The information stamped into the two-inch-long, aged metal was basic: a name, serial number followed by some other numerals, another name and an address, all on five lines. There was a small notch in the end of each tag. I had wanted to study military history, but the discipline was frowned upon when I was in graduate school. My advisor had urged me to consider gender studies. But I was enough of an amateur scholar to know this data was from World War II. The numbers “43-45” indicated the years of immunization shots. The soldier’s blood type was O. He was a Protestant. The name and address were whom to notify in case of emergency. They went to Poston, Arizona. And the soldier’s name was Johnny Kurita. It was as far from the Sinaloa cartel, or a Hispanic academic from New York, as you could get.
“Nisei,” I said.
“The second generation,” Robin said. “The children of Japanese immigrants to America.”
I nodded, pleasantly surprised. Outside of her art knowledge, Robin had always seemed street smart rather than book smart, certainly not well versed in my dying discipline. I said, “The Poston address makes sense, too. Lots of Nisei were forcibly interned in World War II. Poston was a camp.” I hated to use the words, but they were accurate. “An American concentration camp.”
“And yet this Johnny Kurita was in the service?”
“The Nisei soldiers were famous for their bravery.”
“Why would they fight for a country that had done that to them?”
I let that sit. “What was Johnny Kurita to Jax?”
“He never said. But he always wore the chain and dog tags. I’d ask him about it, but he’d just say it was a memento. Something passed on to him. But it was really like an amulet to him. He’d touch it almost obsessively. When he took it off and let me hold it, I knew I was getting somewhere.”
“He didn’t explain it? No story behind it?”
“He said, ‘when I get to know you better.’ But that didn’t happen.” Her voice choked.
“And yet he said if anything happened to him, to give it to me…”
“Yes, that was about a week ago.”
“When, exactly.”
“Don’t be such a bastard, David. That’s not really you.” She screwed up her brow. “It was last Thursday night. We’d made love. I was touching his chest and playing with the dog tags. He put his hand on mine and said it. When I asked him about it, he just smiled and said, ‘it’s no big deal. Just a thought.’ I didn’t know what he meant.”
“Was he worried? Had anyone made threats against him?”
She shook her head. “There were never any threats. He was kind of a loner, which I appreciate. So I never met his friends here, if he had any. And he was new to town. He did seem distracted that night. Not quite himself.”
“Maybe he had somebody to kill.”
“He wasn’t a hit man!”
I asked her about where they went on dates. It was nothing out of the ordinary, although from the names of some of the restaurants they patronized it was clear he had money. Did he run into any old acquaintances? Anybody who might have seen her with him, and somehow chose her to send this horrific message? No. Did she ever feel as if they were being followed when they drove back here? No.
“Did he have drugs?”
“Of course not. I hate drugs.”
“Not even a little pot between friends? C’mon.” Even my first wife, Patty, had a fondness for the occasional toke-and the marijuana she procured was much more potent than the stuff I tried in college. It was another life; I shelved the thought away.
Robin glared at me. Of course that information meant nothing. The high-end people in the cartels usually don’t use their products. They don’t want to get careless.
I stopped talking, stood, and fetched a clear plastic bag from the drawer, then dropped the dog tags inside. She gave them to me, as he had asked. I knew what they meant in a historical sense. But that did nothing to solve the murder, or answer why the man’s head was delivered to my sister-in-law. That act spoke for itself: just as Peralta had said, the killers had connected her to Jax, and not in a casual way, and they knew where she lived.
In the study, I removed a sheaf of file folders from the deep desk drawer, and then replaced them on top of the bag. Concealing evidence. Add it to my rap sheet.
The phone rang. I let it go to the answering machine and heard a woman’s voice. She was a news producer for Channel Five, wanting to send a crew over to interview us. I was sure she wouldn’t be the last to call. Kate Vare had probably personally talked to some media people, to put more of a squeeze on Robin-and on me.
I wished my friend Lori Pope still worked at the Republic. She was a real cops reporter, the kind that dug into cases and built sources inside law enforcement. I had been one of those sources. She would give information back, and I needed it now. But Lori had been laid off with many of the most experienced reporters and now the newspaper mostly rewrote the press releases from the police public information officers. Most of the paper was that way now. I continued to subscribe out of some misplaced belief in the written word and the free press.
Phoenix was increasingly a freak show. Ted Williams’ head was frozen in Scottsdale, waiting for the day the slugger could be regenerated. Unfortunately some employees decided to use his noggin for batting practice. The richest man in town didn’t support the arts, but he spent money to try cloning his dead dog. A disgraced former governor remade himself as a pastry chef. It was a city where a man left his wife by killing her and his children and then blowing up his suburban house, where a woman cut up her lover and left him in a dumpster. The “Torso Murderess.”
What a town. A top city official climbed on top of his Mercedes at high speed and went surfing on Camelback Road, until he and the car hit a wall. It was where retirees sold pot to support their gambling habits and Jenna Jameson, the porn star, was a local businesswoman. Up in Sedona, a self-help guru baked his clients to death in a sweat lodge. Now, a severed head delivered via FedEx. Just another day in paradise and we were part of the freak show. My hometown. The machine clicked off, its red light merrily blinking.
Robin stood before me, watching.
“We’re not answering the phone or the door. We have some decisions to make.”
“Are we going to Peralta’s?”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“No.” Her hands were fists. “I know you don’t believe me, but I never meant to bring this onto you, especially not after what you’ve been through. I can’t go to Lindsey Faith, I know that…”
“How?”
“I just know her, David. So maybe I should just go. I have some friends in San Francisco.”
I stopped her, mindful of Lindsey’s charge. “Please. Stay.”
“Can we make a stand here, at the house?”
I thought about it. Maybe we could. Much would depend on what happened next.
“We can try. We have some work to do.”
We went back to the garage and lugged out a six-by-four-foot plate of one-eighth-inch thick sheet steel. It had been back there as long as I could remember and it was a miracle it wasn’t hiding a black widow nest. The deadly spiders, as well as scorpions, had made a big comeback in the years since DDT had been outlawed. The steel plate was just dusty and edged with rust. I wiped it down and we slowly moved it into the house, working up a sweat trying not to gouge the hardwood floors. I directed Robin to help me situate it inside the guest-room closet. Houses built in the 1920s lacked the giant closets of today. This one was maybe five feet deep. But it was wide enough that I could lean the steel plate up against the outer wall. The plate stuck out past the doorjamb maybe two feet, with enough room to slide around it and close the door.