Then She Vanished

Thirty-Nine

Tola dreamed and trembled. Terrified words and anguished yowls.

At dawn the Marine Corps artillery started up on Camp Pendleton, just a few miles from where I live. Thunder on thunder. Practice makes perfect. Tola was tightly balled under the covers, only a slice of her face and a flood of red hair visible.

“Sound of freedom,” I said.

“Maybe I should join up. Do they accept killers?”

“They create them.”

“I’d be ahead of the curve.”

Downstairs I made coffee and breakfast, brought them up. She stood in my robe, showered, her hair up in a towel, looking out to the pond as the artillery thumped and the window glass shook.

We sat on the hefty old trunk at the foot of my bed, plates on our knees and coffee cups on the floor.

“My soul is gone,” she said.

“It’ll come back when it trusts you again.”

“Will you trust me again?”

“You killed three men last night, Tola. You can say they deserved it and you might be right. Varying gods would weigh in with varying opinions. The one you prayed to in the van? The one you said may possibly not like you? My guess is that that god would approve.”

She gave me a long look, her face specter white with dark hollows. Her eyes flat green pools.

“Get me out of here,” she said. “Anywhere.”

I drove Justine’s red Boxster convertible. Put the top down and a CD from her wallet into the player.

I couldn’t clearly define my emotions as I tore through the curving back-country roads toward I-5: the slaughters on Palomar and in the hotel just hours ago; memories of Justine flooding me as I sat inches away from Tola, hearing the old music.

We stood on a bluff at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, facing the grave of Private First Class Ernest Avalos, 1985–2004.

“Why here?” asked Tola.

“Perspective.” I told her about Avalos in Fallujah.

“Here but for the grace of God are you?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

“Do you feel responsible?”

“Just that I got the luck that day and he didn’t.”

“A good guy?”

“A good man. Humble and kind-natured.”

“I didn’t think marines could be that.”

I smiled.

Tola took my arm and we watched a burial taking place two hills over, the headstones fanning away from us in diminishing perspective, perfectly uniform, an undulating river of stones, over a hundred thousand in all. One hundred thousand. The gulls wheeled over Point Loma.

“I feel that I have sinned,” she said. “And I feel that if I was asked to do last night again, I would. I know I would.”

“Do something good for someone living,” I said. “You’ll feel better about yourself.”

“Feeling better about myself doesn’t seem like an appropriate motivation. On the backs of three dead men.”

I thought of my Five. The Five I’d never told anyone about until I confessed to Harris Broadman and Dalton Strait that day in bungalow nineteen. What good could come of opening those wounds to Tola?

But I did.

When I was finished her head hit my shoulder and I felt the strength of her grip on my arm. Felt the strength it takes to keep going, to fight fear with hope, to bear heartbreak on the slender shoulders of joy.

“Take me to a church,” she said. “One with a lenient god and rituals I don’t understand.”

Which landed us at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Parish back in Fallbrook.

Tola wanted to talk to the priest, so I waited outside.

A buzz in my pocket and Lark on the phone:

“We shot it out with Weld and Deuzler an hour ago at his home in Valley Center,” he said. “Weld’s dead but Gretchen Deuzler is going to be okay. Weld took a bullet from you or Burt when they flipped your tracker in Ramona. No sign of Broadman and the rest of The Chaos Committee. No sign of Natalie Strait, either. There’s almost five hundred feet of tunnel under and out of the Bighorn. Some new, some part of the old mine. The masks, the torture wall, the anarchist library — never seen anything like it.”

I asked Lark if the National Allied Building in San Ysidro had panned out.

“Pan out? It’s bomb-making central behind the import storefront. Small room, no windows. Explosives, fuses, timers, wires, blasting caps, Semtex — you name it. Shipping boxes and envelopes from every delivery service in the country. Lists of prospective targets and their addresses. Guess who made the list?”

“Special Agent Mike Lark. You owe me a solid,” I said.

“Name it.”

“We’ll see.”

“Where’s Dalton?” he asked.

“Moving between his home, his campaign headquarters, and his apartment in Sacramento.”

“And maybe McKenzie Doyle in Newport Beach?”

“Maybe,” I said. “He’s due in court again next week. He’s being sued for slandering Ammna Safar as blood related to known terrorists.”

A beat of silence.

“Broadman abducted Natalie out of vengeance,” said Lark. “I fear for her state of body and mind. Broadman’s Chaos Committee might be shot up, but I think he’s more dangerous now, not less. Dalton is personal.”

“I agree.”

“Let’s hope he’s got enough sense to stay away from packages that arrive by mail.”

“He’s fearless,” I said. “Choosing off The Chaos Committee in the media, when he knows they’ve got his wife.”

“What did he call them in that last tweet?” Lark asked.

“Impotent morons.”

“Proetto and Hazzard have backed off on him,” said Lark. “They don’t think he was involved in her abduction. In spite of his shaky timeline. Doyle offered herself as his alibi.”

“That was never the right call.”

“And you be careful, too, Roland. You’re the pesky PI who put the feds onto Broadman. You came out of Fallujah in one piece and he didn’t. Broadman might enjoy blowing you to bits.”

I saw Tola and the priest walking slowly side by side in the parish garden. A pool and a waterfall and statues of the saints. A riot of springtime colors, the priest’s hands behind his back, Tola’s head bowed in thought.

“I thought of that favor you can do me,” I said.

A grunt from Lark.

“Tola took Crag Face’s bait, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you also going to bring her up on schedule-one drug charges?”

“We might.”

I watched Tola and the priest ambling past the roses and groomed palms.

“Can you help her out?” I asked.

“I cannot. Did you ask her about the six cartel men gunned down in Mexican Buena Vista last night?” he asked.

“I didn’t have to. I was there.”

“Fuck,” said Lark. “Talk to me.”

When I was done, another long Lark silence.

“Roland, the drug charges are the DEA’s but I can make it my business if I really want to.”

“I gave you The Chaos Committee, Mike. Now I’m trying to help a friend.”

“A murderer,” he said. “It’s wrong and you know it and you’re covering her murdering ass. I understand — I understand why, but why doesn’t matter. What matters. Why only counts for kids and dogs.”

Lark punched off.

Tola and the priest were approaching and I heard their voices on the breeze but not their words.

Tola introduced us and the father thanked me for bringing Tola to the parish. He sized me up, then said I had done a brave thing in protecting San Diego from a terrible attack a few months ago. Or was it a year by now? He had a grave expression and I wondered what Tola had confessed.

“Please come visit us any time you’d like,” he said. “Both of you. You are always welcome in the house of God.”

We walked the beach in Oceanside. Got lunch. Watched the surfers from the pier, fed some quarters into the mounted telescopes and got good views north and south. Took a siesta in a shady patch of grass under rotund Canary Island palms. Some of Tola’s turmoil ebbed out of her as she slept, her head heavy on my chest.

My phone rang and Dalton’s name and number appeared.

“Natalie just called!” he boomed. “She’s okay, Roland! She’s okay! I can pick her up but she’s not sure where or when. She’ll call. They don’t want money and I can bring a second. You. It’s going to happen somewhere remote. In daylight, so they can see that we’re playing fair. This phone isn’t leaving my hand!”

“It’s a trap, Dalton,” I said. “They’re shot up and desperate.”

“Maybe, Roland, but I’m going. I feel good about this. What you do is up to you.”