Burning Moon

by Richard Barre

  The conference room.

  Back and listening outside it, hearing nothing, he pushed open the doors, brought the track lights up to shining rosewood tabletop, glasses and spent bottles, pencils and pens, coasters and ashtrays that spoke of a meeting interrupted and hurriedly left. But what caught his attention was beyond the cluttered surface.

  The far wall, a darkened floor-to-near-ceiling aquarium.

  Water coursed quietly through its pumps and filtration systems, the room’s own white noise. From where he stood, Wil could just make out rock ledges, kelp, water plants, temples, bridges. And something else he didn’t quite believe until he located the tank’s slider light and brought it up, the aquarium glowing to pinkish life.

  For a moment he just stood there.

  Luc Tien floated upright between the kelp and a ledge, a stunned expression on his face. As he did, hair rising toward an intake jet and the red, green, and indigo dragon on upper chest seeming to rage at them, the tank’s larger residents tore at his entrails while smaller fish darted in to feast on the shreds. The entrails they so fancied had been released by the slash starting at Luc’s groin and ending at his sternum. Indeed, as Wil tore his eyes away, forced his attention around the room, he saw one whole corner of it was a red-black lake.

  Retreating to the dolls fountain where he took deep breaths, Wil fought the urge to cop a bottle of Luc’s whiskey and down it, let other people deal with this fucking house of horrors. Instead, he went back to the main computer room. He was moving through a maze of access codes and getting nowhere when he heard it: a single faint bump, as much vibration as sound.

  Silence, then.

  Wil snapped off the Mustang’s safety, turned off the room lights and, to monitor glow, eased over to the louvered closet doors. Listened, but heard nothing. Two minutes by his sweep hand, ready to give it up and move on, he picked up from inside a nearly inaudible release of breath.

  Ten seconds…thirty.

  Turning on the closet light, he pulled back the left-hand door and dropped into a shooter’s crouch, scanned side-to-side, up-down…down: there among the silk shirts, jackets, shoes, and monogrammed robes, far in the back.

  He’d nearly missed her.

  Wild-eyed and in the black blouse from earlier, breathing in gasps, knees under her and ready to spring, Mia Tien aimed a wicked-looking shortsword at the death she knew had come for her.

  43

  Frank Lin chain-smoked as an army of detectives, crime-scene and coroner techs, sheriff’s brass and deputies came and went. Media vans—even one that had made the five-and-a-half hour drive from San Francisco—hunkered beyond the walls for the occasional crumb of information from the officer standing by the gate house and conversing with the medical examiner. Generators pulsed and cast pools of thin light that bled into one another.

  “What a goddamn mess,” Lin said to the man beside him.

  Wil didn’t reply. Up the ridge it looked as if the firefighters, with the aid of the dying sundowner and the water bombers, had driven back the flames. Just after three in the morning, stars shone in the unsmoked quadrants of sky, others more dully through the veil. The air felt markedly cooler with the hot wind’s retreat.

  “Yanez wants a briefing at nine,” Lin told him. “I promised him you’d be there.”

  “His master’s voice,” Wil said, not caring how it sounded after three hours of waiting until the homicide detectives were ready to question him, two-and-a-half more until they’d finished, another hour standing by until Lin intercepted him on his way out.

  Lin exhaled. “Not quite. Yanez wanted me to run you in.”

  Not bothering to ask how Yanez thought he’d make that stick, Wil just said, “Sorry, Frank.”

  “You’re entitled. You also look like shit, anybody tell you that?”

  “Take a number. What are you going to do with her?”

  “The Tien girl? Hang onto her till it’s determined,” Lin said. “Other than that the sword came from a drawer and she’d been in the shower and heard nothing, she hasn’t exactly peeled back the curtain.”

  Wil pictured her terror again as he talked her out of Luc’s closet, her sitting slumped and silent in her smeared makeup, the shortsword still in her lap, eyes lost in her cigarette smoke as he phoned it in.

  “She clarify what she was doing for Luc?” Wil asked.

  “Don’t ask me questions you know I can’t answer.”

  “Try careers for five hundred,” he said, “hostessing and light computer work. Entries most likely, a foot in the door. She heard noises and hid. It saved her life. She’s telling you what she knows.”

  “Thanks for that. I’ll be sure to pass it on.”

  “You know what I mean, Frank.”

  Lin flicked ash, drew on his cigarette. “And whoever did this just let her alone, didn’t even search for her with her car still in the garage. That tell you anything?”

  Foil and parry. “Beyond whoever did it set the brush fire as a distraction?”

  “Beyond that, yes,” Lin came back.

  Wil said, “If you’re trying to get me to say whoever it was knew she was in there and gave her a pass, that’s a crock. Far more like they didn’t know or figured she’d gone with the rest or got interrupted.”

  “But it does come to mind, you’ll admit.”

  Shifting on feet past complaint, he said, “When they find out they missed her, she’s in deep shit—no matter how much you guys deny she saw anything. Which I assume you will.”

  “Rudy’s decision. Ask him tomorrow.”

  “You telling me he might not?”

  “I’m not saying, period,” Lin said, eyeing an activity over Wil’s shoulder. “I work for him, remember? The man speaks for himself.”

  “That’s encouraging, the press he feeds.”

  Lin dropped his gaze to Wil. “Excuse me, but I was under the impression you were out of it. Is there something more I should know? Like before I release you.”

  “You have my statement, Frank.”

  “I also know you,” he said. “What I don’t have on it is your gut.”

  Wil let his eyes scan the ridge, the helicopter traversing it: throp that sent him back to a hot LZ, blinding dust, the smell of his own blood as a medic sweated to stanch it. Thinking out loud, he said, “A team, maybe military or military trained. The houseman died when he answered the door. Robb next, fast, then Luc slow, whoever it was guessing right or sure that Luc wouldn’t leave his infrastructure.”

  Lin eyed him, exhaled smoke.

  “You have to do that?” Wil asked. “Why don’t you just breathe in?”

  “Right. The world’s on fire and it’s my stogie bothering you.”

  Wil saw Mia’s eyes again. “Anyway, it explains some things.”

  Lin drew in, turned to exhale. “So could one very strong, very determined individual. Ex-military, perhaps, but good with a knife.”

  “It might.”

  “What do you mean might?”

  Not liking where this was headed, too close to a certain retro conversation on the deck of his house, Wil asked if there’d been any sign of the vehicles the woman in the Wagoneer had spotted leaving.

  Lin said, “Her name is Lorraine Argabrite—widow, age 73, the house west of the open area. I’ve got a man on his way to the daughter’s place in Lompoc, APBs out on the Yukons. The white thing’s probably the pickup you saw.”

  “Which says they had a contingency plan.”

  “Or they were in on it,” Lin finished. “Or they may not have heard what happened and they’ll come waltzing back in the morning. Pick one.”

  “With the gate left like that? I wonder,” Wil said.

  “Wonders never cease, do they?” More smoke.

  They watched a coroner’s team wheel out a body bag—Robb, from its girth—then open and slam the ambulance doors on it. Down the drive and out the gate to the strobe of flash units.

  Wil said, “Have you notified the Tiens yet?”

&nb
sp; “In due course. It won’t make local TV till tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad to know you’re on top of it.” Breeze adding chill to his fatigue. “And where could they see her if they just happened to find out tonight?”

  Lin looked at him. “That is a complication Lieutenant Yanez and I would not necessarily welcome.”

  “So noted,” Wil said. “Am I free to go now?”

  “Don’t mess with Yanez, Wil, it’s not smart.”

  “Or you—is that what I’m hearing, Frank?”

  Lin stubbed out his smoke. “This client you’re so concerned about fired you, right? His daughter says you’ve been a pain in the ass from day one. Yanez thinks P.I.s rank with flesh-eating bacteria. Does any of that tell you anything?”

  “Yeah,” Wil said starting toward the gate, the hunkered media, his car across the road. “There’s one born every minute.”

  ***

  Car windows down and a gutted Luc Tien still swimming in his vision, Wil drove home, showered, and drank a half pot of Viennese. Thermosing the rest, he set out for the Tien’s, the eastern sky beginning to lighten behind him.

  Vinh answered the door, scanned his face, ushered Wil inside. Alert now, as though a courier from some distant front had just awakened him regarding a battle’s progress. No preliminaries, Wil’s firing or what had led to it; only chairs at the kitchen table, the single question, “Where is our daughter?”

  “Mia is safe,” Wil said, watching the facial lines soften slightly. From the hall, he heard a sound, and Li Tien joined them, blue robe with a white and gray heron in the pattern. Black hair streaked with gray framing anxious eyes, a face that looked as if it hadn’t slept in days, senses anticipating a car in the drive, a key in the lock.

  As she poured water into a kettle, put black tea into a blue-glazed pot, Wil went through it for them. Occasionally the two exchanged glances, and at one point as Wil was describing the aquarium room, Li put her hand on her husband’s. Beyond a long breath, a shake of the head, Vinh was a soldier processing casualties and counterthrusts.

  “Have you eaten?” he asked when Wil had finished.

  “No,” Wil said.

  “Li will make you something while I ready myself.”

  The kettle screamed and Li tended to it; Wil caught the clock in the stove: seven-ten. “I’m due at the sheriff’s at nine,” he said as she put toast on, got out butter and cherry preserves. “I doubt they’ll release Mia until later.” If then, he wanted to say, but held off, at this point sure of nothing.

  “They can do that?” Vinh asked.

  “Where it’s justified.”

  “She is a suspect to them?”

  “She may know things they have to find out.”

  He nodded. “Then that is where I will be.” He muttered something in Vietnamese that Wil didn’t catch, Li sighing and nodding. Then, “After what passed between us yesterday, you honor us by coming here. I will not forget that.”

  “They’ll be sending someone to talk to you,” Wil said. “Your relationship with Luc in greater detail, where you were yesterday evening, why Mia left home—things of that nature. Just so you know.”

  For a moment, Vinh Tien’s sight turned inward, no telling what he saw from his expression. Then he turned and left the room.

  44

  They reached the sheriff’s building at twenty to the hour, Wil’s eyes rusted traps ready to spring shut. As Frank Lin ushered him into his office, he glanced beyond Wil to where Vinh Tien sat, hands in his lap and looking straight ahead, as if trying to stare a beast back into its cage.

  “You declined to take my advice, I see,” Lin said from across a metal desk, the shadows under his eyes matching Wil’s. Outside a smallish window Wil could see the hills rising toward the mountains still wreathed in burn haze, a closed highway 154 lost in brown, a seagull soaring toward the dump that lay a canyon over.

  “No idea what came over me,” he said, stifling a yawn.

  Lin said, “At least you’re predictable. And it’s your turn in the bunker.”

  The door to Rudy Yanez’s office was open. Entering behind Lin, Wil saw a wood desk with facing chairs; photos of horse-and-rider events, Rudy front and center; Fiesta shots, Rudy’s Arabian mount and silver-trimmed pommel; Rudy receiving an award, a family portrait—a plumpish Latina and three adolescent boys in descending stages of baby fat. On the desk was a miniature-saddle pen set, lariat name plaque, a hammered copper ashtray and, as if just out of its box, a computer terminal.

  No Lieutenant Rudolfo Yanez.

  That is, until twelve minutes after.

  As he entered, Wil made him for mid-fifties: still-black hair, lines that contributed rather than detracted, eyes that spoke of prizes not lost to distractions. In his nonfolder hand he held a mug, wide at the bottom and rimmed with gold. He toed the door shut, let Frank Lin bring him up to date on some details—the Argabrite woman’s statement, two of the three Yukons found stripped and printless in L.A.—while his eyes appraised Wil.

  “So,” he said when Lin finished. “Are you what you’re cracked up to be?”

  Wil returned the stare. “Which of us is, Lieutenant?”

  “That would be me. I would be.” Thumbing through Wil’s statement from the folder. “And you happened to be out there why?”

  Rubbing his eyes, Wil took a breath and went through it yet again—the invitation to come after seven because of guests Luc was expecting, Wil’s delay in getting there, all of it.

  Yanez let a moment pass in thought. “You have any idea who the guests were?”

  “None.”

  “Try again,” Yanez said. “Harder this time.”

  “Okay. None at all.”

  The cop locked and unlocked his fingers. “You honest-to-God expect me to believe that his guests weren’t at least a part of the reason he asked you there? That you didn’t suspect as much?”

  “You have my statement, Lieutenant. Believing it is up to you.”

  “So it is,” Yanez said. “And speaking of the deceased wanting you to work for him, do you always change sides that readily?”

  “Seldom, and usually not then,” Wil said.

  “I see. You were just curious.”

  “I was hoping to learn what happened to Jimmy Tien. I still am.”

  Yanez clipped off a hangnail, blew it out of the clippers. “On your own dime, of course.”

  “Your own dime is what it comes down to sometimes.”

  “Luc being so forthcoming on your previous visits, and all.”

  “Tell me, Lieutenant. Did you wind up behind that desk by giving up when it got tight?”

  Yanez’s expression changed not at all. “Mr. Hardesty, you’d be well served to understand something here. I ask, you answer—get it? Different topic, now: Why the holdup at your ex-wife’s?”

  “That would be a personal matter.” Aware of Frank pinning him with a look, of him avoiding it. “Nothing to do with this.”

  Yanez tugged an earlobe. “And your relationship with the brother?”

  Resigned to it, Wil set up the Vinh Tien hire, ending as he had so many times last night with his being fired.

  The dark eyes were unblinking “Yet you ignored Detective Lin’s request and actually brought Mr. Tien here with you.”

  “Save gas, save a tree,” Wil said. “However it goes.”

  “I hate clever, Mr. Hardesty. Clever boys wish they weren’t around me.”

  “It was a long night, Lieutenant. And I’m far from clever.”

  Yanez cracked a knuckle, drummed the folder. “The fight between the brothers, who pulled the trigger on it?”

  “Luc provoked his brother verbally. Vinh lost it.”

  “First his son, then his daughter, then his temper.”

  “Something like that.”

  Yanez rechecked a sheet. “And the bodyguard, the one with the blade in his neck—he took Vinh out after Vinh dropped his brother?”

  “Different guard. Robb took the knife. Sonny’s
the one who took Vinh out.”

  “I see,” he said. “And then Vinh fired you?”

  “On our trip back to town, yes.”

  “Kind of abrupt, in light of things, wouldn’t you say?” Sipping from the gold-rimmed mug.

  “All in a day’s work, Lieutenant.”

  “But it made you angry, didn’t it?” Yanez baited him. “Mad enough to get wasted.”

  Wil drew a breath, let it out slow. “I’ll say it again. That was for personal reasons.”

  “Well, don’t hesitate on my account.”

  “It’s why they’re called personal, Lieutenant.”

  Yanez turned to the window, gazed out it, swiveled around. “Try this scenario,” he said. “You lost your job and blamed it on Luc. You lost your head when he wouldn’t give you the time of day. So you torched the field and squared it, except for the girl because you figured she’d taken off with the others.” He smiled, mano á mano in confidence. “A guy like yourself, vigilante type—come on, I can smell it on you. You went there for payback, eyeball to eyeball. None of that long-range shit for a stud like you.”

  “Looks like it’s been a long day here, too.”

  “They’re all long here. That’s because of clever boys like you.”

  Thinking of Maccafee’s similar appraisal, second thoughts as to why he hadn’t given up Lorenz and the big agent—mainly his suspicion that Lorenz knew more about Jimmy and not wanting to cut that off—Wil shook his head. “And I can’t believe you see this as a productive use of your time.”

  Yanez was about to fire back when he turned toward a knock, a head poking in. Wil recognizing one of the homicide detectives from last night. The detective held up a file, crossed the room and handed it over; when he’d left, Yanez studied the contents, handed them to Frank Lin, who read them, glanced at Wil, then at the photo wall.

  Yanez ran a forefinger along his lip and smiled. “You mention a good use of my time, Mr. Hardesty, how’s this? While we were talking, the detectives who took your statement were serving warrants, both at your client’s home and place of business. Care to know what they found?”

  Feeling the elevator drop, that bottomless lurch, Wil said nothing.