Then She Vanished

Twenty-Three

The next morning Dalton and I sat at a long table in the conference room of the Valley Center sheriff substation. Facing us was Lieutenant Lew Hazzard of the Special Enforcement Detail, and homicide detective Tony Proetto. Hazzard was tightly packed into his uniform, thick arms surrounding a folder on the desk. Proetto wore jeans and a golf shirt and a baggy blazer. Hazzard eyed me with the same robust hostility he’d offered when I had watched the CSIs work Natalie Strait’s dust-covered BMW X5 out on the Pala Reservation. Proetto was distant.

“We found some interesting things in your wife’s car,” said Hazzard. “And got some solid information in our field interviews. And a call on the tip line just after your conference yesterday. No smoking gun, but we know more now.”

“Good, Lew, good,” said Dalton, looking at the lieutenant and fiddling with the cuff buttons on his dress shirt. “What exactly?”

“You’re sure about the PI being in on this, sir?” he said as if I wasn’t there. Then a ham-faced assessment of me.

“Pretty damned, Lieutenant,” said Dalton. “We fought in Fallujah together.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“I actually don’t have all day, Lew.”

“We appreciate you being here,” said Proetto. “We’ll keep it short. A witness saw two male subjects getting her out of her BMW and into a white Suburban — out there on the reservation, where she left her SUV. A black man and a white man.”

Brock Weld? I wondered if they’d found Marcus, the young man I’d talked to while being escorted from Tola Strait’s marijuana farm. Maybe he’d come forward, trying to help.

“We already know that,” said Dalton. “But how did two men get into her Bimmer in the first place?”

“A woman called our tip line after your press conference,” said Proetto. “Our luck. Tuesday morning she saw a late-model blue SUV and a larger white SUV with a flashing red light, both on the southbound Valley Parkway shoulder. Looked like they’d just pulled over. She saw a brunette white woman behind the wheel of the blue SUV. She saw a white male subject standing at her window with a clipboard or a citation book. She saw a black guy driving the white SUV. And one passenger, maybe. It all went by in a flash. It was around nine-thirty, not long after Natalie left the restaurant. That’s the direction she’d be heading for work in Escondido. The BMW was in front, indicating she’d pulled over and stopped for what she assumed was law enforcement. When we asked if the white SUV had a law-enforcement emblem she said no, it did not.”

Hazzard gave Dalton a placid, blue-eyed stare. Proetto watched Dalton closely, but I could read no emotion on his face.

“And not long after,” said Proetto, “as we know from Mr. Ford, Natalie Strait is seen out in Pala with two men — one white and one black — exiting her BMW and getting her into a white Suburban. Natalie had gotten there in the back seat of her own vehicle, likely followed by the Suburban that pulled her over. But we found no signs of struggle in her car. No blood, no abraded tissue or skin, no clots of hair or damage to the interior.”

“She didn’t write ‘Help’ in lipstick just for the fun of it,” said Dalton. “Maybe they had a gun. Maybe she figured cops are cops and you do what they say. Maybe they were cops.”

Hazzard absorbed the cop possibility with a stoic expression. Straightened the folder on the table before him and tapped it with his fingers, as if this finalized something. Proetto nodded noncommittally.

“Assemblyman Strait, do you and Natalie own a horse or horses?”

“Nope.”

“Do you or your wife own clothing or crafts or decorations or accessories or art or furniture or anything that might contain horsehair?” he asked. “Specifically, horsetail hair?”

“No. Not that I know of.”

“Does she transport friends, relatives, or business associates who might be around horses?” asked Hazzard.

“I suppose it’s possible but I really don’t know,” said Dalton. “Why?”

“Because we found horsetail hair in her vehicle. One fiber — black, thick, and straight. Cut at both ends. Some kind of adhesive at one end. Someone in her BMW very possibly brought it in. Maybe part of a belt. A purse. Some accessory that makes use of horsetail.”

“You mean a woman kidnapped her?” asked Dalton.

“Why not?” asked Hazzard. “And men can have a horsehair bracelet, or accents on a coat, right? Again, we assume a third person — someone driving the white Suburban when Natalie was transferred to it. The FBI is looking at the hair for me, but it’s going to take time. A lot of time, with The Chaos Committee out there sucking my up resources.”

Dalton sat back, shaking his head, likely scrolling through his memory for horse-owning acquaintances.

“Mr. Strait, do you own a dog?”

“Freddie,” said Dalton. “He’s Natalie’s. She found him running loose one day, dirty and hungry, no tags. Doesn’t care for me, but he votes Republican.”

“We found a fair amount of short, curly white hair in her car,” said Hazzard.

“That’s him,” said Dalton. “He doesn’t shed much.”

“Where does he ride?”

“Jumps the seats. Bounces all around. He’s a maniac.”

“Did you get any prints from the BMW that weren’t Natalie’s or Dalton’s?” I asked.

“I’ll get to that,” said Hazzard. Then did. “They lifted two nice fingerprints off the child-proof door and window toggles. Not Natalie’s prints, and not yours, Mr. Strait.”

The driver’s, I thought, keeping Natalie from getting away.

“No,” said Dalton. “No reason for Natalie or me to use the child-proofer with grown boys.”

“We sent them to ATF and the FBI,” said Hazzard. “But again, The Chaos Committee is slowing things way down.”

Dalton made a fist and touched it lightly to the table. “The California Assembly’s job one is to find those bastards and get ’em in the ground.”

I wondered if Dalton campaigned in his sleep.

“Yesterday a cop up in Adelanto got shot in the back, long-distance,” said Hazzard. “Going to be okay, but another in Fresno got shot at, too. Two cops in one day. That happens just about never in this state. Proof that there are fools out there, taking these Chaos assholes seriously.”

Hazzard looked at Dalton, then at me, placid blue eyes in an angry pink face. “So put as many of them in the ground as you can, Mr. Strait.”

“You know I will,” said Dalton.

“I’ll help any way I can,” said Hazzard.

“Then give me your vote in November, Lieutenant.”

Hazzard nodded his big head.

“Otherwise it looks to us that the interior of your wife’s car was wiped down for prints,” said Proetto. “We found an unusually small number of everyday latents. They found small shreds of paper snagged on the dash and armrest controls — like a paper towel would leave.”

Hazzard slapped open the folder, stared down at the top sheet. “Okay. Natalie wrote ‘Help’ in lipstick on the back of the front passenger seat. She was cool and smart and got away with it. In their hurry they apparently never saw it. She also left this in the map pouch that ‘Help’ was written on.”

He took out a sheet of printer paper and slid it to face Dalton. A close-up photograph, enlarged. The focus and color both good. Against a dark background I saw a faintly shining circle with a faceted pyramid attached.

“Her bridal set,” said Dalton. “A carat and a half combined, white gold.”

He stared down at the copy. “Another signal to us,” he said. “Another warning.”

Dalton lifted the paper for a different angle. A grunt’s stare, a thousand yards foreshortened. And a long moment.

“We also got the recent destination settings from the navigation unit,” said Hazzard. “Which are right here.”

He set another photocopied picture in front of Dalton, the X5 computer screen in its recent-addresses mode:

“So?” asked Dalton.

“Anything surprise you at all?” asked Hazzard.

“Like what?”

“I’m asking you, Mr. Strait.”

“Well… she uses the navigator for practically everything. Even if she knows how to get there. A crutch. She likes that lady with the English accent.”

“Why would she go to the FBI?”

Dalton shrugged.

“Or Asclepia Pharmaceutical?” asked Hazzard. “It’s a regional office. They don’t sell any drugs out of there.”

I wondered if Natalie had been having a look at McKenzie Doyle.

“Funny name, Asclepia,” said Dalton, blushing.

“From the Greek god of medicine,” said Proetto. “Zeus killed him for raising the dead.”

“I’d have given him a raise,” said Dalton.

“Why would Natalie drive to the regional office?”

“Come to think of it, she was applying for a job there,” said Dalton.

Another ham-faced glance of suspicion from Hazzard to Proetto. “She wasn’t selling enough BMWs?”

“She was looking for a better earning opportunity,” said Dalton. “She’s good at sales.”

“And her visit to the FBI, was that a common thing?” asked Hazzard.

“Not that I know,” said Dalton. “But it’s possible the feds were talking to her behind my back. The goal of the charges is to keep me from being reelected. As you know.”

Proetto leaned forward. “We went back through the navigation memory and saw Natalie made three other trips there in the last six weeks.”

“You’ll have to ask them why,” said Dalton. “Odds are, they were trying to get some dirt on me.”

“Dirt?” asked Hazzard.

“Read the papers, Lew,” said Dalton. “How thick are you?”

A glare from big Hazzard.

“Mr. Strait,” said Proetto, “in one of our earlier talks here, we established that you were in Sacramento the day your wife went missing. Am I remembering that right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“And what time did you fly out of Lindbergh?”

“Early morning. I don’t remember the exact time. I already told you that.”

“Just checking the timeline,” said Proetto. “Because this witness who put Natalie with the two men out in Pala, getting her from one car to another, he said one of them looked like you.”

“You showed him a picture?”

“Routine, in a case like this, Mr. Strait,” said Hazzard.

“Well, he might have looked like me but he wasn’t me,” said Dalton. “Jesus, you guys…”

“Do you have a record of that travel? An airline or hotel receipt?”

“Of course I do — it was assembly business.”

“We’re just nailing down the details,” said Proetto. “Get me a copy of that receipt and we can move on to the things that matter. No hurry, Mr. Strait. I know you’ve got an awful lot on your mind these days.”

Dalton stood. “I hope you sonsofbitches know I didn’t have anything to do with Natalie’s disappearance. You’re smarter than that, right?”

Dalton sat in heavy silence as I drove us toward Borrego Springs and our Fallujah reunion with Harris Broadman. Stared out the window for most of the way.

As we dropped down into the valley he checked his phone, returned a call and some text messages.

“I’m looking forward to seeing Harris,” he said. “Kind of nervous, too.”

“It was his idea,” I said.

“It’s the right thing. Sometimes, you have to go back.”