Now he followed the boot prints toward Calexico. Daisy's dainty prints were in the lead. The morning grew hot and by the time Hood came to the last of the tracks, he was standing on Cole Meadows Road looking south to the city.
The first motel he came to was the Mesa, where the manager recognized Hood's photograph of Sean Ozburn without hesitation.
"You missed him by two hours," said the manager. She was young and red-haired and reading a paperback vampire novel. When she had thoroughly examined Hood's U.S. Marshal's badge-a deputy was knighted a Federal Marshal when attached to a federal task force-she dug out a registration card. Hood recognized Ozburn's writing: Sean Newman, with an Oceanside address and a 760 prefix. She offered to let Hood have the card and even see the room if he wanted. The maids had not been in yet.
Hood stood in the upstairs room and saw the unmade bed and the small white towel bunched on the bathroom counter and the clear plastic cup by the faucet and the blow-dryer hanging from the wall. The ice container sat on the bathroom floor with an inch of Daisy's water still in it. The shower door was wet and there were small whiskers stuck along one latitude of the sink bowl. They looked like pepper.
"Did he do something?" asked the manager.
"We just want to talk to him."
"On TV that means yes."
"You're right-on TV it does."
"I didn't charge him for the dog."
"You're sure he walked here? No car?"
"I watched him come out of the desert and across the parking lot."
"You work some long hours, don't you?"
"I don't have much else to do. I just heard a car pull up. Close the door all the way when you leave, would you?"
Hood thanked her and watched her go, noting the older Chevy Astro Van parking in the shade by the motel office.
He studied the room and realized that looking for Sean wasn't the same as looking for a stranger. He knew the man. Knew his opinions, his values, his humor, his habits. Or did he? The Ozburn he'd known for almost a year and a half wouldn't have slaughtered three men without a clear reason. So, something was missing. A lot was missing.
Okay, Hood thought: Sean's clear reason. That he was embittered by his part in a seemingly unwinnable "war" on drugs and guns? Hard to believe. It had never bothered him before. Before what, though? Before going undercover and getting up close and personal with some very bad people. Before being yanked from his life and his wife and plunked down on a hostile planet. Before his nerves began to eat him alive and he found his crossroads on a volcano in Costa Rica and his salvation in a hard-drinking priest who led him back to his faith and his calling as an agent of the ATF. Thus setting the stage for the murders.
Sean had grown. Changed.
In many ways, Hood thought, this was the story of every undercover operation. The degrees of difficulty were variable, but they were rarely this extreme.
So why Ozburn? Hood knew him as tough and funny and typically non-philosophical about his job. It was his work and he believed in it and that was enough. You're out at fifty-five-maybe travel or fix up the house or goof off with the grandkids. Sean wasn't a seeker; he was quietly Christian. He was neither cynical nor subversive. He wasn't overly proud of himself. He wasn't driven by material goods or women not his wife or by alcohol or drugs. So why? Why murder the three?
It's beginning to dawn on me why I'm here, not in this desert but on the PLANET… perform GOOD ACTS and DEFEAT the forces of EVIL. This is not a Biblical thing but a practical one…
Hood sat on the bed and looked around the room again. He wondered if Sean's reasons might be less obvious. Maybe his reasons come from the fissures and faults hidden in his heart, the secrets kept even from himself, the seams not quite true. So that when the whole system was sunk to depth, it would come under such pressure that something might give.
If Ozburn had secrets, he was careful with them, Hood thought. He kept them for himself and for his wife.
… miss you so much sometimes I want to cut my heart OUT just to make it stop aching…
Which left him with Seliah and her anger at Blowdown and her puzzlement over her own husband.
And Ozburn's family back in Texas, and his friends outside of work, if there were any.
And with four private airstrips Ozburn could fly in and out of whenever he wanted, though Hood knew that bold Sean could set his little plane down in a million unforeseeable places.
All four of the runways were located outside of municipal borders, which meant they were patrolled by county sheriffs, which meant that Hood as an LASD deputy might get some cooperation from his brethren in other Southern California counties. Might. He began with an acquaintance at Riverside SD.
"Sergeant Trask."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"Charlie Hood. I thought that was your twang-ass Bakersfield voice. How are you?"
Hood stood and started yapping while he took one last look around the room, then closed the door behind him.
By the time he made Buenavista he had arranged for three different sheriff's departments to make occasional patrols of the four strips. He gave them a description and numbers for the Piper. With its classic Cub-yellow paint job and the name Betty painted beneath the fuselage, it would be hard to miss. The deputies couldn't promise anything but they'd try. Hood thanked each and offered his help in return, anytime.
Find the plane, he thought, find the man.
He had just pulled into the IHOP parking lot for lunch when Bly called. "At nine o'clock this morning, Sean had himself and his dog baptized by a Mexican priest in Nogales. Sean makes a speech about… Well, I don't know what it's about. He sent a video of the whole thing to Seliah. And some other weird videos, too. What in hell's going on here, Charlie? What in hell?"
11
Father Jaime Arriaga of the Church of Santo Tomas in Nogales was young and thin and had a twinkle in his eyes. Hood sat in his office. Arriaga's English was as good as Hood's Spanish and they alternated easily between the two.
He told Hood he'd watched a yellow airplane land on the dirt road that ran through the desert around the church. This was a curiosity. Arriaga had watched as a very tall man with long blond hair had come walking across the desert toward Santo Tomas. He was dressed like a motorcycle gangster. A black dog trotted along ahead of him.
When the man walked into his office, Arriaga saw that he had a machine gun of some kind slung over his shoulder. He introduced himself. He said he wanted to be baptized and he wanted his dog to be baptized also. Arriaga said that the man did not seem to mean disrespect to our Lord by having his dog baptized along with him.
"But you don't just baptize someone into the Catholic Church," said Hood. "Do you? Don't they have to go through certain steps, learn certain things?"
"Yes," said Father Arriaga. "But he brandished the machine gun instead."
"Describe it."
Father Arriaga laughed deeply. Tears of mirth rimmed his clear brown eyes. "I baptize a dog and you ask me to describe a gun! Oh, you have made my day a better one, Mr. Hood. I'm sorry. I mean no offense to you."
Hood laughed, too. "None taken. His wife sent this to me."
He set his smartphone on the priest's desk. They watched the tiny screen as the miniaturized priest sprinkled water onto Sean Ozburn's forehead and intoned the baptism with solemnity and feeling. Daisy sat beside her master, looking up. Sean had one of the Love 32s in his left hand, held loosely like an umbrella or a bundle of flowers for a loved one. The strap dangled almost to the floor.