The Fallen

22

My luck changed for the better on the drive home. I took a small detour to go past Sultra on the slim chance that Gina had driven back from Nevada and returned to work. I pulled over for just a moment. The salon blinds were open to the late afternoon and I saw a tall blonde at Gina’s chair. This made my heart ache inordinately so I drove away. The detour landed me on Hawthorn Street where I passed a downtown car-rental company called Dream Wheels. I’d driven by it a thousand times. But I saw a new black Hummer on the lot and decided to stop and ask about a white one.

The Dream Wheels manager was a short, thick man named Reuben. His assistant was a striking, fortyish woman who introduced herself as Cass. They eyed me warily as I slid my detective shield back into my pocket. Cass excused herself and walked outside.

When I asked about a white Hummer, Reuben sighed. He tapped sharply on his computer keyboard, then nodded. Yes, he said, they had rented out a white Hummer at five-fifteen on the afternoon of March 8, the day of the murder. Oddly enough, it was returned that night after they had closed.

Odd indeed, I thought.

“Charles Hudson Black,” he said. “He lives in Rancho Santa Fe. Go ask Cass about him. She did the rent. And tell you what — I’ll print you a copy of this rental agreement if you can get patrol to drive past this place a little more often. People climb in here all the time. They touch my cars. Once they climbed over, hot-wired a Land Rover and tried to drive it through the fence and out of here.”

“You’ve got a deal,” I said.

I found Cass outside, smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes down beside a Shelby Cobra. The rental cars shone brilliantly in the overhead lights.

“That’s my dream wheel,” I said. “If I could have any car ever made.”

“I’d get a Maybach,” she said. “The expensive one comes with a driver for a year. I’d boot him out of the car, do my own driving, and make him clean my house.”

“Describe the guy who rented the white Hummer on March eighth. That was two Tuesdays ago, the last time it rained.”

“Mid-forties,” she said. “Chargers cap and shades. Cap looked new. Heavy plaid shirt — brown. A bushy mustache. Sunglasses. The kind of guy you’d see at a tailgate party at Qualcomm.”

I saw the shape of a man move between the vehicles.

“What color hair?”

“The hat was pulled down tight but the mustache was brown with gray in it.”

“How tall?”

“Six feet, maybe two-ten,” said Cass. “My ex is six feet, two-ten, and this guy was about the same. Not fat. He had kind of a ‘screw you’ attitude.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing unusual. It was just the way he stood and looked at me.”

I thought of Ron Mincher. The description could have been him, except he was almost twenty years younger than the man Cass had described and his mustache had no gray in it. I wondered if the brown plaid shirt and sunglasses could have hidden his youth. I wondered if he might have added some gray to his mustache. I wondered if the three brown wool fibers found in Garrett’s Explorer had come from that heavy plaid shirt.

“What kind of pants and shoes?” I asked.

“Jeans, I think. Don’t remember the shoes at all,” said Cass.

“Did he say anything that you remember? Anything unusual or different?”

“I said it looks like rain tonight and he said he liked the rain but hated the humidity.”

I thought of Mincher again. He’d said something like that when I talked to him outside headquarters that afternoon.

“How did he get here?”

“I’m not sure, come to think of it. I assumed a taxi. From the airport, I figured, or maybe one of the businesses around here. But I never saw the taxi.”

“Luggage, briefcase, duffel, anything with him?”

“No. None that I remember.”

I thought for a moment. I saw the surveillance camera tucked up under the eave of the building above us. “Is that a tape or closed circuit?”

“It’s closed circuit until we close up for the day,” said Cass. “Then we flip to digital record from the keypad inside.”

“Fancy.”

“You need fancy, with two million dollars’ worth of cars here. You wouldn’t believe the things people try to pull. Or maybe you would. But if you want the guy who returned the Hummer, forget it. The gate was locked. He couldn’t have gotten in if he’d wanted to. So he parked it out on the street. The camera only picks up what’s inside the lot, plus just a little.”

“Was the Hummer muddy?”

“Yeah. He’d been offroading the damned thing.”

“It’s been washed several times since then?”

“Washed and rented several times,” said Cass. “The Hummer is a real popular rental here, believe it or not. Talk about a pretentious, uncomfortable, overpriced, gas-guzzling piece of junk. You drive over a speed bump and things fall off. I mean, you may as well pay someone to drive behind you to pick up the pieces. I’ll open up this black one if you want to see what they look like inside. I’ll rent it to you, for that matter. Preferred rate.”

Reuben came outside and gave me a printout of the rental agreement.

Cass opened the door to the black Hummer and I stood there for a long beat, admiring the quasi-military design of the interior. Reuben started back inside, then stopped and watched me.

“You didn’t happen to find a Higher Grounds coffee shop bag in the white one, did you?” I asked. “When you cleaned it out that morning?”

Cass smiled and nodded. “Oh, a psychic cop. If you’re so smart, tell me what was in that bag?”

“A stir stick and a wadded-up napkin.”

She laughed. “And guess what was on the napkin?”

“Coffee?” I asked.

“Blood.”

“A lot?”

“A little.”

“You threw it away.”

“What else would I do with a bloody napkin?”

I shook my head and smiled. I marveled at how a hopeless detour to see my wife had led me to evidence in the murder of Garrett Asplundh. I know a cop who had taken his daughter to Disneyland and recognized a rape suspect from a drawing done by our fine sketch artist, Kathy Iles. The guy was standing in line with his own daughter for Small World. He was arrested right on the spot.

“Will you give your description to a police artist?” I asked. “It could be a huge help.”

Cass looked at me for a beat. “Okay. Send her down here, though. I’ve got a living to make. I can’t be running all over town.”

“I’ll call you. And thanks for your help,” I said.

“Get those patrol guys out here once in a while,” said Reuben.

“Why don’t you come back and check in on us?” said Cass with a smile.

“I’ll do that.”

I realized there was an outside chance I’d get something useful from the security tape. “Would you mind showing me the surveillance tape from that night?” I asked her.

“I told you, it only shows what’s on the lot,” said Cass. “He left the Hummer on the street outside the lot, on the other side of the fence, right there.”

She nodded toward the street, then shrugged.

“But if the Hummer was left just outside that fence,” I said. “Maybe... please, can we just take a quick look, fast-forward right up to that part of it?”

“There’s not going to be a ‘that part of it,’ is what I’m saying,” said Cass. “But come on, we’ll try.”

Cass was almost right. Back in the main office, she sat down at a computer and brought out her archived surveillance files for Tuesday, March 8. We found nothing on the disc until 10:20 P.M., when we saw the tires and about eight inches of lower body slide to a stop along the curb.

“That’s it,” said Cass. “That’s the Hummer. Look, there’s the mud on the bottom of the body panel, see?”

We watched the bottom of the door open and saw someone step out. All we saw were legs, from about the thigh down. Although the surveillance video was shot at night, it looked to me like the legs belonged to a man, and he was wearing jeans. His shoes shone in the light from the streetlamps. He was visible only for about three steps, as he headed west on the sidewalk, away from Dream Wheels.

“Well, slightly better than nothing,” said Cass. “That was him.”

We watched it again, then once more.

Mud on the body.

A man in jeans.

A flash of dark shoe leather.

“See anything useful?” she asked.

“No. Not really. Can I take this?”

She shrugged. “You sure want a lot.”

I thanked her, then thanked her again. “You’ve really been a big help.”

“Anytime.”

Back in my car I used my cell phone to call Charles Hudson Black’s home number but it belonged to a commercial nursery. His business number was a funeral home.

Funny.

I used my map to locate his street address in Rancho Santa Fe but there was no such street.

Not a huge surprise.

I called Records for a warrants check on Charles Hudson Black and gave them what I was reasonably sure was a false driver’s-license number.

Sure enough, the number belonged to Susy Nguyen of Fresno, California.

Then I called Captain Villas and asked him to arrange for Kathy Iles to interview Cass of Dream Wheels and work up a sketch of the man who had rented the Hummer.

“You sound excited about this, Robbie,” he said.

“First break I’ve caught in a while,” I said.

“I’ll set it up.”

Next I called the Traffic captain and confirmed — for the second time — that Ron Mincher had worked the day shift on March 8 and clocked out at 6:10. I realized he could have rented the Hummer while on duty. It would have meant parking his patrol car, finding a place to change into street clothes, renting the Hummer, then leaving it somewhere nearby while he changed back into his uniform, got back into his prowler, and finished his shift. What, half an hour, if everything went right? I had an odd mental picture of Ron Mincher leaning forward toward a mirror while he added some gray to his mustache from a shoe-polish bottle with a sponge dispenser built into the top.

And again I had the tempting thought that Garrett’s murder was not about the corruption he had found. Sure, he had collected enough evidence to sink a dozen powerful men, but what had he done with it? Nothing that I could see, except extorting some payback out of Steven Stiles and asking Abel Sarvonola’s advice on how to proceed. True, he was set to outline his findings to the state attorney general’s office the week following his murder, but the goal of the Ethics Authority — so far as I had come to understand it — was to dissuade the state from getting involved, not to encourage it. Stella had tried to speak for Garrett when she called his death not a murder but “a piece of work.” But I thought now that she was wrong. I thought now that it was very much a murder and not a piece of work at all.

Then what was it about?

I sat in the dark and watched a big passenger jet come barreling down through the dark sky, lights blinking on its descent to Lindbergh Field. I thought of all the lights blinking in Las Vegas right now and I imagined a big marquee of clear bright bulbs streaked with the headlamps of the cars on the boulevard and a wisp of red hair from someone passing on the sidewalk below.

Maybe that’s what Garrett Asplundh’s murder is about, I thought. Something dark and private and contained within his heart.

I wanted to see the place where Garrett had been murdered because I’d never gotten a good look at it after dark. I picked up the 163, got off on Quince Drive and wound around to Laurel.

I found the dirt road and picked my way down toward the highway. When I reached a place where I could see where Garrett’s Explorer had sat, I killed the engine.

Directly in front of me I could see the swale in which Garrett had parked and the gentle hillock down which he had driven to get there.

To my left was a very large and beautiful palm tree and to my right was a thicket of eucalyptus, the leaves flickering and flashing in the headlights on the highway. Beyond the swale towered the Cabrillo Bridge, lit and rising up into the night like one of the Roman aqueducts on which it was modeled. It looked like a great ruin from history protruding up from the lush greenery, something so strong and elegant that the centuries had accommodated rather than ruined it.

A man stood in the middle of the swale. At first I didn’t see him in the flashing, strobelike headlights from the highway.

He was paying me no attention at all. He simply stood exactly where Garrett’s car had been, then backed up a few steps and slowly turned. His arms were up and he was holding something to his face. It looked to me like he was shooting pictures, or maybe video.

A big rig roared toward me from the highway and I lost sight of the man in the blinding headlights. When the truck passed and I could see again, the guy was gone.

I got out and closed my door quietly. I took my flashlight from the trunk and eased into the eucalyptus grove. Through the pale trunks I could just make out the clearing where the man had been, ahead of me maybe fifty yards.

Then he stepped back into view.

I angled out from the trees and aimed the beam of my flashlight on him.

“You there! Hold it there a second, will you?”

He looked at me, made some adjustment to the instrument he held in one hand, and relaxed his arms to his sides.

“You wait right there,” I called out. “San Diego PD.”

“Brownlaw?”

“That’s right, who do we have here?”

“Walk over and find out.”

It took me another few steps to recognize Samuel Asplundh. He’d changed from his funeral suit back into jeans and boots and a black sport coat.

An uncomfortable moment of silence passed between us. I felt the shadow of suspicion glide effortlessly over my heart.

“Come down here to pick up a scent?” he asked.

“That’s right,” I said. I watched the traffic flashing by. I looked up at the magnificent bridge lit in the darkness. I pictured Garrett Asplundh sitting right here in his Explorer in the rain, looking through the dripping passenger-side window as the Hummer drew up alongside him.

“What scent have you picked up?” I asked.

“Garrett wasn’t surprised,” said Samuel. “Garrett wasn’t surprisable. He knew the guy. He rolled down the window to talk to him.”

“The Explorer doors lock when you put the vehicle in gear,” I said. My gut was telling me to share some information with Samuel, in order to get some back. “So Garrett would have to have hit the unlock button to let him in.”

“He was shot from the passenger side?”

I nodded.

He looked at me, then back up the swale. “There was another vehicle?”

“White Hummer, new.”

“Anyone see the shooter?”

“Maybe. Male, large. It was dark and raining.”

Samuel reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a silver flask. “Johnnie Walker,” he said.

“Black, like Garrett?”

“Black.”

I unscrewed the top and sipped some. It reminded me of my night at McGinty’s.

“And what about you, Brownlaw? What flavor do you get from this place?”

“I know it was special to them.”

“Garrett proposed to her here,” said Samuel.

“But I don’t understand why he would come here,” I said. “I don’t see a reason for that, yet.”

“Sentimental journey?” asked Samuel. “Garrett was a romantic guy. Flowers and poems and the little things a woman appreciates. Garrett was the kind of guy who would revisit a sentimental place because it would give him good luck. Really. He would. Back in high school he wore the same undershirt for all our league football games, but he wouldn’t wash it between games. He would go back and back and back again to things that were important to him or that he believed in.”

“They were trying to reconcile,” I said. “That’s what Stella told me. They were meeting in Rancho Santa Fe that night to lay some groundwork.”

“Yeah,” Samuel said quietly. “He loved her and then some.”

Samuel was quiet for a moment.

“What happened to the blonde you brought to the Fourth of July party last year?” I asked. “I didn’t see her at the funeral today.”

He looked at me sharply, took another sip from the flask, and offered it to me. I shook my head and waited.

“I dumped her,” said Samuel.

He stared at me as a river of red squares rushed into the darkness between us.

“I loved Garrett a lot,” said Samuel. “We had our differences but anyone will tell you I loved and respected him. Hell, I adored him. I picked on him when we were young, but I protected him too. I watched out for him. And he watched out for me. Growing up, there was always this competition over everything — fastest bike, biggest wave, cutest chick. Until one day it all just fell into place — and we realized we didn’t have anything left to prove. Just two brothers. You have a brother, Brownlaw?”

I shook my head.

“And now,” he said, “I’ve got to see this through. I’ve got to make sure that the guy who did this is caught and punished. I had a dream the day I heard about it. In the dream I used Bureau resources off-hours to do some investigating on my own. I identified the person who did this and he resisted arrest. I shot him over and over again because it felt so fucking good. Funny part was, when I woke up I couldn’t remember what he looked like or why he’d done this to Garrett.”

“Maybe you should let me handle the investigation,” I said.

“Maybe I should. The L.A. Bureau needs me more than the San Diego cops do. I always heard good things about you guys from Garrett. He was torn about leaving for Ethics. He was also exhausted, heartbroken, and drunk most of the time.”

“He had made some enemies,” I said.

“An Asplundh talent.”

“I thought it was an execution at first. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Something personal,” said Sam.

I looked at my watch and offered my hand. Sam shook it.

“Let me know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“Back at you. I’m taking a couple of weeks off to help Stella with things.”

“That’s good of you.”

“We’re blood, Stella and I.”

Which I found odd, because they weren’t.