Then She Vanished

Twenty-Six

Lark had agreed to meet me later that afternoon at the Duffytown shooting range. I told him I had some information on Dalton and Tola Strait that he might find interesting. This was enough to get me one hour with my friendly neighborhood FBI. It was also true enough, though the larger truth was that I was planning an ambush.

Duffytown is a mock town on a navy base, part modern and part Old West, named after an old San Diego sheriff — a good place for law enforcement training. Targets jump out at you from doorways or windows if you want them to, or you can just take old-fashioned range practice if you’d rather.

The place was bustling, befitting the bombing death of a local congressman. All manner of law enforcers squeezing off rounds. The rattle of automatic fire. A pair of fighter jets out of Miramar roaring low overhead.

We shot conventional — life-sized paper silhouettes on retracting cables at ten, twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, and a hundred feet. Lark used his .40-caliber Glock and I used my vintage .45 Colt Gold Cup, a gift from my father.

I have 20/10 vision, a genetic gift. One hundred feet is a long shot with an open-sight handgun, good eyes or not. A trained pistolero will put eight out of eight shots in the black all day long at a hundred feet. A street cop who qualifies four times a year at twenty-five feet because he’s required to, won’t.

On this clear spring day my eyes were sound and the rhythm found itself and I beat ultra-competitive Lark in our first round. Six of eight in the black for PI Ford; five for Special Agent Lark.

He set his earmuffs on the bench and examined his target with tense disappointment. Poked his fingers through the outside-the-silhouette holes from behind, as if he could make them disappear.

“Mike, tell me about the craggy-faced old agent who interrupted us in your conference room that day. As you know, he was with Dalton and Tola Strait in Sacramento Monday night after Dalton’s bill got shot down. Heath Overdale was there, too — the freight and shipping lobbyist.”

Lark looked at me, all suspicion. Anger, too, at the risk he’d taken by bringing me into his San Diego field office, and how the simple opening of a conference room door had blown a cover. I remembered the annoyance on Lark’s face when the older man had looked in.

“Back off, Roland.”

“Why?”

A long consideration from Lark, wheels turning. “What put that idea in your head about Sacramento?”

“I was there.”

“We’ve worked hard to get him in place, Roland. Don’t fuck it up.”

The next round, Mike shot first and toggled the target back to us. Six clean holes in the black. One in the center circle. He blew on his upraised barrel like a gunslinger and set his pistol on the bench.

I brought up the Gold Cup, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, settled my weight evenly and enjoyed the God-given blessing of my vision. I shot unhurriedly. As Wyatt Earp once noted, fast is fine but accuracy is final. The trigger’s sweet spots presented in rhythm, weighted and cam-like within the heavy Colt. As the silhouette sailed back to us I could see points of sunlight through the paper. Seven in the black — one just at the edge of the bad guy’s right shoulder — but enough to win.

“What’s Crag Face’s pitch to Dalton and Tola?” I asked.

Lark’s look was cool anger. He could do little more than trust my professional ethics, and our untested, young friendship.

“A California Department of Business Oversight regulator with holes in his wallet and his morals,” he said. “Maybe willing to look the other way on Tola’s wannabe credit union partners. His favorite foundation funds literacy on Southern California Indian reservations. The second she offers it cash, that’s a bribe and we’ve got her.”

I wondered if Tola had been sufficiently fooled by Crag Face to do something so reckless. Her familiar attitude toward him suggested that she might have.

“And if Dalton is willing to sweeten the pot by throwing in a no vote on credit union oversight in return for a campaign donation from said foundation, we get two for one,” said Lark. “We snag a drug pusher and a vote-peddling assemblyman.”

I was suddenly sick of Lark and his feds. Of their separate laws and pugnacious power. I thought they should leave California’s problems to California, rather than compound them. Go entrap someone else. I said nothing. But Lark and I knew each other well enough for him to read my mind like an open map.

“Roland? I still carry the federal handcuffs in San Diego. So if you blow our cover to Dalton or Tola, you’ll qualify to wear them.”

I didn’t have to tell Mike that his FBI wouldn’t be able to prove such a thing if I simply whispered in their ears.

“Your call, Mike, not mine.”

“Are you personally interested in Tola Strait?” he asked. “I’ve seen her.”

“She showed me around the Nectar Barn outside Julian.”

“And?”

“I thought she might hire me to move some cash but she didn’t. I was glad. It looked like an easy way to die.”

Lark gave me his hard-guy look, somewhat softened by his awkward haircut.

“Her cash comes from federal crimes,” he said.

“Her business is legal in the State of California,” I said. “And you put people like Tola Strait in danger by not letting them bank their money. She’s sitting on safes full of time bombs. Her growers were attacked by cartel gunmen last year and had to shoot their way out of it.”

“Poor little felons.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Then we agree to disagree,” said Lark. “If Dalton and Tola suddenly turn a cold shoulder to my man, I’ll have to have a talk with you.”

“I can’t make them fall for his bullshit, either, Mike.”

“I wonder. Maybe we can help each other. Even dogs can share the spoils.”

I didn’t say so, but I’d never seen dogs share anything, especially spoils.

Instead I asked him about their progress on The Chaos Committee.

“Representative Clark Nisson had eighty-seven letters, twelve oversized envelopes, and seven packages delivered to his Encinitas office the week leading up to the bombing,” he said. “That we know of. Almost half of those items came through twenty-eight different U.S. post offices, the others from private carriers. The bomb contained a powder accelerant and the fire destroyed almost everything evidentiary — paper being paper — part of The Chaos Committee’s intention, no doubt. But we’ve got no positive point of origin. Which leaves us mountains of surveillance video to view, along with all the internal tracking information. All to locate a suspect we can barely make out on the outdated surveillance video. If, of course, she even mailed it.”

“Jackie O,” I said. “Mailing bombs from Fallbrook and Ramona. Gaming the postal workers and FedEx employees with phony names and return addresses.”

“Washington is frantic for an arrest,” said Lark, an edge in his voice. “We’ve sent her image to every post office clerk and carrier in the county. To hundreds of FedEx and UPS employees. To every media news outlet there is. She’s been all over the social platforms. Last night the president tweeted that every U.S. citizen should be on the lookout for her. Well, that’s all great but we’ve got scores of thousands more tips, possible sightings, and positive identifications than we can follow up on. And they’re still flooding in.”

Lark wasn’t exaggerating. I’d seen Jackie O everywhere the last few days, from the mainstream media to the corners of the dark web.

“We’ve computer-flagged all post office mailings addressed to government workers in California,” he said. “The obvious ones, that is — mayors, city councilmen, supervisors, state legislators, judges, commissioners. Anyone elected or appointed to federal positions. A huge job. But there are thousands of cops and firefighters we can’t flag. And The Chaos Committee promised more and bigger bombs — soon.”

“What can I do, Mike?”

Lark reloaded his gun and jammed it back into the paddle holster high on his right hip. Gave me a small but joyless smile.

“Joan always said to watch out for you and your favors.”

“You and Joan have gotten plenty from my favors.”

Once again, what hung before us was that terrible night when Joan Taucher was lost to both of us, suddenly and forever.

“I’ve sent you all the surveillance video we have from the postal service.”

“I’m still catching up with it.”

“I’d like you to look at the private carrier video also. Some of it’s good. Some not.”

“Send it, Mike.”

He gave me a tired and harried look. “But mainly, Roland, you can help me by standing behind my agent’s cover if the opportunity arises. Maybe even pursue such opportunity. In your usual subtle fashion. And along the way, I want you to let me know what Dalton and his sister are up to. If you can find it in your heart to defend the Constitution and help us hated feds.”