Then She Vanished

Eight

By the time I got to the city, the waterfront was barricaded and the traffic was inching through downtown. I pulled into an airport parking structure on Kettner, paid the attendant for a few minutes on the rooftop, and wound my way up four stories to the top. Plenty of spaces. I stood with the breeze in my face, looking out at the airport and the tuna fleet and the county center. Raised my binoculars and saw the stately old building surrounded by emergency and media vehicles, SDPD prowlers, and fed and state vehicles of all description. Fire companies and medics still deployed, crews standing outside their engines and trucks. A helicopter hovered low. Various personnel came and went through the cop-clotted entrance, with attitudes of purpose but not emergency. Just doing their jobs now.

I called Lark, not expecting him to answer.

“I’m in the county building,” he said. “You have twenty seconds.”

“Another mail bomb?”

“But stronger. Blew three fingers off the supervisor’s aide who had gone in on a Saturday morning to take care of a few loose ends before a vacation. She’s going to live.”

“Who was it meant for?” I asked.

“Supervisor Holder. The package originated at a FedEx franchise in Ramona. Time’s up, and mum’s the word, Roland. Over and out.”

I looked down on America’s Finest City, at the emergency crews and law enforcers traipsing in and out of the county building. I glassed the cruise ship terminal and Tuna Harbor and Marina Parks and the Midway. The statue Unconditional Surrender. The convention center and the tall hotels. A sleek black helicopter angled down from the blue. My city, America’s finest or not. My turf now. My beat.

I had met Justine in one of those hotels, at a tedious Christmas party that changed my life. That memory drifted across my mind’s eye like a movie clip as I lowered the binoculars and looked at the hotel and I saw her face as it had once been before I’d spoken a word to her. The memory clip played for a moment, pleasantly, but was soon overtaken by another, in which a little pink plane fell into a dark ocean and was swallowed up. That plane will still be crashing on the day I die.

All we control is the volume knob. How much to remember? How much to forget?

I glassed the county building again. The sleek black helo lifted back into the sky, its mission apparently complete. A white SUV rolled to a barricade gate and a cop looked inside and waved it through. I wondered at an America where people blew fingers off of other people they believed to be enemies because they held certain beliefs or opinions. An America where a thousand differing ends now justified the means. An America of open-carry hate.

Which led me from the buzzing of my phone to the latest words from The Chaos Committee, streamed live on my Emergency Alert app:

Which made me wonder: Who’s going to throw out you?

Dalton called. It was barely noon and he sounded drunk.

“She’s chained to a wall. Real shackles, like in a dungeon,” he slurred. “They sent me a self-destructing video. An ephemeral message. It only lasted maybe five seconds.”

“When?”

“Just now. She had on a bathrobe like a prairie girl would wear. Buttoned up and long. Looked out of it, Roland. Didn’t say anything. Just looked at me. My heart’s pounding out of my chest right now. Maybe somewhat a little drunk. I’m getting my gun and going out looking. All the places she might be.”

“You stay put, friend. Where are you? I’m on my way.”

I found him in a bar in Escondido, not far from Natalie’s dealership.

Managed to get him home, where he poured vodka from the freezer into a large tumbler.

“Sit with me awhile,” he said.

“Where’s the gun?”

“Up in the nightstand. Don’t worry. I’m in no shape to go hunting right now. You shoulda seen how sad she looked. So afraid. But the worst part was, she wasn’t resisting. Like she’d given up. Like I feel.”

“You don’t give up until you talk to the cops. Hazzard’s on his way,” I said. “Your sheriff friend. I’ll make some coffee.”