So probably not a cop. That’s good. “You see anything weird here?”
The kid looked at Shane for a few seconds, like he couldn’t be sure of his answer, then said, “I saw a clown. Like in that movie.”
“What movie?”
“I didn’t see it,” the kid said. “But my cousin? He saw it and said it was fucked up.”
Shane looked around but didn’t see Hermie. “Recently? The clown I mean.”
“Couple minutes, I guess.”
Odd.
“You do me a favor?” Shane asked.
“I’m not supposed to talk to anyone,” the kid said, “cuz my dad says the East Valley is filled with criminals and pedos and losers and that’s just who he works with.”
“Yeah, that’s smart.” Shane pointed at his foot. He’d wrapped it in a towel and then taped his flip-flop to it, so he could walk around a bit better. It looked absurd. “Could you just run over and get me a bucket of ice from the front desk?”
The kid looked at Shane’s foot. “What happened?”
“Stepped on a nail.”
“Must have been pretty big.”
“You do this for me or not?”
The kid slid off the back of the truck and headed to the hotel’s lobby, which gave Shane the chance to pop open the unlocked trunk of Terry’s Benz, drop the freezer bag in, and then close it.
Shane got in the Fiesta — it smelled weird inside, like vinegar and shoe leather and wet newspapers — started it up, turned left on Highway 111 out of the hotel, so he wouldn’t pass Cactus Pete’s, since he’d told Terry he wasn’t leaving until the morning, then kept going, driving west into the setting sun, his left foot inside a bucket of ice. He rolled past the presidents — Monroe, Madison, Jefferson — then was in La Quinta — Adams, Washington — and into Indian Wells, then Palm Desert, just another snowbird in a rental car, could be anyone, so he opened the Fiesta’s moon roof, let some air in, get that weird smell out. Then he was in Rancho Mirage, passing Bob Hope Drive, then rolling by Frank Sinatra Drive, Shane starting to feel like he’d gotten away with it, so he took out his burner, called the anonymous Crime Stoppers hotline, was patched through.
“This is going to sound crazy,” Shane said, now in Cathedral City, passing Monty Hall Drive, a street named for a guy who’d spent his entire career disappointing people by giving them donkeys instead of cars, “but I swear I saw a man at the Royal Californian in Indio chopping up a human head. He put it all into a bag in the trunk of his Mercedes.”
By the time he finished his story, Shane was in downtown Palm Springs, rolling north down Indian Avenue. His left foot was numb, but the rest of his body felt alive, sweat pouring down his face, his shirt and pants damp, even though the AC was cranked at full blast, the moon roof just cracked. He’d go back to LA tonight, get all the pills from the storage unit, then torch it, now that he was thinking straight. Then he’d turn around and head to Mexico, get his foot operated on, since he had an appointment already, and Terry was going to be in a jail cell for a good long time, maybe forever. And then he’d just keep rolling east, until he got back to Upstate New York. Find his father at some Indian casino, see if he wanted to start a duo, figure out how to have a life together, Shane thinking, Whoa, what? Am I high? Shane thinking his foot was probably infected, that what he was feeling was something bad in his blood, sepsis most likely, and then he was passing the road to the Palm Springs Ariel Tramway, burning it out of town, the fields of windmills coming into view, Shane finally taking a moment to look in the rearview mirror, to make sure there weren’t a hundred cop cars lined up behind him, and thinking, for just a moment, that he was really fucked up, that he was really hallucinating some shit, that he needed to get some real meds, because sitting right there in the backseat, a gun in his hand, was a fucking clown.
Part IV
Ill Wind
Specters
by T. Jefferson Parker
Anza-Borrego
Borrego Springs is a tidy, low-slung desert town surrounded by Anza-Borrego State Park, the largest in California. The town has over three thousand people. The park is one of California’s wild places — mountain lions, bighorn sheep, abundant reptiles, birds, and wildflowers spread for miles.
Driving in, I looked out at the pale mountains rising in the west and east, a green splash of distant palms, and a wash of orange wildflowers on white sand. It was already ninety-one degrees on this May morning.
My name is Harold Bear and I’m the sole proprietor of Bear Investigations, an LLC. I’m half Luiseno Indian, which puts me in good standing with my tribe and band, though we — the Bear Valley band — are considered “unrecognized” by the United States. I have four employees.
I’d been hired to find Julie Spencer, who went missing four days prior, her abandoned Porsche Cayenne found on Pala Indian land not far from here. Julie was the wife of Congressman Todd Spencer (R), who represented my district in north San Diego County. I first met Spencer just three days ago — when he hired me — though we had both fought in Fallujah back in 2005. We never crossed paths in that bloody battle.
I found the Desert Springs Motel and pulled into the lot. The motel was owned and operated by Dan Morrison, a platoonmate of then Private First Class Spencer. Spencer had earned himself a Silver Star for pulling Morrison from a burning Humvee. Thus making him able to campaign for Congress as a war hero. Todd and Dan had been part of a convoy attacked in what we Americans called East Manhattan — Iraq being shaped roughly like New York City. I had fought in Queens.
The Desert Springs Motel was classic midcentury modern. Which meant a three-sided horseshoe of freestanding bungalows built around a swimming pool and parking. The aqua neon sign sun-blanched and eaten by rust.
When I got out of the car, the hum of air conditioners greeted me in the heat. The wildflower bloom was over for the year, but the motel still looked busy. Young parents and kids in the pool. Desert all around. House windows shimmering in the hills.
The office was a stucco block with a canvas awning. There were blinds behind the glass front door and an intercom built into the wall. A slot for mail. A camera was recessed just above the doorframe, taking aim at my face from close range.
I tried the door and it was locked. I pushed the talk button on the intercom, said my name, and asked to see Mr. Morrison.
“He’s not available at this time.” The woman’s voice was muffled and soft, sounded like it was a hundred yards away.
“I’d like to come in.”
“Why?”
“There’s something important I need to discuss with Mr. Morrison.”
“But he’s not available.”
“We fought in Fallujah at the same time.”
“Put a business card in the mail slot. It’s the way we do it here.”
“I don’t do it that way. This is important. Please open the door.”
I held my PI card toward the camera. The card itself gives me no powers at all, legally, but it is an assuring or sometimes intimidating thing to certain people.
Then I heard a man’s voice in the background. I couldn’t make out what he said. A beat of silence.
“I suppose you can come in,” she said.
The dead bolt clanged open and in I went. The lobby was very small and poorly lit. Nowhere to sit. I’m a big man and unhappy in tight spaces. There was a counter on which brochures stood tilted up in a box — desert activities.
The young woman behind the counter looked late thirties, with tired brown eyes and thinning tan hair. Her smock was tan also and a mini mic was clipped to one shoulder strap. Her name plate said Abigail. She looked like people I’d known who were undergoing chemotherapy — pale, braced, and accepting. Making the best of it. She said that Mr. Morrison wasn’t in, and they had no vacant rooms.