clay Hickman.”

  “Is John there? Is John okay? There were men . . .”

  “With guns!” A boy’s voice. “And masks!”

  “Hush, Michael! Are you one of them?”

  “No. I’m here to help you.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because they might come back.”

  A beat. “They locked us in. But I have a twelve-gauge shotgun. John keeps it down here.”

  “I’m trying to help you, not get killed.”

  “Where’s John?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “There’s a spare key,” said Mrs. Vazquez. “In the medicine cabinet over the right sink. Bottom row, far left.”

  “I’ll be back with it.”

  “Where’s John? Why won’t you tell us? Are you one of those goddamned sons of bitches?”

  “With guns?”

  I got the key, then hustled down the steep, circular stairs to a cozy tasting room that smelled of cigar smoke. Wall cubbies stacked with bottles, a tasting bar with wine goblets racked overhead, wine barrels for tables, stools. It was cool and I could hear a built-in air purifier humming in the ceiling.

  Mrs. Vazquez and her son had been locked in what I assumed was the wine vault. Concrete-block wall, rustic oak door, a wrought-iron lock and pull handle.

  I stood to the side and explained to Mrs. Vazquez that I was about to crack open the door but wouldn’t let them out until I had the gun. “Got that? You have to stay cool.”

  “Okay.”

  Key in quietly. “I’m cracking the door. All I want to see is the barrel of that thing.”

  “Okay.”

  I unlocked the door, leaving the key in, then stood aside. Planted my foot as a brake. Pulled the door open six inches and waited. “The gun please.”

  With only moderately good guesswork, Mrs. Vazquez could have blasted me through the door. Instead, a shotgun barrel came through the crack. As soon as there was enough, I grabbed it and yanked hard. It came loose and the door swung open and a terrified woman backpedaled away from me, nearly knocking over a boy no more than ten years old. The boy got his balance and held up his fists, ready to fight.

  She tried to run past me. I caught her wrist, let her get past the door, then slammed it on the boy. She threw a wild punch with her free hand, so I set the shotgun against the cement wall and grabbed that wrist, too. I shook her firmly and got up in her face. “Listen to me. Listen!”

  She struggled, grunting, but I half-turned her and marched her across the tasting room to one of the barrel tables. I let go of her, stepped back, and raised my index finger to my lips. She watched me for a long moment, then slowly put aside her fight. “John’s dead,” I whispered, glancing at the vault in which her son waited silently. “He’s . . . in the kitchen. You probably don’t want the boy to see that.”

  “My god . . .”

  “Go up there if you need to, Mrs. Vazquez. No one says you have to. But remember, they could come back if they left something unfinished or have a change of mind. I’ll try to talk to your boy.”

  She flew up the spiral stairway and out of sight. I heard the spa door open and slam shut, then footsteps dimming fast. I didn’t know how to break the news to Michael that his father had been murdered. Opened the vault door and looked in. Cases to the ceiling, poor light. He sat on a step stool, chewing a thumbnail. Looked at me and stopped.

  “I’m Roland and I’m a good guy.”

  He blinked. “Mike.”

  “Do you box?”

  He took his time answering. “Dad’s teaching me. We watch on TV.”

  “I boxed in the Marines.”

  “Were you good?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Heavy or light heavy?”

  “Heavy. My best weight was two-oh-six.”

  “Muhammad beat Liston at two-oh-six. In the rematch. He was Cassius Clay then. Um, how’s my dad?”

  Through the loudest of storms only the heart can be heard. Its roar almost deafened me. “They killed him, Mike.”

  He looked down at his hands, nodding slowly. Tears jumped from his eyes. “That’s not true, is it?”

  “It’s true. I’d give anything to say it isn’t.”

  “Mom’s up there with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hear her.”

  So did I, a high, seemingly distant keening.

  “I don’t want to go up there.”

  “Don’t. Nothing will change, and you’ll see things you don’t need to see.”

  His face caved and shifted as emotions surged through him. “Did they shoot him?”

  “Yes.”

  Eyebrows raising, tears falling. “What did he do?”

  “Your father did nothing to them. This is about someone else.”

  “Then . . . why?”

  “I don’t know. But I will find out.”

  The tears poured down his cheeks and Michael brought his hands to his face and screamed. Loud. He ran for the door. I blocked him and held him back while he flailed at me with his fists, blubbering, his bloodshot gray eyes dilated with wild grief. He punched himself out in a brief fury and dropped to his knees, sobbing into his small fists.

  Helplessness is worse than fear. Fight and flight are easier than facing a suffering human being you can do almost nothing to help. Ask any combat medic or corpsman. So I stood there in all my tall heavyweight semper fi adult uselessness, looking down on this child, feeling the tears in my own eyes while Rage, Wrath & Fury writhed and bellowed away inside me.

  “I won’t keep you from going up there,” I said.

  He looked up at me. I knew I’d offered him a heart-splitting choice. It was too much to lay on a ten-year-old, and his decision would last a lifetime.

  “Blood?”

  “There’s a lot, Michael.”

  “What do I do?”

  “S
tay here and wait for your mother.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “You will never forget what you see.”

  “Go with me?”

  I offered my hand and he shook his head no, then stood and led the way.

  —

  We covered John Vazquez with his favorite Pendleton blanket. I figured the crime scene elves would have to live with it. Mrs. Vazquez—Laura—and Michael brought over dining room chairs and sat with him, sobbing, while I called the sheriffs.

  Next I sent a text to Sequoia, having jumped to a conclusion that I dreaded she would confirm:

  7:28 PM

  Did you see Vazz?

  7:29 PM

  No. Shots inside! We sped off!

  7:29 PM

  Where and when?

  7:30 PM

  Vazquez house. Less than an hour ago.

  7:31 PM

  Where are you now?

  7:32 PM

  We are ok.

  7:32 PM

  Need to see Clay tonight. No excuses, S!!!

  7:36 PM

  Clay says no. We are in this together now. I love him.

  My heart slumped.

  While we waited for the sheriffs to arrive, I was able to get Laura Vazquez and Michael to tell me what had happened. They’d come home from running errands in Ukiah and walked in on two men with guns. No car parked outside to warn them. The men wore black balaclavas. One big and in charge. The other short and stocky. John was on the couch, hands bound behind him with plastic ties, afraid and alive. The two men—dressed in casual clothes—took Laura and Michael at gunpoint to the wine cellar and locked them in. The men were calm and courteous.

  Half an hour later, both Laura and Michael heard car tires screeching near the house, then shouting from the direction of the kitchen or dining room, and thumping sounds, like a fight. Urgent voices. Tires screeching away. Then silence. When John didn’t come for them, they thought something terrible had happened to him and they were going to be killed. Approximately an hour later they heard my voice—faint but audible—calling out John’s name from above, probably through the front door.