“This is going to sound crazy,” Shane said, now in Cathedral City, passing Monty Hall Drive, a street named for a guy who’d spent his entire career disappointing people by giving them donkeys instead of cars, “but I swear I saw a man at the Royal Californian in Indio chopping up a human head. He put it all into a bag in the trunk of his Mercedes.”
By the time he finished his story, Shane was in downtown Palm Springs, rolling north down Indian Avenue. His left foot was numb, but the rest of his body felt alive, sweat pouring down his face, his shirt and pants damp, even though the AC was cranked at full blast, the moon roof just cracked. He’d go back to LA tonight, get all the pills from the storage unit, then torch it, now that he was thinking straight. Then he’d turn around and head to Mexico, get his foot operated on, since he had an appointment already, and Terry was going to be in a jail cell for a good long time, maybe forever. And then he’d just keep rolling east, until he got back to Upstate New York. Find his father at some Indian casino, see if he wanted to start a duo, figure out how to have a life together, Shane thinking, Whoa, what? Am I high? Shane thinking his foot was probably infected, that what he was feeling was something bad in his blood, sepsis most likely, and then he was passing the road to the Palm Springs Ariel Tramway, burning it out of town, the fields of windmills coming into view, Shane finally taking a moment to look in the rearview mirror, to make sure there weren’t a hundred cop cars lined up behind him, and thinking, for just a moment, that he was really fucked up, that he was really hallucinating some shit, that he needed to get some real meds, because sitting right there in the backseat, a gun in his hand, was a fucking clown.
PART IV
ILL WIND
SPECTERS
BY T. JEFFERSON PARKER
Anza-Borrego
Borrego Springs is a tidy, low-slung desert town surrounded by Anza-Borrego State Park, the largest in California. The town has over three thousand people. The park is one of California’s wild places—mountain lions, bighorn sheep, abundant reptiles, birds, and wildflowers spread for miles.
Driving in, I looked out at the pale mountains rising in the west and east, a green splash of distant palms, and a wash of orange wildflowers on white sand. It was already ninety-one degrees on this May morning.
My name is Harold Bear and I’m the sole proprietor of Bear Investigations, an LLC. I’m half Luiseno Indian, which puts me in good standing with my tribe and band, though we—the Bear Valley band—are considered “unrecognized” by the United States. I have four employees.
I’d been hired to find Julie Spencer, who went missing four days prior, her abandoned Porsche Cayenne found on Pala Indian land not far from here. Julie was the wife of Congressman Todd Spencer (R), who represented my district in north San Diego County. I first met Spencer just three days ago—when he hired me—though we had both fought in Fallujah back in 2005. We never crossed paths in that bloody battle.
I found the Desert Springs Motel and pulled into the lot. The motel was owned and operated by Dan Morrison, a platoonmate of then Private First Class Spencer. Spencer had earned himself a Silver Star for pulling Morrison from a burning Humvee. Thus making him able to campaign for Congress as a war hero. Todd and Dan had been part of a convoy attacked in what we Americans called East Manhattan—Iraq being shaped roughly like New York City. I had fought in Queens.
The Desert Springs Motel was classic midcentury modern. Which meant a three-sided horseshoe of freestanding bungalows built around a swimming pool and parking. The aqua neon sign sun-blanched and eaten by rust.
When I got out of the car, the hum of air conditioners greeted me in the heat. The wildflower bloom was over for the year, but the motel still looked busy. Young parents and kids in the pool. Desert all around. House windows shimmering in the hills.
The office was a stucco block with a canvas awning. There were blinds behind the glass front door and an intercom built into the wall. A slot for mail. A camera was recessed just above the doorframe, taking aim at my face from close range.
I tried the door and it was locked. I pushed the talk button on the intercom, said my name, and asked to see Mr. Morrison.
“He’s not available at this time.” The woman’s voice was muffled and soft, sounded like it was a hundred yards away.
“I’d like to come in.”
“Why?”
“There’s something important I need to discuss with Mr. Morrison.”
“But he’s not available.”
“We fought in Fallujah at the same time.”
“Put a business card in the mail slot. It’s the way we do it here.”
“I don’t do it that way. This is important. Please open the door.”
I held my PI card toward the camera. The card itself gives me no powers at all, legally, but it is an assuring or sometimes intimidating thing to certain people.
Then I heard a man’s voice in the background. I couldn’t make out what he said. A beat of silence.
“I suppose you can come in,” she said.
The dead bolt clanged open and in I went. The lobby was very small and poorly lit. Nowhere to sit. I’m a big man and unhappy in tight spaces. There was a counter on which brochures stood tilted up in a box—desert activities.
The young woman behind the counter looked late thirties, with tired brown eyes and thinning tan hair. Her smock was tan also and a mini mic was clipped to one shoulder strap. Her name plate said Abigail. She looked like people I’d known who were undergoing chemotherapy—pale, braced, and accepting. Making the best of it. She said that Mr. Morrison wasn’t in, and they had no vacant rooms.
When Abigail receded into an inner shadow, the man’s voice came through a speaker above the closed door behind her. Above the speaker was another camera, aimed again right at me.
“Can I help you, Mr. Bear?” he asked. His voice was thin and unhurried.
“I’m a private investigator working for Representative Todd Spencer. I need just a few minutes of your time.”
“Are you part of any media or news organizations?”
“I am not.”
“Please give me a few minutes to get ready,” said the presumed Dan Morrison. “Abigail, you may offer Mr. Bear some water.”
She handed me a cold bottle from a small refrigerator behind the counter.
“Thanks, Abigail. I see the motel is full, or almost.”
“For the heat and pool. Excuse me.”
She turned away and went through the door behind her. Before that door closed, I glimpsed the room beyond, sunlit through the shades, a plaid stuffed chair, a coffee table, an IV drip station waiting in the corner.
I sipped the water and looked at the brochures. Stared into the camera over Abigail’s door. I don’t like being maybe watched, but maybe not. The camera lens was about the diameter of a .45-caliber bullet.
“Mr. Bear,” the man’s voice said through the speaker, “exit the lobby and go right, to bungalow six at the end of the first row. The door is open.”
I considered Abigail’s closed door, then pushed back outside. The blinds banged on the glass. When I got to bungalow six, the door was cracked.
“Come in.”
It was dark inside at first, even with the sunlight following me in. A man sat on a retro orange vinyl sofa.
“Please sit in front of me.”
The folding chair was small and wooden, and I wondered if it would agree with my 240 or so pounds. I sat. The chair so far, so good.
My eyes adjusting to the dark, I looked directly at Dan Morrison, his face shaded by a black ball cap, bill tugged down low. Aviator sunglasses. A long-sleeved black shirt buttoned all the way, black pants, black canvas sneakers, black socks. White tufts of hair below the cap.
“I have no refreshment to offer you,” he said.
“The water is good.”
“Do not look at me with pity.”
“I promise not to.”
The room focused around me: bookshelves, an old-style TV—possibly b
lack-and-white—in one corner facing a recliner. Blinds on the windows, which faced the parking lot and pool. Framed photographs on the walls, California’s natural wonders, mostly.
“How is Todd?” he asked. As through the intercom, his voice was thin and faint, as if coming from a longer distance.
“He would tell you he’s running for reelection against some big money,” I said. “And campaigning hard. I can tell you he’s anxious and worried. His wife Julie went missing four days ago. They found her car abandoned out by Harrah’s in Valley Center. There are signs of foul play.”
Morrison seemed to think about this. His expression was impossible to read behind the sunglasses and steep black bill of the ball cap. In the shuttered light I could see the flesh coiled on his cheeks, evidence of fire and surgery. His nose and lips looked incomplete, like features that had never matured. Features made for a life in darkness.
“Do you think Todd is responsible for her disappearance?” he asked.
“Should I?”
“I’m not qualified to say. I know little of Todd except what happened in Iraq. I know nothing of his wife. I can’t help but think you’ve wasted your time coming all the way out here.”
“Go to the man’s character,” I said. “I want to know how he behaved that day in Fallujah.”
A long, air-conditioned pause. He was considering.
“I was in that city the day your Humvee went up,” I said. “Over in Queens, going door-to-door.”
“Do you think about it a lot?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
Morrison grunted softly. Maybe a dry chuckle. “I think about it every day,” he said. “I admire people like you, who forget.”
“Almost forget.”
“Do you use alcohol or drugs?”
“Not drugs.”
“Being a Native, you must have your issues with the drink. I used to drink oceans of bourbon and eat pills by the handful. Finally overdosed but the skies cleared. A good doctor. She got me through, and I haven’t self-medicated for four years. I take aspirin when my skin heats up.”
“I admire that.”
“No pity, Mr. Bear. I asked you once.”
I considered explaining I felt no pity in my admiration, but that would have been a small truth within a larger lie: I did pity him, and the world did too. But why should Dan Morrison have to endure that? Why shouldn’t he be able to live in a remote desert motel, unavailable?
“We had to make a run to the palace,” he said. “Uday’s old place in Volturno.”
“I remember it,” I said.
“We were on a humanitarian mission that day.” I heard the controlled emotion in his thin voice. Forced calm. “We had a transport truck full of food and medical supplies for the friendlies. Not one Iraqi showed up to claim a handout. Not even kids. The imams would have them arrested or worse. You must remember the saying, If you deal with Americans, you die.”
“Certainly,” I said.
“Spencer and I were part of security. It was a terrible road. The insurgents were thick in Fallujah by then—twenty-four different groups we considered ‘hard core.’ And even Saddam’s enemies were starting to hate us. We’d been making lightning raids every day and there was always collateral damage. Or so the Iraqis claimed.
“No trouble on the way in. We sat in that Humvee like a couple of nervous rats while the rations and first aid kits were loaded out. Todd acted a little above things. Cocky. Like he wasn’t born to die or get blown up in this dirty little war. He talked about running for office when he got home. Looking back now, I think he was terrified. I know I was. Our Humvee had just been up-armored with an add-on kit and some improvised stuff. Hillbilly armor. Which made it more prone to roll over. At any speed, a Humvee is a rollover waiting to happen. As you know.”
“I saw one do that,” I said.
Morrison studied me for a moment, then stood and walked into the kitchen. I heard a refrigerator open and close. He was a wiry man of average height. He moved slowly, with a hint of the spectral in his sunglasses, tufts of white hair and the all-black clothing. He carried himself with heavy deliberation, like an older man, or a warrior who had been wounded once and forever. I knew from my investigation that Morrison was forty-five—three years older than me.
He set another bottled water on the table in front of me. Sat again and picked up a remote to open the blinds on one of the front windows, allowing in slightly more light.
“When we started back, Todd and I were on point, not the rear guard. It’s all about seeing, as you know. You’re looking for those roadside bombs in anything that looks harmless and common—a ruined tire, a dead dog, a pile of trash, a blown-out vehicle that wasn’t there last time. The insurgent bomb makers were crafty. The bombs that worry you most are the ones you never see, the ones set off by phone. And that’s what we hit. One of the big boys. Made by Rocket Man himself. Remember him?”
“It was big news when we nailed him.”
“Caught him at home, with a bomb schematic up on his computer screen. Anyway, the hajis had dug in after we’d passed through, somehow dodging our patrols and helos and surveillance drones. In broad daylight. I used to think their Allah was a better god than ours, the way they could get away with things like that.
“Then the world blew up and I was upside down. Saw the road through the windshield, smelled the gas. Todd had been blown out of the vehicle. His door was gone, armor and metal blown off at the hinges. A blessing, because the Humvee doors liked to lock up in a blast, could trap you inside, where you’d cook. I couldn’t get my restraint off. It was stuck and I had one shoulder dislocated and the other wrist fractured. My limbs would not answer my will. I thought my back was broken. I struggled in place, felt the gas spilling onto my legs. Prayed and screamed. Screamed and prayed. The world went whump and the Humvee shivered, then Todd was back inside but he couldn’t get the damned strap off either because the latch had melted. He started sawing away at it with his utility knife. The vehicle was almost fully engaged by then. A pyre. Todd kept crawling outside for air, then back in to help me. Face black and his hair scorched. I remember that. He finally collapsed my bad shoulder and pulled me outside into the dirt. I rolled around like a dog to put the flames out. Heard the sniper fire but I couldn’t get my legs under me. Figured my spinal cord was ruined. Todd ran to some K-rails for cover. I felt abandoned. I knew it was just a matter of time until the snipers got me.”
I imagined big, confident, above-it-all Todd Spencer proned out behind the K-rails. He’d gotten Morrison out of the frying pan but into the fire. Then barreled away through the sniper rounds to safety. Did that make him half hero and half coward?
“Air support finally showed up and the snipers got blown to kibble and bits,” said Morrison. “The convoy circled back to us, got Todd and me into a truck. The pain was not of this world. Nothing compares to being burned. Nothing. It changed my life far beyond the booze and narcotics. I remember the corpsman shooting me with morphine and he couldn’t figure out why I was still awake and wailing. He hit me with another pen and the next thing I knew I was in Germany. I wake up in Germany often.”
He held up the remote again and opened the blinds a little more, and I saw Morrison’s violently cabled flesh. He looked monstrous but somehow undefeated.
“How did the pain change your life?” I asked. “Beyond the bourbon and the pills?”
“It made me realize that character is not fate and fate is not character. I had a high school English teacher who taught us the exact opposite.”
I thought about that for a beat. “Spencer got the Silver Star for saving your life.”
“I wanted him to have it. I was learning to embrace the life he’d given me, while detesting the man I’d been changed into. This thing you see …” He set down the remote on the coffee table and opened his empty hands as if presenting himself to me.
In that moment I wondered if war-hero Congressman Todd Spencer hated himself.
“Todd
could have been anyone,” said Morrison, reading my speculation. “The least of my concerns was who pulled me from the fire, and if he could have done better. Could I have done better? A burning man cannot always defeat a military-grade body harness that’s been soldered shut by an explosion.”
“So, your fate was not your character? And Todd’s fate was not his?”
“Far from it. And that is a central truth of life. Clearly proven by war.”
I thought of Todd Spencer’s eventual fate in Fallujah, the IED that blew his foot and lower leg off not three weeks after his act of alleged heroism.
“What do you know about the missing wife?” he asked.
I told him of Julie Spencer’s gambling and shopping enthusiasms, the psychotic breakdown she’d suffered two years past, her drinking. I noted the stress of Julie being her husband’s reelection campaign manager, and the concerted Democratic efforts to unseat him in the coming election.
“I’ve donated to Spencer’s campaigns over the years,” said Morrison, his thin voice shivering in the air conditioner’s hum like a stalk of wheat in a breeze. “Modestly. He doesn’t stand for my politics, but he’s a brother and a marine and he saved what’s left of me.”
“No contact with him since Fallujah?”
“None. Some memories you don’t want to see, face to face.” Another dry sound that might have been a chuckle.
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