Swift Vengeance

9

Kenny Bryce had chosen a no-frills café called the Mine for the Headhunters’ 1100 hours strategy breakfast. The morning was cool and bright. I hadn’t been in Bakersfield in ten years. I’d always liked its rough history and reputation. A few years ago, The Guardian named Bakersfield PD America’s Deadliest Police Force, as it had, at the time, the highest number of per capita police shootings in the country.

Voss arrived exactly on time, as ex — military officers tend to do. He was a tall, beak-nosed man with short, back-brushed hair and quick eyes. Lindsey rose and they hugged.

She introduced us and Voss offered me his hand. “Are you taking good care of my best sensor?” he asked.

“I’m trying,” I said.

“She’s worth all the trouble.”

“You liars,” she said.

They caught up. Voss’s wife, Lindsey’s divorce, the kids. Then the important stuff: acronym-riddled anecdotes, comic memories, gossip and speculation. I half listened and enjoyed the warm December sun on my face. The Mine’s patio had Christmas lights along the roofline and a manger scene tucked into a shady corner.

After twenty minutes and no Kenny, Lindsey left him a message. We ordered and ate. I had the Golden Nugget Omelet. The waitress brought refills. When we finished eating, Voss left Kenny another message. His annoyance hung in the air with the smell of the coffee.

Which put us at the front door of Kenny Bryce’s apartment at precisely 1220 — one hour and twenty minutes after his botched arrival time.

Tuscanola was a newer complex, swirled white plaster and prefab stonework and wrought-iron touches on the windows. The porch was good sized and Kenny had furnished it with a bistro set. A potted succulent and an ashtray sat on the round tiled table. I noted that the long carport across from Bryce’s row of apartments was roofed with solar panels and hung with floodlights and security cameras mounted high up on alternating stanchions.

Voss knocked and waited. The door sounded solid and the peephole bezel looked shiny and new. “Remember that Christmas party when Kenny got blasted and decided to sleep in the restaurant booth?” he asked.

“I do,” said Lindsey. “And how damned hard it was to get him up and out of there. Didn’t the manager help?”

Voss nodded irritably and knocked again. He looked at Lindsey, at me, then took hold of the iron opener and pressed. The thumb pad clunked down and the door opened, swung in six inches, then came to a stop.

My first thought on entering a quiet home, uninvited, is: Where are they hiding and how are they armed?

Seven weeks in Fallujah.

Seven years as a cop.

Six years as a hardworking private investigator and the sudden, wicked surprises sometimes sprung on us.

For such surprises I carry a forty-five autoloader in a strong-side inside-the-waistband holster. I wear it far back so the gun is easily concealed by a jacket or an untucked shirt. I’m right-handed.

I made a deal with myself early on as a freelancer, one that favors my personal survival: I carry the heavy, tumorous, soul-damaging gun even when I’m not expecting to need it.

Such as now, meeting with friendlies in a public place in these peaceful and secure United States of America.

“Let me do this,” I said to Voss, unstrapping the gun. He eased away as I pushed the door open with my foot. Indoor air wafting out, hard and metallic. A thick slick of blood on the tile entryway.

Adrenaline blast, game on.

I drew the forty-five in my right hand, pulled Voss away with my left, then pushed the door hard. Shivered the wall when it hit. Never step past a half-open door. I threw it wide open, jumped inside, and slammed it shut. Nothing. Spun fast to sweep the room, eyes and laser sight moving as one, across, then back, eyes focused on everything and nothing, the doorways, always the doorways, and the stairs, always the stairs, for movement and the shadow of movement concealed: Fallujah.

“Lindsey, Voss!” I barked over my shoulder. “Trouble here. Nobody in, nobody out!”

When you’re clearing you can get a rhythm and it’s the rhythm of your life. Note the big revolver lying on the carpet a few feet away from the entryway tile. Note the sand-colored carpet showing blood. You follow the blood. See the living room is spacious but sparsely furnished. Sweep across, sweep back. Breakfast nook empty. Your legs stable, eyes clear. See the small kitchen and a utility room behind it and a door to the attached garage. Garage for defense. Garage to hide. Follow the blood back to the living room. Silence outside the front door. Up the stairs slowly, one at a time, eyes and gun on the landing. Blood shows the way.

I made the landing, felt the warmer upstairs air pressing close. Scanned the hallway. A wall sconce knocked loose and dangling on its wires. One room right and another left, doors wide open. On the pale carpet a crimson drag pattern like a paint roller might make, all the way to the end of the hall, then through the open door.

Carpet is quiet. I stayed to the left of the blood. Stepped slowly, gun raised. Cleared the right-side bedroom, then the left-side bath. Stood outside the door at the end of the hall where the drag marks went through, knowing that death had gotten there ahead of me.

A quiet breath, then in.

Stillness only. Sunlight through vertical blinds, slats of light and dark on the bed. Nightstand lamp still on. Big bed, still made up, two pillows side by side, a man’s head lying on one of them. Looking up. Eyes half open. Lips parted as if ready to speak. Neck severed, now a crusted red-black stump. A fly on his forehead in a bar of sunlight.

On the floor, in the narrow shadow cast by the bed, lay the headless body. Arms and legs splayed, facedown if there had been a face. Jeans and socks. Neck flared.

I cleared the bathroom and the walk-in closet and came back, stopping close to the bed. Lowered the gun. Breathed even and deep. Heart in my throat. Tire hiss outside. A fly in the room.

And cop training:

UNSUB, black male, 30–40 years old.

Decapitated.

Height and weight TBD.

Defensive wounds on arms and hands.

One long slit over the heart, probably an entry wound, the blade apparently wrenched upward to cut the aorta and vena cava, then swept up and out.

Which had happened so fast Kenny Bryce didn’t have time to fire his weapon. And would have left him only a few seconds of waning fight. Which would have caused the first lurch of his blood to land on the entryway tile, where I had seen it, where he was stabbed. And allowed it to surge and spread and sink in as he was dragged across the living room, up the stairs, down the hall, and into the room in which he slept.

What strength to accomplish all that, I thought. In another man’s home. What ferocious resolve. What stone calm. And speed. Kenny Bryce’s heart was Caliphornia’s first strike. Deep and final. The beheading was a ritual. Something to inspire terror in the living.

Which it did.

I headed down the stairs, weapon face-high and pointed up. Felt the jab of panic, whirled. Heart racing and ears screaming. Empty stairs. Empty landing.

I cleared the garage, came back inside to the front door, and looked through the peephole. In the distorted distance, Lindsey and Voss had taken opposite ends of the porch. They stood in oddly similar postures, arms crossed and feet wide. Lindsey in the sun and Voss in the shade.

I cracked the door. “Kenny’s been murdered,” I said quietly. “Don’t come in. You’ll contaminate more evidence. Stay put. I need a few minutes.”

“I came here to see Kenny,” said Lindsey. “I’m coming in.”

“Think,” I said. “The police are going to question all of us, long and hard. I’ll take the heat for going in. You stay ignorant. A tampering charge won’t help your custody fight.”

“We didn’t know it was a damned crime scene,” said Voss.

“That’s my best defense,” I said. “So let me go collect some things we’ll need. We’ll never get them if I don’t get them now. A few minutes. Then we’ll call the cops.”

Lindsey looked to Voss, defaulting to the old order.

“He’s right,” said Voss.

She glared at Voss, then at me. “Did they cut off his head?”

I nodded, shut the door, and turned the deadbolt.

Got my phone into camera mode and shot the bloody tile and the bloody inside of the front door, and the revolver on the floor, and the carpet and steps and landing and hall and bedroom. The terrible bedroom. Shot his head and body. Macro to close-up. Video.

Then to the bed stand, where the reading lamp spread its cool light. Where waited Bryce’s phone, charging, and placed to hold down the top of a handwritten letter that looked very similar to Lindsey’s. An AF Falcons money clip, thick with bills, anchored the bottom.

I rattled off ten shots on auto-drive. Ten more. Wanted that letter cold.

The spare bedroom was Bryce’s office. The desktop computer was sleeping. I tried some passwords based on Kenny Bryce’s name, and Headhunters, USAF, and Air Force Falcons, which were featured on a wall poster, a coffee mug on the desk, even a mouse pad, in addition to the money clip. No luck. Looked over the last three months of a hardcover appointment calendar and found nothing of particular interest. Dinner with Ron and Kaya last Saturday. An appointment with Dr. Leising one day previous. Haircut next week. I shot the September through December calendar pages anyway.

In the bathroom I tore off some toilet paper, then went back to the meaty hell of Kenny’s bedroom. The horror of a body and its severed head is not describable in the language that I know. There, I hovered over Kenny Bryce’s cell phone. Hoped he’d left it on while charging. Figured the chances were fifty-fifty. Covered my fingertip with the toilet paper, hit the screen control. Clean blue light. Icons. A fly buzzing. Such a lucky day for Kenny and me and the world. I opened Contacts and scrolled down for Ron and Kaya, then Dr. Leising, wrote their numbers in my notebook. Noticed that my handwriting was forceful and shaky. Searched his contacts for anyone of obvious utility. Got Mom and Dad. I chose a few first-name-only contacts at random, on the theory that they were close to him. Brandon Goff’s name jumped out at me like a clown from a dark closet.

Back downstairs I went through the mail on the kitchen counter. Found the envelope that the letter had come in — postmarked the same day as the threat to Lindsey, with a San Diego postmark and a return address belonging to World Pizza of Ocean Beach. Shot that and looked through what else was there.

I rolled off a paper towel and dampened it under the sink faucet. Cleaned my prints off the garage doorknob and the front-door deadbolt. Squeezed the towels dry over the sink, set the soggy wad in my coat pocket. I’d faithfully confess to America’s Deadliest Police Force the basic truth of what I’d done, but I saw no use in advertising my curiosity. No, sir. I had no idea what I was walking into.

I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.

Lindsey was leaning against the porch railing. She offered me a hard stare and smeared a tear off her cheek with her palm.

Voss stood beside her. “We’ve just broken a bunch of laws,” he said. “I think we should at least get our stories straight.”

“Don’t get creative,” I said. “Tell the cops exactly what happened. I’ll take point. When I’m done sending these pictures to myself, I’ll call Bakersfield PD.”

And Taucher.

“Lindsey, you need to answer a very important question. What was Brandon Goff’s relationship to Kenny Bryce?”

“Friends. Air Force. We had us some times.”

“Did they have a fight or a falling out?”

“Never.”

“Was Bryce trying to get close to you since the divorce?”

“Absolutely not.”

I glanced up toward the early-afternoon sun, a dazzling orange ball high in the blue. Wondering, if I could take away the roof of Kenny Bryce’s upstairs bedroom, would that powerful sun burn away the blood and the bones and the horror? Burn them right down to nothing? I knew the answer, though: not in my lifetime. But if I could replace the roof with a magnifying glass of the same size — stupendously heavy and thick and perfectly proportioned and polished — maybe then? In the end I figured if I really wanted it all cleaned up right, I’d have to pour a gallon or two of gas over it and light the match.

I lit a cigarette instead, sat in one of the little bistro chairs and started tap-tap-tapping on my goddamned phone, bouncing images of headless Kenny Bryce from one point on planet Earth to another.