Then She Vanished

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “What about a signature in the device?” I asked. “Some kind of taunt or gamesmanship?”

  “Good,” said Lark. “And you can’t know this but one of the end caps on the bomb wasn’t plastic at all. It was threaded metal, like they used for irrigation before PVC. ‘CC’ was carved into the top.”

  Still on the screen: the indeterminate young woman apparently impatient to mail off a bomb to San Diego city hall.

  I looked up to find Mike’s sharp eyes on me.

  “So, Natalie Strait has been missing since Tuesday,” he said. “And it’s not the first time she’s gone missing like this.”

  “No. She’s had some problems.”

  “You could say they have had some problems,” said Lark. “You fought with him in Fallujah, didn’t you?”

  “Concurrently. Not beside. Why?”

  Mike gloved the mouse again, did his annoying ritual with the cursor. Closed in and clicked: two images side by side. One well-focused picture of Dalton Strait going through the Main Avenue door to my office, and another of him coming back out.

  “We’re surveilling the politician, not you.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Irregularities,” said Lark. “Sorry, but that’s all I can say right now. I suspect he hired you to locate his wife.”

  I shrugged, countering his evasion with one of my own. The door opened and an older man in a gray suit leaned in. An outdoorsman’s craggy face and a crown of hair that matched the suit. He looked surprised.

  “Oh. Sorry,” he said. “Ten minutes, Mike.”

  Lark nodded irritably and the man vanished with a soft close of the door.

  “Anyway, we’re taking a look at the Strait family businesses in East County,” he said. “The formerly Honorable Virgil Strait’s solar farms, crook Kirby’s possible cartel connections, Tola Strait’s stake in Indian reservation pot palaces. A wide net.”

  “What’s Dalton got to do with any of that?”

  “Damned little, he better hope.” Lark smiled. “How is he taking the disappearance of his wife?”

  “Unhappily.”

  “She’s done this before,” said Lark.

  “That’s kind of an open family secret.”

  “So you didn’t know Dalton in Fallujah?”

  I shook my head, studied the pictures of him on the monitor again.

  “Silver Star and Purple Heart,” said Lark. “I never served. I do have some regrets about not serving.”

  “You all say that.”

  “You’re right. I don’t have any regrets. I’m not so sure I could hobble around on one leg the rest of my life. Not sure I have the stamina for that.”

  I asked Mike to get the post office woman back on the screen. He scrolled through the pictures and we studied her again in silence.

  I looked at him and shook my head.

  “Thanks for coming in and trying,” said Lark. “Old man Taucher asked about you. I told him you were fine.”

  Old man Taucher was Joan’s father, and Joan was a woman who touched both Mike’s and my lives, in deep but different ways. Mike’s boss—and, as it turned out, his lover. But my responsibility. In my mind, at least. She’d died in the line of duty, in my arms, not quite a year and a half ago, a bloody and terrifying December for San Diego.

  I glanced down at the just arrived message on my phone, a text from Dalton Strait.

  Natalie’s car found off Valley Center Road. Am stuck in Sacto. SD Sheriff Lt. Lew Hazzard will take your call.

  4:09 P.M.

  “Tell old man Taucher hello from me,” I said.

  Lark stared off as if through a window with an interesting view, but there were no windows in the room.

  “I have to see a man about a horse,” I said, standing.

  He came back from his reverie with a sharp-eyed stare.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Irregularities. Sorry, but that’s all I can say right now.”

  FOUR

  Natalie Strait’s BMW X5 was discovered at 3:15 that afternoon at about the time I was leaving Lark. Four days had passed since her disappearance.

  Dust choked and somehow forlorn, it sat not far from the Tourmaline Resort Casino on the Pala Reservation, behind a cluster of small, now derelict homes set off the road behind a windbreak of towering eucalyptus trees. The surrounding meadow looked to have once been a commercial nursery but was now grazed to the nub by a heard of plump Herefords. The workers’ former homes stood naked of doors or window glass, some of them even without roofs, some of them only foundations.

  A flotilla of San Diego sheriff vans, SUVs, and prowl cars was parked on one side of a yellow crime tape, and a Union-Tribune police reporter I recognized was quarantined on the other. The afternoon sun was high behind them, girders of sunlight through the empty window frames of the houses.

  Sheriff Lieutenant Lew Hazzard of the Special Enforcement Detail led me through the dead little enclave to where Natalie’s car had been found. He was tight within his uniform, ham faced and blue eyed. He had been a sergeant during my SDSD days, a brusque cop’s cop who liked bodybuilding and flying model airplanes.

  We walked past empty beer bottles and soft-drink containers, a fire ring, a plywood lean-to probably made by kids. Hazzard said that a ranch hand had seen the SUV parked here on Tuesday afternoon, and it was still here today, Friday, so he’d finally called it in. Which made Hazzard wonder what some people were thinking, if anything. He nodded toward a young man sitting on a eucalyptus stump. Nearby stood a small bay mare tied to a rusted transmission half buried in the ground.

  Natalie’s X5 was last year’s model, a striking cobalt blue, now dust covered. Brawny tires and complex wheels. All four doors were swung open, and the lift gate, too. A tan leather interior trimmed in shiny dark wood.

  A team of blue-gloved crime scene investigators moved patiently within and without: a videographer, a photographer, a sketch artist, two techs lifting latent prints with clear tape, another combing through the driver’s floor mat, wearing a hiker’s headlight on her head and magnifiers over her eyeglasses. I noted no blood or damage or other signs of mischief, and that the driver’s seat was much farther back than five-foot-four Natalie would need. An automatic exit convenience?

  “Was it locked?” I asked.

  “Un,” said the lieutenant.

  “How much gas was left in it?”

  Hazzard looked at me as if even this was highly sensitive information. “Half.”

  “I appreciate this favor,” I said.

  “Not yours to appreciate,” said Hazzard. “Dalton Strait’s.”

  And walked away.

  I loitered. Watched the tow truck rumble toward us on a dirt road. Soft, dry soil, I saw, poor for traction and retaining tire prints. I asked the hair-and-fiber collector if they’d checked the navigation unit for recent addresses.

  She looked up and shook her head. “Talk to the lieutenant.”

  “He’s mad at me.”

  “Is crime scene contamination your job title?”

  A young fingerprint tech looked at her. “Susan, he’s just doing his job.”

  “So am I.”

  I waited for Susan to thaw but she didn’t look up again so I wandered to the other side of the vehicle. A member decal for the Vista Valley Country Club was stuck low on the windshield. A small wooden cross on a string of leather dangled from the rearview mirror. The mirror, I noted, was tilted up for a driver much taller than five feet four, in keeping with the backed-up driver’s seat.

  Through the open rear door I could see the handicap parking plaque lying on the back seat. And an LA Times, wrapped in its traditional orange plastic bag, and a Union-Tribune in its blue plastic bag. I recognized Tuesday’s front-page picture on the U-T.

  And saw the word HELP written in crude red lipstick
letters on the rear of the front seat, above the map pouch.

  FIVE

  My scalp crawled and the old boxing scar on my forehead tingled. I’d assumed that Natalie Strait’s status as a VIP had promoted her abandoned car into a full crime scene. But with HELP lipsticked onto the seat, her husband’s celebrity was now beside the point.

  The photographer nudged in front of me, squatted to shoot straight-on, and patiently captured the lipstick letters. Flash-click. Flash-click. He leaned closer, camera pointed down, and studied the word. Repositioned himself and took another six shots. Stood and looked at me.

  “I want this shot right,” he said.

  Around back I studied the cargo space: two large, heavy-looking cardboard boxes labeled CAMPAIGN POSTERS, a plastic box overfilled with bundles of new wooden stakes, a heavy-duty staple gun wedged in handle-up, a couple of colorful fabric grocery bags, one stuffed inside the other. On the bumper was a San Diego State University Lacrosse team sticker, a decal for the band The Garden, and a Trojan Mom oval in crimson and gold.

  I approached the ranch hand, who stood. He looked under twenty years old and thin—worn jeans and a blue work shirt and a white straw Resistol cowboy hat. Took off the hat and eyed me. The horse shook away a fly and lowered her head to the grass.

  “I’m not going to arrest or deport you,” I said. “I’m a private investigator, not government.” I showed him my enhanced PI photo ID card, required by California, and my pocket license, also required. Together, they’re a combination that is impressive or at least puzzling to most people. I’m licensed to carry a sidearm, too. It’s a Colt 1911 .45 that fits not quite inconspicuously against the small of my back in a leather paddle holster.

  He gave the card and license a long look.

  “Habla inglés?” I asked.

  “A little.”

  “My name is Roland.”

  “Jesús.”

  “Thank you for calling the police about the vehicle.”

  He nodded.

  “Did you look inside?”

  “Sí. I tell the other police.”

  “Did you open a door?”

  The mare came up from her graze, looked at Jesús as if she was particularly interested in his answer, then lowered her head again.

  “No,” said Jesús. “I look in the window.”

  “What did you see?”

  “I tell the other police.”

  “Tell me, también.”

  In his sparse English, Jesús told me that the windows were very dark and the sun was low and he didn’t see anything important when he looked in. He saw the cross hanging by the mirror and the newspapers and the handicap placard on the back seat and that was all. When I asked him about HELP written on the back of the front passenger seat, he said he didn’t see it. He didn’t remember looking at the backside of that seat at all. It was difficult because of the dark window glass and the sun.

  When I asked Jesús why he hadn’t called the police until today he said that he tried to stay away from other people’s problems. He said there were casinos not far from here and he’d seen many cars speeding and swerving and going through stop signs. Once he had seen a new car smashed like a beer can against a telephone pole. Once he had seen a man chasing a woman along the side of the road and when he had tried to help her they both attacked him.

  “So . . . I no call. I wait when the blue truck is very dusty and maybe forget.”

  Forgotten, I figured.

  The mare whinnied softly and shook off another fly.

  “Did you show it to anyone else?” I asked. “Or tell them it was here?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see anyone around the car?”

  “A woman is here, miércoles. Wednesday? She drive a small white car. Go around the blue BMW and look. Go slow. Stop and open driving door. Go in. Sit. Then drive her car back to Valley Center Road.”

  “Describe her.”

  “Don’t see good. Dark hair. Sunglass. Grande.”

  “The woman was grande or her sunglasses were grande?”

  “Sunglass big. Woman no big.”

  Sunglass big, I thought, twice in one day. I don’t believe in coincidences but I do believe in luck.

  “What kind of car?”

  He shook his head. “White. Much . . . how you say arena?”

  “Sand.”

  “Much sand. And big abolladura on the driving door.”

  A dent.

  Based on Jesús’s description, I found Lark’s possible Fallbrook bomb mailer on my phone, shading the picture with my hand so Jesús could see. Your basic one in a million.

  “Sí.”

  “Yes, but absolutamente o quizá?” I asked. Absolutely or maybe?

  A troubled smile from the young man, sensing my urgency.

  “Maybe. Es difícil.”

  I turned back and looked at the BMW again. I imagined a tall man at the wheel, another man—or was it a woman?—beside him in the front passenger seat, and a distraught and disbelieving Natalie Strait sitting behind them. Maybe she’s arguing. Or pleading. Maybe she’s too frightened for that. After all, they’ve forced or tricked her off the road on her way from breakfast with her sister in Valley Center back to work in Escondido. Jacked her car with her in it. Maybe roughed her up some, too, or showed a weapon, to spoil her mood for conversation. I pictured her scrawling HELP onto the seat back, eyes up to avoid attracting attention, just going by feel with the lipstick and hoping she was leaving a clear, meaningful message. I wondered why they hadn’t smelled it and rubbed it out. But they had their own levels of excitement to deal with. I pictured the getaway car, driven by associate number three—pulling up over there by the derelict little home, beside the SUV so the passengers could board.

  This is what I saw. You learn to trust what you see, even when you doubt. And to doubt, even when you believe.

  Jesús set his cowboy hat back on. I saw Hazzard and two of his uniforms heading our way. The mare gave me a glassy-eyed stare.

  Hazzard waved me off like a picnic wasp. I retreated to the SUV. When I glanced back, the lieutenant was bearing down on the young cowboy, who again had his hat in his hand and a penitent expression on his face.

  SIX

  The once Honorable Virgil Strait lived atop a boulder-strewn mountain near the border of San Diego and Imperial counties. The East County badlands, hot and windblown. A pickup truck carrying two stone-faced gentlemen fell in behind me as I climbed that mountain. Rifles racked in the cab. I had passed a similar pair in a similar truck about halfway up.

  If you squinted you could call his property a compound. Trailers and storage sheds and a rust-eaten metal building. A dilapidated wooden corral, the lumber blackened by the sun. Trails had been etched through the enormous boulders everywhere you looked, disappearing downhill toward Jacumba and its labyrinthine caves and tunnels used for smuggling drugs and humans from Mexico to California.

  As I parked, the first truck pulled up well behind me, turned broadside and stopped. The second one curled away and disappeared.

  Strait’s home was an asymmetrical rock-and-concrete anomaly with a roof made of old license plates. Views of Jacumba, the border and beyond—deep into Mexico and Imperial Valley. It was early morning, the day after I’d talked to Ash Galland and seen Natalie Strait’s resounding HELP written in the back seat of her luxury SUV.

  Virgil Strait had the leathery neck and wrinkled face of a desert tortoise, and small, clear eyes. He wore a knit cap against the morning chill. Flames lapped in a cavernous fireplace at the far opposite end of the room. He sat in an old-fashioned wing chair with his back to the window, giving me the endless eastern view. The walls were made of irregular rock slabs, closely cut and precisely mortared. Hung with rifles and shotguns, vintage and modern, lightly strung with cobwebs. Revolvers heavy in their holsters. Posters of cowboy
s and Indians in combat, Civil War and World War I battle scenes. Some faded and some slipping off their mounts.

  His granddaughter Tola, Dalton’s younger sister, handed me a bloody Mary, smiled, then delivered one to Virgil. Tola owned a chain of legal marijuana emporiums in the rural county, and was often quoted and interviewed on the subject. She was a green-eyed redhead in skinny jeans and a long-tailed blue-striped business shirt that might have come from Brooks Brothers.

  “Thanks, dearie,” said Virgil.

  “Enjoy your primitive booze, gentlemen,” she said on her way out. “But remember, good cannabis doesn’t rot your liver or your brain.”

  “Kids these days,” said Virgil. “I’ve tried that stuff. I wandered through the boulders singing the Sons of the Pioneers’ ‘Cool Water.’ Saw a rabbit almost as tall as I was, then I saw a posse of county, state, and federal officers all in cannibal masks, heading up the road here to arrest me. Their guns were drawn. Five hours later I’d sobered up enough to realize I’d imagined it all. But I also knew the coming-to-get-me wasn’t paranoia. Story of my life, Mr. Ford. People like you always ahold of my ankles, trying to drag me down.”

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “As I’m sure Dalton told you.”

  He peered at me. “I admire that. I’m private, too. The only thing I believe in is family. I have two living ex-wives, three sons and three daughters, eighteen grandkids and a dozen or so great ones. And cousins, nieces, nephews, and bastards of all description running around this fine county. They’re my confederacy, Mr. Ford. My partners and my protection. One snap of my fingers and they appear like a herd of banshees. I’m sure you took note on your way up my mountain.”

  “I did.”

  And the night before, in anticipation of this interview, I’d spent some time on IvarDuggans.com, searching the extensive Strait family entries for possible enemies of Natalie or Dalton. IvarDuggans.com is the best of the online investigator’s services, and I pay good money for my membership. And it paid off, as it almost always does: nearly twenty-five years ago, Dalton’s older brother Kirby had beaten Dalton bad enough to require hospitalization for a concussion and twelve stitches. Dalton was fifteen. The reason? An apparent problem with Dalton’s new girlfriend, Natalie. A year later, Dalton had retaliated with a ball-bat beating of Kirby for which Dalton, still a juvenile, was never questioned or charged. Both incidents took place in the small border town of Buena Vista, in Imperial County, whose three-man police department included Chief Everett Strait, Virgil’s brother. Thus, little press or media. Kirby had recovered in a small Buena Vista hospital owned by his grandfather, San Diego Superior Court judge, the Honorable Virgil Strait. Virgil had taken the hospital as payment for services rendered in his lawyering days.