Lindsey wavered over to Burt, the backs of her arms riddled by shrapnel. Zeno shook his head once like his ears were full of water but followed her, otherwise unfazed. Lindsey tilted into Burt’s outstretched arms, she a head taller than Burt but Burt bull-like and strong, his arms closing around her.
I stood. Leaned against the palapa palm trunk for balance.
Saw Salvano limping toward Kalima and the bomb-squad tech, phone to his ear.
Liz pulling gently on Lindsey’s sleeve.
Dick on his way over to me with some unreadable expression, revolver jammed in his belt, trying to step around the empty brass and bits of doll rubber and shards of blue tile scattered in the blood.
45
Christmas day, Tuesday, bright and blustery. Our reign of terror over. The atmospheric river had hit us just a few hours after Caliphornia and Kalima, bringing four inches of cold, hard rain to rinse off our bloody world.
Everyone on the patio had been hit with mini-bomb shrapnel — carpet tacks again. Salvano had caught shrapnel near his left eye, but no ocular damage. I’d caught my share — one high up on my thick skull, two in my left shoulder, two in the butt, and two in the thigh. First came the delight of having the jagged pieces pulled out, then nine stitches. A haze of painkillers. For three days after the blast I felt like I’d fought a bear. Then the healing itch took over.
All of us had still been turned toward Kalima when the bomb exploded, and our back-side armor had done its job. In some cosmically inscrutable way, Kalima — in killing Joan — had saved us others from worse damage or death. And left Caliphornia to bear the brunt of their own creation.
Then, suddenly and almost surreally, there were no more hospitals, doctors, needles, or stitches. No more detectives, reporters, well-wishers. Nothing but our wounds and our freedom.
And inside me, silence.
Now Lindsey was packing, with help from her son, John, and ex-husband, Brandon. She had caught shrapnel in her arms and legs, including one tack that had gone through the middle of her left hand and would probably leave some “minor” nerve damage. The hand was still thickly wrapped, though she was already deploying it for light duty. Her front door was open and her car pulled up close, trunk open.
Zeno lay smack in the middle of her living room, considering me from within his white plastic cone. It was tied at his neck by a strip of gauze. A monster in a bonnet. He’d cut his leg jumping through the casita window and taken his share of shrapnel, too. No worries, by his expression. I helped Lindsey load up the Mustang, not a roomy car to begin with, and I saw that she had tucked a serape over the backseat, most of which would be claimed by Zeno.
Lindsey took Johnny and Brandon down to the dock. She’d gotten her son a remote-controlled sailboat that he was eager to launch. He was a slender boy, and not tall yet, given his parents’ height. Brandon was well over six feet, and Lindsey just under. In the mother’s and son’s postures, I saw affection and reserve, hope and wariness. I was proud of Lindsey for taking on her demons, one by one. She was beating them back. I saw in Johnny a gentleness that would let him forgive his mother for whatever excesses she’d shown him. Brandon? Hard to say. He looked angry, while Lindsey appeared to be on the humble. They both had plenty to let go.
I sat in one of the Adirondack chairs on her front porch, in the sun, which felt good on this brisk day. Heard a grunt, then the slap of paws on floor tile inside. Zeno came from the casita and dropped his brindled gray bulk down in front of me. Head up and alert. He watched Lindsey for a moment, then threw down his head, cone be damned, and rolled onto his back. There he lay, at my feet, legs spread to reveal his shaved inner thigh where the window had cut him, his stitches and balls. Upside down, he looked at me from within the drool-smeared cone, his tongue lolling and cropped tail wagging. Something like love in his eyes. Something like, We are now together forever. I thought of him straddling Caliphornia with the man’s head locked in his jaws. It’s easy to overestimate the nobility of dogs. Other beasts come to mind, too. Everywhere I look.
Lindsey and I loaded the last of her things. The two bottles of Stoli still stood unopened on her counter, temptation overcome. “All yours if you want them,” she said.
“I’ll put them in the community stash,” I said.
“Do you have another tenant in mind?”
“No,” I said. “You know I like to have one casita open.”
She smiled. “For emergencies, like me.”
“Emergencies like you.”
Brandon started up his Jeep and Johnny climbed in. Lindsey opened the door of the Mustang and flipped the driver’s seat forward. Zeno lumbered to the threshold and jumped in, bashing his cone into the seat back. The car rocked. He climbed onto the seat and turned around with some difficulty, then looked at us hopefully as Lindsey threw the seat back into place.
She gave me a light hug. Too many wounds between the two of us for anything more than that. The breeze threw her hair against my face and I felt the warmth of her tears on my cheek.
“I cry when I’m happy,” she said, stepping away. “You’re a friend, Roland. You must know that.”
“You’re my queen.”
“I don’t want to be a queen.” She looked at me with an odd defiance, wiped both cheeks with her bandaged hand, then gingerly touched my face.
“You and I are alike, Roland,” she said. “We think that if we give up on even one small thing, everything will cave in. So we try to hold the whole world together.”
“Some truth in that,” I said.
“I’m sorry to have brought so much death and destruction to your home,” said Lindsey. “I can’t stop thinking I should have found a way to stop him. After all, I made him.”
“We all made him.”
“It’s generous of you to share the blame.”
A moment later the black Mustang was heading down the drive toward the gate. I’d watched a red Porsche Boxster head toward that gate one fateful day, never to return with its precious driver. I could see the outline of Zeno’s shoulders and cone as he sat up in the back, facing forward, looking out for his queen.
The next day I knocked on the front door of Joan Taucher’s home in the Uptown area of San Diego. Uptown is just that — up. I looked down at the Pacific and Interstate 5 and Lindbergh Field and the downtown buildings.
I waited on Taucher’s porch. The house itself surprised me. From the outside, it didn’t look anything like a place where Special Agent Joan Taucher would have lived. It was old and easygoing and needed paint.
I’d like you to come to my home and meet my people someday.
But if life is waiting, it is also a series of surprises. Such as the call from Special Agent Mike Lark early that morning. And the sight of Lark himself now opening the door. “Glad you could come, Mr. Ford.”
He led me through a narrow foyer that had a coatrack with two FBI windbreakers hanging side by side. Plenty of hats and umbrellas this time of year. Then into a living room. Hardwood floors, dark and scarred. Floral wallpaper, white paint, bookcases, and a dartboard bristling with darts. Mullioned windows with the curtains half drawn across views to the ocean. A fireplace with a tidy orange fire.
In the middle of the room was a well-used leather seating group — sofa, loveseat, and an armchair that looked roughly as old as the man sitting in it. White hair, light brown eyes. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie. A wheelchair to one side of him.