The Rescue

40

“Yeah, I remember Strickland,” says Dave Bridgeman, the longstanding International Practical Shooting Confederation webmaster and historian.

Billy has tracked down Bridgeman through the IPSC website, all the way here to the Coach House in Scottsdale, Arizona. This morning he traded today’s shift with another Bike Team cop, then made the six-hour drive from Laguna in five.

The Coach House patio is busy this March evening, cool though it is. A hangover from the plague years, thinks Billy, when the indoor drinking was shut down. Tonight it’s mostly the snowbirds who pack Arizona in winter.

Bridgeman is early sixties, tall and well built, with humorful eyes and long blond hair.

“Dan Strickland was quite a talent with a handgun,” he says. “Light on his feet for a big guy, like a dancer. And he had this graceful kind of approach to the sport. This could be him in the switching yard. The posture.”

“But you’re not sure?”

Bridgeman holds the picture up again, his fifth long look. “No.”

“How many matches did he shoot?”

“Four, that one year he was with us. The big ones. Most of the shooters are regulars, you know? They grow up with guns and get good and win a few matches and they shoot almost every weekend, match or not. They’re in forever. Not Strickland. He was in and out.”

Bridgeman looks down at his notes. “He showed up back in ’08, just out of high school, if I remember right. Good-looking young man. Quiet but confident. Seemed out of place. Not really like the gun culture folks we competition shooters typically are. But man, he could handle that Glock. Shot heavy loads, too, which makes your job way harder on a rough, running course. As a cop, you know that.”

“How good was he?”

“He won the three regionals and the Western Regional finals in December. I remember he skipped the awards dinner that night. He had some young lady friends we called his blonde-tourage, so I figured they’d taken him off somewhere more fun. Never saw him again. Sent us a note in early ’09, saying he wouldn’t be competing anymore. Paid up his dues for the year, though. Said he was honored by the trophy. Asked us to put it in the headquarters trophy case, or change out the plaque and use it again. See some video of the finals?”

Billy squares Bridgeman’s phone on a Coach House coaster.

Strickland looks a lot like he did on the IPSC website “Young Talent” clip that had reminded Billy so much of the shooter in El Gordo’s photos. Billy thinks that the youthful Strickland had some extra intensity here in the regional finals. But still, plenty of that fluid grace that seems almost an affectation. A performance. Except that he’s punching through the fifteen-centimeter bull’s-eyes on the run, with heavy loads and an eerie, robotic precision.

Billy watches the rest of Strickland’s brief, final championship run, pushes the phone back to Bridgeman. “Did you socialize with him?”

“Not really. It’s all business at the matches and I don’t remember but one time he joined us old people for dinner and drinks.”

“Never met his friends or family?”

“The blondes.”

“And that was all?”

“Well, that one time he came out with us socially was in San Diego. He didn’t drink and he didn’t say much except that he was going to join the marines. Said he was looking forward to shooting at targets that would shoot back. Said he’d been waiting since he was eleven and the towers went down.”

“I knew a lot of boys like that,” says Billy. “Hell, I was one of them when I was nine.”

“I was a little old by 9/11, but I remember watching Saigon fall on TV when I was a kid. In my little suburban living room in Dayton, Ohio. I wanted to fight back but didn’t know how.”

A beat of silence for boys called to war.

“Did anyone ever refer to him as Roman? Or ‘the Roman’?”

“Well, no. But he drove a new Ducati Monster S4R, so maybe he liked Italian things.”

“A recent high school graduate with a new Ducati,” says Billy. He remembers Strickland’s moneyed upbringing, and his sleek Italian Maserati.

“Officer Crumley, I know you’re a cop, but it’s about time you told me what’s going on. Why are you here? What has Strickland done? Happy to help you, but you do owe me answers.”

“I’ll buy you another beer and tell you what I know,” says Billy.

Billy’s back in the Viewridge Avenue DEA building in San Diego at eight sharp the next morning, watching Arnie’s confederate Dale Greene digitally enhancing one of El Gordo’s switching yard photos of the Roman and Joe.

It’s a Sunday but Greene has opened up the forensic lab to do his magic on the picture. Billy has brought doughnuts.

Greene seems not at all put out to be working today, patiently cropping and enlarging, cropping and enlarging again, adjusting filters, zooming in and out on the Roman.

“This had to be shot on the run,” says Greene. “The angle is funny, like the picture shooter isn’t looking through the viewfinder, just firing away with his phone before he has to duck for cover. His motion accounts for the blurring.”

Billy watches Greene slide the color control.

“It may look like it was shot in black and white,” says Greene. “But that’s the weak light. The shooter probably didn’t want to use the flash. So, we’ll add some color and see what happens.”

“Nice,” says Arnie, working on his second chocolate-on-chocolate with peanuts.

Billy watches as the seeming black-and-white photograph becomes, chameleonlike, colored. The hues are faint, but the Roman looks more like a man and less like a blurred sculpture.

“Now for some clarity,” says Greene.

He slides the clarity control to the right and Billy watches the Roman, drawn into better focus. Billy recognizes his gun, a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock 35.

“I’m going to peg the clarity, then the color,” says Greene. “But this might be as good as it gets.”

“Light-skinned,” says Billy. “Look at the sliver of his left wrist, between his glove and his shirt.”

“And pale eyes behind the mask,” says Arnie. “Blue or gray.”

Greene cues up the IPSC Young Talent video on the monitor, splits the screen and hits play.

Billy moves his eyes left and right, vetting the clip against the photo. He reaches into the doughnut box without taking his eyes off the screen. Takes a bite of what turns out to be a maple bar.

When the Young Talent clip ends, there’s a moment of quiet, Billy guessing that all three of them are thinking the same thing.

“We can’t ID Strickland as the Roman with just these,” says Greene.

“No,” says Billy. “But he’s working with that cartel in Mexico, right? So at least a few of them have to have seen him without his commando costume. They’d know what he looks like, maybe even his name.”

“They won’t give him up to us, that’s for sure,” says Greene.

“But we have our Jalisco informants,” says Arnie. “Get them the Strickland video and the Roman pix, and the stills from our files, and let them ask around. No guarantees, but worth the time and expense. Someone at least knows what he looks like. If we’ve got a San Diego self-defense teacher and a former DEA dog making money for Jalisco, we need to know.”

“The Sinaloans have Joe now,” says Billy.

“Kind of beside the point,” says Arnie. “The Roman probably already has another dog.”

“Helping the fentanyl pour into these United States,” says Greene.

Billy thinks of Bettina’s brother. The way she teared up talking about him.

“I’ll take this plan upstairs,” says Arnie. “I think I can get them to bite.”

Greene checks out, leaving Billy and Arnie with the coffee and doughnuts.

“You’ve got it in for Strickland,” says Arnie. “All the way to Scottsdale to try to nail him down. All this. Is he cutting into your time with Bettina Blazak?”

“That’s exactly what he’s doing.”

“You shouldn’t mix professional with personal. What if this Strickland clown isn’t the Roman? What if he’s just who he says he is?”

“Then she can have what she wants.”

“Big ocean out there, full of great fish.”

“Sure, Arnie. Sure it is.”

“You really do like her.”

“I do.”