Then She Vanished

Forty-Two

Another Wednesday with the Irregulars: Dick’s deep-fried catfish and group-effort appetizers cooled and complemented by a pitcher of Grandma Liz’s greyhounds made with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and a touch of blood orange liqueur.

At cocktail hour we played Ping-Pong and commiserated over the Padres’ un-great spring. Most agreed that Phil Rivers, our beloved Chargers QB, should — at thirty-eight — take his spring training more gingerly. To live near San Diego is to love our sports teams, even when they betray us for money and move away.

“We should have built the stadium,” said Liz.

“Absolute waste of taxpayer money,” said Dick. “The city would have to buy up the empty seats for games again, just to keep the Chargers in town.”

“What’s more important than that?” asked Liz.

“The homeless, dear. Those less fortunate than us. They’re everywhere you look downtown.”

“I know you, Dick Ford, and you don’t care one bit about the homeless or the poor.”

“Absolutely true, which should tell you exactly how bad an investment I think a stadium would be.”

“You’re a hateful miser,” said his wife. “That’s why I live as far away from you as I can.”

A tart reference to their longtime living arrangements here at Rancho de los Robles — Dick in casita one and Liz as far down the breezeway as you can get, in casita six.

Odile, the gentle psychic, cleared her throat. “God must love the common man because he made so many of them.”

“And dogs, too,” said Francisco, running his hand down Triunfo’s sleek black head.

“Dogs are superior to us, psychically,” said Odile. “They have purer minds.”

“That’s because they’re animals,” said Dick. “No real minds at all. They’ve got it easy.”

“I disagree,” said Odile.

“We suffer greatly,” said Dick. “Because we know the end. We know there is an end. They don’t.”

Odile considered Dick as she sipped the greyhound. She has a beautiful complexion and an innocent’s gaze, which belie her empathy for the darkness in us.

“But the fact that life ends allows us grace,” she said. “For example, I sense there’s been a change in my clients over the last week. Since The Chaos Committee was stopped. Since our chances of death seem less now. I receive strength and optimism from my clients. Hope and determination. Their auras have much more energy than before. Even the timbres of their voices express positive force.”

“I’ve noticed that, too,” said Burt. “On the links.”

“People are just flat-out exhausted,” said Dick.

“But their drives are carrying better,” said Burt, offering Dick his weird smile.

“And relieved,” said Liz. “It’s only been a week but I’m already having trouble believing it really happened. Two weeks of chaos in the state. Or whatever they’re calling it.”

And they were right. The curse of The Chaos Committee was beginning to lift. Their leader and seven of his followers had been killed; one remained hospitalized and two suspects had been arrested. The investigation would continue.

The cop shootings abated as abruptly as they’d begun, leaving six officers dead and seven wounded across the state. Followed by civilian vigils in support of law enforcement, all of which drew large crowds and no violence.

After the Borrego shootout, the street assaults and car burnings tapered off quickly, too, which cut down the number of citizens trying to fight their way into emergency rooms and urgent care clinics. Schools and houses of worship reopened; the post office and private carriers resumed daily deliveries; the freeway traffic got back to its former congestion. The governor appeared ubiquitously. Federal and state declarations of emergency ended. The damage to property was now estimated at over $500 million.

In pattern with our times, the violence incited by The Chaos Committee and their deadly bombs was replaced by public and media fascination over The Chaos Committee members themselves: Who were these people, what motivated them, how did they come together, could this happen again?

That night on my poor man’s jumbotron we watched a San Diego Channel 8 special, “Anger, Anarchy, and Chaos” about the perpetrators. Sponsored by Ford Motor Company and the redesigned Explorer. It ran complete with pictures and video:

Harris Broadman, forty-two, motel owner and organizer, wounded in Iraq and awarded a Purple Heart. Born and raised in Kenton, Ohio, an athletic boy who became an aloof young man, earning a degree in European history and briefly publishing an anarchist blog after returning from Iraq with burns over 30 percent of his body. Showed him at two, smiling with his arm around an Australian Shepherd. And at thirty-eight, lying in a hospital bed after his seventeenth surgery.

Brock Holland, thirty-one, a Miami native who had done prison time for computer fraud and assaulting a police officer. He’d worked security for two cruise lines, casinos in Las Vegas and Temecula, and various San Diego area hotels. The Channel 8 anchor reported that Holland had “developed a friendship” with Assemblyman Dalton Strait’s wife, Natalie, later kidnapping her for use by The Chaos Committee.

Holland photos showed a serious boy, a defiant teen, and a seductively handsome and confident young man.

“Vile,” said Liz.

Holland’s Chaos Committee “partner,” said the news, was Denton-Texas-born Gretchen Deuzler, thirty-one, daughter of a mining engineer and a college math professor. Channel 8 said that Gretchen had learned the basics of blasting from her father, who used to take her along in fieldwork, and had excelled at physics under Mom. She wrote a popular blog after being raped at a college party. She was believed to be the lead bomb maker. In the pictures she was cute as a girl and sternly pretty as a woman. She was expected to make a full recovery and would face a list of charges that could get her the death penalty.

“They seem to be living normal lives, then something goes wrong,” said Liz. “The IED for Broadman. Weld’s attack on the policeman. The woman’s rape.”

“Are those reasons for terror, or excuses?” asked her husband.

“People act according to how they are treated,” said Liz.

“And some, their light becomes dimmed,” said Odile.

“While the rest of us battle it out with our dark friends inside,” said Burt.

It was the first time I’d heard Burt Short confess to any kind of inner struggle. Years ago he’d offered to kill a man to protect my life, and he had done so. But never hinted at the cost to himself. To his soul, or a dark friend inside.

Cassy Weisberg was twenty-six when she died in the Borrego shootout. She’d come to Los Angeles after high school in Athol, Massachusetts. Worked for Marriott and Hilton as a desk receptionist, then a series of boutique hotels in and around Palm Springs. Then the Bighorn Motel, hired by Harris Broadman. She was described by high school acquaintances as a shy and solitary girl. Her mother hadn’t heard from her in eight years and she had developed no friendships that reporters could discover. She was believed to have mailed the Encinitas bombs. She was being treated for uterine cancer at the time of her death. Her high school yearbook pictured the same wan girl who had fooled me into believing she was nothing more than an ailing desk clerk in a small desert motel.

Jackie O was Roxana Rajavi, thirty, an American-born daughter of Iranian refugees living legally in Seattle. She was a good student and a devout Muslim and, like Cassy Weisberg, socially withdrawn. She had moved to Ramona five years ago and met Harris Broadman through the Internet shortly thereafter. She had mailed the first two Chaos Committee bombs and likely the bomb that had killed the police chief in Hopedale, California. She was believed to be communicating with possible sponsors of terror in Tehran, but investigators had found no concrete evidence that Iranian treasure or know-how had benefited The Chaos Committee. She was believed to be a part of the Local Live! studio takeover.

“The last two girls seem so young and lost,” said Liz.

“Old enough to hate,” said Dick.

“And to fall under the spells of evil men,” said Odile.

“Girls cast spells of their own,” said Dick.

I looked at the brief video and photographs of Roxana Rajavi, seeing the same woman I’d watched in Lark’s post office video so many times. In better focus, and when not mailing a box of death to an innocent person, she looked pleasant and composed.

The other four committee members killed in Borrego — the gunmen in the black Yukon — were:

Daniel Dawes, a fifty-one-year-old school custodian living in Warner Springs, thirty miles from the Bighorn Motel. Bachelor, loner, and a U.S. Army veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was believed to be one of the ninja gunmen in the Local Live! takeover.

Lamont Anthony, forty-nine, the sole black Chaos Committee member discovered so far, was a Portland, Oregon, native who’d gotten a philosophy degree from Oregon State and worked his entire adult life for the United States Postal Service. He was believed to have been the driver during the kidnapping of Natalie Strait.

James Diggory, twenty-five, born in L.A., a community college student with an interest in martial arts and Norwegian black metal music. He had no criminal record, no friends that could be located, and no social network presence.

Trent Hodge was a thirty-three-year-old Tennessean who had joined the French Foreign Legion at eighteen because the marines rejected him for excessive tattoos. He’d fought in Syria and Yemen for six years. Had a tattoo that read L’Enfant Terrible above his right eyebrow.

“Quite the collection,” said Grandpa Dick.

“They actually seem kind of normal, except for the French Foreign Legion boy,” said Liz.

“I sense great histories of abuse and pain in their faces,” said Odile.

“A United Nations of misfits,” said Dick.

“Led by a man who lost his face in a war,” said Burt.

“Do you sympathize with him?” asked Dick.

“I sympathize with all men and no causes.”