“I came here to see Kenny,” said Lindsey. “I’m coming in.”
“Think,” I said. “The police are going to question all of us, long and hard. I’ll take the heat for going in. You stay ignorant. A tampering charge won’t help your custody fight.”
“We didn’t know it was a damned crime scene,” said Voss.
“That’s my best defense,” I said. “So let me go collect some things we’ll need. We’ll never get them if I don’t get them now. A few minutes. Then we’ll call the cops.”
Lindsey looked to Voss, defaulting to the old order.
“He’s right,” said Voss.
She glared at Voss, then at me. “Did they cut off his head?”
I nodded, shut the door, and turned the deadbolt.
Got my phone into camera mode and shot the bloody tile and the bloody inside of the front door, and the revolver on the floor, and the carpet and steps and landing and hall and bedroom. The terrible bedroom. Shot his head and body. Macro to close-up. Video.
Then to the bed stand, where the reading lamp spread its cool light. Where waited Bryce’s phone, charging, and placed to hold down the top of a handwritten letter that looked very similar to Lindsey’s. An AF Falcons money clip, thick with bills, anchored the bottom.
Dear Lt. Bryce,
To cause another’s death is to cause your own.
I am going to decapitate you with my knife. Like the swords of the great Saracen warriors, it has a name. It is Al Ra’ad. The thunder.
Watch for us. Listen for us. Believe every fearful thought.
Your end is our beginning.
I rattled off ten shots on auto-drive. Ten more. Wanted that letter cold.
The spare bedroom was Bryce’s office. The desktop computer was sleeping. I tried some passwords based on Kenny Bryce’s name, and Headhunters, USAF, and Air Force Falcons, which were featured on a wall poster, a coffee mug on the desk, even a mouse pad, in addition to the money clip. No luck. Looked over the last three months of a hardcover appointment calendar and found nothing of particular interest. Dinner with Ron and Kaya last Saturday. An appointment with Dr. Leising one day previous. Haircut next week. I shot the September through December calendar pages anyway.
In the bathroom I tore off some toilet paper, then went back to the meaty hell of Kenny’s bedroom. The horror of a body and its severed head is not describable in the language that I know. There, I hovered over Kenny Bryce’s cell phone. Hoped he’d left it on while charging. Figured the chances were fifty-fifty. Covered my fingertip with the toilet paper, hit the screen control. Clean blue light. Icons. A fly buzzing. Such a lucky day for Kenny and me and the world. I opened Contacts and scrolled down for Ron and Kaya, then Dr. Leising, wrote their numbers in my notebook. Noticed that my handwriting was forceful and shaky. Searched his contacts for anyone of obvious utility. Got Mom and Dad. I chose a few first-name-only contacts at random, on the theory that they were close to him. Brandon Goff’s name jumped out at me like a clown from a dark closet.
Back downstairs I went through the mail on the kitchen counter. Found the envelope that the letter had come in — postmarked the same day as the threat to Lindsey, with a San Diego postmark and a return address belonging to World Pizza of Ocean Beach. Shot that and looked through what else was there.
I rolled off a paper towel and dampened it under the sink faucet. Cleaned my prints off the garage doorknob and the front-door deadbolt. Squeezed the towels dry over the sink, set the soggy wad in my coat pocket. I’d faithfully confess to America’s Deadliest Police Force the basic truth of what I’d done, but I saw no use in advertising my curiosity. No, sir. I had no idea what I was walking into.
I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.
Lindsey was leaning against the porch railing. She offered me a hard stare and smeared a tear off her cheek with her palm.
Voss stood beside her. “We’ve just broken a bunch of laws,” he said. “I think we should at least get our stories straight.”
“Don’t get creative,” I said. “Tell the cops exactly what happened. I’ll take point. When I’m done sending these pictures to myself, I’ll call Bakersfield PD.”
And Taucher.
“Lindsey, you need to answer a very important question. What was Brandon Goff’s relationship to Kenny Bryce?”
“Friends. Air Force. We had us some times.”
“Did they have a fight or a falling out?”
“Never.”
“Was Bryce trying to get close to you since the divorce?”
“Absolutely not.”
I glanced up toward the early-afternoon sun, a dazzling orange ball high in the blue. Wondering, if I could take away the roof of Kenny Bryce’s upstairs bedroom, would that powerful sun burn away the blood and the bones and the horror? Burn them right down to nothing? I knew the answer, though: not in my lifetime. But if I could replace the roof with a magnifying glass of the same size — stupendously heavy and thick and perfectly proportioned and polished — maybe then? In the end I figured if I really wanted it all cleaned up right, I’d have to pour a gallon or two of gas over it and light the match.
I lit a cigarette instead, sat in one of the little bistro chairs and started tap-tap-tapping on my goddamned phone, bouncing images of headless Kenny Bryce from one point on planet Earth to another.
10
Twenty-seven hours later I was back home, outside on a chaise longue, bundled in my barn jacket and watching the black-orange December sunset. My grandfather Dick had just delivered to me a bruising bourbon. Just a splash of water. Dick doubts my well-being when I don’t have a cocktail in my hand, and this time he wasn’t totally wrong. I couldn’t get the Bakersfield images from my brain. I wondered if I ever would. I wanted that drink.
“Judging by your face, I’d say your trip was not a huge success,” said Dick. He sized me up over his highball glass, took a sip, and sat down on the chaise next to me.
“No, not huge.”
I’d been detained and questioned for ten hours over two days, since calling 911 from Kenny Bryce’s front porch. At the end of the first day I’d talked our way out of an overnight discretionary hold and into the Marriott downtown. A little sleep, then round two. I felt bent and folded and torn, but I had not yet been charged with any crime.
“Lindsey looked ready for the grave,” Dick noted. “Might I have an executive summary of events?”
“No,” I said. “Events involved a freshly slaughtered human being. That’s all I’ll say. And keep it to yourself.”
I watched orange and black compete low in the western sky, black winning out. Listened to the clink of ice in Grandpa’s glass. His wife, my grandma Liz, walked past him without a look and sat on the other side of me. She carried a balloon glass half full of red wine. They’ve been married fifty-something years, raised three children, helped to spoil eight grandchildren, and now reside in respective casitas at opposite ends of the pond.
“Welcome home, Rollie,” she said, studying me. “Looks to me like you and Lindsey must have closed the nightclub twice.”
“I wish I looked better for you two.”
“Honey, can’t he just enjoy a sunset?” asked Dick.
“Overall, though, Lindsey is quite fetching these days,” said Liz. “And apparently her custody battle is going in her favor, too.”
I nodded, sipped the bourbon. “It’s nice to have her back,” I said, regretting it immediately.
“I would think so,” said Liz, swirling her glass.