Wild Instinct

40

Gale circles Geronima’s neighborhood slowly, twice, attaching the suction gumball light and siren to his roof, then calls Dispatch again to get a tighter patrol around her home. He guns the Explorer onto Camino Capistrano, headed for Interstate 5 to the San Diego Freeway to Huntington Beach and the Bear Cave.

His nerves are settling and his adrenaline runs strong as he sails through the thin two A.M. traffic at ninety miles per hour, exiting onto Bolsa just as Daniela calls.

Daniela:

“He’s back on his hog now, heading toward Yorktown and home. Funny how that knee healed up so fast.”

“I’ll park close.”

Gale drives carefully up Bolsa to the traffic light.

Weaves his way through the Jeffs neighborhood on Yorktown and parks close to the house. He can barely see it through the fog. Garage closed, porch light on but no lights inside.

Daniela:

“If Vern’s heading home, he’s taking the scenic route.”

“Think he’s onto you?”

“He’s pulling into the Jack in the Box drive-through. You spend the night with Geronima again?”

“Some of it.”

“She looks at you with pride of ownership. I understand and like her. Be careful. Vern’s ordering. Good thing he’s got the saddlebag. Stand by.”

Gale to Geronima:

“You okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“What’s that sound?”

“My neighbor, Neal. Bringing in his Peterbilt from a two-week haul.”

“Why isn’t Hulk screeching?”

“Asleep.”

“Where are you?”

“Bedroom. Lights out, doors locked, Hulk on his pillow, the rose-colored semiauto under mine. Itching to kill a bad guy, Gale. Reading Blood & Heart. I will not fall asleep.”

“Careful the dog doesn’t blast off and step on the trigger. That’s happened, you know.”

“It’s under my pillow, Lew. I’m not worried about it. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m better. It’s over. I’m worried about you, too, Geronima. I like you very much and I want you to live forever.”

A pause then:

“Sweet of you, Lew. Sweet Lew Gale.”

“Signing off.”

The fog lightens. Gale contemplates the Jeffs residence, one of thousands of 1950s stucco tract homes in what was then booming postwar Orange County. By the time Gale was born, the citrus orchards and packinghouses were mostly gone, replaced by tract homes and shopping centers. Sleepy San Juan Capistrano was booming. So was the Tarlow Company. Orange County had become the OC.

Mendez again:

“White bag into the saddlebag, Lew. Looks heavy. Okay, now he’s back on the road. I have to stay way back on these neighborhood streets. Wish me luck or off he’ll go.”

“I’ve got the house, Daniela.”

“Vern has your dinner. Over and out.”

Through Gale’s windshield, pockets of fog roll across the darkness from the sea. The oil pump churns.

Down Yorktown comes a Mustang e-car.

A moment later, a lumbering 1980s Suburban.

Gale watches them closely, but his thoughts are of Geronima, and he’s trying to forget his confusion and uncertainty at her house, trying to forgive himself for it.

Who are you?

Lewis Gallego — half Acjacheme, half Anglo.

Since Sangin, half a man.

Or is it more like a quarter?

A second-class Native, unrecognized.

Unrecognizable?

Fragments of the past whirl inside him.

Fragments of fragments.

You’re dangerous, he thinks. A man sworn to protect and serve. But tonight, barely competent. Barely there. Humiliating. Hulk was better.

Vern’s black Harley Softail emerges from a ball of fog moving across Yorktown like a big tumbleweed.

He’s not moving fast but the Harley pops and growls loudly as he passes his house, then powers past Gale, slouched down in his seat.

And disappears down Yorktown.

Mendez’s black Explorer glides to a stop along the curb, facing Gale a hundred yards away from the opposite side of the street, headlights going off, and the sound of Vern’s Softail diminishing through Gale’s open window.

He flashes once; Mendez answers.

Three minutes later Vern is back, approaching his house with more velocity this time before he decelerates and turns in to his driveway.

He gloves the handlebar remote, and the garage door opens. The lights go on. He pulls in, kills the engine, and kickstands the heavy bike, swinging his right foot over and down, his left leg a little wobbly.

Then movement from the hedge of oleander on the side of the garage: something upright, taller than a monkey and thinner than a bear.

With a handgun and a ski mask over its face — the gun silenced and the ski mask red.

Gale jumps out, nudges the door closed, draws his sidearm.

Ski Mask sidles into the garage behind Vern, who now turns and pulls off his right glove, reaching for the revolver holstered low on his leg like a gunslinger’s.

Even from here Gale sees his big face and wide eyes, blanched by the fluorescent lights overhead.

Daniela closes fast, from up the street.

Gale, too, yelling, “Freeze!”

Stops at a hundred feet and takes a Weaver stance.

Vern looks at him but Ski Mask does not; instead, he points his handgun at Vern, unsteadily, barrel wobbling like he’s going to drop it.

“Drop the gun and down!” yells Daniela. “Drop and DOWN!”

Ski Mask spits a round into Jeffs.

Gale shoots twice, moves in as Ski Mask drops to his knees, and Daniela puts three more bullets into him.

Gunsmoke hangs in the jittery fluorescence, metallic and strong.

Beyond his sights, Gale watches Ski Mask, on his back now, arms out and gun fallen from his right hand, chest rising and falling.

Gale hears his gasps, catches a glimpse of Mendez out in the perimeter of the garage lights.

Vern, huge and motionless, lies on his back beside his gleaming black Harley.

Mindy bursts from the house into the garage in a baby blue robe, sees Vern and screams, throwing herself on her husband.

Mendez stands over Ski Mask in his widening blood, his chest no longer rising and falling, his stillness absolute.

She squats and pulls off the mask to reveal Kevin Elder’s handsome face, his aquiline nose and the streak of gray in his widow’s peak.

His eyes mostly pupils.

Mendez looks at Gale with dull surprise.

A gray Rivian pickup truck comes slowly toward them on Yorktown, hesitates near the driveway, then U-turns and speeds away.

Their shots puncture the eerie silence, and the Rivian’s rear tires burst, and the sleek machine veers suddenly, jumps the curb, and runs through the oil pumper fence, bashing to a stop against the great arm of the thing, which is still rising and falling when the truck’s lithium battery catches fire and the flames ripple up through the seams of the hood.

Grant Hudson throws open the door, sees the fence surrounding him, then turns and faces the detectives, hands up.

Gale squeezes through the pierced chain link as Mendez covers him and Mindy wails beyond the fog.

“My favorite detective!” says Grant Hudson. “I have broken no laws and will not talk without a lawyer.”

“On the ground, cockroach. Face down.”

“It was all Kevin and Hal Teller. I was just following orders. Swear to God.”

“Hands together,” says Gale, cinching the tie snugly, then yanking him to his feet.

Back to the garage behind Mendez, pushing Hudson along in front of him, Gale sees that Mindy is still sprawled over Vern, but now silent.

She rolls off him and plops cross-legged on the bloody concrete, her nightgown soaked with blood.

Looks with dazed eyes at the players surrounding her, settling on Mendez.

“You people don’t know shit,” Mindy says.

“Tell us what we don’t know,” says Mendez.

“We needed the money for the cancer. These pukes hired Vern, then turned on him when he started talking to you two. When you found the crystal cavern, they wanted you both dead. Vern said fuck that — Gale’s okay, a jarhead sniper like me.”

“Vern got Tarlow out to Caspers for the owl,” says Gale.

“The great gray owl,” says Mindy. “They’re sacred. They don’t exist here.”

Gale holsters his gun, orders Grant Hudson to sit and stay, watches Mindy Jeffs contemplating the blood on her blue robe.

Mendez stares down, first at Vernon Jeffs, then at Kevin Elder, in their mingled pools of blood, with an air of dazed wonder.

The neighbors have gathered on the sidewalk across the street. Gale sees robes and flannels, long tees and shearling boots and cell screens held high, aglow in the night.