Never Look Down

by Warren C Easley

  She sat there and watched her inbox, and as she waited time slowed to a glacial pace. She fidgeted and squirmed in front of the screen, but nothing came back. “Sheeze,” she said when the computer timed out on her. An older man in a rumpled suit was next in line. Kelly said, “Can you give me another ten minutes?” He shook his head.

  Kelly stomped out of the library, put a dollar bill in the guitar case, and leashed up the dog. She’d come back, but only after she walked off some nervous energy.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Cal

  It wasn’t until I was walking out of the Belmont Library that I thought of the little dog that passed me coming in. I think it was the big Malamud lying there that somehow jogged my memory about the dog paraphernalia I’d seen in Kelly’s apartment. Maybe she had the dog in tow?

  I hurried down the library steps and looked up Cesar Chavez Boulevard, trying to pull up the image of the kid I saw walking the dog. The sweatshirt hood was cinched up, so I had no impression of facial features, but the height and build were about right. The kid and the dog were out of sight, but I was intrigued enough to try and find them.

  I jogged up to Yamhill and scanned both directions. No sign of them. The same for the next street up. My car was parked on Morrison, and when I reached it got in and continued the search. I must have driven around the area for ten or fifteen minutes before parking again, empty-handed. There were two possibilities—either the kid and the dog had ducked inside somewhere, for lunch maybe, or they’d gone into Laurelhurst Park, a nearby greenspace that covered multiple city blocks.

  Archie squealed with delight when I let him out of the backseat and leashed him up. “Come on, big boy, let’s check out the park.” He took off, practically dragging me. We entered the park at the southeast entrance and took a path that curved around to a huge duck pond with massive firs and hemlocks crowding the banks. We were halfway around the pond when I saw the kid sitting on a bench holding the little dog.

  The bench was between the path and the water’s edge, so Arch and I passed behind them. The small dog yapped a couple of times, but the kid, whose face was still obscured by the hoodie, just sat there looking out on the pond.

  I stopped a little past the bench and said, “Hello, Kelly.” The kid’s head and shoulders made a quarter turn in my direction and then snapped back. Was it her or had the kid just reacted to my voice? “Kelly Spence,” I repeated, “I’m Cal Claxton. I need to talk to you.”

  The kid rose abruptly and began striding away in the direction we’d come from without looking back. “You’ve got the wrong person, mister. Leave me alone.”

  It was the voice of a girl, I was sure of it. “Kelly, wait. If that’s you, I can help you. You don’t have to do this on your own. Just hear me out. Please.” She stopped, her shoulders dropped, but she remained facing the other way. “Let’s just sit down here and talk this over.”

  She turned slowly and faced me, her hoodie still drawn up tight. I was glad I had Archie with me, sensing his presence would reassure her. My dog had a way of doing that. She stood there for a while just looking at me. Finally she said in a low voice, “Will you let me leave after we talk?”

  I would’ve done anything short of physical coercion to prevent her from taking off, but the truth was I couldn’t really stop her.

  “If you want to, yes. I’m not the police.”

  She came back to the bench and stood there. I approached with Archie leading the way. The little dog moved tentatively in front of Arch, lay down, and rolled over on his back, exposing his chest and belly. The act of submission was perfectly timed, serving to break the ice. I said, “This is Archie. What’s his name?”

  “Spencer.” She looked at him, then back at me, showing a hint of a smile. “It’s a stupid name for such an ugly dog.” She sat down on the bench, and I joined her. The dogs arranged themselves in front of us like old friends. She loosened her hood but kept it up. Her eyes were pretty, blue like the McKenzie River. “How did you find me?”

  I chuckled like it was nothing. “I know a computer hacker who eats anonymous websites for breakfast. I put two and two together, and here I am.” It was a bald-faced lie and purposefully vague, but I hoped an allusion to technical wizardry would somehow satisfy her. I’d promised not to compromise Kiyana Howard.

  She looked genuinely shocked. “He must be really good.” To my relief, she left it at that, asking instead, “You said you were waiting for news about the murders. Did you hear anything?”

  I couldn’t lie this time. “I, uh, told you that so you would stay on your computer. That’s how I found you.”

  She turned away from me. “That figures. So, you’ve got nothing, huh?”

  “No, that’s not true at all! Thanks to you, I’ve got a lot. What I need now is for you to take me back through everything you’ve seen, so I can put it all together. I’m close to cracking this thing, Kelly.” That was a bit of an overstatement, but I did feel strongly that she knew more than she thought she did.

  “I told you everything I know,” she said while keeping her back to me. “Looks like it was a complete waste of time.” She sighed deeply. “I should have known.”

  “Not at all,” I shot back. “Look, are you hungry? Let’s get you something to eat, and I’ll get a coffee. Then we can go to my office and talk about this.”

  She turned around and looked me straight in the eye. Her gaze was unflinching and held an element of maturity beyond her years. “You’re not going to call the cops? If you do, I’ll say I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear.”

  “Kelly, I get it about the cops, okay? Come on, let’s go eat.” I held my breath.

  “Okay.”

  As we walked together out of the park, I felt an enormous sense of relief that this young girl was finally safe. At the same time, I was having a distinct dog-that-caught-the-cat moment.

  What the hell do I do now?

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Kelly

  As she walked out of the park with Cal, Kelly struggled to make sense of her clashing emotions. On the one hand, it was good to finally share the burden with someone, and she felt a sense of relief that brought tears to her eyes and made her knees a little shaky. But on the other hand, she felt terrified at the prospect of becoming personally involved in a situation that held so much risk for her and Veronica. Here she was, getting ready to spill her guts to some lawyer. Okay, he had a good reputation in Old Town, and Kiyana liked him, but, hey, he was a lawyer, after all. Claxton knew her K209 secret now, too, and God knows who else. That made her sad for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. There was something special about that moniker, a tribute to her dad, for sure, and a declaration that she didn’t buy what she saw around her. She felt a sense of loss, like a chapter of her life coming to a close.

  But there was something about this guy that made her want to trust him. He wasn’t dressed like a lawyer—jeans, a thick wool sweater, and Merrill hiking boots—and he didn’t look like one either. He was big and broad with a shaggy mustache, long hair, and eyes that were friendly, but warned you not to bullshit him. There was his dog, too—the handsomest animal she’d ever seen, black with white and copper trim, and big without being threatening. And it was easy to tell that dog loved Claxton. Dogs are an excellent judge of character aren’t they?

  When they got to his car, a beat-up old BMW, she stood there for a moment, and Claxton gave her a look that told her he knew what she was going through. He let Archie in the backseat and got behind the wheel without saying anything. Kelly hesitated for a few moments and then went around to the passenger side and joined them.

  ***

  They stopped at a Pizzacato at Twenty-eighth and Burnside, where Kelly feasted on a gourmet pizza and an arugula salad. Claxton smiled, watching her eat, and she told him it was the best meal she’d had in forever. He suggested that instead of launching into the
case, they take some time to get to know each other. Kelly learned that Cal—that’s what he asked her to call him—was a bachelor who lived with his dog out in the wine country and that he also had a place above his office at Caffeine Central. He lit up when he began telling her about his daughter, a grad student at UC, Berkeley. It was pretty obvious that he loved her a lot. He told Kelly his wife had died, but he didn’t talk about that. He laughed when Kelly asked if he had a girlfriend. He told her he didn’t, but that there was a woman he was becoming interested in.

  Kelly talked mainly about her dad, what a great mountaineer he was, and how they used to climb together. She told him about school, too, and how she was on track to graduate early. When Cal asked about her plans she said, “I’m going to college, and I want to be the youngest woman to climb the north face of the Eiger in Switzerland. It was Dad’s favorite climb.” She didn’t mention Veronica, and Claxton didn’t press her about her living arrangements.

  They drove across the river to Old Town, where Kelly and her dog followed Claxton and his dog into the office at Caffeine Central. Spencer managed to appropriate a corner of Archie’s mat, and soon both dogs were snoozing peacefully. Claxton came right to the point. “Look, Kelly, I got involved here because Claudia Borrego was the fiancée of a good friend of mine, and when I realized that K209 probably witnessed the shooting, I decided to find you, figuring the cops would have a problem locating a young tagger.” Kelly smiled and nodded. “Then I found out from you that Rupert Youngblood was another victim, and there’s even one more you don’t know about—a young man named Manny Bonilla. There’s also a man, who may very well be innocent, who’s in jail for the shooting. As you can see the stakes are huge.”

  Kelly’s smile faded, and her face grew wary. Where is he going with this?

  “I promised you I’d do everything in my power to help you, and I will. But as an attorney in the state of Oregon, I took an oath to uphold the law.” Claxton met her eyes and held them. “You’ve got to work with me here, Kelly. We can deal with the tagging misdemeanors you’ve committed. You’ve got tremendous leverage with the police because of what you know.”

  Kelly fought to maintain a brave front, but her lower lip trembled slightly. She dropped her eyes and studied the hardwood floor. You should never have come here, you idiot. The room fell completely silent.

  After a long pause, Cal said softly, “Think about it, Kelly. It’s the right thing to do.”

  A car passed outside on Couch, then another. Her dog made a little whining sound in his sleep. Kelly raised her eyes, sat back in her chair, and sighed. “It’s not about the tags so much.”

  Claxton nodded like he knew that. “What is it then?”

  “It’s my dad’s girlfriend, Veronica. She’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “She’s wanted in California. Drugs, I think. She wouldn’t tell me much about it. She’s not using now.”

  “I can understa—”

  “There’s something else,” Kelly interrupted. “I won’t go back into foster care. I’ll just run away again.”

  Claxton nodded, as if Kelly had just mentioned the weather or time of day. “Good,” he said brightly. “We only have two problems.” He asked her a bunch more questions, and they discussed them for a long time. He didn’t bore in on what had happened to Kelly in foster care, but she made sure he got the picture.

  Finally, Claxton said, “Tell you what. I’m a member of the California Bar. I’ll represent Veronica down there if she’ll agree to give herself up. Drug warrants are generally not a big deal, and what she’s doing now is just making things worse. It’s not fair to you, either.” Kelly shifted in her seat but kept her eyes down.

  Claxton went on. “I’ll also agree to represent you in finding a good foster home, one that you are enthusiastic about instead of being in dread of. And if you want to go after your former foster parents, we’ll look into that, too.”

  Kelly was stunned. It was as if Claxton, with the sweep of his hand, put to rest her darkest fears. But she was still wary. “Uh, what do I have to do?”

  Claxton smiled. “It’s simple. Tell the police everything you know.”

  “What about Veronica? She’ll never agree.”

  “Let me handle that.”

  Kelly exhaled a long breath. “Okay, I’ll do it but only if Veronica agrees, too.”

  “Good,” Claxton said. “What’s her number? I’ll call her right now.”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Cal

  I was relieved when Kelly agreed to my proposition, although it was a deal that would make my accountant apoplectic. Running a pro-bono case down in California could get expensive in a hurry. And I was a lot less confident that I could get Veronica to come forward than I’d let on. Kelly gave me Veronica’s cell phone number, but when I called it no one answered, and I didn’t leave a message.

  I printed out all of Kelly’s e-mail messages, and we began to go back through them. I was particularly interested in what she’d seen at the Bridgetown Arsenal. When we got to that point in her narrative I said, “You say here that you watched the Arsenal for a while from a hiding place. Tell me more about that.”

  “Well, I wanted to see if I could spot Macho Dude. That’s what I’ve been calling the guy who shot Claudia. Because of the jacket he wore with the eagle on it I figured he might be a customer or work at the Arsenal. I was too chicken to just walk in, but I noticed this building across the street just sitting there half built. I found a spot up on the fourth floor and watched from there. About the third or fourth time I was up there, these two panel trucks rolled in just as it was getting dark. A dude I thought was Macho Dude got out of one the trucks, but it got dark before I could be absolutely sure.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “They loaded up a bunch of boxes and took off.”

  “What kind of boxes?”

  Kelly paused to think as she scratched Spencer behind his ears. “Just cardboard boxes, sort of square, not real big, but quite a few.”

  “Did the trucks have any markings on them?”

  “Nope. They were plain white. Then the next day another truck got loaded up.”

  “Same kind of boxes?”

  Kelly paused for a moment. “Uh, actually, that second day the boxes were bigger, rectangular. Anyway, I got up my nerve and walked over there and asked for directions. I didn’t see Macho Dude, but this other dude drove up, got out, and said something to the guys loading the boxes. I recognized that voice. It was the man at the granary. I’d know that voice anywhere.”

  “Shipments,” I said, more to myself than Kelly. “It has to be. When did you see this?” Kelly shrugged, so I got a calendar out and spread it on the desk in front of her. “What were the dates?”

  “Uh, the first must have been a Thursday, so October twenty-third, and the second must have been on the twenty-fourth.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I remember that the first time was the day before the anniversary of Dad’s accident on K2.”

  “Shipments,” I said again with more emphasis. I jumped up and fished the copy of Manny Bonilla’s notebook out of my briefcase and opened it up to the page containing the alphabet soup. The first entry read

  Oct. 23 – two trucks/100 units

  ECA-25

  MGC-30

  BRC-45

  The second,

  Oct. 24 – one truck. 45 mods - SDGC

  The third,

  Nov. 19 – two trucks/80

  ECGR-35

  RBRR-45

  And the fourth,

  Nov. 23 – one truck SDGC – 40 mods

  I pulled up the Bridgetown Arsenal website, clicked on the About Us button, and read about the expanding empire that Roz Jenkins and Arthur Finley were building. Their business strategy was to buy existing gun shops
and ranges and keep their original names to maintain local identities. So, their acquisition down in southern Oregon was called the Medford Gun Club, a venerable organization that had been around for decades. In northern California, it was the Red Bluff Rifle Range, which had been around for fifty years, and so it went on down to the Mexican border, fifteen gun shops and growing.

  I sat there looking at the names of the shops when it popped. “Of course. MGC must stand for Medford Gun Club, RBRR for Red Bluff Rifle Range. I went through all the initials in Bonilla’s entries and matched them up with businesses belonging to the Jenkins’ family. I looked at Kelly. “I think what you saw was the load-up for a series of deliveries. My guess is that first day the ‘units’ were drop-in triggers made at the Arsenal to be delivered to gun shops along the I-5 corridor. The units might indicate how many triggers were delivered at each site, so 45 units at the Bakersfield Rifle Club, 20 units to the City of Angels Gun Range in L.A, and so on. Those units would be used to modify rifles acquired in the local area.”

  I glanced back down at the sheet. “The second and fourth entries are different.” I looked at Kelly and spread my hands beyond the width of my shoulders. “You said the boxes were rectangular that second time. About like this? About the length of a rifle?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, maybe the ‘45 mods’ refer to 45 AR-15s modified at the Arsenal to be shipped to the San Diego Gun Club, which is probably the staging area for the entire smuggling operation into Mexico.” I nodded slowly, awed by the implications. The potential scope of the operation was impressive. “Yeah, that might hang together.”

  Kelly looked back at me in complete bewilderment. “Is that good?”

  I nodded again. “Maybe. If I’m right, then it should tell us when the next shipment goes out.” I looked at the third entry in Bonilla’s notebook, straining to read his terrible handwriting. I could hardly believe my eyes. “It looks like a shipment’s going out today.”