Fatalis

Chapter Ten

Sheriff Gearhart went back to his patrol car. He arrived just as the team of deputies from LEO Investigations arrived. He sent deputies Scott and Bright down into the ravine then shut the door and radioed Chief Deputy Valentine. Gearhart told Valentine what Grand had found in the cave and asked him to have the town's director of social welfare check on the whereabouts of any homeless persons with a history of aggression. Gearhart also wanted the chief deputy to contact the police departments in Santa Paula, Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks, and other communities in the mountains. He wanted to know if any kidnappings or violent crimes had been reported there. Perhaps some maniac was heading west through the hills. If so, this would be as far west as he got.

"I want this kept as quiet as possible," Gearhart instructed him. He looked at Hannah Hughes who was looking back at him. This could still be an accident-a bobcat or a coyote could have carried that radio into the mountain. He looked back at Valentine. "If not, I want some thoughts on who we might be looking for."

Valentine said he'd get right on it.

Gearhart got back out of the car. In the distance he saw the ruins of Knapp's Castle. Begun in 1916 and completed in 1920, the sandstone edifice was destroyed by the Paradise Canyon fire in 1940. The owner did not rebuild. Some say it was because of nightmares she'd had, black dreams that the ancient gods had sent the fire to keep humans from settling in the mountains.

Perhaps the gods were pissed off again, Gearhart thought.

If they were, they'd have to fight for the hills this time. Malcolm Gearhart loved them. He loved all of his county- the air, the ocean, the sun, and the breeze. He loved the pace, the low white buildings in the center of Santa Barbara, the neat suburban streets and homes outside the incorporated town, and the overall quality of life. He loved the fact that people felt safe here and children could be raised with a sense of ethics and community pride. Sanity had to start somewhere and it might as well start here.

That was something he'd never had as a child.

Gearhart grew up in impoverished South Norwalk, Connecticut, where his father painted boats in the marina by day and got explosively pissed off at his wife and son at night. The boy's mother blamed it on the paint fumes, on having no money, on frustration. But that didn't make the screaming and the beatings any easier. The boy took so many belt whippings that today Gearhart felt self-conscious going to the beach in a bathing suit or shorts. His legs had been permanently marked in spots by the metal buckle.

The day after he graduated from Norwalk High School, Gearhart bicycled to the Selective Service office on East Avenue to find out how to get himself into the Marines. One of the neighbors had a son who was a Marine and Gearhart liked the way the man carried himself, with confidence and dignity.

A kind, soft-spoken woman named Mrs. Moriarty told Gearhart how to sign up. Four weeks later he was at Camp Pendleton, California.

Gearhart did two tours of Vietnam. He came home with a chestful of medals, the pride he'd been looking for, and the uncomfortable sense that he'd been beaten there too. They'd won skirmishes and destroyed villages and killed Vietcong. But now that he was back and heard the politicians and protesters and whining singers, he realized that what he and his brothers fought was a holding action, not a war. He had been beaten, this time not from without but from within.

With no idea what he wanted to do with his life, Gearhart bought a '63 Ford Galaxie-pink, because it cost him a couple hundred less than if it had been any other color-and drove cross-country to look at the nation he'd spent his early twenties defending. He saw Gettysburg, the Alamo, and the Little Big Horn. He felt close to those places and to the men who'd fought in them. He also saw armies of scraggly haired punks doing nothing, college kids avoiding the draft, shameless women, and-worst of all-many of his own people advocating violence. It was as if everyone had been sucking up paint fumes. By the time he made his way back to California, Gearhart knew what be wanted to do. He wanted to make sure that other good people didn't get beat. He wanted to protect the honest people who were working and trying to provide for themselves and their families.

Gearhart entered the Los Angeles Police Academy, where his Marine training helped him graduate at the top of his class. He was assigned to a foot beat, Wilshire Area, and, after countless commendations, had risen to Commanding Officer of the Organized Crime and Vice Division.

But he was beaten there too. Not by the ineffectiveness of his own units or by the enemy-the street gangs, the Mafiosi, or the ruthless new criminal families from Armenia, China, Colombia, and Russia. He was beaten by people outside the trenches, the judges and politicians who believed that the answer to crime wasn't hard time but compassion and rehabilitation.

Rather than sit back and wait for his pension to kick in, Gearhart packed up his résumé and campaigned for the position of sheriff in Santa Barbara. He wanted to be in a place where the war was still winnable, where the people and leaders had a community vision and would support him. Backed by well-to-do emigres from Los Angeles, who had come an hour north to escape the crowds and crime, Gearhart got his chance. Some people, like Hannah Hughes, still believed that he was overzealous. But Gearhart viewed his job as no different from that of the forest rangers who looked after the local environment. Allow a single spark to go unattended and soon there would be nothing but flame, smoke, and ruin.

Nearly two years after the election, Gearhart had earned the trust of most of the locals who viewed him as a carpetbagger. He had addressed the state legislature several times on matters of law enforcement. He'd justified the faith of the people who had supported him. But most important, he had the one thing he had always wanted.

He was winning.

As he started back toward the sinkhole, he vowed that nothing-no act of God, no madman, and no displaced predator-was going to change that.