Just Fire

by Dawn Mattox

  Everyone certainly loved Mel, the chapter president—all two hundred and fifty pounds of him. Possibly three hundred pounds if you counted the pins and medals turning his vest into an armored car. Mel was bulletproof. Like my dad, Mel became another Vietnam veteran-turned-outlaw-biker after the war. Unlike my father, Mel had been set free from his anger and bitterness by the grace of God. The medals on his vest were evidence that he had been riding for many years. Bikers got pins, badges, and patches by attending various runs and events. Simply put, a five-star general couldn’t boast more metal than Mel.

  Breakfast was as basic, warm, and satisfying as the natural friendliness of the club members. I was pleased to be invited to join them on their traditional after-meeting run. It was a typical Northern California winter day, cold and dry, but as Shane had often said, “That is why the good Lord invented leather.” A little cold never stops hard-core bikers. So I hit the restroom and headed for the door.

  “Oh my gosh. Duncan. What a surprise.”

  Duncan’s butt was parked in a booth near the door, a napkin tucked under his chin, wearing a baggy, grease-stained sweat suit, eating a breakfast fit for a king. And a queen. And a couple of growing princelings.

  “Sunny!” Duncan choked my name into his napkin. “I thought that looked like you—getting off the Fat Boy, right? Wow—that is so neat. I always wanted to ride a motorcycle.” His round eyes enlarged with admiration from behind his thick lenses, making him look like one of Margaret Keane’s big-eyed pop art puppies so popular back in the 60s.

  “So why don’t you get one? You’d look pretty tough on a Harley,” I said with an encouraging wink. Or not! Second thoughts ran roughshod as I imagined Duncan as a counterpart for Dudley in Wild Hogs more than Jax in Sons of Anarchy.

  I felt sorry for Duncan. Especially after hearing the secretarial shark pool snickering over Paige calling him Duncan Dumbnuts behind his back. At least I hope it was behind his back.

  Poor Duncan. He fell straight into my need to rescue the hurting people of this world—one person at a time.

  Bikers walked past us, heading out for the group ride up the canyon. I needed to get going, so I parted with a friendly pat on Duncan’s arm and quick words of encouragement. “Got to live the dream. Catch you later, big guy.”

  I saddled up and throttled up, stirred as always by growling engines as they caught and the roar of metal beasts as they sprang to life. Duncan gave me a thumbs-up through the café window.

  Nine bikes is a good-sized pack, and the rumble of the bikes echoed off the walls of the winding Feather River Canyon. For seventy miles we rode; climbing over four thousand feet in elevation, sometimes running level with the mighty Feather River and sometimes looking down as it faded into a distant silver ribbon that shimmered along the bottom of the steep-walled canyon. A long train pulling black-and-gold rail cars along the tracks snaked its way around twists and turns as it slithered through tunnels, giving us a mournful cry of greeting as we passed.

  My body clenched when we passed the site of my motorcycle accident, four—almost five—years ago. Broken and half drowned in the swollen river, I had looked up into the eyes of my future husband, a search-and-rescue worker with the sheriff’s office. At the time I’d thought of Chance as my guardian angel. I smiled a sad smile as I flew past because now I thought of him as my fallen angel. I missed Chance and wished he was riding next to me on his VTX. I missed “us.”

  There are few things slower than a line of women wearing thermals under heavy leather chaps waiting to use a single stall toilet at a gas station. But having emptied bladders and filled tanks, the group finally turned to the high country and the clean, crisp pine scent that permeated the thin air. Climbing another two thousand feet, we crossed the mountains and descended on the little historic gold-mining town of La Porte, then line-danced our way through the backwoods before descending into Feather Falls, about twenty-five miles above Oroville.

  I waved goodbye to the group and powered away, turning onto the paved road that headed toward the scenic six-hundred-and-forty-foot waterfall that the community is named for, and then turned onto the narrow dirt road that led to the cabin where I was born.

  To my knowledge, no one had been to the cabin since Logan went to prison. I didn’t worry much about it since Joyce and Kenny, who were both neighbors and my “surrogate parents,” lived past the cabin and were happy to keep an eye on it.

  It is the law of nature: nothing is wasted in the wild. An empty cabin was an open invitation for meth labs, vagrants, and looters that might move in, or just as bad—neighbors who could dismantle a building faster than the Army Corps of Engineers and haul it away just as quick to use on their next remodel.

  Don’t let it be Mexicans or meth heads,” I prayed as I followed the single motorcycle track that cut down the driveway.

  I did not fear the Hell’s Angels. They were my family, no matter that my father was dead. But Logan had been an outlaw among outlaws. He had gone rogue when my dad convinced the club not to back Logan’s plan for a major gun heist. Logan had rebelled, teamed up with rogue members of rival gangs, and gone on to rob the Silver State Armory.

  Not only had Logan gone against the club, he later instigated a shoot-out between the Hell’s Angels and the Mongols down in Laughlin, Nevada, to cover the hit he had taken out on Lefty. Logan had hired a renegade Mongol—as dirty as himself—to waylay my dad out in the desert. Lefty’s murder had been a double betrayal to the club because part of Logan’s duties as sergeant at arms for the Oakland chapter required that he protect Lefty.

  Ever treacherous, Logan went on to cut another deal by paying a Bandido gang member in stolen guns to blow up the Mongol clubhouse—thus taking out the only link between himself and my father’s murder—misreported later in the paper as a “Biker gang war between Mongols and Banditos.” Logan came out of the filth as bright and shiny as polished chrome.

  The good news for Logan was that ATF had busted him before he could pay his debt handing off the guns to the Bandidos. Now there were wealthy, powerful drug lords in Mexico who had an interest in getting Logan out of prison. They wanted their weapons and money.

  A cold sweat dampened my doo-rag as I eased up to the cabin. Anyone could be waiting. Logan had sworn to kill me and he could easily have taken out a hit while behind bars. Or it could be the Mexican cartel that persists in thinking I have a relationship with Logan. They think I know where the guns and money are hidden. Then again, it could be a druggie or a squatter who owned a bike.

  Not knowing who might be waiting inside the cabin sent chills up my spine.

  “Ready or not—here I come,” I whispered to myself as I turned off the engine.

  The possibilities were terrifying—but not nearly as frightening as the bloody knife that someone had stabbed into the heart of the front door and the blackened pool of blood that puddled beneath it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Bonita strolled in, this time wearing a pantsuit, neck tie, and matching loafers. I wasn’t sure if she was making a fashion statement or a gender statement and I didn’t really care as long as she wasn’t making a slut statement.

  “Pollo.” She answered my unspoken question.

  It took a minute to register. “Chicken?”

  “Sí,” she joked. “Chicken blood. No prints on the knife. No fork. No salsa.” Her smile faded, and brown eyes darkened. “Hey, you okay, chica? Rumor has it you have a long history with outlaw biker gangs. Wanna talk?”

  No. “Yes. I would like to know who you’ve been talking to about my personal life.” Bitterness stirred, tasting like a late-afternoon cup of gas station coffee.

  “Bonita gave a dismissive shrug. “Paige told me that both of you have been married to outlaw bikers.”

  I chewed my upper lip and glanced toward heaven. God, give me strength. And he did. It was obvious that Bonita meant well.

  “Paige’s ex-husband is Travis,” I explained. “The guy whose job you now hold. He was working undercover
inside a motorcycle gang for ATF when they met.”

  Bonita slowly nodded her head and parked herself on the corner of my desk.

  “To be honest, I looked into the people I’d be working with before I took this job. What Paige told me wasn’t all news,” she said with an eye roll, “except for the fact that she’d been married to a biker. I already know quite a bit about you without her help. Sorry about the prying, but I wanted to know what I was getting into.”

  She leaned into me and said, “Seems to me that ATF should be notified. The knife is a serious threat.”

  I eyed her warily. “Bonita, I’m sure it’s nothing. Just some bored mountain kids acting stupid.”

  “Yeah . . . that, or Davey Crockett out hunting chickens in the woods.” Bonita wasn’t that easily put off. She had a bulldog streak in her that led all the way back to her roots in East LA.

  “Please, Bonita. I’m asking you as a favor. Don’t call them. Don’t bring ATF back into my life.”

  “Chica, you gotta know your limits.”

  Bonita left, and I went hunting for Paige.

  “Seriously?!” I upbraided Paige, my nose just inches from hers, thinking, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

  “Don’t have a stroke,” said Paige. “It’s not like Bonita wasn’t going to hear about it anyhow.”

  “My life is no one else’s business. Stay out of it.”

  “Oh really?” Paige’s brows arched, ready for a cat spat. “Is that what you really want?” Her words trailed like a cat snapping its tail.

  I hated her more. Paige staying out of my life was not really an option and she knew it. I took her meaning and bit my tongue. She knew I could walk away from her but not the issue of paternity.

  “Don’t talk about my private life with other people again,” I warned.

  “Too late,” said Paige with big-eyed innocence. “I called ATF this morning. I thought they should know about the dead chicken—and the knife. It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  “How do you know about the chicken?”

  “Everybody knows.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and then zeroed in. “Did you tell Travis?” The words crept out from between clenched teeth.

  Paige cocked her threaded brows above her pouty expression. “Travis and I aren’t speaking. I told my dad. And before you have a seizure, Bonita agrees with me.”

  I sometimes share cases with Gina from Child Protective Services when there is domestic violence involving children in the home. This case was different. No parents. No home. Just two babysitters arrested at the Thunderbird Motel and a two-year-old boy abused by the sitters and dumped out the motel window.

  “Two girl perps,” said Gina. “A fourteen and a sixteen-year-old. They were, and I quote, ‘practicing Satanism.’ I thought you’d want to know since you’re the resident cult expert.”

  “I’m no expert. Jack’s making me do this. I hate it.” The antiseptic tang of the hospital could not cleanse the stench that lingered in my nostrils. I could still smell the feces that had oozed from within the refrigerator at the scene where the sitters had kept the boy locked up for part of the day.

  “Will the little guy be okay?” I asked.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” Gina was serious.

  No. “Tell me.”

  “Looks like they tied him up and gagged him, then heated a nail over the stove in the kitchenette and tattooed a pentagram on his butt. He must have been screaming, so they let him chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before tossing him out the window.”

  Minutes had passed before I regained the power of speech. “How many cult cases do Child Services get a year?”

  “I can only speak for myself,” said Gina, “but I guess I get around two or three referrals a year. The abuse isn’t always a direct result of some kind of ritual, but it’s safe to say the parents are either Satanist or wannabes.

  “And, by the way,” she continued, “a reporter told me The Church of Satan in San Francisco has already denied any involvement.”

  My lips curled into a snarl. “They sanction this crap by their very existence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, people like these girls do Godless acts in the name of Satanism whether they belong to that white-washed church of Satan or not. I’ve read the cases, Gina. I’ve seen pictures taken at crime scenes.” I shuddered. “Whether you believe in white magic or black, a real Devil or not, Satan represents the epitome of evil. How can anyone say, ‘We only follow and support good evil’? It’s just a smoke screen to blind the public to what’s real.”

  Gina blinked. “Good luck at the seminar. You’re going to need it.”

  Another drive home. Another soulful meditation. The whole crossover between cult and occult had me thinking. “Cult” referred to a group that worshiped something religiously outside of social norms. The word could also reference the members as a whole that belonged to the cult.

  My thoughts rambled.

  Biker gangs were cults. As a Hells Angel, my dad had practically worshiped bikes and the outlaw lifestyle. But for all that Lefty had taken great pride in living outside of the law, he had freely submitted to the rules and authority figures that guided the club. Go figure.

  My mother had been part of the hippie cult. A spiritual woman open to every kind of spiritualism and mysticism from consumption of Datura—called “moonflower”—to munching baggies of peyote, to an in-depth study of astrology. She often justified her behavior saying that she was “born under the sign of Aries,” whose ruling planet is fiery red Mars that represents anger, energy, and sex. That would be Mom. I nodded to myself. Aries also represents the first sign of spring, which was supposed to explain her “me-first” attitude.

  Maybe there is something to astrology after all.

  I sighed for the millionth time regarding the mystery that was my mother. While Starla’s brain had zoomed through the cosmos seeking God, she remained adamant in rejecting Christ. I thought that was sad because they could have been close friends—my mother and God—but no, she had lain, dying in her hospital bed, brushing me off with a wave of her hand when I had tried to tell her about Christ. She crossed her arms with a dismissive snort and then sneered. “What do you have that I don’t have?”

  My heart had swelled with pity and compassion as I took her hand and offered a weak smile. “That’s an easy one.” The answer came softly. “Hope. I have absolute hope—and you have none.”

  “Don’t get sticky stuff on the sofa,” I cautioned Paige as she munched a jelly donut, powdered sugar falling like flakes of dandruff on my dark sofa as we talked between bites.

  “I played with Ouija boards and read tarot cards and all that stuff when I was a kid. In fact, I did that and a whole lot more. I was really into Halloween costumes and everything,” said Paige.

  I didn’t have any problem imagining Paige as a witch.

  “It was fun. My friends were all into it,” she said.

  I gave Paige a careful look.

  “It’s not like I sacrificed animals or anything,” she added.

  “That’s what they all say,” I mused. “Do you have a head count for today?”

  “Yeah. Crazy. We have the usual social services and nonprofits. Even two police departments, probation, and Mark from the sheriff’s office.” Paige paused at Mark’s name as if trying to shake, or possibly embrace, the memory of her former lover. “But what’s crazy is I only sent one invitation to the county’s Office of Education, and we have six school counselors attending.” Paige squirmed, looking uncomfortable.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.” And she scurried down the hall.

  “Ready ladies?” Duncan barged in, his face flushed. It had to be caused by more than the weight of the new projector he had acquired for my presentation.

  “Almost. As soon as Paige and Wonder Kid get back from the bathroom,” I said.

  Duncan gave me a puzzled look. “Why
do you always refer to the baby as Wonder Kid?”

  I threw him an eyebrow shrug. “Because she keeps everyone wondering whose kid it is.”

  The big guy gave a huge scowl. “That’s not very nice.”

  If only you knew. “No, it isn’t.”

  Paige came back ready to roll.

  I grabbed my bag and did a double-take. It took a minute. “Duncan. You look . . . different. Is that a T-shirt under your coat? And . . . Oh, Lord . . . a gauge in your ear?” His sense of adventure seemed to have stretched along with the enlarged piercing in his ear.

  The pink on his face deepened to red. “You think it's okay? It’s a fake one. Not like I’m going to court or anything. I’m just running the projector.”

  “Dumbkin, come here, let me have a peek,” said Paige. I gasped at Paige, but Duncan just blushed harder as she lifted the corner of his sports coat. “Ohmygod, it’s a Harley shirt.” She squinted. “With skulls and flames. Well, you’re certainly dressed right for the occasion.”

  “You’re wearing a Harley shirt to work?” I laughed in disbelief and merriment. “You’re a new man.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m living the dream!”

  I jumped in before Paige could turn his dream into a nightmare. “Awesome. I love it. Better keep it under wraps!” I added with a warm pat on top of his new coat.

  Bonita strode in jangling car keys like Paul Revere sounding the village alarm. “Saddle up. Let’s ride.” We gathered our equipment and headed for the conference, stuffing ourselves in the county’s new hybrid chuck wagon with Bonita at the reins. Duncan and Bonita were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the front seat, and I was wedged next to Paige-and-a-half in the backseat. Our county spared no expense to save a dollar.

  I was nervous. Afraid of being ridiculed by my colleagues. Paige passed out the informational folders she had prepared: Cult Symbols and Holidays, Survivor Symptoms that Characterize and Contrast Satanic Ritual and Sexual Abuse, Psychological Indicators for Children and Adults. And for law enforcement: Evaluating Evidence for Ritual-Based Criminal Activity.