Wild Instinct

21

Supervisor Kevin Elder is not an elder at all.

More like a wolf of Wall Street, Gale thinks. Forty, a handsome face, and a head of wavy black hair with a silver widow’s peak. His coat is off and a yellow tie loosened in the collar of a white shirt. Black suspenders. His teeth are perfect.

Mendez is thinking likewise, admitting he’s easy on the eyes, but so what?

They sit in his spacious office in the County Building. Elder supervises the Seventh District, by far the wealthiest. Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Woods, San Juan Capistrano, Mission Viejo.

And more, thinks Gale.

He looks through the fourth-floor window at the Santa Ana Mountains to the southeast, beyond which lie Caspers Wilderness Park and Cottonwood Creek Campground, near where Bennet Tarlow took two shots to the head from behind and died in a swamp of his own blood. And, somewhere in those mountains, Gale knows there’s an aged mountain lion that may or may not have acquired a taste for such blood.

All in Elder’s Seventh District, thinks Gale.

Between him and the distant mountains sprawls the county, once home to citrus groves and small towns, now densely peopled and hectic, a thick carpet of suburbia.

OC small talk: Ohtani-less Angels flopping again this regular season, though Trout tried his best.

Drought threatening again after two great wet winters and La Niña on the march.

The median price of a home in Orange County, says Elder, according to this morning’s Wall Street Journal, is $1.65 million.

“Do you have a person of interest, regarding Bennet?” Elder asks, his voice sharp and forceful.

“We do,” says Gale. “He’s got his wife’s alibi for the night Tarlow died. But we have a witness who puts him with Tarlow that evening.”

“She said, he said.”

“She and she,” says Mendez.

“Tell me about him.”

“Vernon Jeffs,” says Gale.

Elder nods but he doesn’t blink and his expression doesn’t change. No surprise or nerves, thinks Gale. But he waits to speak, familiar with the power of silence in an interview.

“Fifty years old, six-four, two hundred and sixty pounds of mostly muscle,” says Mendez. “Red hair and sometimes a beard and mustache. Tan eyes. Scary. He tends bar in the Bear Cave in Huntington Beach.”

“I’ve heard of it,” says Elder. “Never been. This guy sounds like strange company for Ben Tarlow. A record?”

“A DUI five years back,” Gale says. “A bar fight that got him six months, and a school-zone firearm charge ten years ago, dismissed.”

“So he’s a gun nut,” says Elder. “Does he have one like the twenty-two caliber that killed Bennet?”

“He’s not in the ATF, FBI, or state ownership registries.”

“Can you get a search warrant?”

“Pending,” says Gale.

Elder shakes his head, sits back.

“While we gather evidence, we’re looking for a motive,” says Gale. “It doesn’t look like a crime of passion. Tarlow’s wallet was still in his pants — plenty of cash and credit cards. Revenge? Maybe. But this looks like a hired hit. So who paid for it? Who gains by Tarlow’s death?”

“No one I can imagine,” says Elder. “He was a gentleman. Honest and generous. Huge on charities. The Catholic Diocese. The Tarlow Foundation for the Arts. Tarlow Charitable Trust. He wasn’t just a visionary builder, he was a great man. I don’t know who could profit by killing him.”

“I keep coming back to Wildcoast,” says Gale. “Billions of dollars in loans and options to finance it, but future billions to be made when the Tarlow Company sells the homes, the industrial buildings, the open parcels and acres — everything. It was Tarlow’s baby, but the project has detractors at the Tarlow Company.”

“It sounds to me like you should be talking to Tarlow II,” says Elder.

“We will,” says Mendez, giving Gale a look. “Norris Kennedy sends her regards,” she says.

“Ah, Norris.”

“She told us that Bennet was anxious and fearful over Wildcoast,” says Mendez. “Late-night calls he wouldn’t let her overhear. Anger. Evasion. Depression.”

“Norris would know,” says Elder.

“Do you trust her?” asks Mendez.

Elder looks at Mendez, taps his fingertips on his polished stainless-steel desk. “I have no reason not to. But I don’t know her well. I think Bennet trusted her. He was in love with her for most of the time they spent together. I could say they were happy but I don’t think Bennet was ever really happy. Should I not trust Norris Kennedy?”

“She’s pushy and evasive,” says Mendez. “Spilled some interesting dirt our way, about Bennet.”

“Such as?”

“Can’t discuss that now,” says Mendez.

Kevin Elder, hands open. “Sure. I understand.”

A long silence then, as the three humans consider each other and a jet angles down toward John Wayne Airport and supervisorial aide-de-camp Grant Hudson leans in.

“Sorry, sir, but you-know-who is on the line and he is royally pissed off.”

“I’ll call him back.”

He smiles at the deputies. “Real-life detectives!”

“Get the hell out of here, Grant.”

“Love your ponytail, Mendez. Adios.”

The door closes and Elder sighs. “Sorry.”

“I have a child, too,” says Mendez.

Elder smiles, checking his watch.

“Five of seven supervisors oppose Wildcoast,” says Gale. “Why don’t you?”

“I have concerns, but I think overall it’s good for the Seventh District. I talk to my citizens, and they talk back. Do they ever.”

“Do you think Tarlow’s death will kill Wildcoast, too?” asks Gale.

“Talk to the Tarlow Company about that,” says the supervisor. “With Ben gone, the board could always nix it and do something else with those five square miles.”

Gale goes to the window and looks out at Saddleback Mountain, the highest in the county. Sees the flat suburban blanket creeping up the mountain.

“I was out there earlier today,” he says. “At Wildcoast. A crew from Empire Excavators was doing a percolation test.”

“Oh? Seems premature,” says Elder.

“They told me that creating an entire small-town sewer system is millions more than building it all on septic,” says Gale. “And no perc means no septic tanks and leach lines.”

“Yes and yes.”

“A deal-breaker?” asks Mendez.

“Ask Tarlow the second.”

“Do crystals out there mean anything to you?” Gale asks.

“Like quartz or something?” asks the supervisor. “Or for jewelry?”

“Big ones. High value,” says Gale.

“You mean in the ground, under Wildcoast?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“Then I have to admit, Detective Gale, neither do I.”

“Thank you for your time,” says Gale.

He and Mendez take the elevator down in secure cop silence.

Outside the day has gone cool, flat-bottomed cirrus clouds coming in from the east.

“Something between him and Norris Kennedy,” says Mendez.

“I heard it, too.”

“I still don’t trust her, and, by association, I don’t trust Elder either. Politician slick. I doubt he’s tied to Tarlow’s death.”

“No, not his style.”

On their separate phones, Gale and Mendez watch a peaceful demonstration outside Tarlow Company headquarters in Newport Beach.

Gale on YouTube; Daniela on Google.

Gale’s brother, Franklin, holds a sign saying WILDCOAST RIPS OFF THE ACJACHEME NATIVES, and a dozen or so of his UCI students — some dressed in mission-era Indigenous clothing — do likewise.

Frank reads from a list of species endangered by Wildcoast: the condor, the least tern, the sea otter, the monarch butterfly, the gnatcatcher, the mountain lion who was starved enough to eat Wildcoast’s builder!

A striking young woman in a stiff-looking white dress and a seashell necklace dances to the beat of a young man’s rattle.

Gale’s phone throbs a notification through the demonstrators:

The Honorable Carl Schmidt has come through.

Warrant issued.