“Who hired you?”
“Jesus, Ford — I can’t tell you that.”
I had a notion. “Goff. Her ex. Paper to serve?”
Jason leaned back in his chair again, his car coat falling open like a gunslinger in a western. Instead of drawing a six-gun, he opened both hands in a show of peaceful refusal to answer my question.
“I thought about going to a county service for Miller, but there wasn’t one,” he said. “Just an indigent remains disposition. They actually call it that. Cremation.”
“I looked into it, too.”
“I’d like to wake up and feel blameless for a day,” said Jason.
A moment of silence, in memory of the seconds that change our lives forever.
“Who hired you to find Lindsey?” I asked again.
Jason shrugged.
“If I knew, I might be able to help you out,” I said.
“But you haven’t seen her in a year and a half. Remember?”
I leaned across the desk toward him. “Jason, there’s some real bad stuff in the air for Lindsey right now. Terrible stuff. And you might be playing right into it.”
“My job is to find her,” he said. “If you don’t help me, maybe you’re playing into it.”
An interesting idea. One I did not like.
He stood and I walked him to the door. Picked a few Oxley posters from the credenza and gave them to Jason.
“What’s with the damned cat anyway?” he asked.
“Something my mom taught me.”
“My mom taught me loyalty until the bitter end,” said Bayless. “She’s Irish.”
“So is mine.”
12
Joan Taucher started out half a step ahead of me on the Embarcadero, her boots tapping a cadence on the boardwalk. We were southbound in the brisk morning, too early for tourists, under a gray blanket of clouds that looked heavy enough to lie on. A cold Pacific storm from the north was due by noon. I’d had my morning run into the hills, my half-hour alternating the heavy and speed bags in the barn, some sit-ups. Felt clear and ready.
“Thanks for the early call and the pictures,” she said. “I don’t think those images will leave my head anytime soon. Of all the stuff I’ve seen — plane wrecks to crime scenes to autopsies to cartel snuffs — those were the pure worst.”
“They’re stuck in my head, too.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Taucher, stopping and looking at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said plane wrecks. I wasn’t thinking.”
Planes and wrecks. My heart beats faster when I hear an older Cessna 182 churning through the sky above. Taucher had no way of knowing that I’d first laid eyes on Justine Timmerman during a cold winter storm like the one about to hit us. At a holiday party in the Grand Hyatt hotel, which was just a few blocks from where we now walked. I looked up at that hotel, a mirrored wedge atop the skyline. Remembered red-haired Justine in her red party dress and the rain lashing the windows of the banquet room.
Taucher reclaimed her half-step lead. “My bedside manner has always sucked,” she said. A gull wheeled and cried and Joan’s boot heels thumped along. “Anyway, I sent your picture of the Bakersfield threat letter to our questioned-documents section. Match. Same writer as Lindsey’s and Voss’s threats. No doubt of that. And speaking of Lindsey’s threat, the original you so heroically salvaged for me — the lab found DMSO on the letter and the envelope.”
“Horse liniment.”
“I thought of Rasha Samara’s Arabians, like you are right now,” she said. “But no DMSO on his thank-you note or envelope. DMSO is also a remedy for aching humans, and you can get it at any feed and tack store. The trace particles left on the paper were clear. And don’t forget, our documents section could not establish that Samara wrote the threat to Lindsey. Based on comparison with a perfect handwriting sample — his thank-you note. To which he signed his own name.”
The cruise-ship terminal was coming up on our right. I could see the impressive Emerald Empress at dock, the gangplanks being moved into place. The cloud blanket had not visibly moved in the heavy pre-storm stillness.
Taucher turned to look at me, then slowed her pace. “Now, the calligraphy pen used to write the letters was likely the same instrument. Note I said pen, not marker. Our writer is a fascinating combination of artist and amateur. His instruments could be considered professional grade, but his execution is fair at best. Self-taught, probably. With a how-to calligraphy book and a good sample of Arabic writing to work from, most people could do what Caliphornia did.”
“Maybe he is Arabic.”
“Back to Rasha? Maybe. But Rasha Samara is native-born and Caliphornia’s phrasing sounds slightly foreign. I want to decapitate you with my knife... to cause you death. The Bakersfield threat was less stilted but stuffed with Islamic references. The writer used a one-millimeter stainless steel nib, with minute flaws that both our stereomicroscope and spectral comparator picked up. The tip is iridium. The lab thinks the nib used on both threats was a Brause Hatat, which the Brause catalog recommends for Hebrew and Arabic writing. More comparison testing to come, but the same flaws showed up on both documents. They’re like tool marks on bullets or cartridge casings. Same writer, same pen. Same ink, also — an acrylic shellac suspending the pigments and dyes. The ink is animal-free, which means likely a high-end maker.”
We continued down the boardwalk. Joggers and walkers and a few moms with strollers. “Why are you telling me this, Joan?”
Which brought us to a stop. And got me a flat stare.
“I’m helping you, dumbass.”
“Why?”
“I respect what you’re trying to do for Lindsey Rakes,” she said. “I respect your loyalty to her. She told me you’re not charging her for protection, investigation, anything related to this.”
I thought of Jason Bayless’s charges against my loyalty, and was momentarily glad to have a differing opinion from Taucher. Deep loyalty has two very sharp edges. In truth, when I resigned from the Sheriff’s Department, I questioned my loyalty, too. It was always Us against Them. And I’d willingly ditched the Us. So what did that say about me?
“More important, Ford — I’ll help anyone who can help me cancel Caliphornia’s ticket here in my Golden State. You are my citizen and I need your help. That terrorist son of a bitch is cutting off American heads on my watch, and I can’t even build a decent suspect profile. He’s out there, and he’s ten steps ahead of us. And, as my father liked to say, that frosts my balls.”
I looked down at Taucher as she regarded the ships on the water. In the cloudy coastal light, her heavily made-up eyes were raptorlike. Light brown in the iris, and unblinking. Startlingly clear. I wondered if she dreamed only of work and of terror and how to banish it from her city. Though I knew that wasn’t likely, I couldn’t guess or even convincingly imagine what she might dream about, other than that. I didn’t care exactly, but for some reason I wanted to know.
She was right about not having enough knowledge of Caliphornia to effectively cast even the widest of nets.
“You know I’m in,” I said.
She nodded.
“Did Bakersfield PD show you the security video?”
“Indeed they did,” said Taucher. “It’s grainy. Isn’t security video always grainy? From liquor stores to international airports. They haven’t improved the common security video camera in what, thirty years?”
“Why are you torturing me, Joan?”
She actually looked surprised. “Well, male — we saw that much. His race is iffy. Maybe Caucasian, but just as easily a light-skinned Semite, Latin or Arab. Rule out black and Asian. When I said grainy I wasn’t kidding. And the angle is terrible. There are six and a half seconds of recording. Two seconds show him in profile, from the side as he comes into the camera, moving toward the apartments. The last four and a half seconds are of his back. He looks somewhere in his twenties or thirties, six-feet-one or — two, one hundred seventy to two hundred pounds. Dressed like a surfer or a boarder — flannel and loose pants, those big clunky board shoes. And a half-zipped U.S. Air Force hoodie, which is maybe why Kenny Bryce opened his door. The hood was up in the video, hiding his hair and most of his face. A cool-dude walk. Light gait. Well balanced. The video was taken from high up and mostly behind. He’d obviously cased the place and knew where the cameras were. On his way back into the carport, he trotted, hood up and head down. That light gait again, like an athlete. The detectives told me it was the only camera that caught him. No one saw such a man come or go that night. Caliphornia arrived at eleven ten and departed at eleven twenty-six, according to the video time and date stamp.”