“Are you also going to bring her up on schedule-one drug charges?”
“We might.”
I watched Tola and the priest ambling past the roses and groomed palms.
“Can you help her out?” I asked.
“I cannot. Did you ask her about the six cartel men gunned down in Mexican Buena Vista last night?” he asked.
“I didn’t have to. I was there.”
“Fuck,” said Lark. “Talk to me.”
When I was done, another long Lark silence.
“Roland, the drug charges are the DEA’s but I can make it my business if I really want to.”
“I gave you The Chaos Committee, Mike. Now I’m trying to help a friend.”
“A murderer,” he said. “It’s wrong and you know it and you’re covering her murdering ass. I understand — I understand why, but why doesn’t matter. What matters. Why only counts for kids and dogs.”
Lark punched off.
Tola and the priest were approaching and I heard their voices on the breeze but not their words.
Tola introduced us and the father thanked me for bringing Tola to the parish. He sized me up, then said I had done a brave thing in protecting San Diego from a terrible attack a few months ago. Or was it a year by now? He had a grave expression and I wondered what Tola had confessed.
“Please come visit us any time you’d like,” he said. “Both of you. You are always welcome in the house of God.”
We walked the beach in Oceanside. Got lunch. Watched the surfers from the pier, fed some quarters into the mounted telescopes and got good views north and south. Took a siesta in a shady patch of grass under rotund Canary Island palms. Some of Tola’s turmoil ebbed out of her as she slept, her head heavy on my chest.
My phone rang and Dalton’s name and number appeared.
“Natalie just called!” he boomed. “She’s okay, Roland! She’s okay! I can pick her up but she’s not sure where or when. She’ll call. They don’t want money and I can bring a second. You. It’s going to happen somewhere remote. In daylight, so they can see that we’re playing fair. This phone isn’t leaving my hand!”
“It’s a trap, Dalton,” I said. “They’re shot up and desperate.”
“Maybe, Roland, but I’m going. I feel good about this. What you do is up to you.”
Forty
We were sitting in my downtown office when Broadman’s call came through. It was 6:10 p.m., an hour and forty minutes before sunset. Dalton had been talking nonstop, sipping bourbon from the bottle. I did not. My senses were resting for whatever was coming in the next hours. My old boxing scar was itching like a bug bite. My heart felt heavy and my soul felt old.
Broadman had dispensed with the voice changer he’d used before. I could see his mangled face and hear his low, even voice clearly through Dalton’s phone speaker.
“Dalton, come to the visitor’s center at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Use Montezuma Valley Road, in from the southwest. Follow the signs to the center. I need the make, color, and year of the car you’ll be using, and of course the plates. Make sure your phone is charged, on, and your GPS active. Natalie is waiting, but I’m not sure how forward she’s looking to seeing you. Time has passed. People change.”
“If you’ve hurt her, sir, I’ll kill you.”
Broadman chuckled softly, then listened as Dalton gave his SUV description and license plate.
“I’m assuming you’re somewhere near home right now, with your good friend Roland. Hello, Roland. You have one hour to get here.”
He hung up and Dalton strode to the door.
“Stay cool, Dalton,” I said. “Broadman is going to run us around at least a little, make sure we’re alone.”
I attached my remaining Vigilant 4000 to the trailer hitch of Dalton’s black X5, set my riot gun on the front seat, worked my paddle-holstered .45 into its warm lair at the small of my back, put a cold water in the cup holder.
I drove while Dalton looked wide-eyed out the windows, talking about Natalie. And the war. And the election. And his sons. And the Straits when he was a kid and thought his father and Virgil were almost gods, brave and wise, how much they knew and all the ways they had to get people to do what they wanted. Even Kirby was a hero in Dalton’s memory, the big brother who’d introduced Dalton to the love of his life, then gallantly surrendered his interest, the big brother who’d been cursed by God when he lost his temper and knocked their father into the barbecue pit out at grandpa’s place that night.
“I’d give up my other leg to get him back alive,” said Dalton. “As much as we fought and sometimes hated each other. There’s something in blood that you can’t deny. I’m glad Tola did what she did.”
I took the back roads to Highway 76, past Lake Henshaw to Highway 79, north to Montezuma Valley Road. The sun hid high in the trees. The yellow center line wound through the mountains then straightened as we descended toward the desert. I kept an eye on the rearview mirror.
The visitor center entrance was closed, as I knew it would be. A breezy 92 degrees. Three cars in the parking lot. Employees? After-hours tourists? I pulled into the turnaround, knowing that this is where a rifle ambush would take place if Broadman’s goal was simply to kill us. The high rock walls of the building were perfect battlements, overlooking our lumbering target of a vehicle. Perfect light and clarity. But I thought Broadman and what was left of his Chaos Committee wanted more than that. Something less merciful than death.
Dalton’s phone on speaker:
“Park on the shoulder and wait ten minutes. Then drive Palm Canyon into Christmas Circle and take the first right onto Borrego Springs Road. Park outside the Bighorn Motel. You won’t be able to get into the lot. Ten minutes, friends.”
I looked for motion in the visitor center cars, but saw none. Scanned the near sky for a drone but saw and heard nothing. Best bet was Broadman or his people were in some middle distance with their spotting scopes or binoculars trained on us, looking for our backup. We got out and hunkered in the shade of the SUV, Dalton with his bad leg out straight in the sand and his good one tucked up close for balance. We faced the sparse horizontal sprawl of Borrego Springs in the near distance.
“It’s been over two weeks since I’ve seen her,” he said. “The longest time apart since we got married. And that was a long time ago. I can still see her that day, though. And I sense that she’s somewhere close.”
I felt the hot breeze on my face, and the sweat dripping from the paddle holster against my back. Felt that pre-combat slowdown, time putting on its brakes.
“Is it enough for you to get her back?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Broadman and his Chaos Committee are responsible for three bombing deaths,” I said. “Including a congressman and a chief of police. They’ve incited the shooting of six cops and mayhem across the state.”
“What are you saying?”
“We have obligations beyond Natalie, Dalton. What if she’s not as willing to come back with you as you think she is?”
“How could she not be?”
I hung that question on the breeze. “Like Broadman says, time has passed. People change.”
“You don’t think Natalie’s changed, do you?”
For probably the hundredth time in the last two weeks I wondered if Dalton Strait was as childlike and oblivious to reality as he often seemed.
“Dalton,” I said. “I told you what I saw. How Natalie was dressed and how she behaved with her captors. Are you going to have my back if Natalie doesn’t want to come back to you?”
“Then why did she call? Not to lure me into a trap, like you said. She’d never do that.”