Then She Vanished

Thirty-Five

The Chaos Committee’s “gift” to California, promised days earlier, was opened by Gail Winfield, the police chief of tiny Hopedale, in the western Sierra Nevada, at 8:35 a.m. on Wednesday, May 27th.

I’d been home from the Bighorn less than an hour when Lark called.

“It killed her instantly,” he said. “They’re using better materials and less of them. The box that Chief Winfield opened could have been a coffee table book. It weighed about the same. It arrived UPS the day before, from an insecure drop box in Hemet. Another bogus sender and return address. Fires just set in Stockton and Grass Valley. And another officer wounded in Sacramento, shot with a rifle.”

Hemet is forty-three miles from Fallbrook, where the first Chaos Committee bomb was mailed. And seventy-seven miles from Ramona, where the second bomb originated. The third bomb’s origin, which killed Congressman Clark Nisson in Encinitas, was of course still unknown.

“Three of four bombs posted from my backyard,” I said to Special Agent Lark. “I hope you don’t come after me.”

“We might. Have you looked at all the surveillance video?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“I’m counting on you, Roland. This one’s for Joan. Remember? What’s new on Natalie Strait?”

“Nothing since the blouse and the letter from Justine,” I lied.

“The cops think Dalton wrote it and mailed himself the evidence as a smoke screen,” said Lark. “They think it’s possible that he had her bagged as cover for his campaign crimes.”

“Is that why you haven’t opened an official FBI investigation?”

“That’s part of it. Hazzard says Dalton wasn’t where he said he was the morning she vanished.”

“He’s got an embarrassing alibi for that morning,” I said.

“I didn’t think you could embarrass that guy,” said Lark. “Every time I see him he’s talking about his wife handling all the finances. How he never touched the money. I mean, you can stick up for him because of Fallujah, but…”

“But?”

“But if I learn anything I’ll share it with you,” Lark said. “We’re letting Hazzard run with it. For us feds, it’s all Chaos Committee now. They’re operating in my backyard, too, Roland. They’re fomenting revolution, making me look bad. It’s triage and priorities right now. So get on that security video, will you? Jackie O mailed that first bomb from Fallbrook. Find her again. Use that twenty-ten vision of yours for something more than beating me at the range.”

“Glad it pissed you off.”

“Everything pisses me off.”

I ended the call. Checked the Vigilant 4000 to find Brock Holland’s white Suburban en route from Borrego Valley to San Diego.

Perfect. Two fewer people to deal with.

Burt stepped into my office. “Ready when you are.”

The Bighorn Motel parking lot was down to two vehicles: Cassy Weisberg’s Beetle and a wind-blasted station wagon circa 1975 with rust patches the size of dinner plates.

Better than I’d planned for: No Harris Broadman. No Brock Holland or Gretchen Deuzler. Just me and the motel from which Natalie Strait had apparently disappeared less than twelve hours earlier.

Once again I waited just off Palm Canyon Drive. My lucky spot. Watched Burt’s perfect red Eldorado convertible sail into the lot and park outside the office. White leather and a red-and-chrome dash. Burt got out and looked around, dressed for golf — green pants, yellow shirt, black PGA vest and visor. Wiped a folded white hankie over a spot on the driver’s door and palmed it back into a rear pocket.

The truck thermometer read 92 degrees. I gave Burt a moment to engage Cassy, then locked up and trudged out into the desert again to approach bungalow nineteen out of view from the office.

Someone had locked the door since I’d last picked it open. And turned off the interior lights. Interesting. The cleaning people? I doubted it.

I picked the lock again and stepped in. The AC was off and the room was warm. Curtains drawn as they were last night. The big white cat was on the couch, green-eyed and dreamy.

I toured the place once more, gun at the small of my back under a loose shirt. The cat followed me, nosing the wall edges, tail up.

I parted the curtains over the picture window. Burt’s car was now parked outside of unit two. From the back seat he pulled a small rolling suitcase and set it on the asphalt. Then shouldered his precious clubs — woods, irons, and putter all cloaked in red-and-white covers embossed with his initials. He didn’t let them touch the ground. He rarely uses the cavernous Eldorado trunk because he has to jump to close the lid. I tease him about the BS but never about his height. He locked up, grabbed his suitcase handle, and bumped his way to his room.

In the hallway I looked directly up at the attic access panel. All I needed for that was the ladder in the closet. One of my detective friends with the SDSD taught me to look up. At a crime scene, he said, always look up.

I fetched and climbed the ladder, slid aside the attic lid and looked in. Hit the handy light switch. Small and not much to see: beams and rafters with roll-in insulation in between, the air conditioner exchange unit, ducts and electrical and copper water lines to and from the heater below. Two un-sprung rat traps, freshly baited. Not enough room to stand.

I made sure the cover was as before, put the ladder back, and studied the floor hatch. No handles or grip. A switch, I thought, or a button.

Nothing obvious on the walls, but I found a promising candidate in the bathroom just across the hall — an everyday light switch hiding behind a hung hand towel.

Flipped it and watched the hallway floor hatch rise, pavers and all, to form a neat square opening just big enough for human traffic. The hinges were stout and the motor was quiet. A nylon strap nailed to the underside. A light went on. Metal steps and metal railings.

Down I went. Four-by-four uprights rose on either side of me, bound by flat steel T-straps. Two-by-four framing, with heavy sandbag walls down low, and lighter plywood sheets up higher. A tunnel designed for the treacherous desert soil. The ceiling was just high enough that I didn’t have to duck. A line of overhead lightbulbs ran straight down its center, every bulb working. The reinforcement lumber still looked fresh, the nail heads glimmered, and the T-straps were shiny black.

Recently built or well preserved by the desert dry?

By my difficult reckoning, the tunnel ran along one side of the pool and toward the first wing of rooms. The light was good but it was difficult to get a sense of direction underground. I moved slowly and made a soft left turn.

Then on to the first row of the Bighorn Motel horseshoe, aimed roughly at Broadman’s unit six. Where I saw a trapdoor very much like the one through which I’d just descended. I looked up at the ladder tucked under the hatch and the dangling pull-rope, feeling a vertiginous dread — Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

The tunnel continued another fifty feet past what I guessed was the office, then began to lead me away from the motel. But this was not the same tunnel I’d started off in. The walls became solid rock — not reinforced by beams, sandbags, or plywood. It took another gentle turn and, if my sense of direction was right, headed into the hills behind the Bighorn, to the east. The hills that I’d seen the first time I came to the Bighorn — scarred by old mine tailings and scaffolding and pits, and, apparently, undercut by tunnels. The hills with the homes built into the boulders.

A hundred feet more to another turn, then a hundred feet more.

Bringing me to another ladder and another trapdoor.

I’m not claustrophobic but my gut was tight and a pool of panic simmered.

I climbed up and muscled open the hatch. Heard the grind of the hinge and felt the weight on the strap as I lowered the cover to the floor.

Pulled myself up and out and into a large, faintly lit room.

No windows and almost no light. Found a switch and the room flickered to life.

It was large, with brick walls and a low ceiling of recessed fluorescent lights. Bunker-like. Stone silent. One wall fitted with heavy shackles for arms and ankles. Bookshelves on three sides. Desks and tables with newspapers and magazines piling up. Stacks of books. Lamps for reading. Fast-food litter, drink cans. Rugs on a polished concrete floor. A closed door with a poster of a Guy Fawkes demonstrator on it.

A torture chamber? A library? Study hall? Museum?

The far wall arrested my attention. It was hung with masks from around the world, crowded together cheek to cheek: African, Greek and Roman, European, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islands, Australian. Many I couldn’t place. Both ancient and modern. Washington and Lincoln. Reagan and Nixon. Obama and Trump. Superheroes. The world in masks. Grotesque. Amusing. Unnerving.

And down low, within easy reach:

A Hannya theater mask.

A madly grimacing Iroquois.

A WWI splatter mask.

Standing in the cool silence, I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

I let Burt into bungalow nineteen through the back patio door, out of Cassy Weisberg’s view from the Bighorn Motel office.

A few minutes later we stood in the bunker, before the wall of masks.

“Hair and makeup for The Chaos Committee,” he said.

“Check the Iroquois,” I said. It had the same insane grin and crazed eyes, the same stumpy wooden teeth, and a head of bristling black hair that looked much like the horsehairs found in Natalie Strait’s blue SUV.

“Broadman, Holland, and Deuzler make three of five committee members,” said Burt.

“Leaving two ninjas from the TV takeover,” I said. “One female and one male. Possibly Jackie O. For a committee of five — minimum.”

“Let’s see what Mr. Fawkes is guarding,” said Burt.

I couldn’t get the lock open. I learned my lock picking on residential American models and this one was German, industrial and expensive.

“One more round, champ,” Burt said.

I finally got the tension wrench and pick working together and the last pin moved into place. I pushed open the door.

An apartment, spacious and apparently lived in. Bars on the windows and just the one door leading in and out. Brick walls and beam ceilings, a hardwood floor. A good-sized fireplace, black with the years, in the corner of the living room. A stack of firewood left over from winter.

Dishes in the sink, food in the refrigerator, bread, jam, and peanut butter on the counter.

A bath towel hung from the bathroom door hook. A blue dress dried on a hanger hooked to the shower. A shower cap on the nozzle inside. A brush on the vanity counter, matted with dark hair.

“She was still here this morning, when I saw Broadman,” I said. “After I left, he got her out of hiding and they hit the road.”

“Which means they made you last night,” said Burt. “Maybe that’s a good thing. They could have jumped you but they didn’t.”

I checked the Vigilant 4000. Saw that Brock Holland’s Suburban had been stationary for the last fifty-seven minutes at the same GPS coordinates in Ramona, a little over an hour away from Borrego Springs.

Ramona, where Natalie Galland had grown up and met earnest Dalton Strait through his bad-boy older brother, Kirby. Where the second Chaos Committee bomb had been mailed to San Diego County Administration Center.

Burt looked at me.

“I have to tell Lark what we found,” I said. “But I’m not done with Natalie. It’s better we retrieve her than our overworked and sometimes reckless bureau.”

“Certainly.”

“Time kills, Burt. Natalie Strait is a valuable captive and these people will exploit her any way they can.”

“Sounds to me like she was dressed for combat last night,” Burt said. “Stockholm syndrome? Or maybe another psychotic break? More than enough has happened to her in the last two weeks to bring one on. But don’t forget that they expect a ransom. What kind, I don’t know.”

“Is Holland still in Ramona?”

I checked the Vigilant and nodded.

An hour later, Brock Holland’s Ramona GPS coordinates led us to a dirt shoulder of Pine Street, from which we stared through a chain link fence to the empty lot beyond.

No Suburban.

No Harris Broadman, Brock Holland, Gretchen Deuzler, or Natalie Strait.

Just weeds going brown and ground squirrels leading their squirrely lives. Trash flapped against the windward side of the fence, from which hung a collection of campaign posters.

Something flashed red in the empty lot.

I used my binoculars to find the Vigilant 4000 blinking from atop a boulder in the afternoon sun. Passed them to Burt just as the Suburban came up fast behind us, someone spraying three-round bursts that sent us scrambling under the truck and returning fire from the ground. Dirt and gravel kicked up in my face, rattled off my sunglasses. Bullets twanged above. I heard the lead punching through the truck body and the windows as I squeezed off rounds at the driver. Burt fired away beside me. The Suburban’s windshield blossomed and the vehicle swerved suddenly onto two tires — hovered a perilous second — then righted itself and roared back onto the street and away.

“We can run them down but we can’t match the firepower,” said Burt.

“I hate calling cops,” I said.

“Me too.”

I called 911.