The Fallen

28

The front door of Garrett’s apartment was unlocked. An empty bottle of scotch lay in the middle of the living room floor. There were fast-food wrappers on the kitchen table.

The bed was torn apart, and the sheets were marked with blood. An empty syringe and needle lay on the nightstand by the clock. A piece of wadded duct tape stuck with long brown hair lay in a corner of the bedroom, in full view of the scores of images of beautiful Stella and Samantha looking out from the walls.

The garage was empty.

So we drove, radio up loud and windows half open and my optimism following the gas gauge down from full. It was a slow Friday night so far: minor collisions, a domestic call on Banker’s Hill, a possible assault at a bar on Front Street, a drunk and disorderly in Hillcrest. One of the ABLE choppers cut across my field of vision on its way over the dark baseball stadium. I wondered if Stella Asplundh would be able to withstand what was happening to her now.

We flashed the patrol units and got flashed back. We pulled over and talked a couple of times. Some unmarked Deltas joined us. The ABLE choppers drifted overhead. A frustrated irritability sets in when an entire metropolitan police force is looking for one vehicle, one man, and can’t locate either. We were understaffed and underfunded but doing what we could. Everybody was griping but nobody was throwing in the towel.

Ten became midnight. Midnight became two. Two became four, and I realized that in just a couple of hours the sun would be rising on Saturday morning. I gassed up the Chevy while McKenzie washed the windshield. We got drive-through breakfast sandwiches, then candy bars from a convenience store.

We cruised in a slow, expanding circle through the many beautifully named parts of San Diego: Mission Bay and Midway, Loma Portal and Uptown, Linda Vista and Old Town, Middletown and Centre City. Then through Sherman Heights and Logan Heights, Golden Hill and Grant Hill, South Crest and Shelltown. Then up through Rolando to Tierrasanta and Allied Gardens, Grantville and Kensington, Crown Point and Mission Valley. As a child I had traced my finger and read these names on my father’s Thomas Guide, intrigued and impressed. I had loved Shelltown and Logan Heights and Rolando long before I could tell them apart.

I even showed McKenzie the place in Normal Heights where the dog had cornered me in the juniper bush when I was a boy, and the cop had run off the dog and taken me home. That was twenty-three years ago. I still remember the officer’s name — Bob Hoppe. The juniper bush was still there, bigger and even more twisted than I remembered it.

The sun was rising on Normal Heights when Captain Villas called on my cell phone.

“Robbie, ABLE just picked up your car north on 79, out in east county. It’s Van Flyke’s Ethics sedan, no doubt. Our guys made a pass, nailed the plates, and backed off. You can have it if you want, but the Sheriffs will get there a lot faster than you will.”

“Get the Sheriffs on alert and in position,” I said. “If Van Flyke stops, take him. Until then let him think he’s alone and let him get to where he’s going. We’re rolling now.”

“He’s alone,” said Villas. “No woman.”

“She might be in the trunk,” I said. Or dumped somewhere on the long trail from downtown to east county.

“You want Emergency Negotiations Team?”

“Send them.”

“We can go code-eleven SWAT,” said Captain Villas. “We’ll use Secondary Response and the Snipers.”

“Get them ready,” I said. “Tell them she might be in the trunk.”

“Got it. Talk to ABLE on the Mobile Data Terminal, and Van Flyke can’t intercept on his radio.”

The Saturday-morning traffic was light. We picked up the 8 east and I hit ninety all the way to State 79. ABLE kept long-distance visual contact and they messaged us every few minutes on the MDT. Van Flyke was coming up on the little mountain town of Julian. He was holding a steady sixty miles an hour and he hadn’t stopped yet. If he’d spotted the chopper he wasn’t letting on.

He didn’t stop in Julian. Instead he picked up Julian Road, bound west for the tiny village of Clear Creek.

“Clear Creek burned in ’03,” said McKenzie. “I don’t think there’s much left of it.”

I remembered the newspaper photographs of tiny Clear Creek, known locally for its wineries, a cafe specializing in apple pies, and an old hotel once allegedly favored by Gable and Garbo. Several vineyards were reduced to rows of stumps and ash. The adobe Clear Creek Hotel had been gutted but remained standing and vacant. It was built to look like an old California mission, around a central courtyard. In the newspapers it had looked ruined, but somehow noble, too, the burst windows staring out from the blackened inside like the eyes of a blind man.

We tore north on 79, up through the greenery of the hills, then into the black expanse left by the fire. I glanced out at the skeletons of the trees and the rocks burned black. It looked like a charred moonscape. There were shoots of green grasses, though, and the beginnings of regrowth down low in the center of the burned trees, so you could see that life was going to win. It would just take time. I wondered if Stella’s life would win out, too. We charged past Cuyamaca Reservoir and the little lake cabins that had been so mercilessly razed, climbing in elevation as we neared Julian.

The MDT screen jumped to life with a message from one of the ABLE choppers:

“Delta Eight, white four-door has stopped in Clear Creek. Looks like the old hotel. We’ve got him in our glasses. He just exited the car and he’s looking up at us.”

“We’re less than five miles out,” I said to McKenzie. She tapped the message onto the keyboard.

We slowed through the quaint mountain town of Julian. Gray clouds hung low over the mountains, snagging on the jagged pines. We picked up Julian Road east and I gunned it for Clear Creek.

Again we entered a world blackened by the 2003 fire. Although there was green grass and some regrowth, most of the tree trunks were just lifeless spires reaching for the gray sky. The verdant grass and brush had burned back to reveal rocks and boulders, and I wondered how long it must have taken all this life to flourish, only to be scorched to death in a few short minutes of fire.

The MDT screen blipped to life again:

“Delta Eight, he’s got the trunk open now and he’s lifting out a body. Confirm, a woman’s body. He’s got it up over his shoulders now and he’s going toward the hotel.”

“Is she alive, you dumb-ass?” asked McKenzie, as she typed.

A moment later the answer was on our screen:

“Dead or unconscious. SWAT is still twenty minutes out. Paramedics are about two miles behind you right now.”

A smoke-blackened sign for the Clear Creek Hotel flashed by on my right. I swung the Chevy into the turn and started down the narrow asphalt road toward the hotel. The forest was dark and close, and the soft gray sky hung down like the belly of a cat.

“Why did he bring her here?” asked McKenzie.

“He must have run out of ideas,” I said.

“Or gas. There’s the building.”

I pulled off the road and stopped.

“We can wait for SWAT,” she said. “This is what they do best.”

“Stella’s up there.”

“She could be dead, Robbie.”

“I’m going in.”

“Then I’m going in with you.”

“Follow me. Stay in the trees.”

We got out and began picking our way through the forest of black trunks. Sometimes I could see the three-story adobe hotel ahead of us, sometimes it was blotted out by the scorched trees. The world smelled of ash, and the branches left sooty streaks on our clothes and hands and faces.

Ahead I could see a clearing on one side of the hotel. Beyond the hotel was the remains of a vineyard. The vines were just stumps, and the uprights formed diminishing rows of black crosses all the way up a gentle hillside.

“Stay here and watch me,” I said. “If I wave you off, use the MDT to get ABLE out of here. Then work your way back the way we came, cross the road past the car, and go into the hotel from the front. I’m going to try to talk him out of there. If he starts shooting or something, just call in the troops and stay down.”

“Got it. Robbie, goddamn, be careful.”

I moved through the trees toward the hotel. Above me a jay squawked and jeered, jumping from one charred branch to another. I made no attempt to be quiet, but I did try to keep at least one large tree trunk between me and the hotel windows. I stopped just short of the clearing. From behind a tree I looked up at the burned-out windows while I drew my grandfather’s old Colt.

“John!” I called. “Robbie Brownlaw here!”

Nothing. So I yelled again.

A moment later Van Flyke’s face appeared in the lower-right corner of a tall third-floor window. It looked small and white within the black cavern of the building. He was about a hundred feet away. It would be hard to hit him with my .45, and easy to miss.

“You’re worse than a tick, Brownlaw.”

His voice carried well in the silence, as if the great ashen aftermath were starved for sound.

“Is Stella alive?”

“Where’s your partner?”

“Jackson, Wyoming. Is Stella alive?”

“Doing what?”

“Skiing with Hollis Harris. Is Stella alive or did you kill her?”

“Oh, of course she’s alive. Very relaxed. Filled with morphine, breathing nice and deep.”

“We’ve got SWAT and paramedics and backup on the way. Come on down and make things easy on yourself.”

“No. I’ll hang on to her as long as I can.”

“Damn, John, don’t you think you’ve put her through enough?”

“After Cramer called I knew I only had a few hours.”

“Whose blood is that on the bed at Garrett’s?”

“Stella stabbed me with a nail file.”

I pulled back behind the tree and waved off McKenzie. I watched her turn and begin picking her way through the stinking remains of the burned forest. Then I leaned back around to see Van Flyke, my weapon still in hand.

“What’s the deal, John?” I asked. “What are you trying to accomplish here?”

“I didn’t get to plan this part. I ran out of time.”

“What happened to you? What made you do all of this?”

His face disappeared from the window. I tried to see McKenzie through the forest but couldn’t. Then Van Flyke was back in the lower-right corner of the window again.

“The first time I saw Stella,” he said, “it changed me, instantly. Everything went upside down and backward. It got worse and worse. I never should have come to the Fourth of July party. I never should have interviewed for the Ethics job. If I’d just stayed in Miami, I might have been all right.”

“What really happened to Samantha?”

Van Flyke’s face remained in the window but he didn’t say anything. It was hard to see his expressions clearly but I thought I saw a kind of puzzlement on his face. Beyond the old hotel the black vineyard crosses marched up the hill amid the scorched vines.

“I didn’t think it could happen.”

“What could happen?”

“I tossed the doll into the middle of the deep end when everybody was watching fireworks,” he said. “It was one of those moments we talked about in my office, where everything changes in an instant. It was an impulse. A speculation. I didn’t think that what I had imagined would actually happen. Then, a few minutes later I walked past the pool and saw that it really was happening. I only had a few seconds to decide. I decided to do the most terrifying thing I’d ever done — nothing. The sounds were quiet but awful, and nobody could hear except me. I knew that I’d sold my soul to the devil for Stella. It was worth it.”

I looked back for McKenzie and saw nothing but dead trees. “Can Stella talk now? Can she say something?”

Van Flyke’s face vanished from the window. A moment later he was back.

“She’s still knocked out.”

“Is she alive?”

“I told you she’s alive,” said Van Flyke. “I never wanted to hurt her. When you came up with the recording of the conversation between Garrett and her, I knew it was only a matter of time before you realized I’d heard half of that conversation while it happened. I knew what bridge he meant. I just needed a good vehicle to take me in and out of there, so I wouldn’t be seen in my own car.”

“You drove the Hummer down to the bridge and parked next to him and... what? Did you knock on the passenger-side window?”

“Sure. I waved through the glass. I smiled. He frowned at me like ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ but he hit the door-unlock button just the same. I swung open the door and put the gun in his face. Took all of about four seconds from the time I rapped on the window.”

So there it was. Garrett was murdered by a man he thought was his friend as he sat in his car in the rain and looked out at a bridge that was his past and his future. It had gone down pretty much as we had reconstructed it, though the shooter was not who we expected. A shudder broke over me like a towering, cold wave.

“Why the earring, John?”

“Why not? I knew you’d find out about Squeaky Clean when you looked into Garrett. Jordan dropped it at a party. I picked it up to give it back to her but I thought I might use it for something someday. Speculation again. Then, when I imagined what would happen down there by the bridge, I thought I’d throw the earring into the brew.”

“The backing had fallen off so you got a different one.”

“I bought a cheapie thrift-store earring with the same kind. I figured if you got far enough to compare backings, you’d wasted plenty of valuable time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Some.”

“But the call to Cramer is what sank me, Brownlaw. Why did you do that? Why not check the log to see who signed in at the Property Annex that day and just leave it at that? I mean, years had gone by. Anything could have happened to that gun.”

“I’m stubborn,” I said.

“You sure that partner of yours isn’t on her way up here?”

“I talked to her just an hour ago. She’s in Wyoming with Hollis Harris. Scout’s honor.”

“I never planned to hurt Stella. But she’s mine now, and I’ll kill her if I have to. Don’t make me do that.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Nobody has to kill anybody. But SWAT’s going to be here any minute. They’ll surround you with sharpshooters and wait you out. You’ll get hungry and cold while they eat and drink coffee. That’s news-at-eleven stuff, John — cameras and everything? That’s for losers. You’re better than that. Come on down. I’ll drive you out before the cameras even get here.”

Van Flyke’s face disappeared for a moment. I tried to see McKenzie through the burned forest. I saw nothing alive but a bright blue jay peering down at me like a prosecutor. Then Van Flyke was back. “I thought we could make the Arizona border before it got too hot,” he said. “Figured there was just enough air in the trunk.”

“The chopper got you,” I said.

“Then all the way back to Florida. I’d have kept driving.”

“You’re kind of stuck now, John.”

He was quiet for a minute but his face remained in the tall window, low and right.

“You really see her for what she is, don’t you?” asked Van Flyke. “I could tell when you came to the restaurant that day. How you looked at her.”

“She’s got something rare,” I said.

“She sure does.”

“My wife has it, too,” I said.

“So, Brownlaw — I’ll leave her here if you let me get to my car. I’d rather die in a high-speed chase than from a sniper.”

“Deal,” I said. “But you have to show me she’s alive. I’m not trading for a corpse, John.”

His face vanished again.

A few seconds later, Stella was in the window. Van Flyke was behind her, his wrists jammed under each of her armpits, either holding her up or holding her steady — it was hard to say which. He had a big automatic in his hand. Stella’s head lolled to one side, then seemed to find upright balance for a moment, then swung heavily to the other. In that brief attempt at balance, I could tell that she was alive.

I realized that if McKenzie were to come through the door to that room right now, she’d be unable to shoot Van Flyke without shooting Stella too, unless she was good enough to get him in the head.

“She can’t stand up,” said Van Flyke. “I overdid it.”

“She looks fine to me,” I called out. “Put her down, John. You’re free to get back to your car. Put her down!”

Suddenly the ABLE helicopter appeared in the middle distance, hovering low over the crosses of the vineyard and raising a black cloud. Van Flyke couldn’t see it from his window, but he could hear it. I looked through the trees to the road behind me and saw the flash of metal and paint as the SWAT trucks piled to a stop behind my car.

I could tell by the angle of Van Flyke’s head that he had seen them, too. He dropped Stella. I brought up my Colt and aimed at him. He turned quickly away and I heard the four quick pops beneath the roar of the advancing helicopter. Van Flyke backed up and sat on the sill, arms out as if for balance. Two more pops and he slumped out of the window and cascaded three floors down, landing in a fatally shapeless heap.

McKenzie appeared in the window, gun in hand, looking down at Van Flyke, then to me.