It took every particle of patience I had to thread the car slowly back down the rocky road and out of the hollow. Once I reached the main road, I floored the gas pedal, gunning the small-caliber engine. I made a skidding turn at the sign pointing toward the prison, then — glancing at my phone and seeing that I had four signal bars — I pulled to the side and phoned the deputy to tell him what I’d found. “This is Skidder,” said the voice-mail greeting. “Leave me a message and I’ll call you back.”
“Deputy, this is Bill Brockton,” I said. “I think I found where Richard’s killer came down when he bailed out that night. Call me back soon as you can.”
Next I scrolled down my list of contacts until I found Special Agent Miles Prescott. I debated the pros and cons of calling him. On the one hand — the call-now hand — an FBI Evidence Response Team would have the best shot at finding any significant evidence, if indeed I was right about what I’d seen; with luck, there might even be recoverable DNA on the cigarette butts, and possibly fingerprints on the unburned bases of the flares. On the other hand — the slow-down hand — the San Diego County sheriff was supposedly engaged in some delicate interagency diplomacy with the FBI, possibly even at this very moment; if I called Prescott directly, rather than letting the sheriff finesse things, I might accidentally sabotage his efforts to refocus the investigation.
I decided to seek a second opinion. This time the call was answered by a human, not a recording. “Safety Board. Maddox.”
“Pat,” I said. “Bill Brockton here.”
“Doc,” he said heartily. “How the hell are you?”
“Well, I’m okay,” I said. “It’s been rocky lately. My wife passed away recently. Unexpectedly.”
“What? Did you just say your wife died?”
“Yes. But—”
“My God, Doc, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks, Pat. I appreciate that. But that’s not what I’m calling about.”
“Well, no,” he said, “I realize I might not be your main go-to guy for emotional support. What’s up?”
“You’ll be very interested in this,” I told him. “And I’d appreciate your advice.”
“Advice? Hell, Doc, I stopped giving advice a long damn time ago. I noticed I was nearly always wrong, but even when I was right—especially when I was right — people ended up getting pissed off at me.”
I laughed. “I promise not to get pissed off.”
“I’ll hold you to it, Doc. So to paraphrase the 911 dispatchers, what’s the nature of your advice emergency?”
“So, remember when we talked a few weeks ago? When you said there was a way to bail out of a Citation — out of that Citation — in flight?”
“Sure,” he said. “I don’t surprise that easy anymore, old as I am, but I gotta admit, you coulda knocked me over with a feather when I found out about those belly doors.”
“Well, get ready for another surprise. I found where the guy landed.”
“Come again?”
“I found where he landed. The guy that bailed out.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Seriously, Doc, what’s on your mind?”
“No kidding. Hand-on-the-Bible serious. I came back to San Diego, and I found the place, Pat. Not where you thought, though — it’s about a mile south of that airstrip.” I described the scene — the dead-end road, the pile of cigarette butts, the giant + sign formed by flares. “In the middle of the night, right under the flight path, no other lights around? That signal would’ve stood out like a searchlight.”
“Maybe,” he said. “If that’s what it was. And if that’s when it was.”
“How do you mean?”
“Coulda just been kids, out there some other night. Drinking, smoking dope, playing with fire. You know — kids.”
“I’ve got a good feeling about this, Pat. Those flares, arranged in that pattern? That wasn’t made by stoned kids messing around. I’m telling you, Pat, that was a signal. I think maybe I should call Prescott, let his evidence guys see what they can find.”
“Special Agent Prescott? I thought you were number one on his shit list.”
“Well, yeah,” I conceded. “That’s why I called you. To see what you think. You’re a fed, Pat. Would Prescott actually listen to what I have to say? Or would he just dismiss it, since he thinks I’m full of crap?”
“Hmm. Interesting question, Doc. Tricky.” He paused to think. “Here’s an idea. I’m just thinking out loud here. I’m not on Prescott’s shit list. What if I came down and took a quick look? If it’s all you say it is, maybe I could make the call to Prescott — soften him up a bit — and then hand the phone over to you. Might help him listen with an open mind if I ran a little interference for you.”
“I see your point,” I said, “and I appreciate it. But I’m nervous about just leaving it for a day or two, or whenever you can get away and get down here.”
“And you think Prescott and Company are gonna rush right over there? Not bloody likely.” Maddox chuckled. “You’ve never ridden with me, have you, Doc?”
“Well, no. Why?”
“Because if you had, you’d know it’s like ridin’ in a low-flying plane. I can be there in two hours. That soon enough for you?”
I checked my watch. “Really? Three o’clock? Today?”
“Three-thirty, tops, if there’s not a wreck on the 405. Can you wait that long? You could run back to town and grab lunch, if you haven’t already eaten.”
“Nah, I’ve got snacks in the car. Besides, I’ve got something else I want to do out this way. I’ll plan on meeting you at three, or as soon after that as you can get here.”
“Where? Can you tell me how to find this place?” I gave him directions, and as I finished, he said, “I see it on the map, and I’m printing it out right now. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”
“Drive safe, Pat.”
He chuckled again. “Clearly you’ve never ridden with me, Doc.”
Donovan State Prison occupied the entire top of a low, oblong mesa. The terrain was dry and dun colored, and the few bits of scrubby vegetation that hadn’t been bulldozed looked as brown and desiccated as the rocks and dirt. A road encircled the complex, skirting the base of three parallel chain-link fences, fifteen feet high and ten feet apart. Out of curiosity, I circumnavigated the complex on the perimeter road, keeping count of the cellblocks and guard towers. If my count was correct, there were twenty cellblocks and a dozen guard towers, each tower thirty or forty feet high.
I’d seen forbidding penitentiaries before. Tennessee’s Brushy Mountain State Prison — whose hard-core convicts had once included James Earl Ray, the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — was a forbidding stone fortress, complete with crenellations that looked transplanted from a medieval castle. Donovan State Prison, by contrast, had nothing even grimly ornamental about it. It was almost as if Donovan’s designers and builders had carefully, purposefully excluded any scraps of ornament or history or humanity. Donovan had the bare-bones, bleached-bones look of a bottom-rung industrial complex: a slaughterhouse of the human spirit, as efficient and utilitarian as any meatpacking plant where cows were conveyor-belted to their deaths.