Swift Vengeance Page 2

  “And have you been really busy—privately investigating?”

  “Just one open case right now,” I said.

  “Something exciting?”

  “Oxley,” I said, pointing to the poster that was stapled to one of the thick palm trunks that support the palapa. The poster featured a color photo of a hefty gray-striped cat. He looked peaceful. The photo was cropped so the cat seemed to sprawl in the middle of the flyer, as if lying on a cushion. LOST CAT was the headline. The surrounding text explained that Oxley was missing from his Fallbrook home as of a week ago, that he was much loved, and that his owner—Tammy Bellamy—was heartbroken. Oxley had “hypnotic green eyes” and weighed twenty-two pounds. Tammy had given me a stack of the posters, all professionally printed on very heavy and expensive card-stock, to aid my search and post on my travels. Cats could go far, she’d explained. By the time I got my wanted posters, there were already scores of them put up in and around Fallbrook—on power poles, roadside oak trees, stop signs and traffic light stanchions, storefronts, shop windows, walls and fences. I’d stapled this one to the palapa so the Irregulars could keep their eyes out.

  “Tammy is elderly,” I said. “And she can’t actually pay me. Except in homemade jam.”

  “I’ll bet the coyotes would help her find that cat,” said Lindsey.

  I nodded, fearing that the cat had already been killed and eaten. Fallbrook was brimming with coyotes. If they hadn’t gotten him, then a car probably had. On the other hand, cats are great survivors, so maybe Oxley had found shelter in one of our many avocado or citrus groves, or on some relatively secure, fenced property. Or maybe someone had taken him in and knew nothing of Tammy Bellamy’s emotional plea for help.

  I looked at Lindsey’s black Mustang, parked up by the main house. The Las Vegas sun had not been kind to it. It still had the child’s seat in back. When I’d first heard of Lindsey’s child-custody quest, the safety seat had seemed to me more a symbol of a goal than a necessity. But she was closer to that goal now, apparently. I refolded the letter, carefully placed it in its envelope, and set it on the table.

  “Lindsey, has anything unusual happened to you lately? Unsolicited visits? Weird phone calls or hang-ups? Anything out of pattern in the people you work or socialize with? Neighbors, even.”

  She shook her head, but indecisively. So maybe I’d brushed up against something. To me, Lindsey had never been a full-disclosure person. There was always more, something else, another layer.

  “Anything, Lindsey,” I said. “Even the great PI Roland Ford needs help against a stalker-terrorist with beheading on his mind.”

  She set her elbows on the rough old table, raised and joined her fingers, nodded. She hadn’t needed to think too hard. “Well.”

  2

  “TWO AND A HALF weeks ago I went out with a guy,” Lindsey said. “First time. I’d met him a little over a year ago, through work. A widower, like you. He was the father of one of my new fall students. Nice guy, and nice looking. Almost formal, but just enough off-center to make me smile. Well groomed and well off. Gave me his full attention. He reminded me of someone, but I didn’t know who. I started getting this funny feeling when we were in the same room. I liked it. He’s a landscape architect. Designs golf courses all over the world. Shows horses for fun.”

  “The downside?”

  She watched me through her dark glasses.

  “He’s Saudi by birth,” said Lindsey. “His parents both came here on student visas in ’78. Married very young. Rasha Samara. Born in Riyadh after they had graduated and returned home. He went to Saudi schools until he was six, then came here with his parents. Became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His extended family lives in Saudi Arabia. Of course.”

  I thought about that.

  “Roland, I spent almost a year learning how to kill violent jihadists in the Middle East, and another year and a half doing it. So when I met this guy, I didn’t know if it was morally desirable—or even possible—for me to have any kind of relationship with him. Muslims aren’t Christians and vice versa. But I also know that people of those two faiths can get along fine. On account of something that happened to me and I experienced firsthand.”

  She took off her sunglasses again and leveled her chocolate-brown eyes on me. “I’ve never told you this, but my mother is an Indian Muslim. Shia. Dad’s a Methodist. They’ve been married for thirty-eight years and they’ve never said an unkind word to each other in my presence. Silences, yes. They met at Rice in Houston. Her English was very English from school in Delhi, but she took the time to learn to say ‘y’all’ perfectly. Practiced it. She became the most Texan Indian you can imagine. Loves her Cowboys. Loves her Longhorns. Loves her dancing and her turquoise and her country music. Loves Dad and his Fords. Still quietly observes the Muslim holy days, too, and she prays and believes and fasts. Observant but not devout. Hasn’t worn a headscarf since the day she was engaged, except to mosque a few times a year. Used to tell me Christmas was more fun than Ramadan but Ramadan left her feeling closer to God. So with Rasha I thought, Okay. You can look back at him. I saw some of Mom in there. And I thought he might be solid, Roland. So when he asked me if I would like to ride horses I said yes.”

  I’d always been taken by Lindsey’s dark eyes and lustrous hair, her striking facial structure. “So that’s where you got your good looks.”

  “Mom’s an Indian goddess with a Texas drawl.”

  “I’d say I’m happy for you meeting Rasha Samara, Lindsey, but I get the feeling there’s more to this story.”

  “Oh yeah. Isn’t there always? He lives outside of Las Vegas, a swanky development called Latigo. Big custom houses, pools and clubhouse, tennis courts, golf course, and landing strip. Stables and livery. And of course equestrian trails so you can ride just about anywhere you want. Guys in quads with trash cans and shovels to keep up with the horse poop. You can take the trails right out to the foothills. He’s got Arabians, of course. Mares. Very nimble. I grew up on larger mounts, so I wasn’t comfortable at first. Got over that pretty quick. We brought them to a gallop, then gave them a long cool-down. Watered them, then sat on red rocks and had salami and cheese and wine and watched the sunset. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We talked like you do when you don’t know the person but you like them—respectfully and not too deep because you don’t know what’s there. He seemed honest and gracious and he was very much interested in me and the world around him. Not just himself. And that was about it. The Monday after the holiday he came by my school after class and asked me out again. Another ride. I declined. Two days later I got a nice thank-you card from him, with a pen-and-ink sketch on the front that he’d done. Some nice words inside.”

  “Why no second date?”

  A pause from Lindsey. Then, “I’d thought about him a lot. But I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted to take things any further. That I would call him when I was ready. I didn’t tell him this, but I liked him and thought that I could go further with him. That thrilled me. Scared me. And I had John to think of, and my petition before the court, and what complications might ensue if Rasha became party to that. He was hurt but . . . still gracious.”

  Lindsey sighed and worked her sunglasses back on. “But then I was thinking about seeing him again. I turned that idea over and over. Changed my mind every hour or so. Felt like such a schoolgirl.”

  She brought her purse close and pulled out a small square envelope addressed to her PO Box in Las Vegas. Postmarked Las Vegas, Monday, November 26. It was heavy for its size, and I had to worry the card out a little at a time. When I finally righted it I looked down at a skilled ink drawing of two horses cantering along together, heads high, proud. No ground, no background. Sky horses. Arabians, with their short backs and wedge-shaped heads. They were done in just a few lines and would have seemed casual and dashed off if not for the attitudes that the two animals displayed.

  “His thank-you
card,” she said.

  Dear Lindsey Rakes,

  Thank you so much for your time. I’ve never seen a more beautiful desert sunset and I hope you enjoyed those moments of splendor as much as I. The horses, of course, are insisting that they be taken out again. I understand your reluctance to consider a relationship. I have similar doubts. Not about you, in any way. But about myself. May God bless you in your life.

  Sincerely,

  Rasha

  The note looked computer-printed, a common Roman font, ten-point, maybe.

  But Rasha was signed by hand and looked a lot like the writing in the death threat. It jumped at me. Not quite the same straight up-and-down posture, but close. Graceful, full-bodied letters. Similar calligraphic flourishes—the varying thickness of line, the graceful lead-ins and tails. I unfolded the death threat and held the thank-you card beside it. Lined up Rasha and Rakes. A similar marriage of English and Arabic.

  Lindsey was watching me closely. “Ten days later, when I got the threat and compared the signatures, I completely freaked out.”

  “This makes me unhappy,” I said.

  “I have to tell you something else. When Rasha and I sat up on the big red rocks and had our wine and cheese, he cut that cheese with a sharp-looking folding knife. Very deftly. Then he served the wine in two silver goblets with calligraphic engraving on them. They were in his saddlebag with the food and wine, wrapped in white napkins. They looked old. Maybe passed down through his family. Nice. When I got the threat letter, the writing on those goblets rushed into my mind, and the way he used the knife. And rushed in again when I got this note from Rasha. Roland, I get people. I know right from wrong and good from evil. So if Rasha wrote that threat, I’m the most wrong-assed I’ve ever been about anybody in my life. But still . . .”

  I let my vision track back and forth between the two R’s. Let the letters blur, then squinted them back into focus. Subtle differences, but my first and persistent reaction was: same writer.

  “Have you communicated with him since you got the threat?”

  “Hell no. Where are you going to start, Roland?”

  “Where you probably should have.”

  “You know a local FBI agent?” she asked.

  “We worked the federal counterterror task force together. Before I went private.”

  San Diego FBI special agent Joan Taucher would curse me—a former San Diego County sheriff’s deputy who should definitely know better—for contaminating the letter and the thank-you card. But Lindsey had beaten me to most of it. The contamination, that is.

  More important, Special Agent Taucher would want to interview Lindsey. Lindsey could refuse, up to a point. That’s why she’d come to me. And Taucher would briefly tolerate me—as a conduit. But I could run interference between Lindsey and the feds for only so long, and I’d never known Joan Taucher to show much patience.

  If I had won any leverage at all with Joan Taucher, it was knowing that she was a woman possessed.

  And that Lindsey might be holding a piece of what possessed her.

  “Brandon Goff know about Rasha?”

  “No. Roland, am I just one giant fuckup?”

  “You’re not giant at all.”

  She set her hands over mine and looked out at the spangled pond.

  3

  SPECIAL AGENT JOAN TAUCHER had an athlete’s build, lithe but solid. Short white hair, bangs to her eyebrows. Some years ago, I’d seen an article and pictures of her in an amateur MMA fight. She looked lean, muscle-plated, and lethal. A winning record. She’d filled out some since then. Whether wearing her fighting garb or a trim gray suit like she did today, her facial expression remained constant: humorless and unconvinced.

  Her shake was very firm and her hand notably cold, as I remembered. “Nice to see you again, Joan.”

  “Of course it isn’t. That was quite a shootout on your property up in Fallbrook last year. Helicopters and escaped mental patients and everything.”

  “One helicopter and one patient,” I said.

  “Made you famous again for another day or two. You do have a way of getting into the news.”

  More than I like. A long story, that—the helicopter and who was flying it and why—and Taucher of course knew most of it. What she didn’t know was how close her own federal government had come to killing innocent people in my very home. No one, except those of us who were there that day, really knows that ugly truth. Sometimes the truth has to step aside so life can go barreling along.

  “Do you miss the MMA fighting?” I asked.

  “No. Even then I was too old for that nonsense. It was supposed to be fun, anyway. You boxed, right?”

  “One pro fight a long time ago.”

  “One. Well.”

  “It taught me the value of survival.” I’ll always remember looking up at that ref and those lights and realizing I could beat the count, get up and keep fighting, and maybe find a way to win. Or I could stay where I was and live to fight another day.

  She drummed her fingertips on her desktop. It was glass-covered and pin-neat. Taucher had light brown eyes and went heavy on the makeup. Always heavy on the makeup, I remembered. Just a hint of anger in those eyes now. “So what’s this about a death threat against someone you know?”

  “These are copies,” I said, setting the handwritten threat and the typewritten envelope on her desk. I’d made them in my office just two hours earlier, along with copies of the thank-you card and envelope. I’d also printed out a four-year-old article and picture of Rasha Samara from the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

  Taucher’s Joint Terrorism Task Force office was a sixth-floor corner in an older downtown building, formerly a bank. Good views west and south—the Embarcadero, cruise ships at dock, the bow of the USS Midway jutting into the harbor from behind a row of restaurants.

  While she studied the photocopied death threat, I studied her office walls. Every single square inch had a face on it. Floor to ceiling, left to right. Part of the ceiling, too. I figured that was where the new ones went. I could barely spot the doorknob and light switches. The pictures were mostly of Middle Eastern men and a few women, most of them dark, young, and unsmiling. Most in Western clothing, many in varying Middle Eastern attire—Arabian, Persian, Turk. Scores of them. A clear push-pin positioned top-center in each. Curled at the edges. Some wallet-sized, some larger. Some were police booking mugs. Others taken inside homes. Some had been shot outside, with law enforcement vehicles in the backgrounds. Most were stills extracted from video, grainy and vague. Not just scores of them, I thought, turning around to see the back side of Taucher’s office door plastered with more. Hundreds.

  “Who is Lieutenant Lindsey Rakes and how did you get this?”

  “She’s a friend and former tenant. She lives in Las Vegas now. She overnighted it to me.”

  A skeptical consideration. Taucher had no doubt noted the postmark, estimated the day of arrival, and come up with barely enough time for an overnight delivery to me. I skeptically considered her in return.

  “Is Rakes law enforcement?” she asked.

  “Former lieutenant, U.S. Air Force. She flew drone missions out of Creech. She operated the sensors.” Joan Taucher’s eyes locked on to mine as if acquiring a target. I told her what years Lindsey had flown, and what little I knew about her missions.

  She sat back and stared at me for a long beat. “That makes this threat more than just interesting.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “I take it very seriously,” she said. “Even if it runs contrary to the current terror model. No group affiliation. No political message—jihadi or other. In fact, the opposite—he says personal. The letter claims no credit and is not intended for the public. It wasn’t Tweeted, Facebooked, Snapped, or posted on any social or media network I watch—and I watch them like a hawk. Instead, this threat was sent discreetly to its targ
et. Privately. Almost intimately. Islamic State has threatened specific former U.S. military personnel with death. Of course they have. However, this letter was composed by an English speaker—very rare for foreign terrorists. And it was handwritten by someone with knowledge of Arabic-style calligraphy—a relatively unusual skill in the U.S. But if you put those last two elements together, you come up with Caliphornia. As in Californian. As in caliphate. As in terror. As in our worst nightmare—homegrown actors with outside sponsors. We call them homegrown violent extremists, HVEs.”

  “He says vengeance.”

  “Right,” said Taucher. “So what did she do to this guy?”

  I liked the way Joan Taucher’s mind was working. She was an original member of the San Diego FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. That meant approximately six federal, six state, and thirty-seven local bureaus, departments, agencies, patrols, authorities, commissions, centers, and offices dedicated to counterterrorism in San Diego. Depending on how you count. And, depending on who you talk to, the combined might of the JTTF is either a security dream team or another expensive, inefficient, self-perpetuating federal bureaucracy. Its finest moments—the JTTF is quick to note—are ones that we citizens never hear about. Which of course makes citizens like me wonder how many and how fine these moments really are.

  I’d first met Joan in 2010, when I was an SD sheriff’s deputy assigned to the—get this—Law Enforcement Coordination Center (LECC), which, in tandem with the sheriff’s Regional Terrorism Threat Assessment Center (RTTAC), comprises the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “Fusion Center,” which is “co-located” with the FBI/JTTF, though subservient to it. It’s complicated only if you try to figure out who does what. Or if you wonder how long it must take for a nice fat piece of intel to get from one end of this acronym-gorged python to the other.

  Joan and I had worked as part of that team but never closely. My job was to go into the mosques and Muslim centers, poking around for sympathetic eyes and ears. I soon learned that my JTTF supervisor, Taucher, had been a freshman FBI agent here in 2001, when the towers fell. And though that event had left its scar on all Americans, it had—according to law enforcement rumor and legend—cut with particular depth into yearling agent Joan Taucher. Stories and gossip flew, not all of them kind.