“The last two girls seem so young and lost,” said Liz.
“Old enough to hate,” said Dick.
“And to fall under the spells of evil men,” said Odile.
“Girls cast spells of their own,” said Dick.
I looked at the brief video and photographs of Roxana Rajavi, seeing the same woman I’d watched in Lark’s post office video so many times. In better focus, and when not mailing a box of death to an innocent person, she looked pleasant and composed.
The other four committee members killed in Borrego — the gunmen in the black Yukon — were:
Daniel Dawes, a fifty-one-year-old school custodian living in Warner Springs, thirty miles from the Bighorn Motel. Bachelor, loner, and a U.S. Army veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was believed to be one of the ninja gunmen in the Local Live! takeover.
Lamont Anthony, forty-nine, the sole black Chaos Committee member discovered so far, was a Portland, Oregon, native who’d gotten a philosophy degree from Oregon State and worked his entire adult life for the United States Postal Service. He was believed to have been the driver during the kidnapping of Natalie Strait.
James Diggory, twenty-five, born in L.A., a community college student with an interest in martial arts and Norwegian black metal music. He had no criminal record, no friends that could be located, and no social network presence.
Trent Hodge was a thirty-three-year-old Tennessean who had joined the French Foreign Legion at eighteen because the marines rejected him for excessive tattoos. He’d fought in Syria and Yemen for six years. Had a tattoo that read L’Enfant Terrible above his right eyebrow.
“Quite the collection,” said Grandpa Dick.
“They actually seem kind of normal, except for the French Foreign Legion boy,” said Liz.
“I sense great histories of abuse and pain in their faces,” said Odile.
“A United Nations of misfits,” said Dick.
“Led by a man who lost his face in a war,” said Burt.
“Do you sympathize with him?” asked Dick.
“I sympathize with all men and no causes.”
Forty-Three
When I picked her up the next morning, Tola looked as professional as I’d ever seen her, stepping from her tiled portico into the good June sun. Leaning on my truck I watched her walk toward me, her smile and sunglasses on, and a cinnamon-colored business suit that showed off her fair skin and red hair, which was up and held loosely in place by a faux ivory Nectar Barn cannabis-leaf barrette.
“Thanks for drumming up the media,” she said. “Hope they all show.”
“I still think that was a bad call.”
“You can’t use celebrity. I can.”
A beautiful and complex woman. I pictured her in the courtyard of the Hotel Casa Grande, pleading her case before taking her bloody, triple-barreled vengeance. I’d never forget what happened there. Did it lessen her? Clearly. But the part of me that was drawn to Tola argued that those men had it coming and, therefore, what she’d done was justice. Frontier style, appropriate to its time and place. So was I lessened, too? I was there. On her account. For now I was going to let my demons wrestle it out.
We came into San Diego on an inland route, sweeping through the edge of Balboa Park, under the Cabrillo Bridge, spilling into downtown on Eleventh Avenue, then Ash to Front to F to Union to the federal jail.
“Abel said this’ll take an hour or two and I’ll be on my way.”
“Nothing federal takes an hour or two.”
“Thanks, Daniel Downer,” said Tola.
“Call me when you’re ready and I’ll pick you up.”
“Sure you don’t want to stay?”
“I’ll stay until we hit the cameras,” I said. “Abel can take over from there. I’m kind of sick of me.”
“In the news, you mean?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They say that Abel tries his cases in the media,” she said. “All that hair and bluster.”
“If you ever get to trial, it’s going to be a circus, Tola.”
“I love the circus. And I love you, Roland. Really a lot. I’m sorry I’m just a murderous lowlife, but I try to be a good person.”
“You acted according to your nature.”
A courtroom silence. She stared straight ahead. The bump of tires on the downtown streets.
“I’ll call you as soon as I get myself free,” she said.
I pulled into the parking structure, found a ten-minute space. Gave her a hand down.
In a big bright rectangle beyond the dark structure I could see the crowd of reporters and camera operators, all their mics and baffles, booms, lights, and logos. Some of the people I recognized. Along with Abel Cruzon, Mike Lark and two of Lark’s agents, and two uniformed marshals. And two hard-hatted, orange-vested workers puzzling over the concrete near the curb as pigeons bobbed around. All of this tableau in a panoramic sun-shot theater toward which I escorted Tola, her hand firm on my upper arm.
“I’ll take what I deserve,” she said. “What the law says I deserve. That’s okay. It’s my responsibility as a citizen.”
I had the thought that if Tola had been arrested for a premeditated triple murder in Buena Vista, Mexico, instead of attempted bribery of a federal officer in San Diego, she would quite possibly never see the outside of a prison again.
“You’ve got the best lawyer in the city,” I said. “You’ll surrender and post bail today, plea down later, and probably do a few months of federal time.”
“Attempted bribery of a federal agent can carry five years,” she said, squeezing my arm. “But I can run the Nectar Barns from the slammer. I could see you every other day. That’s the policy. I’ve looked into it. The rules say, when you come see me, we can shake hands, embrace lightly, and kiss briefly upon arrival and departure. Visitors’ behavior is considered to be the responsibility of the inmate. So if you go all mating dance on me, I’m the one they dock. You’ll need to show some self-control.”
We walked toward the knot of people gathered in the sunlight.
Then Tola stopped and turned to me. Her eyes searched my face and I felt the pain in them.
“I really don’t expect to see much of you in or out of prison, Roland. You’re better than me. But I’m harder. You can take the Straits out of East County… and we’ll be fine wherever we land. What’s left of the Straits, anyway.”
“You and Virgil will carry the flame,” I said.
“We absolutely will.”
Lark turned to us as Abel Cruzon raised a hand and started our way. Currents of movement through the reporters, the marshals hemming them in. The hard hats still looking down at their projects. Tola let go of my arm and the pigeons fluttered up as she walked into the sunlight.
Forty-Four
Natalie and her two sons arrived on time for the morning appointment in my Main Avenue office.
She’d lost some weight as a captive of The Chaos Committee — compared to the robust BMW pitchwoman whom half the county had seen on TV — and there was a dark calm about her.
She came in on the arm of the older son Lee, who seated her brusquely and bypassed my hand to hug and clap me on the back. He was in his NROTC uniform, hair cut high and tight in the marine manner.
“Thanks for everything you’ve done,” he said.
Younger Terrell, who’d made the admiring and insightful film about his mother, gave me a polite handshake, then sat down on the other side of his mother.
Natalie pulled a white envelope from her purse and set it on my desk.