Then She Vanished

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I pushed the doorbell button, heard the faint chime. Waited, then rang again. And once more.

  Door locked, of course.

  I picked the lock in less than a minute and stepped in, closing the door with my back.

  Heart thumping, eyes clear, adrenaline high: Go.

  See, don’t think. Long steps, all angles, no frontals. Room to room.

  I drew the .45 and cleared the place swiftly: two bedrooms, two baths, closets and cabinets.

  No one there and no evidence that anyone had been there recently. The kitchen and bathroom sinks were clean and dry, the refrigerator empty, beds neatly made. Two TV remotes on the coffee table squared side by side over the satellite guide.

  The kitchen suddenly sprang with motion—fast and airborne. I swung my pistol toward a big white cat sliding across the countertop, surprised as I was, trying to reverse course on smooth tile and knocking over a phone that slid off the counter and clattered to the floor. I picked it up and set it back in its cradle. No messages on the recorder. The cat disappeared under the couch.

  Standing in the hallway, gun down and still amped by the cat, I asked myself if four people could have possibly left while I was out there watching. Gone out the front when I’d staked out the back? But from the rear I’d still been able to see the Suburban, and it hadn’t moved. And out front I’d planted myself at a distance and angle that gave me a view of most of the desert behind the little building—good enough to see them picking their way through the cactus-mined desert, headed for . . . where? If they had managed any of those feats on my watch, it was time for me to consider a new career.

  Which left two options: an attic or a basement.

  I looked up to see an attic hatch neatly framed in the old plaster ceiling, exactly where you’d expect to find it in a building this size and shape. They could easily have climbed through and pulled the ladder up behind them. Which could partially account for the motion I saw through the curtains. Which meant they could be up there right now.

  However, I also saw that the colorful kilim hall runner at my feet lay askew. As if recently disturbed.

  Dragging it aside with my boot, I saw the dark cut lines through the pavers, neatly done but still visible. In the shape of a trapdoor, large enough for people. No handles or recessed pulls. No easy way in. So, likewise, they could be just feet below me in a basement or crawl space, waiting for me to pass. I toed the runner back into place.

  Then retreated outside and through the desert darkness to my truck. Continued my watch. Puzzled and off-balance.

  * * *

  The darkness surrendered to gray, and the calls of desert songbirds joined the morning. Across the parking lot from bungalow nineteen the office light was on but none of the other units were stirring yet. There were only two cars besides Holland’s Suburban, Cassy Weisberg’s Beetle, and Broadman’s silver Chevy Tahoe.

  A few minutes later, Brock Holland and Gretchen Deuzler came from the front door of bungalow nineteen, quickly got into the white Suburban and drove toward town. I didn’t even have to duck and hide.

  I got my Vigilant 4000 up and running. Noted that Holland and Deuzler were headed west, toward San Diego.

  I waited another hour, then drove into the Bighorn lot and parked up near the office, one space over from Broadman’s silver Tahoe and Cassy Weisberg’s sun-blanched blue Beetle.

  Cassy buzzed me into the office, welcomed me with a distant smile.

  “Hello, Cass, is Harris around today?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “The PI, Roland Ford.”

  “I was only kidding you, Mr. Ford.”

  “You’re a good kidder, then.”

  “Mr. Broadman is sleeping, no doubt. He doesn’t usually get up until after noon.”

  “Would you tell him I’m here?”

  “I’m not supposed to wake him.”

  I tried to look disappointed and I was probably sleep deprived enough to be convincing.

  She pressed something on the counter I couldn’t see. “Mr. Broadman, Roland Ford is here to see you. The PI.”

  The soft buzz of static, like the sound of a phone being picked up but not answered.

  “Probably sleeping, like I said.”

  “May I see him?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Can I just go knock?”

  “That’s rude, Mr. Ford. I can’t allow that.”

  My first impulse was to embrace rudeness. Natalie Strait was alive and kicking, and last seen a couple of hundred feet from where I now stood. Maybe, if I was face-to-face with Broadman, I’d be face-to-face with Natalie, too. My second thought was that Cassy Weisberg, employed by a kidnapper, and undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, might suffer for my rudeness more than me.

  “Roland, what do you want?” asked Harris Broadman through the speaker.

  “I have a question about Natalie Strait,” I said.

  “I know nothing about her.”

  Did he know it was me watching them last night? If not, I could still be just a harmless pest to him. If so, he would try to derail me.

  I stalled and threw out something that Dalton had told me just recently.

  “Dalton said he used to brag about her when you were in Fallujah,” I said. “That you three talked on Skype once, and you told Dalton he’d better take good care of her when he got home or you would.”

  “And what’s the matter with that?”

  “I’m trying to figure out if Natalie might have looked you up recently,” I said. “As a friend of her husband.”

  “She did not. She did not.”

  “No communication from her at all?”

  “I’ve told you. None. Be gone, Ford. You’re trespassing on my property and my patience.”

  “It’s my job, but thank you, Sergeant. I apologize for getting you up so early with long-shot questions.”

  “You know I will always help.”

  I thanked Cassy and told her to have a great day.

  Stopped in front of bungalow six. The blinds were open.

  Broadman looked back at me from the far side of the living room. He was sitting on the same ’50s turquoise sofa as when we’d first talked here and he’d told me about the IED that Dalton Strait had not quite saved him from. Same molten face. Same white clothes, white ball cap, and aviator sunglasses. Same sprigs of downy white hair.

  He pointed the remote at me and the blinds shut tight.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Chaos Committee’s “gift” to California, promised days earlier, was opened by Gail Winfield, the police chief of tiny Hopedale, in the western Sierra Nevada, at 8:35 a.m. on Wednesday, May 27th.

  I’d been home from the Bighorn less than an hour when Lark called.

  “It killed her instantly,” he said. “They’re using better materials and less of them. The box that Chief Winfield opened could have been a coffee table book. It weighed about the same. It arrived UPS the day before, from an insecure drop box in Hemet. Another bogus sender and return address. Fires just set in Stockton and Grass Valley. And another officer wounded in Sacramento, shot with a rifle.”

  Hemet is forty-three miles from Fallbrook, where the first Chaos Committee bomb was mailed. And seventy-seven miles from Ramona, where the second bomb originated. The third bomb’s origin, which killed Congressman Clark Nisson in Encinitas, was of course still unknown.

  “Three of four bombs posted from my backyard,” I said to Special Agent Lark. “I hope you don’t come after me.”

  “We might. Have you looked at all the surveillance video?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I’m counting on you, Roland. This one’s for Joan. Remember? What’s new on Natalie Strait?”

  “Nothing since the blouse and the letter from Justine,” I lied.

  “The cops thi
nk Dalton wrote it and mailed himself the evidence as a smoke screen,” said Lark. “They think it’s possible that he had her bagged as cover for his campaign crimes.”

  “Is that why you haven’t opened an official FBI investigation?”

  “That’s part of it. Hazzard says Dalton wasn’t where he said he was the morning she vanished.”

  “He’s got an embarrassing alibi for that morning,” I said.

  “I didn’t think you could embarrass that guy,” said Lark. “Every time I see him he’s talking about his wife handling all the finances. How he never touched the money. I mean, you can stick up for him because of Fallujah, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “But if I learn anything I’ll share it with you,” Lark said. “We’re letting Hazzard run with it. For us feds, it’s all Chaos Committee now. They’re operating in my backyard, too, Roland. They’re fomenting revolution, making me look bad. It’s triage and priorities right now. So get on that security video, will you? Jackie O mailed that first bomb from Fallbrook. Find her again. Use that twenty-ten vision of yours for something more than beating me at the range.”

  “Glad it pissed you off.”

  “Everything pisses me off.”

  I ended the call. Checked the Vigilant 4000 to find Brock Holland’s white Suburban en route from Borrego Valley to San Diego.

  Perfect. Two fewer people to deal with.

  Burt stepped into my office. “Ready when you are.”

  * * *

  The Bighorn Motel parking lot was down to two vehicles: Cassy Weisberg’s Beetle and a wind-blasted station wagon circa 1975 with rust patches the size of dinner plates.

  Better than I’d planned for: No Harris Broadman. No Brock Holland or Gretchen Deuzler. Just me and the motel from which Natalie Strait had apparently disappeared less than twelve hours earlier.

  Once again I waited just off Palm Canyon Drive. My lucky spot. Watched Burt’s perfect red Eldorado convertible sail into the lot and park outside the office. White leather and a red-and-chrome dash. Burt got out and looked around, dressed for golf—green pants, yellow shirt, black PGA vest and visor. Wiped a folded white hankie over a spot on the driver’s door and palmed it back into a rear pocket.

  The truck thermometer read 92 degrees. I gave Burt a moment to engage Cassy, then locked up and trudged out into the desert again to approach bungalow nineteen out of view from the office.

  Someone had locked the door since I’d last picked it open. And turned off the interior lights. Interesting. The cleaning people? I doubted it.

  I picked the lock again and stepped in. The AC was off and the room was warm. Curtains drawn as they were last night. The big white cat was on the couch, green-eyed and dreamy.

  I toured the place once more, gun at the small of my back under a loose shirt. The cat followed me, nosing the wall edges, tail up.

  I parted the curtains over the picture window. Burt’s car was now parked outside of unit two. From the back seat he pulled a small rolling suitcase and set it on the asphalt. Then shouldered his precious clubs—woods, irons, and putter all cloaked in red-and-white covers embossed with his initials. He didn’t let them touch the ground. He rarely uses the cavernous Eldorado trunk because he has to jump to close the lid. I tease him about the BS but never about his height. He locked up, grabbed his suitcase handle, and bumped his way to his room.

  In the hallway I looked directly up at the attic access panel. All I needed for that was the ladder in the closet. One of my detective friends with the SDSD taught me to look up. At a crime scene, he said, always look up.

  I fetched and climbed the ladder, slid aside the attic lid and looked in. Hit the handy light switch. Small and not much to see: beams and rafters with roll-in insulation in between, the air conditioner exchange unit, ducts and electrical and copper water lines to and from the heater below. Two un-sprung rat traps, freshly baited. Not enough room to stand.

  I made sure the cover was as before, put the ladder back, and studied the floor hatch. No handles or grip. A switch, I thought, or a button.

  Nothing obvious on the walls, but I found a promising candidate in the bathroom just across the hall—an everyday light switch hiding behind a hung hand towel.

  Flipped it and watched the hallway floor hatch rise, pavers and all, to form a neat square opening just big enough for human traffic. The hinges were stout and the motor was quiet. A nylon strap nailed to the underside. A light went on. Metal steps and metal railings.

  Down I went. Four-by-four uprights rose on either side of me, bound by flat steel T-straps. Two-by-four framing, with heavy sandbag walls down low, and lighter plywood sheets up higher. A tunnel designed for the treacherous desert soil. The ceiling was just high enough that I didn’t have to duck. A line of overhead lightbulbs ran straight down its center, every bulb working. The reinforcement lumber still looked fresh, the nail heads glimmered, and the T-straps were shiny black.

  Recently built or well preserved by the desert dry?

  By my difficult reckoning, the tunnel ran along one side of the pool and toward the first wing of rooms. The light was good but it was difficult to get a sense of direction underground. I moved slowly and made a soft left turn.

  Then on to the first row of the Bighorn Motel horseshoe, aimed roughly at Broadman’s unit six. Where I saw a trapdoor very much like the one through which I’d just descended. I looked up at the ladder tucked under the hatch and the dangling pull-rope, feeling a vertiginous dread—Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

  The tunnel continued another fifty feet past what I guessed was the office, then began to lead me away from the motel. But this was not the same tunnel I’d started off in. The walls became solid rock—not reinforced by beams, sandbags, or plywood. It took another gentle turn and, if my sense of direction was right, headed into the hills behind the Bighorn, to the east. The hills that I’d seen the first time I came to the Bighorn—scarred by old mine tailings and scaffolding and pits, and, apparently, undercut by tunnels. The hills with the homes built into the boulders.

  A hundred feet more to another turn, then a hundred feet more.

  Bringing me to another ladder and another trapdoor.

  I’m not claustrophobic but my gut was tight and a pool of panic simmered.

  I climbed up and muscled open the hatch. Heard the grind of the hinge and felt the weight on the strap as I lowered the cover to the floor.

  Pulled myself up and out and into a large, faintly lit room.

  No windows and almost no light. Found a switch and the room flickered to life.

  It was large, with brick walls and a low ceiling of recessed fluorescent lights. Bunker-like. Stone silent. One wall fitted with heavy shackles for arms and ankles. Bookshelves on three sides. Desks and tables with newspapers and magazines piling up. Stacks of books. Lamps for reading. Fast-food litter, drink cans. Rugs on a polished concrete floor. A closed door with a poster of a Guy Fawkes demonstrator on it.

  A torture chamber? A library? Study hall? Museum?

  The far wall arrested my attention. It was hung with masks from around the world, crowded together cheek to cheek: African, Greek and Roman, European, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islands, Australian. Many I couldn’t place. Both ancient and modern. Washington and Lincoln. Reagan and Nixon. Obama and Trump. Superheroes. The world in masks. Grotesque. Amusing. Unnerving.

  And down low, within easy reach:

  A Hannya theater mask.

  A madly grimacing Iroquois.

  A WWI splatter mask.

  Standing in the cool silence, I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

  * * *

  I let Burt into bungalow nineteen through the back patio door, out of Cassy Weisberg’s view from the Bighorn Motel office.

  A few minutes later we stood in the bunker, before the wall of masks.

  “Hair and makeup for Th
e Chaos Committee,” he said.

  “Check the Iroquois,” I said. It had the same insane grin and crazed eyes, the same stumpy wooden teeth, and a head of bristling black hair that looked much like the horsehairs found in Natalie Strait’s blue SUV.

  “Broadman, Holland, and Deuzler make three of five committee members,” said Burt.

  “Leaving two ninjas from the TV takeover,” I said. “One female and one male. Possibly Jackie O. For a committee of five—minimum.”

  “Let’s see what Mr. Fawkes is guarding,” said Burt.

  I couldn’t get the lock open. I learned my lock picking on residential American models and this one was German, industrial and expensive.

  “One more round, champ,” Burt said.

  I finally got the tension wrench and pick working together and the last pin moved into place. I pushed open the door.

  An apartment, spacious and apparently lived in. Bars on the windows and just the one door leading in and out. Brick walls and beam ceilings, a hardwood floor. A good-sized fireplace, black with the years, in the corner of the living room. A stack of firewood left over from winter.

  Dishes in the sink, food in the refrigerator, bread, jam, and peanut butter on the counter.

  A bath towel hung from the bathroom door hook. A blue dress dried on a hanger hooked to the shower. A shower cap on the nozzle inside. A brush on the vanity counter, matted with dark hair.

  “She was still here this morning, when I saw Broadman,” I said. “After I left, he got her out of hiding and they hit the road.”

  “Which means they made you last night,” said Burt. “Maybe that’s a good thing. They could have jumped you but they didn’t.”

  I checked the Vigilant 4000. Saw that Brock Holland’s Suburban had been stationary for the last fifty-seven minutes at the same GPS coordinates in Ramona, a little over an hour away from Borrego Springs.

  Ramona, where Natalie Galland had grown up and met earnest Dalton Strait through his bad-boy older brother, Kirby. Where the second Chaos Committee bomb had been mailed to San Diego County Administration Center.