Then She Vanished Page 5

  I called Lark, not expecting him to answer.

  “I’m in the county building,” he said. “You have twenty seconds.”

  “Another mail bomb?”

  “But stronger. Blew three fingers off the supervisor’s aide who had gone in on a Saturday morning to take care of a few loose ends before a vacation. She’s going to live.”

  “Who was it meant for?” I asked.

  “Supervisor Holder. The package originated at a FedEx franchise in Ramona. Time’s up, and mum’s the word, Roland. Over and out.”

  I looked down on America’s Finest City, at the emergency crews and law enforcers traipsing in and out of the county building. I glassed the cruise ship terminal and Tuna Harbor and Marina Parks and the Midway. The statue Unconditional Surrender. The convention center and the tall hotels. A sleek black helicopter angled down from the blue. My city, America’s finest or not. My turf now. My beat.

  I had met Justine in one of those hotels, at a tedious Christmas party that changed my life. That memory drifted across my mind’s eye like a movie clip as I lowered the binoculars and looked at the hotel and I saw her face as it had once been before I’d spoken a word to her. The memory clip played for a moment, pleasantly, but was soon overtaken by another, in which a little pink plane fell into a dark ocean and was swallowed up. That plane will still be crashing on the day I die.

  All we control is the volume knob. How much to remember? How much to forget?

  I glassed the county building again. The sleek black helo lifted back into the sky, its mission apparently complete. A white SUV rolled to a barricade gate and a cop looked inside and waved it through. I wondered at an America where people blew fingers off of other people they believed to be enemies because they held certain beliefs or opinions. An America where a thousand differing ends now justified the means. An America of open-carry hate.

  Which led me from the buzzing of my phone to the latest words from The Chaos Committee, streamed live on my Emergency Alert app:

  Dear California . . . only the People can overthrow this system . . . only the People, armed with chaos, fear, and terror can drive the power brokers, moneylenders, and the godless technocrats from our collective temple. THROW THEM FROM OUR TEMPLE! We will provide the protection of anarchy, fear, and terror for the restoration of God’s one true nature.

  Which made me wonder: Who’s going to throw out you?

  * * *

  Dalton called. It was barely noon and he sounded drunk.

  “She’s chained to a wall. Real shackles, like in a dungeon,” he slurred. “They sent me a self-destructing video. An ephemeral message. It only lasted maybe five seconds.”

  “When?”

  “Just now. She had on a bathrobe like a prairie girl would wear. Buttoned up and long. Looked out of it, Roland. Didn’t say anything. Just looked at me. My heart’s pounding out of my chest right now. Maybe somewhat a little drunk. I’m getting my gun and going out looking. All the places she might be.”

  “You stay put, friend. Where are you? I’m on my way.”

  I found him in a bar in Escondido, not far from Natalie’s dealership.

  Managed to get him home, where he poured vodka from the freezer into a large tumbler.

  “Sit with me awhile,” he said.

  “Where’s the gun?”

  “Up in the nightstand. Don’t worry. I’m in no shape to go hunting right now. You shoulda seen how sad she looked. So afraid. But the worst part was, she wasn’t resisting. Like she’d given up. Like I feel.”

  “You don’t give up until you talk to the cops. Hazzard’s on his way,” I said. “Your sheriff friend. I’ll make some coffee.”

  NINE

  In the Marine Corps I boxed and never lost a match. I was a tall, lanky heavyweight who could punch and get out of the way. No big talent, but good reach. I could keep cool and land punches unexpectedly. I had one professional fight after discharge from the corps, as the newly minted pro Roland “Rolling Thunder” Ford. Late in the fight and tiring, I was hit hard by a superior ring journeyman known as Darien “Demolition” Dixon. I saw my mouthpiece arching through the overhead lights. I saw the ref above me. I was helped to my stool, where I was able to look out at the mostly empty arena. And I could also see myself from above, sitting way down there on that stool, looking out. I was myself, then outside myself; me then not me. I’d seen the punch coming but didn’t have the reflex left to slip it. It landed on my forehead and left a scar that still itches and heats up and annoys me from time to time. Usually, at a time when something bad is about to happen. I never fought again. It wasn’t that I’d been knocked out, or even that I’d lost. Nothing to do with shame or pain. I quit the ring because I didn’t want things shifting around upstairs. More concisely: I never wanted to get hit that hard again. I understood that I’d lost this fight but I would find another.

  But throwing punches is still a violent pleasure, something I’m good at, and I do it most days in my barn.

  After talking to Lark that afternoon, I finished my sit-ups and the jump rope, breathing hard, stomach tight, and arms already heavy. I prowled around the drafty old space, shadowboxing with my back to the spring light that poured through the wide barn doors. Then I attacked the speed bag for three rounds of boxing action. Panted deeply on a barstool for a minute, listened to the pigeons cooing in the rafters before starting in on the heavy bag. I wear ankle weights and extra-heavy gloves.

  When that was over I stripped off the weights and gloves and ran for it. Across the barnyard and around the big pond behind the main house, then along a narrow trail leading into the rocky hills of the rancho. This property is called Rancho de los Robles—Ranch of the Oaks—founded in 1894 by immigrants from Germany and later sold to the Timmerman family, originally from Boston. The Timmermans owned several properties in the West, and occupied the rancho only briefly before leasing it out to a thoroughbred breeding consortium that ran it for nearly fifty years. When they moved their operation north into less expensive country, the Timmerman family sold off the bulk of the acreage but kept twenty acres, the structures, and the spring-fed pond. The rancho had fallen into general disrepair by the time Justine Timmerman and I received it as a wedding gift. Our little fixer-upper. I offered Rancho de los Robles back to the Timmermans after her death, but they would hear nothing of that idea: family was family.

  Leaving me suddenly rich, free to climb on the backs of the poor. I don’t feel rich. I make a modest amount of money. My tax bite is low. Electricity, water, and propane are high. The property is still in general disrepair. I rent out the casitas down by the pond for income and company. I donate generously to the Food Pantry, the Animal Sanctuary, the Land Conservancy, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of North County. Sometimes I walk through my large adobe house, rich in personal history but also in histories larger than my own, looking into the theatrically draped rooms and out the old sagging-glass windows. Always, somehow, I’m a guest here.

  I churned my way up a rise, braked on the steep decline, startled three coyotes way out in the meadow; they froze and watched me with sharp-eared caution. Looped around the far, unfenced perimeter of the property, down into an oak-shaded arroyo with a tiny creek winding through it. I thought of Dalton Strait clomping into my office, hiring me to find his wife. I pictured Natalie shackled to a wall. Thought of him telling me that Natalie’s car had been found abandoned but he was stuck in Sacto. Could I deal with it? I thought of Natalie Strait writing her SOS in lipstick on the back of her BMW seat. Then of her sister, Ash, clobbered by worry for her sister. Thought of Virgil Strait’s luminescent scorpions and his stubborn surrender of grandson Kirby as a person of interest in Natalie’s disappearance. And his granddaughter Tola, so assured within herself, so blithe an echo of Justine.

  I ran off-trail toward an outcropping of vertical sandstone boulders tall enough to make shade in the late afternoon. Here they stand in a
loose ring, used for various purposes by the native Luiseños, Spanish explorers, Franciscan padres, rustlers, bandits, prospectors, drifters, bikers, hippies, and migrants. There are metates—grinding spots—up on the sunny surfaces, and the earth between the boulders once held arrowheads, pottery shards, and the remains of native woven baskets. I can still find them if I dig deep enough, and in the right places. I found a Spanish doubloon once, very deep. And pieces of ironware and a small wooden cross misplaced by a priest or perhaps discarded by one of the doubtful natives. The sheltered space within the boulders is pocked and scarred by decades of fire rings and open-pit cooking stations, benches and tables made of slate slabs rounded by the elements and blackened by fire. The walls are littered with five-plus centuries of drawings and messages and inscrutable designs left by rock, stick, knife, and paint. A deer jumping over the sun, far up and hard to see, is my favorite.

  I picked my way through the boulders, around the fire pits and stone furnishings, then over the buried treasures to the other side. My ribs and legs ached from a spectacular beating I’d taken a few months earlier from some bad men in a bad place. I skidded down an embankment of loose rocks trying to be light on my feet—impossible—then strained up a sharp, short rise and picked up the trail that would lead me home.

  Home, at a distance: a silver pond with its cattailed banks and wooden dock, my adobe house on a hillock just beyond, and six casitas below, small and neat, perched along the narrow beach. A big palapa shaded the patio, barbecue, the picnic benches and the Ping-Pong table, ready for play. A scattering of mongrel chaise longues and outdoor chairs left where last needed for sun or shade. My beloved sagging old barn, from which I had recently emerged, and the flat green-dandelioned barnyard overhung with a tremendous coast live oak that a local padre had referred to in a diary from 1887.

  * * *

  That evening at sunset I sat under the palapa with my five current tenants, whom I refer to as the Irregulars. They are not named after Sherlock Holmes’s Irregulars, who are of course only fictional. Cocktail hour is our social time, an informal commitment at best. We are not exactly friends, but we have more than the standard landlord-tenant relationship.

  I began renting out the casitas not long after Justine died, which was five years ago last month. In those days I’d felt trapped by the old home in poor repair, numbed by the absence of my someone to love, and suddenly—for the first time in my life—unwilling to live alone. I was also open to the idea of collecting rent. My PI practice had begun to suffer from my own blank ineffectuality and I was casting about for dollars and distraction.

  So I ran a for-rent ad in the local paper and online, sensing good conversation and easy money. I pondered ground rules. Anticipating my arrivals, I wrote a brief constitution, had it professionally printed and housed in a weatherproof acrylic frame, and hung it on one of the palapa uprights not far from where we now sat:

  GOOD MANNERS AND PERSONAL HYGIENE

  NO VIOLENCE REAL OR IMPLIED

  NO DRUGS

  NO STEALING

  QUIET MIDNIGHT TO NOON

  RENT DUE FIRST OF MONTH

  NO EXCEPTIONS

  Here is the current starting lineup of Irregulars, in order of seniority:

  Burt Short, fiftysomething, indeterminate profession and background, a scratch golfer, casita five.

  My grandpa Dick Ford, eighties, retired advertising executive, casita one.

  My grandma Liz Ford, early seventies, retired teacher, casita six.

  Francisco “Frank” Cuellar, nineteen, Salvadoran immigrant, and his dog, Triunfo, casita two.

  Odile Sevigny, mid-twenties, psychic, casita four.

  I keep casita three unoccupied in case of emergency.

  Liz had just proudly poured a round of her “commercial grade” martinis, then set the glass pitcher back in its bowl of melting ice. Francisco’s glass she filled with bubbly water because he’s underage. Burt doesn’t drink.

  We lifted the glasses carefully.

  “So, you didn’t actually get in to see the blast scene,” said Grandpa Dick.

  “I didn’t even get near the building,” I said.

  “You’d think a good PI would find a way in.”

  “No need for the likes of me,” I said. “They have an entire federal bureau dedicated to things that blow up. And the FBI and local cops, and so on.”

  “How bad was the injury to the aide?” asked Liz.

  I told them again what Lark had told me. It’s funny how people like to hear grim details more than once.

  At seven we watched the news, as usual, with the complete text of The Chaos Committee’s second letter to the Union-Tribune writ large on the palapa-mounted big screen. Apparently the streamed diatribe I’d heard hours earlier had been an impromptu rant.

  Dear California,

  You have now seen a more powerful and directed sign. The collateral damage will decrease as we increase the payload to reach our intended targets more accurately. You must be asking if there is anything you can do to make us stop, and yes, there is: Join us. Assault your political leaders and all police on the job and in the streets. Bear arms against all oppressors and let your anger be your conscience. Destroy government property no matter how innocent it may seem to you, specifically city halls, county seats, courts, public parks, and public schools. Set afire houses of worship. Drop your cell phones and computers into the nearest body of water. Load up. Lash out. Be heard.

  The Chaos Committee

  “Pompous horseshit,” said Dick.

  “But scary when you think about it,” said Liz.

  “Everything’s scary when you think about it,” said Dick. “Just ask our nation’s military-security complex. Scary is what keeps them in business.”

  “This letter will make people feel empowered to commit violence,” said Liz.

  “There’s a puppet for every string,” said Burt.

  “Many guns here, like Salvador,” said Frank.

  “I shudder,” said Odile.

  Odile has been here for only three months. Her most striking feature is her height—same as mine—six-three. We see perfectly eye to eye. Slender, a kindly face, big brown eyes, and short, corn-silk-yellow hair. Her Psychic Matters parlor/office/studio is a converted downtown Craftsman home next to Little C’s Tattoo. As a psychic, a lot of Odile’s conversation springs from the emotional, premonitory tuning fork inside her. Sometimes she’ll carry on without a comma, halfway in—and halfway out—of what I think of as the real world.

  But now silence fell upon her as the commentators tried to parse the communiqué while the text remained on-screen.

  “You’ve been gone a lot lately, Roland,” said Dick. “What are you working on?”

  “You know the deal, Grandpa.”

  “Ah, come on. Just a clue.”

  I make it clear to all the Irregulars that prying into my work is forbidden. That doesn’t matter; they never stop trying. I wish I’d posted this important rule along with the others. Thought of adding it but that’s a lot of work. The Irregulars and I have other dustups as well: they uniformly point out that although I insist on collecting my rent on time (rule six), I don’t keep up on repairs. I admit to this, but point out that no Irregular I’ve ever hosted, with the exception of Burt Short, has ever paid reliably on time (rules six and seven).

  More important, the Irregulars—past and present—have stood behind me in some dire situations, personal and professional, and more than once. They have acted on my behalf. They have given sanctuary to the innocent, protected this property from armed invaders, helped to dispatch terrorists, and given me useful advice on certain love affairs. Collectively, they often reach a higher moral truth than I can manage alone.

  Burt in particular has helped me in tough professional moments. I literally owe him my life. We are more than friends and more than partners. There’s no
good noun for us. We are a gang of two, bound by loyalty, made stronger than we are as individuals.

  TEN

  After the cocktail and a fine paella with scampi dinner, I lumbered off to my upstairs home office, poured a bourbon, and called retired colonel Jim Young. I’d served under him in First Fallujah. After his thirty years in service, Jim had settled in Tucson to pursue the pleasures of bird-watching and photography. These are logical pursuits of a retired military mind, if you think about it—all about pursuit, acquiring your target, and forms of capture. After some catching up, I came to the reason for my call.

  “What can you tell me about Dalton Strait in Fallujah?”

  “A good enough marine,” said Jim. “But he carried himself more like an officer than an enlisted man, which he was. He served because his father served and his grandfather served, and of course nine-eleven. I think Dalton was eager to get on to more important and less bloody things. Then he lost the leg and he was on his way home. He’s your state assemblyman now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. He’s up for reelection in November.”

  “Are you looking for anything in particular, Mr. PI?”

  “Just his general character, Jim. I never ran across him in Fallujah. Had my own beat.”

  “Jolan district, if I remember right,” said Young.

  The Jolan. My cradle. Twisting warrens and alleys, homes and shops all huddled close, resentment thick as the smoky air. Images rose to my mind’s eye, rarely summoned but always ready. I thought of the Blackwater men. Bodies on the bridge. I thought of my Five.