A family portrait taken just months before their deaths showed two wholesome, still-young parents and their two daughters, a teenager and a four-year old. They all looked loved. Mom and girls were conspicuously radiant.
However, I did have some questions for my employer — older sister Penelope — who was claiming to have married a man who didn’t seem to have a history. None at all. And I had other questions for her little sister, Daley, who had just yesterday been seen willingly getting into a car with probable murderers and had not been home since. I looked at that family portrait again. A tingle came from the scar on my forehead — an old boxing injury that acts up from time to time. Sometimes a tingle, sometimes a chill, sometimes an itch or a burn. An expressive scar with a mind of its own. Always trying to tell me something. I wondered what.
An Internet search told me that SNR Security was a privately held, San Diego — based company now two years old, specializing in “Armed and Unarmed Personal, Workplace, and Job Site Protection.” SNR Security was a member of the Better Business Bureau and the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, and endorsed by the Southern California Christian Business Association. I found two workplace racial discrimination suits, both dropped. No other complaints, controversies, or litigations involving the company.
I watched the young dancers, enjoyed the music. I might have been in a place like this twenty-something years ago. Partying like it was 1999. Even back then I liked to dance. A large but not completely graceless young man. I was twenty years old that year. Two years through a San Diego State University degree in history. I surfed and fished and had a steady girlfriend. Why history? Because when I read the papers and watched the news I couldn’t make any sense of the world at all. Figured I needed some background. Soon as I had gotten a little, I joined the Marines and stepped from the pages of history into history itself. Fallujah. Where so much went wrong.
Alone there in Alchemy 101, I let the hours set their own pace. We widowers learn to do that. I scanned the newspaper on my smartphone. Nations rising and nations falling. Find the nuke. Our great American divide. The scandal du jour. All the heat and so little light.
Dinner was good, soup and a sandwich. I watched the customers on their way into the club. At 9:04 p.m. a silver Expedition SUV pulled into the handicap-only space out front, not ten feet from where I sat. The emblem on the door said SNR Security, and showed an eagle holding two lightning bolts. The driver got out, locked up, and knocked on the glass of the ticket-seller’s booth, smiling at her on his way past. When he came inside I saw a sturdy guy, thirty or so, dressed in slacks and duty boots and a dark blue uniform blouse with a badge on it. A Sam Browne belt with Mace and a flashlight attached, no sidearm. He moved through the crowd to the coffee bar and started talking to the barista.
He accepted his drink in a to-go cup but didn’t pay for it. He sipped it and slowly worked his way between the dancers and the standing audience, all the way along the full-wall video screen, which was now showing a hugely magnified, real-time Tin Lenses. The guard slipped backstage through a black curtain.
The orange-haloed girl in the singlet and shorts was giving the song her all. Boots planted, arms out, swaying in rhythm. The bass player watched her closely, his fingers tied to her movements as firmly as a puppeteers’. Through the amplified music, her voice rang clear and true.
Ten minutes later, the security man came back through the black curtain, sipping his coffee, making his way toward the exit. I bellied up to the bar and bought a double espresso in a to-go cup, timing my return trip for a brush with the guard. He bumped past me, raising his cup to Dreadlocks as his badge glimmered in the brightly flashing strobe lights: Adam Revell.
I spotted him a few steps, then hooked around and followed him out. Gave him my back as I walked to my truck, digging the fob out of my pocket. Casual PI Ford, in no hurry and happily careless in the world. I saw Adam Revell behind me, reflected in my window, standing on the running board of the Expedition and waving goodbye to the ticket-seller in the glass booth.
6
I stayed two cars behind, padding my cover with the beach town traffic. Took Interstate 5 through Carlsbad and Leucadia into Encinitas, then Encinitas Boulevard toward Rancho Santa Fe. Hills and open land. I’d done work here in this prosperous corner of San Diego’s North County, multimillion-dollar estates with acreage, privacy, and plenty of room for horses and helipads.
Revell turned up Via Encanto, lightly traveled at this hour and leaving me exposed. I followed and fell back as he turned onto Matilija. Drove past it and U-turned, taking my time. Gave Revell his space.
Which gave R. Ford a chance to study the “Cathedral by the Sea” sign on the corner:
When the SUV’s taillights had vanished around a bend I started up the hill. Steep and wide. Up ahead I saw Revell sweep right, no signal, Matilija deserted. Again I loitered at the stop sign. Gave my mark some distance. Slowly followed him onto King’s Road.
It was a private road, with thick new asphalt that randomly glittered in my headlights. From a steep, slow curve I saw the Pacific a few miles to my left, glittering much as the asphalt was, and the lights of the San Diego coast. I poked along, enjoying the view.
Rounding the next curve, I saw the Cathedral by the Sea, rising from a hilltop and bathed in light. It was modest in size, an asymmetrical construct of white marble and wooden beams bound together by stainless-steel cable. A copper roof flowed down nearly to the ground at one end, yet formed an upswept wave rising into the sky at the other. I wondered if the architect was now institutionalized. Concrete stairs and ramps led up to a tall, arched doorway. Inset windows of stained glass flickered with color. Above it all towered a large stainless-steel cross, lit by hidden floodlights to give it a supposed glow of its own. The Cathedral by the Sea was bold and somehow forbidding. I wasn’t sure if it was expecting a worshiper or an invader.
The SUV rolled across a big parking lot, which was empty but well lit. I saw what might be an administration building, and a campus built around a stand of big Canary Island date palms, and a meandering grassy mall with fountains at each end, both still illuminated and tossing water in the night. Revell steered around the outbuildings and disappeared behind the cathedral.
I retreated to Via Encanto, backed my truck into a break in the thick chaparral, rolled the windows half down, and shut off the engine. I wondered how long it would take Revell to make his appointed rounds. Would he walk the grounds or just reconnoiter by SUV? It was hard to picture much trouble up on this swank but secluded hilltop church at ten o’clock on a warm Southern California night.
I found the Cathedral by the Sea website. Glancing from the phone to the road and back, I read:
Dear Faithful,
Please join us in worship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and in praise and thanks to Him for the forgiveness of our many sins. Our mission is to bring you to Our Lord. Come to experience fellowship in Him! Bring your children to our Sunday school, and encourage your teens to participate in our many activities. Next Sunday is surfing at Swami’s — following our ten o’clock service, of course. Bring sunscreen, boards and joyful hearts! Sign up in the office, Moms and Dads welcome!