If Angels Fall

SEVENTY-FIVE

George Hay sat at the counter of Art’s Diner in Inverness, eating a clubhouse sandwich.The front page of The San Francisco Star was folded precisely beside hisplate and he read while he chewed.

He was engrossed in the multiple kidnapping case. Itwas fantastic. Has to be a ball-breaker for the people on it, he figured,reaching for a French fry. All that glory. Sure. And all that career-bustingpolitical bullshit, too. He took a hit of coffee. Admit it though, you miss theaction, he told himself. Cases like that gave you a helluva rush. Yeah, hemissed it, like he missed not being in pain.

Damn, he winced, putting his cup down to massage hisleg.

Two years back, a carjacker’s bullet had shattered hisright thigh, leaving him with a partial pension, a bastard’s attitude, and apermanent limp after fifteen years with the San Jose Police Department. Asuccession of rent-a-cop security jobs and lost weekends sunk his marriage. Tohell with it. Allana was not the stand-by-your-man type; she was thekick-you-in-the-teeth type. George still had trouble believing that rightbefore she walked out on him he was actually contemplating knocking off anarmored car for her, thinking the money would keep them together. He shook hishead. That was when a buddy got him work as a U.S. Park Ranger in Point Reyes,the national seashore park, just north of San Francisco.

He spent his first months swallowing what bits ofpride he had left and going through the motions of his job. Gradually, heburied the things that made him an asshole and came to appreciate thetherapeutic qualities of the park. He was even good natured about the ribbinghe got from old police friends. “Collar any perps with pic-a-nic baskets,George?” He found a postcard-perfect cabin near Dillon Beach and was secretlytrying his hand at writing a police mystery. Instead of a drunk, he had becomea philosopher, a seaside poet. So fuck the world, old George was doing finewith the hand that was dealt him. There, his leg felt better. He gulped thelast of his coffee and tucked a crumpled five and two ones under his plate.“See ya, Art.”

A fat man, wrapped in a grease-stained white apron,peeked through the kitchen’s serving window, waving as he left.

George clamped a toothpick between his teeth andinhaled the salt air, limping to his U.S. Park Service Jeep Cherokee. A CoastGuard spotter plane roared in the distance as he climbed into the Jeep, grabbedhis Motorola mike, and checked in with park headquarters in Bear Valley, sevenmiles away.

“Forty-two here, Dell. Got anything? Over.”

“Pretty quiet, George, except for — Just a sec…”

That was Dell, always misplacing something. Georgepried a piece of bacon from between his teeth. Three hours left in his shift,then four days off. While Dell searched, George flipped through the papers onhis clipboard: faxes, alerts, and bulletins. Routine stuff about amendments tolaws, and regs dealing with the park, and the Gulf of the Farallons, overlooksfrom Sonora and Marin counties, Coast Guard notices. Usual crap. Ah, there itwas. The stuff from the FBI on the Keller kidnappings. George read it again,awestruck by the magnitude. Details on the boat, the trailer, the vehicles,background on Edward Keller, the children, that reporter. Helluva case. BetKeller took them to Half Moon Bay, where he took his own kids twenty years ago.He heard they had heavy surveillance going down there, Coast Guard, FBI, thestate boys.

“You still there, George?”

“Ten-four, Dell.”

“Okay. Lou at the Valente place called. Saw sometrespassing headlights late last night. Must’ve been kids partying on theproperty again. Wants you to check it out when you can.

“The spot down by the old cow path to the beach?”

“That’s it.”

“On my way. Ten-four.”

Overnight and through the morning, the park wascloaked in chilly fog. By mid-afternoon it had yielded to the sun and asparkling clear day. George hummed to himself driving from Inverness, onTomales Bay on the north side, to the Sir Francis Drake Highway, meanderingwest across the sixty-five-thousand acre park. He loved, no, he revered thePoint, its majestic, craggy terrain, it’s Bishop pine and Douglas fir forests,the estuaries slicing into its sloping green valleys where dairy cattle grazed;the mist-shrouded beaches and jagged shorelines, glistening today with seaspray as sea lions basked in the sun. And the place had wild weather,simultaneously throwing up hot California sunshine, cold fog, and damp,pounding winds all within a few miles, manifesting the mood of the peninsula.It sat on the San Andreas Fault, rendering the rocky shelves of her coastalwaters a ships’ graveyard. But beyond the beautiful treachery was the celestialPacific and eternal hope. That’s what it did for him. The Point was a living,breathing deity. Damn. He had become a tree-hugger! Admit it. He laughed outloud. Laughed until his goddamn leg hurt.

The Jeep curled past Schooner Bay, Drakes Estero, andthe sea. George passed the overgrown ruins of the ancient mission church. Heonce read of plans to rebuild it years ago. Wonder what happened? About a milebefore Creamery Bay, he left the highway for Valente’s property. It stretchedin a near perfect two-mile square between the road and the Point’s north beach.He kicked the Jeep into four-wheel-drive, bumping his way down a tractor trailthat meandered to a small lagoon at a valley bottom. The path was longabandoned, but now and then local kids trespassed, usually in ATV’s, to party.Looked like it happened again. George spotted fresh tire tracks at the valleybottom. Seemed strange. They were deep, mud-churning troughs, going to theshore, then disappearing into the tall dense brush. But no tracks led out. Novehicles were in the area. Nothing. George stopped.

“What the hell is this?”

He cranked the emergency brake, killed his engine, andgot out to investigate, pulling on his rubber rain poncho because much of thebrush here thrived with poison oak and thorns. Slipping on work gloves, hefollowed the tire impressions into the thicket, using his baton to slap asidebranches. Suddenly, he froze. Something chrome reflected the sun. He moved toit. Looked like the ball of a trailer hitch. It was! George chopped his waydeeper, coming up on a tarp, barely concealing a late model van. A rental bythe looks of it. Who would take time to hide this stuff? he asked as theanswer, rolling on a wave of knowing, crashed down on him.

The van was unlocked. Frantically, George scouredinside. Nothing. He jotted down the tag, struggled to get through the brushagain, finding a manufacturer’s plate for the trailer, jotting down its number.This was it. He knew it. Nettles snagged him as he fought his way back to hisJeep, snapped through the pages on his clipboard, and checked the trailer. Thiswas it! This was the goddamn trailer! George looked up and down the shore.“Where’s the boat?”

No trace of a boat. He stared at the ocean. Keller putto sea here. He launched here. George pounded the wheel. That was right,everyone would be sitting on Half Moon Bay. From here, around the westernmostpoint at the lighthouse, it was only twenty miles to the Farallon Islands. Washe too late? Didn’t Lou see the headlights last night? George snatched theradio mike.

“Dell, it’s George! I’ve got something here! You’regoing to have to make some fast phone calls!”

The radio hissed with silence.

“Goddamnit, Dell! Are you there? For Christ’s sake!”