“Jihadis in Grass Valley?”
“I did not say that,” said Joan, giving me a “me and my big mouth” look.
“Did you call nine-one-one?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Did you have your phone with you?”
“Always. Jacket pocket. One that snaps.”
“So you were there when the first deputies arrived?”
“I feel like I still am there,” said Bill Immel. “Blood has such a strong smell, especially that much of it. His eyes were half open. Dreamlike. Go away! Alma? I think I will lay back for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”
He sighed and stood and hovered by the bed while Alma turned down the sheets and propped up some pillows. “Were you serious about jihadis, Agent?”
“We haven’t ruled anything out yet,” said Taucher. “But I very much want to thank you for your help.”
Immel worked his bulky layered body into the bed and Alma covered him with a sheet and blanket. “Warm enough, Bill?”
“Just a chill.”
“You would be more comfortable out of those clothes.”
“I’m keeping my clothes on.”
“Hot soup?”
“That would be real good,” said Immel. “I wish I could stop seeing what I saw. But you can’t unsee things. If enough people in America saw what I saw this morning, it would be bad for the country. Very bad. Productivity would go down.”
I set a business card on his bed tray and told him he could call me anytime for any reason.
“I’m only seventy-eight,” he said. “I’m strong as a goat and my mind is not wholly gone. But something changed back there on that running trail. I am changed.”
“You are still in shock, Bill,” said Alma. “You eat soup and you feel better.”
“Bring it on, beautiful.”
I found us a way out through the ER so we wouldn’t have to deal with the reporters again. Out back on the entrance ramp, a Nevada County Fire and Rescue truck idled in a pool of pale exhaust. Our taxi waited out front.
Taucher stopped under a snow-laced pine tree to take a call. I watched the snow and hoped it would stay light enough for takeoff. The airport was a few hundred feet downslope and I thought my chances were good.
Taucher shoved her phone into her coat pocket and gave me a look as cold as the day. “Nothing from Ben Azmeh.”
We stood there for a long minute in the dainty snow. Letting the silence be.
“This guy’s heading south for Lindsey,” I said.
“We’d be foolish to think anything different.”
I tried to subtract what else we knew from all we didn’t know, to reduce things to the essentiaclass="underline" a ten-hour drive from where we stood to Fallbrook, where Lindsey was hunkered down with Zeno and the Irregulars. So, if Caliphornia had left here promptly after killing Voss, he’d make Fallbrook by five thirty in Sunday traffic.
“And when he gets to San Diego,” I said, “he’ll want to see a helpful, friendly face.”
By the time the taxi driver got us within sight of the Nevada County Airpark, Taucher was calling in the 4Runner’s stolen plates to the California Highway Patrol, requesting an all-units-be-on-the-lookout notification and a message on every Amber Alert emergency-message sign in every county of the state.
It was too late to tell her they wouldn’t do the Amber Alert, though she probably knew this already. Amber Alert is for missing or endangered children — period. There’s Silver Alert for missing oldsters and a Blue Alert for cops in danger. But no alert for someone who has just beheaded a citizen on his morning run.
Taucher started to argue, voice rising. In the rearview mirror I saw the cabbie look back at her.
But to my surprise, she silenced herself, listened for a long while — breathing like a bull in a rodeo pen — then thanked them and hung up.
“We got the damned BOLO at least,” she said.
As we pulled into the tower I called Burt and Lindsey and put them on my own personal Ford Alert. Lindsey sounded worried, but Burt said they were “ready for anything.”
Next I talked to Clevenger, who quickly agreed to hover one of his drones over the casitas and monitor the video feed for intruders. Then he apologized for the lucky shot in Ping-Pong. I checked in at the tower and we trotted out to Hall Pass 2 through pinpricks of snow.
32
Hector Padilla’s house, at twilight: dark inside but the porch light on. If we were right about Caliphornia’s destination — and if he’d driven fast — he could be here in under an hour. We were parked half a block down from the house, shrouded by my blackout windows and a sycamore still trying to hold on to its big yellow leaves.
As darkness fell, most of the other houses on the block came alive with Christmas lights. Santa’s sleigh took off from a roof. A trio of lighted angels, winged and posed in song, stood on a lawn not far from us.
“Where would he be by now?” asked Taucher.
“North San Diego County. Maybe closer.”
Taucher had set her tablet on the floorboard, screen dimmed but angled optimistically up to her in case of a response from Ben Azmeh.
My phone stood upright in a cup holder, still logged on to Facebook, where we had followed Marlon Voss’s murder in Grass Valley. The online buzz was minor until the mainstream media caught Bill Immel leaving Sierra Nevada Memorial.
We watched the two-minute CNN video: Bill in a wheelchair in the hospital lobby, Alma behind him at the handles, and a uniformed guard trying to give Bill some space from the reporters. Hair awry, still bundled in his sweatshirt and parka. His mind wandered. He told about running almost every day, then this morning finding the headless body. He described the snow falling and the steam still rising from the bloody pool on the running path and the half-open eyes of the dead man. The reporter asked him how it felt to see such a thing.
Helpless and sick, Bill Immel answered. Then he said he’d forgotten the question.
“My dad got like that when he was about Bill’s age,” said Taucher. “Scattered. Scared. Lost his courage. Then dementia started to creep in. It really seemed to start when he fell from a ladder. Putting up Christmas lights. And the fall didn’t hurt him physically, according to the doctors. No concussion, no breaks, just a twisted ankle and a bruised shoulder. But it scared him. It made him think how fast things can change and what a hostile thing a commonplace ladder can be. And that’s what I saw in Bill Immel having to see Voss. Like falling off the ladder. You see something terrible, so fear rushes in, and you can’t easily get rid of it. And terrorists know that — one act makes a million fears. Tens of millions. Look at Nine-Eleven. Or the IS execution videos.”
A vehicle came down the street slowly, passed. I watched it in the rearview. Fog rolled in from the west.
On Facebook, Marlon Voss’s widow, Danella — apparently standing on the front porch of a home in lightly falling snow — said that her husband had been, “... a great husband and father. A great Air Force pilot. He was brave and patient and funny. He was the love of my life.” A twentysomething man who looked a lot like Marlon Voss appeared in the doorway behind her and gently pulled her back in.
Something in that moment got to me. The woman turning back into the house with her son. People and a house forever and terribly changed. The math was so wrong. Start with a brave and selfless doctor in Syria. Then a well-liked young man working as a landscaper in Bakersfield, a man with a lot of life still ahead of him. Now a pilot and his family. All of their relatives and friends. Next, a young mother? The math of vengeance, never balanced or even. Never finished. The scar on my forehead itched. I rubbed it.