Wild Instinct

22

Two deputies in uniform — Rodriguez and Robinson — accompany the detectives to the front porch of Vernon Jeffs’s home in Huntington Beach.

Late afternoon, cloudy but cooling.

The home is on Yorktown Avenue, in a fifties tract, inland from downtown and the pier. Its paint is peeling, and in a shabby open garage Gale sees two Harley choppers agleam — a black Softail and a Sportster in Mary Kay pink.

The rusted white van is parked in the driveway.

Mindy opens the door just enough for her face.

“Go away. He’s asleep.”

“We’ve got a search warrant.”

“What for?”

“The house and the van. Any place where a handgun might reasonably be stored.”

“What specific gun? A warrant has to say.”

“A twenty-two-caliber semiautomatic pistol and ammunition. And anything in plain sight that could tie Vern to Bennet Tarlow.”

“You people are dumb.”

“Let us in and we’ll get it over with,” says Gale, holding up the warrant for her to see. “Shouldn’t take long, Mindy.”

“There’s plenty of guns around but no pussy guns. Vern doesn’t do pussy guns.”

“I understand. We’d like to serve this out, now.”

Inside, the house offers a fifty-fifty aroma of cigarette and weed. Mindy’s got on red flannel pajama pants and a clashing orange snap-button blouse.

“The weed is legal now in California, in case you haven’t heard,” she says. “I’m going to get Vern. Don’t you move one inch until we come back.”

“We’re going to get started, is what’s going to happen,” says Gale.

“Pigs.”

He nods at Robinson, a large Black man, who follows Mindy down the hall.

From the foyer, the three deputies can see some of the small living room, dining room, and kitchen. Gale notes the old Royal typewriter on the dining room table and the thick stack of white paper with double-spaced writing on the top sheet.

He goes into the kitchen, checks the white countertops, the drawers. A pile of mail and flyers lie on the counter. The drawers hold flatware, kitchen implements, corkscrews, and bottle stoppers. A bag of ground coffee, a measuring spoon, paper filters.

A big revolver in an oiled leather holster.

“A long-barreled thirty-eight-caliber revolver,” he says, shooting it with his phone.

Finds a snub-nosed cousin in a drawer half-hidden below a retractable cutting board. Shoots it, too.

“There’s a 1911 in the pantry,” says Mendez. “Protecting the cans and the Cap’n Crunch.”

“My wife keeps her kitchen gun in the fridge,” says Rodriguez.

“That’s kind of pushing ‘reasonable,’” she says, but swings open the door anyway.

“I think so, too,” says the deputy.

Gale bangs through the pots and pans and lids in the cabinets but no guns.

Big Vernon Jeffs comes from the hallway in a bright tropical print robe and shearling slippers, followed by Mindy and the uniform. Gale has half forgotten how huge this man is.

His tan eyes are bloodshot and his face is stubbled red.

“I don’t have a twenty-two pistol,” he says. “I’ve got two thirty-eights, two forties, three forty-fives, two three-fifty-sevens, and a monster fifty-caliber Desert Eagle. Some ARs and tactical shotguns. You don’t have to tear apart my house. I’ll show you. Inherited some from Mom. Some were presents from friends. Bought the rest private party. Nothing stolen; nothing illegal. Some loaded, some not. Sorry, dipshits — Second Amendment.”

“Were you with Tarlow the night he died?” asks Gale.

Jeffs stares at him, giving Gale a look of disgust. “I don’t see how many times I have to say no. You can’t prove anything. No lawyer, no talk.”

“If we charge you, you’d have to talk,” says Gale. “Then we lawyer up, too. I’ll be honest, the DA’s office is foaming at the mouth to file charges. Highest profile murder they’ve ever had. Murder weapon or not, they like you and your van out at Caspers that night. And your fingerprints at his Newport home. And the eyewitness who put you there not long before he died. They think after you did Tarlow, you went back to Newport and wiped your prints off of Tarlow’s kitchen and the black countertops. The bourbon bottle. The plastic chopsticks. They think you have some explaining to do.”

Jeffs hesitates. Seems to change his mind about what he’s going to say.

“What horseshit,” Jeffs says. “And I’m going to watch every second of this search. You won’t find a twenty-two semi. I guarantee it.”

“Because you dropped it off the pier here in Huntington?” asks Gale. “Along with Bennet Tarlow’s phone? Or maybe in Irvine Lake. Or in the rocks off Laguna? We’ve got divers.”

“We were together that night,” says Mindy. “Here. You cannot change that.”

“But our prosecutors will separate you and break down that alibi in less than an hour,” says Mendez. “Welcome to Superior Court, against a state with deeper pockets than you, and a DA who runs for reelection every four years.”

“We’re trying to keep you two from going through all that,” says Gale. “Help us help you.”

“No weapon, no case.”

“Don’t bet on it,” says Gale.

Jeffs turns in to the hallway, his left hand raised, waving the deputies forward. “I’ll show you where they are.”

Mendez and Mindy mad-dog each other from opposite sides of the dining room table.

“Nice old typewriter,” says Mendez. “Who’s the writer in the family?”

“I am,” says Mindy. “Vern can’t spell his own name.”

“I want to write but never have the time.”

“I just do it,” says Mindy. “I got a story to tell.”

She unsnaps the top two buttons on her blouse and folds the collar down to reveal the chemo port affixed beneath her clavicle.

Mendez nods. “I’m sorry. How is it going?”

“Not bad. A day or two of hell a week, then a good week after. I can still work a few days a month.”

Mindy gives Daniela a steely look. “I use the typewriter because I’m mostly computer illiterate.”

Mindy fingers the chemo port gently, then snaps the blouse back up.

“What did you and Vern do the night Tarlow died?” asks Daniela.

“Saying nothing to you about that. I know what you’re trying, with Vern out of the room.”

“If you lie, the DA will smash your alibi,” says Mendez.

“It’s shatterproof. Because it’s true.”

Mindy heads down the hall and Mendez follows her, then detours into the spare bedroom.

Where she sees the twin bed, made up with a soaring bald-eagle spread, and the drip trolley beside it, rigged with clear tubes and stop valves, but no bags or bottles.

Sees the syringes and needles on the nightstand and finds the chemo bottles and saline bags in the little black fridge under the desk that puffs the faint smell of isopropyl alcohol into her face when she opens it.

Sees the birds on the long cabinet: pheasants, a hen, and a rooster. Two band-tailed pigeons. Two wood ducks. A six-quail covey, four little ones following mom and dad.

They’re frosted with dust and their eyes are dull.

No owl.

With Robinson alertly looking on, Gale lets Vern play tour guide in his bedroom:

A steel gun safe with a combination lock, containing eight AR-15s.

Another with six tactical, short-barreled shotguns and two regulation Remington Sportsman 12-gauge scatterguns.

“Number three lead shot in two-and-three-quarter-inch shells,” says Vern. “Punch you right out.”

A third safe is backed into a shallow closet and half hidden by Mindy’s skirts and Jeffs’s mostly plaid shirts. It’s taller and wider than the others.

Jeffs opens it to rows of handguns on pegs, small on the top, large at the bottom, and many gradients of size in between.

Single- and double-barreled derringers, both side-bys, and over-and-unders.

Revolvers, semiautomatics, even an enormous flintlock down on the bottom row just above the Golden Rod Dehumidifier.

“Where do you keep the twenty-twos, Vern?”

Jeffs smiles and slowly shakes his head.

“There’s a couple more combat shotguns under the bed,” he says. “One on my side and the other on Mindy’s. Peace of mind, you know.”

On his way out, Gale looks behind the open bedroom door. Sees the cobwebs, and a.50-caliber sniper rifle much like his own.

“That’s where mine is,” he says. “I got spiderwebs, too.”

Back in the Explorer, Gale’s phone throbs, and Sheriff Kersey’s name appears on the screen.

“Lew, what’s this about Vic Klavic?”

“We’re interviewing him in half an hour. See what he knows about Vernon Jeffs. Daniela is on speaker.”

A silent beat then, as Gale remembers the OC Sheriff’s Department scandal centering on informants illegally planted in Men’s Central Jail.

FBI got in on that one, much to the department’s fury and embarrassment.

Kersey was undersheriff back then, but Gale watched him bear the weight of the investigation into his jail.

“We didn’t put Klavic with Jeffs to spy on him.”

“No, sir.”

“He’s a slimy little guy, though. Klavic. Parse him well. How good is Jeffs?”

“He’s looking good but we need a gun. Or Tarlow’s phone. Something smoking. None of which are available.”

“I need results on this, Gale. We’re getting bombed every day. Media. Tips. Advice. Fucking psychics. The Wall Street Journal.”

“We’re trying, sir. Nothing actionable. You know how it goes.”

“Do I ever. Light a fire, Gale. The narrative I want here is, the OC Sheriff’s has the best detectives in the world. And the headline I want is, Bennet Tarlow’s killer is in jail.”

“Working on it, Sheriff Kersey.”

Kersey hangs up.

“Mindy’s got cancer,” says Daniela.

“Oh boy,” Gale says softly, swinging the Explorer onto Coast Highway.