by Lewis Perdue
"Oh, hell." I slowed down, half-expecting to see the lights of a police car, then realizing it was unlikely in the dead of night.
Emotions careered wildly about in my head, then suddenly distilled themselves; I visualized the heap of bloody clothes I had stuffed into a plastic bag in my Mississippi motel room after Mama's funeral.
"Hold on? I said quietly at first.
Jasmine looked at me expectantly.
"Whoa! That's got to be it."
I slammed on the brakes and hung a U-turn.
"If it's anywhere, it'll be in the suit I wore at my mother's funeral."
"The Blackberry?"
I nodded. "It's the only possible thing."
I replayed the scene in Itta Bena once again. Only this time I had trouble focusing on Vanessa's face. It came to me now as one of those hyperpixelated images you get when you enlarge a digital photo too much.
Excitedly, I described things to Jasmine, slowly struggling to relate every detail as I drove north along Lincoln, making most of the green lights and easing through the reds. I visualized the cracked concrete in the garage of our little stucco beach house in Playa Del Rey a block from the ocean where the music of the surf rode the ocean breezes through the open windows on warm summer evenings. My mind saw the washer and dryer and the kids' bicycles and my workbench and the tools and the stacks of boxes I had packed when I had briefly thought of selling the place after the accident. But mostly I fixed on the plastic bag from the hotel room in Jackson all knotted up around the bloody new suit.
"How could you possibly have hung on to that?"
I shrugged. "Memories. Why does the Catholic Church hang on to the bones and other relics of saints?"
"Perversity?"
I laughed. "Okay, that's why I didn't toss it."
When I pulled the truck into the driveway of the white, 1930s, art deco bungalow with the giant jade plants and the white picket fence guarding the little postage stamp of fescue in front, I knew at once everything was all wrong.
CHAPTER 21
"Porch light's on." I sat in the truck and tried to decipher the shadows around my house.
"So?" Jasmine asked.
"So it's on a heat and motion sensor." I killed the engine.
"Maybe we triggered it."
I shook my head. "It was on when we were half a block away."
"A dog?"
Again, I shook my head. "I adjusted the sensitivity so that doesn't happen. It used to wake us up all the time."
I yanked the keys from the ignition, shouldered open my door, and got out. "Wait here."
I climbed into the truck bed and opened the big metal box bolted to the truck right behind the cab. The box held a few tools, chains for snowy Sierra roads, and a lot of gear for sailing, hiking, and mountain biking. And shooting.
Jasmine got out and made her way to the side of the truck bed, where she watched me pull out a sturdy metal box, locked with a casehardened padlock and secured by a thick security cable to a bracket welded to the truck bed. I unlocked the box and pulled out the Beretta Model 92F 9mm semiautomatic pistol I used for duty as a reserve sheriff's deputy. With another key on my chain, I unlatched the trigger lock, pulled a fifteen-round magazine from the box, slid it into the handle, and worked the slide to chamber a round. I grabbed two more fifteen-round magazines and shoved them in the pockets of my shorts.
"I thought you were going to wait there." I nodded toward the front seat.
"I never said that." She gave me that wry smile again.
"Whatever." I climbed down. "They might still be here." I motioned toward the house.
Jasmine gave me a "So what?" look.
"You might want to wait in the truck."
She rolled her eyes, then pulled her cell phone off its belt clip and waved it at me. "Isn't this one of those times when you're supposed to call for backup or something?"
That stopped me. I took a deep breath and held it for a long moment against the tension wringing my guts like a high-C piano string gone sharp. The palms of my hands tingled.
Was I overreacting? There was no sign of movement. I thought about the hours I had already spent with Internal Affairs and the probability that dialing 911 would mean more bureaucratic hassles and paperwork, and the reality that calling the LAPD for help usually meant waiting on hold.
"Well, I think the guys who attacked my boat wouldn't have done it if they'd found what they were looking for here."
"Maybe," she said. "Or not."
"Well, we can debate it all night or find out." I turned and made my way up the short walk to the porch and found the front door ajar. I motioned Jasmine to stay back, but she ignored me again. I reached inside the front door, turned on the entryway light, and stepped in.
We made our way to the living room. I went first, following the Beretta, then turned on the overhead lights.
"Oh, hell."
My home, which I had lovingly saved from the wrecking ball with my own sweat, muscle, and considerable money, had been expertly tossed, drawers emptied, cushions slashed open, fixtures ripped out, heating-duct grills pulled and thrown about. With a gathering sense of dread, and Jasmine right behind, I made my way from room to room. In the bedroom I had once shared with Camilla, the snapshots of her and the children lay scattered on the hardwood floors amid the fragments of glass and remnants of frames.
The devastation hit me hardest in the children's room. Untouched since the accident, the toys lay scattered, broken and shattered open with venality beyond professional thoroughness. I froze when my eye caught sight of a tiny stuffed tiger, my daughter's constant companion and sleep partner. It lay disemboweled on the floor, the stuffing probed and discarded. This ripped my heart like rusty barbed wire.
"Motherfuckers." I bent over and picked up the tiger. The touch brought memories and tears. Then I stepped through the debris and placed the tiger gently on the lower bunk where my daughter's head used to lie, so perfectly beautiful in her sleep.
I swallowed hard against the tears, and when I turned away, my heart was hard again and filled with the momentum of revenge.
"Come on," I said.
We headed through the kitchen and made our way toward the garage door, stepping carefully through the mess of broken glass, spilled flour, and broken mustard jars. A couple of feet before we got to the door leading down the two concrete steps to the garage door, we came to the walk-in pantry on the right. I laid my hand on the knob and paused.
"The suit should be in a plastic bag." I nodded toward the garage. "Next to the washer and dryer. I never got around to doing anything about it, but I couldn't throw it away"
The image flooded back vividly so I turned from the pantry and went to the garage door opened to reveal a new scene of chaos.
It stank like a stale beer joint. The reason became clear when I turned on the light and smashed on the concrete floor lay the remains of a full case of Lagunitas IPA. Foam still adorned the puddles. I drew a quick mental sketch of the cluttered one-car garage: my tool bench on the wall to the right with nothing disturbed, the old refrigerator-freezer used for beer, wine, and Costco overflow, piles of boxes stacked nearly to the ceiling, mounds of sailing and sporting gear. I spotted the shreds of the plastic bag from the hotel room in Jackson, scattered about the floor amid the articles of wrinkled, bloodstained clothing. In the split second it took me to comprehend this, the door to the walk-in pantry burst open.
"Hey!" Jasmine yelled as the door slammed into her. Then a single gunshot and the voice of a man cursing.
I whirled, Beretta at the ready. Jasmine stumbled sideways as the pantry door swung open again, slammed into my foot, and stopped instantly. The top twisted forward as if someone was shoving it with his shoulder. The upper hinge complained as the screws holding it in the casing began to splinter.
A gun muzzle emerged at the edge of the door, followed by the rest of a largecaliber revolver gripped by an even larger left hand overgrown with thick brambles of black hair. Jasmine threw
herself to the floor as the muzzle found her. I fired two shots through the hollow-core door; the pistol dropped to the floor and clattered away. Pressure on the pantry door ceased immediately. I jumped back, pulling the door with me. There, bent double on the floor, a tall, muscular man clad in Levi's and a navy blue T-shirt cradled his arms around his belly and moaned softly. He rocked himself gently as a severed artery siphoned the life from his body and flooded it across my terra-cotta tiles. Blood filled a small crater dug by the solitary round the man had accidentally fired when the opening door hit Jasmine. He had obviously assumed we had continued on into the garage when he'd sprung his ambush and run into us instead.
Jasmine stood up and joined me, her face oddly composed and her eyes working to take in everything.
"Get his gun," I said.
Jasmine followed my gaze and picked it up.
"Forty-four Magnum," she said, holding it with an easy familiarity.
"Know how to use that?"
"I'm a civil rights lawyer from Mississippi. What do you think?"
"Good point."
I looked down at the man on the floor. "He could have a friend. Shoot anybody that's not me." I moved cautiously toward the garage with the
Beretta ready. The garage was small, cramped, and left few places to hide. I cleared it quickly, checking behind the towers of boxes and even inside the refrigerator.
"Okay, time for 911," I said reluctantly when I got back to the kitchen.
"Done already!" Jasmine waved her cell phone at me. "On hold."
The big man lay still now, his skin whiter than a kosher chicken and surrounded by an enormous pool of blood that no longer expanded.
"He's gone," I said.
"But you're a doctor."
"Even if I gave a damn, he's a goner. A severed aorta empties a body faster than you can count seconds on one hand. Come on." I clicked the safety on the Beretta and headed for the garage. "Let's see if we can find anything in my suit they missed."
I made my way through the mess to the cabinet holding sandpaper and painting supplies and grabbed a box of latex gloves. I pulled out a pair, then offered the box to Jasmine.
She shook her head. "It's my mother's blood. I don't mind touching it."
The way she said it made me feel guilty for getting the gloves in the first place. Jasmine placed the .44 Magnum on my workbench, then picked up the bloody suit coat. I couldn't think of anything to say so I slipped on the gloves and went to the kitchen. I leaned way over the pool of blood, not wanting to step in it, not wanting it on me or my clothes. The body lay on its left side, which made it easy for me to pat down both rear pockets and the right side.
Nothing. I struggled him over on his back and found the left-side pocket empty as well. The man was a cipher.
"Brad!" Jasmine's voice reached me loud and excited. I turned. She stood at the garage door holding up a scrap of plastic smaller than her pinky nail.
"It's a MicroSD card," she said, walking over to me.
"Of course! Flash memory data storage."
She let it drop into my hand. Small wonder I had overlooked it and so had my assailants.
"How did you find it so fast?"
"I knew what to look for. Mom wouldn't give you the whole Blackberry. So I—" She cocked her head like a person listening to unheard voices.
"One moment, please," she said into her cell phone and handed it to me.
"It's for you," she said.
CHAPTER 22
Darryl Talmadge's collapse on the VA hospital floor dominated Clark Braxton's flat-panel computer monitor. The General pushed his Aeron chair back from his black granite slab desk to give Frank Harper a better look.
Harper studied the image, leaning one bony hand on the brilliantly polished desk and the other on his polished briar cane with the brass knob cast from melted shell casings he had collected from the sands at Juno Beach. Braxton resisted the impulse to remove the old doctor's hand from his desk and polish away the residue left behind. He loathed having other people's bodily oils on his belongings.
Instead, the General studied Harper's faint trembling. Secretly, Braxton had learned Harper's new palsy had lately begun to overwhelm the Parkinson's medication. Despite this, Harper's back was straight and his bearing sufficiently military and his intellectual capacities still useful enough to warrant Braxton's continued association.
"Would you like a chair?" Braxton made sure not to sound overly solicitous. When Harper shook his head, his sparse, down-fine, white hair swayed, then landed in disarray. Chaos irritated Braxton and he turned toward the window. The General stared at his own well-crafted image in the glass, mirrored by the darkness beyond. His frown deepened as he visualized the well-remembered view down the hill—his hill. Braxton's frown embraced the small brushy patch at the base that belonged to a stubborn son of a bitch in the ersatz Spanish stucco McMansion on Oakville Crossroad who kept jacking up the asking price.
That brushy patch remained the sole piece of his hill he had not been able to acquire. The arrogant bastard had let the land go to hell, didn't even have the decency to plant grapes on it. The parcel left a breach in security and posed a severe brush-fire hazard.
A recurring fantasy visited him now, replaying images of a solitary jog through vineyards glowing with the faint green haze of spring. Corning round a row, he confronts the stubborn landowner and settles the dispute with a lethally honed grape knife, crescentcurved and wicked with serrations. Braxton's frown vanished as he unzipped the man from sternum to scrotum. Then the General smiled, visualizing the first sip of wine made from the grapes fattened on the man's blood.
"That happened awfully fast." Reluctantly, Braxton turned back toward Harper. On the flat-panel display, a burst of white coats and scrubs exploded into Talmadge's room. The phone on Braxton's desk rang then; Braxton hit the pause button on the video stream, freezing two uniformed MPs in midlunge.
"Braxton," the General barked into the mouthpiece. He tilted his head as he listened.
"Ben, how many times do I have to tell you, price is not the issue?" Braxton dosed his eyes for a moment and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
Harper watched the microtremors ripple across Braxton's jaw that indicated he needed to adjust the General's medication. Harper had trained himself to see the symptoms where others couldn't. That's why he and he alone treated the General. The speed with which the tremors intensified now alarmed him.
"Just get me the fucking wine, Ben!" Braxton's voice carried a deep, honed menace few ever cared to provoke. "This is my collection and it is incomplete. Incomplete! Do you know what that means? It means this collection is worthless—worthless—without that 1870s solera vertical....
"Yes, I know I've already spent millions, but this is not about the money; this is about having a complete collection. Complete!"
Braxton listened for a few more seconds. "Ben, I am paying you for results. Get me the collection or get the hell out of my life!"
Harper looked discreetly out the window as Braxton struggled not to slam down the receiver. The dosage and formula of the General's drug cocktail had become increasingly complicated with week-to-week and sometimes daily adjustments needed. Neither the General nor any other person knew how much effort Harper put into keeping one of his oldest surviving patients on an even keel.
After hanging up the phone, Braxton restarted the Talmadge video. After Braxton's microtremors subsided, Harper said, "I still don't understand why you didn't have Talmadge killed like the others."
Braxton offered the old Army physician another question: "Well, for one thing, have you recovered the old microfilmed files you left in Belzoni?"
Harper sighed and, with considerable effort, straightened up and faced Braxton. He was taller than the General and more than two decades older. When he spoke, his voice failed to hide his own lack of patience.
"Obviously I would have told you if I had. Why do you keep giving me that question instead of an answer?"
"Because
you keep asking me that very obvious question." Braxton worked to maintain a neutral tone. "You know darned well our Mr. Talmadge got his hands on those records and his do-gooder lawyer burned them all on CDs. For all we know, lawyer Shanker or an ally made arrangements to have the CDs turned over to the press if Talmadge dies in our hands." Braxton paused to select a tone of voice conveying the appropriately serious edge. "The problem with old men is that time and guilt loosens their lips. When consequences disappear, people do things that we can't tolerate."
"Clark, you know that without the microfilm of the documents, or your testimony, the CD copies can be dismissed as forgeries," Harper responded. "Something concocted by desperate people who want to block your election." He paused. "Besides, the real dynamite is still here." He tapped his head.
Braxton shook his head. "Frank, with all due respect"—which is rapidly diminishing, you old fool, Braxton thought—"you simply don't understand the process. All those ankle-biting Chihuahuas in the media have to do is release the CD a couple of weeks before the election and I've lost."
Harper shrugged.
"Until we find those documents—and any copies which might be out there—we cannot be sure, and until we are sure, my bid to rescue this great country from its own sloppy foolishness is in grave danger."
"Yes, yes." Harper waved his free hand about. Braxton noted that Harper had, indeed, left a handprint on the black granite. "But don't you think the longer he continues this"—Harper pointed toward the screen—"this repeating drama, the greater the danger?"
Damn! The old fool was losing it. And he's wasting my time as well, Braxton thought as his eyes strayed to his desk and the two unread hardcover thrillers by David Baldacci and Dale Brown. They were his favorite authors and had much rather be reading them rather than nursemaiding a broken-down old sawbones.
"Frank, you're a brilliant physician, a gifted researcher, and a loyal, patriotic soldier who has served his country well." Braxton turned toward Harper and placed his hand on the old man's shoulder and felt the bones. "You understand the inner workings of the human body, and I, for one, am grateful for your work." Braxton paused as he shifted from the richly warm congratulatory tone that had brought a smile to Harper's face, to one now of wisdom and caution.