Swift Vengeance

10

Twenty-seven hours later I was back home, outside on a chaise longue, bundled in my barn jacket and watching the black-orange December sunset. My grandfather Dick had just delivered to me a bruising bourbon. Just a splash of water. Dick doubts my well-being when I don’t have a cocktail in my hand, and this time he wasn’t totally wrong. I couldn’t get the Bakersfield images from my brain. I wondered if I ever would. I wanted that drink.

“Judging by your face, I’d say your trip was not a huge success,” said Dick. He sized me up over his highball glass, took a sip, and sat down on the chaise next to me.

“No, not huge.”

I’d been detained and questioned for ten hours over two days, since calling 911 from Kenny Bryce’s front porch. At the end of the first day I’d talked our way out of an overnight discretionary hold and into the Marriott downtown. A little sleep, then round two. I felt bent and folded and torn, but I had not yet been charged with any crime.

“Lindsey looked ready for the grave,” Dick noted. “Might I have an executive summary of events?”

“No,” I said. “Events involved a freshly slaughtered human being. That’s all I’ll say. And keep it to yourself.”

I watched orange and black compete low in the western sky, black winning out. Listened to the clink of ice in Grandpa’s glass. His wife, my grandma Liz, walked past him without a look and sat on the other side of me. She carried a balloon glass half full of red wine. They’ve been married fifty-something years, raised three children, helped to spoil eight grandchildren, and now reside in respective casitas at opposite ends of the pond.

“Welcome home, Rollie,” she said, studying me. “Looks to me like you and Lindsey must have closed the nightclub twice.”

“I wish I looked better for you two.”

“Honey, can’t he just enjoy a sunset?” asked Dick.

“Overall, though, Lindsey is quite fetching these days,” said Liz. “And apparently her custody battle is going in her favor, too.”

I nodded, sipped the bourbon. “It’s nice to have her back,” I said, regretting it immediately.

“I would think so,” said Liz, swirling her glass.

“In what way is it nice, Roland?” asked Dick.

“In the way that a strong young man likes having a lovely woman around,” said Liz. Another lift of her balloon glass.

“I’ve forgotten,” said her husband.

“Fifty-one years of marriage and Dick lost interest halfway through,” said Liz. “Garaged the car with plenty of miles still left on her.”

“Do we have any noise-canceling headphones around here?” I said.

“I’ve got a pair in the house,” said Dick. “Believe me, they’re well used!”

Liz sighed and leaned back on the chaise. “Rollie, just FYI? The electrical in my place is acting up again. My brand-new microwave sparked and fizzled out last night. Had to drink my hot toddy cold.”

“Why not use the stove?” asked her husband. “You remember how to boil water, don’t you?”

“This Chilean wine I found must be really good. Halfway through and even you seem funny, hon.”

“What’s the latest on the cat?” asked Dick.

Owner Tammy Bellamy had left me four emails when I was closing nightclubs in Bakersfield. There had been two false sightings yesterday, Tuesday, and two more today. People were reporting average-weight gray striped cats — not twenty-two-pound Oxley. One was not even gray, and only one of them had Oxley’s green eyes. Tammy said that the brief rain shower on Monday night had ruined most of the posters. Would I take a few minutes to replace the soaked posters with fresh ones from my stack?

“Tammy needs some help putting up new posters,” I said. “You guys up for that tomorrow?”

“There are hundreds of them,” said Dick.

“The rain ruined them,” I said.

“She should never have let that cat get over ten pounds,” said Liz.

“Tammy needs our help.”

“You’re making the big money off of this cat, not us,” said Dick.

“I’ve got some of Tammy’s apricot-brandy jam and you’re welcome to it.”

Dick shrugged. “Okay. Liz and I will put up more posters. But it’s been what, ten days? Every time I hear those coyotes yapping I think Oxley just got lunched. What a racket those things make. And almost every night. Maybe Dale can shed some scientific light on why those animals are running around unchecked. Maybe find a way to cut their numbers down. Dale’s won awards, you know.”

“Coyotes have to make a living, too,” Liz pointed out.

Dale being Dale Clevenger, award-winning video-journalist now residing in casita number two. Who, judging by the lights already on in the barn, was hard at work on his next program.

After the last strip of orange had blipped out over the black hills, I got a handful of LOST CAT flyers from my office and brought them down for Dick and Liz. They were disputing the truth of the “flash of green” in Key West sunsets: Liz pro and Dick con, on and on as always — poster models for how not to grow old. Or maybe they had it right: the secret to longevity was dispute.

Liz took the flyers and squared them on her lap. “We’ll find this kitty.”

Clevenger and Burt were in the barn. Radio news playing low, every light on. Clevenger had taken over one end of the space, arranging two long utility tables in a wide V shape for a workstation. One table for his three custom-made computers, three monitors, a bank of wireless speakers, and an audio mixing board. The other table for his drones and their corresponding tools. He had four, five, or six drones — the number kept changing. Tonight it was five, three of them whole and two taken apart for maintenance or repair.

Clevenger stood inside the V like an impresario, looking up from one of the monitors when I walked in. He’s husky, curly-haired, and thick-armed. Hangdog eyes, big and expressive. Glasses always out of kilter, an air of benign intensity. He reached down to the audio mixer and the barn filled with the sound of yipping coyotes. It’s a high-pitched sound, wild and inscrutable. Starts and stops abruptly. Eerie. Sounded like there were ten of them right there in the barn with us.

“How many of them are there, Roland?” he asked in his soft Georgia accent.

I’d been told that one coyote can make much more noise than you think. This sounded like a platoon. “Four.”

“You’re close. What’s the most you’ve ever seen together, here in Fallbrook?”

“Four,” I said. “Parents and two young ones, by the look of them.”

“Check these guys out. Got them out near Winterwarm Street last night, that big field where the longhorns are pastured.”

I came to the monitor to see six coyotes moving across a moonlit meadow, shot from above by drone. The light was weak and the animals looked ghostly. They had the familiar, light-footed coyote trot, and their heads were up. As if on cue they stopped, listened, then started yipping and howling again. Paced nervously. Something out there. Snouts raised, they howled at the drone. The camera panned to a half-dozen Texas longhorns — staunch and imposing creatures kept for nostalgia by a Texas-raised Fallbrook resident — watching the coyotes with little apparent interest.

Then back to the coyotes, silent and spreading into a loose half-circle to work their way across the pasture. Noses down. Noses up. One by one, disappearing into the thick scrub of an arroyo. Consumed, they struck up their inquisitive yipping again, their voices braiding together. I could barely see the forward shiver of brush as their bodies pushed through.

Suddenly the yips turned urgent, a crazed blast of determination rising in pitch. Then came to a perfect stop. Hushed snarls as the bushes quivered in the darkness. A rabbit shrieked and a puff of dust rose in the moonlight. Then the snarls of the five hungry coyotes snapping at one another while the lucky one tore into his prey. Beneath the soundtrack, the radio news ran on, Redskins in L.A. against the Chargers on Sunday. Clevenger stopped the show.

“How was Bakersfield?” asked Burt.

“Slow.”

Clevenger gave me a look: curiosity and concern behind his crooked glasses. “Why don’t you come out with us tonight, Roland? I could use another hand. We’re going back to the longhorn pasture, but this time I’ve got floodlights set up. Enough to light up a soccer practice. Sometimes when you light these critters, they give you dirty looks and hightail it. Sometimes they just keep on doing whatever they’re doing. I’ve got the cameras and mikes, infrared binoculars, and two drones ready. We’ll call the animals in with the varmint recording.”

Clevenger touched a keyboard and the sounds of the coyotes killing the rabbit filled the barn again. I was sick to my soul with death. The brush parted and the coyotes looked straight up at the drone overhead.

“No Oxley?” I asked.

Clevenger shook his head. “Didn’t see him. But I’m ready if I do. Got my Kevlar animal gloves and the crate out there in the van.”

“I’ll pass tonight,” I said.

“It’s cold and boring, mostly,” said Clevenger. “But you’re welcome to come along anytime.”

Burt walked me across the barnyard, toward the house. He’s small and takes short, fast steps and I’m tall and take long, slow ones. If you added us together and divided by two you’d get an average man. A year and a half ago, we were little more than landlord and tenant, agreeable strangers. Then he’d offered to help me out of a very tight situation. Two capable men had wanted to do me harm. There’s a story behind it, like there’s a story behind everything, but the punchline is that Burt and I prevailed at great cost to my tormentors. The cost to ourselves, we have not discussed. But in that muzzle-flashed moment, we become something new to each other. I trust him with my life, and I owe it to him.

“Someone’s threatened Lindsey,” I said. “That’s why she’s here.”

He looked up at me, matter-of-fact. “She’s jumpy.”

“Someone wants her head, Burt. Literally. He decapitated a guy in Bakersfield two nights ago. One of Lindsey’s old Air Force buddies.”

“One of the Headhunters?”

I nodded.

“Hunter becomes hunted. You think this beheader is working alone?”

“I think he’s got help. Just my gut on that.”

“Where did it happen?”

I knew he’d talked to Lindsey, but I gave him the basics anyway. He nodded along. Burt gets things quickly, including some things other people don’t. “Samara,” he said. “The Prince Charming she dated one time in Las Vegas. The one with the handwriting that looks like the threat. I wonder if he was in the Bakersfield area two nights ago.”

I told him the FBI was looking into that.

“I’ll make sure Lindsey’s door and window locks are sound,” he said. “And install a wireless security system in her casita, something she can monitor by phone. I’m up most nights anyway, so I can keep an eye out. You might think about moving her every few days. Motels, cash, new IDs. I’ve got a friend who breeds Cane Corsos — that’s ‘dog of the guard’ in Italian. Very capable and well-trained animals. He leases them out for protection. He could have one here in a day or two. Does Lindsey still have that pistol?”

I nodded.

“Tell her to be careful with it.”

We continued along the pond, then doubled back toward the casitas and the main house. I could see lights on in Lindsey’s casita number three. Apparently, Liz and Dick had gone to their respective corners. Casita four was vacant.

I sensed that something was bothering Burt. He’s never been one for an evening stroll, or walking me home. “Saturday, the day before Lindsey got here, I went to Joe’s Hardware for a space heater,” he said. “Noticed a nice black C–Class Mercedes SUV behind me. Big guy at the wheel, long black hair, sunglasses. Wearing a blue leather moto jacket. Very fashionable for this hick town. Fine. Got the heater, put it in my trunk in the parking lot. I went east on Main for home, and by the time I’m to Mission there’s the black Mercedes SUV behind me again. Fashion boy at the wheel. He followed me two vehicles back all the way here. Waiting at the gate, I watched him in the rearview. He went right on by, not a pause.

“Two days later, on my way to golf, same black SUV fell in behind me on Old 395. Same guy. I pulled into the club, he went by. Shot nine rounds — one under — went to the restaurant for lunch, and when I left he was sitting in his car in the lot. Same blue moto jacket. I got into my car and drove home. When I came to the gate I punched the code and came through and pulled in behind the bougainvillea. Sure enough, here comes Moto Man. Slowed down when he went past your drive. Took a long look in. Gate still open. I’d already figured he wasn’t looking for me. He had me, twice. And if he just wanted to draft in past the gate behind me, why didn’t he? First, I thought Clevenger. He had some trouble back in New Orleans, moons ago. Then I thought Lindsey — something to do with her ex, maybe. The custody dispute.”

I hadn’t seen a black Mercedes SUV around Rancho de los Robles, or in any other place that might stand out. I thought back to the previous morning, when I’d driven Lindsey and myself to the Fallbrook Airpark. Still before sunrise. Darkness and empty winding roads. No hundred-thousand-dollar German SUVs that I noticed.

“Think about that Cane Corso,” said Burt. “Best guard dog there is.”

“So you say.”

“My friend Bruno? He trains them right and contracts them out for people who need protection. Expensive, and kind of limiting, a large beast like that in your face twenty-four/seven. But Lindsey in casita three with a Cane Corso napping on a pad inside the door? That’s security, Roland. The beheader would never know what hit him.”

I sat in the dark in my office for a while, ailing from what I had seen in Bakersfield. Ugliness causes ugliness, happiness makes happiness. Opposite momentums. Joy is easy to ride, the way I had ridden it with Justine. Higher and higher. Until. Icarus? But so hard to ride death. Which led me to Justine. Which led me to Kenny Bryce. Which led me to the rabbit screaming briefly on Clevenger’s video. Leading me, of course, to my own death, whenever and however it might come. Death. One and whole and undefeatable. Spirals inside spirals.

My mother, who is only occasionally softhearted and almost never sentimental, told me something once that had the ring of truth to it: when you feel bad, do something good for someone else.

I told Burt not to let Lindsey out of his sight or off the property until I got back. Then got a handful of LOST CAT flyers from my office desk, then a staple gun and a hiker’s headlight from the barn.

It was a cool night and dark. A quarter moon. Fallbrook’s country roads are curving and unlighted, and the shoulders are thin, and the vegetation grows right up to the asphalt on both sides. The canopies of large old oak trees join hands from opposite sides of the narrow roads. Minor moonlight blinks by overhead and there is really just the faint white line to guide you through the curves. Headlights appeared behind me, coming fast. I pulled over to let a Porsche convertible howl past. A blonde in the passenger seat, hair streaming.

I stopped along Old 395, left the engine running and the headlights on while I pulled a rain-faded Oxley poster from a power pole and stapled up a new one. In the beam of my hiker’s headlight, Oxley’s hypnotic green eyes regarded me. I made another stop on 395 as I worked my way toward Fallbrook. I tried to make a rational assessment of the obese cat’s chances of survival after nearly a week and a half of coyotes, dark roads, and fast cars. Not good chances, by my reckoning.

I sensed a tail a mile from town, made a stop anyway. Got a gun from the locked toolbox in the bed of my truck, pocketed it in my barn coat. Stapled an Oxley poster to a white post-and-rail fence. A black Mercedes SUV passed by. I continued onto Mission, passed it, and pulled into a deep, oak-roofed turnout. Saw headlights in my rearview mirror two curves back. Not terrific tradecraft.

When I hit town I hung fresh LOST CAT posters outside Vega’s Tailor, El Toro Market, and the Mission Theater. Put the old flyers and the hiker’s headlight on the seat beside me. Looked down at Oxley, blanched by rain, fading into history. I fought back the pessimism. Heard Mom’s voice. Something good for someone else. Hoped her travels with Dad were going well. This month: Florida.

I’d just stapled a poster on the wall of the Main Street Café when the black Mercedes SUV pulled to the curb and parked in front of my truck. Burt Short’s fashion man stepped out, eyed me across the hood of his vehicle, then started my way. No blue moto jacket, just jeans and a black car coat against the December chill. His hair was black and unruly, much longer than he had worn it as a San Diego sheriff’s deputy during our two months as partners.

“Hello, Jason,” I said. “What brings you out tonight?”

“Lindsey Rakes. Your new tenant.”

“You mean my former tenant?”

“Maybe we should talk.”

I considered the pros and cons of having to lie to my old partner, now a licensed private investigator himself. And I was more than a little interested in what had brought him here. “Right this way.”