The Triggerman Dance Read online

John was quiet for a while.

  "Sir, after what she did to Pat, and you, why talk to her?"

  "Justice, John. Simple justice."

  Holt took the Hughes through a sudden shower of meteors falling all around him. The eyes again, he thought: all stars are falling, all lights liquid, all moons melting. He could see the lights of Liberty Ridge below and to the south. They were his destination, his immediate goal. But so far as his larger desires went, Holt felt for the first: time in many months that he could accomplish them. He felt that the whole tragic circle of his life was about to complete itself become whole. And he now believed that soon, very soon, justice would be done and he could rest.

  CHAPTER 32

  John's dogs rumbled toward him as he walked across the meadow in the generous white moonlight of two a.m. A cool breeze puffed in from the ocean and rippled the lake. He heard the barking of Boomer, Bonnie and Belle, then the heavy pounding of their feet on the ground. Boomer crashed into him as he always did, then jumped up and put his rough paws against John's stomach. He stood there and rubbed the big Labrador’s ear with one hand and fingered the videotape in his coat pocket with the other.

  He let the dogs into the cottage with him. They sniffed around the dining table legs, then looked guiltily at him, not used to the privilege of being inside.

  Looking down at the computer screen, he keyed up his mailbox messages and read:

  PLAY IT, CUTIE-PIE . PURE OSCAR MATERIAL .

  John looked out the picture window at the inhospitable silhouette of Lane Fargo's darkened packing plant of a home. He gazed toward Laura and Thurmond Messinger's church, noting the faint light in the bell tower. In the Big House he saw lights on the second floor—Holt's rooms, Valerie's, Carolyn's? Who's leading me to Holt, he wondered. Which of you would betray him? Or is this only a test?

  He went into the living area and slipped the tape from his pocket into the video player. He hit rewind but it was already rewound. All three dogs lined up, sat, and watched him.

  He pushed the play button and waited.

  The screen filled with gray light, then static, then an image— taken from the observation deck of the Big House—of the hillsides and the Pacific being pelted by a steady, heavy rain. The camera panned to record views in all four directions. There was no sound at all, just a mute storm.

  Then the camera simply held, facing north, to capture the acres of orange grove beneath the gray and troubled sky. John couldn't tell if it was morning or evening or sometime in between. The orange trees shivered in the wind and the rain heaved down in slanting torrents. It turned the irrigation ditches into flat brown ponds with surfaces that popped and roiled. It looks like March, he thought, the month of all the rain, the month Rebecca died.

  Three minutes. Five.

  John looked at his watch: 2:12 a.m.

  Seven minutes, then eight. A storm that never ends, he thought. He reached down to press the fast forward when the image shifted from the dripping Valencias to a long shot of a building. He took his finger off the button and felt a surge of blood hit his eardrums. The Journal.

  The camera held on the lobby as a woman wrapped in a raincoat makes her way through the doors. She wears a hat cinched down over her blond hair. She hesitates at the edge of the entryway overhang and looks skyward.

  Rebecca, John thought. Rebecca the beautiful. Rebecca the unmistakable. Rebecca.

  The rain has lessened to a constant drizzle and she jogs out into the asphalt. She chooses a path through the cars, then, holding the hat onto her head with her left hand she accelerates toward the camera. She looks far away. But the camera follows her through the cars, then it swings ahead and zooms in on a new Lincoln Town Car—white. It almost fills the screen. It is parked beside a brick planter that separates the parking slots from the driveway. The camera jiggles slightly, then stops, as if—John thought—the operator has just tightened a tripod nut. A few seconds later Rebecca enters the picture again, stops at the driver's side door of the Town Car, extends her hand toward the door lock and inserts a key. Her back is to the camera. The picture jumps slightly. Rebecca's arms raised as her body pushes against the car. It looks as if someone has yanked her forward with a hidden wire. Then she rolls away to her left and takes two small, feminine, dance-like steps toward the camera, which jumps again and Rebecca folds to the ground. The camera holds the image for five seconds. There is a red blotch on the Town Car window, chest high. There is no sound. Then the picture fades to black and the black abruptly gives way to gray static.

  John simply stood in place, unmoving, and stared at the silent gray screen. He felt the revulsion gathering in his stomach and a frantic anger knotting up in his heart. He imagined setting fire to the cottage, loading his dogs into his truck, driving over to the Big House and lighting it on fire too, shooting Holt in the head when he ran out, then speeding away forever. For a moment he felt like he had entered Hell and was unsure if he would ever get back out. How do you forget what is seen, erase a memory of the real?

  Drawn to the horror, feeling that he owed at least this much to Rebecca, he watched the tape again. Every moment of it removed something measurable from his soul.

  John loped along in the moonlight with his dogs ahead of him, Re-bec-ca-pause, Re-bec-ca-pause, along the lakeshore where he had first seen Vann and Carolyn Holt many years ago, around the western edge of the water and into the scrub hills of Liberty Ridge. He looked down on the island. He imagined being eleven again and hiding there with Carlos in the cave with the spring bubbling up from the rocks and wondered why he had spent a lifetime trying to outrun the snapping jaws of loss.

  What he had just seen seemed to him the ultimate profanity; Rebecca's once vibrant body reduced to a lump of lifeless flesh in the rain. But the tape in his pocket was a prize beyond anything Joshua could have dreamed.

  He made the clearing, sat on the log and felt his heart thumping in his temples. The dogs sprawled around him. He looked at the place where Snakey had died. The breeze rattled the stiff leaves of the oak tree. What had they done with his body? It all seemed such a waste.

  I am here to atone and begin again, he thought.

  I am here to put things right.

  I am here, like Holt, to do justice.

  And I won't leave without his head on a platter.

  John had never heard Joshua Weinstein so excited. Not that the special agent was giddy, no. But his voiced dropped a register when he asked John again about the video tape, the message on the computer, the interdiction mission in Little Saigon, and most of all, when he asked John to tell him again exactly what the tape showed.

  John told him. He told him again. The images slugged away at him until he couldn't describe them anymore.

  "Fuckin' enough, Joshua!" John listened to the hush on the other end of the line. "Give me something back, goddamnit. What about the notes on Baum? Are they real or not?"

  "Affirmative. Documents confirmed it against samples from Wayfarer's Bureau days. It's his writing."

  "And the picture of Baum's house?"

  "Unretouched. Unaltered. Genuine. His fingerprints on both of them."

  "Then he isn't testing me. So who's setting him up for us? Who knows what I'm doing here?"

  "The Messingers might be next in line to run Liberty Ops if Holt is up the river. They might have intuited your true mission and decided to give him a push."

  "Might doesn't get me very goddamned far, Joshua."

  "It's a privately held company. We don't know what the bylaws are, if there even are any. It's Holt's show. We can only speculate."

  "What about Fargo?"

  "He's loyal as a dog."

  "So was Cassius. And he's the one who checked me out. He was close, Joshua. He traced us to Olie's together, but couldn't get the proof. He knows you don't hunt quail with a German shepherd. He knows I'm not good with a handgun because we shot together out there. He smells Rebecca all over me. Snakey, too. What if he found more than he's telling Holt?"

  "If
he did, then he'd blow you wide open. Why betray his master? It doesn't make sense. What's in it for Fargo? Do you think he really likes you?"

  "He hates me."

  "Then he's not going to feed you evidence to hang his own boss! Jesus, John. Try this: he's not being set up by a traitor, but by a conscience. Someone who knows what he did and hopes you can do something with the evidence. Someone who suspects not that you're a plant, but a man with a strong sense of right and wrong. Someone who knows everyone else is loyal to Holt. Someone who's loyal to Holt too, but not quite enough to let him get away with murdering an innocent young woman."

  "Who?"

  "His wife. His wife's nurse. His daughter. Thurmond or Laura Messinger. One of the Holt Men who works closely with him. Holt himself. Maybe he's broken down, needs to confess."

  John tried to think through the possibilities, but they all sounded wrong. "Joshua, you don't have a clue about what's going on out here. Do you?"

  "John, I don't give a damn what's going on out there. We've got five days. We're being fed evidence and I'm going to take it. If it comes from an unexpected source, fine. I'll use any bit of rope I need. When Holt's in lockup we'll sort through the program and identify the players. But as long as it's going like this, then in the name of God in heaven let's burn his sorry carcass while we can!"

  John listened to Weinstein's clear baritone. He imagined his Adam's apple doing its little jig; he imagined Joshua's black eyes and pale skin and the unshakable focus of his vengeance. And John realized for the first time that he was utterly expendable here, only a tool for Joshua. He was a conduit, a piece of pipe. And no amount of danger or threat would make Joshua waver in his crusade to ruin Vann Holt. What an odd feeling, he thought, to realize you are only valued for what you can do. I don't care what's going on out there. What a simpleton he had been.

  He said nothing for a long moment. Instead he felt the chill of the wind cutting through his coat, all the way to his bones, and the loneliness of his body here on Liberty Ridge. He felt the solitary nakedness that was his. He felt the border between his own skin and the world outside it, and knew that he could only trust what was within. He shivered and felt cold.

  "The tape's in the box, Joshua."

  "Very good, Owl. We can hope it's good enough for a warrant, but that's up for a judge to decide. Now, has he asked you to meet with Baum?"

  "He made it official tonight. I'm supposed set up a meeting somewhere, then bring her back to Liberty Ridge. So they can ... talk."

  Joshua was silent. His voice was even lower now, quieter "It is happening, Dear Owl. Good things are happening for us. is coming together. When? When does he want her?"

  "As soon as possible."

  "The gods are smiling. Call her this morning at 8:30. You find her reluctant to meet, but not suspicious of you. She'll insist that Sunday noon is the soonest, and best she can do."

  "You've been busy."

  "Always. Once Wayfarer agrees to a time, the clock star ticking. I'll need to know what he's planning, where on the Ridge he might take her, anything you can find out. Sundays, the Liberty Ops training school is down. It's quiet, not a lot of Holt Men around."

  "And you'll make the arrest while I'm out retrieving her?"

  "Ideally. Now, has Holt frisked you since the first day?"

  "Holt didn't. Fargo did."

  "Well, has Fargo?"

  "No."

  "Have your things been disturbed?"

  "I told you he took my wallet, shotgun and ammo."

  "Have your things been disturbed since?"

  "I don't think so."

  Josh went quiet again. John heard the wind in the fallen oak leaves, the scratch of needles in darkness.

  "Owl, we're down to five days. This, as ordered from mid level deities you don't need to know about. Sunday will be the third of those five—our last best window. We've played well, but our time is running out. I want you to do something different, want you to keep your phone with you from now on. Hide it in the cottage. When you've set up the meeting with Baum, an Holt has agreed, call me as soon as it's safe to do so."

  "Fargo can check the cottage any time he wants."

  "It's time to take acceptable risks."

  "You've got the whole sad thing on tape, Joshua. Holt's firished."

  "Not yet, he isn't. We'll need a warrant for his arrest. Judges frown on information obtained from covert, untrained, unsworn sources."

  "I thought you trained me."

  "Don't get precious on me, now. It's a little late in the game for that. We're here to flay Wayfarer alive and let the vultures eat his guts. Aren't we?"

  "I've got to be alive to enjoy it."

  "I'll keep you alive, Owl. You're indispensable to me. You're my secret agenda. My hidden reason. My invisible passion. Just like you were, to—"

  John hung up, slipped the phone into his coat pocket where the videotape of Rebecca had been, and set his box of toys back into the ground.

  CHAPTER 33

  John rows toward Liberty Island, watching the shore in front of his cottage graduate into the distance. The dogs prowl the receding beach, ordered to stay and yelping with frustration. Boomer finally dives into the lake and swims a few yards before turning around and paddling back to shore where he shakes himself out in a nose-to-tailtip shiver, then starts barking again. It is morning of the next day and John's heart is sick with memory.

  But his senses are attuned to Valerie. She sits astern in the little rowboat, side-saddle on the bench so she can look forward at John, backward to the shore, or to her right, where the western parcels of Liberty Ridge stretch over the hills toward the sea. The picnic basket sits at her feet. She wears a big black straw hat that sweeps up in front to form a white rose-studded wave that tapers dramatically back to a flow of white ribbon and a spray of red gladiola that dangle over the back of the rim. Her dress is loose and sleeveless, white, with lace around the neck and a wide shiny black belt. John suspects it is out-of-date. He suspects she wears sleeveless dresses to complement her smooth brown arms. Beneath the hat, her hair is free and falls over her shoulders. She is barefoot and her ankles cross as she turns and looks back at the dogs. To John she is a riddle of the known and the unknowable, familiar as a sister but exotic as an orchid.

  "Where's your six-gun?"

  "Hanging on my bed post. Like my dress?"

  "It's nice."

  "It's the one my mother wore the day you saw her. It took a while, but I found it."

  "Why would she keep it?"

  "She's always been sentimental about things she wore when she was happy. Has closets full of clothes. A couple of months ago she cut her wedding dress up the back with pinking shears and put it on for dinner. Anyway, I thought you might like to see this one again."

  "It's becoming."

  The blush again. The smile. "It's becoming difficult to take my eyes off of you, John Menden."

  "Then it's good I'm the one rowing. What's for breakfast?"

  "A surprise."

  "Do you use the computer in your room much?"

  She looks at him quizzically, her brown eyes seeming to take in, then release him. "Not since I graduated. I talk to Dad or the Ops guys, if I'm doing work for him. I did my vet school applications on it. Why?"

  "I've been getting some odd mail. Little taunts and jabs. Things to let me know I'm being watched. No sender, of course."

  "Dad's a prankster, believe it or not."

  "Doesn't sound like him."

  "Lane would pester you because that's his job and his character. Could be Snakey or Partch—one of Lane's goons. Snakey's supposed to be MIA but I don't believe it."

  "What about Sexton?"

  "Well, he's linked up. Works from home, mostly. It's not me, if that's what you're asking."

  John feels the sand sliding up under the hull, then the abrupt stop. The stern drifts as he climbs out, pulls the rowboat in a little farther and helps Valerie unload the basket, then herself. With one hand she bunche
s her dress up over her knees and with the other she reaches to John. He leads her through the ankle-deep water to the beach.

  "Let's walk around the island," she says. "Work up an appetite. Find a good spot to eat.

  "She hangs onto his hand—and he hangs onto hers—as they set out around this inner shore. Emerging from the shade of the giant Norfolk Island pine, John feels the thin warm sunlight on his back and smells the rare Orange County aroma of sagebrush and fresh water. John has the basket. The rim of Valerie's hat touches John's neck when they get close, so she takes it off an carries it. She walks closer to him and he can feel the heat and softness of her bare arm as it presses against his own.